For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time. The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are cr… - Rachel Carson

For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time.

If we have been slow to develop the general concepts of ecology and conservation, we have been even more tardy in recognizing the facts of the ecology and conservation of man himself. We may hope that this will be the next major phase in the development of biology. Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces.

It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.

Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species — man — acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world.