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What The New Fertilizer Technology Has Accomplished For The Farmer Is Clear: More Crop Can Be Produced On Less Acreage Than Before. Since The Cost Of Fertilizer, Relative To The Resultant Gain In Crop Sales, Is Lower Than That Of Any Other Economic Input, And Since The Land Bank Pays The Farmer For Acreage Not In Crops, The New Technology Pays Him Well. The Cost-in Environmental Degradation-is Borne By His Neighbors In Town Who Find Their Water Polluted. The New Technology Is An Economic Success-but Only Because It Is An Ecological Failure.

-Barry Commoner

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What The New Fertilizer

Barry Commoner

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What The New Fertilizer Technology Has Accomplished For The Farmer Is Clear: More Crop Can Be Produced On Less Acreage Than Before. Since The Cost Of Fertilizer, Relative To The Resultant Gain In Crop Sales, Is Lower Than That Of Any Other Economic Input, And Since The Land Bank Pays The Farmer For Acreage Not In Crops, The New Technology Pays Him Well. The Cost-in Environmental Degradation-is Borne By His Neighbors In Town Who Find Their Water Polluted. The New Technology Is An Economic Success-but Only Because It Is An Ecological Failure.

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Sooner Or Later, Wittingly Or Unwittingly, We Must Pay For Every Intrusion On The Natural Environment.

The Environmental Crisis Is A Sign That The Ecosphere Is Now So Heavily Strained That Its Continued Stability Is Threatened. It Is A Warning That We Must Discover The Source Of This Suicidal Drive And Master It Before It Destroys The Environment-and Ourselves.

Nothing Can Survive On The Planet Unless It Is A Cooperative Part Of Larger Global Life.

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Our Assaults On The Ecosystem Are So Powerful, So Numerous, So Finely Interconnected, That Although The Damage They Do Is Clear, It Is Very Difficult To Discover How It Was Done. By Which Weapon? In Whose Hand? Are We Driving The Ecosphere To Destruction Simply By Our Growing Numbers? By Our Greedy Accumulation Of Wealth? Or Are The Machines Which We Have Built To Gain This Wealth-the Magnificent Technology That Now Feeds Us Out Of Neat Packages, That Clothes Us In Man-made Fibers, That Surrounds Us With New Chemical Creations-at Fault?

Nothing Ever Dies, Nothing Ever Goes Away.

Environmental Quality Was Drastically Improved While Economic Activity Grew By The Simple Expedient Of Removing Lead From Gasoline - Which Prevented It From Entering The Environment.

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Because The Global Ecosystem Is A Connected Whole, In Which Nothing Can Be Gained Or Lost And Which Is Not Subject To Over-all Improvement, Anything Extracted From It By Human Effort Must Be Replaced. Payment Of This Price Cannot Be Avoided; It Can Only Be Delayed. The Present Environmental Crisis Is A Warning That We Have Delayed Nearly Too Long.

The First Law Of Ecology Is That Everything Is Related To Everything Else.

For That Reason The Simple Test Of The Slogan 'consume Less' As A Basis For Social Action On The Environment Would Be To Tell It To The Blacks In The Ghetto. The Message Will Not Be Very Well Received For There Are Many People In This Country Who Consume Less Than Is Needed To Sustain A Decent Life.

The Most Meaningful Engine Of Change, Powerful Enough To Confront Corporate Power, May Be Not So Much Environmental Quality, As The Economic Development And Growth Associated With The Effort To Improve It.

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Environmental Concern Is Now Firmly Embedded In Public Life: In Education, Medicine And Law; In Journalism, Literature And Art.

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In Every Case, The Environmental Hazards Were Made Known Only By Independent Scientists, Who Were Often Bitterly Opposed By The Corporations Responsible For The Hazards.

The Favorite Statistic Is That The U.s. Contains 6 To 7% Of The World Population But Consumes More Than Half The World's Resources And Is Responsible For That Fraction Of The Total Environmental Pollution. But This Statistic Hides Another Vital Fact: That Not Everyone In The U.s. Is So Affluent.

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The Gap Between Brute Power And Human Need Continues To Grow, As The Power Fattens On The Same Faulty Technology That Intensifies The Need.

The Aec Scientists Were So Narrowly Focused On Arming The United States For Nuclear War That They Failed To Perceive Facts - Even Widely Known Ones - That Were Outside Their Limited Field Of Vision.

As The Earth Spins Through Space, A View From Above The North Pole Would Encompass Most Of The Wealth Of The World - Most Of Its Food, Productive Machines, Doctors, Engineers And Teachers. A View From The Opposite Pole Would Encompass Most Of The World's Poor.

After All, Despite The Economic Advantage To Firms That Employed Child Labor, It Was In The Social Interest, As A National Policy, To Abolish It - Removing That Advantage For All Firms.

What The New Fertilizer Technology Has Accomplished For The Farmer Is Clear: More Crop Can Be Produced On Less Acreage Than Before. Since The Cost Of Fertilizer, Relative To The Resultant Gain In Crop Sales, Is Lower Than That Of Any Other Economic Input, And Since The Land Bank Pays The Farmer For Acreage Not In Crops, The New Technology Pays Him Well. The Cost-in Environmental Degradation-is Borne By His Neighbors In Town Who Find Their Water Polluted. The New Technology Is An Economic Success-but Only Because It Is An Ecological Failure.

Air Pollution Is Not Merely A Nuisance And A Threat To Health. It Is A Reminder That Our Most Celebrated Technological Achievements-the Automobile, The Jet Plane, The Power Plant, Industry In General, And Indeed The Modern City Itself-are, In The Environment, Failures.

Despite The Dazzling Successes Of Modern Technology And The Unprecedented Power Of Modern Military Systems, They Suffer From A Common And Catastrophic Fault. While Providing Us With A Bountiful Supply Of Food, With Great Industrial Plants, With High-speed Transportation, And With Military Weapons Of Unprecedented Power, They Threaten Our Very Survival.

It Reflects A Prevailing Myth That Production Technology Is No More Amenable To Human Judgment Or Social Interests Than The Laws Of Thermodynamics, Atomic Structure Or Biological Inheritance.

My Entry Into The Environmental Arena Was Through The Issue That So Dramatically - And Destructively - Demonstrates The Link Between Science And Social Action: Nuclear Weapons.

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