"In the book "The Closing Circle" Barry Commoner offers four laws formulated by him in the form of aphorisms.

We will cite them and comment briefly, showing that, in essence, these are known laws of nature of the most general and fundamental level.

Law 1. Everything is connected with everything.

This law postulates the unity of the World, it tells us about the need to look for and study the natural origins of events and phenomena, the emergence of chains connecting them, the stability and variability of these connections, the appearance of gaps and new links in them, stimulates us to learn to heal these gaps, and also to predict the course of events .

Law 2. Everything has to go somewhere.

It is easy to see that this is, in essence, just a paraphrase of known conservation laws. In its most primitive form, this formula can be interpreted as follows: matter does not disappear. […]

Laws 1 and 2, as a consequence, define the concept of isolation (closedness) of nature as an ecological system of the highest level.

Law 3. Nature knows best.

The law states that any major human intervention in natural systems is harmful to it. This law, as it were, separates man from nature. Its essence is that everything that was created before man and without man is the product of lengthy trial and error, the result of a complex process based on such factors as abundance, ingenuity, indifference to individuals with an all-encompassing striving for unity.

In its formation and development, nature has developed a principle: what is collected, then disassembled.

This principle is beautifully articulated in the famous film Mark Zakharova"Love Formula". Remember, the blacksmith, breaking the carriage of Count Cagliostro to extend the repair period, utters the following maxim: "What one person does, another can always break." In nature, the essence of this principle is that no substance can be synthesized in a natural way if there is no means to destroy it. The whole mechanism of cyclicity is based on this.

A person does not foresee this in his activity, at least not immediately. Not everything that he "collects", nature can destroy. This is one of the impasses in the relationship between man and nature, although man himself is part of nature. […]

Man wants to be independent of nature, to be above it, and everything he does, he creates for his own comfort, for his own pleasure, and only for them. But he forgets that against the background of natural expediency and harmony, in words A.I. Herzen, "our comfort is pathetic and our debauchery is ridiculous." Probably, we should follow the call of our peasant poet Nikolai Klyuev: "... with God we will be gods ...". To do this, a person must subdue his pride. We will return to this idea at the end of the book.

Law 4. Nothing is free.

In other words, you have to pay for everything. In essence, this is the second law of thermodynamics, which speaks of the presence in nature of a fundamental asymmetry, i.e., the unidirectionality of all spontaneous processes occurring in it. When thermodynamic systems interact with the environment, there are only two ways to transfer energy: heat release and work. The law says that in order to increase their internal energy, natural systems create the most favorable conditions - they do not take "duties". All the work done without any loss can be converted into heat and replenish the internal energy of the system. But, if we do the opposite, i.e., we want to do work at the expense of the internal energy reserves of the system, i.e., do work through heat, we must pay. All heat cannot be converted into work. Any heat engine (technical device or natural mechanism) has a refrigerator, which, like a tax inspector, collects duties. This is payment for useful work, a kind of tax on nature.

Introduction

The remarkable American environmentalist Barry Commoner is the author of a number of books and a well-known social and political activist. Commoner was born in 1917. He attended Harvard University and received his Ph.D. in biology in 1941. The main theme of his work, Commoner as a biologist, chose - the problem of the destruction of the ozone layer.

In 1950, Commoner being an opponent

om atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, tried to draw public attention to this problem. In 1960, he was involved in other environmental issues, including environmental issues and research into energy sources. He has written many books: Science and Survival (1967), The Closing Circle (1971), Energy and Human Welfare (1975), The Poverty of Power (1976), The Politics of Energy (1979), and Making Peace with the Planet ( 1990).

A combination of socialist beliefs and environmental issues formed the basis of his presidential campaign in 1980. After failing to run for President of the United States, he headed the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College in New York City.

According to Commoner, today's industrial methods and the extraction of fossil fuels lead to active environmental pollution. He firmly believes that the pursuit of maximum profit, at present, takes precedence over the ecology of the planet. According to Commoner, only compensation for the damage caused to nature is meaningless. We must, first of all, focus on preventing the destruction of nature in the future; for the most part, the solution to environmental problems lies in the preservation of the environment. It was in the books Science and Survival (1967) and The Closing Circle (1971) that Commoner was one of the first among scientists to draw our attention to the high environmental cost of our technical development and deduced his 4 famous "laws" of ecology.

20 years later, Commoner reviews the most important attempts to assess environmental damage in his book Making Peace with the Planet (1990), and shows us why, despite billions of dollars spent on environmental protection, we are now at a very dangerous stage. This is a book of brutal facts and figures, the conclusion from which is one: environmental pollution is an incurable disease that can only be prevented by a fundamental rethinking of the production of goods.

Commoner is quite radical in his choice of solutions to many problems of environmental pollution. He is a strong supporter of the use of renewable energy sources, especially solar energy, which can decentralize the energy consumption of enterprises, and use sunlight as an alternative energy source for most energy consumers.

Commoner points out the seriousness of the social causes affecting the current ecological situation. He argues that by closing the gap in economic development between developed countries and the countries of the so-called "Third World", the cancellation of economic debts should lead to a reduction in the problem of overpopulation. Also, it can compensate for the damage caused by such countries to nature in previous decades. Also, Commoner calls for a redistribution of the world's wealth.

1. Everything is connected to everything

The first law (everything is connected with everything) draws attention to the universal connection of processes and phenomena in nature. This law is a key provision in nature management and shows that even small human changes in one ecosystem can lead to large negative consequences in other ecosystems. The first law is also called the law of internal dynamic equilibrium. For example, deforestation and the subsequent decrease in free oxygen, as well as emissions of nitrogen oxide and freon into the atmosphere, led to the depletion of the ozone layer in the atmosphere, which, in turn, increased the intensity of ultraviolet radiation that reaches the earth and has a detrimental effect on living organisms. There is a well-known parable about Darwin, who, when asked by his countrymen about what to do to increase the buckwheat harvest, answered: “Dilute the cats.” And in vain the peasants were offended. Darwin, knowing that in nature "everything is connected with everything", reasoned as follows - cats will catch all mice, mice will stop destroying bumblebee nests, bumblebees will pollinate buckwheat and the peasants will get a good harvest of it.

2. Everything has to go somewhere

The second law (everything must go somewhere) is based on the results of the emergence and development of life on earth, on natural selection in the process of life evolution. It is associated with the biotic (biological) cycle: producers - consumers - decomposers. So, for any organic substance produced by organisms, there is an enzyme in nature that can decompose this substance. In nature, no organic substance will be synthesized if there are no means for its decomposition. In this cycle, continuously, cyclically, but unevenly in time and space, there is a redistribution of matter, energy and information, accompanied by losses.

Contrary to this law, man has created (and continues to create) chemical compounds that, when released into the natural environment, do not decompose, accumulate and pollute it (polyethylene, DDT, etc.). That is, the biosphere does not work on the principle of non-waste, it always accumulates substances that are eliminated from the biotic cycle and form sedimentary rocks. This implies a consequence: absolutely waste-free production is impossible. Therefore, we can only rely on low-waste production. The operation of this law is one of the main causes of the environmental crisis. Huge quantities of matter, such as oil and ores, are extracted from the earth, converted into new compounds, and dispersed into the environment.

In this regard, the development of technologies requires: a) low energy and resource intensity, b) the creation of a production in which the waste of one production is the raw material of another production, c) the organization of a reasonable disposal of inevitable waste. This law warns us about the need for a reasonable transformation of natural systems (the construction of dams, the transfer of river flow, land reclamation, and much more).

3. Nature “knows” best

In the third law (nature “knows” best), Commoner says that, until there is absolutely reliable information about the mechanisms and functions of nature, we, like a person who is unfamiliar with the clock device, but wants to fix it, easily harm natural systems by trying to improve. He calls for extreme caution. The transformation of nature is detrimental economically and dangerous ecologically. Ultimately, conditions unsuitable for life may be created. The existing opinion about the improvement of nature without specifying the ecological criterion of improvement is devoid of any meaning. An illustration of the third "law" of ecology is that the mathematical calculation of the parameters of the biosphere alone requires immeasurably more time than the entire period of our planet's existence as a solid body. (The potentially feasible variety of nature is estimated by numbers with the order from 101000 to 1050 with the computer speed not yet realized - 10 "° operations per second - and the operation of an incredible number (1050) machines, the operation of calculating a one-time problem of a variant of 1050 differences will take 1030 s, or 3x1021 years , which is almost 1012 times longer than the existence of life on Earth.) Nature still “knows” better than us.

It is clear that everyone cannot be ecologists (I am not an ecologist either), but face environmental issues - be it the problems of cleaning leaves, cutting grass, building, garbage, "improvement", public hearings on the development of the settlement, etc. - for everyone. It helps a lot to know the four fundamental laws of environmental science, which were formulated by one of the "fathers" of modern ecology, Barry Commoner:

1. Everything is connected to everything (Everything is connected to everything else)- for all living organisms, including humans, there is one common, unified environment of existence (biosphere).

What affects one affects all; you cannot change or destroy any part of the natural environment and at the same time be sure that we ourselves will not be affected in one way or another. People have many times faced with the fact that the thoughtless destruction (or, conversely, the introduction) of animals and plants, changing the environment, ultimately worsened their own quality of life and health.

2. Everything has to go somewhere(Everything must go somewhere)- in the natural world there is no such thing as "garbage" at all; the natural world is a cycle where nothing disappears, but passes from one form to another.

Fallen leaves and dead grass become fertile soil, from which new plants grow and trees give new foliage.

In order for the natural environment (and we along with it) not to suffer, it is necessary that everything that we call "garbage" return to the cycle of things, and not turn into a "dead weight". For example, in a healthy forest or park, not only fallen leaves, but even fallen trees are very quickly processed and returned to the natural environment, nourishing its new cycles. The same applies to the garbage that a person produces. - he must go somewhere, not lie idle in the garbage heaps and not fly out into the chimney with smoke. Look at the landfill from a different angle - not as mountains of unnecessary garbage, but as mountains of raw materials that literally lie under your feet and can be put back into circulation, to factories, but instead it just lies in the open. Nature tries by all means to avoid "idle" resources - everything should be in action.

3. Nature knows best- unlike human laws, norms and rules (from the laws of aesthetics to all kinds of SNiPs and GOSTs), the laws of nature are objective, they operate regardless of whether we recognize them or not; in addition, the natural world already exists in the form of a system of interconnections between living organisms and the environment.

Therefore, it is necessary to identify the laws of nature and follow - whether it be the maintenance of territories, industry or "improvement" - and not try to impose your own rules on the natural world (which is tantamount to spitting against the wind).

It is necessary to create conditions for natural objects to exist in the way that is most natural for them, and to regulate themselves.

4. You have to pay for everything (There is no such thing as a free lunch, an American proverb, literally "There are no free lunches").

Thoughtless exploitation of the natural world inevitably leads to the fact that useful natural resources turn into useless forms for us. Poaching leads to the fact that only animals and plants that are useless for us remain (survive), uncontrolled felling of trees and mowing leads to soil depletion, washout and scattering of fertile soil; constant dumping of garbage into the water - to the fact that the water cannot be drunk, emissions into the air - to the fact that the air cannot be breathed. We must understand that for all our actions, in view of the objective laws of ecology, the environment "will bill us."

Another statement of this law is that nothing comes out of nowhere. For example, it is foolish to think that if you only remove fallen leaves and mowed grass, cut off branches, then trees, shrubs and grasses will grow as well as before, by themselves - they simply cannot take resources for growth "out of nowhere". ".

It would seem that all these four laws are common truths, but practice shows that people simply do not understand them, which is why they are guided in their actions and decisions by such nonsense as “if you want nature, there is plenty of it outside the city”, “here is a city, not forest, there is no place for nature”, “green zones are reserves for development”, “the main thing is that the yard and the park look neat” and the like.
We must always be ready to repeat and explain the obvious (for ourselves) things, including the following: science just exists in order to provide us with knowledge to make the right decisions.

Improvement of the city and the health of citizens:

the problem of ensuring the ecological safety of the population

City district of Khimki, Moscow region

1. Introduction.

Yablokov's report on the state of the ecology of the Russian Federation

RAS Corresponding Member Alexei Yablokov and Head of the Social Ecology Research Group of the Sociological Institute of the RAS Olga Tsepilova prepared a report on the state of ecology in Russia and delivered it at the St. Petersburg Regional Press Institute.

According to Alexei Yablokov, an alarming ecological situation has developed in Russia. On the one hand, the highest officials of the country do not get tired of repeating the right words about the need to fight for improving the environment. However,

A prominent American ecologist and conservationist Barry Commoner formulated four "laws of ecology", which he successfully applied to explain the current ecological situation. Think carefully about their content.

1. Everything is connected to everything(or "everything affects everything"). This is a very laconic paraphrase of the law of materialistic dialectics about the universal interconnection and interdependence of objects and phenomena in nature and society. F. Engels wrote: “After all, nothing happens in nature in isolation. Each phenomenon affects the other, and vice versa.

This "law" reflects the colossal number of connections between the billions of living beings inhabiting the biosphere and their environment, between the biosphere and society, between the components of various ecosystems, the biosphere and the sun. Unexpected chains of connections are known. Let's give examples. Excessive deforestation causes forests to cause: a decrease in forest cover - an increase in surface runoff - a decrease in groundwater - soil erosion - shallowing and silting of rivers and lakes - a decrease in the area of ​​floodplains - a decrease in the productivity of land, fodder lands - a decrease in livestock productivity - a shortage of food products.

2. Everything has to go somewhere. This is a paraphrase of the law of conservation of matter and energy: nothing disappears without a trace. Once in the environment, the substance (garbage) passes from one form to another, moves from place to place, from one ecosystem to another, from area to area, often concentrated along food chains. Everything that a person throws out into the environment during the production process sooner or later enters the human body through food, air and water, causing numerous diseases, premature aging and death.

4. Nothing comes for free. All good things have to be paid for. The global system is one. A gain in one place is followed by a loss in another. In each case, the ratio of gain and loss will be different, there may be very large deviations in one direction or another. Thus, the flooding of floodplain meadows during the construction of a hydroelectric power station makes it necessary to spend a large amount of energy on the production of fodder on irrigated lands. The immoderate intake of water from rivers during land irrigation reduces the flow of these rivers, causes shallowing and drying up of them, as well as those inland water bodies into which these rivers flow. As a result, desertification of landscapes around shallowed or disappeared water bodies often occurs. Nature is so complex and perfect that "almost every step we take forward brings both benefit and harm."

Thus, the skillful use of the most general laws of philosophy, physics, and ecology makes it possible not only to explain the current ecological situation, but also helps to change and regulate it.

Conversation "How to behave in nature?" (for students in grades 6–7)

Target: evoke a sense of belonging of each student to the state of the environment, nature, an inner need to work on solving its problems.

Guidelines: The room where the conversation is held should be designed accordingly: it can be an exhibition of protected plants and animals listed in the Red Book, herbariums of poisonous plants, an exhibition of indoor plants, colorful posters.

Dear Guys! There is probably no person on Earth who would not be interested in the life of animals, would not admire the beauty of rivers, flowering meadows and would not strive to learn as much as possible about nature. After all, man himself is a part of nature, he must take care of nature, preserve it and increase it. However, in our technological age, millions of people live in an environmentally harmful environment. The Chernobyl tragedy created huge zones of radiation contamination. Water and air contain many toxic substances, especially in large industrial cities. Soils are polluted and destroyed; food products contain chemical compounds harmful to the human body; degradation of the biosphere continues, many species of plants and animals die out.

It is time for every person to think about how to preserve and preserve our nature. To begin with, every student must master environmental knowledge, learn how to behave correctly in nature, know the laws of nature and remember that life is now a universal value. Now let's get acquainted with the rules of behavior in nature:

1. Do not litter in the forest! Know that the paper you left in the forest will only rot in a few years, and broken glass can cause a fire, a plastic bag breaks down within 226 years.

2. Do not tear flowers in large armfuls! This leads to a decrease in their number.

Remember, it takes 7-8 years for a plant to grow from lily of the valley seeds!

3. Don't make noise in the forest! Do not turn on the tape recorder at full power; bumblebees, bees, wasps, beetles and other insects will not be able to take off from the large vibration of the air. Noise also frightens birds and animals.

4. You can't tame wild animals without knowing how to take care of them.

5. Birds - winged protection of forests, gardens, parks. Don't touch the bird's nests, chicks; Birds don't like being disturbed. In one day, a titmouse can destroy more than five hundred insects.

6. Protect anthills, make special fences. The forest cannot live without ants!

7. Do not leave unburned fires in the forest! Remember that one tree can make a million matches, and one match can destroy a million trees.

8. Remember that it is currently forbidden to collect insect collections. Such beautiful butterflies as a dead head, black Apollo, blue sash, admiral and others are included in the Red Book of the Republic of Belarus. Protect them!

9. Remember that the following plants are included in the Red Book of Belarus: white water lily, forest anemone, European bathing suit, small egg-cap, tall primrose, valerian dioecious, rapunzel bell and other species. Study them and protect them, they are on the verge of extinction!

10. Remember poisonous plants: henbane, dope, hemlock, crow's eye, wolf's bast. They must be handled with care!

11. Remember this poem by P. Brovka and think about its content:

Everything is so wounded in the forest,

As after the days of the war.

Here, neither spruce nor pine can be found surviving.

A birch was stabbed with a knife by a live-eater.

It seems to me that from under the bark my tear flows.

From this human callousness

My soul hurts

Under the crippled oak tree, it's not the wind that moans - it's me.

Here the anthill is set on fire

blasphemous hand,

It seems to me that it’s not him, but my house is on fire,

They left, offending beauty, confusing the forest comfort,

Not hearing that all the leaves are shedding tears behind their backs.

In the second part of the conversation, the teacher invites students to get acquainted with the theses of environmental morality and decipher their meaning:

P every person has the right to a favorable living environment;

P nature must be loved and protected, it is our mother and breadwinner;

P even the most advanced technology cannot replace nature;

P violating the coherence and beauty of nature, it is difficult to hope for its full restoration;

P took from nature - compensate three times, cut down a tree - plant three;

P measure seven times and do not do that, the consequences of which for nature you do not know;

P in a sick nature one cannot remain healthy;

P just talking about nature conservation is not enough , need to act;

P do not kill the living;

P don't pick the flowers - the plants need them.

At the end of the conversation, a summary of the significance of nature for each person is summed up.

In the 1970s, biologist and environmentalist Barry Commoner laid out in simple aphorisms the four rules of ecology for which he became widely known. Commoner managed to explain to society the dangers of a frivolous attitude to the environment in popular science language.

The future scientist was born in 1917 in Brooklyn. His father and mother were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. After graduating from the university with a bachelor's degree, in 1938 Commoner received a master's degree, and in 1941 - a doctorate. After World War II, he taught plant physiology at St. Louis University for more than 30 years. In the fifties of the XX century, Barry Commoner wrote several books about the dangers of nuclear testing for the planet's ecosystem. In the 1980s, he moved to New York City, where he became head of the Center for Biology and Natural Systems at City College.

His research during his scientific career became the basis for writing several popular science works on ecology. In two of them, "The Closing Circle" (1974) and "Technology of Profit" (1976), the scientist described four ecological principles. In his laws, Barry Commoner relies on the principle of dynamic equilibrium.

First law

The most obvious illustration of the principle of dynamic balance is the first postulate formulated by Commoner - "Everything is connected with everything."

In the written works, the scientist tried to convey the idea that in the surrounding world all components are connected with each other. If humanity spoils something in one place of the biosphere, then this will certainly affect others. Any impact, even a small one, entails consequences, including negative ones.

This principle illustrates the vast number of connections between living things in an ecosystem and the environment, the biosphere and society, and the components of many systems.

In his work, Commoner relied on the scientific works of his predecessors. In one of his works, to illustrate the first principle, he recounted a story from the life of Charles Darwin. One day villagers came to Darwin for advice. They asked the scientist to tell them how to increase the yield of buckwheat. To which the scientist advised to get more cats: they will destroy the rodents that eat cereals, as a result of which the yield of the latter will increase.

Second law

The second postulate says: "Everything has to go somewhere." It follows from the fundamental law of conservation of matter. In nature, only those substances are synthesized that can subsequently be destroyed in a natural way. In accordance with the first principle, any pollution will return to the person back. This allows us to consider the problem of waste material industry in a new way. The synthesis of new substances by mankind, which cannot be destroyed without harm to the environment, has led to the problem of waste accumulation where they should not be. The same applies to mining: refined oil leads to pollution and environmental degradation.

The second law is based on the principle of redistribution of household waste and non-waste ecological production. When creating new technologies, it should be taken into account that they are less resource-intensive and also use processed products. In addition, it is worth using the most gentle way to dispose of garbage.

third law

The third principle formulated by an American biologist says: "Nature knows best." It is based on the theory of evolution. The organisms and combinations that exist in the modern world are the result of a long process of evolution and natural selection. Of the huge amount of substances, as a result of the selection process, those compounds remained that are most acceptable to earthly conditions and have enzymes that decompose them. Nature, through the competitive struggle of species for existence, left only the strongest organisms resistant to specific climatic conditions.

Active human transformation of the ecological environment (ecocide), biogeocenoses (cenozocide), as well as the extermination of plants and animals (genocide) can lead to

irreversible consequences, as a result of which the world will cease to be suitable for the existence of mankind. Without an accurate knowledge of the functioning of the laws of ecosystems and biocenoses and the consequences of their change, no “improvements” of nature are possible. Random human intervention to solve problems can lead to even more damage. The mass shooting of sparrows in Asia, which, according to residents, harms crops, caused insects to take their place. The latter, having lost their natural enemies, increased their population and caused even more damage to crops. Changes in the ecological chain have led to greater yield reductions.

Fourth Law

The last principle, derived by Commoner, is based on the law of reasonable use of natural resources and says: "Nothing is free" or "Everything has to be paid for." This law combines the previous three. The biosphere, as a comprehensive ecosystem, is a single entity. Victory in one place is followed by defeat in another.

Saving money on protecting the environment turns into a health complication for a person, natural disasters and a decrease in favorable conditions for life. Everything that was obtained from it as a result of human labor must ultimately be reimbursed.

In his laws, Commoner brings to the fore the universal connection of natural processes. The progress of any natural system is possible only with the use of material, energy and information resources of its environment.