The 20p Ecologist

Man and the environment • The Quality of life • Pollution • Conservation

Vol. 1. No. 12 June 1971 Mining in Snowdonia • Onslaughts on Anglesey • Environmental genetic hazards • Primitive peoples defended PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS

It is a fair bet that everyone reading The Ecologist is in some way or another concerned by the accelerating destruction of Britain's natural environment. It is also a fair bet that all of us from time to time have publicly or privately deplored the seeming omnipotence of huge corporations, and the irresponsibility that such power engenders.

The time has come to stop bleating about it. A handful of international mining consortia, in a desire to maximise short-term profit, are currently intent on laying waste to the Snowdonia National Park. The aim of Friends of the Earth, put simply, is to stop them.

To do this we will require money, and it is for this purpose that the SNOWDONIA DEFENCE FUND has been established.

If Snowdonia is desecrated the blame will not be entirely attributable to Lord Byers—it will be your fault too. Give us enough money to engage lawyers, planners and the like, and we'll do the rest.

By making out a cheque to the Snowdonia Defence Fund, and sending it to Friends of the Earth, 8 King Street, London, W.C.2., you will be putting your money where your mouth is—and right now it's action we want, not words. The Ecologist

Vol. 1. No. 12 June 1971

Editorial The rape of North Wales 3

Feature articles Friends of the Earth Mining in Snowdonia The threat to a national park 4

Richard Thompson Coon Aluminium and Anglesey The smelter they didn't want 9

Richard Thompson Coon No oil at Amlwch Another onslaught on Anglesey 14

Bryn Bridges Environmental genetic hazards The impossible problem? 19

Conrad Gorinsky In defence of the primitive The intrinsic value of primitive man 22

Robert Allen & Edward Goldsmith The need for wilderness A proposal for Stockholm 24 Reports Edward Goldsmith DDT lunacy 26

Jeremy Bugler John Barr 26

Peter Bunyard Fessenheim—Easter Monday 26

Nicholas Gould Gulliver in Automobilia, IV: wherein the Author considers the Disposal of Refuse 28 Columns Lawrence D. Hills Down to earth Poisoned pastures 30

Edward Goldsmith Towards a unified science Directivity of behaviour 31

Robert Allen Ecopolitics Fresh air squandered 33

Arthur J. Puffett Ecotechnics Bricks from—anything! 37

Feedback 35 Books 38 Letters 40

Editor: E. R. D. Goldsmith; Deputy editor: Robert Allen; Associate editors: Michael Allaby, Peter Bunyard, John Davoll, Lawrence D. Hills, Brian Johnson, S. G. Lawrence, Jean Liedloff, Charles Maclean, Robert Waller. Production and design by The Soil Association. Editorial copy and enquiries should be sent to The Editor, The Ecologist, 73 Kew Green, Richmond, Surrey. Telephone: 01-948 0690. Advertising enquiries should be sent to Mrs Valerie A. E. Ingersoll, Hexagon Publishing Co. Ltd., 131 Praed Street, London W2. Telephone: 01-723 1456.

Published by Ecosystems Ltd., registered office 11 Mansfield Street, Portland Place, London W1M 0AH and distributed by the Hachette Group, Continental Publishers and Distributors Ltd., 4 Regent Place, London W1R 6BH; Telephone: 01-734 5259; Telegrams: Aglibrairi London Wl; Telex: 25114. Subscriptions to: The Ecologist, 73 Kew Green, Richmond, Surrey. Printed by The Garden City Press Ltd., Pixmore Avenue, Letch worth, Hertfordshire, SG6 1JS.

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Editorial

The rape of North Wales completed, these constructional opera­ that "the scenic beauty of upland Wales This month's issue is exceptional in tions are also an important source of offers great potential to tourism, and that we devote a considerable propor­ local employment, and employment firm policies of conservation are essen­ tion of it to North Wales—specifically problems are likely to arise in the locali­ tial", it also recognises that mining is to Snowdonia National Park and to ties affected as these projects are com­ highly lucrative. But with today's Anglesey with its lovely coastline, much pleted". sophisticated extractive methods it is of which is an Area of Outstanding In the end, RTZ and Shell are likely unlikely that the inhabitants of Snow­ Natural Beauty. We do so because in to employ only a small proportion of donia will benefit quite as much as spite of these designations both areas the local labour force (and much of the RTZ's shareholders. What is unques­ are under intense pressure to develop skilled work will go to outsiders), and tionable, however, is that the effect on in the most destructive and short­ the net effect will be to exacerbate local the landscape will be irreparable—a sighted manner possible. In Snowdonia, unemployment problems as the con­ landscape which, as the Welsh Council Rio Tinto-Zinc want to mine gold and struction workers are laid off. points out, is not merely a basic re­ copper—and other mining companies Nor will mining operations like those source of the tourist industry but is also are hard on their heels. In Anglesey, an proposed for Snowdonia be of any help. a "national heritage which should be aluminium smelter (largely owned by Indeed, the extractive sector is notor­ handed on to succeeding generations". RTZ) has just been built and emissions ious for creating communities around For Anglesey and Snowdonia, as from it are already causing a great deal it which are abandoned once the mines with the rest of North-West Wales, the of distress. In addition, Shell plan a are worked out. Copper and gold may future lies in tourism and light industry. large oil terminal there so that heavy help today, but they will leave behind Indeed, employment in the manufactur­ bouts of pollution threaten not just the them a far worse problem in a genera­ ing and services sector has expanded Anglesey coast but also the mainland tion's time. much more than any other—by 45.2 and its highly popular tourist resorts. What is particularly alarming is that per cent between 1959 and 1969. But if The industrial protagonists and their both projects seem to have been rushed this future is not to be lived out in a "voices-off" see the issue as essentially through with barely the minimum of blighted environment, they must be one of "jobs or beauty". Yet once this consultation. The smelter was foisted helped in their fight to keep out the beauty goes it is gone for ever, while the on the unwilling islanders by a small clumsy giants of the oil and mining few jobs brought to the region will not but vigorous minority, and they are worlds. The struggle is unequal: the long remain there. threatened with the oil terminal in the puny local resources against the might North-West Wales has a serious un­ same way. Similarly, environmental of international companies. But the employment problem, worse than that safeguards, such as they were, do not locals have learned one lesson—which for Wales as a whole, which in turn is appear to have survived the public en­ should be noted by everyone facing about one and a half times to twice as quiry. A discrepancy in sales or profits similar threats to their environment— bad as the average for Britain. But it forecast of the same order of magni­ that assurances of safeguards are not to will not be solved by glamorous con­ tude as that between the level of emis­ be believed. They must be spelt out in struction projects like the aluminium sions promised at the enquiry (and detail and guaranteed. smelter and oil terminal in Anglesey. backed by a forbidding display of plans Now that Anglesey's aluminium As the Welsh Council's latest report, and calculations) and that achieved smelter has been built, proper standards A Strategy for Rural Wales, explains: now would have led to meetings with for emissions must be agreed with the "In North-West Wales this labour force aggrieved shareholders, violent up­ residents. And there is time (though not has been employed mainly on the con­ heavals within the company—certainly much) to save Anglesey from the ter­ struction of two nuclear power stations not to bland assurances that everything minal and Snowdonia from the atten­ at Trawsfynydd (in Snowdonia National is perfectly proper. tions of RTZ et al. Both issues still Park) and Wylfa (in Anglesey), a major As for Snowdonia, it should go with­ await a careful consideration by the pumped storage scheme at Ffestiniog out saying that, unless it is a matter of local authorities of the real benefits they and later the construction of the RTZ life and death, mining is incompatible are likely to bring to their people, and smelter at Holyhead ... While a signi­ with a National Park. Unfortunately, a much more public appraisal of their ficant proportion of the constructional the Welsh Council, in both its report dangers. It is essential that public pres­ labour force on these major projects on Rural Wales and that on An Eco­ sure be brought to bear on Parliament, are migrants, most of whom may move nomic Strategy for North-West Wales, and on the Government Departments to other projects as existing ones are equivocates over this. While allowing concerned, to see that this is done. 3 Ten designated National Parks cover nine per cent of the area of England and Wales. In general the Parks are Mining privately owned, marginally farmed, locally administered, and so unpro­ tected that not one of them qualifies for inclusion in the United Nations List of National Parks and Equivalent Re­ serves. Yet these Parks contain our most beautiful, varied, and fragile wild land. It is their misfortune, and ours, that they also contain most of Britain's reserves of nonferrous metal ores, and that British law and policy presume that mining is in the national interest Snowdonia unless proved otherwise. In the 845-square-mile Snowdonia National Park, the exploitative eco­ nomy and the National Park idea are colliding head-on. Giant mining con­ sortia, sometimes combining their offers with the threat of compulsory purchase, have bought exploration options for most of the Park, and are prospecting widely for copper, zinc, gold, lead, manganese, silver, and other "The wicked flee," wrote Charles Parkhurst, "where no man minerals. One company has already pursueth, but they make better time when someone is after them." applied for permission for extensive Friends of the Earth invite you to join the chase. trial-borings—a test-case crucial for Snowdonia and for all other National Parks. Within the next year or two, the Government will probably have decided whether to allow large-scale mining in Snowdonia. We have singled out one company, Rio Tinto Finance and Exploration Ltd (which we shall call RTZ because it is a subsidiary of The Rio Tinto- Zinc Corporation Ltd, an English hold­ ing company with annual turnover well over £300 million) because RTZ is ahead of its competitors in Snowdonia, and its plans are therefore easier to find out about than theirs. RTZ has not formally proposed any development in Snowdonia beyond prospecting in two areas (the Mawddach estuary and Coed-y-brenin); but if, as seems very likely, this exploration is allowed and reveals deposits of economic interest, RTZ will wish to extract them. Our description of how this would have to be done is based on published state­ ments (oral and written) by RTZ offi­ cials and on the limits of known mining technology. RTZ can deny that it definitely plans to do the things we describe, but we do not say it does. We only say that extraction, if it occurs, will take certain forms. We have tried to minimize any distress our specula­ tions may cause RTZ by founding them firmly upon known facts.

4 When is a Park not a Park? supposed to be held by the National previous Government, RTZ has been The boundaries of the Snowdonia Parks Commission but in the event was exploring two parts of the Park. First, National Park, though drawn in 1951 usually ceded to local authorities and, seismic and resistivity studies in the to exclude past mining and quarrying in a few cases, to the Secretary of State. Mawddach estuary (one of the most devastation, include most of the 300- During the second-reading debate in beautiful in Europe) suggest that allu­ square-mile Harlech Dome, long known 1949, the Minister of Town and vial sediments presumed to contain to contain huge deposits of nonferrous Country Planning admitted that mining millions of pounds' worth of Merioneth metals such as copper. Recent price in a Park might someday have to be gold may be accessible to modern large- rises and consequent refinement of considered. But he laid down several scale dredging; RTZ has sought per­ mining technology have made eco­ conditions: mission for test-boring to find out. nomic the mining of these relatively Second, RTZ's illegal drilling of 48 It must be demonstrated quite poor ores (~ 0.5-1.0 per cent). The holes in the dense forest Coed-y-brenin, clearly [he said] that the exploita­ profit-margin will continue to rise: further to the northeast, has already tion of those minerals is absolutely RTZ's present exploration in Snow­ located at least one large body of cop­ necessary in the public interest. It donia is probably more a hedge against per mineralisation, and RTZ has asked must be clear beyond all possible future competition than a prelude to for permission to continue drilling doubt that there is no possible immediate extraction. there. Both drilling applications were alternative source of supply, and Whether mining could ever be called in by the Secretary of State for if those two conditions are satis­ allowed in National Parks was argued Wales at the request of the Merioneth fied then the permission must be at length when the Bill for the Parks County Council, and were the subject subject to the condition that restor­ was introduced in 1949. Unfortunately, of a public inquiry in Dolgellau on ation takes place at the earliest the test urged by the Hobhouse Com­ 15-18 December 1970. (According to possible opportunity. mission—that proposed mining must be the usual practice, no public record of "of vital national importance" and "of We contend that RTZ's potential oper­ the inquiry was made.) The Secretary's proved national necessity"—did not ations in Snowdonia cannot meet any binding decision on the applications is become law. The Parks' normal status of these three requirements. To show expected in the spring of 1971. as "white areas" (expected to have no this, we must first set out RTZ's stated substantial development) was instead and presumed intentions. A rape by any other name left at the mercy of Park administra­ With the probable encouragement of The test-boring in the Mawddach would tions, control of which was originally the Ministry of Technology under the annoy residents for some months but

Snow don Horseshoe from Uyn Mymbryr Uchuf would probably cause only slight and life. The works that might eventually be the initial investment exceeding £40 transient ecological damage propor­ carried out in this forest (less famous million. tional to the extent of the drilling, to and less visible to tourists than the A simple calculation shows that a which RTZ has set no limit. Dredging, Mawddach) would be on an even larger single 200-acre-by-100-yard pit worked however, if permitted would be an ir­ scale than dredging, and even more dis­ for 25 years yields on average about 10 reversible ecological disaster. It would astrous both locally and as a precedent. million tons of rock a year. It is not probably take several decades for one And oddly enough, RTZ's proposed clear whether this rock (after consider­ or more dredgers about 320X80X80 drilling will be merely a continuation of able on-site processing) would be trans­ feet in size, floated either by dredging a programme already well-advanced ported by some new means to South out a series of lagoons or by flooding without permission and (for almost a Wales for smelting or would be smelted the estuary with a barrage adjacent to year) without the County Council's locally; in either case the ecological the existing railway bridge. We are re­ even being informed of it. effects would extend far beyond the liably informed that the barrage is the Over a period of nearly two years square mile or two occupied by the scheme more likely to be proposed if starting in January 1969, RTZ drilled mine itself. the test-boring results are favourable, four dozen scout and prospect holes in The more the merrier: RTZ would though of course any method of dredg­ Coed-y-brenin, some to a great depth promptly be joined by Noranda-Kerr ing would ruin the extremely delicate (said by residents and denied by RTZ (Noranda Mines Ltd plus Kerr Addison flow-patterns of the estuary. A barrage to be 1,000 feet). RTZ's contention that Mines Ltd, both of Toronto), Union would have to be backed by upstream planning permission was not legally re­ Corp Ltd of South Africa, and possibly dams to control flooding, and the estu­ quired for this work seems no more others. Ominously, even the mineral ary itself, deprived of tidal scouring, than face-saving sophistry. RTZ's view rights to the Secretary of State's 13,000- would become heavily silted—an effect of the law is not supported by the acre Vaynol purchase (which includes already obvious since the pilings of the sources and authorities it has cited; is most of the central and western Snow- railway bridge reduced the tidal flow. not shared by the Merioneth County don massif, the Pass of Llanberis, and A huge volume of tailings would be ex­ Council, the Welsh Office, the Depart­ the south-western side of the Glyder) creted from the dredger in hillocks that ment of Trade and Industry, or our were bought not by the Secretary but one day might subside. own counsel; and is hard to reconcile by a private mineral agent, Geo- RTZ has apparently had no exper­ with RTZ's request for prior permis­ chemical Remining Co Ltd. Several ience of estuarine dredging, and can­ sion for shallower and less extensive consortia, including RTZ, are now not say (nor can anyone else) how it drilling in the open country of the prospecting in other wild areas of might change mineral-salt concentra­ Mawddach. Britain and Northern Ireland. tions and other conditions. But it is ob­ RTZ certainly cannot claim ignor­ vious that dredging would turn the ance of the law after January 1970, Loopholes estuary into something else—something when it was officially informed that per­ RTZ's expertly managed appearance at less attractive to residents, visitors, mission was required. But though RTZ the Dolgellau inquiry left little room plants, wildfowl, and fish (including then prepared an application (filed in for opposition. The muddled state of salmon and other species worth more April), it also kept on drilling at a planning law makes it possible for an than £40,000 a year to the landowners). faster pace, with some of the drill-rigs applicant to divide his proposal into RTZ could not, of course, undertake running day and night and causing in­ artificially separated stages, and thus to to restore the dredged estuary, but tense annoyance to residents. The present his plans a little at a time with­ would instead propose to "improve" it. County Council, though it eventually out reference to more than the immed­ This "improvement" might take the had the courage to oppose RTZ, was at iate future. This admissibility of the form either of "land reclamation"— first indecisive and never issued an en­ pretence that plans that are necessarily filling the estuary for agriculture and forcement order, so RTZ's violation of incomplete do not exist at all makes confining Afon Mawddach in drainage planning law continued until the Welsh planning inquiries have little to do with channels fed by dams ("flood control") Office asked RTZ to desist in Novem­ planning, but it is probably the law, and —or of "water conservation"—turning ber 1970, presumably so that the Secre­ RTZ took full advantage of it by re­ the estuary into a freshwater reservoir tary would not have to decide whether fusing to discuss anything beyond test- or recreational lake. The latter scheme, to allow RTZ to do what it was still boring. with marinas, a major north-south doing. The impropriety of RTZ's past Furthermore, the Minister who trunk road on the barrage, and perhaps actions does not, unfortunately, bar a determines a called-in planning applica­ an improved harbour at Barmouth, grant of permission to continue them tion has to take into account all could attract heavy political support. legally. "material considerations", but the If allowed to, RTZ will probably courts have been so reluctant to con­ Meanwhile, back in the woods... drill in Coed-y-brenin for another year, strue "material" that in practice the RTZ has also asked for permission to then file simultaneous applications for Minister is normally the sole judge of drill an unspecified number of holes in intensive exploration (costing several his own terms of reference. His ad­ Coed-y-brenin, which is described by million pounds) and for eventual min­ ministrative discretion is absolute—his its tenant (the Forestry Commission) as ing. This mining would be opencast and decision cannot be questioned in court "a mountain forest of superlative on a very large scale: probably from —but it seems that his grounds for beauty", and whose dense mosaic of two to four pits about 200 acres in reaching the decision cannot readily be habitats makes it an important regener­ extent and several hundred feet deep questioned either. This will continue to ative ground for birds and other wild­ would be worked for 15-30 years, with be the law until some landowner 6 wealthy and stubborn enough to go to the House of Lords suffers a direct legal injury as a result of a Minister's restricted views of what is relevant. The 1962 Town and Country Planning Act has removed most of the usual preroga­ tive remedies against abuse of admini­ strative discretion, so that even if a Minister breaks his own rules there are very few people legally entitled to chal­ lenge him. (The Merioneth County Council could appeal in this case, but that could be very expensive.) Unless the severe deterrents to judicial review of the legality of planning decisions are reduced, large companies will continue indefinitely to bulldoze their way through the public interest. RTZ's present applications are only the first of many. If they are rejected, Ogwen Valley they will be renewed in different terms with increasingly persuasive arguments. Tryfan from Bwlch Caseg Fraith If they are accepted, they will open the floodgates. Even if the ores turn out to be poor, the same ores will someday be thought rich. In any event, only a nation sufficiently aroused to strengthen the existing National Park legislation, and sufficiently vigilant to guard it from evasion day by day, can ever keep large-scale mining out of the Parks. Under present law, a Minister can authorise almost any sort of heavy in­ dustry he likes in a National Park with­ out seeking Parliament's consent. The purposes for which the Parks have been reserved seem in law to give rise to no enforceable public rights to enjoy the Parks unimpaired. To make a Park last only until a Minister decides he has a better use for it is in practice to aban­ don the idea of National Parks held in trust by the will of Parliament. You pays your money. • • National Parks and the mining industry cannot both flourish forever in Britain, so Britain must decide which she pre­ fers. If her National Parks are to have a price, RTZ and its competitors have the money and will bid more and more temptingly. Yet some things of value have no price; and if everything has a price, we can keep nothing priceless.

The main arguments for mineral ex­ traction in Snowdonia are:

1. Copper-mining is essential in the national interest. 2. Copper is a strategic metal; there­ fore mining it would increase national security.

7 3. Copper-mining would make their sources are very stable and will All economists who have seriously Britain more self-sufficient—less be for a long time. RTZ and other studied Merioneth's unemployment dependent on distant and unstable companies have large copper-mines in agree that although it must be relieved sources. South Africa, Canada, and New promptly, heavy extractive industry is 4. Copper-mining would make Guinea: Chile and Zambia are not the not the way to relieve it, and would Britain more prosperous by reducing only sources. Indeed, RTZ's foreign probably leave the area worse off than her sterling outflow for foreign copper. mines are so successful that far from before. We feel that the bait of jobs has 5. The Mawddach is Britain's only failing to avert a critical world short­ been seized far too uncritically, espec­ known potential source of substantial age of copper, they have recently ially by local MPs who should know amounts of gold; therefore we must use helped to produce a glut on the market. better. We believe that if the people our unique opportunity to get the gold. 4. Even after part of RTZ's profit of Merioneth realised the scale and the 6. Mineral extraction would bring has returned abroad (as dividends and side-effects of modern opencast min­ hundreds of badly-needed jobs to investments) Britain would save sterling ing, they would be less anxious to Merioneth. by mining copper domestically. This is bestow on Dolgellau the same benefits 7. In obtaining all these benefits, we the best argument we know for mining that quarrying brought to Llanberis. would not lose the "amenity" of the in Snowdonia, but we do not think it is 7. Large-scale mineral extraction in Park—indeed, the Park would actually good enough. Britain could reduce her Merioneth would cause drastic and ir­ be improved. copper-importing in other ways too— reparable harm to the beauty and wild­ 8. Mining is essential in the name of for example, if RTZ applied some of ness of the land—qualities that tourists progress and inevitable in a world that its capital and expertise to recycling now pay more than £5 million a year depends on progress. copper. (Scrap brass is a much better (£400 per Merioneth family) to enjoy. ore than Welsh rock.) That would be This income is permanent, depends on Friends of the Earth do not think a far greater public service than turn­ an inexhaustible resource, could be these arguments make sense. We urge ing our children's shares of Snowdonia greatly increased, and benefits everyone you to consider these counter-argu­ into someone else's dividends. in the community. We do not think it ments: 5. Mining, we are told, is fixed by its makes sense to jeopardise this stable, nature and therefore must take pre­ widespread, long-term income in order 1. Copper-mining would certainly cedence over all other land-uses. Min­ to seek a speculative, undispersed, increase RTZ's profits, but the national eral deposits, dam-sites, and the like short-term income. RTZ has pointed interest does not necessarily coincide are often represented as scarce re­ out how its working could be "cos- with RTZ's interest. By no stretch of sources that "must" be used. We do meticised"—e.g. by flooding an open­ a highly elastic imagination can copper- not see the logic of this argument-from- cast pit to make a new recreational mining be said to be essential for uniqueness. Many things, such as polar lake (which we doubt anything could Britain; we suspect that if the copper bears, are not found in Britain, but that live in) or pumped power-storage were not there we should get on very is not a reason for introducing them. station (which we would hardly prefer well without it. The national interest in There are many activities that cannot to a forest), or by hiding the pit behind Snowdonia seems to have been ex­ be carried out just anywhere—the level­ artificial mountains of tailings (which pressed by Parliament, which reserved ling of mountains by nuclear explo­ probably could not be re vegetated). We the land "for the purpose of preserving sions, for example, can be done only in realise that RTZ thinks such "cosmetic- and enhancing [its] natural beauty... mountainous country—but that is no isation" would be real conservation, but and ... of promoting [its] enjoyment by argument for allowing them. we do not think that is what National the public". The interest of the millions 6. The boom-and-bust jobs brought Parks are for. of visitors who come to Snowdonia to Merioneth by highly mechanised 8. We do not think that large-scale each year (we shall refer in a moment mining would be too temporary to inter­ mineral extraction in one of our finest to the interests of the residents, who est school-leavers, few compared to the National Parks has anything to do with have even more of a claim on how their capital outlay, useless to the hard core progress. We think it is a clever, well- land is used) is in enjoying beauty and of unemployment (men disabled by in­ financed, disastrously misguided wildness close to the cities. This interest dustrial disease and injury), and too attempt to destroy for profit the values would not be furthered by mining. If skilled to be filled locally. For these National Parks are designed to pre­ Parliament, which is supposed to know reasons, two recent construction pro­ serve. RTZ thinks mining in Snowdonia what is in the national interest, no jects in Gwynedd—the Trawsfynydd would be a patriotic public service; we longer means what it said in 1949 and nuclear power station and the large do not agree. Mining treats the earth in the Countryside Act, 1968, it is odd RTZ alumina-smelter on Anglesey— as though we had a spare. It literally that Parliament has not said so. have failed to provide jobs as promised. costs the earth. Yet mining is not in­ 2. If copper is a strategic metal—one The unemployment rate in Anglesey, evitable unless we fail in our civic essential to have reserves of in an emer­ for example, is the same after the duties: all citizens have a choice, for gency—we should be foolish to smelter-building as before. RTZ's geol­ themselves and their descendants. squander it in peacetime. ogist at the Dolgellau inquiry said he Friends of the Earth urge you to help 3. Again, depleting our reserves can had had trouble finding locally even six your Government make the right only reduce our self-sufficiency. The labourers to help with a seismic survey: one. As Newton Drury might have said, other countries that rely on the same the reasons for this would apply all the Britain is neither rich enough to be able sources of copper we do are not so more to a modern mining operation to afford to sell Snowdonia, nor poor anxious about their copper-supplies, for needing highly skilled machine-experts. enough to need to. 8 Aluminium and Anglesey by Richard Thompson Coon

In 1955 an enormous bauxite deposit was discovered at Weipa, near the tip of the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. The deposit contains more than 2,000 million tons of bauxite, or about 20 per cent of the world's known reserves. Discovery led to the formation of the Commonwealth Aluminium Corporation (Comalco), in which Conzinc Riotinto of Australia Ltd. (CRA) have a 45 per cent shareholding. CRA is owned 83.6 per cent by the Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation.

In 1960, CRA and Kaiser formed Norway where hydro-electric power is smelter on Anglesey was made long Comalco Industries Pty Ltd as the cheap. It was therefore essential for before the people who lived there knew management and marketing company any company contemplating large-scale anything about it, whilst the Public for the Comalco group, and in so doing aluminium smelting operations to nego­ Enquiry that was eventually held was established the base from which the tiate a cheap source of electricity. RTZ predictably a democratic farce. RTZ Group's expanding aluminium made the first move, but were quickly interests could grow. Comalco has be­ followed by British Aluminium and The Wylfa power station come one of the world's leading pro­ Alcan. Combined their plans meant In 1957 test drilling was begun on ducers of bauxite with production an introduction into this country of the Weipa bauxite deposits in Queens­ capacity expected to reach 10.5 million a smelting capacity of about 320,000 land. In 1959 Leslie Watson joined tons in 1972. tons per annum, which it was origin­ RTZ's precursor, Consolidated Zinc, The largest outlet for the Weipa ally estimated would save the coun­ from South Africa, and took on the task bauxite is Comalco's alumina refinery try £40 million on imports. After a of preparing plans for an aluminium at Gladstone, also in Queensland; it is lot of argument, the British taxpayer smelter in Britain. In 1963 construction presently the largest alumina refinery was eventually made to contribute £62 began on the Wylfa nuclear power in the world and by 1972 will have a million to the smelter projects under station only a few miles to the north of rated capacity of 2 million tons per the Industrial Expansion Act. RTZ re­ Holyhead. It is likely that Wylfa was annum. ceived a loan of £33 million, which was considered as a power source, but as At the present rate of consumption used as a capital payment to the CEGB we now know, RTZ paid their £33 mil­ and loss the bauxite reserve at Weipa in return for cheap nuclear power. lion government subsidy to the CEGB could be exhausted in less than 35 What follows is the brief story of as a capital contribution to the Dunge- years. how the Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation ness "B" nuclear power station, and During the last Labour administra­ landed on Anglesey; how it built an obtained in return electricity from the tion, RTZ, requiring an outlet for their aluminium smelter and how it is de­ grid, under a 20-25 year contract, at a alumina from Gladstone, approached grading the life of the surrounding price related to the cost of producing the Government on the question of district. The decision to build the power at the Dungeness "B" station. establishing a primary aluminium By 1964 detailed plans had been pre­ smelting plant in Britain. pared, whilst the people on Anglesey Electricity accounts for about 15 per still had no idea of their existence. The cent of total smelting costs, and con­ plans proposed the immediate construc­ sequently Britain, because of the rela­ Richard Thompson Coon tion, at Penrhos, Holyhead, of a smelter tively high cost of electricity, has relied is a marine biologist with an initial capacity of 120,000 tons on importing aluminium, mostly ingot, and a free-lance pa, as well as extensive modifications from countries such as Canada and writer. to Holyhead harbour. A later phase 9 was planned, to increase capacity to The aluminium smelting process con­ ium plant does not emit smells or fumes 300,000 tons with the possibility of sists of the electrolytic reduction of and effluents which could cause harm." further development of a bauxite re­ alumina (A1203) dissolved in a bath of It also asked local authorities to con­ finery. No mention of these plans was molten flourides at 950°C. It is tech­ sider the ultimate development of an made in their 1966 Annual Report. nically possible to scrub both the low- alumina refinery on the same site. In the Autumn of 1966, RTZ started level emission of gases from the pot There then followed a series of local to purchase the land around Penrhos, rooms and the high-level emission from council meetings and a full ACC meet­ and rumours began to spread. The the main stack to an efficiency of 95 ing was called on 14 November to Clerks of both the Holyhead UDC and per cent; however, because of the type debate the application. An eye-witness the County Council professed ignor­ of cell or pot chosen for use in the account of this meeting reads as ance of what was going on. Anglesey smelter (using "pre-baked" follows: "There, facing the ranks of By the Summer of 1967, RTZ had anodes), efficient extraction is made Welsh councillors, sat, rather nervously, held several confidential meetings with more difficult. the representatives of RTZ. The debate senior members of the Anglesey County Fluorine contamination from atmos­ was opened: one ancient, his bald pate Council (ACC), but there was still no pheric fallout can cause severe damage fringed by flowing white locks, strug­ official statement of intention. In June, to most forms of life; it is cumulative gled on for a few sentences in English, the TGWU in North West Wales and therefore the degree of damage is then appealed to the Chairman—could pledged its support to the County dependent upon the length of exposure he not use his mother-tongue? Assent Council in their bid to attract the in­ to the contaminant, as well as its con­ was given, and the Bardic arms were dustry to the Island. centration. For these reasons the MRC raised to Heaven, the powerful Welsh With Wylfa nearing completion, Memorandum No. 22 on Industrial phrases rolled round the Council hundreds of men were soon to be laid Fluorosis concludes that "... it is only chamber like thunder. RTZ looked off work. Most of the construction prudent to site new developments in dumbfounded. He was followed by force had been imported, but many, such a way that, so far as is possible, others, equally passionate: should they having settled into the local community, residents are kept out of the zone sell their birthright for a mess of pot­ were now presenting local authorities known to be liable to contamination". tage? A decision was taken to delay with an abnormally inflated unemploy­ Animal husbandry is usually impossible voting for one month and seek expert ment problem for which one immediate in the locality of an aluminium smelter. opinion from university sources. What solution would be the RTZ plant. Presumably RTZ ignored these facts after all was all this bum's rush asked In July the local papers were still when they made their plans, for the one councillor? As the vote was taken, including headlines like "Rio rumours smelter stands contiguous with Holy­ the Clerk to the ACC threw down his still. Let Facts Be Told". head town; primary schools are only a pen in an angry gesture." few hundred yards away and 16,000 One month wasn't very long. A dele­ The Anglesey Residents' people live well within the fallout area. gation from the National Farmers Association As the facts became known the row Union visited aluminium smelters in General anxiety had been engendered began to flare. The TGWU spoke out Switzerland and Germany and realised by the refusal of senior members of the strongly for the smelter for obvious that damage to milk and f atstock would County Council to let the public know reasons, but also because they hoped be inevitable. Professors in Botany, precisely what it was that was coming to improve their bargaining power with Zoology and Marine Biology at the to Anglesey. This led to the formation the existing main employer, British local University College were consulted of the Anglesey Residents' Association Rail. Amiable RTZ representatives and all reported unfavourably. The Pro­ (ARA). People began to realise that mingled with the locals in clubs and fessor of Chemical Engineering at aluminium smelting released large hotel bars, speaking seductively of the University College, Swansea, was re­ quantities of hydrogen fluoride gas into benefits to come. tained by the ACC as a consultant and the atmosphere. Anglesey's Medical his report recommended that no ob­ Officer of Health (MOH) was also First planning application jection on grounds of atmospheric con­ aware of the possible dangers and felt On 4 October RTZ made their first tamination be raised, provided that that he was being purposely excluded official outline planning application to certain conditions were met; these he from meetings that, under the circum­ the ACC. The proposed site had a total listed. stances, he should have attended. area of 738 acres with 463 acres to be While everybody was gathering data He was eventually officially in­ used for industrial purposes and 275 to support their particular point of formed about the project on the eve of acres to be used as an Amenity Area; view, the Clerk to the ACC was con­ his departure to West Virginia, where, the meaning of amenity in this context ducting his own campaign; the next with other ACC officials, on a trip is obscure. major meeting was planned for 14 payed for by RTZ, he had been in­ Later on in October an exceedingly December and during the days preced­ vited to inspect a large smelter oper­ small notice appeared in the local paper ing it he summoned, individually, every ated by Kaiser. The report he produced announcing the application, and on member of the County Council to his upon his return, concluded that 20 October RTZ executives met with office for a "chat". On the morning of Anglesey must obtain assurances from local councillors to display a scenic 14 December there was a meeting of RTZ on the control of fluoride emis­ model of the site and distribute their the planning committee with full sions, because 'if we do not, we could propaganda booklet "Aluminium Pro­ powers to approve schemes for in­ well be caught in an avalanche with no ject for Anglesey". The booklet stated dustrial development. RTZ's plans were return to the status quo". that "A well-designed modern alumin­ debated, and the meeting voted 10:10

10 for and against. The chairman then used his casting vote to make it 11:10 for RTZ, but subsequently withdrew and the decision was deferred. The full Council meeting that afternoon, was to all intents and purposes completely biased and anybody wishing to object had to force their way into the debate. Over 170 written objections It must have been clear to the Clerk and the Chairman that it would have been unwise to try and force a deci­ sion there and then; over 170 written objections had been received and these included the National Farmers Union, the Farmers Union of Wales, the Min­ istry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Caernarvon), the Marine Science Laboratories, Menai Bridge UDC, and the Anglesey Residents' Association. Accordingly, the matter was put before the Secretary of State for Wales and a Public Enquiry was called, to begin on "A Area of 9 January 1968. V, outstanding natural beauty RTZ had realised that their plan to construct a bauxite to alumina refinery lin-6mls was temporarily becoming a thorn in their side and so a letter from Leslie Sketch map of Anglesey Watson was sent to the ACC stating that RTZ wished to put on record that: Sketch map showing aluminium reduction plant "(1) We have no plan or intention to and surrounding area establish such a plant."; however, item (3) of the same letter, read "We have no intention of raising the matter again ^rea of outstanding natural beauty and would certainly not wish to do so as long as it was apparent that such a SCALE plant would not be welcomed by the people of Anglesey", from which we may conclude that they have every in­ tention of doing so, when the time is ripe. Early in December 1967, on the tele­ vision programme "Week In, Week Out", Leslie Watson stated that an agreement had been reached between the Farmers Union of Wales and RTZ, regarding compensation for the loss of livestock due to fluoride emission from the proposed plant. In fact no such agreement had been reached, because there hadn't been any negotiations. Leslie Watson's motives for saying what he said are unimportant; however, the FUW were amused that on the one hand they were being asked to approve a project on the basis that it would have no detrimental effect on Man or beast, whilst on the other hand they were being hustled into accepting compensa­ tion for the very damage they were being assured could not occur. It was then discovered that RTZ's

ii Opposing RTZ were ARA, the two The County Council's recommenda­ NEW PRODUCT farmers' unions and the CPRW. Trades tion that the low-level emission of gases MARIGOLD BASIC PROTEIN unions and councils had stated their from the pot rooms should be scrubbed, support for the project, but a formid­ was firmly squashed. It was "imprac­ Suitable for incorporating in any savoury dish. able list of "safeguards", prepared by ticable", and in any case the Company Recipes provided. 4 Varieties. the MOH and other advisors, had been itself proposed to farm the area close written into the approval of the County to the smelter. One by one, as the En­ consulting chemical engineers, Cremer Council and local district councils. The quiry dragged on, the ACC "safe­ and Warner, had based their computa­ only "safeguards" that need be men­ guards" fell by the wayside. RTZ tions for the mean gaseous concentra­ tioned here concern the fluorine con­ stated that they would only need to tion of fluoride over the area tent of the gases to be emitted by the emit 284 lb/day of fluorine, at 0.44 surrounding the proposed plant, on plant. It was stipulated that the fluorine mg/m3, from the pot rooms, and only meteorological conditions for 1966 content of the gases emitted from the 270 lb/day of fluorine, at 2.2 mg/m3, only. Investigations into the validity of pot rooms should not exceed 360 lb/ from the stack. This had the effect, these calculations revealed that the day with fluorine concentration not desired or not, of making the County average figures for a 10 year period exceeding 0.5 mg/m3 and that the Council and public begin to wonder gave a radically different picture. fluorine content of the gases from the what all the fuss was about. A letter Localised pollution, i.e. that concerning stack should not exceed 330 lb/day from the Alkali Inspectorate was read, Holyhead, is greatest during calm with fluorine concentration not exceed­ expressing deep satisfaction with the weather, and winds in the 1 to 3 knot ing 2.5 mg/m3. way in which RTZ were preparing to range occur more than three times RTZ had been pressuring the farmers' deal with the problem of controlling more frequently in an average year unions to accept a compensation agree­ these effluents, and eventually the entire than in 1966. ment, and at the very start of the En­ matter was left in the hands of the In­ Similar differences in magnitude be­ quiry the opposition suffered their first spectorate. RTZ had cleared their big­ tween the average data and the 1966 disappointment when the NFU agreed gest hurdle. data are also found for winds in the to accept RTZ's terms and withdrew On 24 January, at the close of the higher speed ranges, as well as differ­ their opposition. The Enquiry then day's proceedings Goodfellow delivered ences in wind direction. It is disturbing opened with Mr Goodfellow, RTZ's an ultimatum to the FUW to accept his that their resulting figures and maps Counsel, delivering a long exposition proposals for compensation by 10 am were used as evidence in support of on the national necessity of the plant, the next day, or any offer of compen­ RTZ at the Public Enquiry. on how it would staunch the outflow sation would be terminated. The FUW of Anglesey's young people, and how it not only turned the offer down, but The Public Enquiry would solve the unemployment prob­ gave the Inspector a list of 428 object­ A battle royal was anticipated at the lem. RTZ's Planning consultants, ing island farmers, 140 Anglesey NFU Enquiry and indeed a battle was fought. Davidge and Partners, spoke warmly of members, some of whom were on its It began on 9 January and dragged on how the smelter chimney would im­ executive. Mr Williams, Secretary to for nearly three weeks. prove the landscape. the FUW, said that he would not com­ mit his members in advance to un­ known hazards and continued "I have been given the option of either being shot or drowned and I have no desire to accept either". Dr Dobbs, a senior lecturer carrying out research in plant and forest pathology, with special inter­ ests in soil microbiology, spoke on be­ half of the FUW. Dr Dobbs could not have been more qualified to speak on the subject. Yet the transcript covering the cross-examination of Dr Dobbs covers nearly 40 pages in which his opinions are almost continously abused. When the ARA tried to voice its ob­ jections it was beaten down, and the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales walked out of the Enquiry. For all the good it did, the Enquiry might never have been held. The ARA appealed first to their MP, the Secre­ tary of State for Wales, and then to the Parliamentary Commissioner. There was little point to either of these actions except that the Enquiry had been a sham and some gesture of disgust was necessary. The future for those MARIGOLD FOODS LTD Overland cables brought power to who had no choice? 29 Bell Street, London, N.W.I. the smelter from the grid at Wylfa, and The smelter is presently working at Anglesey Aluminium Ltd. (75 per cent about ^ maximum capacity. Informa­ Products free from artificial Additives and organically grown wherever possible. RTZ-BICC Aluminium Holdings Ltd) tion is hard to come by, but reports went into production on 9 December have it that the fluoride extraction Obtainable from Health Food Shops. 1970. plant is giving trouble and has broken down twice. There are other reports of written to the County Council to say the paintwork on cars parked in the that they will be releasing large numbers Pollution increases factory compound becoming pitted, of men over the next few months. The Company are required to monitor and of their windscreens being etched. In 1967 the FUW wrote: "It is, in the ground level concentration of fluor­ That Rio Tinto-Zinc should be our view, an error to suppose that the ine in the locality of the smelter; how­ allowed to dictate the state of health of sort of young people who might be ever, the results are not available to the the surrounding district is irresponsible. attracted to the bright lights of a great public or the district councils con­ All figures should be open to public in­ city would be induced to remain by the cerned; they are available to the Chief spection, and an independent monitor­ urban attractions of an industrialised Alkali Inspector, the Ministry of Agri­ ing service should be established. culture, Fisheries and Food, the Holyhead, dominated by one large The 275 acres of so-called Amenity aluminium smelter." Regional Officer for the Nature Con­ Area that flattered local authorities in servancy and the local MOH. Quite by With the level of permitted pollution the early planning days is skirted by now over three times that which was accident, in August 1969, it became what is called a nature trail. originally stipulated as "safe", and with public knowledge that the levels of A booklet, put out by RTZ, reads RTZ intending to treble the capacity pollution agreed at the Public Enquiry "Welcome to Penrhos Nature Trail. of the smelter, Anglesey has in fact be­ had been discarded and that the Alkali The path you are about to follow is a come caught in an avalanche. It is yet Inspectorate had permitted more than new one laid down by Anglesey Alum­ too early to speak of damage to a threefold increase in the emission of inium Ltd and forms the course of a humans, animals and plants because of gaseous fluoride from the stack. nature trail established by the Company The official reason for the increase in response to European Conservation the cumulative nature of the fluoride seems to have been that, since the En­ Year", it adds "Please do not spoil it ion; but the future of the people who quiry, smelting capacity had been re­ for others by leaving rubbish or damag­ had no choice is bleak. duced from a maximum of 120,000 tons ing trees." The Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation has per annum to 100,000 tons, and the The unemployment situation on lied, bullied, seduced and cajoled all height of the stack had been increased Anglesey is as bad as it ever was. In who stood in their path. from 300 feet to 400 feet. We must December 1967 there were 1,200 people As the hand of "Big Brother" therefore presume that the figures for unemployed, in January this year the descends, so the character, beauty, gaseous emission that were recom­ figure was 1,344 and at the end of serenity and warmth of the island mended as being safe at the Enquiry, April it was 1,427 (9.7 per cent). begins its inevitable decline. are now regarded as obsolete by the Anglesey Aluminium has recently May others be warned. Company and the Inspectorate. (The recommendations were based on data provided by RTZ and on a stack height of 525 feet). The attitude and failings of the Alkali Inspectorate are discussed elsewhere in this issue of The Ecologist. HUMANIST Duncan Dewdney, Chairman of Anglesey Aluminium Ltd., and Exe­ offers a full diet of criticism, comment cutive Director of RTZ, was asked and reviews on current issues—all free what he would do if the Company could from the pressures of religion and party not contain pollution at the new level, that is, a scrubbing efficiency of 86 per politics. cent as against the previous 95 per cent. Articles in the June issue are on the He replied that the Company would ecology movement, tragedy in East have to spend more on scrubbing equip­ ment. Why then, he was asked, were Bengal and women versus men. Authors the Company not prepared to install include Edmund Leach, Jeremy Sandford, equipment that would maintain a A. S. Neill and Roger Manvell. scrubbing efficiency of 95 per cent as promised, particularly since the smelter Yearly subscription (12 issues)—£1.50 had been constructed under its bud­ or 1 op a copy from your newsagent or geted cost. It appears that the Company Dept. JHI, 88 Islington High Street, has no intention of either installing this London Ni. equipment or of going back to the original figures.

13 No oil at Amlwch by Richard Thompson Coon

county council recognised when, in been appalling and local authorities Demand for energy in the their report, they pressed that the area continue to complain about the mess, British Isles is presently be designated an Area of Outstanding not to mention general unsightliness, increasing at a rate of between Natural Beauty (AONB). This they pylons, radioactive wastes and the 7 and 8 per cent per year. achieved, and at present all but a few problems that will have to be faced in This means that the capacity miles of the Anglesey coastline stands 25 years time. as an AONB. For some reason, how­ At yet another public enquiry in of our oil refineries must ever, the 1967 White Paper "Wales: the 1968, Rio Tinto-Zinc forced their way double every ten years if they Way Ahead" advocates the growth of on to the island with their 100,000 tons are to meet demand. More and industry in suitable places along the a year aluminium smelter. more oil will have to be coast as the main means of strengthen­ extracted and transported with ing the economy, singling out the North The decade of invasions the inevitable result of Coast and that of Anglesey. In Janu­ In less than a decade the big corpora­ ary this year the Welsh Council pub­ tions have moved in on Anglesey; hold­ increasing environmental lished a report entitled "An Economic ing hands with central Government deterioration. Strategy for North West Wales" which they have begun their slow, insidious seconded the White Paper and paid dance around the islands, crushing and cursory attention to agricultural casting aside as they go. The islanders The island of Anglesey is the smallest development. have become weary of objecting. Last county in Wales, with an area of 276 Anglesey's first major industry, how­ year, after long and secretive planning, sq miles and a coastal frontage of 125.5 ever, came after a public enquiry in the Mersey Docks and Harbours Board miles. About 70 per cent of the coast­ 1947, when the predecessor of Asso­ and Shell (UK) Ltd. announced their line remains undeveloped (see Table 1). ciated Octel Co. Ltd. established a intention to discharge 50,000,000 tons The story that follows is a thorough bromine from sea water extraction of oil a year from tankers on to the illustration of how our society continues plant on the north coast of Anglesey at mainland at Amlwch. No consideration to court ecological catastrophe. On its Amlwch. They promised no pollution. was given to the islanders in the pro­ own it is but a small insult to the Many oil companies including Shell posals which met with 100 per cent natural dignity of the world, but it is hold shares, and in 1966 an extensive local opposition. symptomatic of all that bedevils this expansion of the works was under­ In the Annual Report and Accounts, technological era. taken. The air around Amlwch is now 1969, the Mersey Docks and Harbours In September 1963 the Ministry of polluted with bitter acid gas, and a Board reported total imports of petrol­ Housing and Local Government asked creamy yellowy effluent discolours the eum in bulk at 11,156,000 tons. They local planning authorities in North sea. also reported that "the oil refining Wales to make a special study of their Next to come, after another public companies in the area continue to ex­ coastal areas and to write into their enquiry in 1963, was the Wylfa Nuclear pand their installations and will require development plans a policy for safe­ Power Station at Cemaes Bay five miles a much greater output of crude oil in guarding natural resources. In June west of Amlwch. The construction of the near future". 1965 the planning ministers again ex­ the power station brought to the island Ellesmere Port must rank amongst pressed deep concern about the spread the problem of how to deal with an the most intensively devastated environ­ of development on the coast. enormous imported labour force, a ments in the British Isles. Gulf, Esso, Anglesey has a beautiful and un­ problem which lingers on today. The ICI, Total, Burmah, Shell and others spoiled coastline, a fact which the landscaping of the power station has combine to create an environment that

14 Stanlow

has to be seen to be believed. They say a further plan emerged to discharge oil formal announcement of their plans on locally that to retire from Shell is to off the north coast of Anglesey and 23 January 1970, another rushed meet­ die of fresh air. Shell have their largest pump it through about 75 miles of pipe­ ing was called inviting Shell and all crude oil refinery (11 million tons a line to Stanlow. The plan developed, other interested parties to attend. year) at Stanlow Point; it is connected and still unknown to the people of On 1 March a campaign was via 23 miles of pipelines to their petro­ Anglesey, except one or two select launched by local people to raise funds chemical plant at Carrington near members of the County Council, early to fight Shell and to organise petition­ Manchester, and they are now engaged survey work was begun. ing. NO OIL AT AMLWCH posters in an expansion of the refinery to bring In May 1969, a TV programme were printed and in August 1970 an its capacity up to 17 million tons a "Wales Today" broadcast the exclusive Anti-Oil Campaign was launched as year. A new ethylene cracking plant is announcement that an oil company was the direct spearhead representing the also under review for Carrington. arranging to take out options at a place whole North Wales Coast. The MDHB derive a large propor­ called Rhosgoch on land to build a tank Opposition organisation gained in tion of their revenue from port dues farm. In an area of unspoiled natural efficiency and at a delegates meeting of levied on the oil companies vessels. At beauty the word oil instills dread and the Campaign on 13 November, it was present Shell's terminal at Tranmere, local people speculated on where the oil emphasised that there were two pro­ just south of Birkenhead, is able to was to come from and to where it would cesses involved in establishing the handle tankers of 200,000 tons dead­ go. In September, a chance radio con­ terminal. First, that a Private Bill weight; however, this seems to be the versation by an amateur operator on would have to be put before Parliament practical limit in Mersey waters, and Anglesey with one in America revealed regarding the offshore installations and other than this the MDHB is apparently plans published in an American Shell secondly, that a planning application unwilling to cater for tankers over house magazine to build a deep water would have to be put to the County 90,000 tons on full draught. Because of oil terminal off Amlwch, a tank farm Council for developments on the the revenue derived from tanker traffic at Rhosgoch, about three miles inland, Island's mainland. On 21 November a it is obviously advantageous to the and a pipeline across the North Wales delegation of the Anti-Oil Terminal MDHB to expand the area of their coast to Stanlow on Merseyside. A Campaign met their local MP, Cledwyn jurisdiction to incorporate the expand­ public meeting was organised at once, Hughes, and put their case. He appar­ ing activities of the oil companies, and and 5 December saw the formation of ently "listened most attentively and so the MDHB together with Shell set the Amlwch and District Residents took notes". out to solve the problems of an expand­ Association to whom the Anglesey On 27 November last year it was ing oil industry and the consequent Residents Association pledged their aid announced in the local paper that a problem of accommodating the very in opposition to the oil project. Shell Private Bill entitled "Mersey Docks large tankers. had to come out into the open, and and Harbours Board (Anglesey An early plan was to build an arti­ they met local authorities and residents' Terminal)" was to be presented to ficial island, carrying tanks, in the associations on 16 December. The press Parliament and that it would be avail­ deeper waters of Liverpool Bay; how­ were excluded on request by Shell. able for public inspection at the price ever the plan was dropped, probably of 2/- on 4 December. The bill was on the grounds of cost, or of it being No oil at Amlwch "To empower the MDHB to acquire an unacceptable hazard to navigation, The consternation amongst local people lands (under the Compulsory Purchase or both. It would almost certainly have was great and there followed much dis­ Act 1965) and to construct works; and caused a great deal of pollution. cussion and fact finding. When it was for other purposes". The MDHB was Unknown to the people of Anglesey, realised that Shell were to make a to exercise total jurisdiction with no 15 benefits to the local community. The When they received this proposal the trade, an enormous tank farm, pump­ project would only employ around 20 council sought financial advice from a ing stations, chimney stacks, pipelines, local people and opposition was total. certain Mr Hill of Arthur Collins and as well as the certainty of environ­ The bill was withdrawn almost Co. In a letter addressed to the Clerk mental pollution from oil. It is also immediately, before in fact any peti­ of the Council, dated 9 March, Hill clear that those on the council who are tions against it had been officially advised the council to* accept Shell's enthusiastic about this deal do not rea­ lodged. Story has it that Cledwyn offer. His letter included a seemingly lise the full long-term consequences of Hughes specifically asked that it be superficial analysis of the proposal. their actions. withdrawn, and the official reason for Superficial on most points, and in its withdrawal was published as local particular in his estimate that the cost Installations will dominate opposition. of developing the harbour would be landscape between half a million to a million At a meeting of the 16 Welsh MP's At the time of writing (April) detailed in Cardiff, a Welsh banker offered to pounds! Taking the higher estimate the plans are being prepared by the Parlia­ lend the Anglesey County Council the County Council can expect an average mentary Agents in London; however, necessary monies to embark upon the annual income of about £100,000 over a rough description of the project is project themselves; it seems he was the first decade of operations with that given below. beaten to it by Shell who decided to income steadily increasing thereafter to finance the whole scheme whilst paying a maximum of a little more than Marine Installations a direct levy to the County Council, £300,000 when the terminal is working Two 50 single mooring buoys based on the tonnage of oil landed, in at maximum capacity at an unspecified (SBM's) each to be moored by eight an attempt to placate the local popula­ date after 1990. 15 ton anchors at distances of approxi­ tion. Shell require, however, that the In other words the County Council mately 2,000 yards and 3,000 yards off­ Anglesey County Council pay for the is presently in the process of being shore. Each buoy to be connected to a necessary modifications to the harbour "bought out" by a deal proposed by shore pumping station by four sub­ at Amlwch, a sum not exceeding £1 Shell, which, on thorough analysis, will marine pipelines buried in seabeds. million, and are prepared to deduct the leave Anglesey with the eventual possi­ Pipeline system to each SBM consist­ interest incurred from the revenue the bility of a few thousand pounds cash, ing of two pairs of pipes, each pair council would otherwise receive from liability for an extensive harbour and making a closed flushing circuit; main the oil. the threat of a reduction in its tourist pair of 48 in diameter for crude oils; small pair 24 in diameter to take fuel­ Table 1 ling oils for tankers. Amlwch port to be extended by Approximate Length and % of Coastline for Main Uses (1966) breakwaters to protect, in an all-tide harbour, two 75 ft all-weather, 300/500 Main Use miles % HP Berthing Launches. Agriculture and rough grazing 63 50-4 SBM's have never been used in this country and are designed to take the Settlement areas 23 18-4 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC's), Service establishments 4 3-2 presently around 200,000 tons, and Industries 2 1-6 eventually much bigger tankers. Forestry 6 4-8 The terminal is said to be able to Nature Reserves and Sites of Special Scientific Interest 22 17-6 handle around 50 million tons of oil a Holiday camping and caravanning 3 2-4 year, which is as much as the amount handled by all the refineries and Commons 2 1-6 terminals at Milford Haven at the Total 125 100-0 moment.

Land Installations Table 2 A pumping station to boost the oil from tanker to tank farm will be sited Capacity Diameter Height on land owned by Associated Octet Site Mtr3 No. mtrs. Purpose and will comprise, besides tanks, pump Feet mtrs. (approx) houses and a 60 ft chimney stack. The "tank farm" will be sited on farm land 30,000 2 46-5 61 18-5 Holding Shore First at Rhosgoch and besides enormous Pumping Phase 5,000 2 27-5 31 9-25 Holding tanks, will also include pump houses Station 5,000 1 27-5 31 9-25 "Surge tank" and a 60 ft chimney stack. Details of the tanks for both the proposed land First 100,000 8 78 73 22 Storage installations are given in table 2. Phase The cross-country pipeline is a single Tank 50,000 6 33 56 17 Storage Farm 40 in pipe, buried 3 ft underground. Second 100,000 8 78 73 22 Storage Apparently no auxiliary pumping Phase stations are planned. 16 As Shell took over the complete pro­ phrases. Mr Hill spoke next and the By the time this article is published ject early this year, their PR men commercial naivety of "The levy and the Bill will probably have had its moved into both the areas directly con­ loan fees offered to you by Shell are a second reading. It is generally consid­ cerned and those outside areas which recognition of Anglesey's natural geo­ ered that an amendment will be made feared pollution. Films were shown to graphic position", was matched by at the second reading debate to give the local councils, hoteliers and residents' the odd combination of despair and MDHB some form of jurisdiction over associations all along the North Wales threat in "You will get an oil terminal the area concerned. This would prob­ coast. Special meetings were held with in any case and so you might as well ably be welcomed by Shell since they local councils and, in some quarters, present the Bill now, or else you won't would be absolved of certain responsi­ resistance began to weaken. get anything". bilities; it would also be welcomed by Shell are insisting that all craft using For some reason the Planning Officer the Liverpool Pilots Association who the proposed harbour, including plea­ was not called on to comment. Alun regard the terminal as an obstruction to sure boats, should pay proper dues, and Williams was accused of blackmail and shipping. of rigging the whole meeting, but Hill suggests that these could be levied The threat of pollution is of course despite all he won. His motion was car­ in such a way as to cover the estimated very grave, although I was assured that ried 44 votes for and 11 against. £25,000 needed to run the harbour. At all precautions are being taken, that the Within a few days of this meeting a present Amlwch Harbour is small and most modern and effective oil dispersal planning application had been received beautiful, providing enjoyment for the equipment will be used, that the crews Amlwch Port Boat Club and many from Shell in connection with the Tank of the Berthing Launches will be fully others besides; and there are no har­ Farm and other land installations, and trained, and that the tankers themselves bour dues. the local district council directly con­ carry spray lances. We know however, Then on 18 March there was a cerned has been informed by the that there is no effective method of debate at the AGM of the Anglesey County Council that they have no plan­ clearing oil at sea. Indeed Shell is work­ County Council on a motion proposing ning grounds on which to oppose this ing in the "hope" that they will have that the County Council itself present application. Shell had already pur­ devised an effective method by 1974 a Private Bill in Parliament this 1970- chased the land for the tank farm and when the terminal is due to go into 1971 Session to obtain permission to are currently paying the farmers operation; but whatever they devise it commence construction of the offshore through whose land the pipeline will go is unlikely that there will ever be any installations. No planning applications the sum of 90p a yard, together with a really efficient method of clearing oil had been received from Shell and modest handshake of £5. people were stunned by the unpre­ Assuming that it is the duty of the in 4, 5 or 6 foot waves with a fast- cedented haste on such an important County Council to consider the wishes flowing current. issue. Local opinion was also surprised of the people within its boundaries the We are told that Shell invented the that the County Council should present most vital question that should have SBM's, that Shell is now operating 17 the Bill and not Shell, and could only been asked, but wasn't, was whether of them, that the original one has now conclude that it was to the advantage local people would have preferred to been in operation for 10 years, and that of Shell to get the County Council to pay £200,000 less rates or go without there has been only one spill of 15 tons do it for them. the terminal. in all that time off Kuala Lumpur. We The decision not to wait for a formal planning application infuriated those local people who were aware of the im­ plications of Shell's plans. Objections to the motion were received from, amongst The river Gowey passing through Stanlow others, the Farmers Union of Wales, the Menai Bridge UDC, the Amlwch Port Boat Club, the Anglesey Residents Associations, the CPRW, the RSPCA, and the Amlwch Chamber of Com­ merce. Seven thousand signatures in opposition to the motion were collected by the Amlwch and Districts Residents Association alone. All objectors asked that they might first be allowed to debate the plans when they were re­ ceived and that any decisions on the matter be withheld until this had been done. At the AGM, Alun Williams, a solici­ tor, presented his motion with soft persuasiveness: "Bold brave and venturesome as we might be..." and "our chance to be pioneers in another field of public interest..." are typical

17 are shown colour film of oil transfer to from the catastrophic effects resulting County. A survey carried out by the and from an SBM. If we are lucky we from a collision. County Council jointly with the British might also get to see a film entitled Shell state that the SBM's will be Travel Association in 1964, found that "Murex and Darina". Murex, a VLCC, outside the main shipping lanes for people came on holiday to Anglesey to is Shell's flagship, whilst Darina is a ships travelling to and from Liverpool; enjoy, first, its quietness and secondly, smaller, specialised "lightering tanker". however, the shipping lanes are only its coastal scenery; hardly surprising The film shows efficient ship-to-ship oil recommended lanes, ostensibly about 5 when the human chaos of the Lanca­ transfer on the high seas; in the last miles off the north Anglesey coast. shire industries is considered. More two years Anglesey has started to They are not strictly adhered to at pre­ and more people flee to Anglesey every experience this sort of efficiency as oil sent and collisions in the English Chan­ year to seek refreshment in clean air, begins to appear around the island on nel have taught us of the dangers clean water and clean land. Without beaches that were previously oil-free. associated with tanker movements in crossing the Irish Sea they can go no This is because VLCC's bringing oil to coastal waters. further; it is easy to imagine the feeling Merseyside are having to lighten their On the 30 April 1969, the tanker of suffocation when they discover that loads by about 70,000 tons in the Irish "Hamilton Trader", on charter to Esso, here too there is no peace to be found. Sea and off the North coast of collided with a German coaster near Strong north-westerly winds will also Anglesey. The amount of oil appearing the Barlight vessel in Liverpool Bay. bring oil, within a day or two, from on beaches in recent years has led local About 700 tons of heavy fuel oil were Amlwch down into the Menai Straits sailors to judge these operations as hap­ spilled into the sea; 4,407 seabirds are where it will have serious effects on the hazard. Three days before the time of known to have died, although the actual mussel fisheries and cause severe set­ writing a six mile oil slick was reported mortality was probably two or three backs to research programmes at the lying 12 miles north of Point Lynas on times greater than this. Marine Science Laboratories; by pass­ Anglesey. The North Wales Coast is renowned ing further east along the North Wales Discharge of oil at an SBM by a for its bird life and in particular the Coast it could well affect the shellfish VLCC, involves the tanker approaching breeding colonies of the Auk family— hatcheries at Conway belonging to the the SBM to within 150 yards (under her the Guillemots, Razor Bills, and Puffins Whitefish Authority and the Ministry own steam). We are told they will not at Great and Little Orme, Puffin Island of Agriculture. approach in waves greater than seven and North and South Stack. As diving Despite this and much other evidence feet. The tanker is moored by a berth­ birds they are most vulnerable to oil besides, the onslaught of industrial ex­ ing launch which also brings the float­ pollution, their colonies are already pansionism still overrides the right of ing hoses so that they can be craned up known to be under pressure, (from rock every individual to seek solace in the on to the tanker's deck. climbers, etc.) and it is the considered natural world. The Anglesey County The whole operation, which need not opinion of scientists and ornithologists Council is presently in the process of take more than 20 minutes would seem that if Shell go ahead with their plans selling its most valuable resource, the to be foolproof. Under the 1962 Pipe­ we can expect to see a steady decline pricelessness of its natural beauty, for a lines Act however, any oil company, in the size of these colonies until the dubious and short-term reward. The having first made necessary arrange­ smaller ones cease to exist. Many other changes that will ultimately result are ments with Shell, may use the pipeline. species will also be affected and there largely irreversible. Once again we The terminal, working at full capacity, are taking away from those who come will be able to handle six or seven times is considerable danger that the bird after us all choice of environment, all the volume of oil that Shell require to sanctuary at Cemlyn Bay which lies choice of what they will have to live supply their extension to Stanlow, within one "tidal distance" of Amlwch with, and for what? More detergents, assuming continued use of existing will be threatened. The sanctuary may more insecticides, more artificial ferti­ terminals. So tankers flying many differ­ carry up to 2,000 ducks at any one time lisers, more plastic, more anti-knock ent flags will probably use the terminal, during the summer, whilst during the while many of the larger vessels are winter, 200-300 usually remain on the compounds? going to require refuelling, so smaller water. The days of the passive conserva­ tankers will also be berthing at the Shell tell us that with fast flowing tionist are over, because unless we are SBM's to pump fuel oil ashore ready east-west tidal currents off Amlwch the all mad, we must seek an alternative for refuelling the larger tankers. chances of oil coming ashore on life to the one we now lead. The North The whole situation necessarily in­ Anglesey are slight. This is strictly un­ Wales pipe-line is not such a small volves a concentration of tanker move­ true. Strong winds frequently blow from issue, it is a very great issue and with ments off the North Anglesey coast. the north west and with oil moving at enough opposition it need never be Again, on the day of writing, oil pollu­ 3-4 per cent of the wind speed there is built. The Bill will be debated in Parlia­ tion has been reported in the Menai a very great danger that the shores ment in early June. We plan a petition Straits as the result of a small tanker around Anglesey will become oiled. If for the first week in June, so please flushing its tanks actually in the Straits, oil originating from a tanker flying a write immediately either to The Eco- smearing yachts and plastering oil on foreign flag fouls somebody's foreshore logist or to "Friends of the Earth", 8 the walls of Port Penrhyn. hours after the ship has sailed, who if King Street, London WC2, indicating There can be no doubt, that if Shell anybody is going to pay compensation your opposition to the oil terminal so go ahead with their plans, Anglesey can to the party concerned? that we can add your name to the list. expect a slow decline in the quality of On Anglesey the holiday trade ranks Although it is very short notice, it is its coastal environment, quite apart about third in terms of income to the well worth the effort. 18 Environmental genetic hazards—

mutagenicity, but a plethora of possible Environmental pollution and the systems. The nearest practicable its attendant hazards are approach to the human system is prob­ newsworthy, and rightly so. ably the specific locus test in the The risk of genetic damage to impossible mouse; breeding experiments with mice man is one aspect, however, are the foundation of the present stand­ which has so far received less ards for radiation exposure. Such problem breeding experiments are, however, attention than it deserves, at laborious, expensive and time consum­ least in the UK. One reason ing and it is unlikely that they could be for this is that the possible end considered for general screening. Their results are not immediately continued use is, however, absolutely apparent. essential for providing a baseline with which other tests may be compared and for decisions regarding controversial They include both an increase in by mutagens. diseases with a strong hereditary com­ Perhaps the next most relevant test ponent (e.g., mongolism, phenylke­ Bryn Bridges may be with cultured somatic cells from tonuria, many anaemias) and an over­ the Chinese hamster and man. It is only all reduction in population fitness, not in the last two or three years that tech­ now, but in future generations. Even in niques have been developed for study­ the present generation the induction of ing induced mutation in cultured cells. malignant disease may not become The work so far, in our own laboratory, apparent until decades after an ex­ and elsewhere, gives hope that they may posure to an agent causing genetic dam­ respond in a similar manner to germ age (mutagen). Another reason, which line cells. Other tests include breeding it is the purpose of this article to experiments with the fruit fly Droso- explore, is the enormous number of phila, microscopic observation of visible difficulties which appear as soon as one chromosome aberrations in plants and tries to set practicable limits for ex­ cultured mammalian cells, and detec­ posure to mutagenic agents. Ionizing tion of presumed gross chromosomal radiation is the only environmental abnormalities by looking at intra­ mutagenic agent about which there are uterine deaths of foetuses in female accepted international standards of ex­ rodents treated before conception posure. Even here the estimates of risk (dominant lethal test). The induction of are far from being uncontroversial, mutations in bacteria or other micro­ despite the availability of more inform­ organisms is probably the cheapest and ation than we are ever likely to have most immediately applicable approach for any other mutagen. for screening very large numbers of There are five stages at which deci­ chemicals. One must, however, have sions have to be made in the evaluation some reservations about the relevance of the potential hazard from an envir­ to man of the results obtained. A useful onmental agent. Difficulties may arise Dr Bryn Bridges is Director of hybrid technique is the host-mediated at any stage, and taken together they assay which overcomes the objection may be almost insurmountable. The the Medical Research Council that a compound may be harmless to first question to be answered is "Is the Cell Mutation Unit and Senior cells by itself but be converted by the agent mutagenic?" There is no single Research Fellow of the University metabolism of the host to a potent ideal experimental system for testing of Sussex. mutagen. In this test the assay organ- 19 isms, for example bacterial, fungal, or acquitted as easily as caffeine. not in any position to answer the fourth cultured mammalian cells, are injected One further fact has to be kept in question "What is the risk from being into the body cavity of a rodent which mind at this stage. As all toxicologists exposed to the agent?" Even where one has been treated with a suspected know, low concentrations of a chem­ has knowledge of the dose, things are mutagen via another route (e.g., oral, ical may be completely harmless, even not necessarily easy. The quantitative respiratory, intravenous). After, say, one over a long period of time, because response may vary from one test system hour, the cells are extracted and tested metabolical conversion or inactivation to another, and specific locus data from for the possible induction of mutants. occurs before a sensitive tissue is pene­ the mouse may be available for only trated. At higher concentrations the in­ one concentration of chemical if at all. activation capacity of the body becomes Data may be readily obtained with saturated and toxic effects are mani­ cultured mammalian cells, but it is too fested. The same may be true for early to say whether one may justifiably mutagens, but with the difference that extrapolate the results quantitatively to it would be extremely difficult to sub­ human gonadal cells, In these circum­ By means of tests such as these it is ject to experimental test. Moreover, it stances, the best that can be attempted usually relatively easy to say that an is possible that genetic material, even could be little more than an inspired agent is mutagenic in a given test when damaged, may be repaired if the guess. system. Some agents, for example rate at which damage is induced is low Provided a satisfactory answer can ionizing and ultraviolet radiations, enough. This certainly occurs with be given to the first four questions, only mustard gas, give positive results in all ionizing radiation. The outcome of then is it possible to decide whether the test systems. Others are only mutagenic either of these phenomena would be risk is acceptable, but this confronts us in some, and these lead to difficulties that a substance could be mutagenic in with the fifth question: "What is an when considering the second problem an acute test but non-mutagenic in a acceptable risk?" It is possible to argue "Is the agent likely to be mutagenic in chronic exposure such as that to which forcefully that no new genetic hazard man?" One commonplace agent, man might be subjected. should be added to the environment. caffeine, illustrates well the difficulties The next question which immediately Certainly, if an adequate substitute were that may arise. Caffeine was shown to poses problems is "What dose of available, one would hope that any in­ be mutagenic in bacteria by several mutagen is being received, or is likely dustrial or domestic substance which groups of workers. They all, however, to be received by the population or in­ was shown to be a likely mutagen in used bacteria growing under growth- dividuals at risk?'1 With ionizing radia­ man would be banned. Similarly with limiting conditions in a continuous cul­ tion this has been one of the easiest mutagenic substances whose benefits to ture apparatus. When other workers questions to answer. The radiation level society are not large, a limited period of looked for visible chromosomal dam­ at any given time or place can be time could be allowed for an adequate age in animal and plant cells they monitored and as most of the sources substitute to be found before a ban was found plenty and became so worried of radiation are known it has been rela­ brought into force. that as recently as 1968 caffeine was tively easy to calculate the average dose described as "one of the most danger­ received by the population in any given ous mutagens in man". But not all time. Moreover, individuals known to bacterial workers could repeat the be at high risk may carry their own results obtained with growth-limited personal film badges or cumulative dose cells when they used conventional monitors. It is also relatively simple to growth conditions, and some even calculate the average dose of a sub­ There will, however, be substances claimed an antimutagenic effect. stance such as caffeine which is con­ for whose function there is no adequate Drosophila also seemed resistant to sumed orally by almost the entire adult substitute, and whose benefits are mutagenesis by caffeine. Tests with population from readily identified clearly large. Some attempt at limita­ mice, both specific locus and dominant sources (coffee, tea, soft drinks) the tion, based on knowledge of both risk lethal, have now been carried out at annual consumption of which is known. and benefit, has to be made in such some expense and have failed to detect In the case of caffeine, the gonad con­ cases. It is important to realise that any significant effect. Recently we have centration is the same as the total body there is such a thing as an acceptable used cultured hamster cells and found concentration since the drug permeates risk. Every time we drive a car, take a consistent lowering of the spontan­ the tissues freely. the pill, drink a glass of wine or smoke eous gene mutation frequency in the With other agents, to determine an a cigarette, we take a risk, in order to presence of caffeine. Thus in the average dose for the population or even obtain something which is to us a bene­ systems which are most closely related an individual would be a much more fit. Unfortunately, what different in­ to the human system we have negative difficult task. Imagine trying to do this, dividuals consider to be an acceptable results and may conclude that caffeine for example, for a vaporising fly killer, risk varies enormously, as may be seen is unlikely to be mutagenic for man. or "miracle compound XYZ" in a from the extreme attitudes towards Which is just as well, as the ovaries and washing-up detergent, or a motor fuel smoking and drinking found within our testes of habitual coffee drinkers are additive, or a garden weedkiller, or a population. permanently bathed in caffeine at a con­ fungicide used to stop fruit rotting in Considering radiation again as a centration of around 1 microgramme storage and transit. precedent, one may note that the Inter­ per millilitre (^g/ml). Not all suspected Of course, if one cannot make an national Commission on Radiological mutagens, however, are convicted or acceptable estimate of the dose one is Protection, with great caution, defined

20 as an acceptable risk one "that is not widely distributed which might be sus­ able information) that any of them unacceptable to the individual and to pected of having genetic effects—a constitute a hazard to man. Doubtless the population at large." (One may formidable task especially in view of the relevant safety committees are well enquire whether the opportunity to difficulties described above. The other keeping themselves informed and would express an opinion on this matter has consequence is that the present limits act if they thought a hazard existed. ever been given to us, either as individ­ for radiation exposure, both for popu­ Sooner or later, however, they are uals or as members of the population lations and individuals, may have to be likely to be faced with a decision which at large. Such limits become accepted severely tightened. Radiation will have can only be made in the light of the by default!) to compete for the privilege of damag­ overall genetic hazard from the eviron- ing us with all other physical and ment, hence the advisability of setting chemical mutagens. up a body with overall responsibility. One way of approaching this would From the foregoing discussion, it is be to reconstitute the existing radiation clear that many problems and diffi­ organisations, national and inter­ culties may arise at each of the five national, so that they become respon­ stages at which decisions must be made. The problem facing us is immense, As the ICRP concluded, it is "not sible for limiting all exposure to en­ though perhaps not impossible. A solu­ possible to define acceptability in a vironmental agents, constituting a tion must be attempted. If I end with a quantitative way", and behind their re­ genetic hazard. Unless something like cliche, let it be someone else's (J. V. commendations there has been the this is done, the deliberations of the Neel's). "Man's most precious posses­ assumption that a doubling of the present radiation bodies could con­ sion is his genetic endowment. Each spontaneous rate of occurrence of ceivably become increasingly futile as generation holds it in trust for sub­ genetic damage would be acceptable. radiation hazards pale into insignifi­ sequent generations. In order to support Although the doses of radiation calcu­ cance when compared with those from our technology we may have to com­ lated to produce such doubling have chemical agents. On the other hand, if promise with the desire of the geneti­ been subject to attack and modification, it were done, environmental muta­ cist for no increase in mutation rates— the basic premise has largely passed genesis would benefit enormously from but we owe it to our offspring to see unchallenged and it may be assumed the organisation and experience of that the compromise is based on know­ that the majority of informed people radiation workers. Such a step would ledge rather than a guess we may later accept a doubling of the mutation rate be regarded as a wise precaution rather regret." as acceptable in view of diagnostic X- than a panic measure. It should be em­ radiation, isotope techniques in medi­ phasised that at the present moment al­ cine and industry, nuclear power and though we know of a number of other benefits of atomic energy. What pesticides with mutagenic properties, it is unlikely, however, is that informed has yet to be established (possibly be­ people would tolerate more than an cause of the inadequacy of the avail­ overall doubling, whatever the benefits from any environmental mutagen. It follows that what is a suitable recom­ mendation for one mutagen (i.e., radia­ tion) will not suffice when considering each of a number of mutagens. It has been estimated that about a thousand new chemicals are introduced into the environment each year, of which no more than a minute fraction are tested for mutagenic activity. If a thousand mutagens were each allowed at popula­ tion doses which doubled the spontan­ eous rate, then the overall rate might go up a thousandfold, quite apart from any synergistic interaction which might occur. Following the logic of the ICRP, re­ commendations we should affirm that the overall mutation rate for all envir­ onmental mutagens must be kept within a doubling of the spontaneous rate. Two things, in particular, follow from this principle. The first is that knowledge is required of all environmental agents with a significant mutagenic risk. This presupposes testing, not only of all new "Now this group had the same attention as the rest except we played chemicals, but also of all those already antipollution speeches to it for six hours a day." 21 In defence of the primitive

by Conrad Gorinsky

may also play a part; or some primitive may be meted out in the field but the Primitive peoples are of intrinsic groups may be thought to embody a order is dictated from the city. importance. They have a vital few quaint features worthy of study and As with all environmental problems, contribution to make to our so warrant protection as research it is the directive that must be ques­ world, and we can ensure material of academic interest. Paternal­ tioned. What is decided in the city their survival by helping them istic or humanitarian motives may today will be accepted in the rest of also be apparent in the defence of to do so. the world tomorrow. In war, the crimi­ primitive peoples—but these motives nal is not the poor soldier swinging the lack real force of argument in the face sword, and even less so is it the inani­ The word primitive has a derogatory of the needs of the great democracies. mate sword. It is futile to go wailing meaning in everyday usage. We imply The minority rights of sixty or eighty into the wilderness totting up swords disapproval when we say that the faci­ persons hold little sway against the after some massacre—all the docu­ lities of a hotel are primitive, or that weight of millions. This is the basic mentation in the world is useless after the way of life of some person is pri­ position of the primitive. the deed. mitive. In this context a primitive state It is the purpose of this article to Take the blue whale: it does not is considered undesirable. point out the intrinsic value of primi­ matter whether twenty or two thousand This attitude is a direct consequence tive peoples and the vital contribution whaling ships are after the blue whale of an intellectual commitment to the they can make to our world. Only by or whether its food is being depleted concept of progress. We conjure up a providing primitive people with the by ocean pollutants—the fact is the picture of social evolution or progress, means and the dignity to make this whale is in a crisis situation. Whether and we come to accept this picture as contribution will there be any hope for the final thrust comes from a harpoon immutable. We consider that we have them and, for that matter, ourselves. gun, with or without an explosive head progressed from a primitive state, and Our attitude towards the word primi­ or from a broken heart (the oceans therefore to propose the re-evaluation tive is a good indication of the extent being too big for it to find its mate) is of a primitive state is to advocate a of our alienation from the intrinsic, of no real consequence. Accurate docu­ retrograde step. We claim to have ad­ basic, vital and, in a word, primitive mentation of the end is the most futile vanced from small primitive tribes to elements of nature (which of course in­ of gestures. What is important and in­ mammoth super tribes, dominance clude ourselves). controvertible is that we can never being the sole measure of success. In One must realise that primitive replace it and that it did not die be­ common with some creatures of the peoples are intimately tied up with the cause of some evolutionary process. past, we are also becoming too large, environmental crisis and also that they Well over 800 species are now on the too specialised and too inflexible. It is have a critical role to play in nothing verge of extinction—by our actions. It this situation that should be borne in less than our own survival. is civilised man, with his great art, his mind when we consider a primitive The real danger facing primitive great music and his great science that tribe: most of them number not more peoples of the world is not from bandits will swing the sword. It will be his than a few hundred. and other riff-raff but from our own philosophy that will demand it. It might be conceded that some pri- attitudes and philosophy. The fight for "The fact is that these areas where mitivism in arts and crafts is of interest their survival is not to be conducted in primitives live must be developed—man and therefore a benign protection of the forests and in the countryside but must advance—the wilderness must fall these elements is desirable. Sentiment in the cities of the world. Destruction and with it all that it sustains." 22 It is this philosophy that must be re­ fessional hidehunters. Manu National and destroyed more in the last forty moved and this can only be achieved Park is the only place in Peru where years than in the whole of the rest of by providing an alternative philosophy. the species remains well represented. man's history. Primitive man depends on the wilder­ It is my view that the extinction of It is in our own time that techno­ ness—without it he ceases to exist. The the primitive will herald our own. Man logical man has emerged (not evolved), giant otter (Pteronura braziliensis) is has existed on this planet for probably and it is our own time, the next thirty itself on the verge of extinction due to little more than a million years. A tiny years, that will witness the most critical European demand for its skin. Curious­ fraction of that time, a few thousand phases for most life forms—including ly, it is venerated by the Guiaca In­ years, is represented by civilised man. man. One must remember that our own dians who regard the animal as sacred He cleared the wilderness and estab­ population will double during this and look upon all giant otters (of both lished himself. Most of the forests were period. sexes) as female relations of the tribe. never regenerated as a result of the in­ A conscious effort must be made to The Makiritare Indians also do not kill troduction of domesticated animals appreciate the vital need to maintain a Pteronura—unless their love of gain is which cut back the vegetation. Agricul­ diversity of species of plants and ani­ played on by hidehunters. Its survival ture and over-grazing have produced mals, which we cannot replace. We in the Manu National Park in Peru is many present-day dustbowls and might must respect and maintain a diversity attributed to the guardianship of the explain why much of the old fertile of cultures among man, especially now Amawaka Indians, whose warlike acti­ crescent is now scrubland and desert. when traditions are crumbling in a de­ vities have thus far deterred the pro­ Contemporary man has consumed structive rather than a critical wave of opinion. Man is at war not only with Degradation and despair, as expressed in the faces of these recently-contacted himself but also with nature. The Guiacas of Venezuelan Amazonas, are the inevitable results of the advance of answer cannot be found by continuing "civilisation". the expansion of human habitation, the felling of trees, and the mindless dis­ ruption of the earth to conform to man's wishes. Man may not be capable of mastering the elements yet, but he certainly has the capacity to undertake global experiments—and global mis­ takes. Whether it is in modern man's best interests to displace other human cus­ toms and traditions and other living creatures from the earth to make room for him is the crucial question that faces us all now. The plight of the Amerindian in Amazonas is a good measure of one's intent and one's state of concern. We should be working out systems which would involve the primitive in the vital task of securing our biological heritage. Ecological zones should be designated for this purpose in areas where primitive peoples live. Institutes for ecological studies should be established in which primi­ tive peoples could make use of their accumulated knowledge of the environ­ ment and use their acknowledged ex­ pertise. Special courses, consistent with these needs should be devised and directed by these institutes located in various parts of the world. Of course the priority areas are South America and South-east Asia. Finance to support these projects should be obtained from the industrial­ ised nations as a fee towards the main­ tenance of the world environment. Only by establishing this reciprocal approach and acknowledging the auth­ ority of these people and to be seen by

23 them to be doing so will it be possible to escape the devastating trauma that they are encountering. Shame can be as The need for great a killer as disease and they may both be linked in the mind of the primitive. The botanical world is extremely wilderness complex and many useful plants have been obtained from primitive man; for by Robert Allen and Edward Goldsmith example, all our food plants have origin­ ated from his knowledge. It should "Could we not make the west into a great park where man, the be remembered that without plants denizens of the wild, and the scenery should be one vast park?" neither man nor any other animal William Catlin, the remarkable painter oxidises rapidly or is washed away, so could survive. Also, the lives of primi­ of the North American Indian, made that although intensive agriculture may tive food-gathering peoples may depend this plea in the early part of the last be more productive than traditional as much on knowing which plant is century, long before the national park methods over a season or two, in the poisonous as which is nutritious. In concept was seriously contemplated. long-term it is thoroughly wasteful. Amazonas, the Amerindian's know­ He is quoted by Sir Frank Fraser Mining brings much greater returns ledge of plants is immense as he is a Darling in his closing address to the over the short-term and these may be supreme naturalist and is nomadic or Conference on Productivity and Con­ considered sufficient to justify the gross semi-nomadic in an area of vast servation in Northern Circumpolar ecological destruction associated with botanic potential. Lands—that last great wilderness area it. But no country can afford to It is in this field—sensitivity to our in the northern hemisphere; and Sir squander the vast yet fragile wealth of environment—that our culture is most Frank goes on to say, "I see no reason the forest. As P. W. Richards puts it: deficient. Biological awareness is not a why any national park in the Arctic "To a botanist the policy of concen­ characteristic of our culture. It is in should not remain inviolably the coun­ trating attention on a small number of this field that we have most to gain and try of the indigenous people who use it 'economically valuable' species sug­ it is in this approach that a meaning­ in pursuit of their life ways. The gests certain doubts. Among the many ful position can be secured for the pri­ Eskimos did not damage the perma­ thousands of species of rain-forest trees mitive and with him the viability of frost and most of the Indians who lived there is only a small fraction of which the natural world. in these Arctic and sub-Arctic areas the properties, mechanical, technical, The UNESCO Man and the Bio­ have not greatly damaged the environ­ biochemical, etc., are even approxi­ sphere Programme should include pri­ ment either. I see no reason why they mately known. Among the rapidly dis­ mitive man in its proposed activities should not be left to live their lives appearing majority of 'useless' species and the Primitive Peoples Fund should within that area. And on that line I there may be many of unsuspected be effective in this purpose. An Ethno- would also follow up by saying that value. .. Th? reservoir of natural botanical Programme would depend these people, Eskimos and Indians, material represented by the rain-forest largely on the participation of primitive know their country; they can live in it, flora is in danger of disappearing before man and without him little can be move in it, better than we can, and its value has been adequately ex­ achieved. His authority should not be could they not come much more into plored".3 dismissed out of prejudice on the our lives by being the custodians of the In the hunter-gatherers and gatherer- grounds that his sages and doctors hap­ Arctic?... It is their country. This is a farmers of the forest—for example the pen to be wearing feathers rather than way of our impressing on them and on Punan and Negritos of Malaysia, the suits. This proposition is not so naive ourselves that it is their country".1 Onge of the Andaman Islands, the or impractical as it might appear. It is their country; they know it Pygmies of the Congo, and many of The wilderness may not be so obvi­ better than we do; let them look after the Amerindians of Amazonas—we ously vital to the welfare of modern it on behalf of the world. This is the have the indisputable authorities on man. But how many of us leave our nub of our argument on behalf of the rain forest ecology—especially its plant offices, laboratories and factories and hunter-gatherers and gatherer-farmers2 life. In a sense primitive plant-know­ seek to enjoy a holiday in the closest of the world's two most misunderstood ledge may be regarded as an under- thing that we can find to unspoiled biomes—the arctic tundra and the exploited resource (curare, cocaine, nature. Admittedly we make massive tropical rain forest. quinine, cassava and maize represent a compromises and why not, technology There is a real possibility that we will small part of Amerindian learning, for and nature need not be incompatible have destroyed the rain forest before we example). It is also an integral part of and why should we not strive for the come to understand it. At the moment, their culture, one of which they are best of both worlds? we value it only for a few plants, prin­ justifiably proud. If we are seen to re­ Conrad Gorinsky, whose main cipally timbers like mahogany and spect them as naturalists we are on the interest is ethnobotany, has trav­ greenheart. For the rest it is considered road to a dignified meeting and sharing elled widely in South America useless, best cut down in the search for of two equally valuable cultures, rather and is currently engaged in minerals or cleared for agriculture. But than the cruel and irresponsible destruc­ chemical research at St. Bar­ modern agricultural methods are im­ tion of one by the other. tholomew's Medical College, practical in the tropical forest. Once What both the peoples of the tropical London. the forest cover is removed the soil forests and those of the circumpolar

24 regions need is a massive campaign to appointed (possibly reporting to IUCN secure their rights by giving them title and/or UNESCO) to supervise an eco­ The Primitive Peoples to their lands, creating conservation logical programme of research, the Fund areas around them and ensuring that results of which should be freely avail­ The Primitive Peoples Fund (incorpor­ these are respected. An ecological pro­ able to participating countries. ating Survival International) is the only gramme associated with the conserva­ The benefits of this proposal: charity entirely concerned with help­ tion areas is also needed. a. to the world (both developed and ing primitive peoples throughout the In general the less developed coun­ less developed)—those parts of the world. Its immediate aims are: tries have the wilderness, the developed planet which hold great botanical and 1. Grants for specific action to help countries have the money, so that while zoological riches of which we are pre­ primitive peoples in urgent need. sovereignty obviously should remain sently ignorant and are close to destroy­ Already sums have been voted and a with the country in which a wilderness ing will be safeguarded until we know list of priority projects is being pre­ area lies, we propose the developed their real value. Our understanding of pared as information accumulates. countries pay compensation to the host them will be much assisted by our 2. Arousing world public opinion country in lieu of the income it might studying the knowledge of plants about the grave danger that primitive otherwise have expected. (ethnobotany) and animal behaviour peoples are in, with the hope of Governments could take the first step (ethnoethology) of those peoples who developing a social conscience that is in this direction at the UN Man and the have lived there for generations—an tolerant and protective towards them. Environment Conference in 1972. The investment in irreplaceable human The public must be informed of the two headings drawn up by the Prepara­ experience. value of primitive peoples, their arts, tory Committee which appear relevant b. to the host countries—as (a) societies and knowledge. Exhibitions, are (1) the World Heritage Foundation, above, plus substantial compensation in films, television programmes and con­ under which it is proposed that certain lieu of exploitation. ferences will be encouraged. areas of natural, cultural, historical or c. to the hunter-gatherers and gath­ 4 3. Danger areas in the Americas, scientific significance be accorded erer-farmers within the areas —security eastern Asia, Oceania, Australasia, and special recognition; and (2) the rational through title to their lands; the freedom Africa must be studied to investigate conservation of world genetic resources, to live their own lives; dignity and a the circumstances and rights of their under which measures may be agreed renewed sense of their own worth in primitive peoples. A schedule of the to halt the accelerating rate of plant and the modern world. Few people realise ways these rights must be respected in animal species extinction by preserving what an immense psychological impact practice will be drawn up and presented important habitats. The Ecologist re­ our technology has on primitive for ratification to the UN and its mem­ commends that: peoples. At a time when our own ber states.* 1. certain wilderness areas be declared civilisation is being forced to choose 4. International support will be inviolate; which initially shall be areas between self-destruction and an alter­ given to local publicity and fund- of arctic tundra (especially in Canada native value system we could do well raising campaigns, and to the forma­ and Alaska) and tropical forest (espec­ to show them that we respect them and tion of similar bodies in other coun­ ially in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, wish to learn from them. This for all tries, particularly those with primitive Congo, Gabon, Cameroun, Brazil, humankind will be the greatest benefit. peoples. Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Guyana), 5. Combating disease, malnutrition these being the least understood and Notes poverty and landlessness both by direct most fragile biomes. Ultimately they 1. Darling, Sir Frank Fraser, 1970, "Tundra aid and by pressing for the betterment could also include tropical scrub areas, Conference Summary". In Fuller, W. A., of existing conditions and laws. as in Australia, Botswana, SW Africa; and P. G. Kevan (eds.), Proceedings of the 6. Education: help must be given to 2. the hunter-gatherers and gatherer- Conference on Productivity and Conserva­ tion in Northern Circumpolar Lands, Ed­ primitive peoples so that they can adapt farmers within these areas be given title monton, Alberta, 15-17 October 1969, IUCN, to a changing world without loss of to their lands (i.e. those lands in which 16. identity. Studies must be made of the traditionally they have gained their liv­ 2. A distinction is made between shifting best ways in which this can be done. ing) and be allowed to live there with­ (slash-and-burn or swidden) cultivators who 7. Combating environmental destruc­ out pressure of any kind; depend very little on hunting, gathering or tion: research must be initiated, in co­ 3. severe restrictions be placed on fishing, and those to whom one or more of these practices is important. The latter are operation with conservation organisa­ entry to these areas by anyone who referred to here as gatherer-farmers. The tions, into ways of saving or creating does not live there permanently (while significance of this distinction will be dis­ environments in which primitive peoples allowing the indigenes free movement). cussed in a later article. can continue to live their own lives 4. sovereignty over the areas remain 3. Richards, P. W., 1966, The Tropical Rain securely, should they so desire. with the countries in which they lie, Forest: an ecological study, Cambridge University Press. who should also be responsible for the 4. Most of the peoples considered in this Further details may be obtained from policing of their boundaries; proposal find western / industrial thought- The Primitive Peoples Fund (inc. Sur­ 5. funds for administration of these processes so odd and incomprehensible that vival International), 36 Craven Street, areas together with payments in lieu of to include them in detailed deliberations London WC2. Tel: 01-839 3267. exploitation (to the host country) be about these areas would be more distressing * Robin Hanbury Tenison has recently re­ collected from UN members in pro­ than helpful. Others, however, especially Eskimos and North American Indians, quite turned from the first of such study tours— portion to their GNP; rightly insist on participation and should be in Brazil. We hope to publish his findings 6. an international committee be invited to do so. in a later issue of The Ecologist. 25 requirements of availability, efficacy, John Barr safety, stability and cost". The early death of John Barr has taken I shall not bother to comment on the from this country one of its very best extent to which DDT in fact satisfies environment writers. It has taken from these—in some cases—contradictory his friends a warm and gentle person. criteria. This statement, however, is a DDT Lunacy As a writer, he gave to his work two truly frightening one, especially after qualities especially: a prodigious in­ A most revealing letter appeared in the the publication of such revealing books dustry and a real concern. These November 27th 1970 issue of Science. as Chemical Fallout and Man's Impact features are apparent in his best work It emphasised the fact that DDT is on the Global Environment. —Derelict Britain and The Assault on addictive and that an addicted area can The writer considers that it is only our Senses and some of his contribu­ never do without it again—as this over-emotional and ignorant laymen tions to New Society and the BBC. poison, by its very nature, must destroy who attack the uses of DDT. He ends Since he never wrote off the top of his all natural controls. The experience of his letter with the following plea: head, his work was both fact-packed Ceylon is particularly illustrative. As "Will the afflicted public finally be and well argued. And because of this, soon as its use was abandoned "there aroused to return the administration of his work had impact. Much of the pres­ were over one million cases of human pesticides to trained and experienced ent awareness of the problem of derelict malaria in a population of ten million scientists, operators and administrative land and its social impact is due to people and no part of the island of officers who are obviously best quali­ John Barr. Ceylon was free of the disease or its fied to exercise such jurisdiction?" Few environment writers knew better vector". The situation was so serious The answer to this must be: yes, than he what is at stake. He loved the that "... the Singhalese government when such individuals are capable of country and the wilderness and natural sent out an emergency call for 10 mil­ judging the long-term effects of their things. While he worked in London, lion pounds of DDT in 1969 to recover work on the biosphere as a whole and his friends knew he found it only a control". The writer also cites similar not simply its immediate effects on that necessary evil; he fretted to go with experiences with forest insects in small section of it that happens to fall his wife—Pat Barr the author—to their Sweden and with the gypsy moth in the within the narrow compass of their croft on the windswept Scottish island Eastern States of America. specific discipline. of Coll. It is curious that what to any serious What is particularly alarming about His last work was a fine series of scientist would constitute a particularly this astonishing letter is that it should BBC Three programmes on noise, to damning indictment of DDT was de­ have been written by one whose job be repeated this summer, and the edit­ signed to show how splendid and irre­ should be to contribute in some way ing of an English edition of The placeable it is. The writer for instance towards the protection of our environ­ Environmental Handbook. He was 44. points out that "the World Health ment against such poisons as DDT. He Jeremy Bugler Organisation has critically examined is Robert White Stevens, Bureau of over 1,000 such possible substitute pesti­ Conservation and Environment, Rut­ cides to replace DDT in the world­ gers University, New Brunswick, New Fessenheim—Easter Monday wide antimalaria programme, and has Jersey, 08903, USA. While the British appear to have found none that can meet the essential Edward Goldsmith accepted their growing numbers of nuclear reactors with scarcely a mur­ mur of protest, elsewhere the public is beginning to have grave doubts about the long-term safety of these techno­ logical giants. On Easter Monday when people in Britain were marching for the CND a crowd of more than 1,500 con­ gregated in front of the town hall in the small Alsatian town of Fessenheim to protest against the construction of an 850 megawatt (MW) nuclear reactor some 3 km away on the banks of the Rhine. Then, with placards proclaiming "Yes to science—No to nuclear reactors" the demonstrators set off out of the town in complete silence—their destination EDF's (L'Electricite de France) proposed site for the reactor. After speeches the demonstration organisers—Le Comite pour la Sauve- garde de Fessenheim et de la plaine de Rhin—released hundreds of balloons each one symbolically inscribed with

26 active the concrete-enshrouded core has where in the world every day of the to be left intact. "If we continue to use year. Once a reactor has been opera­ nuclear power," say the two British tional the public is at risk because of groups, "we can expect the landscape accidents or because of sabotage and the name of a well-known radioactive to be littered with highly dangerous war. The transportation of highly toxic element—strontium-90, tritium, kryp- cathedral-sized hulks." radioactive wastes from the reactors to ton-85, iodine-131, caesium-137, etc. During its lifetime a reactor produces processing plants and to disposal points CSFR was started by several of the many hundreds of times the radioactive also constitutes a grave threat to the local inhabitants who were deeply wor­ waste released over Hiroshima and public at large. ried about EDF's rather appalling Nagasaki by the bombs. Although the With oil prices going up by leaps and record with nuclear reactors—including atomic authorities claim here and else­ bounds and the political uncertainties a "meltdown" in the core of the Saint- where they have foolproof methods of surrounding the oil-producing coun­ Laurent-des-Eaux reactor in October disposal, a number of containers, brim­ tries, nations like Britain and France 1969. But when these individuals tried ming with millions of curies of waste, are turning more and more to nuclear to get information from EDF about the are already failing after less than 25 power as an alternative. Britain is put­ safety of the Fessenheim plant and the years' use. For the safety of mankind ting up some half-dozen new reactors levels of radioactive effluent to be re- the containers must remain intact for at present and France is planning to released during its normal operation hundreds and even thousands of years. build 10-12 reactors over the next they were fobbed off, so they claim, Over and above the highly radio­ decade. with totally unsatisfactory replies. active wastes generated, each reactor The problem is to find cheap reliable CSFR is now gathering 10,000 signa­ releases low levels of waste into the sources of uranium and the UK Atomic tures for a petition to be sent to Presi­ environment. The CBS and FOE both Energy Authority has recently signed dent Pompidou, having so far got more claim that with the number of reactors a contract with the Rio Tinto-Zinc min­ than 5,700 people to sign. How success­ needed to supply future global energy ing company in South West Africa for ful the citizens of Fessenheim and the demands—assuming the same pattern £150 million worth of uranium. This neighbouring villages will be remains of industrial growth as is now evident— contract obviously complicates Britain's to be seen. Earlier this year the French "this waste will eventually build up to involvement and dependence on South President said in no uncertain terms a biologically intolerable point". Africa—and it means that Britain is what he would do to anyone protesting Although reactors are claimed to be tacitly aiding and abetting South against nuclear reactors—"Le premier "clean and safe" very few of them have Africa's claims to territories that it has qui me parle de centrales atomiques, je operated without an incident of some no right to. Like oil, point out the le flanque par la fenetre." ("The first kind or another. With the world's demonstrators, uranium is fast becom­ person who talks to me against nuclear energy demands rising fast and short­ ing a major political issue—and once reactors, I shall chuck him out of the ages in oil imminent the number of again it is the underdeveloped country window.") reactors necessary will increase to a rather than the industrialised one which loses out. At the same time as the Fessenheim point where one large 1000 MW reactor demonstration two newly-formed will have to come into operation some­ Both groups—the Campaign for British groups organised a token demonstration in support of CSFR out­ side the French Embassy in London. Britain, with 27 experimental and electricity-generating reactors in exist­ ence, has more nuclear reactors and has generated more power by this means than any other country in the world. Why then should these two groups—the Campaign for Biological Sanity (CBS) and Friends of the Earth (FOE)—have chosen a French protest for their debut? The reason, say the organisers of the British demonstration, was to shake people in Britain out of their complacency regarding nuclear reactors and to show them the concern people feel elsewhere. (For example, how many CND members have ever given any thought to nuclear reactors.) And what are the reasons for being concerned? The CBS—started by John Papworth, the Editor of Resurgence— and FOE point out that a reactor has a working life of about 30 years. After "What's the difference how a fish dies? If the thermal pollution doesn't get that time, because it is intensely radio­ him, some fisherman will." 27 discard serviceable Goods for others the Authorities are put to great Expense superior in no Respect but their New­ to dispose of it: often conveying it ness : and by this Means the Labourers many Miles out of the Cities to dis­ and Tradesmen are kept in Employ­ charge it into vast Pits, so that the Biological Sanity and Friends of the ment. Patching and Darning are quite Minerals which last Year Men did Earth—believe that one of the answers gone out of Fashion; there is not a sweat to dig from the Earth, this Year to the world's energy problems lies in Tinker to be met with, and even they labour to bury again. Nor can the a radical re-assessment of the essential Cobblers are seldom found: the very domestick Bins contain all the Super­ requirements. Unmitigated expansion Launderers fear the increased Use of fluities of a Household: he who would and economic growth on the big scale Undergarments of Paper, which are be rid of a Carriage, or a Stove, or envisaged by the industrial nations can donned new of a Morning, and cast another of the mechanical Contrivances only lead to disaster, so they believe. away the same Night. The humblest by which this People sets such Store, More modest energy requirements, on domestick Necessaries come to the must needs pay the Breaker to bear it the other hand, could be met for a long House wrapt in such a swaddling away, or himself take it from his House time to come by the shrewd use of con­ Integument as would perplex our Eng­ by Night and abandon it privily by the ventional fossil fuel sources. lish Housewives: in a Grocer's Shop Wayside, as the old Greeks were wont Peter Bunyard you may see not a Particle of Food to expose unwanted Infants. To such exposed to the Air, but all inclosed in Stratagems must they resort to rid If you would like to help CBS or FOE Boxes and Bags, measured out ready themselves, of the Midas-gift of their contact them at these addresses: for Sale; which Wrappings are no own Prosperity: and ever and anon sooner brought home, than they are Campaign for Biological Sanity, felicitate themselves, for they measure rejected as of no further use. 24 Abercorn Place, London NW8. the Wealth of a Man or a Nation, not My Readers will scarce believe what Tel: 01-286 4366. by the Benefits it bestows, but by the I must now tell them: yet being re­ Waste it produces; which is as much Friends of the Earth, solved to tell the whole Truth in this as to say, that they judge a Chimney 8 King Street, London WC2. History, I will persevere. Outside every not by the Fire, but by the Soot. Tel: 01-836 0718. Dwelling in Automobilia stands a Tub Nicholas Gould or Bin, commonly of Iron, about the Gulliver in Automobilia, IV: Bigness of a Beer-barrel, in which are Wherein the Author considers the placed the Wastes of the Household Poem Disposal of Refuse (the Refuse of the Privy alone ex­ Seen from a train on a journey to London cepted) : and so speedy is the Accumu­ The Apostle Luke relates of the Athen­ White horse in a field ians that they spent their Time in noth­ lation of diverse Matter in these Cropping alone ing else, but either to tell, or to hear Receptacles, that they must be emptied Among the thistles. some new Thing. This Enthusiasm for every seventh Day into great Wagons, White mane graceful lying, Novelty he evidently accounts a Fault employed at publick Expense to go Nostrils touching green world, round the Streets, like Pest-carts in Neck extended, body engrossed, in them. It were curious to discover In its world of food and hedge, what his Opinion might be of the Time of Plague. This Service being Needless of passing train. Automobilians: for they are wondrous lately withheld for some Weeks, the Kind of microcosm susceptible to the Charms of whatever whole Nation seemed doomed to be In a field. is new. During my Sojourn among them overwhelmed, like an Oasis beneath in- A white being I dined often at the Tables of the croaching Sands. I was much perplext Alone. Quality, and the Talk was all of the to learn the Ingredients of this Hotch­ Encapsuled humanity potch of Offals; and investigating a on rapid rotating latest News, the latest Book, Musick, wheel Play and so forth. Nay, even the Works single Bin, found its principal Contents rushes by of ancient Masters are noticed only if to be as follows: in its adrenal they be presented in a novel Guise: as and lemming-like Imprimis, xij Canisters of Iron, when a Nobleman's Heir sells the Con­ flight wherein Food had been stored; to the long precipice. tents of his ancestral Gallery to pay his Item, viij Bottles and Jars of fine A mile away the colossus Taxes, or an old Play is tricked out Glass, with metal Stoppers; of new-town towers afresh with new Bawdry. above the box-jungle. Item, a Quantity of Scraps sufficient Where the very Patrons of the Arts Then elite exurbian to provide a Day's Meals for a poor are so partial, it is scarce to be hoped undergrowth. Man or a Pig; Encircling all that the Mob will show better Sense. Item, enough Paper and Pasteboard is the bye-pass The Art most esteemed by the Vulgar to furnish a good Folio Bible; octopus. is Balladry: and a Song that is on all Item, numerous small Articles, I look out and rejoice Lips in May, were shown rare Favour At the white horse mostly Containers, of the resinous Sub­ if any listened to it still in July. This Here in its corner stance the Automobilians call Plastic. Lust for what is new is fostered by the Of the macrocosm. Merchants to increase their Trade; It will be seen herefrom what Feeding and breathing, Graceful mane lying; who, while they cry this Year's Wares, Abundance of useful Materials, the The field its allotted space omit not to decry those of last Year. Product of Men's Labour, is treated as Of food and water and peace. The gullible Populace are induced to worthless. Indeed, I was informed that Martin Gildoch

28 In the next issue of The Ecologist Classified Adverts

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29 oxygen so fast from the limited store ican striped bass, which thrives in pol­ Down to Earth dissolved in the water that the fish luted water, because it preys on young "drown" without any. The warmer the migrating salmon, and are watching weather the less dissolved oxygen there suspiciously the lake in Middlesex is, and the faster the bacteria take it— where an Angling Club managed to so spectacular fish kills can happen in introduce 1,000 channel catfish, a summer apart from the many cases of favourite with American fish farmers. direct poisoning by industrial wastes. This creature will grow to 25 lb, is This process, called "eutrophica- omnivorous, so could be a weed-eater by Lawrence D. Hills tion", occurs when anything decays in alone in a large and overfed lake, and water,' especially raw sewage and once is good eating as well as a furious it has produced a complete kill by up­ fighter. Poisoned pastures setting the oxygen balance, it is irre­ The Ministry has had the most likely The world's pasture water is vastly versible. Even if the sea recovered after vegetarian of all on trial since 1968. more important than its pasture land, we had poisoned most of its phyto­ This is the Hungarian strain of the for the tiny plants of the phytoplankton plankton, the world would never be the Chinese grass carp, (Ctenopharyngodon that float and thrive as far as the sun­ same again. Man would be missing with idella) which can consume its own light falls through the fenceless mea­ all his fellow mammals, as well as the weight in weeds every 24 hours and has dows of the sea, give us each day 70 birds and the fish. grown up to 100 lb, though thirty per cent of our daily oxygen. All the So far as rivers and lakes are con­ pounders are all that can be expected in forests and fields of the wild green cerned, eutrophication is merely over- British waters. They will only breed at earth supply only the odd 30 per cent manuring our watery pastures. Surely temperatures above 50°F and our rivers which would not keep us breathing and we could find something to keep pace are never this warm at the right season, burning for even a year if once the with the algae and spread the oxygen so they would have to be bred artifi­ oxygen cycle slows and stops. demand safely, like a farmer buying cially and released, which would pre­ If ever we over-feed and undergraze store cattle to balance the grass that vent their becoming a kind of "water our watery pastures we could poison "runs away" with more grazing rabbit" and stripping our rivers like them as easily as we are poisoning our mouths, taking our profit in better fish­ Australian sheep farms. rivers and lakes with sewage, sewage ing for the hundreds of thousands of In Russia, after the same kind of efflulent and the washings from our anglers in Britain today? ecological research that our Ministry is farmlands. Indeed, the USA has Our freshwater fauna is very short of undertaking, 246,000 were released in poisoned the Great Lakes, very largely algae eaters, for most of our native fish the Karakum canal that was so weed with a fourteenfold increase in nitrogen are zooplankton eaters, and these live grown for 65 miles that the flow was fertilisers in the last 25 years. From on freshwater phytoplankton, as in the reduced to a fifth and water enough to British experiments on the Great Ouse sea, with a wide range of other "meat irrigate 50,000 acres of cotton was lost. we know that between a third and a dishes" such as small crustaceans and They solved the problem and are now quarter of our nitrate fertilisers washes larvae. We have nothing like the delici­ balancing the weed growth so success­ quickly into our rivers, where, though ous Tilapia of Africa which will eat a fully that they have been introduced it takes 10 parts per million to make the third of its own weight of waterweed a into the Volga and have eaten their way water undrinkable, only 0.3 ppm will day and produce about two tons of fish up as far as Stalingrad, but go down to begin the population explosion of algae a year per acre of the ponds that are the warm southern reaches to breed. which is technically called a "bloom". adding high grade protein to the local Unfortunately the weeds they clear Fresh water normally depends for diets in so many hot and hungry coun­ are all the clean water species and they nitrogen on Azotobacter agilis, which tries today. ignore floating algae and blanket or fixes it from the air dissolved in water Tilapia will take a fly and it would flannel weed. Even if they were algae as a better known bacteria does in the be possible for a factory or power eaters, releasing enough to keep pace roots of pea tribe plants, and relatively station with a cooling water problem to with a "bloom" would mean an even little washes from unfertilised soil. warm a pond with their waste heat, to bigger fish kill from starvation than When we suddenly add thousands of stock with this useful fish, and Water from eutrophication, once they had times more nitrogen than our rivers Hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes) which is eaten the thousandfold increase of have ever received in history or pre­ perhaps the most efficient converter of "grazing" that farmland washings and history, plus quantities of phosphorus unwanted plant foods into vegetable sewage effluent forces ahead to draw from the breakdown of modern deter­ fodder, for them to feed on. There the-oxygen when it dies, rushing to­ gents in sewage effluent, it is as though would be no risk of the Water wards it like air to a burning ware­ some wonder fertiliser made grass grow Hyacinth, the floating plant from South house. 50 feet high and too coarse for cattle America that has spread throughout the Thirty pound grass carp, caught per­ to eat. Grass, however, would become tropics, escaping to block our water­ haps with cucumbers instead of worms, a peat for lack of the nitrogen to decay ways with solid foliage, for our climate cruising like giant herrings in our it, but the blanket weed algae grows is too cold. canals, lakes and rivers are no easy way furiously through spring and summer The Ministry of Agriculture, round the pollution problem, but a and then dies, to be attacked by bac­ Fisheries and Food has some watchful reward for cleaning up our rivers till teria increasing with explosive speed ecologists in its middle department. they are again fit for both men and fish on unlimited nitrogen, demanding They firmly refused entry to the Amer­ to swim in. 30 The directivity of behaviour To deny directivity is in fact to deny Bierens de Haan3 writes: "... that the Science consists of organising data or that processes can be the object of weaving of the web by the spider is putting "cybernismic'' order into the scientific study. In spite of this, empiri­ purposeful for the catching of insects, environment. Things that appear un­ cists obstinately persist in so doing. and the collecting and storing of cater­ related and haphazard are arranged in This is partly because they tend to pillars by the wasp purposeful for the such a way as to appear orderly. The regard three-dimensional things and nourishing of its future larvae, are facts environment is four-dimensional, or, one-dimensional processes apart, as that are so self-evident that it is not more precisely, it can best be repre­ though they were self-sufficient units. necessary further to elucidate them." sented by a four-dimensional model. It is not currently realised that these The evidence that is occasionally Thus it is not three-dimensional things units are nothing more than anthropo- mustered to oppose the notion of direc­ into which order must be put, but four- centric abstractions, units of our tivity consists of examples of the be­ dimensional processes. To put order thought-processes and of our language haviour of systems ostensibly contrary into the latter involves knowing in what but not of the world they represent. to their personal interests, but that, if direction they are moving. If one can­ There are no such things as dogs that examined more closely, are seen to be not do this, they remain unrelated and do not eat and drink and reproduce, in the interest of the more general haphazard, i.e. disorderly. except as photographs, pictures, con­ system of which they are part. Indeed, All behavioural processes must there­ cepts and words, nor are there such if the sub-system is regarded in vacuo, fore be taken as being "directive"—a processes as eating, drinking, breathing its behaviour may not appear directive. term coined by Russell in 1938.11 prefer and reproducing taken apart from the If it is regarded, as it should be, as a this term to the term "purposive", organisms involved. differentiated part of a larger and which in fact means the same thing. To deny directivity is to deny that longer-term system, its directivity then Unfortunately, when we talk of some­ cybernismic order can be put into becomes apparent. body's purpose, we are not thinking of dynamic processes, and hence that they Thus, for instance, it is argued that his role within some general system, but can be subjected to scientific examina­ during the mating season, the male rather of his "conscious" motivation. If tion, and, since all the constituents of stickleback undergoes colour changes man's behaviour is determined by a the world display different degrees of that render him conspicuous and hence mysterious force called the "free-will", dynamism, that science itself is in fact more vulnerable to predators.4 It has then "purpose" refers to the direction possible. been shown that the object of the in which the exercise of "free-will" is The evidence of directivity is so over­ colour change is to attract the attention leading him, and in terms of which his whelming at all levels of complexity of females. That the stickleback has behaviour can be explained. It must that its denial seems inconceivable. enemies who have learned to take ad­ follow that since animals other than De Beer writes2: "The structure of vantage of this conspicuousness (as the men are supposed to be governed by an animal shows a number of predator's behaviour is also directive) "blind instinct", they are not capable exquisitely delicate adjustments: the is only to be expected and does not of exercising "free-will", and thus of splinters inside a bone are situated detract from the directive nature of its displaying "purposive" behaviour. exactly where they are required to with­ colour change for breeding purposes. Even if we use the word "purpose" stand the pressure to which the bone is The latter remains adaptive so long as functionally, its old metaphysical con­ subjected; the fibres of the tendon lie the breeding advantages to be derived notation tends to linger. If we use it, accurately along the line of strain be­ from it outweigh its disadvantages for for instance, in connection with the be­ tween the muscle and the bone to which the purposes of phylogeny. haviour of such lowly animals as sea- it is attached; centres of nerve cells in An infinite number of examples of urchins or fiddler-crabs, subconsciously the brain are situated close to the ends the same principle can be cited, thus: we cannot help but imagine these of the nerve fibres, from which they certain fish learn to tolerate smaller fish humble creatures consulting their little habitually receive impulses, and when that enter their mouths and clean their "wills" before deciding "freely" which in phylogeny there is a change in the teeth. This is known as "cleaning sym­ zooplankton to have for tea. As this nerve fibres from which any given biosis". However, predators have is not the image I wish to convey, it is nerve-centre habitually receives its im­ "learned" to imitate these cleaners, and easier to abandon the term "purposive- pulses, the nerve-centre is found to have grown to look exactly like them. ness", in favour of one with no such be situated near its new source of They are consequently tolerated by the undesirable connotations. stimulation." larger fish, a fact they take advantage 31 of by taking an occasional bite at their immature ticks cling hopefully to entering the eye. The performance of unsuspecting hosts.5 In many species of blades of grass, waiting for the mil­ this task suffers from the same short­ ants, specialised workers have evolved lionth chance which will bring an comings as does the behaviour of the to look after the larvae. Certain cuckoo­ animal brushing through the vegetation famous insectivorous plant, the Dionaea like parasitic beetles, incapable of look­ within reach of their waving forelegs. fly-trap. Neither system can distinguish ing after their own larvae, lay their Owing to the difficulty of finding a between the various foreign particles, eggs in the ants' nests. These later host—a difficulty which is superimposed most of which are harmful, but some hatch into larvae that are indistinguish­ on the more familiar hazards of life— of which could conceivably be benefi­ able from the ants' and which, after the mortality among most parasites is cial, such as the medicinal drops which having been carefully looked after by enormous. A vast number of eggs or an occulist may wish to insert into a the workers, hatch into predator larvae have to be produced in order diseased eye. Does this detract from the beetles that gradually take over the that the species can survive at all. Con­ usefulness of the blinking function? colony. 68 sequently, a characteristic feature of The answer is no. The experience of These are but two of an infinite most parasites is a relatively enormous phylogeny has established that, statistic­ number of examples of parasites that development of the reproductive ally, blinking, like digestion and the take advantage of certain features of organs, which frequently come to circulation of the blood, is best medi­ a host's behaviour pattern. Does this dominate the body. Intestinal worms ated at a low neurological level. The mean that these features are not direc­ produce eggs by the million and even possibility that a foreign particle enter­ tive? Undoubtedly not. It is clear that brood-parasites like the cuckoo lay ing the eye might be beneficial is so cleaning symbiosis is very useful to the four to five times as many eggs as their remote that it is best not taken into host; it is also clear that looking after hosts. The difficulty of host-finding can account. The cost of doing so, in terms the larvae is a necessary function within often be estimated by the number of of an increase in the size of those cere­ an ant colony and is directive to the eggs laid." bral mechanisms required for increasing survival of the young. The fact that, for Surely nothing could be more direc­ discrimination, would just not be worth­ these functions to occur successfully, a tive than this automatic regulation of while. number of individual members of the the number of eggs laid in accordance Indeed, in spite of the inflated view species will fall prey to parasites is no with the number required to produce we may have of human intelligence, it argument against their usefulness. the optimum number of adults. Once is probable that if this "faculty" were Such behaviour only appears non- again, directivity is apparent if one rea­ allowed to govern all those elaborate directive if we regard the individual in lises that the unit of analysis must be processes necessary to sustain life, vacuo, i.e., apart from the family or the larger unit—in this case the species which are at present mediated by lower the community of which he is part, as a whole, four-dimensionally—and centres in our brain and spinal cord, which we know to be impossible. not the individual. the result would undoubtedly be a Again, it is pointed out that the fierce Other arguments against directivity serious increase in inefficiency. Blinking competition obtaining in certain animal are based on the disadvantages to in­ may appear indiscriminatory, but this societies for the possession of the dividual survival of the so-called in­ lack of discrimination is a low price to choicest female or of the most desirable flexibility of instinctive behaviour. Thus pay for the advantages of automatism territory is not conducive to the sur­ Hingston9 tells of a clubionide spider in and for the protection it enjoys from vival of the individual. Indeed, in such Central India. These spiders live in the ravages of "intelligent" behaviour competitive societies as those of the grassy meadows. They are the same that is at present wreaking such irrepar­ baboons or fur-seals, casualties often colour as the grass and are capable of able damage to the less well-protected can run quite high, especially under lying in a particular position that en­ parts of our biosphere. conditions of overcrowding.7 But such ables them to blend perfectly with their Edward Goldsmith behaviour can only be interpreted as background. When threatened, their contributing to the selection of the fit­ instinct is to remain perfectly immobile References test individuals and thus to the adapta­ and thus hope to pass unnoticed. 1. Russell, E. S., 1938, The Behaviour of Animals, E. Arnold & Co., London. tion of the species as a whole to the Hingston found that, in such circum­ 2. De Beer, Gavin, 1948, Embryos and challenges of its environment. stances, there was no way to make them Ancestors, Clarendon Press, Oxford. It is also occasionally pointed out move, neither by pushing them with a 3. Bierens de Haan, J. A., 1946, Animal that in certain species the individual at straw, by sticking a pin into them, nor Psychology, Hutchinson's University Library, one or more stages during its life-cycle, even by cutting off one of their legs. London. 4. Tinbergen, N., 1951, The Study of In­ is subjected to so many environmental They would inevitably remain quite stinct, Clarendon Press, Oxford. challenges that its chances of survival immobile. 5. Limbaugh, Conrad, 1961, Cleaning Sym­ are in fact minute. This is especially the Canis azarae, the pampas fox, appar­ biosis, Scientific American, August 1961. case with certain parasites. Miriam ently behaves in a similar way. Now, 6. Haskins, Caryl P., 1942, Of Ants and Rothschild and Teresa Clay write: can one say that such behaviour is not Men, George Allen & Unwin, London. 7. Russell, Claire and W. M. S., 1968, Vio­ "... the eggs of the grouse roundworm directive? Undoubtedly not, statistic­ lence, Monkeys and Man, Macmillan, Lon­ lie scattered all over Scotland, but mil­ ally; therefore, from the point of view don. lions and millions of their young, which of the species, it must constitute the 8. Rothschild, Miriam and Clay, Teresa, hatch out and wriggle up the sprigs of reaction most conducive to survival. 1952, Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos, Collins, heather around them, perish because A further example is the pheno­ London. that particular plant is never eaten by 9. Hingston, R. W. G., 1928, Problems of menon of blinking. The human eyelid Instinct and Intelligence, E. Arnold & Co., a grouse. Similarly, vast numbers of closes to prevent a foreign particle from London. 32 Ecopolitics

by Robert Allen

countries. Nor is there any doubt that Thus in one letter to a local complain­ Fresh air squandered the Inspectorate's policy of persuasion ant, the Chief Inspector writes: "The We all have a right to fresh air—like has earned the willing co-operation of important point, which you seem to water it is something we take for many industries. The measure of con­ miss, is that it is the effect of the emis­ granted—yet safeguarding it is increas­ trol it has achieved is better than any sions at ground level which matters ingly difficult in an industrial society legislation that is more honoured in the most and not the mass emissions of such as ours. Atmospheric pollutants breach—but there is still no substitute pollutants. In this our requirements must be kept below levels where they for putting standards on the statute have not changed and the environment cause offence, damage health or disrupt book and providing the means for en­ is safeguarded just as much under the ecosystems, and basically there are two forcing them. For a policy of exhorta­ new conditions as under the old, per­ ways of doing this: either by establish­ tion is always open to the charge that haps even with a minor improvement". ing maxima, enforceable through the standards voluntarily come by, while The important point which the Chief law, with heavy penalties for infringe­ better than nothing, are not nearly Inspector misses, of course, is that put­ ment and an agency powerful enough enough, and sometimes protect industry ting greater quantities through a taller to bring offenders to book; or by more than the public. chimney does not make things easier: persuading polluters to gradually im­ The case of RTZ's aluminium the stuff comes down again and is prove standards, prosecuting only those smelter in Anglesey is a good example. merely dispersed over a wider area. It who prove entirely intractable. At the public enquiry the Anglesey may be more democratic but it is still In Britain we have taken the latter Residents' Association (ARA) opposed as anti-social. Indeed, in this particular course, in the belief that "complicated the plan, largely on the grounds of air case it is less democratic since fewer legislation and standards usually pollution. They were somewhat molli­ pollutants will fall on company land require complicated and expensive fied, however, by RTZ's assurance that while more will fall on the residents and means of supervision and inspection, they would keep emissions below cer­ farmland surrounding it. with the danger that the system falls tain levels. There is some dispute be­ A reasonable man might assume that into disrepute when it cannot be en­ tween the ARA on the one hand and the increase in emissions has been forced"1 Grit and dust, and smoke RTZ and the Alkali Inspectorate on allowed because no technology exists to from industry, private houses and the other as to whether these assurances reduce them. He might also assume that vehicles are the concern of the local were guarantees or estimates "of what the levels discussed at the enquiry authorities under the Public Health might be achieved on the evidence of (whether guarantees or estimates) were Act, the Clean Air Acts and the Road known technology". At all events, with chosen because they represented a sober Traffic Acts. Most other forms of in­ the agreement of the Inspectorate, assessment of what was safe in terms dustrial air pollution are the concern total emissions now exceed the levels of the health of the local population of the Alkali Inspectorate under the mentioned at the enquiry by 54.7 per and damage to the environment gener­ Alkali, etc Works Regulation Act of cent, wtiile gaseous emissions of ally. So he would expect a very good 1906. The Inspectorate's job is to see fluorides from the main stack have reason indeed for exceeding those that industry uses the "best practicable trebled. levels. I understand, however, that the means" to keep emissions to the mini­ The Alkali Inspectorate in permitting standards proposed at the enquiry can mum, and it is this phrase which ex­ this increase has taken cover behind an be met but that it would cost an extra poses the disadvantages of exhortation increase in stack height. Originally there £500,000—a sum which might be be­ over legislation. were to have been two stacks—the main yond the means of a rag-and-bone man There is no doubt that in many cases one of 300 ft and one for the anode but not, presumably, of RTZ. Further, the Alkali Act has worked well, and plant of 125 ft. Now all emissions if the industry were already established, our anti-pollution policies are probably (except some from the potroom louvres) it might require time or a subsidy to more effective than those of most other go through a single stack of 400 ft. install the necessary equipment, but a 33 brand new one like the smelter should pollution is economic and it is important a day and took their soiled washing have protection of health and environ­ that the financial resources available down to the Guildhall in an attempt to ment written into the initial capital should be directed primarily towards impress their plight on their local outlay. abatement in the correct order of councillors and MP. There was no im­ The argument hinges on the inter­ priority".4 provement, and in February this year pretation of "best practicable means". There are two issues involved. One is the housewives blockaded the factory As understood by the Beaver Com­ that as a society if we are capable of again—this time day and night for three mittee on Air Pollution, who had noth­ creating a clean and healthy environ­ weeks, after which they secured a meet­ ing but praise for the Inspectorate, the ment there is no question we should do ing with an Alkali Inspector and an expression "covers both the right type so. This does not mean that industry Assistant Under Secretary at the Welsh of plant and its use and maintenance. must eliminate emissions immediately Office. They have been promised that For certain processes upper limits are regardless of cost. But it does mean that something will be done, but they have specified by the Acts for the concentra­ standards and a time-table for meeting taken care to warn the company that tion of acidity in the effluent gases them should be fixed without delay— more direct action will be taken if noth­ which may be discharged to the air. in short the dates and targets promised ing happens within six months. Wherever it is technically possible com­ us by the Conservative Party election For anyone with a feeling for justice plete elimination is required" (italics manifesto. it is inconceivable that the people of mine).2 In other words there is room for The other is that the Alkali Inspec­ Port Tennant should have had to suffer manoeuvre only in what techniques are torate is in no position to decide eco­ for so long. Yet nothing was done be­ used to eliminate pollution. nomic priorities. Not only are the tools cause United Carbon Black Ltd could Today however, the common inter­ for the job inadequate (cost benefit hold up their heads and say, we have pretation introduces an important analysis is still in its infancy and has so done all we are required to do by the economic qualification. Here, for ex­ far proved a singularly clumsy method Alkali Inspectorate. ample, is the view of the Warren Spring of quantifying needs like clean air), but "Astronomical figures are frequently Laboratory: " 'Best practicable means' the Inspectorate is required by the Act quoted for the cost of the effects of air is interpreted as the provision, efficient to consider only the technology of con­ pollution", writes the Chief Inspector maintenance and proper use of appli­ trol—indeed that is where its expertise of Alkali, "but we see no rush by the ances for preventing the escape of lies. alleged sufferers to finance the preven­ gases, smoke, grit and dust into the The great danger of allowing eco­ tion of pollution at source when on the atmosphere and for rendering them nomic factors to colour technical judge­ face of it, there should be a pheno­ harmless and inoffensive where dis­ ments is that an industry's arguments menal return for the outlay".5 In the charged and the proper supervision of against incurring cleaning costs appear cases of Anglesey's aluminium smelter operations causing such emissions. It much more "reasonable", not to say and Swansea's carbon black works the also takes into account the effect of forceful, than the demands of those costs are gross environmental contamin­ such measures on the operation of the who have to breathe the air it pollutes. ation and simple human misery. The process and their cost, since a balance This is vividly illustrated by the Port sources themselves are quite capable of has to be preserved between the amount Tennant carbon black affair. meeting them. It is surely time they did of money to be spent and the degree of For 21 years the residents of Port so. harm or nuisance involved" (italics Tennant, Swansea, have suffered from 3 mine). In other words muck will be vast quantities of smuts emitted by a References reduced if the brass does not suffer factory of United Carbon Black Ltd. 1. Chief Inspector of Alkali, 1970, 106th overmuch. The filth is appalling. "Windows and Annual Report on Alkali, etc. Works 1969, The Chief Inspector of Alkali seemed washing are all marked by the carbon", p. 6. to concede that "best practicable said one resident, Mr Edgar Cutler. "If 2. Beaver Committee on Air Pollution, means" are now interpreted in eco­ I want a clean shirt my wife has to take 1954, Report, p. 15. nomic rather than technical terms when it to the launderette to get it dry ... My 3. Warren Spring Laboratory, 1970, Clean he wrote in his Report for 1969: "The wife and I have to scrub our carpets Air Research at Warren Spring Laboratory, p. 22. problems of air pollution control are once every eight weeks and we have to mainly economic. If money were no 4. Chief Inspector of Alkali, 1970, op. cit., redecorate three or four times for every pp. 5 and 7. object there would be very few unre­ once that other people have to do it". 5. Chief Inspector of Alkali, 1970, op. cit., solved problems, for the technical solu­ Another resident, Mrs Jessie Cottle, p. 5. tions to prevention are almost all said: "I suffer from asthma and the known"; and "Our present knowledge air is seriously affecting my health. I of emission control techniques is suffi­ cannot even open my bedroom window cient to give this country a clean and at night". Some of the mothers claimed healthy environment, provided that their children got so dirty they had to sufficient energy and resources are scrub them with detergents. devoted to the task. We know how to They complained bitterly to both prevent smoke formation, arrest grit, works management and the local dust and fumes, absorb noxious or authorities to no avail. Then in Janu­ offensive process gases and desulphur­ ary 1970 they heard the factory plan­ ise liquid and gaseous fuels. The chief ned to increase production by 35 per reason why we still tolerate a degree of cent. They blockaded the entrance for 34 Feedback

centres, 36 youth club sites, and nine their legislatures. In Massachusetts | Epping Forest reprieved camp sites with a total capacity of one such measure has been passed by The threat that cattle should not be 3,000 tents and caravans. the Senate, and one in New York is allowed to range freely in Epping The Commission hopes to attract also likely to go through. In the US Forest has been lifted—at least for the private capital for some of its more Congress, however, a Bill sponsored time being. Mr D. L. Jones, reporting ambitious projects like log cabin by Senator Gaylord Nelson which on a meeting between the Corporation retreats. Announcing these plans, the would ban foreign SSTs has been held of London, as conservators of the chairman Lord Taylor of Gryfe said: up in the commerce committee and Forest, and local authorities, said that "2,000 people in a forest area of 2,000 could well die there.(2, 4) "the Corporation is not prepared to acres can be lost and all of them can The Weekly magazine L'Express promote legislation unless it has the enjoy some degree of privacy. People has carried out a survey of French support of all local authorities and it want to escape into peace and quiet public opinion, and found that it has was clear that they are by no means and we will cater for these in our veered markedly against Concorde, unanimous". Epping and Ongar RDC forests." Guardian, 6A.11 Only 44 per cent believe the had reiterated its opposition to Government was right to have started legislation. the project, as against 72 per cent in Gazette and Guardian, 30.4.71 *t Supersonic white elephant 1969; 58 per cent, however, believe it Mr F. R. Barratt, Under Secretary of the is too late to cancel it.(5) Defence, Policy and Materials Division |J Fowl pest At home, the Government wallows at the Treasury has told the Commons Fowl pest, which has killed over 15 in expensive uncertainty. The decision Trade and Industry sub-committee that million chickens in the past seven on full production has been postponed, there is no hope of fully recovering months, is being spread unwittingly but four more aircraft and materials Concorde's research and development by the public. Broiler chickens for another six have been ordered. costs—£825 million at the latest infected with the disease are taken to Expenditure at the rate of £1 million estimate (the UK's share being £405 processing factories and later sold in a week is being allowed to continue, million, of which we have spent £250 the normal way, says Capt. S. E. and as the weeks go by so will it be million). Mr Barratt added that it was Thistlewayte, chairman of the National more difficult to cancel Concorde. A uncertain how much of this money Egg Producer Retailers' Association. proposal that the Government should would be recoverable, and said that "The disease cannot be passed on to own the aircraft and lease them to if Concorde was proceeded with there whoever eats the chicken, but it will BO AC has been considered by the would be a substantial loss. This was still be in the carcase when it is thrown Cabinet.(2) a certainty and had been known for away and can spread again. We shall (1) Financial Times, 21.4.71; (2) Ob- some time.(l) never get rid of this disease while this server, 25.4.71; (3) editorial interpola­ sort of thing goes on. We know of Meanwhile, figures have been tion; (4) Guardian, 13.4.71; (5) Finan­ broiler chickens dying on their feet submitted to the Cabinet, suggesting cial Times, 5.4.71 while waiting in lorries outside that the number of Concordes likely processing factories." to be sold is between 20 and 40—much less than the manufacturers' estimates Daily Telegraph, 5.4.71 5 Abortion pill of 250.(2) This lends some point to the Prostaglandin, an abortion-inducing protestations of the Concorde lobby drug, is being tested in four hospitals, 3 If you go down to the woods that the plane will have no adverse so far with success. At the moment it The Forestry Commission is to spend effects on the environment. Most must be injected, but it is believed it £100,000 a year on car parks, camp environmentalists have argued that could be made available in tablet sites, forest trails and other ways of while a few SSTs might make no form. However, Sir John Peel, former making its 3 million acres more difference, no one can predict the President of the Royal College of attractive to visitors. Last summer it potentially grave effects of many Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, has established a conservation and hundreds of them in the air. (3) said that at least five more years of recreation branch, for which it hopes Even fewer will be ordered if testing and research are necessary, and to get a Treasury grant. There are American moves to ban Concorde on warns that "if it does away with already 177 picnic sites, 201 forest noise grounds are successful. 21 of the surgical abortion, its implications will trails, 134 car parks, 16 information 51 states have Bills to this end before be tremendous and decisions about its 35 use will have to be taken at the some kind of control over at least chattering motorists. As Mr Jack highest level. It could be a political some of those things which tend to Parker, chairman of Rownham's matter requiring a change in make modern life hideous". residents' association, puts it, the legislation". Daily Telegraph, 5.4.71 However he went on to say: "I hope villagers who live there for the peace that, as we get nearer to a and quiet "might just as well take up comprehensive network of good roads— residence at Waterloo Station".(4) Where there's muck—hang on to E your brass! a network that will provide good Somewhere in the DoE there must J. Whelan and Sons, industrial access to the ports—it might be be a file marked "environmental tank-cleaning specialists of Hockley, possible to relax the rules as to weight, quality", and somehow the ghost of Birmingham, have been fined £60 plus and at the same time restrict these the Ministry of Transport has hidden it. an analyst's fee of £20 for polluting a heavier vehicles to those roads which (1) The Times, 27.4.71; (2) Daily Tele­ sewer by pouring large quantities of can accommodate them. This is a graph, 27.4.71; (3) Guardian, 7.4.71; acid down a drain. matter on which I would wish to hold (4) The Times, 27.4.71 It took the city corporation three detailed consultation with you. I would months and £1,000 to track them down. like to stress the importance I attach to easy access to the ports."(l) The Times, 17.4.71 Energy restraint plea The drive for a comprehensive u Worried by an anticipated 450 per network of good roads is causing a cent increase in power consumption by 1 Playing with fire great deal of trouble and concern in, 1990, New York's Environmental The US Atomic Energy Commission among other places, Cambridge, Protection Administration has urged plans a 5,000 megaton nuclear Cumberland and Hampshire. Noise severe measures to limit the use of explosion 6,000 ft below the surface of from the proposed six-lane Cambridge electricity. If power output continues Amchitka Island, about 1,400 miles western by-pass, a 14 mile extension to increase at the present rate, it says, south-west of Anchorage, Alaska. of the Mil, is likely to ruin there will be "an intolerable increase Canada has expressed "serious Granchester, the village which inspired in air pollution, chronic respiratory concern" to the State Department, and Rupert Brooke, say objectors.(2) disease, thermal pollution, radiation warned that since the test is to take The Department of the Environment hazard and ruination of landscape". place "in a region known to be prone supported by Cumberland County Daily Telegraph, 21.4.71 to earth disturbances" it could have Council, has proposed a road grave environmental consequences. "improvement" scheme through the The test is scheduled for October. heart of the Lake District National Daily Telegraph, 14.4.71 Park along the shores of Bassenthwaite. l£ Till kill The Lake District Planning Board, Hedgehogs, rats, birds, ducks and who strongly oppose the scheme, wants thousands of fish have been killed by Q Taxonomical teaser the trunk-route to go to the north of a chemical polluting the River Till in Mrs Mary Whitehouse has attacked Dr the Park. Mr Graham Watson, its Lincolnshire. All wildlife has died on Martin Cole's controversial sex chairman, has described the two a five mile stretch of the river. The education film as reducing humans interchanges planned for the outskirts Lincolnshire River Authority has not "to the level of animals ..." of Keswick as "two vast plates of yet discovered the sources of the Daily Telegraph, 17.4.71 spaghetti linked by a swath of roads pollution, though it knows it entered cutting across the foothills of the river near the village of Ingham. A Latrigg".(3) chemical packaging company at DoE gives with one hand ... Ingham, Britpak Ltd., is quite sure it is Mr John Peyton, Minister of Transport The DoE has been especially not responsible for the episode. Mr Industries, has announced that the heavy-handed over the M27 motorway, C. J. Elcoate the managing director Government will help local authorities which is to pass close to the village of says, "we do handle all sorts of introduce bus priority schemes. Rownhams (pop. 600) between herbicides, insecticides and fertilisers, Provided the authority takes the Southampton and Winchester—so close which come in bulk for us to package. initiative and spends £5,000 or more that some houses will be demolished, But we are one and a half miles from on the scheme, the Government will others will be a mere 20 ft away, while a further 17 will be stranded on the the river Till, and connected by only give 50 per cent on the cost of a small stream. We are extremely roadworks and traffic signs; principal wrong side of it. The villagers want the route to be moved half a mile to careful about handling chemicals and road schemes will get 75 per cent. consider that an enormous amount of Financial Times, 21 A.11 the north, but the DoE regrets that this will be too difficult and expensive. chemical would have to go down to do Instead they have decided to put a this damage". Sunday Times, 4.3.71 |Q ... and takes with the other service area astride the motorway a At the annual dinner of the Freight bare 100 yards from the eastern end Transport Association, Mr Peyton said of the village. This will boast a petrol that the Government's decision to station with breakdown facilities, Ecology Bookshop restrict maximum lorry weights to the restaurants and snack bars, 24 ft high 45 Lower Balgrave Street, S.W.1 present 32 tons was justified by "the road lights—and, especially during the Write for free lists on tide of opinion that is at long last summer months, will no doubt be a Ecology, Conservation, Pollution etc. beginning to favour the imposition of hullabaloo of transistor radios and

36 which have to be "fired" in a kiln. different materials. Coloured chips may Bricks made by the Tech Process be added, and permanent but inexpen­ (Tekbricks) are uniform in size, where­ sive mineral pigments can give innumer­ as conventional bricks can become dis­ able pastel shades. Colour pigments torted as a result of firing. Precision disperse uniformly through the entire tolerances are obtained on masonry body of the masonry unit without shad­ products, allowing rows of Tech pro­ ing or fading. Ecotechnics ducts to be rapidly glued in place using T-A Materials does not presently en­ thin line epoxy adhesives, apart from gage in the manufacture of masonry by Arthur J. Pujfett the normal method of using mortar to products through plants of its own. The bond the rows. company will license the Tech Process The basic manufacturing technique throughout the world, offering a com­ Bricks from—anything ! consists of dry-mixing cement and plete service in the process and use of When a manufacturing process uses aggregate to a specific formula, depend­ new materials, and offering engineering waste materials as the basic ingredient, ent upon the waste material being used and purchasing assistance in construc­ ecologists applaud the achievement. If and the strength of the final product. tion and equipment installation the same process can also significantly Water, and a special chemical acceler­ throughout the period of contract. reduce the manufacturing costs over ator, are then added in exacting Having read the details, stop and the conventional method, economists amounts, binding the aggregate par­ think! The argument between the also begin to take notice. ticles together. Depending on the mater­ China Clay companies and the trans­ T-A Materials, Inc., of Palisades ial used, the aggregate makes up from port authorities could cease if a plant Park, New Jersey, was founded in 1969 90 per cent to 96 per cent of the total were built in Cornwall. And imagine to manufacture bricks, blocks and tiles solids. The material is then fed to a the difference in the landscape of parts using a revolutionary system called the powerful press, moulded, discharged of Wales, Lancashire and Yorkshire "Tech Process". The company devised and stacked on pallets for a minimum without the coal tips. Large municipal a method whereby almost any inorganic of 24 hours to allow for drying. incinerators would have an outlet for mineral or mineral waste could be used However, independent laboratory their garbage frit, power stations for to produce bricks to high tolerances, at tests indicate that a Tech Process pro­ their fly ash and steelworks for their a low unit cost and with a low capital duct can meet or exceed American slag. The reduction in use of clay bricks investment. The ecological potential at Society for Testing Materials standards would slow down the erosion of the its inception was hardly realised, but for severe weather conditions. Load countryside through open mining. The an article in a leading American busi­ bearing block for reinforced masonry list is endless, the benefits spectacular. ness magazine resulted in a deluge of work can also be produced by the Tech So why can't a few local authorities, mail, pointing out the vast resources of Process. with grants from the government, set up waste which could be used at negligible Tech products have the appearance a plant to rid themselves of their pol­ CQSt. Indeed, many producers of in­ and colour of the aggregate used. This luted past, at the same time bringing dustrial waste would welcome the allows for a most attractive, textured employment and money to their re­ opportunity of ridding themselves of surface, with the natural colour ad­ spective areas? The economics are their technological "garbage". vantages of the raw material being used. right, the product is right, the cause is This unexpected development led The process lends itself to blending of right—there are no further excuses. T-A Materials to begin experiments on a host of differing materials, including: fly ash, garbage frit, ground glass, mine and quarry tailings, cement dust and furnace slag. Having reached the stage of proven commercial production, the company now offers producers, con­ tractors and architects an economical method for mass producing masonry products designed to counteract the spiraling costs of materials and con­ struction. For masonry producers, it means the utilisation of inexpensive and readily available raw materials. For contractors, it offers new low costs per thousand units, particularly significant in wall cost savings. For architects, it brings forth the hidden beauty of aggregate colour. In simple terms, the Tech Process makes precision masonry units without the use of heat, unlike products using clay or sand-lime as the aggregate social structures on which technomania view is tantamount to calling in an Cures for technomania depends intact. arsonist to rebuild the target of his APPROACHING THE BENIGN EN­ Listen, for example, to the blurb on crime. Small wonder that Dr Killian VIRONMENT, ed. Taylor Littleton, the cover of Approaching The Benign finds his solutions in terms of "bridg­ Collier Books, 45p. Environment. "In the recent floodtide ing C. P. Snow's two cultures", and of doomful prophecies about the immin­ massive federal programmes. THE ENVIRONMENTAL HAND­ ent destruction of our environment, this Dr Walker's essay can be dismissed BOOK, ed. John Barr, Ballantine book stands virtually alone. The three after reading but a single sentence: Books, 40p. eminent scientists who wrote it offer "... we have many very fine auto­ hope—and more than that: positive mobiles, very fine airplanes and, in POPULATION, EVOLUTION AND creative ideas that can enable man to many places, very fine highways. But BIRTH CONTROL, ed. Garrett improve life on this planet and build the average citizen can't get from one Hardin, W. H. Freeman and Co., 135p. what Dr James Killian, Jr. calls 'the place to another rapidly and safely." By now, it is painfully obvious that one benign environment'." In other words, this is, with minor of the prime causes of the coming eco­ Dr Killian's history is at least as exceptions, the best of all possible logical disaster is technomania. Our interesting as what he has to say. He is worlds. What problems exist can be very conception of progress, with its truly a high priest of technomania. As dealt with through existing channels, as twin exhortations of MORE and President of the Massachusetts Institute the money becomes available. FASTER is rapidly destroying the eco­ of Technology he was overseer of the What both of these men are doing, system of the planet, and with it the enormous Lincoln labs, where the primarily, is justifying the present eco­ probability of human survival beyond development of most of the American nomic (capitalist) set-up. For doing so the year 2000. Or, as Konrad Lorenz missile projects took place. Later, as they are handsomely rewarded. Bucky put it, in a different context: "Just as special assistant on science and techno­ Fuller, whose essay takes up the major­ there are lethal mutations, so there can logy to Eisenhower, he OK'd the mas­ ity of this book, is in a class of his own. be lethal cultures." Technomania is one sive roadbuilding campaign which He is original, in a delightful and naive of these. redesigned America's cities for cars at way, and his history of design successes Like any religion, it has its prophets. the expense of making them almost im­ makes him worthy of our attention. Watt, Edison and Ford, to say nothing possible to live in. One can only specu­ His thesis is that "extinction is a re­ of the heads of all "science-based" in­ late about his later activities as sult of overspecialisation". He has dustries, can be termed orthodox. They chairman of Kennedy's Foreign Intelli­ attempted throughout his life to avoid have seen no faults, in innumerable gence Advisory Board, but it is clear being trapped into the human equiva­ after-dinner speeches, in the idea that that he must have had a hand in adapt­ lent of a single ecological niche. In do­ uncontrolled technological growth is an ing technology to the demands of ing so he has had to face each problem, absolute and unmitigated boon. This "counterinsurgency''. (Counterinsur- as it arose, without preconception. His convenient, self-serving attitude is gency is the Kennedy name for the view of the rise of industrialism, which rapidly becoming untenable in the light ruthless suppression of agrarian reform makes up the majority of this essay, is of such idiocies as Concorde, the con­ movements throughout the under­ that it was only possible because of the quest of our land by the automobile, developed world for the benefit of surplus profits of piracy. He cites the and the slow but definite poisoning of American investors. British East India Company as the fresh and sea water with pesticides and And what does he say? The very greatest pirates of all time, and damns other chemicals. phrase "benign environment" provides the majority of humanity—though only To combat the embryonic ecological a clue, amounting to doublespeak. It is by implication—for putting up with the movement which, more than anything not the environment that is malignant "brain slavery" that our civilisation is else, represents an attack on techno­ or otherwise, but what man has done to built on. mania, the creed has begun to advance it. What Dr Killian's sort of man, in Unfortunately, when it comes to views which are, at first sight, heretical. particular, has done. Small wonder that modern economics and politics, he is But in fact these sheep in wolves' cloth­ he reassures us "... our society is con­ unable to apply the same toughness of ing are nothing of the sort. While advo­ fronted with a host of problems that in mind. He admits that the present cating minor, irrelevant reforms, they my view can best be solved by activists system of distribution of wealth be­ would keep the economic, political and (sic) from the sciences ... etc." His tween the rich and the starving coun-

38 tries is operated for the profit of the efficiently and realistically. a sampler of their viewpoints, which few, but believes that technology offers For example: if the time scale within may help convinced readers to decide a way out. It's the same old line— which we are forced to operate is less between alternative groups. MORE and FASTER, we'll get to than 50 years, it is unlikely that an edu­ One point, however, disturbed me. Utopia that way. This is all put so cational reform working through the If, as I am certain, the problems are subtly that his arguments can be ex­ established school system would be mainly social and economic, the most tremely seductive. But they rest on a appropriate. Perhaps the techniques of important group is those who have the fallacy: the power output required to mass-education used in the Chinese least vested interest in the established build Fuller's Utopia would melt the cultural revolution, or the Cuban cam­ order. That is to say, the young and the ice-caps and put most of the world's paign to stamp out illiteracy would be poor. This book has a middle-class, farmland under water, while probably more effective. middle-aged bias which becomes making the atmosphere unbreathable. For example: the amount of pesti­ slightly patronising when it talks (down) All in all, each of these men shares cide already released into the environ­ to "the masses". It is very hard to in Dr Killian's misconception as to ment will, when it is dispersed imagine a mass movement of school­ what the environment is about. Their throughout the biosphere, be sufficient children and university students allied message will provide ammunition for a to cause major changes. Further pro­ to young workers operating through, variety of large-scale interests whose duction of nondegradable pesticides say, CoEnCo. Until ecology comes activities must be stopped if man is to must be stopped right now. The agro- down to the level of everyday exper­ outlive this century. This book will chemical industry has enormous eco­ ience and relies less on poetic allusion probably enjoy a huge sale among nomic vested interests. It will drag its and more on popular culture, this gap senior executives. If you want to under­ heels, gaining time to exhaust present shows no signs of being bridged. stand the enemy, it is well worth read­ stocks or recoup on present investment. Garrett Hardin calls his book "a ing. But don't be deceived. Every two years they are able to con­ collage of controversial ideas". Like tinue reduces our chances—at a guess The Environmental Handbook, it is a The Environmental Handbook is an —by 50 per cent. Should we blow up collection of essays; but these come altered version of a Ballantine collec­ the factories? Or should the govern­ from sources as diverse as Marx, tion produced for the last US Earth ment simply accept the impossibility of Darwin, the Bible and even Norman Day. It is divided into a sequence of the situation and buy up the firms or St John Stevas MP. The idea is that "a essays about what's going wrong with compensate them for losses as a result study of the history of opinion is a the environment, and an "action of an enforced ban? (The last idea necessary preliminary to the emancipa­ guide". seems unfair to the public, but it may tion of the mind". The first section has contributions be necessary to bribe shareholders for Dr Hardin is concerned with our from just about all the experts: Bould- the sake of all our children.) ideas about population, about the value ing, Calder, Mellanby, Frazer Darling, The basic principles of Human Eco­ and desirability of having children, and Dubos, and Paul Ehrlich. Very little, if logy must be stated in terms of the real of using contraceptives and social any, of this material is original, but it situation. That means giving up a tre­ policies to regulate population growth. is nice that someone has taken the mendous number of preconceptions, Historically, this is bound up with Poor trouble to collect it all in one place. As technomania among them. But first we Laws, Victorian capitalism, and Puritan an introduction to the subject, it is must identify them. The essay section morality. By allowing social philo­ difficult to see how the collection could of this book tries so hard for universal sophers to speak for themselves, (with be bettered. However, there seems to appeal that it fails to take a critical appropriate comments and background be no over-riding scheme to relate one viewpoint. Are local amenity societies from the editor), he shows us that what point of view to another. really working? In all probability, they we feel is the product of our upbring­ Human ecology is still in an un­ consume more trees through their ing. More important, by not pushing formed state. It desperately needs a paperwork than they save in their any one "line" too hard, he opens our creed, an ideology, and a general actions. And that—other than its edu­ eyes to the fact that the whole set of matrix within which to discuss tactics— cative function—is of less value than customs and taboos associated with an alternative to technomania. It is doing nothing. western family life and the implicit pretty obvious that one or another of We are not going to save the planet population policy they embody is not the by-products of technomania will by planting flowers around factories the only one we could have. make the planet uninhabitable within and on slagheaps. That is not to say One of the things that has been seri­ a relatively short time. Paul Ehrlich's that I prefer slagheaps to gardens; ously lacking in the conservation move­ "Eco-catastrophe" provides a well simply that if we operate at that level, ment is an historical perspective. thought out example of this sort of we will not in any measure increase the Malthus, Darwin, Sanger and Marx scenario. How long do we have? What survival chances for our children. have all played a part in shaping our should we tackle first?—"The Death The idea, presumably, of collecting world view, and yet we know so little of the Oceans"? Concorde? Overpopu­ a series of short articles is to promote of them. If Population, Evolution and lation? Non-returnable bottles? this kind of debate. If the Handbook Birth Control stimulates a few people Are these problems even separable? does nothing else, it will have achieved to look at the original sources, it will It is questions of this sort that should a tremendous amount. But the action have done well. And for those who be answerable by Human Ecology. guide is also useful. It contains a list of have not the time or inclination, his Our movement has only limited energy all the major legislation on the environ­ selection is at least a good beginning. and resources. We must allocate them ment, a directory of organisations, and Francis Arnold 39 of our environment, that of wasting our is more important than other compon­ resources. This includes not only the ents of environment" (Birch, 1957). Letters litter caused by unnecessary packaging It is then claimed that "animals, but also the waste caused by unneces­ birds, fish and insects all have built-in sary use. Fossil fuels go into the mak­ limitation mechanisms that tend to ing of paper and plastics and they are maintain a balance in the ecosystem also used in unnecessary illumination of and so ensure that food supplies are advertising. Not only is imported wood not exhausted". Some species do be­ used in paper but also the finest quality have in this way under laboratory con­ of China clay from Cornwall and ditions. However, Huff acker (1958) Devon. None of these resources are in showed that in a simple laboratory en­ unlimited supply; moreover the misuse vironment a population of the preda­ of some may increase our balance of cious mite Typhlodromus occidentalis payments problem and so affect our would eradicate its prey Eotetranychus standard of living. sexmaculatus and then die out itself. He A Conservation Party? Perhaps someone will undertake the had to provide a fascinating laboratory Sir, necessary investigation to show the set up involving matchsticks, hairdriers Michael Gurstein's article on Envir­ cost of waste—as is imported and mis­ and barriers of petroleum jelly before onmental Politics (Vol. 1, 10) was inter­ used: how much wood pulp, tin, iron both species survived. A similar esting but inconclusive. It is certain ore and petroleum are imported, only example of the lack of "built in limita­ though, that any type of "Conservation to be deposited as unwanted packaging. tion mechanisms" is the use of the pre­ Party" would be doomed to failure by datory mite Phytoseiulus riegeli to con­ Yours sincerely, the unfairness of our present voting trol Tetranychus urtici the cucumber system and the unpopularity it would P. /. T. Barbary. mite. The predator was so successful receive from all those short-sighted 12, Ragstone Road, Slough, Bucks. that it nearly wiped out the pest. The people who do not want prices to go predator died out and the few remain­ up. Real concern for our environment ing cucumber mites rapidly multiplied. would have to be paid for. One method of maintaining control was Pressure on the Government does Biocontrol found by introducing small numbers of work and the balance is beginning to Sir, the pest at regular intervals! Try ex­ tip our way. We should all maintain David Greenstock's article "Bio­ plaining that to a grower or farmer. this pressure on our MP and the Press. control in agriculture: 2" (Vol. 1, 10) Yours sincerely, As far as actual politics is concerned raised one of the most fascinating con­ we should join the Party of our choice troversies of ecology, namely, the mech­ Trevor H. Booth. and work actively within it. As the anism of population regulation. He says 52 Dickens Lane, Poynton, Stockport. writer implies, the Liberal Party is the that "certain field experiments seem to most democratically organised and have established that there is a natural therefore the most easily influenced if mechanism that regulates the popula­ joined in large enough numbers. It is tion of any species to a constant den­ Zinc in S. Wales also the one with the strongest regard sity, regardless of fluctuations in food Sir, for the value of human life, freedom supply". Presumably, Mr Greenstock is A recent medical report stated that and the rights of the individual. It does referring to factors such as stress and the concentration of zinc both in the have policies on these vital issues. competition for breeding area, which body and in the air, was very high in Political parties are what we make have been investigated by Errington the Risca—Newport area of South them. If people who had firm views on and Wynne-Edwards respectively. Such Wales. It has been suggested that the any matter did something to further evidence is limited and to say such high illness rate in the area is due to their point, instead of apathetically factors can be applied to "any species" this. doing nothing positive and grumbling is mere conjecture. Moreover, Wynne- Just across the Severn estuary, zinc when things go against them, I feel our Edwards (1965) himself has said is being smelted in the Avonmouth society would be much further forward "Darwin was undoubtedly right in con­ area. Is it not possible that this is the in this country than it is. cluding that food is the factor that source of the zinc pollution? If this is Yours sincerely, normally puts an extreme limit on so, could I use your magazine to sug­ Hugh Heywood. population density". gest that the connection between the 46, Robinson Road, Having said that "there is no need two is investigated by a reputable Mapperley, Nottingham. for us to take sides in this argument" scientific body? I believe farm animals Mr Greenstock continues to elaborate are suffering and dying in the Avon- on his particular viewpoint by stressing mouth area. Do people have to die the importance of climate in population before something is done? Wasting Resources dynamics. Even the leading advocate of Yours sincerely, Sir, the effects of climate on population has Mark Steinhardt (Vol. 1, 8, p. 32) is said that "it is not contended that the John G. Owen. to be congratulated on his awareness numbers of all animals are determined 94 Nantgarn Road, of a major problem affecting the future primarily by weather nor that weather Caerphilly, Glamorgan.

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