The Closing Circle is a classic and sobering examination of the root causes of climate change, potential solutions (a window of opportunity which is closing or possibly closed), and a clarion call to action. Written by Barry Commoner and originally released in 1971, this reformat and re-release from Dover has 352 pages and will be available in paperback format. Other editions available in other formats.

This is a sobering retrospective look at human induced climate change and the dystopian course our society has been hurtling along. Almost every one of the predictions he made and meticulously built up (in 1971) have come true (as bad as or worse than predicted). The book is layman accessible, the author has a clear and readable style which connect the lines and show the undeniable science based conclusions which are playing out in our world today. I found it very interesting that the author didn't just predicate the climate and ecology problem on people/population, but also shows the direct connections between greed and exploitation of uncontrolled capitalist systems as a primary driving force of the ecological crises facing us. His emphasis on compassionate and fair economic systems make so much sense.

This is an important book, and Dover's decision to re-release this book and others, many of which were mostly forgotten for a generation (or more) does them credit and is to our benefit. This book belongs beside Muir, Carson, Colbert and others. I was unfamiliar with Commoner's work prior to this.

Five stars.

The insane argument over the environment seems to stem from the thought this is somehow a new fad and not established science. The timely reissue of Barry Commoner's The Closing Circle (1971) puts the lie to that nonsense. Reading it today is stunning. Commoner carefully proves his cases in meticulous scientific fashion. He researches for facts, working around obstacles. His analyses are prescient. His worries have borne fruit. Very little has changed in the intervening 50 years. Mostly, he was right and it has gotten far worse.

For Commoner, the circle of life is a network where everything is useful (if not essential) to something else. Compare this to Man's way, he says, where machine A makes object B endlessly, and when object B's usefulness is at end, he throws it away. The endless circle becomes a (manmade) linear event. That conflicts with the global model. It is simply wrong.

The results are quite obvious. Already by the early 70s, feedlots produced more waste than all US municipalities combined. And failed to deal with it. And in countless ways, technology was busy adding complexity to life. And this was long before Facebook and Google, consuming more electricity than many countries, producing a surveillance society for all.

His arguments go as far as economics and philosophy. Capitalism encourages any innovation to be implemented, whether it is beneficial or not. If it can be invented and manufactured, it will be. This approach negates the value of social goods in favor of capital goods. Social goods like clean water, places to dump waste chemicals, raw metals in the ground and cheap fuels to transport products anywhere, are never accounted for in their production. They are assumed to be free for any entrepreneur to consume for himself. But for capitalists to destroy social goods for their personal profit again takes Man out of the ecology network, placing him above it all. Commoner calls it suicidal.

Complexity is a point he keeps coming back to. Man has abandoned the natural for the complex. Simple cotton has been replaced by petroleum-based manmade fibres, for example, that don't require textile skills. They require giant factories, lots of water and electricity, and shipping between factories globally. Real food has been supplanted by manufactured processed foods. Commoner cites an early example: the non-returnable soda or beer bottle. This one change caused the manufacture of glass to skyrocket. So with non-rubber tires, plastic cloth, and everything else that used to be sane. Each so-called improvement caused new industries to emerge, consuming vast quantities of natural resources to produce what was already sufficiently supplied - by natural sources. The smartphone is only just the latest in a long line of complex solutions that scour the earth for rare metals and minerals, employ slave labor, and further complicate the lives of consumers.

He says there are four basic rules of ecology:
1. Everything is connected to everything else.
2. Everything must go somewhere.
3. Nature knows best.
4. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
This how the world works, even if Man declines to participate. When the systems clash, Nature takes a beating, but Man will lose the war.

Commoner was wrong about a few things. He assumed things would steadily worsen in all cases. Every body of water would become a Lake Erie, unable to sustain life, becoming a stinking mess that would catch fire from time to time. He did not count on activists, pressuring government to stop the madness. So there have been some spectacular turnabouts. Unfortunately, the current federal administration is working to roll back all that progress and return the country to the early 1960s.

Commoner could not have been expected to foresee things like gigantic plastic depots in the center of the oceans, microplastics infiltrating every living thing, or trash compacters - $200 marvels that turn ten pounds of trash into ten pounds of trash. On the other hand, he learned smog like no one else before. The sources, the processes, the results and the unintended consequences, as well as the political inability to deal with it are all documented here. Commoner nailed it 50 years ago.

The way forward involves a compete mindset change: "To resolve the environmental crisis, we shall need to forego, at last, the luxury of tolerating poverty, racial discrimination, and war. [...] Now that the bill for the environmental debt has been presented, our options have been reduced to two: either the rational, social organization of the use and distribution of the earth's resources, or a new barbarism." The world desperately needs a new Barry Commoner right now.

Kudos and thanks to Dover Books once again. They have made a business of reissuing important books that have mostly, if not totally, been forgotten, and put them in bookstores at accessible prices. Their tastes are impeccable.

David Wineberg