ABSTRACT
The environmental crisis expresses the relation between science and society in a special way: it illustrates the overriding importance of action. Environmental quality is an aspect of political economy, requiring, for example, national, democratically determined, industrial and agricultural policies. In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards. Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline—which prevented it from entering the environment. The wave of new productive enterprises would provide opportunities to remedy the unjust distribution of environmental hazards among economic classes and racial and ethnic communities. Since for some time the required production facilities—for example, solar energy equipment—would need to be imported, developing countries are potentially a huge market for the new environmentally benign products.
