Word: ecologists
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This week, Environment's first cover story deals at length with the fascinating work of Ecologist Barry Commoner, leader of a tiny band of once sheltered scientists who have suddenly risen to prominence and sometimes sound like new Jeremiahs. In addition to the regular Environment staff, the month-long project drew on the talents of Writer Peter Stoler, Correspondents Sam Iker and Alan Anderson, Researchers Hilary Ostlere and Marguerite Michaels. The story, we feel, is in line with our promise of six months ago that the new section would report the good with the bad, would listen to optimists...
...promising start is being made in Colorado, where Ecologist George Van Dyne is running a key project under the International Biological Program to discover how a grasslands ecosystem responds to various stresses. Van Dyne and 80 other scientists are trailing every imaginable creature on the Western prairie and gathering data for a computer-modeling scheme that may become a landmark in ecological forecasting...
...Ecologist LaMont Cole raises the crowding problem. Since 80% of the population is likely to live in cities occupying only 2% of the land, the sheer density of people will strain what might be called the urban ecosystem. Asks Cole: "Are we selecting for genetic types only those who can satisfy their aesthetic needs in congested cities? Are the Davy Crocketts and Kit Carsons who are born today being destined for asylums, jails or suicide...
...have 50% more nitrogen oxides in the air in California," says Ecologist Kenneth E.M.F. Watt. "This has a direct bearing on the quality of light hitting the surface of the earth. At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." Tougher auto-emission standards in California will start reducing the nitrogen problem next year. But Watt argues that California's air pollution is already so bad that it may start a wave of mass deaths by 1975?perhaps...
Meantime, several schools are planning their own teach-ins to lead up to the national day. The first teach-in will take place this week at Northwestern University. Because it will be first, "Project Survival" has attracted many leading scientists, including Biologist Barry Commoner, Population Expert Paul Ehrlich and Ecologist Lamont Cole. Northwestern's activists say they expect as many as 10,000 people to attend half-hour sessions throughout the night on such issues as the depletion of natural resources and the psychological problems of overcrowding. The organizers hope to awaken a public awareness that survival itself...