EDITORIAL PAGE (February 03, 1992)

Environmental crusaders who are fighting against industrial development of any kind are simply battling the wrong enemy. A recent article in a newsletter from the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta lists some examples:

— Three volcanic eruptions — at Krakatoa, Indonesia; Hekla, Iceland; and Katmai, Alaska — put more particulates, more carbon dioxide and more sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere than all the activities of industrial man. n Such widely publicized environmental disasters as Love Canal and Three Mile Island caused no immediate deaths. Within the same time period, however, a cyclone in Bangladesh caused 10,000 immediate deaths and a volcanic eruption in Colombia caused 20,000 immediate deaths.

Dr. Margaret Maxey of the University of Texas says in the article that the new environmental ethic wrongly presumes that nature is benign and benevolent. “I think that nature, instead of being a victim of technology, remains an overwhelming culprit endangering human lives.”