Source: The Owosso Argus-Press
URL: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=jjgiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9KsFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1371,2354081
Date: 26/01/1970
Event: Reitze: "We will be forced to sacrifice democracy" to avoid a deep-frozen future
Credit: The Owosso Argus-Press
THE OWOSSO ARGUS-PRESS - JAN 26, 1970
Editorial: Pollution Prospect A Chilling One
For a long time now man has been trying to do something more than talk about the weather. Ironically and unfortunately, he may already have done far more than he imagines, or desires.
In fact, should a new Ice Age descend upon the earth in the centuries immediately ahead, man - or at least those as yet unasphyxiated survivors from his present billions - may have to acknowledge that he brought it on himself.
That, at least, would seem to be the moral of the latest horror story from the pollution front. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, debris from manufacturing processes has been accumulating in the atmosphere to such an extent that the earth is now enveloped in a layer of dust which has the effect of reflecting back into space a portion of the energy radiated by the sun.
The result has been a measurable lowering of average temperatures, not merely in industrial areas but worldwide. So far it is only in fractions of a degree. But even minor temperature changes, if prolonged and widespread, can have startling effects on climate and, consequently, on plant and animal development and survival. It would not take many degrees to trigger renewed expansion of the polar ice masses.
The prospect is literally chilling. The ultimate in climate control - 20 degrees cooler not only inside but outdoors as well. And if by now we are accustomed, if not inured, to the physical threat of pollution, along comes a warning there may also be dire political consequences.
Dr. Arnold Reitze, an expert in the legal aspects from Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, suggests pollution, or the effort to control it, could be fatal to our concept of a free society.
As likely inevitable restraints on the individual and mass, Reitze suggests:
In Reitze's view, "We will be forced to sacrifice democracy by the laws that will protect us from further pollution."
All is not despair and disaster, however. President Nixon's decision to make environmental cleanup a major administration effort and, even more importantly, continuing and growing public agitation are hopeful indications that all is not necessarily already lost.
Fortunately, man has the capacity, if often imperfectly exercised, to learn. He can say that he did not know the consequences back when he began to transform, and devastate, the environment for his own often questionable purposes. He does know now, and the measures to correct the damage are either already at hand or largely within his grasp.
It is up to him to make a little knowledge not a dangerous thing, but his salvation from a deep-frozen future and a smoggy version of 1984.