ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, August 9, 1993                   TAG: 9308090237
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Alexander S. McDowell
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NATURE'S POWER, MANKIND'S MIND

GEORGE F. Will makes some excellent points in his July 19 commentary in the Roanoke Times and World-News ("The river, the deficit and man's conceit"). Man's desire to control nature began with Newton's discovery of gravity and the belief that eventually we would understand the universe implicitly and completely. The truth of the matter is: the more we have learned, the more realize what we do not know and cannot control.

When I hear a Midwesterner proclaim on the radio that the "gov'mint" is responsible for the fact that the Mississippi has flooded its banks (as it has done for millions of years), I laugh at the folly of men. Somehow, the government is responsible for keeping people out of natural disasters and paying money to rebuild the country. People love to hate the government; yet they expect that the government will take care of the medical health of 250 million citizens, take care of the poor and the elderly, educate our children, provide for transportation, create jobs and build the economy, defend us from intruders and police the world - everything! And we wonder why there is a $4 trillion deficit.

We must give up the idea that we can stop the Mississippi River or the ocean's water from finding their levels. Everytime a levee or ocean jetty is washed away, there are new cries that the government should fix it. Fighting the laws of thermodynamics (the potential energy held in water is awesomely great) and attempting to hold back the ocean is impossible.

However, Will's inclusion of "apocalyptic environmentalism" in this generalized philosophical discussion shows a fundamental lack of knowledge concerning our environment and ignores individual will in human evolution. When Vice President Gore says that we must find a better source of energy than fossil fuels, the "conservatives" think that this is outrageous. Well, I am quite sure that many people said that the combustion engine would never replace horses - jobs would be lost - what a wild idea. Copernicus was called a heretic and nearly murdered because he knew that astronomical science indicated that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system.

The fact is that converting fossil fuels that were formed over billions of years of geologic time into gases released into the atmosphere in a matter of decades, will have effects. Granted, these effects (and counter-effects) may not be clear. Granted, the evolution of mankind definitely is what it is, just as the flooding of the Mississippi River is undeniable. However, human beings are not amoebas. We have a brain, and therefore we have individual will. I know that the crux of human evolution, and therefore survival (which is not a given), is human being's individual will and our ability to interact and co-exist. (Just as our ability to hunt in coordinated groups and discover fire allowed early man to out-compete other creatures - not to mention our ability to reproduce!) It is true that our ability to survive and not destroy our environment is based on individual will, not the government's pervasive existence in our lives. But this is a democracy, and therefore the government is only a representation of the collective will of the country, whether we like to admit it or not.

The fact is that the planet's atmosphere and our planet is "highly changeable and fragile." If Will knew more about science and, in particular, geologic history, he would know that scientists have recently discovered that the periodic ice ages have been more pronounced and more devastating to life than previously believed.

What causes an ice age? Why is it that recorded human history begins somewhere near the end of the last ice age (about 10,000 years ago)? Are we willing to find out by blindly reacting like amoebas, reproducing and producing wastes?

Perhaps Will has seen the movie, "The Hellstrom Chronicle" and realizes that, in fact, (as far as numbers), insects are the most successful and adaptable creatures on Earth. Are the ice ages and global warming simply fluctuations in the Earth's climate that are inevitable? Perhaps. Still, I cannot agree with his assertions that we cannot attempt to evolve and interact with our environment. I think that human beings are more intelligent than amoebas or insects.

\ Alexander S. McDowell of Salem is a hydrogeologist with a local engineering consultant. 


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