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This Conference is to be about the global environment in the future, which implies that we are not entirely satisfied with it in the present and that we have some inkling of what it was like in the past. The geologists have told us the story of the aeons before there was life, of the spread and recessions of oceans, of the appearance of life, and the rise and fall of great forests in the days long before man came. The palaeontologists have mapped for us the development of living organisms in the past as manifested in the fossil record. The early history of man is still obscure, but we have some notion of his activities as a hunter and fire-raiscr-positive environment-influencing activities, but probably very slow-acting ones, conducted with complete unconcern for, and lack of knowledge of, any influence of change.

When we consider the theme of ‘Marine Productivity and Pollution5 within the framework of an International Conference on Environmental Future, we find it necessary to deal in some detail with the topic of how pollution is affecting marine productivity at the present time, before attempting any prediction for the future. In such a prognostication of what in our opinion is most likely to happen in this highly important matter, a clear distinction must be made between the ultimate results that are to be expected from the present trends and the effects of man’s decisions to apply remedial measures—or, practically, between scientific predictions and political decisions. Without legislative and other counter-measures, the present trend would be amenable to prediction with some accuracy (and despondency). However, man’s counter-measures may well result in greatly reduced trends or even in reduction of the eventual pollution. One worthy instance of this nature is the present downward trend of smoke and sulphur dioxide pollution of the air above the United Kingdom (Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 1971).

On some 1938 postage stamps of Czechoslovakia are shown the smoking chimneys of factories. These stamps were not issued in support of a campaign against air pollution, but instead were intended to be symbolic of industry and prosperity. To many people of the world this picture still seems true of life, whereas actually, man has so harnessed the energy symbolized by the smoking chimney that the resulting air pollution has become a problem which erodes the prosperity of nations, undermines their health, and even modifies the very physical and biological environments in which we all live.

The price of survival for modern man in a finite world is restraint of his insatiable demands upon the natural environment and due treatment of that environment with the respect and care which he would accord to the life- support system of a space-ship upon which he was a passenger. Self-control has now become the quality that is perhaps most essential to the individual and to society alike. Collective self-control became essential when man found himself the greatest threat to his own survival and development.