OUR ENVIRONMENT CAN BE SAVED.

By Nelson A. Rockefeller '30. Forewordby John W. Gardner. Garden City:Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1970. 176pp. $5.95.

Nelson Rockefeller is no Johnny-come- lately to the cause of conservation and the preservation and improvement of the environment. He has been Governor of New York since 1959. He says that he took office with an inherited conviction that we could have a productive, prosperous society without destroying the wholesomeness of our environment. He knew that a governor must go out and fight for new industry and new jobs but, at the same time, must maintain the difficult balance between economic and technical progress and the conservation of a livable world.

This slender book describes in interesting detail what New York State has done, is doing, and plans to do about the air, the water, the land, the problem of increasing need for electric power, the noise and the fostering of the arts. It demonstrates by specific case histories the political techniques necessary to solve environmental problems, by persuasive legislative leadership and cooperative action with municipalities and industry when possible and by recourse to the courts when necessary.

If, cynically, one might suspect, from the publication date, that this book was a bit of timely publicity in connection with Governor Rockefeller's recent successful campaign for reelection, it remains a convincing record of what can be done to preserve and improve the whole human environment by a skillful political leader who has been in office long enough to develop long-range plans and guide them toward ultimate fruition.

A New York lawyer, recently retired, Mr.Loeb is now a resident of Norwich,Vermont.