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Ted Scone broke in, without opening his eyes.  That s a welcome note!
There was a scud of chuckling. Bush laughed, too, and went on:
 In a world that is worried about the exhaustion of its on-land resources, much hope is
held for resources in and under the seas. These are, of course, enormous, largely untapped,
and include sources of minerals as well as food. Our research shows, however, that many of
the predictions about the sea as a resource-salvation will be disappointed. We are taking vast
amounts of petroleum from the oceans and searching for more supplies. Many short minerals,
in the USA, especially, can, theoretically, be recovered from the bed of the oceans. But  he
paused to ponder.
Rufus Cooper prompted him, with calm geniality.  But  the cost is or will be high? I
know. My company has made dozens of studies. Copper, tin, manganese, cobalt, a score of
elements seem to lie around for picking up or digging out. But it s not easy, technically.
Albert Bush nodded at his host  Not impossible, if you wish to use the oceans for
multiple purposes. In fact, that idea of  multiple uses is both a federal slogan and the fastest
road to destitution.
 Why? Logan, the supermarket-chain genius, said that.
 Because, the scientist calmly replied,  nature isn t a multiple-use resource. If you
gentlemen aren t familiar with my area, you surely are aware that the land-surfaces of this
nation, in particular, are being ruined, millions of acres a year, by this  multiple-use myth.
Benton, the lumber man, said,  Bull, and asked to be excused for a moment.
Eyes followed him as he went out. For what? They d just started. Surely, he didn t
need to relieve himself so soon?
Bush spoke at the door through which Benton had gone.  He has his bias, here,
plainly. He his huge company takes out yearly an immense reach of wild forest. It is
sometimes lumbered  selectively. But the hauling off of the best and largest trees changes
the entire ecology. He often  scalps a forest and then plants two trees for every one cut.
Boasts about that in double-page, four-color ads. As if he had put back twice what he took.
But even if he does plant two little trees for each board-producing giant, there s something he
cannot plant: the century that he also took away, or fifty years, and maybe two centuries.
Adams, the railroad man, spoke with vexation.  Is that accurate? Won t he go on
doing the planting and cutting till, fifty years hence, say, he returns to crop his own trees?
And so on, without damage or loss. Gain, even?
Bush disregarded that for the moment.  Now  multiple use. The same area that is
lumbered, or will be, is also used for grazing. Cattle, maybe sheep. And sheep take the
ground cover off to the crowns roots, even. Cattle are sad enough. So our forest, virgin, re-
planted after selective cutting or a scalping, is ready for erosion. It takes a lot-of rain to make
a tree. When the roots of the tree itself and the surrounding ground cover die, or even
diminish, the rains tend to wash away, not sink in. This same area, let s suppose, with its
multiple-use license, is open to camping and hunting and therefore to whatever man does
there: his trash, his toxic debris, his hard-trodden paths, his paved trailer-parks, his junk-filled
brooks, the game tie takes away if he is a hunter, the dead predators meant to keep a balance
which his ignorant hatred of that kind leads him to destroy the wolf, bobcat, cougar, coyote,
and the rest. Now, yet another use is common in this once-balanced and self-sustaining
wilderness. Somebody has mining rights.
 Like me, Rufus Cooper put in, good humoredly.
Albert Bush turned and pointed at his host soberly.  Like you. How many million
acres of once untouched forest or grassland, swamp, even, or inshore waters has your big and
very enterprising company left a dead place a ruin of tailings? A mile-wide hole in a white
pine forest? An underground gallery that, when the metal veins are exhausted, becomes a
drain for the rain and destroys the previous ground water tables? How many offshore sulphur
bores have spilled the sulphur, or dumped the low-yield portion into what reaches of once-
living sea till, today, it is without valuable fishes or Crustacea? That s my area, of course.
Cooper was visibly distressed. But he spoke with a sort of sweetness, a dangerous
sort.  Stick to it, then, for a bit. We get your forest allusion, all right.
Bush nodded, paused, shrugged.  Very well. Let s move on to Addison Lewis, here,
and his tanker fleet. Shipping. Man carries about a hundred million tons of petroleum and its
products on the seas, yearly. Fine! USA and many other nations need the import. How much
of it, though, is spilled or washed out of bilges and left on the oceans? Someone, Glenn saw,
must have tried to interrupt but Albert Bush raised a hand, palm out and flat.
 One per cent. Not a great loss, economically. But in amount, a million tons. You ve
all seen how any petro-chemical liquid spreads on water. A drop of kerosene becomes a
molecule-thick layer on a big area of a pond. Same, at sea. And when oil, even one molecule
thick, covers an aquatic surface, it kills many life forms you use it, that way, to destroy
mosquito larvae. Also, this thin veil changes surface tension. And yet, the very organisms,
phytoplankton, that we heard about this morning, live at or near the ocean surface have
to because they need the energy of sunlight to do that job of changing the carbon dioxide
we flush into the air, to oxygen, again, the most vital of all life-needs for nearly all forms,
near enough to all to say all.
He looked at a restive audience, cleared his throat and went on.  Already we have
fished out many of the best and most productive areas in the oceans. Already, some animals,
whales, are as near to gone as doesn t matter. What will be next? Tuna? Perhaps. And, then,
too, we have already polluted, or filled so many of the estuaries where innumerable fish and
Crustacea breed, that their numbers are being reduced.
He looked, slowly, from face to face. What he saw evidently distressed him.  I am
prepared to support those and a hundred other claims, with fact. I realize this aspect of
ecology isn t being well received here. I understand the reason. Many of you are deeply
involved in, these destructive procedures. To carry on your industries and do so without the
lethal side-effects would be so costly you couldn t sell your products 
Somebody muttered loudly,  Damn right!
 So let me be brief. As a source of more food, whether by better fishing and netting
means, or even by aquaculture fish farming, in enclosed bays or the like the seven seas [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]