Green the earth, heal the earth

Excerpt

WE live in an historic time. For the young and middle-aged, it should be a matter for self-congratulation. For me, at 70, it is a matter of remorse that only now, after decades of oblivion, the environment has at last achieved primacy on the world's agenda. Consider the challenges.

The human population of five billion has never been exceeded and accelerates.

Extinctions, environmental destruction, and pollution exist at unparalleled levels.

World warming, ozone attenuation, dessication, innundation, reduced biodiversity, and increased climatic violence all auger ill for the future.

These are the challenges. What are the opportunities?

Without doubt, the greatest single factor, which has dominated the human prospect for more than four decades, the obscene threat of nuclear war and nuclear winter, is evaporating. This constituted the greatest threat to man, life, and the environment. The prospect of an irradiated, cindered, depopulated planet with whimpering refugia in Patagonia and New Zealand has diminished. This makes Ghorbachev the world's greatest environmentalist. It was his unilateral disarmament and his challenge to the West to follow suit that accomplished this monumental objective.

And the corollary. As the U.S.-Russian …