Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle points out the environmental damage attendant to a number of new technologies, citing them as a result of a linear model of thought and calling for the development of sustainable technology. He suggests that continued use of these technologies will lead to great challenges to human survival. The record on his predictions is somewhat spotty: many of the problems noted by Commoner have been reduced since his writing, many have not. On another note, there are categories of ecological damage that his evaluation glosses over or misses completely, particularly depletion of natural resources. Furthermore, his calls to develop more sustainable technology do not discuss incentives for encouraging this development. <\/p>\n
Commoner’s central thesis was that humanity needed to “close the circle” by making sure that what we produce, whether for our own use or as a by product, would be reused or made into a form such that it would not be damaging to the ecosphere when we discard it. As such, he could be one of the first voices calling for recycling as an industry. <\/p>\n
In his focus on the outputs of modern technology, he neglects other ecological problems. Humanity has just attempted to take himself out of closed ecological cycles. Humanity has damaged the environment in other ways. Resource depletion, including deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, and easily accessible fossil fuels seem like an obvious element to inspect more closely, which would be in keeping with his views on “closing the circle.” While he does mention this principle with respect to metals, which is somewhat ironic in light of the continuing improvements in the supply of metals, this is a small . He does not pay attention to concerns about resource scarity to nearly the same degree that he pays attention to ecologically damaging outputs. <\/p>\n
While his call for the development of technology which does not exemplify the faults of this linear model of production are clear, how he plans to get there from here is not. He spends a chapter examining the economics of the situation, and concludes that economic decisions should play a secondary role to ecological decisions. He never examines the role that economics has to play in informing ecology or encouraging the development of more sustainable technology. This book primarily highlights a set of problems, particularly relating to pollution and the absorptive capacity of the environment, and says very little about the solution to the problems it highlights. <\/p>\n
The Closing Circle provides insight into issues surrounding pollution and recycling. While these are useful underpinnings, the author seems to believe that these are the central issues of ecology. The book is an informative, but narrow view at a particular set of problems, that fails to clearly situate itself as such, and fails to develop usable guidance on how these problems might be addressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle points out the environmental damage attendant to a number of new technologies, citing them as a result of a linear model of thought and calling for the development of sustainable technology. He suggests that continued use of these technologies will lead to great challenges to human survival. The record on … Continue reading “Evironmental Classics Week 6: “The Closing Circle””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}