ECOLOGY

ECOLOGY

By RICHARD LANE

Only a few years ago we were assured
that science and technology could solve
any problem. Nothing could stop “the
triumphant march of civilization’’.

The first sputniks, man on the moon,
automation, the increased use of power,
increased food production, all seemed to
prove that there were no limits to man’s
mastery of nature.

~ reeling in economic crisis, high inflation,
high unemployment, the energy crisis,
population crisis, health crisis, and the
ecological crisis, a pessimism has swept
over the West.

“Science and technology can no
longer solve our problems.”’ Scientists
say: “We are a restricted, small planet
with limited resources. Sometime into
the next century we will number more
than 10 billion people. Any attempt to
increase agricultural output to feed this
number is doomed. Natural resources,
fossil fuels, metals and minerals will soon
be used up. Our attempt to produce
manufactured goods for all will totally
pollute the planet. We are in for an
unavoidable ecological disaster and
human extinction will become a fact.”’
That’s what some scientists say.

During the next several months
the Tribune will publish a number of
articles dealing with human beings
and their environment. The articles,
prepared by Richard Lane, a work-
ing scientist, begin with this general
introductory article.

In later issues, the author lists
some of the immediate issues that
require a closer look:

Environmental disease. It is true
that most cancer is environmentally
caused? Canadian asbestos workers
have 10 times as much chance of
getting lung cancer as the ordinary
public. Is asbestos also killing un-
suspecting citizens? What Cana-
dians are being sickened by mer-
cury, lead and arsenic? Has Canada
potential Love Canal types of waste
dumps?

Energy crisis. Does it matter
whether the path is ‘‘soft’’ or “‘hard’’
if they are both controlled by capital-
ists and must be profitable? Will the
new Government of Saskatchewan
continue to mine the richest and
most dangerous uranium ore in the
world? What’s to be done with the
spent uranium wastes which will be
radioactive for centuries? Did the

Who’s going to jump off the boat?

Pollution: the implications

miners shorten their lives by work-
ing in the mines of Elliot Lake?

Biotechnology. Are there dangers
from the new answer to all of the
earth’s problems? Will this new
revolution be chained by the profit
mongers?

Population. Is it true that with
minor assistance the present world’s
farmers could support 50 times as
big a population? Will it be neces-
sary to send people offinto space for
survival? Do we face a food crisis or
a distribution crisis?

Nuclear war. Can the ultimate
ecological disaster be avoided? Do
the citizens of the world know the
real dangers of atomic weapons? Is
there a similar danger from chemical
and biological weapons?

Microtechnology. Will the
Japanese industries make work ob-
solete? Can the profit motive system
totally put buyers out of work and
continue to exist? Will people be-
come appendages to the computer,
or will they use it as another useful
tool?

The questions are manifold, but
then, so are the answers, some of
which are seldom explored in the
capitalist media. Be

_ But today, with the capitalist world

But does an increase in population, for
instance, directly increase pollution?

Pollution Leads Population

In the last 25 years the U.S. population
and production growth was less than
40%. But there was a horrendous tenfold
(1,000%) increase in environmental pol-
lution in the same period. The population
rise had very little to do with the pollu-
tion increase. New technology with no
pollution abatement restrictions was the
cause. There has been a direct relation-
ship between the increase in pollution
and the increase in profits.

Some scientists have characterized the
world as a lifeboat. There are only so
many spaces in the lifeboat, and “‘we’’
have to decide whom to let on the life-
boat. The rest must be left to drown. For
ecologist writer Garret Hardin the ‘“‘we”’
are the chosen people of the Western
industrialized countries and the *‘drow-
ners’’ will be the people of the Eastern
and underdeveloped countries —
Asians, Africans and Latin Americans.

He calls for a stop to aid to these coun-
tries, and claims: “‘We just haven’t got
what it takes to save the world.” In other
words: ‘‘Let them drown.”’

Paul Ehrlich, a veteran in the field,
suggests that the powerful nations must
make all the political decisions for the
‘thave-nots’’. For instance, population
and migration control, direction of agri-
culture, which countries should be in-
dustrialized and which should not, must
be controlled by us. This, of course, is
not new. The imperialists have always
exhibited this type of control over their
political and economic colonies.

In the Western developed countries
pressure groups have arisen for ecologi-
cal sanity, made up mainly of young
middle-class professionals who have
launched anti-litter campaigns, boycotts
against non-returnable bottles, programs
for the collection of metals and paper,
and demonstrations to save seals and
whales. Some, more courageous have
fought to prevent oil refinieries,
expressways, atomic plants, missile

submarines, high rises and airports in
their areas.

The congestion, pollution and
environmental damage is invading the
life style of the middle class. In the past
-the working class had alone borne the |
“burden of poor housing and food,

dangerous working conditions and living}

conditions. So what’s new?

Pollution abatement, zoning by-laws,
could be good for a community if they
were part of a comprehensive plan to
ensure maintenacne of good living stan-
dards as well.

Paying for Reforms

The working class knows, from past
experience, that liberal reform is gained
at the expense of the working class. Zon-
ing by-laws mean higher cost of land,
housing and rents for workers. Pollution —
regulations can result in layoffs. Speed-
up, higher rents, price and tax increases,
and deterioration of working conditions
are the usual cost of liberal reforms under
capitalism. —

Workers are also maligned as the ones
physically to blame for pollution. They

clutter the ‘streets and roads with |)

cigarette butts, bottles, papers and other"
garbage. They drive big polluting gas
guzzlers. They opt for bucks over ecolo-

y.

Who dumps industrial waste into the |
air, water and into the ground?

Who benefits from planned obsoles-
cence in consumer goods?

Do workers request elaborate packag-
ing?

Whose fault is it that buildings, plants
and equipment sit idle, under-used?

Do workers waste resources for manu-
facturing weapons of war?

Do workers clamor for the media ad-
vertising which costs $25-billion a year?

Who is really to blame? i#

Since the ‘‘main impulse of the capital-
ist social system is the quest for profit,
the result is unplanned, anarchic pro-
duction, which allows pollution and in-
discriminate plunder of our our natural
resources.”

The ultimate solution is a planned soc-
iety in which the products of science and
technology are used for the benefit of all
human beings.

Immediate goals should be to pressure
governments to force the large
monopolies to pay reparations for the
ecological damages already done to the
environment, and to see that ecological
remedies will be paid out of monopoly
profits, not out of the working people’s
hides.

Richard Lane is a working scientist.

onference aims to keep the Crow Rate —

By K. CARIOU
Predictions of hard times for farmers, and calls for
public ownership of transportation came at a seminar on
the Crow Rate, here, Sept. 21-22. Some 30 participants
from labor and farm groups and universities took part in
the conference held by the Saskatchewan Federation of
Labor and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
National Farmer’s Union president Ted Strain pointed
out that the recommendations of the Gilson Report,
which leaked documents indicate originated in the Tru-
deau cabinet, will cost farmers an extra $1-billion a year
by 1990-91. Many farmers with below-average incomes
will be forced out of business, he said, by this course
‘‘which will essentially give the railroads the power to
tax farmers, to decide which rural communities will sur-
vive or die’’. Railways are an essential service which
must be operated as a public utility for the good of

Canada, he said.
Reduced Risk

Strain’s argument was backed up by University of
Regina sociologist Jim McCrorie, who debunked the
myth that Canadian transportation is “free enterprise in
action”. McCrorie detailed how governments and tax-
payers reduced the Canadian Pacific Railways’ ‘‘market
risk’? with massive subsidies of cash, land, and mono-
PACIFIC TRIBUNE— OCTOBER 8, 1982— Page 8

poly clauses. Governments made the 1897 Crow’s Nest
Pass agreement an integral component of national pol-
icy, he said. The agreement served to settle the West,
create a captive market for central Canadian manufac-
turing, and gave the CPR its mineral empire in the
Kootenays.

McCrorie pointed to the federal government’s 1969
Agricultural Task Force, which proposed a massive re-
organization of agriculture, including the elimination of
many family farms, as a key to understanding the ‘“‘Crow
Debate’. Private capital, he said, wants to use higher
freight rates to achieve this and open up rural areas for
investments at a time when private investment oppor-
tunities on a world scale are declining. :

Darlene Henderson, NFU women’s president, from
Sinclair, Manitoba, outlined the devastating effects
higher freight rates will have on rural communities. The
government’s ‘‘agri-food strategy’’, she said, means the
industrialization of food production, without concern for
the incomes of farmers. Money now spent locally, she
said, will instead go to the railways, as farmers tradi-
tionally pay their ‘‘input’’ costs first. The switch to vari-

able rates implicit in the Gilson proposals will accelerate .

the trends to centralize shopping, schools, hospitals, and
retirement in larger centres. For example, she said, even

now farmers from her area are beginning to. retire is
Brandon, 90 miles away. i

The farm family’s need for more cash will also pus!
more into off-farm jobs, with the resulting strains |
home life and heavier workload on all family membes*
And most jobs, particularly for farm women, she noted

are low-paying and non-union.
Demise of Farm Life

These factors, Henderson said, will help break dow!
many rural communities, by leaving ever fewer people”,
support services and voluntary activities, and could le®
to the demise of an important way of life. ;

Using NFU projections, Bob Sterling of the Unive
sity of Regina predicted that Saskatchewan farms 0
have to grow from their current average of 1,000 acres’.
1,700 acres by 1990 to meet rising freight costs. TH
could mean a loss of up to 15,000 of the province’s 68,0,
farms, he said, especially north of the line from Lioys
minster to Moosomin, in areas not as deeply affectet
earlier waves of consolidation as southern areas. oo!
factors could offset this trend, such as higher yields ee
use of more machinery, but these would not solvé ov!
fundamental problems or ease by much the tremendo™
pressure on land.

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