Pollution

For the oil industry, human survival is just not economic - an article by Edward Goldsmith and Simon Retallack for the Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006); written in March 1997, and updated on 22 November 2002. "International attempts to control climate change have been a primary target for corporate lobbyists. Their aim throughout has been to delay, damage and, if at all possible, destroy the rather feeble measures that have been proposed. Perhaps the most damaging response has come from oil industry chiefs like Lee Raymond, President of Exxon-Mobil ... "

Technology - a false religion - a review of Why things bite back by Edward Tenner. "Edward Tenner's book is truly blasphemous. Its thesis is that our technological efforts to manage the world of living things are not working out too well. At first they may seem magically successful, but then comes what Tenner calls their 'revenge effect', which at best transforms acute problems into chronic ones, at worst gives rise to all sorts of new problems, often more serious than whatever problem was targeted in the first place ... ". Published in The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 5, September / October 1998.

The real causes of cancer - "Cancer is now a disease that afflicts one woman out of three and one man out of two, and everybody knows in their hearts what the main causes are: exposure to carcinogenic chemicals in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe, and ionising radiation ... However the 'Cancer Establishment' ... will not admit it so the cancer epidemic is blamed on such things as faulty genes, viruses, eating fatty foods and drinking alcohol ... ". Unpublished, September 1997.

Cancer: are the experts lying? - yes they are, in denying the role of carcinogenic pollution, both chemical and radioactive, while supporting implausible theories which pin the blame for cancer on cancer sufferers themselves.

Changing values (original version) - Part Five of the introduction to Green Britain or Industrial Wasteland by Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard (Polity Press, February 1988), concluding the introduction.

Delaying tactics - Part Four of the introduction to Green Britain or Industrial Wasteland by Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard (Polity Press, February 1988).

Secrecy - Part Three of the introduction to Green Britain or Industrial Wasteland by Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard (Polity Press, February 1988).

Rationalising inaction - Part Two of the introduction to Green Britain or Industrial Wasteland by Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard (Polity Press, February 1988).

Misleading the public - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 16, 1986, by Peter Bunyard and Edward Goldsmith. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "Today, much of the information supplied by government and industry on key environmental issues is designed to rationalize current practices and policies. To that end, numerous public statements have been made which can only be described as downright lies ... "

Industrial pollution: getting away with the crime - in the UK, there is little effective legal sanction against even the most egregiously criminal industrial polluters. But in the USA, aggressive prosecutors armed with effective environmental laws have achieved remarkable successes. This editorial article, co-written with Peter Bunyard, was published in The Ecologist Vol. 14 No. 4 1984.

The scapegoat principle - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 10 No. 3, March 1980, by The Editors. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

Under control? - Do the laws regulating pesticide use in Britain really protect our health and environment? Far from it. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 10 No. 3, March 1980.

Pesticides create pests - Published in The Ecologist Vol. 10 No. 3, March 1980. "Natural selection assures that the fittest survive ... Those that have become the fittest and will now become selected to the exclusion of all others, are those that have developed resistance to the pesticide used... "

The importance of being average - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 9 No. 8/9, November / December 1979. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). To calculate average exposures to pollutants, and average susceptibilities to their ill-effects, is all very well. Except that "Mr. Average does not exist. He is but a figment of the statistician's imagination."

False perspective - review of A Perspective of Environmental Pollution by Martin W. Holdgate, Cambridge University Press. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 9 No. 8/9, November / December 1979.

Maintenance: a limit to growth - Editorial article by Edward Goldsmith published in the Ecologist Quarterly, autumn 1978. While we press on with ever-greater expenditures on new capital plant and infrastructure, we are increasingly unable to finance the maintenance of what we already have, and thus "Our growing inability to maintain the physical infrastructure of our industrial society constitutes in itself, yet another limit to growth."

Mellanby versus theory and fact - The attack on Professor Kenneth Mellanby, which began in "What makes Kenny run?", continues. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 8 No. 5, September / October 1978.

What makes Kenny run? - a critique of Professor Kenneth Mellanby, with his response. "A man of distinction, erudition and considerable personal charm ... he has a big reputation in the academic world and passes for an ardent environmentalist." Yet he is here portrayed as a cynical, self-interested collaborator in global ecocide. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 8 No. 3, May / June 1978.

Blind mans buff - this article published in the Ecologist Quarterly of Spring 1978, argues that "Seek not, and ye shall not find" is the new mantra of the industrial - scientific research complex when it comes to the possibility of discovering inconvenient truths about the dangers of pesticides, food additives, agricultural antibiotics, radiation, and sugar.

Reprocessing the Truth - The Ecologist analyses the Windscale Report. By Edward Goldsmith, Peter Bunyard, and Nicholas Hildyard. Published by The Ecologist as a pamphlet, 1978.

How to live in cloud cuckoo land and justify it - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 8, August 1974. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "Researchers have made the amazing discovery that there is plastic waste in the sea. Since in the UK alone we consume 1.5 million tons of plastic a year, and since our principal method of getting rid of all waste products is to dump them into the sea, one would not have expected this discovery to have caused quite so much astonishment ... "

Pollution by tourism - one of the first-ever critiques of mass tourism, revealing its many under-estimated impacts. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 2, February 1974. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

Asbestos and cancer - presenting the overwhelming case for the total prohibition of asbestos. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 8, August 1973.

So far, so good - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 16, October 1971. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "The experts assure us that current levels of lead in our air and water are safe. Scientific endeavour, it would appear, is something that confers on a proposition some measure of credibility - perhaps even downright certainty. If so, how is this achieved? ... "

We can't have our cake and eat it - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 13, July 1971. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). " When, in time of drought, a tribal rainmaker fails to bring about the required rain, the tribesmen, sadly surveying their parched fields and ailing crops, do not question the efficacy of the magical rites that they performed in vain. Age-old tradition has conferred on the rainmakers a respectability that no individual failures can possibly impair ... "

Pollution costs - This is Chapter 17 of the book Can Britain Survive?, published by Tom Stacey, London, 1971, and Sphere Books, London, 1971 (paperback). The book is a selection of articles from The Ecologist, together with original papers and articles from other periodicals, collected and edited by Edward Goldsmith while Editor of The Ecologist.

Is pesticide science based on false assumptions? - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 5, November 1970. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "The scientist is under attack. His image is deteriorating fast. No more do we see a benevolent sage whose infinite wisdom is leading to man's conquest of nature, to the elimination of disease, poverty, misery and everything else that afflicts us. Instead, to more and more, he has become an ogre who, to satisfy his own curiosity, is concocting vile poisons that are bound to get us all in the end ... "