Ecology Survey: At the Crossroads

After reading At the Crossroads, your ecological survey (Dec. 10), I must confess that I am the world’s worst polluter. I didn’t mean to be.

But the veins of Mother Earth have bled to provide me, directly or indirectly, with oil, gas, metals and water to meet my constant needs. To produce my cars and household appliances, factories and power plants pour poisonous smoke into faraway skies. Trainloads of coal have burned for me.

In 1929 I started driving. By now, I forget how many cars I’ve owned, how many planes I’ve ridden on. I can only see tens of thousands of miles laden with exhaust fumes trailing behind me.

To grow my food, farmers have unloaded tons of pesticides and chemicals upon once fertile lands. A long, long parade of cattle, sheep, pigs and fowl have died for me, their flesh neatly packaged--embalmed really--in inviting cases at glamorous supermarkets. (I worry about added hormones and preservatives.)

In the lush green valleys of Central America, cattle for my hamburgers have displaced peasant farmers. For my tuna sandwiches, gill nets over 30 miles long kill multitudes of seals, turtles, dolphins, sea birds every day.

I survey my house. What a bunch of stuff I take for granted! And electricity is a must.

Of course, I hate to think of the Owens River Valley becoming a dust bowl, even as detergent-laden gallons of water go whishing through my washing machine and out of sight. Over the years my family has generated rivers of sewage, tons of trash, mountains of throwaway everlasting plastics; fast-food restaurants, hospitals and planes add more. And now disposable diapers.

Yet we all agree we need more roads, more skyscrapers and shops and jails, more houses, parking lots, chopped-down trees. More energy, food, water.

And what do we get? Fast-rising cancer rates. (My son paid his way through school working in a tire factory and died of a brain tumor.) Filthier air. Droughts, floods, toxic dumps. Threatened shortages of food and water. More traffic. Dying lakes and forests. Acid rains. Poisoned oceans.

Smog-choked prayers do not suffice. Nor do my newly made resolutions. Like the recommendations in The Times (grow veggies, car pool, sort trash), they are too little and far too late. Our immutable verdict was handed down ages ago, stressed by many of the world’s great teachers: You reap what you sow.

RUTH LORING

Calabasas