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Environmental awareness demands divers inputs The various disciplines and activities involved in environmental understanding remain discreet but draw strength from each other
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NVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, for several years has been practicing and preaching the concept that the best approach to solving many environmental problems is to consider the environment as a whole, Le., a single integrated system in which the sequence of evolution is a cycle-technology, research, science, development, technology. Where technology employed in solving problems, large and small. reveals new needs for knowledge and lays out the course for research. Where research shows new opportunity, new direction, new relationships, and grows at various speeds into a body of science that, through trial and development, leads to new technology that can be applied to the solution of problems. The old or present problems may not be fully solLed, and new ones may crop up. But in any event. the cycle continues. There are other cycles involved, too: for example, the wheel of various disciplines involved in environmental understanding, control, and management. that moves in a circle from engineering through the geological, soil, marine. atmospheric, medical, and social sciences to biology, ecology, and even economics and politics. Each is a spoke in a huge wheel that helps move all civilized activities forward. The strength of the wheel rests on the mutual support and strength of each of the spokes which. only together with the continuity of a compiling rim, can complete the wheel. There are cycles within cycles, wheels within wheels. A n d to achieve significance each one must be treated alone, yet in concert with the others. It is as if each system were but a single ingredient in
a huge pot of stew. Each ingredient maintains its discreetness while contributing to the special overall effect of combination. What ES&T has tried to do is to provide the serving dish for the agglomeration of many critical, individual, and discreet ingredients to be presented to as many as care to feed at the table of full environmental awareness, Not all participants need partake of the entire offering; one need only take that portion or combination which satisfies o r fulfills. The need for a single forum in which environmental matters may be discussed alone and with other relevant items seems obvious. and it is certainly demonstrated by the reception accorded ES&T in its 28 months of existence. Likewise, the value of the whole o r integrated approach is evident in another success-that achieved by the Houston Junior Chamber of Commerce's National Pollution Control Conference and Exposition. First held a year ago, the exposition is having its second run this year (see page 343) before what promises to be a much larger audience than last year's 2500 attendees. We wish the exposition's sponsors well in their program for, in many ways. they have embraced within their own context the concept of an integrated environment responsive to each of its many parts, where pressures on any one part lead to bulges somewhere in the overall system. and where the interrelated nature of the individual parts permits each unit to draw strength from the others while contributing to the common success.
Volume 3, Number 4, April 1969 295
