They Huey P. Newton Reader

dialectic, 0 nature 307
pharmaceuticals, gas, and minerals. Barring cultivation of the universe,
the ocean emerges as that vital storehouse.
Today the "society where none intrudes" is being penetrated by submarines
equipped with nuclear reactors and rockets, by oceanographers
with silken deip nets, by oil-drill islands built to hurricane specifications,
and by scuba divers clad in pastel neoprene suits. "A complete
three-dimensional rcalm for the military, commercial, scientific and
recreational operations of man," exults Seabrook Hull, a new-style
ocean admirer, in his book The Bountiful Sea. A "sea of profit," gloats
a Wall Street broker. Even the Boy Scouts offe r a new merit badge for
oceanography.
The challenge of the ocean is international as well as national in
scope. As marine technology generates more activities and ambitions,
nations must learn how to preserve marine resources as well as their
respective tempers. Nutrition experts promote the ocean as a food
locker for future survival, but the high-seas fishery competition seems
little related to effective conservation or food distribution. The ocean
promises to be the ultimate challenge to nations to coexist on a watery
planet whirling through space. An indication of the ultimate seriousness
of this challenge is that three estranged world powers-the United
States, mainland China, and Russia-now share the common border
of the Pacific Ocean, perhaps the planet's richest resource.
Marx concludes elegantly that a rather ominous question emerges.
Byron claimed that "Man marks the earth with ruin." Many of our hills,
valleys, and rivers-even the air we breathe-today testifY grotesquely
to the accuracy of this pessimism. Are we perhaps fated to mark the
ocean with ruin, to plunder, pollute, and contend until we have a ghost
ocean bereft of all but the voice of its waves?
Wesley Marx, like other official and semi-official experts, points to
the ocean as a last refuge for the world's exploding population (of
course, they call for birth control by the State along with all other ecological
reforms). These experts mention in passing that the U.S. Navy,
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and various huge multinational
corporations may undermine, somewhat, bold environmental reform.
These same experts argue for moderation on the part of the navy from
turning the sea into a hostile arena bristling with atomic submarines
and other instruments of "defense."