Jacques-Yves Cousteau

UNESCO Courier, Nov, 1991 by Bahgat Elnadi, Adel Rifaat

* Is there anything we can do to control industrial pollution?

-- Not much. Carbon dioxide is the big problem. We are going to suffocate because of carbon dioxide. As you know, it stimulates breathing, and we shall all end up panting to death if amounts of carbon dioxide continue to increase. This increase is the result of a misguided energy policy. What's more, we have preferred to invest enormous sums in nuclear energy produced by fission rather than by fusion, which is clean. But nuclear energy produced by fusion makes it possible to have the bomb!

There are other, more "picturesque" forms of pollution. Planet Earth is now surrounded by a girdle of fragments of broken satellites which move at the speed of a bullet and will eventually prevent any attempt to reach outer space.

To manage nature a certain amount of wisdom is needed. Perhaps one day, taking long-term factors into account, we shall succeed in managing nature as we now do when we create a pretty garden. But let's get back to the mosquitoes. For the last ten years I have owned a house in the country. When I first went there, there were swallows, robins and mosquitoes. Today the mosquitoes have gone, but so have the swallows, the grasshoppers and the butterflies. The crops have been sprayed with pesticides from the air, and so the insects have been almost totally wiped out. If we carry on like this, children will never see a swallow, a dragonfly or a butterfly. Well done!

* Perhaps you coudl find a more hopeful note on which to end this conversation?

-- Real interest in environmental problems began in 1988 when the American magazine Time featured planet Earth on its cover, and titled it "Planet of the Year" instead of its usual "man of the year".

In July 1989, the leaders of the seven great industrial nations devoted a third of the time at their annual summit and twenty-three pages of the report to environmental problems. Later a meeting was held at The Hague and there were others too. At long last people were realizing that the danger was global and that everyone was threatened.

This realization on the part of world leaders has been encouraged by powerful pressure from public opinion all over the world. The combination of these two forces, at the top and at the grassroots, should lead to the beginning of a solution. I hope that this is a sufficiently hopeful note on which to conclude!