Chapter One
Historian may one day call 1970 the year of the environment. They may not be able to say that 1970 actually marked a significant change for the better in the quality of life; in the polluting and the fouling of the land, the water, and the air; or in health, working conditions, and recreational opportunity. Indeed, they are almost certain to see evidence of worsening environmental conditions in many parts of the country.
Yet 1970 marks the beginning of a new emphasis on the environment - a turning point, a year when the quality of life has become more than a phrase; environment and pollution have become everyday words; and ecology has become almost a religion to some of the young. Environmental problems, standing for many years on the threshold of national prominence, are now at the center of nationwide concern. Action to improve the environment has been launched by government at all levels. And private groups, industry, and individuals have joined the attack.
No one can say for sure just how or why the environment burst into national prominence in 1970. Certainly national concern had been mounting for a long time, and the tempo has increased greatly in the last decade.
Early environmentalists - Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, Theodore Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold - and a legion of dedicated citizens contributed to the rise in awareness. In its early days, the conservation movement aimed primarily at stemming the exploitation of natural resources and preserving wildlife and important natural areas. By the 1950's, Federal air and water pollution laws had been enacted, and the pace of environmental legislation quickened dramatically in the decade of the 1960's. Now the conservation movement has broadened to embrace concern for the totality of man's environment, focusing on pollution, population, ecology, and the urban environment.
The public has begun to realize the interrelationship of all living things - including man - with the environment. The Santa Barbara oil spill in early 1969 showed an entire nation how one accident could temporarily blight a large area. Since then, each environmental issue - the jetport project near the Everglades National Park, the proposed [[w:Trans-Alaska Pipelines System#Origins|pipeline across the Alaskan wilderness, the worsening blight of Lake Erie, the polluted beaches off New York and other cities, smog in mile-high Denver, lead in gasoline, phosphates in detergents, and DDT - flashed the sign to Americans that the problems are everywhere and affect everyone. Millions of citizens have come to realize that the independent web of life - man, animals, plants, earth, air, water, and sunlight - touches everyone.
A deteriorating environment has awakened a lively curiosity in Americans about exactly what is meant by an ecosystem, biome, or the biosphere. Citizens who are now aware of environmental problems want to know the full extent of the environmental crisis and the nature of the factors that have contributed to it. They are anxious to learn what can be done to correct the mistakes that have led to the current conditions of the environment. This report attempts to answer some of these questions.
Ecology is the science of the intricate web of relationships between living organisms and their living and nonliving surroundings. These interdependent living and nonliving parts make up ecosystems. Forests, lakes, and estuaries are examples. Larger ecosystems or combinations of ecosystems, which occur in similar climates and share a similar character and arrangement of vegetation, are biomes. The Arctic tundra, prairie grasslands, and the desert are examples. The earth, its surrounding enveloe of life-giving water and air, and all its living things comprise the biosphere. Finally, man's total environmental system includes not only the biosphere but also his interactions with his natural and manmade surroundings.
Changes in ecosystems occur continuously. Myriad interactions take place at every moment of the day as plants and animals respond to variations in their surroundings and to each other. Evolution has produced for each species, including man, a genetic composition that limits how far that species can go in adjusting to sudden changes in its surroundings. But within these limits the several thousand species in an ecosystem, or for that matter, the millions in the biosphere, continuously adjust to outside stimuli. Since interactions are so numerous, they form long chains of reactions. Thus small changes in one part of an ecosystem are likely to be felt and compensated for eventually throughout the system.