Observations on the Ecology and Biology of Western Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts V11

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Lecture Notes on Coastal and Estuarine Studies Series, Volume 11.

Alice, amongst all her Adventures in Wonderland, comes to a situation where she has to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place. As Canfield (1974) has pointed out, this happenstance has a close parallel in the history of growth patterns for energy.

The simile has two parts. The first involves proliferation of the world population, advances in technology, etc., which in turn require more and more energy--i.e., as natural resources diminish we have to run faster and faster to find new sources of supply just to stay level with the ever increasing demand. The second part, inseparable from the first, involves the belated realization that "...our responsibility to preserve the earth and its inhabitants..." carries with it the comprehension "...that the more energy we use, the more problems of pollution we encounter." That is, we have to take faster and faster remedial steps just to keep even with the control of the increasing levels of different sorts of pollution and degradation.