Environmental Science: The Way the World
Works
I now have examined the seventh edition, and I have found that it
bears little resemblance -- either substantive or superficial -- to
the third. This seventh edition is a far better book. Besides
providing updated material, it displays superior writing, better
balance, and a notably reduced load of ideological dogma.
Chapter 1, "Sustainability, Stewardship, and Sound Science,"
introduces the book's three central themes. The rest of the book is
divided into six parts -- "Ecosystems and How They Work," "The Human
Population," "Renewable Resources," "Energy," "Pollution and
Prevention" and "Toward a Sustainable Future." Each part comprises
two to seven chapters, and the chapters cover all the topics that we
commonly find in environmental-science textbooks, such as ecological
relationships, population dynamics, soil, water, biodiversity, fossil
fuels, nuclear power, pests and pest-control methods, atmospheric
pollution, and human-induced alteration of Earth's climate.
The opening page of each chapter shows a list of "Key Issues and
Questions," alerting students to particularly important aspects of the
material that they will encounter in the body of the chapter. Then,
in typical cases, the writers start the chapter's text by presenting a
little scene that immediately awakens the students' interest without
being overstated or cute. Here, for example, is the ominous
beginning of the text of chapter 13:
Here is the passage that initiates the text of chapter 19:
Or consider the opening sentences of chapter 22:
Do you want to know what happened to the Sea Empress? Do you
want to know what activates that big red light in the public rest room
at Danehy Park? Do you want to know why that dense fog covered Donora
for five days? I did -- and as I read to learn the answers, I was
captivated by the writers' narrative flair, by their literate,
engaging style, and by their lucid, informative presentations. The
quality of the writing in Environmental Science: The Way the World
Works is remarkable, and the book is a pleasure to read.
This book is copiously illustrated with photographs, diagrams and
charts, and it contains numerous sidebars, but the designers have
favored clean layouts and have shunned the use of flashy typographic
devices. As a result, Environmental Science: The Way the World
Works doesn't have the "video arcade" appearance that I have
encountered in some of the other textbooks that I have reviewed.
Part One, which deals with ecosystems and consists of five chapters,
is particularly fine, and its final chapter -- "Ecosystems and
Evolutionary Change" -- is a jewel. Early in the chapter, the
writers show us that natural selection, mediated by environmental
pressures, is much like the artificial selection that humans practice
in the breeding of domesticated animals. Then they explain such
concepts as adaptation, genetic variation, the gene pool, mutation,
speciation and extinction. Their explanations of how genes are passed
from one generation to another, of how genes that promote survival are
favored in successive generations, and of how natural selection leads
to changes in species and in ecosystems are clear and vivid.
Furthermore, the chapter has a good discussion of plate tectonics.
Here the writers show that continental drift affords a reasonable and
understandable mechanism for long-term, global environmental changes
which doubtless have driven much of the organic evolution that has
taken place over the eons. This fusion of biology with geology is
top-drawer material. The chapter concludes with a section called
"Stewardship of Life," in which the writers connect evolutionary
biology with the concept of sustainability: If an ecosystem is to
endure indefinitely, they say, its biodiversity must endure too -- and
this can happen only if the gene pools of the species that participate
in the ecosystem are preserved, so that all those species will be
able to retain the stores of genetic variation that will make future
adaptations possible. The treatment of biological evolution in
Environmental Science: The Way the World Works is the best that
I have encountered in an environmental-science textbook.
The principal weakness of Environmental Science: The Way the World
Works is that the writers continue to display, in some places,
their propensity for ideological rhetoric. They exercise more
restraint than they did in the third edition -- but even so, their
sections about population, wealth and food resources smell slightly of
the notion that I have to be my brother's keeper, and the sidebar on
page 491, titled "Environmental Justice and Hazardous Waste" really
stinks. In that sidebar, the writers endorse the fashionable notion
of "environmental racism" -- the notion that, because of some racist
conspiracy, waste-disposal sites typically are located in places that
are inhabited chiefly by "people of color" (i.e., blacks, Latinos or
American Indians). That notion is bogus. Here is what I wrote about
it in 1995, in my review of another textbook [note 2] whose writers promoted "environmental racism"
fables:
Please! Spare us any more of this politically correct stuff about
"environmental justice" and "environmental racism"! Let's just
recognize that hazardous-waste sites are installed where land is
available at an acceptable price and where transportation routes are
convenient. Let's leave the stuff about oppressed "people of color"
in the dustbin, where it belongs.
I am happy to observe that such lapses as the "environmental justice"
sidebar don't occur often in this seventh edition of Environmental
Science: The Way the World Works, and I've been impressed by the
writers' overall success in avoiding one-sided advocacy and in
treating social issues in an even-handed way. I especially like the
sidebar "Defining Hazardous," on page 496, where the writers explain
that, in a waste-management context, it is hard to form any consensus
about what the terms hazardous and toxic should mean.
Many different standards can be advanced for deciding whether a waste
material is hazardous or toxic, and the various standards involve
vastly different biomedical criteria -- from obvious, gross disease to
tiny chromosomal alterations that have no apparent effect on human
health.
I also like the writers' forthright descriptions of some of the
environmental disasters that arose from agricultural and industrial
practices espoused by the Soviet Union and its captive states. Here
is a part of the sidebar "A Toxic Wasteland," on page 494:
It is refreshing to think that at least some of the students in our
schools will learn those facts about the "workers' paradise" that
socialism created in the Soviet empire.
All in all, the seventh edition of Environmental Science: The Way
the World Works is a fine textbook -- superbly written and very
readable. I recommend it highly.
Notes
Max G. Rodel is a chemist, now retired. He is an expert on the
chemistry of natural aquatic systems and on the behavior of
pollutants in such systems, and he has worked as a consulting
environmental scientist and as a registered environmental assessor in
the state of California.
Reviewing a science book for high-school honors courses
Seventh edition, 2000. 664 pages. ISBN: 0-13-083134-4. Prentice
Hall.
(Prentice Hall is a part of Pearson Education, 1 Lake Street, Upper
Saddle River, New Jersey 07458.
Pearson Education is a division of Pearson PLC, a British corporation
headquartered in London.)
This Is a Fine Textbook, All in All, and I Recommend It
Max G. Rodel
In 1990 I had an opportunity to review the third edition of
Environmental Science: The Way the World Works, and my review
appeared under the headline "An Ideal Book for Teachers Who Have
Activist Leanings" [see note 1,
below]. That third edition, I wrote, was strong in its
presentation of scientific and technological topics, but I did not
like the ideological maneuvers that the writers performed when they
dealt with some social and political aspects of environmental
problems. I said that the writers tended to give one-sided
expositions of controversial issues, I told that their effort to
explain overpopulation was weakened by their ideological notions about
the "distribution of wealth," and I called attention to some of their
prescriptions for environmental activism (such as their directing
students to "shame" people who owned exotic pets or who used products
derived from endangered species). To me, the writers' obvious
willingness to venture beyond the realm of knowledge and into the
realm of indoctrination was troubling.
The Sea Empress, a 147,000-ton tanker, left the
Firth of Forth in Scotland in early February, 1996, laden with 131,000
tons of crude oil bound for the Texaco Refinery at Milford Haven,
Wales.
Danehy Park features four soccer fields, four softball
fields, three basketball courts, a baseball diamond, two playgrounds,
and a two-mile jogging trail. The 55-acre park, opened in 1990, is
located close to a heavily populated area of North Cambridge,
Massachusetts . . . An unusual feature of the park is a big red light
in the public rest room that warns users to vacate the park if the
light goes on.
On Tuesday morning, October 26, 1944, the people of
Donora, Pennsylvania (population 13,000), awoke to a dense fog . . . .
At first the fog did not seem unusual. Most of Donora's fogs lifted
by noon, as the Sun warmed the upper atmosphere and then the land.
This one didn't lift for five days.
"Environmental racism" makes a good story that can stir
the emotions of ignorant audiences, but it is nothing more than that:
a story. There is no doubt that dirty industries are unusually common
in (or near) black or Hispanic communities, but this doesn't mean that
white racists have deliberately sought this result; nor have the
promoters of "environmental racism" produced any evidence to support
such an idea. If we recall how the distribution of industrial plants
or waste-disposal sites is influenced by land costs, by transportation
facilities, and by the political power or political impotence of local
residents, we needn't invoke a special "environmental racist"
conspiracy to explain why dirty industrial operations are often found
in communities of people who are poor and powerless. The inventors of
"environmental racism" are in the business of using dubious
"studies" and outlandish claims to confuse correlation with
causation.
Now that the shrouds of secrecy have been lifted from
the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the republics of
the former U.S.S.R., it is apparent that central planning has been
responsible for the worst kinds of environmental pollution imaginable.
Pollutants were emitted from the stacks of industry and power plants
with no controls, ruining thousands of square miles of forests and
creating untold health problems; untreated sewage from cities fouled
the rivers, destroying fish and rendering the water unfit even for
industrial uses; heavy metals and toxic chemicals were poured
untreated into the Baltic Sea, turning the bottom into a marine desert
. . . .
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