Progress Requires Commitment to Ethics

The adept identification of the ethical pathways lying at hand in the editorial ``Environmental Legacy,'' Dec. 1, deserves commendation. The fervor that environmental issues have created in our generation continues to propel thought and science in previously uncharted directions. The scope of humanity's current ability to make a difference on our earth and in each other's lives is without a comparable historical precedent.

The seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-graders who fill my days as a history and ethics teacher captivate me with their perception of social issues at hand; yet they understandably struggle in the nebulous world of morals, ethics, and values. Your tying together of a vital issue of the day, whether one identifies with it or not, supports the prime motivation each of us ought to perceive. These issues defining our time are not so much biological or political questions, but questions of motives and decisions - questions whose only resolution will come in the moral, ethical, and spiritual development of our scientists, activists, and politicians.

Until we all face the ethical issues at hand, solutions for the physical issues will always remain elusive. Steve Chitwood, Los Angeles

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