*** It is clear that all segments of the world-all soils, waters, woods, mountains, plains, oceans, and ice-covered continents-will be occupied and used by man. Not a single solitary piece of landscape will go untouched in the future and in fact not be used repeatedly for as long as man survives. Everything between soil and sky will be moved about, redistributed and degraded as man continues to exploit the surface of the planet. * * * The population will grow until it reaches some equilibrium level. An alternate ultimate destiny is for an earth of half-starved, depressed billions gasping for air, depleted of eutropic water, struggling to avoid the constant presence of one another and in essence continuing life at a degraded subsistence level limited in numbers not by conscience but by consequence. A third possibility exists which is to maintain a reasonable quality for life by means of population control, rational management of ecosystems, and constructive exploitation of resources (p. 174). *** The issue of high population densities as a source of growing stresses in our society, with profound effects on health and safety, raised a number of comments. Senator Henry Jackson observed that the apparent cause-and-effect relation of congestion and violence should be a consideration in arriving at any decisions concerning what constitutes an optimum population density. Dr. Paul Weiss submitted the following caveat: A stress free environment offering maximum comfort and minimum challenge is not only not optimal but is detrimental. To be exposed to moderate stress is a means of keeping the human faculty for adapting to stress *** lacking the opportunity for such exercise, man loses that faculty and becomes a potential victim of any unforseen, but inevitable, stressful occurrences. The optimum environment consists of a broad band of conditions bounded by an upper limit far short of the stress limit and by a lower limit considerably above the ideal zone of zero stress. Within those margins of reasonable safety or tolerance, man must navigate his own responsibility (p. 224). Senator Clifford Hanson suggested that the Federal Government might well consider programs which would provide incentives and opportunities leading to a wider and more balanced dispersal of our people. Assistant Secretary John Baker (USDA) agreed and proposed the creation of new community centers as a matter of national environmental policy. Secretary Weaver commented that any Government policy which has to do with such dispersal must be based on the democratic principle of free choice including for all of our people the alternatives of living in existing large population centers, suburbia, or new towns. B. Broadening the Scope of Cost Accounting Narrow utilitarian views governing the use of environmental resources were cited as the root of many conflicts and a major barrier to sound environmental management. 20-218-68-2 Dr. DONALD HORNIG. In my view national policy must recognize the very wide array of appropriate and necessary uses of air and water and land. It would recognize, too, the existence of a number of beneficial but noncompatible uses, and make provision for resolving these conflicts. It should result in an environment that is safe, healthful, and attractive and that is economically and biologically productive, yet that provides for sufficient variety to meet the differing requirements and tests of man (p. 31). Congressman Emilio Q. Daddario questioned whether the industrial objective of immediate profit can be made compatible with longterm environmental management objectives. Congressman Joseph Karth observed that the self-interests of some organizations do not coincide with the public interest. Secretary Wilbur Cohen (DHEW) commented that environmental controls may be costly in the short run, but in the long run they are a bargain both for industry and the public it serves: "What we are really seeking is an enlightened self-interest that industry and commerce have often exhibited." Dr. Lynton K. Caldwell contended that the social costs of environmental management should not be an undue burden on the business community if all competitors carry it alike: Scientific knowledge and rising levels of amenity standards have added to public expectation that protection against environmental change will be built into the products and production costs of manufacturers (p. 99). The point at which compromise among conflicting uses is reached furnishes one test of adequacy of policy. If you take a black and white approach, you are never going to resolve it. You have a lot of hostility and you don't represent the public constructively (p. 63). C. The Role of Ecology Ecologists dedicated to the study of man-environment relationships were urged to show a greater willingness to engage with industry in what was termed "ecological engineering." However, Dr. Dillon Ripley argued that this subject involves a kind of ecological study which is still in the formative stage: I think it may take a generation perhaps to achieve even the beginnings of the kind of training, the kind of production of original minds and talents that will be able to perform the sorts of studies which we stress the urgency of (p. 75). By contrast, several participants contended that the science of ecology has already established a number of basic principles, or propositions, which could guide the attitudes and actions of both industry and government toward the environment. The following examples are paraphrased from submissions by Dr. Paul Weiss: (i) Organic nature is such a complex, dynamic, and interacting, balanced and interrelated system that change in one component entails change in the rest of the system. Isolated analytical study of separate components cannot yield desired insight. To find solutions to separate problems (ii) The significance or insignificance of mixtures of (iii) Similarly, the concept of single, rigid, linear cause-toeffect chains of natural events has given rise to organically unreal and practically untenable conclusions. More attention should be given to the network type of causal relations in an integrated system that establishes a multiplicity of alternative routes to such a goal of optimizing the development of environmental resources. Commenting on the complexity of the total systems approach, Mr. Don Price stated: I am left with the vaguely uneasy feeling that if we see the continuous complex here as one set of interconnecting realities that have to be understood as a total system, we may be broadening our interest so much that it's impossible to act on it at all (p. 64). Dr. HORNIG. It is a great thing to talk about systems analysis, but the trouble with that is that you have to put in some facts. And, if you do the analysis when the facts aren't available, you are in trouble. * * * it needs a basis in sound research that understands, that gives us clear understanding of what the nature of these long-term liabilities are (p. 51). D. Redirecting Research Activities In addition to increased ecological research, the colloquium touched on the need for the entire scientific community to direct a greater share of its total effort to long-term environmental problems. Mr. Laurance Rockefeller argued that we have not yet fully harnessed this Nation's vast technological talent in the effort for a better environment. Dr. Walter Orr Roberts pointed out that cross-disciplinary research on environmental problems offers the utmost challenge from the intellectual standpoint, and also cited the following as an example of neglected research: Only modest efforts have been made to mount a sustained research program on the medical effects involved in the slowly developing health impairments, like aging, that result from low-level but long-persistent alterations of the atmospheric environment. Subtle alterations of the chemical constitution of the atmosphere, through pollutants added in the form of trace gases, liquids, or solids, result from industrial activity or urbanization. This is an area of Future values are difficult to judge, particularly when they include non-economic aspects of environmental quality. Social science research and ecology were singled out for increased support. Dr. HORNIG. One of the central problems in weighing the future against the present is that we don't know about the future. The reason we can't muster political forces and the reason we can't make decisions is that for the most part the information is not there (p. 51). The establishment of criteria for judgment is a primary task of environment management. Secretary WEAVER. There are too many things we do not know, basic matters such as how we define quality in the urban environment, how we measure it, and how we strike a balance among competing values (p. 19). Mr. PRICE. There has been a lot of talk lately about social indicators out of a conviction that narrow economic statistical consideration are not an adequate guide to economic policy, and here we are talking about a field in which it is not enough to know about the chemical industry and the biology (p. 67). Technology was seen to be the savior as well as the villain in many environmental quality problems. Mr. PRICE. There is a tactic or an approach which has received a good bit of attention recently in technological and scientific literature. Mr. Weinberg, I think, called it the technological fix (p. 66). It is obviously true that the development of the specific techniques has proved to be not only the basis of our accumulation of wealth which now makes it possible for us to ask these more sophisticated questions about our environment, to have very much higher standards of environmental control to insist on (p. 68). E. International Aspects of Environmental Alteration The urgent necessity of taking into account major environmental influences of foreign economic assistance and other international developments was underscored by Mr. Russell Train. Dr. Ivan Bennett commented that the Federal Government is now participating, through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in a series of cooperative programs that will encourage the exchange of environmental information. Senator Henry Jackson recalled President Johnson's remarks at Glassboro State College on June 4 in which he said: Scientists from this country and the Soviet Union and from 50 other countries have already begun an international biological program to enrich our understanding of man and his environment. I propose that we make this effort a permanent concern of our nations (p. 83). Dr. Roberts questioned whether these and similar ongoing cooperative efforts were fully adequate, and proposed that a broader international scheme of cooperative "bench mark" observations be made. As an example he described the neglected area of stratospheric contamination: It is now very difficult for us to say anything quantitative or certain about the degree to which the atmosphere above New York City, or Zurich, Switzerland, or the rural regions of the United States, Europe, and Siberia has been changing in respect to the burden of liquid or solid wastes that jet aircraft carry. I have seen many occasions when the skies over my home city of Boulder, Colo., are crisscrossed with expanding jet airplane contrails. Often these grow, in hours, to a general cirrus cover that blankets the entire sky. On these days it is eminently clear that the jet exhausts are stimulating the formation of a cloud deck. Theory suggests that these clouds, in turn, almost certainly modify the strength of incoming sunlight, and the degree to which outgoing infrared radiation is permitted to escape from the earth to outer space. No one can say for sure, today, to what degree, if any, this alters the weather (p. 217). Dr. Ripley summarized the feeling of the colloquium: * * * to speak about environmental quality without at least referring to the fact of the international components and consequences of even our activity as Americans and considering our own acreage and our own problems with the environment, appears to me to be somewhat shortsighted (p. 74). Senator Edmund Muskie argued that existing conservation policies deal too heavily with the permitted levels of resource exploitation at the expense of the equally important objective of enhancing these same resources. To overcome this difficulty, Mr. Don Price suggested that countervailing policies might be established which would encourage and even make it profitable for private developers not to pollute, but actually upgrade the quality of our environment through the development of new resource-processing methods. Assistant Secretary Lee mentioned that in the public health area a great deal of consideration has been devoted to the subtle health effects of many pollutants, but that the management problem of setting standards is made all the more difficult by the constantly changing character of chemicals being added to the environment. As part of the standard setting process, he proposed that it may eventually be necessary to require industries *** to demonstrate a positive beneficial effect, or an enhancement of the environment as suggested by Senator Muskie, rather than just an absence of deleterious effect (p. 71). Dr. Harvey Brooks argued that we could easily move too far and * * * place a presumption so much against new technology that in fact the disincentives to innovation would create |