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It's no secret that Americans have been
spending the earth's reserves of
non-renewable resources at about the same
rate of the proverbial prodigal son and taking
little thought for the future except as it relates
to an increase in the gross national product.
Blessed by nature with an abundance of
productive land, clean water, fresh air,
minerals, and energy, we have seen little need
to save for the future. Our motto for the most
part seems to have been "spend, spend,
spend" in the spirit of "easy come, easy go."
The time has come for us to take a long,
hard look at our spendthrift ways. The time has
come for us to become responsible caretakers
of our resources and life support systems and
to stop being wastrels of these precious
resources on our planet.
The data received from recent space probes
are convincing evidence that movement to
other planets will not be one of our options for
some time to come, if ever. The earth is not a
throw-away commodity. We can't just discard
it when, like locusts, we've devoured its
sustenance and then move on to another land
of abundance. We have to learn to live with it
and to care for it with all the intelligence
available.
If we don't, we stand in peril of becoming an
endangered species, destroyed by our own
inability to heed the signs of resource depletion
caused by our energy intensive economy.
Past erroneous conclusions that resources
are without limit and need no conservation
have produced an economy marked by low
unit costs for resources relative to the cost of
labor.
Today politicians hesitate to permit prices to
increase sharply in the interests of
conservation because there is no historical
precedent for high resource prices.
We have been led to believe that it doesn't
really matter if we run out of resources because
there is always a substitute. This is a basis for
the widespread and unshakable belief that
atomic energy will arrive and provide salvation
in the nick of time.
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In the past, Americans have been successful
in developing new sources of energy when old
sources were no longer capable of meeting
demand. We have made the transition from
wood and whale oil, to coal, to oil, to gas. But
we seem to be unaware of the enormous time
that has been required to get new technologies
working. It behooves us to reflect that it has
always taken from 40 to 60 years to get a new
source of energy to the point where it could
supply 10 percent of the national energy
needs.
Our highly industrialized energy consuming
economy generates mind-boggling quantities
of toxic waste products which are poured daily
into the air and water and on the land, creating
definite health hazards for all of our citizens.
Because of the tremendous demand for
energy, America's Midwestern breadbasket
stands in peril of having its natural fertility
ruined by the strip mining of coal reserves
under it. Shall we trade our finest food
producing land for a quick energy binge?
Our experiences in the nineteenth century
generated in us an excessive faith in our
"Yankee ingenuity" which never encountered
an insoluble problem in the past because of
our superabundance of resources. As a result,
we are overreliant on what we believe we can
accomplish and naively count on nuclear
energy, solar energy, wind or gravitational
fields to produce another miracle for us.
Other countries have the same ingenuity as
ours, but, due to lack of resources, they have
developed more efficient energy use. This
means train and buses instead of cars as well as
compact cities and different diets. Other
nations have tended to equate high
technology with great efficiency of resource
use, while we have used energy to solve all our
problems, always deluding ourselves that high
energy use means high technology.
Advertising and our natural instincts have
led us to use up much of our resources. We
never worried much about the possible
consequences of market saturation because
we came to believe that our wants were
insatiable. Our economy is being profoundly
affected by the simultaneous satisfaction of a
wide variety of wants. A glut of cars, planes,
luxury resort hotels, upperclass housing, and
electronic goods will slow economic growth,
even without an oil embargo.
However, our most serious problem is the
selection of an erroneous set of national goals,
which were based on our luck in the
nineteenth century and which we have
advertised with great vigor internationally. We
are committed to maximizing gross national
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product by maximizing the flow of matter and
energy through the economic system rather
than being concerned with the quality of life.
Our current national goals maximize
resource depletion, increase pollution, reduce
life expectancy, destroy the centers of cities,
and give us an unhealthy, slow and
inconvenient form of travel.
By shifting our goals to maximize the quality
of life, we could reduce resource depletion and
pollution and have a higher life expectancy,
more pleasure (including culture,
entertainment, and less haste), and a faster,
more convenient, transportation system less
detrimental to health.
If we don't change we are in real danger of
running out of everything while still expecting
substitutes for soon-to-be depleted resources
to show up, as they did many times before.
The energy crisis should not be viewed as a
problem but as an opportunity. We can exploit
this opportunity in two ways: by converting to
more efficient use of resources and by shifting
a higher portion of the labor force from
manufacturing and transportation into service
occupations.
In comparison with life in other nations, we
Americans have lived luxuriously for two
centuries off the energy-rich land, like a
spoiled child off wealthy parents. Now, we are
being forced by crises into a period of maturity
and to an awareness of the consequences of
high energy consumption.
Produced by US Environmental Protection Agency
Graphic Arts Branch
Region V
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comparison
ve lived luxuriously for
o centuries off the energy
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