THE ENVIRONMENTALIST AND THE BOMB UPDATE: DAVE BROWER

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

We have to act from love, the one resource that will be exhausted only if we forget to use it. I learned from the Nepalese, during a visit to their country a few years back, that there are really just two basic laws for good behavior: It's a sin to make a child cry, and it's a sin to embarrass anyone. Now, I don't break that first rule very often, but — when it comes to dealing with earth-wrecking developers or politicians — I must confess that I keep forgetting the second one.

Yet we all must, as Schell says, replace the Law of Fear with the Law of Love. We have to remember to thank politicians when they do something right and — without compromising our standards — try to understand their point of view when we disagree. And most important of all, we have to acknowledge the rights of those to come . . . to stop stealing from the children who aren't yet born.

You know, I love this place ... this planet. I'm not going to want to leave it. But I'm not going to mind leaving it — since I know I must — if I'm sure that it will survive and that I've done my bit for the largest population of all: the billions of people to come and all the billions of children they will wish to have and see grow up with hope in future millenniums.

Their genes are in our custody, and guarding them is our greatest responsibility. After all, we do not inherit the land from our fathers ... we borrow it from our children.

FROM THE FATE OF THE EARTH

As Dave Brower points out, Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth (published by Random House and available in any good bookstore for $11.95) is one of the most compelling tomes ever written about the threat of planetary extinction by nuclear war and the need to act to save the earth. In fact, Senator Alan Cranston recently read some excerpts from Schell's work into the Congressional Record . . . including the following passages.

* * * * * * *

Bearing in mind that the possible consequences of the detonations of thousands of megatons of nuclear explosives include the blinding of insects, birds, and beasts all over the world; the extinction of many ocean species, among them some at the base of the food chain; the temporary or permanent alteration of the climate of the globe, with the outside chance of "dramatic" and "major" alterations in the structure of the atmosphere; the pollution of the whole ecosphere with oxides of nitrogen; the incapacitation in ten minutes of unprotected people who go out into the sunlight; the blinding of people who go out into the sunlight; a significant decrease in photosynthesis in plants around the world; the scalding and killing of many crops; the increase in rates of cancer and mutation around the world, but especially in the targeted zones, and the attendant risk of global epidemics; the possible poisoning of all vertebrates by sharply increased levels of vitamin D in their skin as a result of increased ultraviolet light; and the outright slaughter on all targeted continents of most human beings and other living things by the initial nuclear radiation, the fireballs, the thermal pulses, the blast waves, the mass fires, and the fallout from the explosions — and considering that these consequences will all interact with one another in unguessable ways and, furthermore, are in all likelihood an incomplete list which will be added to as our knowledge of the earth increases — one must conclude that a full-scale nuclear holocaust could lead to the extinction of mankind.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print