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The next frontiers for science

What is relevant is that we are destroying our planet. A steadily rising population is placing ever-higher demands on Earth’s resources and is wiping out the wilderness and the ecological balance of the planet, something on which we all depend.

A steadily rising use of fossil fuels for energy is choking Earth’s atmosphere with gases that are slowly poisoning it. In addition, it allows the atmosphere to conserve heat more efficiently, so that the planet is experiencing a greenhouse effect that may have catastrophic impact.

A steadily increasing production of chemical substances that are highly toxic is poisoning the soil and water of the Earth, is destroying the ozone layer and is converting much of the planetary surface into a garbage heap.

Since there can be nothing on Earth, simply nothing, that is more important than saving the planet, our priorities must be to reverse these destructive tendencies.

We must find alternative sources of energy, long-lasting and non-polluting. We must continue the search for nuclear fusion, in the hope that it will be a far richer and safer source than nuclear fission. We must develop wind-power, wave-power and, most of all, the direct use of solar power. All these things are highly practical, but cost more money than oil and coal, so that the challenge is to make them cheaper.

We must find ways of detoxifying toxic products produced by industrial plants. We must find substitutes for packaging, substitutes that are recyclable. We must find substitutes for chemicals that destroy the ozone layer.

We must find methods of saving our forests, of saving threatened species, of maintaining a healthy ecological balance on Earth.

If there is any spare effort left over from these absolute necessities of scientific advance, we can put them into other projects – otherwise not.

I regret this, for I am emotionally on the side of the big projects, all of them, but necessity is a hard task-master, and necessity is now in the saddle and holds the whip.

Say whether these statements are TRUE or False.

1. We are turning our planet into a huge waste dump.