The Spirit Of The Age

Ecologist, The, July, 2000 by Fred Pearce

Indeed, the new Ecologist looks remarkably like the 1970s version with a design and journalistic makeover. The magazine that has championed rickshaws and the Khmer Rouge, Zulus and Gaia, peasants and feminism, sterilisation and rainforest rubber tappers, is not done yet.

Fred Pearce is a regular contributor to New Scientist and a long-time reader of The Ecologist.

First to say...

THE Ecologist

INDUSTRIAL FARMING: 1970

'The use of fertilisers is limited because pest species develop immunities to them, and the cost to the environment and possibly to the health of man is too high to be borne.'

WATER SCARCITY: 1970

'Large scale irrigation will produce violent ecological changes whose results are largely unpredictable, and will place an intolerable strain on water resources.'

PCB POLLUTION: 1971

'A very disturbing finding about the biological effects of PCB is that they can have an insidious effect on hormonal systems.'

GENETIC ENGINEERING: 1977

'In the face of all the ethical difficulties that genetic engineering creates... we should take a long, hard look at it before it goes any further.'

RAINFOREST DESTRUCTION: 1980

'If present trends continue... there will be no more tropical moist forests in 60 years' time.'

WAY BACK WHEN...

Co-founder Peter Bunyard (left, with Teddy Goldsmith) remembers the magazine's origins, and wonders how the world has changed.

Like a bombshell, early in 1969 an article appeared in the Sunday Times colour supplement, which spoke of unbelievable atrocities committed by government authorities, especially the Agency for Indigenous Affairs (FUNAI) in Brazil. Norman Lewis, the author, told of disease-infected blankets dropped from the air, machine-gunning and even bombings carried out against indigenous tribes in the Amazon. It was horrendous stuff. One result of this revelation was Survival International (then, can you credit it, known as the Primitive Peoples' Fund). Another was The Ecologist and, as the first editors and contributors, we used to meet in the same building as our anthropologist brethren, down Craven Street, just off London's Charing Cross Road.

What has really changed since then? One thing is for sure; we are far more enlightened about environmental issues than we ever were in 1970. Global warming didn't exist then -- not as an issue -- and the ozone hole hadn't appeared like an unseen curse above our heads. Nor did we have the London Dumping Convention, the International Whaling Commission, the Montreal Protocol, the Biodiversity Convention, the Convention on Climate Change and a host of other treaties.

But has all that flurry of post-1960s activity changed much? Or are the current number of environmental organisations simply a reflection of the poor state of the world? Like the supposed final triumph of communism when the state is no longer required, we environmentalists should welcome our obsolescence -- the time when we are no longer needed to shout at the WTO, or root up genetically-modified organisms. But it's not yet time for us to retire: for the human impact on the planet is greater than ever.