In general, any productive activity which introduces substances foreign to the natural environment runs a considerable risk of polluting it.

Air pollution is not merely a nuisance and a threat to health. It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements-the automobile, the jet plane, the power plant, industry in general, and indeed the modern city itself-are, in the environment, failures.

In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards.

The AEC scientists were so narrowly focused on arming the United States for nuclear war that they failed to perceive facts - even widely known ones - that were outside their limited field of vision.

The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.

Perhaps the simplest example is a synthetic plastic, which unlike natural materials, is not degraded by biological decay. It therefore persists as rubbish or is burned-in both cases causing pollution. In the same way, a substance such as DDT or lead, which plays no role in the chemistry of life and interferes with the actions of substances that do, is bound to cause ecological damage if sufficiently concentrated.

If environmentalism is a fad, it will be the last one.