Bulletin Special Supplement Nov 1974

Eng l i sh Ve r s i on o f Dr. YANG C h i ng Ka n ' s A d d r e ss I t is a great privilege to share high honors w i t h M r . J. S. Lee, the Ho n. P. C. Woo and D r . C. T . Yu ng in receiving the Honorary Degree f r om T h e Chinese University of Ho ng Kong, and speaking for mysel f and on their behalf, we are deeply grateful. Vice-Chancellor Dr. C. M. L i asked me to speak on urbanization and ecological balance. For popular interest, I made a slight change of the topic and w i ll speak on the great environmental pollution brought on by th e industrial civilization. Since I am unfamiliar w i th the facts of Hong Kong, I w i ll speak about the Un i t ed States as an illustration of the nature of the problem. T h e Un i t ed States in the 1970's is at a high level of industrialization. Economically it is characterized by mass production and mass consumption ， pursuing day and night an ever higher G NP and annual rate s of economic growth. A t a glance, it presents a scene of endless luxury and affluence. T h is is a dream eagerly pursued by the developing countries of the t h i rd world. But ther e has always been a distance between dream and reality, for ， as we recall from Chinese poetry, even fairyland suffers f r o m the defect of the monotony of perfection. Thus, this age of mass production and mass consumption has also brought a new disaster of our age: the great pollution of water, land, and air, knocking the ecosphere of the earth ou t of balance. Short of timely remedy, Jay W . Forrester warned that in a few decades all the industrial countries w i ll be unfit for healthy human habitation. Jacques Cousteau, the we l l - k nown marin e scientist, said that in another eighteen years ( f r om 1974) all living matters of the ocean w i ll die . Bo th men are renowned scientists and their statements were not made merely to frighten an already worried world. L et us first consider air pollution. One mo r n i ng several years ago I went up to the 42nd floor of the F o rd Building in New Yo rk City, and looking d own f r om the w i n d ow I saw a sea of white fog rushin g up f r om the ground, obliterating pedestrians and vehicles and later the low buildings, and finally it rose past the 42nd floor and on upwards. Even on the 42nd floor I felt I sank into a cauldron of white foam. T h is was my first personal experience of the mu ch reputed air pollution f r om heat inversion. I t was a frightening experience. T h e typical example of air pollution i s not N ew York ， but Los Angeles of California. Affected by air pollution, 700,000 of the residents, 10 per cent of the metropolitan population of that city, suffered varying degrees of lung and pulmonary disease. As far back as 1968, the medical school o f U C L A issued warnings that air pollution had seriously threatened the health of the residents in most areas of that city during much of the year, and advised all those who had no need to remain in Los Angeles to leave the city. I come f r om the steel industry center of Pittsburgh, and I well remember that in the 1940's ， before the cleaning up of the air, the entire city was buried in a thick yellow fog because of pollution f r om the steel industry. I n those days, street lights were turned on in the d own t own area during the daytime for one thousand hours each year, almost one-fourth of the daylight hours of a year. T h e automobile industry center of Detroit, Michigan, was so affected by air pollution in terms of human health and property damages that the loss came to be o n the average of $20,000 per capita annually. One forecast has -9-