Is the U.S. a planetary disease?
Imagine that we could compress the world's present population of over three billion persons into one town of 1,000 persons, in exactly the same proportions. In such a town of 1, 000 persons there would be only 70 (United States) Americans.  These 70 Americans--a mere seven percent of the town's population--would receive half of the town's income.   This would be the direct result of their monopolizing over half of the town's available material resources. Correspondingly, the 70 Americans would have fifteen times as many possessions per person as the remainder of the townsmen.
The 70 Americans would have an average life expectancy of 70 years.   The other 930 would average less than 40 years.   The lowest income group among the Americans, even though it included a few people who were hungry much of the time, would be better off by far than the average of the other townsmen.   The 70 Americans and about 200 others representing Western Europe, and a few classes in South America, South Africa, Australia and Japan would be well off by comparison with the rest.
Could such a town, in which the 930 non-Americans were quite aware of both the fact and means of the Americans' advantages, survive?   Could the 70 Americans continue to extract the majority of the raw materials essential to their standard of living from the property of the other 930 inhabitants?   While doing so, could they convince the other 930 inhabitants to limit their population growth on the thesis that resources are limited?   How many of the 70 Americans would
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have to become soldiers?   How much of their material and human resources would have to be devoted to military efforts in order to keep the rest of the town at its present disadvantage?
Chances are the 70 Americans would have to organize into a military camp in order to maintain their material dominance of the remainder of the town. Chances are most of the Americans would be too insecure or guilty about their situation to enjoy their dominance.   Chances are this guilt and insecurity would lead some of the .Americans to protest the situation and call for a change.   Chances are that the protesting Americans would find themselves subjected to variations of the same repressive forces being used to subdue the other 930 townspeople.   Chances are the military camp would also be a police camp.
The most regretful thing about the situation you have been asked to imagine is that it is not imaginary. For such is the present material relationship and incipient political relationship of the U.S. to the rest of the world.   The material relationship is very clear: the U.S. is systematically plundering the planet's physical resources.   And if the political conclusions drawn above are not yet so, they are rapidly becoming so. The logical complement of a nation of plunderers is a nation of police.
Noel Mclnnis
Spaceship Earth Curriculum Project Kendall College, Evanston, 111. 60204
.39 WAYS TO SAVE THE EARTH.C
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Don't use colored facial tissues, paper towels, or toilet paper. The paper dissolves properly in water, but the dye forms a
residue.
If you accumulate coat hangers, don't junk them, return them to the cleaner. Boycott cleaners who won't accept them. Use the containers that disintegrate readily. Glass bottles don't decompose. Bottles made of polyvinyl chloride (PVO give off lethal hydrochloric acid when incinerated. (That's the soft plastic many liquid household cleansers, shampoos and mouthwashes come in. Don't confuse it with stiffer polystyrene plastic, used mainly for powders.) The Food and Drug Administration has now approved PVC for food packaging too. Don't buy it. Use decomposable " "Biodegradable" " pasteboard, cardboard, or paper containers instead. If you can't, at least re-employ non-decomposable bottles; don't junk them after one use. Don't buy non-returnable containers. When you go to the super market for milk, take an empty jug with you. At the check-out stand pour milk from the disposable carton into your recycled jug, give the empty "disposable" carton to the checker, and explain that you must put action on the store because you can't stop buying milk and this is the only way the individual can reach the companies which the store orders from. Hold the aluminum can purchase to a minimum unless you are willing to recycle the aluminum. In Santa Fe the address for recycling is Capitol Metals, 4008 Cerrillos Road, 983-2726. They will buy aluminum at 10** per pound if the cans are delivered in gunny sacks, crushed; also old aluminum TV dinner trays, old aluminum lawn chairs. This way the metal can be reused. At the gas station, don't let the attendant "top off" your gas tank; this means watte and polluting spillage. The pump should shut off mechanically at the proper amount. (True too for mo-torboats.)
If you smoke filter tip cigarettes, don't flush them down the toilet. They'll ruin your plumbing and clog up pumps at the sewage treatment plant. They're practically indestrucible. Put them in the garbage. Stop smoking.
Stop littering. Now. If you see a litterbug, object very politely ("Excuse me sir, I think you dropped something."). If you are a home gardener, make sure fertilizer is worked deep into toil " don't hose it off into the water system. Phosphates (a key ingredient) cause lake and river algae to proliferate wildly. Convince nurseries to provide information and sell publications on the control of pests without pesticides rather than selling pesticides. Encourage them to hire someone part-time to work at a pest-control consultant. Boycott and picket uncooperative stores.
Don't buy or use DDT, DDD, or any other chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides. The sale of DDT is now illegal in New Nexico. Do not dispose of DDT or any other poisons down the toilet, in the garbage can, or into ââ€"  horn, incinerator or the fireplace. Each of these results in the release of the poison into the environment. Local sanitation officials should be contacted for instructions On proper disposal methods. Make sure these officials don't just dump it in the garbage themselves. If your garden has water, sun, shade, and fertilizer, it shouldn't need pesticides at all. If you must spray, use natural poisons extracted from plants
-like nicotine sulfate, rotenone, pyrethrum.
To reduce noise, buy a heavy-duty plastic garbage can instead of ââ€"  metal on*. Or sturdy plastic bags, if you can afford them. They're odor proof, neater, lighter.
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When you see a junked car, report it to your local Sanitation Department. If they don't care, scream until someone does. If you don't really need a car, don't buy a car. Motor vehicles contribute a good half of this country's pollution. Batter walk or bicycle. Better for you too.
If you have to car-commute, don't chug exhaust into the air just
for yourself. Form a car pool. Four people in one car put out
a quarter the carbon monoxide of four cars.
Better yet, take a bus to work. Or a train. Per passenger-mile,
they pollute air much less than cars. Support mass transit.
If you still think you need a car of your own, make sure it burns
fuel efficiently (i.e. rates high in mpg). Get a low horsepower
minimachine for the city, a monster only for lots of freeway
driving.
Bug gasoline manufacturers to get the lead out. Tetraathyl lead additives are put in gas to hype an engine's performance; they can build up in your body to a lethal dose. Indiana Standard Oil Co. has a lead-free fuel now (AMOCO): Atlantic Richfield has announced they'll introduce one if all car manufacturers rework engines to make them burn up every breath of fuel, so lead's not needed. One Detroit leader has already promised new engines on all 1971 models. Pester the others. (Lead, by the way, chews up metal " including new antipollution catalytic mufflers.)
If bagged garbage overflows your trashcans, shake it out of bags directly into the can and tromp it down to compact it.
Burning leaves or garbage is already illegal in many towns. Don't do it. Dispose of it some other way.
If you see any oily sulphurous black smoke coming out of chimneys, report it to the Sanitation Department or Air Pollution Board.
There's only so much water. Don't leave it running. If it has to be recycled too fast, treatment plants can't purify it properly. Measure detergents carefully. If you follow manufacturers' instructions, you'll help cut down a third of all detergent water
pollution.
Since the prim, offender in detergent pollution is not suds but phosphates (which encourage algae growth), demand to know how much phosphate is in the detergent you're buying. Write the manufacturer, newspapers. Congressmen, the FDA. Until they let you know, use an unphosphated, nondetergent soap. (Bubble baths, you may be happy to know, do not cause detergent pollution.)
Never flush away what you can put in the garbage. Especially unsuspected organic doggers like cooking fat (give it to the birds), coffee grounds or tea leaves (gardeners dot. on them). Drain oil from power lawn mowers or snowplows into . container and dispose of it, don't host it into the sewer system. Avoid disposable diapers if possible. They may clog plumbing and septic tanks.
If you see something wrong and don't know who to contact, bombard newspapers, TV and radio stations with letters. Get friends to loin in. Media will help with the message if you're getting nowhere in normal channels. Remember: publicity hurts polluters.
Protest the economic idiocy Of the SST, writ, the President. Today's Boeing 747 can already move more people farther without ear-shattering sonic booms.
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Help get antipollution ideas into kids' heads. If you're a teacher, a Scout leader, a camp counslor, a summer playground assistant, teach children about litter, conservation, noise . . . about being considerate, which is what it all comes down to. If you're in a relatively rural area, save vegetable wastes (sawdust, corn husks, cardboard, table scraps, et al.) in a compost heap instead of throwing them out. Eventually you can spread it as fertilizer " nature's way of recycling garbage.
Remember: All Power Pollutes. Especially gas and electric power, which either smog up the air or dirty the rivers. So cut down on power consumption. In winter, put the furnace a few degrees lower (it's healthier) and wear a sweater. Use live Christmas trees, not amputated ones, and replant them afterwards. City bound? Contact your Parks Department. Protesting useless pollution? Don't wear indestructible metal buttons that say so.
Fight to keep noise at a minimum between 11 P.M. and 7 A.M. Studies show that sounds which aren't loud enough to wake you can still break your dream cycle " so you awaken tired and cranky. By the same token, b. kind to neighbors. Suggest that your local radio/TV station remind listeners at 10 P.M. to turn down the volume.
When you shop, take a reusable tot. with you as Europeans do " and don't accept excess packaging and paper bags. Th. packaging you take home today becomes trash tomorrow. This is costing you in terms of dollars and health. Packaging can be deceptive, disguising product contents. Packaging increases th. cost of th. products you buy. By converting trees to paper, it upsets th. forest lift-cycle. You must pay high municipal taxes for trash disposal. When packaging is burned in building incinerators and city dumps it contributes to air pollution. Burning paper gives off carbon monoxide and particulates. Pollutants irritate your eyes, nose, throat and lungs.
Patronize stores that specialize in unpesticided, organically-grown food in biodegradable containers. There's probably such a health food store near you.
Radicalize your community. Do something memorable on April 22nd, the date of the First National Environment Teach-In. On. group's given Polluter of th. Week awards to deserving captains of industry. In traffic jams, other groups have handed out leaflets titled "Don't You Feel Stupid Sitting Her.?" which list advantages of car pools and mass transit. You as a citizen can swear out a summons and bring a noisy neighbor to court. If the problem's bigger than that, talk to a lawyer about a class-action law-suit. A group of people, for instance, can file a class-action suit against a noisy airline or against a negligent public antipollution official. Last, and most important " vitally important " if you want more than two children, adopt them. You know all th. horror stories. They're true. Nightmarishly true. And that goes for th. whole American economy. Unless we can stop fanatically producing and consuming more than we need, we won't have a world to stand on. Caral Who will, if we don't?
The Central Clearing House
107 Cienega
Santa Fe, New Mexico
12/Number Nine