Books

Books

Review: OUR PLUNDERED

PLANET, by Fairfield Osborn, Pyramid, 176 pp, $0.75 paper.

Merely the fact that this book could have been written in 1948 — and largely ignored until quite recently — is telling. It is even more telling to update, or compare the 1948 predictions of coming problems with the 1969 actuality; e.g., in 1948 Osborn stated with some horror that the population of the world could be expected to reach three billion by the end of the twentieth century. In the foreword to the 1968 edition, he presents the following statistics:

1948 world population

2,331,000,000

1 968 world population

3,479,000,000.

which goes to show that even our most pessimistic extrapolations may turn out to be too optimistic.

Osborn begins by stating the basic axiom of the eco revolution — in his words, that man “has so far failed to recognize that he is a child of the earth and that, this being so, he must for his own survival work with nature in understanding rather than in conflict.” He then does a brief rundown of the more or less accepted anthropological myth, pointing out along the way that man became predatory at an early stage of his development (evidence exists that peking man 'was a cannibal some 500,000 years ago) while his nearest relatives in the animal kingdom remained vegetarian.

Furthermore, says Orborn, “it is estimated” — love those passive verbs! - that only about one percent of the higher mammals of Africa, or North America, were carnivorous - that is, in the golden days before man decimated the wildlife of those continents. Furthermore “only in exceptional cases in higher forms of animal life is there organized killing within a species itself, and even combat is rare except in defense of members of the immediate family or social group, or when males are seeking dominance.” Where does that leave us?

But it’s in the accumulation of desolate FACT that the book has its power: 16 billion habitable acres of planet earth; 4 billion arable acres (remember, these are the figures of twenty years ago, there are probably less now) - divided by 3 1/2 billion people: a little more than an acre of arable land per person. Osborn says it’s not enough, says we need at least 2 1 /2 acres per person for a minimum adequate diet.” I’m inclined to doubt this, considering what I know about what we Americans consider a “Minimum adequate diet.“ - we don’t need half the things we think we do. An acre is nothing at all if you’re living.on hamburger - won’t graze much of a cow - but an acre per person can make it if you do with grain and vegetables, and if you’re careful. Or, as Keith Lampe put it recently, “learn to eat farther down on the food chain.” Safer, too, as far as DDT and other non — bio -degradable poisons are concerned. Other facts:

There is less than a foot of living topsoil - “the precious sensitive earth cover through which life flows” — on the average, on the surface of the " planet. In the United States the average depth of topsoil is something like seven or eight inches. IT TAKES 3000-10000 YEARS (depending on the kinds of vegetation, climate, etc.) TO MAKE AN INCH OF TOPSOIL -and at least that much can be blown away in a year, when the land has been stripped of its protective covering of grasses and left bare for long periods of time. Or can be washed away by the torrential melting snows, spring rains, etc. when there are no longer any forest to hold back the moisture and release it slowly to the streams; so that, instead of underground springs, flowing creeks, high underground water tables, you have flash floods (the water rushes downhill to the sea, carrying the soil with it) and then dry riverbeds all summer. Three hundred to a thousand years for an inch. And the work of innumberable sentient beings - many millions per acre:

“One of the activities, for example, of bacteria, is gathering nitrogen from the air, combining it in form which in turn can be made into protein by plants. Free nitrogen in the air cannot be used directly by plants, and it will be remembered that all living things -plant and animal — are essentially protein organisms. Another group of bacteria decomposes the protein existing in dead animal and plant materials in the soil and changes them to ammonia. Ammonia contains nitrogen but most plants cannot use the ammonia as such since the nitrogen must be available in the form of nitrates. The transformation from

ammonium salts to nitrates is brought about by two other groups of bacteria. The first group changes the ammonia to nitrites, which are also unusable by plants. But a second group of bacteria is standing by whose function is that of converting the nitrites to nitrates, in which form nitrogen is readily absorbed and used by plants to build more protein, and proteins mean growth. The reverse process also takes place, in that some bacteria change nitrates to nitrites and finally to free nitrogen, which goes back to the air. Here it is picked up by the nitrogen - gathering bacteria and again transformed by them into usable protein — building compounds.”

Meanwhile plants grow and decompose, humus is formed, algae and fungi work their synergistic magicks - A THOUSANDS YEARS TO AN INCH’ And the unpleasant facts of erosion: “Both wind and water bear with them for great distances the life - giving organic matter in the soil and the finer, richer grains of mineral soils, but they drop behind them the relatively worthless heavier sand and bits of rock. Streams. and rivers usually deposit the organic matter well out to sea, where it can no longer be of use — and wind, at almost stratospheric levels, may carry fine dust halfway around the globe, or even further. When this dust finally settles, much of it too falls into the sea.”

Osborn then gives a rundown of the larger land masses one by one. None of it is too promising, and he destroys, in the process, any lingering notion we may be cherishing of Africa or South America as an ecological paradise. Let’s simply take a look at what he has to say about the United States: “The story of our nation in the last century as regards the use of forests, grasslands, wildlife and water sources is the most violent and the most destructive of any written in the long history of civilization.” (CF. Snyder, in EARTH HOUSE HOLD: “Something is always eating at the American heart like acid: it is the knowledge of what we have done to our continent.”) One example: an estimated fifty million bison reduced to 500 within one century.

Or, the original breakdown of the landmass in the U.S.A. would have been something like 40% primeval forest, 40% grassland, 20% natural desert or extremely precipitous mountains (more or less uninhabitable)’ On these grasslands roamed one hundred million mammals: elk, moose,deer, caribou, bison, etc. — nearly all gone now. Of the forest: in 1948 there remained an area of primal growth approximating seven percent of the landmass of the U.S.A. How far this has been reduced by this time, Osborn doesn’t say, nor does he give the new figure for the increase in desert lands. (Most of the southwest was grassland, until the arrival of the huge herds of sheep, and the attempt to farm. In the years of drought the soil blew away.)

On the condition of our forests he holds forth at some length: annual drain on our remaining timber (as of 1948) is 54 billion board feet, annual growth is 35 billion board feet. Untenable. Further, the National Forests in our western states comprise 135 million acres of our land - of which some eighty million are now geing grazed and overgrazed by cattle and sheep. (Permission to graze herds on the public land being obtainable at nominal costs.) The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 attempted to control over - grazing by setting up advisory boards in each of these states - which boards are by now in the hands of the large cattle interests, so that in all probability discriminatory measures are being taken against the small rancher, or the newcomer, while the large cattle and sheep men feed their herds on the public lands and to a larger and larger extent destroy them. (N.B., we might do well, when we hear a right — winger shouting “CONSERVATION,” to check if he’s simply a rancher or logger protecting his own interests. Like most of the language of double — think, Conservation might as easily mean Over - graze: as, for instance, those signs in the state forests of New York, labelling them “land of many uses”!) More: ,

U.S. soil loss by erosion FIVE AND A HALF BILLION TONS annually (three billion from farm lands). “In a normal production year, erosion by wind and water removes 21 times as much plant food from the* soil as is removed in the crops.”

And of the cities - one aspect of the problem:

“Our present domestic animals represent a minor portion of the organic whole that is not permitted to return to the earth of its origin. They end up in the consuming centers, their residues in disposal plants or carried to the ocean. The broader implications are that this holds true of a large proportion of the earth’s products today — both animal and plant life, including vast quantities of forest products. There is one steady movement of organic material to towns and great consumed or disposed of as waste, but never to go back to the land of origin. We are hacking at the circle expressive of the organic unity and productive processes of nature. The question is, will we one day actually break that circle?”

Cont. on Next Page

Cont. from page 29

1948. My constant question now: have we not already broken it? If we were to stop now, today, all destructive activity: pollution of water and air, use of insecticides, etc. (a manifest impossibility) — what chance does manor, for that matter, all of the larger mammals and fish -have of making it through the next 20-100 years of DDT runoff, the next 100-1000 years of rebalancing of land and water areas, re-establishing of life - making soil — making organisms in the wastes, slow cleansing of dead lakes and rivers?

Osborn has no heavy political stance, though he does state, mildy enough, that “there can be no political stability if the basic subsistence needs of a people are not satisfied.” And, later, that “the theory of a democracy presupposes a condition of reasonable well - being for all.” (For all who vote, Mr. Osborn, is all, and you had to own property to vote in some states in the U.S.A. until 1965. And as it is, as the black, the brownj the poor white votes begin at the polls and in the streets, “political stability” takes a sharp curve downhill. Right on.)

And he offers no solutions, except the general one that:

“Man must recognize the necessity of co-operating with nature. He must temper his demands and use an'd conserve the natural living resources of this earth in a manner that alone can provide for the continuation of his civilization. The final answer is to be found only through comprehension of the enduring processes of nature. The time for defiance is at an end.”

Hopefully. Though it is to be noted that Eldridge Cleaver, in his recent article “Revolution and Education” (THE BLACK PANTHER, June 28) takes for granted an antagonistic relationship between man and his natural environfnent, a struggle against the “natural enemies of man” that makes one realize that this relationship has hot yet been sufficiently probed and examined by leaders of the political revolution. Hopefully, they will bridge the gap very shortly, with that lightning comprehension (ability to sort truth from bullshit) that in all areas seems to be at their command. Plankton power to the Plankton Tree power to the Trees Human power to the People ALL POWER TO THE TAO

-Diane di Prima, c/o ERO 439 boynton,berkely calif 94707 Georgia Straight