ONE OF THE MAJOR problems facing environmentalists and anyone else determined to save the earth from its mutinously lethal two-legged inhabitants is that values have changed so sharply. A society that believed for more than a century in its right to information now believes it has a right to entertainment; and for worry-free escapism, tales of a ravaged ecology are just not in it with "The Simpsons" or even Scott Turow`s latest best seller. In fact, even those who have subscribed to environmental gloom and doom from the beginning, and who continue to fill their blue boxes conscientiously, are beginning to ask if there`s no good news about anything. The short answer, according to both It`s a Matter of Survival and Silent Earth, is that there is very little. The only good news these days appears to be in the eyes of growth-oriented economists and a few optimistic scientists subverted by industry. After a relentless 23 I-page litany of disaster, Anita Gordon and David Suzuki pull themselves together long enough to suggest that there is still hope, that in the past we`ve been capable of rapid transformation. And they cite what happened after Pearl Harbor as an example: "Women left their homes to build aircraft," they write, car factories began turning out tanks, and people adopted a spirit of sacrifice and cooperation to meet the challenge. Paul Ehrlich says we have to believe that what we face now is worse than a million Pearl Harbors, all happening at once. But 1 couldn`t help remembering that the original Pearl Harbor occurred in 1941, before the world was mesmerized by television. And it also occurred to me that just three years earlier, the United States, even then mesmerized by Life magazine and radio`s "Amos `n` Andy," had ignored Hitler`s Anschluss into Austria completely. The United States remained unmoved even when the Nazis grabbed the Sudetenland, then Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, and Norway, and finally sent their armour rumbling through the Netherlands, France and Belgium. So I am not optimistic about an alert and aware populace exploding into selfless action. In fact I find it difficult to imagine what it would take for the present generation of North Americans to shut off their TVs, get off their rear ends, retire their automobiles, and begin to make do with less. I am not holding my breath for baby boomers to start belttightening to meet a threat they only half believe in. And despite their determined optimism, I don`t think Gordon and Suzuki are either. David Israelson is slightly more cheerful, and he has the advantage of being a relatively fresh voice from the environmental front lines. It isn`t until page 226 of Silent Earth, however, that he finds much to pin his hopes on. Chapter 13 is entitled "Success Stories," and Israelson leads off with the battle waged against atmospheric pollution here and in the United States by the single-minded activists who run the Canadian Coalition on Acid Rain. Preserving British Columbia`s South Moresby area as a national park is cited as another success story. He goes on to make the point that "some of the most notable environmental successes today are being scored not by activists, but by their traditional adversaries - bureaucrats and companies." Israelson suggests it was the oftenmaligned U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that laid the foundation for a Chesapeake Bay clean-up plan that may one day restore the blighted estuary to reasonable ecological health. Similarly, he says, it is James Lents, an official with the South Coast Air Quality Management District, not Jane Fonda, who is leading the fight against Los Angeles smog. In this country as well, he has more faith in the bureaucrats than the politicians; but he concludes that even the politicians are beginning to listen, and dares to believe that "we`re going to overcome the problem and live.` I think Gordon and Suzuki, on the other hand, have pretty well concluded that we`re going to have to go on a war footing to do it; and that we`re going to have to begin with that gleaming symbol of North American ease and consumerism, the car. "The automobile," they tell us flatly, is proving itself to be incompatible with human survival and the well-being of the planet. It destroys our quality of life, the air we breathe, our crops and our trees with toxic emissions. It destroys the ozone layer. It is responsible for the paving over of our cropland and wilderness. Every time we climb into a car and put our foot on the gas, were jeopardizing our family`s future. Alarming words, perhaps, but none too strong for this poisonous final decade of the 20th century. Realistically, however, the only way we`re going to stop this madness is if we get political leaders brave and tough enough to force the issue. In the end, we will have to be legislated out of our automobiles, and neither of these otherwise admirable books faces that issue squarely, or suggests specific environmental regulations that might improve things. Time is growing short, for, as the former Greenpeace president, Robert Hunter, once put it: "If environmentalism is just a fad, then it`s the last one."