Japan is not the problem. We're committing hari-kari.

Concern with the deteriorating environment is expressed daily in newspapers and newscasts. Certainly, pollution of the atmosphere, waters and soil has become a very important concern. It appears that the chemical industry is widely felt to be the main cause, with the chemists and chemical engineers the chief culprits -- not of course the owners and consumers. The simple word "chemical" now traumatizes many people. The old DuPont adage, "Better living through chemistry", is now considered by many to be a monstrous idea -- although people, especially those privileged to live in regions where chemical industries are most advanced, have never been healthier, better educated, better housed, better travelled and longer lived with more access to cultural benefits than any in history. It is an established fact that to have reached these laudable goals we are using and polluting our planet irreversibly at observable rates. It is a problem inherent to the modern consumer society and one which the scientists identified over 60 years ago but the depression years, wars, and recoveries from wars' devastation were not times that provided much incentive for remedial action. Clearly, we must act now to decrease the rates of pollution and exhaustion of our nonrenewable resources and bring these down to steady states that are compatible with an acceptable standard of living for the about five billion people that now populate our planet.

There appears to be little appreciation of the fact that the present state of pollution is the price that inevitably had to be paid, under the prevailing circumstances to enjoy standards of living which have increased immensely in recent years for virtually all of the people on our planet. The cost, in terms of pollution, to better man's lot on earth was higher than it might have been. However, humanity naturally progresses by reacting to the mistakes of the past and, normally, makes changes that best appeal to the politics of the time. This in itself represents a serious problem since the issues have become highly technical and only poorly understood by the majority of the electorate that, for this reason, is rather easily misled.

Pollution of our waters and soil, acid rain, over-cultivation, the exhaustion of non-renewable resources, and perhaps even the greenhouse effect, are serious matters with which we must deal as well as we …