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International Socialism, June 1973

 

Jim Lord

The Last Resource

 

From International Socialism (1st series), No.59, June 1973, p.26.
Transcribed & marked up by by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

The Last Resource: Man’s Exploitation of the Oceans
Tony Loftas
Penguin, 50p

With an apocalyptic title and the author billed as an expert on the subject, you might expect this book to be about marine ecology and the destructive impact which present profit-orientated uses are having upon it. It turns out. however, to be only superficially concerned with these matters.

We are treated to a brief history of oceanography, an inventory of the enormous and largely unexplored resources, animal, mineral and vegetable, both within and beneath the oceans, and the story of the ‘wayfarers and warriors’ who traverse them. This accounts for over three quarters of the contents and seems solely preoccupied in each case with the technological ‘advances’, commercial, military and scientific.

It reads amiably enough, especially if you share the author’s uncritical obsession with such developments in isolation from their causes. Yet ecological topics are broached only in passing, particularly in relation to the over-fishing of the sea and the ‘web of life’ grievously interfered with by such activity.

It is only in the last chapter that we get down to the nature and scale of the environmental problems created by the pollution of oceans. Here we learn of seas turned into toxic graveyards, through oil pollution, the dumping of industrial and military wastes, the disgorging of human sewage (treated or otherwise), and by many other means. In the future we face the spectre of nerve gases and nuclear waste dumped on the sea bed in containers whose life is much shorter than the activity of their deadly contents.

Yet, in the analysis of the source of these and related problems, all credibility fades. The ‘underdeveloped’ world is mentioned in terms which ignore the ways by which present methods of advancement of the ‘developed’ world are predicated on continuing underdevelopment elsewhere. Why do we continue to ruin the terrestrial world in the quest for minerals, water, and so on, at the same time fouling up the marine nest, when we could intelligently explore the oceanic reserves with far fewer repercussions? Because it is uneconomic, and for Loftas uneconomic means contrary to human nature. Man has no ‘incentive’: ‘... the final question must always be “can a particular mineral be supplied more cheaply by turning to the sea?”’ We must show that we can ‘... still save money, time, and lives’ (in that order) to win the day for rationality – and for humanity. Military misdemeanours are ‘in keeping with man’s aggressive nature.’ Survival is clearly a secondary consideration to the maintenance of the balance of power.

Thus imprisoned by his thinking, it is small wonder that the author feels, ‘at present it is difficult to be anything but pessimistic about the future of the last resource’ or that he can find solace only in fantasies about action in the United Nations. There is some useful material on oceanic ecology here, if you know where to look but, like the subject, it is heavily and dangerously polluted.

 
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