World News and Trends: Cousteau's environmental warnings

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Cousteau's environmental warnings

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He had just completed a 400-page autobiography in whose pages he warned that environmentally speaking "our survival is only a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years." This long-time nurturer of the natural world wrote that "unrenewable resources are being squandered. Waste is building up, goods are vanishing while rubbish thrives."

Mr. Cousteau minced no words in his criticisms of politicians, scientists and national leaders: "With their pesticides and their pollution, their toxic discharges and the certainty of mutual destruction . . . , scientific experts have hidden the harsh reality: They will decide whether we live or die."

Over the past generation we have seen too many men of Cousteau's stature fade from the world scene. In Isaiah 3, God said He would take away "the mighty man and the man of war, the judge and the prophet, and the diviner and the elder; the captain of fifty and the honorable man, the counselor and the skillful artisan, and the expert enchanter" (verses 2-3). And in their place? "I will give children to be their princes [rulers] and babes shall rule over them" (verse 4).

But why would God do this? He would allow these things to happen to apportion punishment for national sins (some of which are described in these pages), particularly of those nations that have most successfully spread Bibles around the world and therefore should know better. (News sources: The Times; The Man, the Octopus and the Orchid [Mr. Cousteau's autobiography].)