ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
COMMENT
©Copyright 1996 by the American Chemical Society EDITOR
William H. Glaze, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Walter Giger, EAWAG (Europe); Ronald A. Hites, Indiana University; fames E Pankow, Oregon Graduate Institute; Jerald L. Schnoor, University of Iowa (water); John H. Seinfeld, California Institute of Technology (air); Mitchell I. Small, Carnegie Mellon University; Joe Suflita, University of Oklahoma ADVISORY BOARD
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Preservation and Wonder
I
t is fascinating to watch a child playing outside. Left alone the child will often sit down and begin to sift through whatever is at hand, sometimes picking it up to examine it more closely or, if it moves or looks a bit suspicious, poking at it with a stick or watching it from a distance. Seldom is a child repelled by a deer, a puddle of water, or a butterfly drifting from flower to flower. What is the relationship between a child and the environment? I recently posed this question to a class and they described the child's attitude as one of "wonder," "fascination," "curiosity," and "openness." This openness to nature seems to be one of the fundamental traits of human beings. We all seem to have a fascination with living things and a wonder of nature. As we grow older we retain some of this openness and fascination, but things change. Our wonder at the beauty of the stars, for example, shifts to a wonder about how we fit into the universe, how it and we were created, and what lies beyond. Increasingly, we ignore the stars as we hurry about our lives. Similarly, our view of the air, land, and water shifts from wonder to utilitarianism: Are the water and air clean enough to drink and breathe, is this parcel of land a good investment, is the river navigable? These are natural tendencies and as deeply imbedded in our persona as our wonder of nature. Self-preservation and personal pleasure also compel us to use the natural world. And we become concerned when our freedom to use nature is deprived by the uses others make of it. We are offended when we perceive that our right to the environment has been affected by another party, especially a stranger. It is this competition for rights to the environment, mixed with our tendencies for self preservation, that cause us to take ownership of a part of the environment and to defend it against all offenders. To a very large extent, the environmental movement is a reflection of our desire to protect our property rights from insults by others. Unfortunately, this is also the motivation for our own exploitation of the natural world, which we often rationalize as necessary for our comfort and preservation. When this necessity clashes with the needs of others or the preservation of the environment, tensions rise. Let us hope that in our attempts to resolve these tensions we do not forget the child whose fascination and wonder with nature was so pure and so mightily needs to be preserved.
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VOL. 30, NO. 3, 1996 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 1 0 3 A
