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Europc's environmenta1 cns1s. It is a
crisis that spans national bordees.
The Rhine, pure at its glacial source,
rises in Switzerland. Halfway on its
course to the sea it has accumulated
24,000 "undesirable organisms" per
cubic ccntimeter.
By the time it courscs through thc
industrial heartland of Gerrnany and
finally empties into the North Sea
through the Netherlands, the Rhinc has
picked up the burden of a dozen addi–
tional major cities, plus the wastcs of
numcrous tributaries. Its germ tally
amounts to a phenomenal 2,000,000
per cubic centimeter!
littlc wonder the Rhine is called "the
scwer of Europe." And thc microbe
count, of course, says nothing
o(
the
abundant array of industrial wastcs and
toxic chemicals the river transports, or
of the occ<..sional chemical spill that can
kili millions of fish.
Such an accidental spill killed an
cstimatcd 40 million fish along a 250·
milc stretch of the Rhine Jast summer.
"Rivcrs of air' ' - prevailing air cur–
rcnts -
also are intcroationn lizing
Europe's contamination. The problcm
Ambouoclor
Col/ego
Photo
One wash that won't get "whiter than white." Steelworks town of Port Talbot
in South Wales. Quality of urban life is declining rapidly throughout Europe.
was dramatized a year ago wben "black
snow," actually gn:yish snow witb black
spots, fell on eastern Norway and west–
ern Sweden. Swedish scientists con–
duded the airborne pollutants had
wafted in from Wcsl Germany's Ruhr
district.
It was against the background of
these and similar ex,1mples that thc
European Conservation Conference was
held.
European Conservation Year
The conference was organized by the
Council of Europe, thc leading non–
political consultativc organization in
Europe. Thc asscmbly, designed to
stress the urgcnt nced for European
cooperation on cnvironmcntal issues,
kicked off the Council's "European
Conservation Year."
Participating werc Princc Philip of
Britain, Pnnce Bcrnhard of the Nether–
lands, and Princ<: Albert of liege
(brother of King Baudoum of Belgium),
along with about 350 government
cxperts, parliamentarians, conservation–
ists, educators, and industrialists.
Besides the Council of Europe mcm–
ber states•, several other European states
together with delegates from the United
$tates and Canada aod 60 internat10nal
organizat10ns wcre in attendance.
In thcir speeches the three mcrnbers
of royalty dcarly traced Europc's envi–
ronmcntal crisis to three factors
population, urbanization and indus–
trialization. And bebind these
sec–
ondary causes, they noted, lay the
primary causes of human greed, the
boundlcss appetite of affluent Europeans
for more and more material goods, and,
as Princc Albert stated it, man's brcak–
ing of lhe " immutable laws" which
govcrn the earth and all life upon it .
(See accompanying excerpts from thc
specchcs of Prince Philip and Princc
Albert.)
This rcporter noted that royalty,
bcing above politics, can and do spcak
li\fembers: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Den–
m<trk,
Feder~l
Republic of Germany, Fr:tncc,
Jcelafld,
1rd3nd,
lral y,
Luxembourg, i\f:tlta,
Nc:tht•rtamls,
Nonvay, Sweden,
Swit¿erbnd,
Turk(•y, Unitcd Kingdom.