This paper continues an earlier discussion of the hazards of nuclear fission, and of the choice of alternatives (Edsall, 1974), in Environmental Conservation, 1(1), pp. 21–30. Important changes have recently occurred in energy policy in the United States. The Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), whose mission is to promote the development of all promising forms of energy production, has replaced the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). A Nuclear Regulatory Commission, independent of ERDA, has been set up. The proposed ERDA budget, however, is largely dominated by the very heavy costs of research and development for the liquidmetal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR). The AEC, in one of its last acts, produced a voluminous environmental impact statement on the LMFBR. A preliminary version of this statement (spring 1974) was sharply and widely criticized as inadequate, and as highly biased in favour of the breeder. The revised statement is now under critical review (March 1975). The AEC has also produced a comprehensive report (the Rasmussen report) on the safety of the current light-water reactors in use in the U.S.A., with the conclusion that a major accident in a nuclear power-plant is so unlikely as to be almost negligible by comparison with other hazards of daily life. It does not consider the hazards of radioactive waste disposal, or of theft and sabotage. Critics have pointed to what they consider grave flaws in the reasoning of the Rasmussen report, so the matter is still highly controversial.

One major source of uncertainty in industrial planning is due to the conflicting uses of environmental components by the proponent of an action and the various ‘actors’ who share the proponent's environment. These actors may be government agencies, health authorities, conservancy organizations, or individual citizens. As they all share the environment with the proponent of the action, there should also be a sharing of the decision-making process.

Difficulties of identifying potential actors at the non-governmental level can be reduced by undertaking a rigorous analysis of the environmental components, of the uses which they serve, of the way in which the uses may be impaired by proposed activities, and hence of which users are most likely to be concerned.

The result of such an approach, which constitutes a new style of management ‘from the outside–in’ rather than ‘from the inside–out’, is that industry must involve itself in a broader-based and more imaginative planning process than hitherto. Failure by industry to do this will result in either a progressive erosion of the freedom of decision-making (by increased government interference) or in progressive blocking of industry's plans and consequently a reduction in its ability to achieve its corporate objectives of profit–growth–security in the face of conflict over its operations, its siting proposals, and its products.

Suitable realization by managements of the interdependence of their actions with those of others should lead to the addition of a truly environmental dimension to their traditional function—even without the governmental intervention and pressure-group counteractivity which have become increasingly evident with the growth of the environmental movement in recent years.

To circumvent the coming energy crisis the development of new sources is popularly associated with the gasification of coal and with atomic breeder reactors, although solar and nuclear fusion sources are distant possibilities. But coal is limited in supply and breeders will not be ready in time to replace the remaining oil and natural gas; wind offers a more likely possibility.

The practical equation for electricity obtained after conversion to hydrogen, passage, and reconversion to electricity, is:

for a rotor of 100 m radius in a location where the mean annual wind is v k.p.h. Thus, for v = 30, Pelec ≃ 5 MW per rotor.

The concept of large sea-borne rotors in high-velocity wind-belts with long-distance hydrogen transmission offers a more readily attainable (and more environmentally acceptable) prospect than atomic, or solar, possibilities.

The Walking Catfish (Clarias batrachus), accidentally introduced into southeastern Florida in the mid-1960s, is currently distributed over more than 8,750 square km in ten counties of that State. The range of this exotic can reasonably be expected to extend over still further counties within the next few years. The present threat to fish farming interests, and the potential threat to native fishes, are thought to be serious.

A major challenge in developing programmes for professional education in environmental management is presented by the need to determine how the vast amount of scientific and professional knowledge required for effective environmental management can be efficiently transmitted to prospective or practising ‘environmental coordinators’ in the private and public sectors of society. This paper describes the work conducted at M.I.T., in collaboration with C.E.I., to provide a conceptual and substantive base for such programmes.

The conceptual framework is based on a simplified model of the decision-making steps in environmental management processes. Such a model can be used for isolating certain types of decisions and roles in different social, cultural, administrative, or political, contexts. When once this has been done, the responsibilities and the educational needs of specific classes of ‘environmental managers’ can be identified through studies and interviews.

The substantive base for new educational programmes requires the development of outlines and the identification of reference material for the major bodies of knowledge that comprise the ‘field’ of environmental management. This paper briefly describes the major subject-areas treated in this study: values and perceptions, ecology, environmental effects, environmental indicators, environmental impact assessment methodology, modelling, monitoring, growth and its implications for the future, economics of externalities, environmental law, and administrative processes.

The approach and materials described in this paper are now being used at C.E.I, in the development of educational programmes for practising professionals, and at M.I.T. for graduate and undergraduate students in a variety of disciplines. Thus far, these efforts have been well received and have provided additional information with which to continue designing additional programmes.

Systematic sampling of hoverflies, ichneumonid wasps, and butterflies, in a suburban garden at Leicester, England, has revealed a remarkable diversity of species. Suburban gardens, which support an enormous variety of plants, now cover at least a million acres (405,000 ha) of England and Wales (about 1/37 of the total land area), and if the diversity of insects found in one garden reflects the situation elsewhere, gardens are collectively the most important nature reserve in the country. They are, moreover, in no danger of disappearing; on the contrary they are spreading, yet their potential for conservation has been neglected.

Plants are major factors conditioning an environment, and conservation of particular environments depends fundamentally on the maintenance of existing plant communities. In many parts of the world, the destruction of such communities is occurring so rapidly and so completely that entire natural systems are subject to, or threatened with, total destruction. In such cases artificial methods of conserving plant germplasm for ultimate regeneration, for supplementing natural populations, for study, or for use by Man as an economic resource, may be of great significance as one possible means of averting total loss. Under less extreme pressures, the availability of representative propagules of significant taxa or populations may be of crucial assistance as an aid to research directed towards a better understanding of factors affecting survival or competitive advantage in the wild, or as a means of providing stocks for assessment of the potential economic value of existing reserves of wild species.

This paper discusses methods of recording, maintaining, and evaluating, collections of populations of wild species. Plant resources of this kind are extremely vulnerable when maintained under artificial conditions, and a very high proportion of collections are lost within a few years, remain unavailable for general use, or fail to be used owing to inadequate documentation. Conservation of plant germ-plasm as an international resource, in a usable form, depends on a wide acceptance and practice of greatly improved methods of documentation, and requires the creation of effective organizations for surveying, maintaining, and coordinating, plant resources on an international scale.

Salt-gradient solar ponds function as systems to collect and store solar energy. The upper zone of the pond is rendered non-convective by the salt gradient and serves as a partially transparent insulator, permitting some of the incident solar energy to penetrate to the bottom and heat the lower zone to a temperature as high as 95°C. A pond 3 m deep and 150 m2 in area is expected to provide all of the winter heat required by a house of the same area in Columbus, Ohio.

Solar ponds occur in Nature. Research on artificial solar ponds was first begun in Israel in 1958 and some research has since been done in other countries. Recent results obtained by the author and collaborators indicate that solar ponds will be simple to operate and will provide low-temperature heat at a cost of perhaps $0.010 per kW-hr thermal. Experiments to obtain more definitive cost information are now in progress.