Nothing Ever Dies, Nothing Ever Goes Away.

Recycling Is A Good Thing To Do. It Makes People Feel Good To Do It. The Thing I Want To Emphasize Is The Vast Difference Between Recycling For The Purpose Of Feeling Good And Recycling For The Purpose Of Solving The Trash Problem.

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.

Finally, Since Human Beings Are Uniquely Capable Of Producing Materials Not Found In Nature, Environmental Degradation May Be Due To The Resultant Intrusion Into An Ecosystem Of A Substance Wholly Foreign To It.

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.

What Is New Is That Environmentalism Intensely Illuminates The Need To Confront The Corporate Domain At Its Most Powerful And Guarded Point - The Exclusive Right To Govern The Systems Of Production.