ore hee ne eee Orn: eB U iis kD EON 37 
activity. On Duncan Island, I slung my shirt on a stick to dry, and within 
a few minutes, six hawks were visiting me, some settling within a yard 
or two.” 
Ian Thornton has written a fascinating and tantalizing book. A profes- 
sor of zoology in Australia, he did an extensive study of the islands’ wild- 
life and plant life. He quotes widely from the observations of many 
naturalists who have visited the islands before him. The Galapagos have 
fascinated explorers and naturalists for centuries. The islands were known 
to the early Icas and the Spaniards. 
This reviewer shares with the author a profound distress over the 
excessive decimation of the islands wildlife by scientific expeditions, which 
apparently, at least in the past, have killed or captured some of the already 
rare species in numbers larger than required. 
— Raymond Mostek 
THE POLITICS OF ECOLOGY. By James Ridgeway. 
E. P. Dutton and Co., 201 Park Ave. South, New York 10003. 
1970. 222 pages. $5.95. 
Pollution pays! James Ridgeway claims that industry is less interested in 
America the Beautiful than in profits; less interested in the demands of 
weary citizens and outraged environmentalists than in the joy of 
stockholders. 
Ridgeway writes with the bitterness, the cynicism, and the coldness 
of a seasoned reporter which he is. A contributing editor to the New 
Republic, he is less likely than most to meekly accept the corporate 
“brochure” explaining the great progress being made in the fields of air 
and water pollution. Instead he explains how much of the “brochure” 
is phony. 
After reading Ridgeway’s “The Politics of Ecology,’ one cannot help 
increase his contempt for the corporate power structure of this country 
which continues to defile the countryside while it defrauds the consumer 
and deliberately deceives the apathetic citizen. What is so galling is that 
federal, state, and local officials are more in tune with the leaders of 
“corporate pornography” than they are with under-financed and badly-led 
conservation groups, which only seek a restoration of the environmental 
health of the nation. 
Earth Day 1970 showed our concern; Earth Week 1971 showed our 
mild commitment to recycle cans and bottles. Let’s hope that Earth Month 
1972 (hopefully November) will demonstrate the willingness of the 
American people to contribute campaign funds to ecology-minded political 
candidates, to ring door-bells, and work in the precincts in their behalf. 
Citizen talk is cheap. But pollution pays, and in the end, it is the consumer 
and the citizen who pays for it. 
Ridgeway’s chapter on “The New Fuel Trusts” is perhaps the most 
important in the book. “Competetion in the energy markets is a myth. Even 
that myth is fast eroding as a handful of large trusts move in to finish 
cornering the market.” A sound warning to all. 
— Raymond Mostek 
