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question, Is it possible that the 
new technology is the major cause 
of the environmental crisis?” Of 
course the answer is “yes”, which 
is expounded and reiterated for 250 
pages, in lucid statements such as 
“The new technology is an eco- 
nomic success — but only because 
it is an ecological failure.”’ 
He argues that environmental 
degradation mainly results from in- 
troduction of new industrial and 
agricultural technologies. These 
are said to be ecologically faulty 
because they are designed to solve 
singular, separate problems and 
fail to take into account the in- 
evitable side effects that arise. He 
stresses the fact that costs of such 
environmental degradation are 
chiefly borne, not by the producer, 
but by society as a whole in the 
form of “externalities.” A business 
enterprise that pollutes the envi- 
ronment is said to be subsidized by 
society; to this extent the enter- 
prise, though it is free, is not whol- 
ly private. 
He continues, declaring that air 
pollution is not merely a nuisance 
and a threat to health. It is a re- 
minder that our most celebrated 
technological achievements — the 
automobile, the jet plane, the pow- 
er plant, industry in general, and 
indeed the modern city itself — are, 
in the environment, failures. As to 
modern highways, Commoner has 
figures to prove that for the same 
freight haulage, trucks burn nearly 
six times as much fuel as railroads 
— and emit six times as much en- 
vironmental pollution. 
The author, in supporting his 
contention that the main cause of 
the environmental crisis is technol- 
ogy since World War II, rather 
than overproductivity, our current 
affluent way of life or even the 
population explosion, contradicts, 
among others, the apostles of pop- 
ulation control. This is the basis 
of the quarrel, much publicized and 
probably somewhat exaggerated, 
that took place last June at the 
Stockholm Environmental Confer- 
ence between the eminent Ameri- 
can Doctors of Philosophy, Barry 
Commoner and Paul Ehrlich. 
Housewives who think they 
know all about soaps and deter- 
gents are likely to learn from the 
chapter on phosphates. Note these 
statements: 
@ The “whiter than white” ap- 
pearance of washed fabrics so glee- 
fully boasted in T.V. commercials 
results only from “an additive that 
reflects light.” 
@ Phosphate is needed ONLY to 
soften hard water. 
@ From a chemical engineering 
textbook: “There is absolutely no 
reason why old-fashioned soap can- 
not be used for most household and 
commercial cleaning.” 
@ The displacement of soap by 
detergents has made us no cleaner 
than we were, but it has made the 
environment more foul. 
@ Profits from the manufacture 
of detergents are nearly twice as 
great as from the manufacture of 
soap. (Dr. Commoner has the facts 
in dollars and in percentages.) 
In advertising “The Closing Cir- 
cle” the publisher declares: “He 
makes shockingly evident the sym- 
biotic if unwitting relationship 
between pollution and profits, as 
one by one, since the Second World 
War, the processes of manufac- 
turing and farming have been dis- 
placed by the (more profitable) 
new technologies.” The profits of 
detergent manufacturers already 
noted are one of many examples 
the author has researched with 
thoroughness and apparent accur- 
acy. 
Dr. Commoner finally submits 
one prediction: “If we are to sur- 
vive, ecological considerations must 
guide economic and political ones, 
and like the ecosphere itself, the 
