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<address><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-04-16-bk-2580-story.html">https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-04-16-bk-2580-story.html</a><br>
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<h1 class="headline"> Eco-Eschatology : HIGH TECH HOLOCAUST<i>
by James Bellini (Sierra Club Books: $10.95, paper; 256 pp.;
0-87156-686-9) </i> </h1>
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<div class="byline-text"> <span class="byline-prefix">By </span>Kirkpatrick
Sale </div>
<div class="published-date">
<div class="published-day">April 16, 1989</div>
<div class="published-time">12 AM</div>
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<p>Straight out, I have to tell you I am an apocalyptic: I
believe that most of the life forms of the planet Earth, and
the workings of the planet itself, are seriously imperiled and
may not survive the next two or three decades.</p>
<p>That should put me solidly on the side of “High Tech
Holocaust,” since its somber conclusion--the next-to-last
sentence of the book, highlighted in 18-point type on the back
cover--is that “if the scale of the assault on our well-being
is not reduced . . . then humanity will itself become the
species facing a slow, but inexorable, journey to extinction.”</p>
<p>And, well, I suppose I <i> am </i> on its side, for the
most part. This is the sort of message that must be heard--and
taken deeply, deeply to heart--if there is any chance to avoid
the holocaust.</p>
<p>And yet, I somehow doubt that a book like this, which is
essentially a catalogue of all the perils we know the
industrial culture has unleashed on our environment in recent
decades, will really help anyone to hear and heed that
message. Not only is it depressing, as it moves from toxic
wastes to nuclear accidents to acid rain to poisoned foods to
contaminated waters, but its collection of horror stories and
horror statistics is eventually numbing to the point of
insensibility.</p>
<p>I mean, you can open to any page and be overwhelmed by the
awful lethal ailments provided by our industrial age. Just at
random--and I assure you this is totally unplanned--I open to:</p>
<p>“Scientists drilling the Greenland icecap have discovered
that lead levels in the air we breathe have increased two
thousand percent since the start of the industrial revolution.
. . . Lead too is a poison; there is mounting proof that our
brains and nervous systems are being steadily eroded.”</p>
<p>“In practically every area of toxic pollution, mankind has
reached a cross-over point, beyond which the natural balance
of the Earth’s chemistry becomes seriously distorted.”</p>
<p>“All nuclear plants produce waste products . . . radioactive
substances . . . that are beyond the capacity of man to
destroy. And so long as they exist, these substances present a
mortal danger.”</p>
<p>“After Chernobyl, we can now have no doubts about the
inability of man to control our nuclear technology.”</p>
<p>“Acid rain is destroying our forests, contaminating our water
supplies, changing our climate, eroding irreplaceable historic
buildings and, we are now discovering, causing the slow
wasting of mankind through corrosion of our own body
chemistry.”</p>
<p>I suppose it is true that Bellini--a free-lance “forecaster”
and adviser to British TV projects--might well say that the
only way to show people how horrible the world has become is
to pile up horror stories. And yet, there is nothing really
new here, nothing that is not derived from rather well-known
scientific or popular materials of the sort that have become
increasingly common since “Silent Spring"--with not much
perceivable alteration, either, in the conditions they
condemn. (They banned DDT, you will say; but “Silent Spring”
was not about DDT but chemicalization, which has increased
sharply since 1962.) Having all this information together in
one place certainly serves some encyclopedic purpose, but it
is not really calculated to invite the skeptical or
uninformed, and it simply overwhelms the sympathetic.</p>
<p>There is another similar danger, too, to this book, and it
has to do with its doomsday tone that “we have five years to
make the choice” between “a cleaner, safer world” and
extinction. As an apocalyptic, you understand, I can’t exactly
disagree--but nowhere is this proven, or even addressed in
fact, nowhere is there any justification for such a time-line.
It is simply not convincing, certainly not to the unconverted,
and it is the sort of wolf-is-coming exaggeration that has
served in the past to discredit ecological critics. And it may
also be quite off-putting even to the receptive reader, since
it is fair to say that the chances of our achieving radical
environmental changes in the next five years are remote in the
extreme.</p>
<p>Which brings me to what I regret to describe as the
fundamental flaw of this book: its failure to identify the
root cause of our eco-crises and thus to have any intelligent
suggestions for any real remedies. Bellini does, from time to
occasional time, put forth “a devil called industry” and “the
high-tech age.” But he is really quite placid about it, quite
happy with its “wonder drugs” and “skyscraper cities,” and all
he really seems to worry about (though I must say this is not
dealt with very clearly) is its scale and its secrecy, and all
he can think of by way of remedy is for industry “to establish
a climate of open business” so as to become “more accountable”
(ditto) and for the public to have a “more acute recognition
of the biochemical threat that confronts us” (ditto). Puerile
pap, that--thin gruel for an apocalyptic menu.</p>
<p>The culprit, and how desperately we need to come to realize
it, is nothing less than modern Western culture and its
attitudes--exploitative, utilitarian, hostile, competitive,
self-aggrandizing--toward the Earth. Bellini is quite wrong to
think that this culture simply reflects “man’s insatiable
desire to manufacture” and that the search for “ways to
conquer nature” is a basic and unchangeable characteristic of
the human animal. <b><u>It is precisely in its alienation
from nature, its desire to “conquer” it, that this culture
differs so starkly from those healthy cultures of the past
(including those first on this continent) that sought
harmony with, not dominance over, the precious systems of
the living Earth, and for whom its creatures and its
habitats were sacred. It is precisely among such
non-industrial cultures, if anywhere, that we may find the
wisdoms that will help us avoid our eco-catastrophe.</u></b></p>
<p>This American edition is taken directly from British proofs
complete with British spellings, phrases, punctuation, tone,
and often, focus. Its notes are woefully thin and its index
non-existent.</p>
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