The biosphere, and the many delicately-balanced yet dynamic ecosystems that make it up, is an open system: its energy comes from the sun. We, and the other animals that join us on this planet's journey through space and time, live by the grace of green plants and the photosynthesis that gives us food and breathable air. Should the biosphere begin to break down, as a result of our leeching it, we will crash much as lemming populations crash in the Arctic. But lemmings do it regularly, every four years or so -- we have no practice ourselves at cyclical recovery. As they have before, the cockroach, the ant, and the tortoise, meek creatures less specialized, with ambitions less grand than our own, will inherit the Earth. But we still have the choice: to opt for beauty over ugliness, diversity over impoverishment, harmony over domination, life over death. As a former traveler in the Brooks Range, I hope we will.
--JOHN MILTON
Washington, D.C.
July 1970