Question: Do you have a program for ecology, because there is also the problem of natural resources that we are expending?

LaRouche: We should throw the word "ecology" away. It's an insane word, because of the way it's been used. Go to Vernadsky, Vladimir Vernadsky, who is the author of what's become known as the biosphere and the Noösphere. He was a Russian scientist, partly trained in France, but also trained by the famous Mendeleyev, and he developed the field geobiochemistry, by doing research work in physical chemistry and looking at geological and living processes as a part of the question of physical chemistry. He divided the evidence of physical chemistry, or geobiochemistry, into the following categories. First, those physical processes which we know do not involve life, non-living processes. We can define this experimentally. Secondly, those processes which occur only as physical processes, or physical effects of processes only in the presence of action by living processes. Thirdly, those forms of activities which are not otherwise found among living processes, or abiotic processes, which represent the human mind's discovery and application of physical principles which transform the world, which produce new physical effects. This is what he called the noösphere.

What we have to do is recognize that ecology is insane. The relationship is that just as living processes have transformed this planet, by virtue of what we call the biosphere -- for example, the oceans and the atmosphere were created by living processes. They were not created "naturally," in the sense of physical processes otherwise. The fossil area -- most of the minerals we use are located in fossils, which are the product of life. Air is a fossil of living processes, the oceans, water is a fossil of living processes, produced by living processes. Man comes in on top of this and changes everything, makes the deserts bloom and so forth. So man is now changing the planet, for the better, just as living processes improved the planet, so man by acting on the biosphere improves the planet.

Instead of ecology, we have to say what do we do to improve the planet for human benefit. For example, there's a transmission of certain minerals from the inner part of the planet into the fossil area of the planet, into parts of the biosphere. Many of the minerals we use we mine from that area. The minerals we use are concentrated as fossils of living processes in certain areas, and that's where we go to get concentrations of the minerals we usually mine. So therefore, we find some cases where we are using up certain minerals we find in the biosphere more rapidly than such minerals are being replaced in the biosphere from below. So therefore, we have to find a way of managing this process. We have to manage the atmosphere. We have to manage the oceans, the deserts, for the purposes of benefits to mankind, but also responsible gardening of the planet in the same way that a farmer maintains a farm area for future crops and improvement of those crops. So we need a science of the noösphere: man's responsible management, and development, and improvement of the planet for future human life, as oppose to the idea that nature is something we're robbing. We're not robbing nature. We are part of nature. We are greater than the rest of nature. And, as the greater authority over nature, we have to manage nature so that it's more fertile, more productive than it was before. So we throw ecology out the window as a kind of strange pagan religious cult, which we cannot afford.

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