Environmentalism

Environmentalism

283 simple matching of output with observed data must be regarded with suspicion, but on the whole its contributors take a healthily pragmatic view. D...

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283 simple matching of output with observed data must be regarded with suspicion, but on the whole its contributors take a healthily pragmatic view. Despite such strictures, which cannot be ignored, the tone of this text is much more up-beat: again to quote from Dugdale's c h a p t e r - - " I n addition t o . . . integrating biological detail, the power of computing to give us a spatially inhomogeneous sea will probably prove to be one of the most important factors in biological oceanography in the decades ahead". In fact, it is the last few words of this quotation that hold the key to the value of this book: systems modelling may be one of the few areas in which a quantum jump will be possible in marine ecology, and progress in this field is presently so rapid that in a decade or so we shall wonder what all the fuss was about in the early 70's. Ecological science, with a new role in environmental quality management thrust upon it in recent years, is in desperate need of new tools; it is indeed fortuitous that the computer revolution hit the ecological research institutes in time to enable them to face up to this new role, and to begin to translate their general conceptual, and their special reductionist understanding into quantifiable and testable terms. What I think is not yet clear from the development of system models across the full spectrum from reductionism to holism is whether their general shortcomings are due more to incorrect ecological assumptions and numerical parameters, or to invalid system modelling techniques: it is very obvious from the contributions to this volume that problems and disagreements still exist in both of these areas. This is a text which should be at the elbow of anyone actively involved in the modelling of marine systems, and which will be found to be of much greater value than some of its congeners; it may not, however, convince the cynics that systems modelling is a respectable scientific occupation--but then, by definition, there is no harder person to convert to novel ideas or techniques than a conservative. Plymouth (England) Alan Longhurst

Environmentalism, by T. O'Riordan, Pion Limited, London, 1976, 373 pp. Unpriced.

This is intended to be an advanced text for undergraduates and graduates studying resource management and environmental issues and is written by an author who evidently takes his title as Reader in the School of Environmental Sciences at Norwich very seriously indeed: a full 50 pages of references are included in the volume, and the text comprises a very competent review of the literature from Britain and North America. Curiously, in a quick skim through the pages of the references I was unable to find a single one in any language other than English; this is so striking that I feel it should have been reflected in the title of a work which is thus restricted. However, this does not detract from the interest of the book once the restriction is understood. It is, in fact, a most valuable text which I shall be very glad to have beside me; though written with the interest of environmental planners particularly in mind, the text is yet sufficiently broad to be o f interest to anyone who has other

284 concerns in the environmental field. I think it will be especially valuable to people who in the first flush of interest in environmental problems have read a few of the key works only; O'Riordan's book will help them to get things in perspective. It should certainly be required reading for anyone with any aspirations to activism in this field where enthusiasm commonly runs deeper than understanding. Taking as his starting point the evolution of the modern environmentalism, O'Riordan leads us through the relationships between the new philosophers, such as Hardin, Boulding, Ehrlich and Commoner and discusses the relationship between what they have been telling us and what the older prophets such as Malthus, Marx and Kropintsky said so long ago. He follows this with a discussion of the politics and economics of growth and the "spaceship economy", after which the bulk of the book is concerned with planning policies and the techniques for evaluating and protecting environmental amenity, and closes with a solid discussion of environmental law especially leaning on the United States example. I found this last section less useful than the earlier part of the book, perhaps because the section dealing with the recent events in the international field in maritime affairs was relatively trivial and already outdated--but that must be the fate of anyone with the temerity to write on the Law of the Sea Conference in the last few years. I was not always in agreement with some of O'Riordans' value judgements; I would find it hard to agree, for instance, that "Blueprint for Britain" shook the western world out of its complacency over affluence and resource availability--to quote the author; it certainly generated much critical writing in a few specialists journals, but I believe most of us were underwhelmed by its naievety and thought it a real damp squib. Because most of the authors' concern is for what has been written on the subject he seems to have missed what, for me, is the most important characteristic of the recent movement--those of us who were fortunate enough to participate in the heady times of the late 60's Earth Days on the U.S. campuses know that more people today than ever before are at least aware that an environmental problem exists--the subject is out of the hands of the philosophers now, whether they like it or not. Finally, I found it surprising that there is such an assumption in the works quoted that the human problem is being worked out against an unvarying natural environment; our new understanding that we cannot trust in the stability of our climate will have to interact with the environmental philosophies discussed here if they are to carry conviction. That the CIA and the USDA are currently locked in a conflict of opinion concerning the probable effect of the climate of the next few decades as forecast by climatologists on Soviet agriculture, is a reflection of this neglected aspect of the matter. Modern environmentalists should perhaps look more closely at the historical literature on famine, to begin to understand the importance of decadal, not to speak of secular climatic variability. Plymouth (England) A . R . Longhurst