The State of the Planet

Without industrial civilization, which Davis has the insolence to call “a cancer on the body of the Earth,” he would not be so separated from his two daughters while he serves his prison sentence. They probably would have died in infancy from one of the childhood diseases that ravaged pre-industrial societies.

Contrary to Davis’ arbitrary equation of growth with environmental destruction, growth is a direct cause of the betterment of human surroundings. It spurs technological innovation and encourages industriousness in exploiting a minute fraction of this 4,000-mile-deep ball of natural resources on which we live.

RON M. KAGAN

Los Angeles