Protection of the Environment

Report Outline
Rising Concern Over Man's Environment
Shape of Threats to the Environment
Action Aimed to Protect Environment

Rising Concern Over Man's Environment

A multi-nation effort to tackle what is potentially the most serious of all problems facing mankind—deterioration of the human environment—is slowly getting into gear. The International Biological Program, to which 55 nations have pledged cooperation, is short on funds but long on hope that scientists all over the globe, working together or in complementary endeavors, will find a way to rescue the earth from the depredations of man before those depredations threaten his very survival. American scientists in the program are particularly interested in the environment-protection phase of the program because the United States, as the richest and most technologically advanced nation, does the lion's share of the contaminating.

Even as scientists began to draw up their I.B.P. study plans, they realized that, no matter how successful their studies, no good would result unless people and their governments became sufficiently concerned to take the steps necessary to maintain the earth's natural hospitality to man. The United States has been slow to move against the mounting menace. As Walter R. Hibbard Jr., director of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, said recently: “We respond to alarms only when the house is already on fire.”

Results of Tardy Reaction to Pollution Abuses

It took the killer smogs of Los Angeles and then New York to force action against the menace of airborne pollutants whose toxic effects were known before the situation became critical. Lake Erie “died” as a medium for living organisms before serious attention was given to protecting the Great Lakes. Recent federal anti-pollution legislation was enacted only after contamination of air, soil and waterways had become serious and widespread. Scientists and conservationists had been warning for many years that this would be the result if the abuses continued. Now, however, there appears to be growing appreciation within the United States and other advanced nations of the need for a broader, preventive approach to protection of the environment.