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PROBLEMS
PERCEIVED
AS RESOLVABLE:
By Technological
and Legal Approaches
By Management
and Incentives
Approaches
Only By
Whole-System
Change
INTERRELATED PROBLEM AREAS
PHYSICAL
ENVIRONMENT
e.g.
Stack Gas
Scrubbers,
Air Pollution
Regulations
e.g.
Effluent
Taxes,
Land Use
Policies
SOCIAL
ENVIRONMENT
e.g.
Desegregation
Regulations,
Street Lighting
for Safe Streets
e.g.
Social
Programs
to Reduce
Crime
FOOD
e.g.
Green
Revolution
e.g.
Farm
Subsidies
ENERGY
e.g.
Breeder
Reactors,
Higher
Efficiency
Engines
e.g.
Energy Tax
DISTRIBUTION,
EQUITY
e.g.
Direct Aid to
Less Developed
Countries
e.g.
Industrialization
Assistance to
Less Developed
Countries
RESOURCE
DEPLETION
e.g.
Law to Prohibit
Throwaway
Containers
e.g.
Economic
Incentives
to Reclaim
Materials
e.g. Modifying Fundamental Characteristics
of the Industrial Production System;
Redistributing Population and Industry
to Reduce Transportation Needs
FIGURE 2 CONTRASTING PROBLEM PERCEPTIONS
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biotic patterns. Examples are integrated industrial processes and urban
sewage systems that return organic waste to the land.
In this systemic view of societal problems a number of intermediate
objectives could be set to reduce environmental impact through:
• Selection among alternative materials, processes, and products
on the basis of low environmental impact as well as economic
cost
• Changing extraction processes
• Changing transportation needs
• Changing resource processing
• Changing materials usage in fabricating and packaging
• Improving durability and repalrability of products
• Increasing resource reclamability.
To attain these intermediate objectives would require in most cases a
combination of a strong environmental ethic and altered incentive struc-
tures, since desirable changes from an environmental standpoint would
not necessarily be those that would increase return on investment or
market share.
Longer range objectives—extending over more than a decade—are
even more difficult to achieve through planned intervention. Examples
would be adjusting economic and other incentives to promote redistribu-
tion of population and industry, and to foster land use planning to
reduce transportation needs. Another example might involve
de-industrializing food production to reduce agricultural energy de-
mand, transportation, packaging, and processing energy. Research needs
for long range programs are great, since little is known about what spe-
cific system changes would be desirable, and how they might be brought
about. Such needs can best be met by research programs that are indi-
vidually low-cost and high-risk (of significant results) in contrast to
the high-cost low-risk research programs that are normally supported.
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Bases for Selecting High-Priority Research
From the various symposium discussions, as well as the arguments
above, emerged a number of proposed high priority research areas. The
most important of these are:
• Research on emergent critical problems, especially those involv-
ing potentially global and irreversible impacts
• Research to improve ability to anticipate critical problems
• Research to resolve critical uncertainties of a substantive
nature
• Research to resolve critical uncertainties of an interpretive
nature (e.g., whether the society is entering a period of rela-
tively fundamental transformations)
• Monitoring areas of critical uncertainty.
Guide to Individual Papers
The prepared papers that constitute the central framework of the
symposium include (1) the keynote and three background papers, (2) five
papers addressing the two theme questions from diverse points of view,
and (3) five responses to those papers from five additional points of
view.
An Administrator's Viewpoint. William Ruckelshaus, first Adminis-
trator of the EPA provided some remarks from his vantage point. He re-
minded the symposium participants that the pioneers of EPA took consid-
erable satisfaction in having created the Agency to attack in a coordi-
nated way the interrelated problems of air and water pollution, pesti-
cides, solid-waste, and land use. Even so, they later found that envi-
ronmental problems cannot be separated from the whole social fabric.
The problem is less one of advancing the technology than of understand-
ing what costs should be accepted for what benefits. The new realities
of changing resource usage require new patterns of coordination—EPA,
ERDA, and FEA working together on energy conservation, the recession
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forcing attention to the economic impacts of environmental regulations,
EPA and Agriculture working together on low environmental impact agri-
cultural methods, and so on. Equally, they require new abilities to
continually look into the future, to anticipate and accommodate to future
threats to environmental goals.
Background Papers. The first background paper, by John McHale,
stresses the institutional nature of the resource crises, mentioned
earlier. The very concept of a resource grows out of the institutions
of the society and their perceived needs. Industrialized society is
creating an explosive growth in resource needs, environmental impacts,
and capacities to intervene in the planet's life-support processes. If
industrial growth seems to lead toward "neo-Malthusian" hypotheses of
inevitable catastrophe, it is because of an implicit assumption that the
basic institutional characteristics will remain unchanged. With a guided
transformation of the industrial world's institutions, it is possible to
conceive of accommodating more balanced growth and high technological
development with lowered resource demand and lowered environmental im-
pact. But this view emphasizes changes in perceptual and conceptual
"worldviews" which accompany, and often precede, significant social,
economic, and political change. Resource usage patterns and environmen-
tal impacts are inherent in a particular worldview, and will change fun-
damentally only as that worldview changes. We need "to recognize that
the environment is not only modified by physical actions, but by our
ideas, beliefs, and value systems. . .and the ways in which they operate
to influence policies and environmental decisions even more than do ma-
terial techniques."
Ted Gordon's background paper has a similar tone. He notes the huge
increasing demand for resources with the ineluctable conclusion that the
environment will be severely stressed in producing and disposing of the
demanded materials. The conclusion is "irrefutable," that exponential
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growth of world population and resource-depleting production must ulti-
mately end—the questions are when and how, "Not very soon" is Gordon's
answer to when. The question of how leads him to the conclusion that
the industrialized and industrializing worlds face an unprecedented cul-
tural and institutional crisis. In spite of promising technologies, he
doubts that the necessary changes can occur fast enough to resolve the
contradiction between increasing resource demands and environmental con-
sequences. Gordon predicts "chaos" and suggests additional technological
measures to buy time.
The third background paper by Maurice Eastin focuses on the need
for a more system-oriented view of resource utilization. The environ-
mental problem can never be satisfactorily resolved through fragmented
regulation of air, water, and earth impacts. Yet dealing with all these
plus the planet's living and life-support systems in an integrated
fashion is out of reach. Faced with the inability to deal with the
total life-and-environment system, yet with the fact that "we cannot
live with the economics of the end-of-the-pipe environmental point of
view," we need to look toward an intermediate target—more efficient
subsystem processes from the standpoints of resources, economics, and
energy. The basic processes of industrialized society (e.g., agricul-
ture and food, paper and pulp, construction materials') need to be ap-
proached with a systems orientation, with an eye to converting waste
products to by-products and new products. This is an approach toward
which EPA is evolving, moving from negative restrictive control to pos-
itive environmental synthesis.
First Viewpoint. Lynton Caldwell presented the first of the five '
viewpoints. He emphasized the need for an improved framework of knowl-
edge about the general and basic causes of our environmental predicament.
Lacking an adequate conceptual framework, we lack the basis for guiding
research to bring our general environmental situation under control;
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attacking specific problems of environmental protection may invite others
equally unwelcome.
One of the key points highlighted by Caldwell is the political, con-
ceptual, and psychological difficulty of dealing with the resource-
environment problem in the consumption phase rather than concentrating
efforts almost solely on the supply phase—that is, of seeking an im-
proved system rather than "making the present system work better." With
regard to research priorities, Caldwell argues for "a structure or hier-
archy of environmental knowledge that would be larger than the operational
agenda of any agency, but which could provide orientation and perspective
for the research missions of organizations such as the EPA." For an as-
sortment of political and cultural reasons this most-needed research is
very difficult for any government agency or even foundation to support.
We will probably have instead a much less systemic, more risk-averse,
problem focused, and ultimately less effective and more costly research
program.
Stanley Cain argues only mildly with Caldwell in commenting on his
paper. He further emphasizes the need, and the difficulty, of a broader
scope for inquiry than can with propriety be mounted by a government
agency with legally restricted cognizance. As Cain says, "the holistic
science of ecology is well and working." We are coming to realize "the
intricate interconnections of life and environment." Yet because of
compartmentalization of knowledge and of institutional responsibility,
it will be difficult to acquire the knowledge, authority, and understand-
ing we require to resolve our environmental problems. Although "it is
profitless to do research only on existing resource-use patterns," this
is predominantly what we will do. We need to see our problems whole.
Yet the temptation instead is to find someone to blame. The lesson we
have yet to learn is, "when the causes are shared by everyone, when the
system is at fault, the victims are the culprits."
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Second Viewpoint. Robert North's paper explores in more detail the
implications of an interdisciplinary systemic view. Arguing that envi-
ronmental consequences come essentially from three variables—population,
resources, and technology--he elaborates the need for research to model
all of these together, taking into account the complex pattern of social,
economic, and political changes on their interrelationships. A large
portion of North's discussion goes to making the point that our accus-
tomed ways of dealing with problems are ill adapted to problems that are
systemic in character. As he puts it, "a social system tends to draw
our attention to the very points at which an attempt to intervene will
fail." We tend to look close to the symptoms of trouble for an apparent
cause; however, that cause is not the basic cause, and thus the proposed
remedy turns out to be ineffective or to produce "unintended consequences'
or counterintuitive results." Through lack of understanding of how the
whole system operates, and through lack of an accepted goal structure,
micro-decisions are made that sum to bad macro-decisions for the overall
society. This will be exacerbated as we move into a period of intense
competition for critical resources. Thus the highest priority should be
assigned research on system simulation, whole-system forecasting, and
evaluation of alternative assumptions and alternative courses of action
for the future.
Earl Heady, in commenting on North's paper, expresses himself as
more optimistic that the difficulties of interdisciplinary research on
total life-environment-society systems can indeed be surmounted. He
notes successes in interdisciplinary university research efforts, in
large-scale modeling, in evaluating tradeoffs and comparing the conse-
quences of alternative policies to substantiate his point. He urges re-
search on incentive systems (e.g., taxes, subsidies) for political im-
plementation of values (e.g., clear streams, natural beauty) not expres-
sible in the marketplace (i.e., externalities), and to ameliorate the
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problem of excessive discounting of the future. Secondly, he sees the
need for expanded research efforts on modeling complex social systems.
Finally, he urges altering EPA's research approach to a more positive
and long-term emphasis on developing technologies and resource that avoid
deleterious environmental consequences.
Third Viewpoint. At first reading, the paper by Ralph d'Arge may
seem to strike a different note. He defines an emerging class of envi-
ronmental problems: ones where extremely long-term or irreversible im-
pacts might occur, where multinational and even global impacts are antic-
ipated, and where the set of outcomes is at least partially unknown and
highly uncertain. He points out that present guides to decision-making
do not adequately take into account possible long-term and potentially
irreversible effects. He notes the limitations of modeling when assess-
ing the range of plausible outcomes; "man will not (ever) understand in
detail the interweaving patterns and forces within his own ecosystem
because he can never observe all the interdependencies. And we have no
effective way of handling problems of the "global commons" (e.g., the
oceans the stratosphere, nuclear wastes). d'Arge urges high research
priority for this class of problems, and concentration of research funds
on the most impending of these. This emphasis on control strategies for
a limited class of environmental problems seems superficially distinct
from the emphasis on whole-system approaches advocated in so many of the
other papers. However, the difference turns out to be more apparent
than real, because when these "most urgent" problems are examined the
solutions appear to lie less in technological advance than in system
change.
William Cooper agrees that d'Arge identifies a set of problems that
will be of increasing concern "as synthetic compounds are developed and
produced in a frantic effort to escape the ultimate constraints of mate-
rial limitations and/or the thermodynamic implications of dependence on
16
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closed energetic systems." The difficulty with controlling these prob-
lems using economic incentives, standards, regulations, and penalties,
is that the control system must be designed to perform almost flawlessly.
The alternative approach is system redesign to achieve satisfactory per-
formance and resilience assuming that there will be individual and in-
stitutional mistakes which no system of control will be able to prevent.
Again the prime need expressed is for a research program on overall sys-
tem control and design supported by experimental approaches to incremental
change.
Fourth Viewpoint. The paper by George Woodwell centers around the
confrontation between the industrial system with its emphasis on short-
term profits and those segments of human welfare that depend on biotic
resources, a confrontation that must become steadily more acute with
instances more common. The alternative to the present situation is clear.
In a world with soaring population and soaring demands on resources, the
basic pattern in use of the environment must become the closed system.
The basic principle is not pollution within limits, to be corrected. It
is, rather an approach toward no pollution by designing cities, indus-
tries, and agriculture to be as nearly as possible self-contained, recir-
culating water- nutrients, metals, and wastes in ways that do not make
excessive demands on the "assimilative capacity" of the environment.
The central principle is the preservation of the earth's basic chemical
and biotic patterns, as written into the policy statement of the Water
Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. The research needed to guide
the transition to closed systems would include, as examples (a) a con-
tinuing analysis of the world's carbon budget to discern when dangerous
imbalances occur, (b) a program to discover the details of biotic impov-
erishment and how to recognize the earliest stages of it, and (c) a
vigorous program on the recirculation of water and nutrients in sewage.
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Sid Caller's comments on the Woodwell paper are mainly by way of
emphasis. Agreeing with Woodwell's basic principle of "no pollution;
not pollution within limits" and with the urgency of attention to impacts
on the global carbon budget, Galler disagrees sharply on one point. He
contradicts Woodwell's suggestion that the EPA should be given responsi-
bility for basic research to preserve "the earth's basic chemical and
biotic patterns." Caller's argument is that this large and important
task requires resources and capabilities going far beyond those likely
to be, or appropriate, for a primarily regulatory agency, and that the
knowledge required for this task derives from a wide variety of basic
and applied research investigations that are appropriately carried out
in a diversity of existing agencies.
Fifth Viewpoint. John Zierold's paper concentrates on the energy
and world food crises, and the pressures these will bring on the environ-
ment. Among the topics are environmental impacts of urban sprawl, re-
source recovery from low-concentration sources, resource processing and
transportation, preservation of prime agricultural lands, and preserva-
tion of green spaces within urban areas. It is typical of such problem
areas that the solution is only to a limited extent technological. A
good part of the problem comes about because present economic incentives
tend to be inimical to environmental protection. The point is made again,
as so many times throughout the symposium—research toward redesign of
the economic and industrial-agricultural system seems central to long-
term resolution of environmental problems.
The response to this paper by Frank Sebastian includes a detailed
report on progress in water reclamation, indicating both technological
progress and economic .viability of wastewater recovery. The message is
clear—in emphasizing the needed systems research, stressed so many times
through the symposium, do not overlook the technical progress on specific
ameliorative measures.
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Summary of Research Priorities
From these highlights of individual papers it is clear that certain
themes stood out, and yet that there was a great diversity of viewpoints.
As a brief summary of the research priorities identified, we might pick
out the following six themes:
1. Environmental Systemic Interactions. This need was identified
more strongly than any other. The whole system includes not only physi-
cal environment and institutions but also social, economic, and cultural
beliefs and values. Modeling and research are needed toward understand-
ing interactions in the whole agricultural and industrial production
system, toward relatively closed, resource-frugal subsystems, and toward
overall system incentives more compatible with preservation of the
earth's basic chemical and biotic systems. A systems approach implies
far more attention to the consumption phase of resource use—to reducing
resource demands within the system, in contrast to present and projected
research which is heavily weighted toward the supply phase. Since this
in turn implies changes in lifestyles and a more frugal culture, research
should involve public dialogue and education on central issues and pol-
icies .
2. Resource Usage Patterns. Numerous intermediate objectives in-
volving subsystem modification were cited. Among them were reducing
environmental impact of extraction and processing, improving use-recycle
processes for materials, reducing energy use, reducing materials usage
in fabricating and packaging, and improving durability and repairability
of products.
3. Incentives for Controlling the Environment. Present economic
incentives tend to conflict with environmental protection and enhance-
ment. Short-term profit incentives and consumer fads mitigate against
product durability and repairability and heavily discount the future.
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Economic growth imperatives make it difficult to cut back on energy and
materials use. The long-term resolution of our environmental situation
may require major readjustment of this incentive system.
4. Critical. Ecological Problems. Special attention needs to be
given to critical problems where very long-term impacts might occur,
global in nature, and where the set of outcomes is at least partially
unknown and highly uncertain. These include the oceans, the stratosphere,
CO atmospheric centration, and nuclear waste. An ongoing research pro-
gram, screening new materials and products and monitoring both environ-
mental and social trends, is required to anticipate critical problems.
5. Applied Research and Technological Developments. Not to be
overlooked in the emphasis on systemic problems are the specific research
and technological advances that can reduce or ameliorate environmental
impacts. Examples include low environmental impact technologies, re-
cycling and waste processing technologies, materials substitution, and
materials-conserving production and technology.
6. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. Observation of both
critical uncertainties and control programs should have high priority.
Some scenarios for the future implicitly assume that the trends of the
future will be more or less the trends of the past, and that the problems
of the future do not differ in kind from the problems society has learned
to deal with by technological prowess and appropriate institutional inno-
vations. Another group, hov/ever, assumes that a combination of histori-
cal forces and physical limitations have brought society to a point of
fundamental system transformation. The "limits to growth" thesis is but
one form of this second argument, which says that the consequences of
advanced industrialization v/ill soon become so intolerable that a major
restructuring of industrialized society may be inevitable. According to
this view, partial system breakdowns accompanying this major societal
transformation will become evident during the next decade or so. Because
20
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uncertainty is so crucial in the accurate interpretation of societal
problems, it is imperative that careful monitoring be instituted to
determine as early as possible which track the society is on.
A more complete listing of recommended research areas, coming out
of the symposium proceedings, will be found at the end of this report.
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ACCOMMODATING THE NEW REALITIES
William D. Ruckelshaus, Attorney and First Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, D.C.
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ACCOMMODATING THE NEW REALITIES
William D. Ruckelshaus
I applaud the non-confrental approach of this conference. I have
concluded in the four and one-half years since EPA started, contrary to
my every instinct as a lawyer and advocate, that in today's climate con-
frontation, and the adversary system we use to make so many environmental
decisions, are in the last analysis too often causing bad decisions.
These decisions, couched in terms of winners and losers by legislative,
administrative, and judicial declaration, are not focusing enough on the
public interest, but instead handing "victory" to one of the adversaries.
I applaud the SRI conference effort to avoid the endless and pres-
ently unresolvable debate over what the future holds for man. If we take
as a starting point that we don't know what tomorrow will bring we can
focus on what is advisable for man--and not spend endless hours debating
what is inevitable.
The Environmental Protection Agency came into existence only four
and a half years ago. It sometimes seems like four score and four years
because a number of startling events have taken place in the interceding
years. (My transfer from EPA to the FBI was the one of the more per-
sonally startling events.) Perhaps for all of us the time seems so long
because our political/economic climate is so different from that prevail-
ing at the start of the decade.
The year 1970 saw the first Earth Day and an explosion of public
awareness and concern about the environment. As a people we came to have
a better understanding of the biological, physical, and chemical inter-
relationships of life on this planet; and at the same time, naively, we
25
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also came to believe that environmental problems could be separated out
and addressed by themselves. Congress and state legislatures passed
some tough, demanding laws. The American people indicated at least pre-
liminarily that they were willing to bear the costs needed to clean up
the environment within the tight time frames set by their elected
representatives.
An energy crunch featuring dramatically higher energy prices that
contributed to worldwide inflation in concert with recession have changed
the world economic and American societal conditions considerably. Tight
public and private pocketbooks and the need to cope with unemployment
have replaced the era of deep pockets for worthwhile projects we knew
only a short time ago. These changed conditions, coupled with the ero-
sion of public confidence in our institutions—both private and public--
that began in the late 1960s and accelerated with Watergate, create a
situation which many environmentalists feel poses a catastrophic threat
to their goals. In response, some are attempting to stiffen or at least
hold the line of our present environmental laws—rather than to accommo-
date the new realities.
I don't believe that our energy and economic problems are the
harbinger of the end of environmental progress in this country, nor do
I believe in reacting to these problems by increasing the inflexibility
of our approach to environmental problems as some unfortunately--in
Congress, executive agencies, and the environmental movement—are in-
clined to do. I would rather discuss the positive aspects of our cur-
rent situation—and to put forth a perspective of the future I believe
we should adopt to guide us wisely through the years ahead.
The great judge and scholar, Learned Hand, once defined "justice"
as the tolerable accommodation of the competing interests of society."
I think we can—and should—use the concept of accommodating competing
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interests to guide our approach to societal problems such as environ-
mental degradation, where in total only limited resources are available
to meet virtually unlimited social demands.
In the early days of EPA we took a certain amount of satisfaction
in the fact that we at last realized the problems of air and water
pollution, pesticides, solid-waste and land use are interrelated and
should not be addressed in isolation. In fact we created EPA, a new
government agency, to attack these problems in a coordinated way. We
sought to imbue the Barry Commoner concept "that everything is connected
to everything else" in our public and private consciousness. But for
all of our environmental farsightedness, we were at the same time ex-
hibiting societal shortsightedness when we viewed the environment as
unrelated to other problems.
It took long gasoline lines to bring us to the realization that the
environment is not unrelated to other issues—and that the social fabric
is like a balloon—if you push in at one point, it will bulge out at
another. We are coming to better understand that we have only limited
economic and natural resources for which there are virtually unlimited
demands. We are coming to see that we cannot solve problems incremen-
tally as if they were unrelated to other problems.
When I was the Administrator of EPA, I had mixed emotions about
trying to solve the air pollution problems of urban areas like Los
Angeles. It was clear that air pollution was really part of their
transportation problem, which was part of a larger problem of the qual-
ity of life they really wanted. So our hopes for solving the air pol-
lution problem were too optimistic. It turned out, in spite of the
mandate by Congress that air throughout the country would be pure by
June of 1975, that Los Angeles still has a major problem. In fact one
of EPA's transportation control studies indicated that L.A.'s photo-
chemical oxygen standard could be met by removing 92 percent of the
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automobiles from the highways. In January of 1973 1 was ordered by the
District Court of Los Angeles to provide a transportation control plan
for Los Angeles or be held in contempt. So I went to Los Angeles and
announced that 92 percent of their automobiles would have to get off the
road. I admit I made the announcement at the airport and immediately
flew out.
There is one great lesson we should draw from our efforts in the
1960s and early 1970s—that merely pouring out large sums of money or
setting tough but unrealistic deadlines for a single problem will not
necessarily result in the public interest being served. Not only is our
own society more interdependent than in the past—so is the world.
Droughts in the farmlands of Russia, and actions by tiny shiekdoms in
the Mideast, can and do significantly affect our own cost of living and
economic wellbeing.
I have the deep sense that the public in this country--in a visceral
way--is more aware of the interrelationship of our societal problems in-
cluding energy and the economy and the environment than is our leader-
ship. Particularly, it seems ahead I think of the Congress. I was con-
vinced in 1970, when we started to implement the new laws that Congress
had passed, that while it was necessary to move forcefully and intelli-
gently and with as much vigor as possible, there would come a time when
the public would recognize that the problem was less one of advancing
the technology than it was of what costs should be expended for what
benefits. Unfortunately, many of the debates that were going on five
years ago are still going on today at the same level of confrontation.
Partly this is because of our inability to take advantage of the lessons
learned and to explain these lessons to the committees of Congress. I
would blame this mainly on the Watergate affair, in that the attention
of the public and the Congress was riveted for two years almost exclu-
sively on this problem. Now that we have reached the time where
28 ,
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environmental laws need to be changed, we again find ourselves in a much
more confrontational atmosphere.
There is a real need to take a dispassionate look at how competing
social demands can be accommodated, and a need to abandon in many cases
the practice of taking each problem to the point of confrontation. Con-
frontations may make great news stories—they encourage people to take
sides and to focus on who is acclaimed "the winner." But if a problem
is viewed as the environment versus the economy or the environment versus
energy, with one or the other side winning, inevitably the public inter-
est will lose because almost by definition the public interest is an
accommodation. A number of the major issues I had to wrestle with during
my tenure at EPA were depicted in the press as the "white hats" against
the "black hats"—and score was kept of the number of supposed victories
by each. It was difficult to get the message across to the press—and
through them to the public—that the real question was not who "won" or
who "lost"—but whether the action taken was in the public interest—
whether it was a wise decision. It is discouraging to me that the media
emphasis is even now on whether a decision is "tough" or "weak" and not
on the essential question: Is it wise?
While not at the peak level of 1970-71, membership in major environ-
mental organizations is holding fairly steady. And the polls show that
the public continues to consider the environment to be an important
issue. These are good indications. A Harris poll released in March
showed that the American people ranked air and water pollution as the
nation's third and fourth greatest problems—second only to inflation
and unemployment. At the same time I believe that the public understands
the need for reasonable accommodations with other pressing social prob-
lems, and expects that they will be made. How then are our major public
institutions—Congress and the federal agencies—responding to the public
will?
29
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In the early 1970s Congress reacted to public pressure and passed
a number of major environmental laws that embodied lofty goals and set
stringent standards. In my opinion, like too many laws adopted by Con-
gress, the environmental laws were adopted in isolation from other issues
and were based on optimistic assumptions as to how much progress could
be achieved in what time frame and what resources the society should
commit to making that progress. Reflecting Congressional dissatisfac-
tion with the past rate of progress, the new laws set out rigorous time
frames for certain actions by both the public and private sectors that
would require massive expenditures of money. But they gave EPA and the
states relatively little flexibility.
EPA began to push its own bureaucracy, the states, municipalities
and industry in the directions and at the speeds dictated by Congress.
One of the early actions was to urge that utilities convert their boilers
to use oil rather than coal to reduce the emission of sulfur oxides. No
sooner was this shift of resources underway than our energy supply and
economic conditions forced a reappraisal, and another Federal Agency is
now ordering the switch from oil back to coal.
The measure of our institutions must be as much or more in their
ability to respond and adopt to changed conditions as in their ability
to design sound solutions for static problems. On this score we find
that Congress has not only put in place too inflexible a structure for
addressing environmental problems (a structure that in part requires
economic commitments based on much rosier conditions), but the committees
responsible for environmental legislation are still reluctant to legis-
late needed changes responsive to the new realities. That is why I have
concluded that the public is far ahead of Congress in realizing that we
cannot afford an unlimited blank check to clean up the air and water--
and that progress that can be made must be considered against the social
and economic costs that will be entailed, the resources that'are
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available, and the ways in which those limited resources can most effec-
tively be directed.
At first EPA had a fairly free hand in the course of implementing
the Clean Air Act to de facto require the allocation of certain kinds of
energy resources, particularly of low sulfur fuels, to certain areas of
the country and to certain uses. But recently, Russel Train has been
more constrained because the competing social concerns have become much
more apparent. Now EPA must work and accommodate its goals relating to
availability and best use of our energy resources with the Federal Energy
Administration and the Energy Research and Development Administration.
The environment is no longer the sole consideration. Reconversion of
certain oil-fired boilers back to coal sharpened the conflict between
competing interests of the agencies--and ultimately forced the required
accommodation.
On the other various issues, the agency interests are similar to
each other, and coordination of resources and responsibilities is impor-
tant. EPA's solid waste office and ERDA will be working together on the
development of solid waste as an energy source. With more projects like
the Union Electric Plant in St. Louis where solid waste is burned to
generate electricity, we are on the way to turning a disposal problem
into a useful resource.
Similarly I gather that EPA, ERDA, and FEA are working together on
how best to increase public awareness of the need and means of energy
conservation. While their overall missions differ, in the energy con-
servation area, their interests and the public interest coincide. These
are among the hopeful signs I see--that EPA recognizes it must come to
grips with the new conditions and the new public mood. Agencies by
necessity reflect public opinion—and they become more or less aggres-
sive depending on public attitudes. This is not necessarily bad. It's
the way a democracy is supposed to work.
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The economic downturn clearly has made EPA pay more attention to
the economic impact its regulations are having. This was happening be-
fore I left. Someone counted four times as many economists on our staff
as ecologists. (That is not a statistic we normally published.) In the
environmental area, like a number of other areas, tight economic condi-
tions help the society become more efficient.
The theme of this symposium, "research needs to anticipate environ-
mental impacts of changing resource uses," is giving you many knowledg-
eable presentations on the problems that EPA should be addressing. If
I could add one message, it would be for EPA and indeed all Government
agencies to continually look into the future to see what factors may
inhibit the achievement of their goals, and to build in mechanisms to
anticipate and accommodate those problems.
The emergence of the energy and economic problem can be beneficial
if it aids us in organizing our legislative and administrative processes
to accommodate new realities into existing efforts to solve problems—
and to better recognize the interdependence of our world.
We should not underestimate the challenge to leadership that modern
problems present. Environmental problems themselves are complicated
and, when you add problems like energy scarcity and economic downturn,
the equation is bound to produce answers that are unclear and contro-
versial. No one will be satisfied.
In one sense what we need to restore confidence is more Mayaguez
incidents. Someone swiped our boat, and we took it back. What could be
clearer? I think the clear-cut nature of that problem and its clear-cut
solution accounts for the overwhelmingly positive response to the Ameri-
can people to that incident.
But the new environmental realities are quite different. Someone
or a group of someones has quadrupled the price of oil. What do we do
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about it? No one has a very good answer. This kind of problem contri-
butes to the continued dissatisfaction and erosion of confidence in our
government. Yet these are the President's daily problems. We should
keep them in mind when we criticize leadership by him and other heads of
state.
I don't believe we should view the new realities as a threat to
cleaning up the environment—but rather as a challenge to accommodating
a desirable social goal like clean air within the matrix of other social
problems. If we lack the ability to adjust the pace with which we are
addressing a given problem, or if we cannot accommodate our ultimate goal
to a new consideration, we risk losing all our momentum toward solving
that problem. Instead, we must be sure we are setting reasonable goals
so that our progress will give us the confidence to go on to the next
goal.
When I became the Administrator of EPA I believed very strongly
that the challenge of the environment offered us an opportunity as a
society to restore some of our confidence in our ability to deal success-
fully with a major complex problem. I continue to believe that this
prospect is available to us in the environmental arena—despite high
energy costs, changing resource demands, inflation and recession—if we
carefully accommodate our goals to the new realities.
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RESOURCE CHANGES, CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT, AND RESEARCH NEEDS
John McHale, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Integrative Studies
School of Advanced Technology
State University of New York at Binghamton
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RESOURCE CHANGES, CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT, AND RESEARCH NEEDS
John McHale
Resource changes not only impact our social structure, but also
cause changes in perceptual and conceptual "worldviews" which accompany,
and often precede, significant social, economic, and political change.
One might initially suggest that our concepts with regard to resources,
their impact on the environment, and usage of the term environment itself,
have all changed radically in the past few decades.
Many of our principal resources were not even conceptually recog-
nized as such a relatively short time ago. Aluminum was a scarce metallic
curiosity, radioactivity a laboratory phenomenon, and many of our key
metals were regarded as waste impurities in other ores. In this fashion,
our range of useful resources is ultimately as we conceive it to be. It
is dependent both on the state of our knowledge and the perception of our
needs. These also change and interact with one another.
With regard to environment, two critical aspects of change have be-
come dramatically visible:
The first is the explosive growth in our actual and potential capac-
ities to intervene in the larger environmental processes. This is evi-
dent in the increase in human population, the transformation of the earth
to human purposes, and in the range and amounts of energy and materials
exploited. The scale of our human systems begins to approach magnitudes
which can affect larger areas and relationships in the biosphere.
The second is the lag in conceptual grasp of this transformation and
in the understanding through which we may manage its changes more effec-
tively. One shift that has taken place is that "nature" or "environment"
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is no longer something to be conquered—but protected and conserved. We
begin to recognize that human decisions not only determine environmental
conditions but most other aspects of the human condition.
Attention has been focused primarily on the impacts of technology
on the physical environment. More recent thinking indicates the prior
importance of "institutional" impacts; i.e. that the crises are not in
energy, in technology, in. food supply, ijn the environment, and so forth.
They are all institutional crises. They are the results of specific
values, attitudes, and institutional arrangements through which these
activities are conducted. Many of these economic, political, and other
policies have been expedient and practical in the short range. It is
only now when their visibly dysfunctional effects have become apparent
in the longer range that they emerge at crisis levels--but still with
least attention to their real causal origins.
Given the nature of the crisis, many people have accepted, somewhat
uncritically, a revised set of neo-Maithusian premises. Human growth
within a finite earth system is viewed as leading almost inevitably to
catastrophe within the next half century. Many recent proposals emanat-
ing from this viewpoint contain explicit, or implicit, abnegation of
continued technological and material growth, which is viewed as the
major factor leading to critical imbalance. Some advocate the return
to more frugal, and even more pastoral modes, as ways of avoiding the
crisis.
But while recognizing the need for more rational growth policies,
there is no necessary or essential connection between the development of
advanced technologies, the material improvement of living standards, and
deteioration of the natural environment.
There is no absolute relation between high production and consump-
tion with high environmental impact. Many of the richer countries in
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the world have significantly "cleaner" living environs than the poorer.
The severe problems of local and worldwide pollution are due to lack of
foresight, inadequate planning, and mismanagement. They are institu-
tional and regulatory in origin rather than absolutes.
There is, again, no direct linkage between population growth and
high environmental pressure. Many of the richer countries with high pop-
ulation densities have significantly less impacted environments than the
poorer. In terms of population growth rates, most future growth will be
in the lesser developed countries whose material resource usage is still
relatively small—whereas most anxiety is felt in the developed countries
whose populations are stabilizing and whose resource consumption could,
and in some cases is, leveling off. Where environmental impact is still
high in the latter it is due to wasteful resource management, planned
obsolescence of products, and overstimulation of demand, among other
factors.
As we shall discuss, more balanced growth with less resource demand
and high technological development may be accommodated with low environ-
mental impact.
There are a set of more specific points which I have been asked to
touch upon. One set relates to resource availability, new technologies
and life style changes, and how these may affect EPA policies. The re-
source availability question is directly related to technological devel-
opment .
Energy is the most obvious issue here and yet the most clouded one.
We have reiterated emphasis on the energy crisis but more clearly this
is not an energy but an oil crisis—and then not a crisis in terms of
actual shortage but in terms of price and availability. It is a crisis
that has been allowed to occur in terms of a preferred fuel use for con-
venience, profitability, and expediency.
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In terms of resource supply, the real problem may be a return to
oil surplus due to extended exploration and the use of oil sands and
shale—thus encouraging more profligate use of a potentially more valu-
able source of petro-chemicals, medicinals, plastics, and even new food
sources, than of a material to be wantonly burnt up.
What are the prospects for adequate energy supply in the face of
increased demand?
The conventional mode is to treat this in terms of reserve capacity
against current and extrapolated rates of consumption. For oil and nat-
ural gas, these are conservatively estimated to vary from 30 to 50 years,
for coal upwards by magnitudes of 200 to 500 years. No one knows exactly
what reserves exist, and figures are constantly revised upwards. Rates
of consumption have about the same confidence level as indicators.
Nuclear fission power obviously extends this capacity but has greater
environmental hazards in terms of operation and radioactive waste dis-
posal .
How does this fit with longer range EPA policy? Leaving aside the
obvious encouragement of alternative energy sources, one key factor in
short and long-term adequacy is efficiency of energy use. Wasteful
energy uses are not only uneconomical but usually have high environmen-
tal impacts.
The overall efficiency of world energy use is between 6 and 8 per-
cent. With due assessment to improvement of efficiency at every level
of conversion, storage, distribution and end use we could probably double
such a figure to between 10 and 15 percent overall. That is we could
have twice as much power from conventional sources at the same energy
cost--with lower environmental cost.
The variability of efficiency among the industrialized countries
illustrates this. For example, the energy required to produce an
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arbitrary unit of Gross Domestic Product varies from 1.0 in Sweden to
1.3 in Japan and 1.9 in the United States. That is, the United States
uses almost twice as much energy to produce the same unit of wealth as
Sweden.
What is the feasibility of increasing efficiency? Even with little
explicit attention to this, in the United States over the past 50 years
the amount of energy input per capita unit of GNP in the manufacturing
sector has declined steadily with a corresponding increase in overall
GNP. The great increase in per capita energy use has been in transpor-
tation, service and domestic sectors particularly marked by low effici-
encies in conversion and end use.
Increase in efficiency of energy use is, therefore, an obvious tar-
get for EPA research priorities—requiring attention to alternative energy
sources. Many of the latter are less environmentally impacting, and by
utilizing agricultural, industrial, and urban wastes may decrease envi-
ronmental problems in other areas. They are, of course, poorly funded
in research and development due to institutional inertia and vested
interests in more conventional sources.
When we turn to material resources the picture is obscured in much
the same fashion as energy. There is all sorts of loose talk about re-
source shortages, needs to restrain production and restrain technologi-
cal development.
By traditional practice, most of our data on metals and minerals
use are biased toward primary extraction and processing. Beyond primary
production, it is progressively difficult to assess materials in use per
sector or product performance. Rates of use and consumption figures
usually do not take into account the fact that we do not consume mate-
rials in use. We use them in various combinations over time for differ-
ent purposes.
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Most of our metals are re-available after "use-lifetime" cycles in
products of from 3 to 25 years. In many cases, the recycling process
gains in efficiency of performance over the primary extraction cost of
the material—plus the fact of avoiding the large amounts of waste over-
burden in primary extraction. We have, however, very few models of the
use, recycle process which have been developed specifically for the re-
duction of both performance and environmental costs. Adequate large-
scale modeling of this type is an obvious EPA priority.
This speaks not only to environmental and resource conservation but
also to the reserves question in materials. Conventional reserve esti-
mates are considered only in terms of unmined resources. In effect, how-
ever, our gross reserve includes all materials in use, in "junk" stock-
pile form as well as in existing structures and products. Cumulative
production over time is, therefore, an index of reserve and in some cases
is from one-third to almost three times our estimated recoverable reserve
for many major metals.
The question of materials (like the energy question) is not one of
materials scarcity but of the sets of conventionally preferred use ar-
rangements. In economic as well as environmental terms, it speaks to
the need for more comprehensive long-range research into the following
two primary areas:
(1) How We May Use Our Materials More Efficiently in Terms of
Performance per Resource Unit Used.
• More systematic reuse and recycling practices. It is
estimated that approximately 55 percent of all copper
put into use can eventually be recovered. As against
new copper mined with increased volumes of waste rock
(at approximately 400 tons per ton of usable copper),
efficient reuse would double both conservation and
economy if organized on a larger scale.
In effect we need to reorganize our materials extraction
and use system in more rational terms to close the waste,
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residuals and by-product loops in more efficient fashion.
At present each section of the industry operates in rel-
ative autonomy—extractive, primary processes, secondary
manufacturers, marketing, and end-use. Then there is a
longer gap to the scrap industries. The more rational
mode would be a more continuous systemic process with
ongoing environmental assessments at each stage in the
process.
• At the production and use end of the materials cycle,
the obvious direction is build the scrapping and re-use
function in at the beginning. That is to design prod-
ucts for longer life cycles wherever appropriate, to
design in their disassembly and recycling procedures,
and to prepare anticipatory schedules for the recovery
stages of their various materials. This system has
been partially introduced in the manufacture of mili-
tary aircraft where costly alloys have their constitu-
ent composition stamped on the component to aid recovery
on scrapping.
As we began our discussion with the need for reconceptualization of
the overall resource position, so we now need to reconceptualize and re-
design our industrial system as a potentially regenerative one.
(2) Ranges of New Materials Coming into Use Require More Compre-
hensive Environmental Attention. This need not always be
negative, in terms of their projected impacts but may also
be turned toward their potential for replacement and sub-
stitution for more environmentally impacting uses. For
example, as older materials such as steel give way to
lighter metals, to plastics and composites, this may also
afford gains in economy and performance with equivalent
reductions in environmental costs. Man-made fibers already
off-loaded agricultural land from vegetable fibers, increased
food acreage and potentially reduced environmental pressure
for more diverse land use.
Again this is an area of environmental research which is presently
accorded only piecemeal and relatively negative attention. More compre-
hensive long-range assessment policies are patently required. The range
of developed and potential material substitutions may not only enhance
required supply levels but also have less impact on the environment.
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Technological development is obviously a crucial factor in the en-
vironmental aspects of energy and material resource uses. The problem
here is that we tend to lump together all the different phases of
"industrial" technology. We may distinguish at least three major phases
of industrial development with different sets of typical resource uses,
environmental impacts, and related socioeconomic changes.
The first phase encompasses the heavy industry developments incident
upon the later stages of the Industrial Revolution--typically steelmaking,
railroads, automobiles, electrical generation, and so forth, based on the
fossil fuels. This type of industrial practice is highly resource deple-
tive, with low performance per input of energy and materials, and has
gross environmental impacts through its effluents and other by-products.
Although it still constitutes the industrial base of many societies, it
is partially obsolete in its plant, production/consumption practices, and
supporting materials policies.
The second phase of industrial development trends toward the light
metals and plastics associated with the development of air transport,
aerospace, and computers—and the emerging set of new electromagnetic
spectrum industries, i.e. electronics, telecommunications, and nuclear
energy which developed after World War II. This phase, is by comparison,
non-resource depletive, extremely economical in energy use and has a much
lower impact on the environment. Its advanced technological forms trend
toward ephemeralization through their decreasing use of materials and
energy per function, and their successive microminiaturization of com-
ponents .
The third phase might be characterized by the development of new
ranges of metallic and nonmetallic composites and reinforced materials
for structural purposes coupled with more sophisticated electronic and
electrochemical processing and the emergence of biotechnical develop-
ments, e.g., the resurgence of industrial microbiology and bionic
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engineering, the more efficient use of microbial populations to produce
energy, food and process materials, and the development of new ranges of
alternative energy sources.
In practice of course, these phases overlap and have different rates
of growth and development. In the advanced societies they are also paced
by changes in social and economic organization, in the balance of produc-
tion and services, and by internal shifts in manpower and resource re-
quirements. Hence the shift from the first to the second and third
phases of such development is often phrased as from industrial to post-
industrial society—meaning really a shift to a different kind of indus-
trialization.
One key factor in this shift, of relevance to our theme is that,
with the fusion of information and communications technology, information
(or organized knowledge) begins to emerge as the unique resource capabil-
ity. Information as basic resource has certain unusual properties:
• All other resources and technics are ultimately dependent upon
information and knowledge for their recognition, evaluation,
and development.
• Information as a social resource is not reduced or lessened
by wider use or sharing like material resources—rather it
gains in the process of distribution and exchange.
Where previous resource bases such as raw materials and energy were,
by comparison, scarce and depletive, information and knowledge are in-
exhaustible . The enlarged environmental awareness in itself may be
largely due to increased capacities to perceive, monitor, and evaluate
environmental changes incident upon these new information and communi-
cations capabilities. Certainly the attitudinal changes towards the
environment were greatly aided by the electronic media.
The above review does not absolve uncontrolled technological growth
as a major factor in environmental deterioration nor does it advocate
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technological deterioration. It merely stresses the need for more
adequate conceptual and policy frameworks for differentiating and eval-
uating the impacts of technology. More immediate measures lie with ap-
propriate institutional change, with more stringent economic dis-
incentives to waste and pollute, and with more rigorous socioeconomic
and technological assessment.
Our current assessment procedures need to be expanded in several
ways and are thus candidates for the longer range research needs of the
EPA.
(1) The need to include institutional and policy assessment.
That is, to recognize that the environment is not only
modified by physical actions but by our ideas, beliefs,
and value systems—social, economic, cultural—and the
ways in which they operate to influence policies and
environmental decisions even more than material tech-
niques .
(2) That the industrial assessment process should be con-
ceptually reorganized to consider both agriculture and
industry together with their product and service com-
ponents as a whole system. It should encompass not
only industrial uses, residuals, and pollutants but
also agri-industry equivalents and how these are re-
lated to domestic materials, garbage, and effluents.
This would furnish a beginning description of our over-
all environmental transactions as the external metabolic
system of society. We have accumulated considerable sys-
tematic knowledge about the flows of energy and materials
in our internal metabolism, but our conceptual framework
of our external metabolic flows is singularly inadequate.
(3) All such assessments should be oriented towards the longer
range of the next 30 to 50 years (some perhaps beyond) and
should be prospective by nature. Our tendency thus far
has been to restrict attention to those impacts that have
already occurred rather than anticipating the possible
impacts and cross-impacts of processes before they are
introduced.
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Moving to the life style changes which may be underway and which
might influence environmental policy, one can return provisionally to
the post-industrial shift hypothesis.
This carries with it certain suggestions about growth, consumption,
and quality of life which may be important. It is generally assumed
that, in the more advanced societies, material expectations and demands
for personal consumption will continue on an exponential curve—thereby
sustaining gross resource depletion and environmental deterioration.
The evidence seems otherwise. It may be suggested that as standards of
living rise beyond sufficiency, we get satiation levels of demand. Wants
may be artificially stimulated beyond this point but, as advertising
revenues show, this is a costly process. The tendency is not toward just
more products and more things but toward wider ranges of alternative
choices of products and toward greater access to shared services.
Material satisfaction in terms of individual consumption peaks out
below maximal satiation and then finds expression through progressively
dematerialized and, eventually symbolic means of satisfaction.
At a low income level, the material and symbolic goal may be a
large resource-hungry automobile. As such goals become more easily
reachable, they tend to transform into an interest in smaller high-
performance cars thence to a recreative and "aesthetic" interest in
speed or driving generally. Where food is scarce, being fat has high
social status. In rich societies today it is the reverse—foods are
consumed for their low caloric value and some become merely symbols of
consumption rather than material actuality.
There is an accompanying value shift observable where people begin
to pursue styles of life and goals for personal growth which move away
from the energy-intensive, materially costly and conspicuous consumption
of the earlier industrial society toward concerns with the meaning and
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quality of life experience. The expansion of shared amenities such as
national parks, clean waters and beaches, becomes important—even where
the individual may not use them, he or she will subscribe to their col-
lective availability as a drawdown on the public purse.
Overall this kind of social shift, accompanied by the technological
changes already described, suggests that even the "growth" requirements
of more people can be satisfied with less per capita resources and less
environmental impact. We should not, however, assume some invisible
hand at work guiding these trends so that it all comes out for the
better! Many of the positive aspects of these changes have to be an-
ticipated and aided rather than merely observed.
Neither may we assume that most current policy directions and leader-
ship will bring them about. Indeed many of the key change issues have
emerged not from leaders and policies but from issue-oriented citizen
groups in the society--for example, environmental conservation, consum-
erism, and quality of life issues surfaced in this way before they were
sanctified by policy attention. This suggests that a key function for
EPA may also be the closer analysis and oversight of social trends, at-
titudinal changes, and value orientations with their appropriate long-
range projection in terms of environmental policies.
In the larger sense, we refer here to the longer range social and
political constraints that may affect EPA decisions. Very often such
constraints on the wider demands for a better environment emerge not
from any broad consensus of the society but from the specific interest
groups who have the power and lobbying pressure to influence and con-
strain decisions far in excess of their representative numbers.
There is no fast answer to how a better balance of interests might
obtain. The paradox often exists that those who have such power to in-
fluence policies derive that power from public resources such as
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federally leased lands, direct and indirect public subsidies, and various
other means which flow ultimately from the citizen's purse. Many of our
best environmental policies have been pursued in the face of opposition
from those with short-term political mandates or concerned with the most
economically expedient exploitation of environmental resources. In gen-
eral, the emerging debate in this area may be characterized as a conflict
between the politics of longer range social requirements and the shorter
range expediencies of "business as usual."
Again, the balancing of these competing interests, which may aid or
constrain appropriate long-range policies, may well be a focus for EPA
research. Certainly one component may be vital here—communication and
contact with the larger publics. Information on both the key issues and
on the intricacies of specific policies is often restricted to those
special interest groups who may be opposed to their consequences. The
EPA should forward more continuous appraisal and communications functions
both with expert groups acting in the public policy interest and with the
wider citizenry directly and through its various associational groupings.
In concluding, I have been asked to identify some priority research
topics which the EPA should undertake now. I have mentioned a number of
these in dealing with various topic areas of my brief. In order of pri-
ority they may be summarized as follows:
Generalized Program Priorities
(1) The development of a more comprehensive conceptual framework
for environmental concern. This would include the systemic
interrelationship of resource usage patterns, technological
development, and socioeconomic change.
(2) Larger scale modeling of the industrial, agricultural, and
urban systems. These need not, and perhaps should not, be
initially quantitative in cast. It probably calls more
directly for a broad "taxonomic" synthesis and mapping of
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the interactive components in the overall system and pro-
jections of alternative relationships and tradeoffs.
(3) Expansion of the assessment process to include both tech-
nological and institutional assessments oriented specifi-
cally towards prospective appraisal of their longer range
consequences and cross-impacts.
(4) Need for a balance of more integrative work with reduct-
ionist directions, i.e., more synthesis to pace analysis,
or to combine analytical results into larger policy
oriented, long-range, frames of reference.
Specific Research Priorities
(1) More efficient and less environmental impacting resource
usage. This would involve detailed energy and materials
budgets for specific product and service flows, oriented
towards increasing performance per unit of invested re-
sources and the reduction of wastes and residuals.
(2) An investigation of the redesign of major product and
appliance groups towards possibilities of longer life,
built-in procedures for scrapping and reuse and higher
efficiency of operation and maintenance.
(3) A new materials assessment program in terms of feasible
substitutions both for improved resource performance and
environmental impact. This would obviously include the
screening of new materials and products for their nega-
tive effects on the environment.
(4) The analysis and projection of longer range social needs
and trends. This would encompass the emergence and
identification of changes in attitudes values and life
styles in the society and their projected consequences
for changes in environmental policy.
(5) Public communication and consultation. The design of
better procedures for public policy appraisal by expert
and public groups: increased information dissemination
on critical issues and policies with wider exposure to
public debate via the media.
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We may note that these summarized priorities are obviously inter-
linked. The specific recommendations fold in as components of the gen-
eralized program priorities. It should also be assumed that many of
these topic areas will require a global context for their more realistic
assessment rather than being confined only to the U.S. national society
postures.
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THE EMERGING SITUATION FOR RESOURCES—AN EXTRAPOLATIVE VIEW
Theodore J. Gordon
The Futures Group
Glastonbury, Connecticut
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THE EMERGING SITUATION FOR RESOURCES—AN EXTRAPOLATIVE VIEW
Theodore J. Gordon
Introduction
Both the drives for increasing economic output and for increasing
world population require continually increasing raw material use. The
world per capita mineral consumption rate quadrupled over the past 25
*
years. Assume for a moment that a similar rate increase will hold over
the next 25 years. In that same interval, world population will about
double, Therefore, by combining these two forces, by the year 2000, the
world as a whole may increase its present mineral consumption by a factor
of eight or so. Failure to achieve this growth will mean that developing
countries will not be able to achieve their current economic goals.
The dilemma implied by this tremendous growth rate is illustrated in
Figure 1. Since 1945 annual world production of the indicated mineral
has doubled every seven or eight years, while in the United States the
production doubling rate was approximately 25 years. In 1945 the United
States consumed about 60 percent of the world total for the minerals
shown; by 1971, primarily because of the growth of consumption of other
nations in the world, this figure had fallen to 16 percent.
This huge increasing demand for raw materials has enormously impor-
tant consequences. The economic condition of the United States depends,
*Eugene N. Cameron, "U.S. Contribution to Mineral Supplies," Mineral
Position of the United States, 1975-2000, p. 21 (Madison, Wise., Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, 1973).
55
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o
or
LU
5
0
in
O
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
.8
World production
U.S. consumption
,-„••- U.S. production
0
1930 1940
1950 I960
YEAR
1970
1980
Data compiled at the University of Wisconsin by Kenneth D. Markart
and E. N. Cameron, from U. S. Bureau of Mines, MINERALS YEARBOOK
AND COMMODITY DATA SUMMARIES. From MINERAL POSITION OF THE UNITED
STATES, 1975-2000, p. 19 (Madison, Wise., University of Wisconsin
Press, 1973.)
FIGURE I. 1930-1971 WORLD PRODUCTION AND UNITED STATES
PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF EIGHTEEN MINERALS
(Iron Ore, Bauxite, Copper, Lead, Zinc, Tungsten, Chromium,
Nickel, Molybdenum, Manganese, Tin, Vanadium, Fluorspar,
Phosphate, Cement, Gypsum, Potash, and Sulfur)
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in large measure, on the continued availability of reasonably priced,
economically important materials. With growing competition for these
resources on a world market, our economy becomes more dependent on world
economic and political conditions. To the degree that countries depend
on imports, opportunities abound for OPEC-like cartels. The environment
is likely to be severely stressed in an effort to produce and dispose of
the demanded materials. And, perhaps most disturbing of all, the de-
pletion of some economically viable resources is possible in our life-
time.
These factors have led to the argument that consumption must be cur-
tailed, that society must somehow be reoriented toward other measures of
achievement, that nonindustrial models and goals must be found—not only
for the United States, but for all nations—and that, in fact, many na-
tions of the world are in the midst of such a transition currently. This
is one plank in the "limits to growth" platform.
The central point of the "limits to growth" argument is irrefutable;
exponential growth of world population and resource-depleting production
must ultimately end--the issues are when and how.
In this paper I answer "neither the growth of population or resource
depleting production is likely to end very soon." The difficulty of in-
fluencing population growth rate is well known. Even if the world birth-
rate dropped markedly and quickly, the world population would almost cer-
tainly reach six billion by 2000 (versus four billion currently). To
imagine a very rapid transition from the current consumption and economic
growth orientation to society based on new cultural values (or if not new
values than at least a value structure based on vastly different priori-
ties) is difficult indeed. The system inertia is too high; the lessons
of the culture too strong; the levels of expectations too high in the
United States and elsewhere. The reward structure of corporations, the
expectations of people about what constitutes a "good life," the popular
57
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images of "progress" and "status," the whole notion of Gross National
Product (GNP~) and GNP growth as a measure of achievement all suggest that
our present culture, and indeed the culture of all developed nations,
requires not only consumption but increasing consumption.
This consumption-oriented growth-oriented culture is not unique to
the United States; it is the culture of industrialized nations. Further-
more, many developing countries form their economic goals on the model of
the developed countries. In developed countries economic growth is ap-
parently a necessity, at least for the short term, to keep unemployment
low, to remain competitive internationally, to satisfy system imperatives
of their complex economic structure and, some economists argue, to per-
mit less affluent individuals to achieve higher living standards either
through transfer payments or through other redistribution mechanisms.
In developing countries growth in output is seen as a birthright, a path
to affluence, well chartered by the United States and other nations.
So we are on a collision path. Reserves are needed in increasing
amounts as a result of growing economies and populations; yet providing
them will be chaotic, perhaps disastrous.
Perhaps expectations and values and economic structures can change
fast enough, but I doubt it. Where then does that leave us? Sorely in
need of more time. Technology, informed and sensitive technology, mech-
anical as well as social technology, can help buy time and mitigate the
impacts of growing mineral use. We have little choice but to define
what would be helpful and to pursue it.
In this paper I plan to:
• Review some of the reasons for the chaos.
• Describe the slow transitions which are apparently already
underway.
• Propose some technological and policy alternatives that might
improve the situation.
58
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Some Reasons for Chaos
The rising world demand for raw materials suggests that the United
States, for the first time, is likely to face a situation of continually
rising, unpredictable prices and uncertainty of supply of many materials.
To meet its needs, the United States has to depend increasingly upon im-
ports of certain materials—domestic production has lagged behind demand
(see Table 1) . "I"
Dependence on imports seems almost certain to grow. As shown in
Figure 2, under the assuumption of continued economic growth in the United
States, reasonable projections indicate that by 2000, imports will account
for more than 90 percent or more of all the chromium, tin, titanium, plat-
inum, beryllium, aluminum, and fluorine the country consumes.
A paradigm for forecasting future OPEC-like situations might be to
identify key materials used by industrial nations which are concentrated
in a few other nations that could be linked politically. The paradigm
becomes particularly strong if the recipient countries do not have access
*Some of the material in this section is drawn from: L. Heston and H. S.
Becker, Focal Points in the Future of Food and Mineral Resources, Report
151-46-10 (Glastonbury, Conn., The Futures Group, July 1974), and T. J.
Gordon, Shortages and Their Implications for American Business, Report
132-59-01 (Glastonbury, Conn., The Futures Group, March 1974).
tMaterial Needs and Environment Today and Tomorrow, Final Report of the
National Commission on Materials Policy, pp. 9-8 (Washington, D.C.,
June 1973).
*U.S. Department of the Interior, First Annual Report of the Secretary
of the Interior; under the Mining and Minerals Policy Act of 1970 (P.L.
91-631), p. 63 (Washington, D.C., 1972) and Material Needs and the En-
vironment Today and Tomorrow, Final Report of the National Commission on
Materials Policy, pp. 2-25 (Washington, D.C., June 1073). (Hereafter
called U.S. Department of the Interior, First Annual Report and Material
Needs.)
59
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Table I
CHANGING UNITED STATES RELIANCE UPON
SELECTED MATERIALS FROM ABROAD
Imports as a Percent of
Total U.S. Consumption
Material
Aluminum
Copper
Lead
Mercury
Platinum
Tin
Titanium
Zinc
Iron ore
Chromium
Cobalt
Columbium
Manganese
Nickel
Tungsten
Petroleum
Natural gas
Timber
1950
71
35
59
92
91
100
32
37
6
100
92
100
77
99
80
8
0
11
1970
86
8
40
38
98
100
47
60
14
100
96
100
94
91
40
22
3
8
Change
+ 15
-27
-19
-54
+ 7
--
+15
+23
+ 8
—
+ 4
—
+17
- 8
-40
+ 14
+ 3
- 3
Source: Material Needs and Environment
Today and Tomorrow, Final Report
of the National Commission on
Materials Policy, pp. 8-9
(Washington, D.C., June 1973).
60
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1970
1985
2000
PERCENTAGE " PERCENTAGE " PERCENTAGE "
0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100
CHROMIUM
TIN
TITANIUM, METAL
PLATINUM
BERYLLIUM
NICKEL
ALUMINUM
ASBESTOS
FLOURINE
POTASSIUM
TITANIUM, NONMET.
SILVER
LEAD
IRON
MAGNESIUM, NONMET.
SODIUM
CALCIUM
MAGNESIUM, METAL
NITROGEN, COMP.
SILICON
SULFUR
NO OAT A AVAILABLE
' '• '• •••••::.\
!'."> ;;AIA AVAILABLE
•' .': . •'" ::'': )
. . ',' :' \
: • ••••; : .1
• .. •• '.' • :•''•• ,vj
j
J
;_."_JTL_ : _ ~
! •••••]
\ ..•:• i • ~
i
p" "" "
• -
i
i „ . .... -
i
i
j
i
i
i
,1
1
I
\
•j-__— - _
i
I
, I
.;..!
I
I
I
f
I
...J
|
j
I
\
I
*f\
m^mv-ymi
MAJOR FOREIGN SOURCES
USSR, SOUTH AFRICA, TURKEY
MALAYSIA, THAILAND, BOLIVIA
AUSTRALIA
UK, USSR, S.AFRICA,CAN.,NOR.,JAP.
CANADA, NORWAY
JAMAICA, SURINAM, CANADA,AUSTRALIA
CANADA, SOUTH AFRICA
MEXICO, SPAIN, ITALY, S. AFRICA
CANADA
CANADA, AUSTRALIA
CAN. , PERU, MEX. , HON., AUSTRALIA
CAN., PERU, MEXICO, AUSTRALIA
CAN., JAPAN, VENEZUELA, EEC
GREECE, IRELAND
2C 43 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100
SHORTFALL
DOMESTIC PRIMARY PRODUCTION
"BASED ON UtlGHT
SOURCE: U.S. Department of the Interior, FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR,
under the Mining and Minerals Policy Act of 1970 (P.L. 91-631) (Washington, D.C., 1972),
p. 63; and MATERIAL NEEDS AND THE ENVIRONMENT TODAY AND TOMORROW, Final Report of the
National Commission on Material Policy, pp. 2-25 (Washington, B.C., June 1973).
FIGURE 2. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN U.S. MATERIAL SUPPLY AND DEMAND
-------
to economically viable substitutes. Figure 2 presents some possible
groupings.*
It does not appear that the world will be depleted of any major
mineral resource in this century. This statement is based on the fol-
lowing assumptions:
(1) World rate of consumption of raw materials will continue
to increase exponentially. Projected growth rates run
from 1.1 percent per year for tin to 6.4 percent per
year for aluminum.
(2) Known reserves will increase by a factor of five before
the turn of the century. This assumption is intended
to capture the effect of price elasticity: as the
resource nears depletion, its price will rise; as
prices rise, there is additional incentive for explo-
ration and recovery of previously marketable resources.
This "factor of five" assumption could, of course, be
wrong.'
Using these preconditions, the length of time remaining before
depletion of important nonrenewable natural resources in the world can
be computed. While it is true that these figures indicate depletion of
important materials will not occur in this century, they demonstrate,
nevertheless, that depletion is near. As depletion nears, we can ex-
pect increasing prices, intensified arguments for resource conservation,
hasty searches for substitute materials, and increased government regu-
lation of the use of material. All of these forces are inflationary
*U. S. Department of the Interior, First Annual Report and Material Needs
tThese assumptions and the figures shown in the text are from Donella
H. Meadows, et al., The Limits to Growth (New York, Universe Books,
1972). In their computations, the known global reserves were derived
from U.S. Bureau of Mine estimates.
62
-------
and will cause balance of payment difficulties as well as fluctuations
in the value of currency.
Resource
Aluminum
Chromium
Coal
Cobalt
Copper
Gold
Iron
Lead
Manganese
Mercury
Molybedenum
Natural gas
Nickel
Petroleum
Platinum group
Silver
Tin
Tungsten
Zinc
Remaining Years
to Depletion
55
154
150
148
48
29
173
64
94
41
65
49
96
50
85
42
61
72
50
Estimates of mineral resources change over time. The reserves are
reduced by production, as well as by decreases in prices, increases in
costs, increased availability of substitute sources, or government reg-
ulations that restrict the production and/or use of different materials.
On the other hand, reserves may be enlarged by new discoveries and by
new technological or economic developments making it feasible to produce
from deposits that previously had proved uneconomical to mine. There-
fore, the future of mineral resources supply in the United States de-
pends not only on presently minable deposits already identified, but on
*U.S. Department of the Interior, First Annual Report and Material Needs.
63
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potential resources as well; these resources include similar quality
deposits as yet undiscovered and lower quality deposits which may prove
worthwhile at some point in the future.
If shortages developed in materials for which indigenous but un-
tapped reserves exist, they would undoubtedly be developed. Vincent E.
McKelvey, Chief of the United States Geological Survey, believes that at
higher prices, most of our mineral needs could be met through the turn
jj;
of the century at Least, by using materials which lie within our borders.
However, among materials not to be found in quantity in the United States
are tin, manganese, and chromite. Furthermore, developing these resources
would undoubtedly have significant environmental and political ramifica-
tions. The environmental implications are obvious; as for the political,
we already hear dissatisfaction expressed by a state rich in one or
another mineral, which feels exploited when it must "export" the mineral
at the expense of its environment to satisfy the need of another state.
To put it more precisely: why must Louisiana export its natural gas
when the state itself is in short supply? Why should Montana suffer
strip mining when the coal finds its use out of the state? The argu-
ments are reminiscent of those used by developing countries.
The Transition in Progress
There is an inexorable relationship between the size of an economy
and its consumption of materials and energy. Certainly there is some
"scatter" which represents more or less efficiency or special condition,
but by and large, the correlation between consumption and output is
strong. This is illustrated for energy consumption in Figure 3. Some
*"Raw Material: U.S. Grows More Vulnerable to Third World Cartels,"
Science (January 18, 1974).
64
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200
15%
REDUCTION
OF ENERGY
V
ARGENTINA^ ^ . |TALY
50O
1000 I50O 2000
GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT- $ /capita
2500
3000
Source: E. Cook, "The Flow of Energy in an Industrial Society,
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (September 1971), p. 142.
FIGURE 3. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ENERGY AND GNP (1968)
65
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of the variation around the trend line in this figure can be accounted
for by differences in weather and lifestyle preferences, particularly
with respect to transportation. Such relationships offer at least a clue
about how much might be saved through conservation without requiring mas-
sive economic changes in a country; targets of more than 15 percent would
probably be very difficult to achieve.
Despite the strong correlation between input mineral requirements
and economic activity, there are some indications that things are chang-
ing. First of all, we are indeed in the midst of a transition to a more
service-oriented economy. A smaller percentage of the labor force is and
will be engaged in agriculture and manufacturing; the service sector--
including government—is growing. Within ten years or so, only one
worker in four or five (versus one in three currently) will be in manu-
facturing; fewer than one in 20, in agriculture. Such an economy will
be less energy and material demanding.
Secondly, for some materials at least, long term efficiency-
improvement trends seem to be in progress. Since the early 1920s the
U.S. energy/GNP ratio has been in a falling trend, as more intensive use
of energy was offset by increased technical efficiency. From 1966
through 1970 the trend reversed itself and the ratio moved steadily up-
wards. This had alarming implications for the future, and there has been
much speculation that if the rise continued it would lead to even more
drastic energy shortages than had been predicted. In 1971 and 1972, how-
ever, the ratio resumed its downward direction. Both the National Pet-
roleum Council and the Bureau of Mines of the U.S. Department of the
Interior* anticipate that the ratio will continue to fall in the future.
*Dupree, W. and R. West, U.S. Energy Through Year 2000 (Washington, D.C.,
U.S. Department of the Interior, December 1973).
66
-------
Figure 4 depicts this history and a forecast of the project development
of the ratio which was made recently in a study by The Futures Group.*
1 1 U
100
0.
* 8°
cr
8 60
cr
DO 40
Q
-------
half of a representative sample of people in the United States, ques-
tioned about the number of children which, in their view, constituted
an ideal family, answered, "four or more." Now the fraction of people
holding that view is considerably less than a quarter. Polling services
that track values, such as Yankelovich's Monitor, have identified "fore-
runner" values groups in society holding nontraditional values: the
forerunners, the new comformists, and the autonomous sectors. Among
these groups is found beliefs in new, less materialistic ways to measure
success, rejection of the orderly and rational in favor of the less
planning and more spontaneous life, and the notion that simpler and
small is beautiful.
Yet, the changes that are underway are small indeed in view of the
magnitude of the problem. And they are not always what they seem to be.
A person advocating a simpler life and less materialism, might still
include his stereo and electric guitar in his lifestyle.
Some Technologies and Policies That Might Be Helpful
Scientific and technical developments will be urgently important in
solving material problems. Technology could have an important role to
play in providing substitutions, improving processing efficiencies,
promoting recycling and reuse, developing economic processes for the use
of lower grade ores, and in improving techniques of exploration and
recovery.
In the area of exploration, clearly improved methods would be use-
ful in helping to identify the location of mineral deposits, both in the
United States and throughout the world. These techniques include, for
example:
68
-------
• Geological techniques, including field work, aerial surveys,
subsurface investigations, mapping or rock types, and petro-
logical studies.
• Aerial or orbital surveys using visible light, infrared, and
microwave photography, as well as gravimetric and magnetic
sensing.
• Geochemical exploration involving analyses performed on solid,
liquid, and gaseous samples derived from surface manifestations
and drilling cores.
• Geophysical techniques including measurements of temperatures,
electrical conductivity, propagation velocity of elastic waves,
and density and magnetic susceptibility of various strata.
• Seismographic techniques including active or passive seismic
methods (active methods include reflective and refractive;
passive techniques involve recording naturally generated
microearthquakes or acoustic noise patterns within prescribed
frequency ranges).
• Electrical methods including self-polarization, induced
polarization, and telluric approaches.
In addition to simply developing improved methods for identifying
the location of resource deposits, general improvements in the field of
geology would probably be very helpful. These improvements could lead
to the development of statistical and mathematical methods for projecting
the extent of the deposits, given certain surface and subsurface geologic
f
information.
*T. J. Gordon, et al., A Technology Assessment of Geothermal Energy, Re-
port 164-46-11 (Glastonbury, Conn., The Futures Group, September 1974).
tL. Heston and H. S. Becker, Focal Points in the Future of Food and
Mineral Resources, Report 151-46-10 (Glastonbury, Conn., The Futures
Group, July 1974). (Hereafter called Mineral Resources.)
69
-------
The mineral position of the United States might also be improved
through the development of new mining technologies. The industry in
general is in a depressed state, as evidenced by the relatively slow
advance of mining technology and the large number of imported technolo-
gies. The National Academy of Sciences recently recommended several
potential research programs associated with improved mining technology.
For example:
"in conventional approaches there is a need to determine whether
harder cutting materials can be synthesized in suitable sizes
and shapes (tungsten carbide and synthetic diamond have led to
considerable progress in this respect), and to explore their
capabilities in factors affecting bit performance in various
types of rock. Novel approaches for both soft and hard rock
should be fully explored and evaluated for various mining con-
ditions. These include the use of high powered lasers, elec-
tron beam, plasma torches, thermal fragmentation, ultrasonics
and shock waves, percussion and hydraulic jet techniques, and
automated continuous explosive systems.
"it is recommended that research be accelerated on ways to
automate mining operations. Such automation requires the
development of suitable sensing devices (to monitor rock
composition, for example), information processing equipment
(minicomputers), and servo-mechanisms (robots), all of which
t r -k
have to be exceptionally rugged.
Scientific and technological developments will also be important
in the economic utilization of lower grade ores. The country will move
from the use of its richest ores to those that are currently marginal.
Therefore, a series of developments that improve the economics of the
use of low grade ore will be necessary; these may involve for example,
in situ leaching of ore deposits, improving methods of beneficiation
(e.g., beneficiation of magnetic taconite in coarse crushing plants in
*Mineral Resources.
70
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the process of producing iron), lower cost transportation, new grinding
and separation techniques, diminished energy requirements, etc.
Ocean mining is a particularly promising era. Here the processes
involve both the removal of minerals from sea water through distillation
or osmotic processes and the direct recovery of minerals from the ocean
floor. Sea water contains almost all of the chemical elements, although
only four elements—sodium, chlorine, magnesium, and bromine—are now
being recovered in relatively large quantities. Landsberg, Fishman,
and Fisher project that:
It is not unreasonable to expect that within the next twenty
to forty years some byproduct recovery will be carried out in
sea water conversion plants built for meeting fresh water
needs. But these plants will probably be of a limited number
in the United States, at least in this century; barring the
achievement of the extremely low-processing costs, application'
will probably not be of major significance except for the sea
water minerals already being recovered.'
With respect to use of the ocean bottom, mineral resources may be
"mined" from beneath the surface of the Continental Shelf, recovered in
the form of deposits from silt, slime, and solid debris covering the
ocean floor (these materials are believed to have collected from land
erosion and deterioration of submerged rock), and nodular material lying
on the ocean bottom, at considerable depth. The recovery of nodules is
particularly interesting since they appear to be primarily manganese and
also contain nickel, copper, and cobalt. Nodules have been found at
depths of from 500 to 3000 feet off the United States southeast coast,
and to a range of 5000 to 14,000 feet in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
^Mineral Facts and Problems, Bureau of Mines Bulletin 650, United States
Department of the Interior (1970).
tH. H. Landsberg, L. L. Fishman, and J. L. Fisher, Resources in America's
Future, 1963, p. 495. (Hereafter called Resources in America's Future.)
71
-------
...one square mile would contain 70,000 tons of nodules or
20,000 to 35,000 tons of manganese...a breakthrough here
would almost at once shake free the United States of growing
dependence upon overseas sources. Recovery of phosphates
from the ocean bottom, especially along the west coast, may
*
exceed that of manganese.
Recycling technology is indeed promising. Americans discard ap-
proximately 250 million tons of solid wastes per year. Today nearly all
major materials are to some extent recycled. The rate varies from nearly
100 percent for lead to 50 percent for copper, 31 percent for iron and
steel, and 19 percent for paper and board, to 4.2 percent for glass.
Considering just iron and steel, nonferrous metals, glass, textiles, and
rubber, about 25 percent of the materials consumed in the country are
currently recycled. Improved processes of recovery for the huge waste
stream will reduce demand for virgin materials. The National Commission
on Materials Policy has recommended that the government accelerate re-
search and development and technology transfer on resource recovery from
scrap, especially encouraging the recovery of resources in municipal
waste.*
Finally, science and technology can aid in the development of sub-
stitute materials for currently imported minerals or minerals that are
likely to be in short supply in the future. Several of these substitu-
tions are already in progress; for example, the use of plastics for
metals in automobiles began in 1960 and had reached a level of about
^Resources in America's Future, p. 496.
t"Report to Congress on Resource Recovery," Environmental Protection
Agency (February 1973).
$Needs in the Environment, Today and Tomorrow: Final Report of the
National Commission on Materials Policy, p. 4d-19 (June 1973). Here-
after called Needs in the Environment.
72
-------
10 percent by 1970.* The National Academy of Sciences recently urged
that the search for substitute materials begin immediately:
We cannot emphasize too strongly that the discovery and de-
velopment of new and improved materials as possible substi-
tutes for existing ones takes time, and that the process is
generally driven by clearly perceived functional objectives
rather than by ill-placed optimism that "something will turn
up when the crunch comes."T
There are three major difficulties encountered in seeking to sub-
stitute one material for another: complexity of design considering
specialized uses; accounting for the many uses of single materials of
different combinations; and accommodating the huge volume of use of many
commodities. In technically complex applications, such as nuclear reac-
tors and jet engines, some substitute materials are nearly impossible to
find. In other cases, the material is so crucial to adequate performance
(e.g., palladium in telephone systems) that a substitute would mean re-
design of the entire system if that were possible.
There are many political actions possible in this domain that relate
to creating incentives or removing barriers to influence production or
consumption of minerals. For example, taxes or subsidies could be
created to promote conservation of scarce resources, federal stockpiling
programs could be introduced, or materials rationed. As a single example,
the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment recently pointed out
that more than a hundred million acres of federal lands including wild-
life refuges, national parks, and land administered by the Department of
Defense are hardly used to produce materials, yet these lands are thought
*J. C. Fisher and R. H. Pry, "A Simple Substitution Model of Technologi-
cal Change," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. Ill,
No. 1, p. 75.
tMineral Resources.
73
-------
to be quite rich in mineral wealth. The various institutional factors
that affect the use of such land include:
• Environmental policy, laws, and regulations.
• Mining and leasing laws and regulations.
• Administrative processes for environmental and other
certification reviews.
• Economic policy (e.g., tax provisions such as depletion
allowances and accelerated amortization of facilities or
investment tax credit).
• Transportation policy (e.g., construction and operation
of rail lines) .
• Government programs for geological and geophysical sur-
veying, exploration and mapping.
• Conflicting or concurrent federal-state jurisdictions
(e.g., sovereignty and unitization of oil fields involving
federal lands).*
The National Commission of Materials Policy recently recommended a
full legislative program in this area. They urged that federal agencies
intensify their efforts to encourage worldwide development of resources
by all means, diplomatic, financial, and educational; that the federal
government give users of materials economic incentives in the form of
tax credits for expanded use of recycling materials; and that Congress
modify the existing General Mining law to modify the procedure for re-
claiming abandoned mining claims. They urged that prospectors should
be granted sufficient rights to encourage their active exploration for
t
new mineral deposits.
Corporations that have the use of materials in short supply will be,
I think, seen by the government and society as custodians entrusted with
*Request for Proposal from the Office of Technology Assessment: OTA/RP
75-4 (February 1975).
fNeeds in the Environment.
74
-------
the job of changing those materials into products useful to the country.
There will be penalties for performing this job badly and rewards for
doing it well. Within a corporation that has under its control the use
of materials in short supply, there will be new kinds of decisions about
what to manufacture and produce. With input materials limited, it may
not be possible to serve all markets and produce all products; what should
be given priority? If business has no means for deciding, government
will.
Summa ry
In preparing the agenda for this symposium, EPA posed several ques-
tions. In this section, based on the foregoing discussion, summary
answers to these questions are presented.
(1) What future resource issues do you anticipate will have
major implications for EPA policy?
• Determination of more precise relationships between
consumption of minerals and GNP.
• Public attitudes and expectation about what constitutes
a "good life."
• World competition for minerals, availability and price.
• Extent of domestic proven reserves, their locations,
and the willingness of the owners (including the
federal government) and local and state governments
to permit their extraction.
• The availability and cost of substitutes.
(2) How will various changes in human carrying capacities affect
these issues?
• GNP growth and the material things it brings will con-
tinue to be sought by individuals and the nation as a
whole.
75
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• Shortages and high prices of materials will bring pres-
sure to develop indigenous resources and more advanced
technologies of waste processing, recycling, explora-
tion, substitutes, and improved production and proc-
essing efficiency.
(3) What emerging environmental policy alternatives will need
to be examined in light of these issues?
• Current policies should be reviewed to determine that
they encourage the development of needed technology and
are not inconsistent with the effective and appropriate
development and use of indigenous resources.
• Policies will be needed to improve planning associated
with projecting the future demand for minerals.
(4) What political and social constraints may limit the effects
of EPA policy decisions?
• Suppose materials are short, prices high, supply uncer-
tain, and unemployment pervasive. EPA policy decisions
which are seen (correctly or incorrectly) to inhibit
the effective development of indigenous supplies will
be strenuously questioned. In other words, in this
scenario, a backlash is indeed plausible.
(5) In view of future issues, what kinds of research related to
resource use should EPA be undertaking now?
• Supporting the development of more effective exploration
techniques, and geology in general.
• Participating in the evolution of new mining technologies.
• Pursuing the techniques for employing lower grade ores
and beneficiation.
• Investigating the utility of ocean mining.
• Reaching an understanding and creating incentives for
greatly intensifying recycling and waste processing
technologies.
• Understanding a priori, the dynamics and potential for
the use of substitutes for materials likely to be in
short supply.
• Developing more effective economic and planning tools
which help project the primary and secondary conse-
quences of policy.
76
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RESOURCES, INDUSTRY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Maurice R. Eastin
Special Assistant to the Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
-------
RESOURCES, INDUSTRY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Maurice R. Eastin
EPA's charter from Congress is to set health standards and to en-
force such standards. If we in EPA were to look at this charter without
relation to the total environment, we could be accused properly of tunnel
vision. If on the other hand we were completely broad in our interpre-
tation we would give into other forces and our charter would suffer.
Russell Train is consciously trying to operate reasonably within these
bounds with one eye on health and the other on our economy. This is the
decision of a reasonable and prudent man.
Our government is a system as well. What OSHA, Agriculture, Energy,
Transportation, Interior, EPA do is all interdependent. At times, how-
ever, we give the impression that each segment of government is afflicted
with tunnel vision or that government is a series of tunnels with no view
from the mountain top.
If every agency takes its pound of flesh, the body politic will die.
Administrators must decide whether they will be technicians or statesmen,
picayune or wise, capricious or profound. Government also has an alarm-
ing proclivity for going from suspicion to conclusion with quite careless
attention to the burden of proof. This is in many cases generated by
an overdeveloped sense of self-righteousness and turns into unresponsive
and arrogant government.
The dictionary is one of our great educational tools. It is also
good for the soul now and then. The other day I decided to refer to it
for some basic guidance. Health standards, as you know, are created to
guide us all in environmental reconstruction. We can argue about them
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quantitatively, but I believe we all accept their objective. By defini-
tion health is: "The general condition of the body." We assume, of
course, that this includes the brain or mind and that the objective is
good health. Thus, the definition helps to point out the obvious—that
health is dependent on the condition of the total body, considered as a
system.
Now what about the definition of environment. Webster says it is
"the aggregate of the social and cultural" conditions that influence the
life of an individual or community. The word aggregate stood out and I
looked that up: aggregate is a mass or body of units or parts somewhat
loosely assocated with one another. The term associated led me to the
definition of system: "a regularly interacting or interdependent group
of units or forces forming a unified whole and tending to be in equi-
librium. "
Combining these definitions, we come to the conclusion that the
environment is the aggregate of the interdependent interacting physical,
cultural, economic, and social conditions, generally in equilibrium and
that influence the life of the individual or community.
That is quite an impressive mouthful indeed.
The physical system within the total environmental system includes
the air, water and land. It therefore follows that in dealing with
water you are disturbing this interrelated air and land and you are at
the same time disturbing cultural, economic, social factors which before
such action were loosely in equilibrium.
Man however at the present time does not completely understand the
total life or environmental system. To solve or to make progress to-
wards the understanding of such a complex subject, our teachers have
always told us to seek out a portion of the system, work with it, under-
stand it, and use it as a building block to progressively reach our goal
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The Guiding Philosophy for the Future
I am convinced that the building block that we should use as a key
to total understanding is the process—a subsystem of the total mystery —
but a building block we understand nevertheless. If we look towards a
more efficient process from the viewpoint of resources, economics, and
energy, the environment will gain.
It is therefore a point of view we seek; a more technologically and
system-oriented posture than the narrow view of pollutants coming out
the end of a pipe. These are only indicators of the performance of the
total system we seek to correct. And we are seeking progress not per-
fection. We cannot live with the economics of the end-of-the pipe point
of view.
Application of Philosophy to Program Administration
But what can EPA do administratively to face up to the system con-
cept and lead Congress into eventually using the system concept in draft-
ing laws. I reemphasize that we at EPA must interface administratively
water, air, and earth laws and second, effectively and efficiently ab-
sorb and understand industry technology and the processess—the building
of the organization to do the job. The equally important manning of that
organization and the quality of management will be left to another time.
At present, the whole energy is law oriented. I hold that this is
the proper organization for the enforcement sections of EPA—and EPA is
an enforcement agency; but I believe most deeply that this law orienta-
tion is in error for the program areas of EPA. We are now requiring
municipal officials, agriculture and industry—the people we all must
depend upon to get the job done—to mill about from pillar to post to
seek out the receiving areas for technology and to be whip-sawed from
water to air to earth to obtain incomplete nonsystem oriented decisions.
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If we do not arrive at a system decision within our agency, how can
industry plan and execute programs in the best interest of all our citi-
zens? At the best, it is awkward and at the worst this loose adminis-
tration is irresponsible.
But I do not believe this is happening because collectively EPA is
bad or stupid or does not mean well. I am convinced that this is hap-
pening because our program area is not system-oriented. It is oriented
and organized and fragmented—as is the rest of the agency—by air,
water, and earth laws.
I believe the day will come when the agency will administratively
put it all together in a system orientation by establishing basic process
groups in the program areas. There are a dozen more or less basic proc-
esses or systems with which we must deal and, of course, many other less
dominant systems. Those basic processes are: agriculture and food;
paper and pulp; steel and iron including foundries; aluminum; copper and
nonferrous metals; electric power; coal; petroleum and refining; chemical
organic and inorganic; glass; automobiles (mobile sources); cement; plas-
tics; synthetics; rubber; textiles; electroplating; public waste and
resource recovery; and drinking water. These process groups, to which
we are now going philosophically in EPA research, will deal with all
facets of the process including energy, resources, economics, noise,
air, water, and solid waste. They will also be the recipients of all
technological data and should therefore understand the process and
should assist the industry in improving the process rather than dealing
negatively with more sewage disposal plants or removal equipment.
You have just had some heart surgery described to you because the
program area is the heart of EPA and all the other sections should sup-
port it. This orientation already exists to some degree for municipal
waste water and mobile sources but we stop there; we do not go on to
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industry and agriculture. To support these process groups through which
all progress will flow will be such existing functions as: toxic sub-
stances; resource recovery; pesticides and agricultural chemicals; noise;
water chemistry; fuels; research (applied only); hazardous materials
(radiation); ocean disposal; monitoring; chemical and physical support;
radiation; land use; economic studies; and air cleaning systems.
It's all there now in EPA but very importantly we have not put it
all together, and you cannot find it. It is so fragmented we in EPA
really don't know where it is either, but please keep that quiet. I
would not want that to get around; it's embarrassing.
The only counter argument in EPA has been from EPA lawyers. They
say this would allow industry and EPA to get too cozy. This is a typical
and proper reaction to those embued with the arms length legal philosophy.
The functional logic and simplicity of such a system organization should
be its strength and its protection from hanky panky. But, importantly,
this would improve our technological communication and understanding
greatly.
When we do progress to a system orientation our decisions will be
more sound and our understandings will be more profound—at that point,
we will truly embark on positive environmental reconstruction rather
than negative restrictive control.
Application of Philosophy to Research
How can this basic system philosophy be applied to research? I
repeat that our society cannot afford the economics of end-of-the-pipe
negative environmental control. I have just suggested a system approach
to the Administration.of Environmental Reconstruction.
Again in research I believe we must concentrate on the process, but
I do not think EPA or any government agency should direct or execute such
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process research. I do not think government can duplicate the talent in
industry nor should it even attempt to do so.
EPA's function is to augment and stimulate process improvement in
cooperation with industry, not separate from industry. Industry on the
other hand should direct and execute process research to create more
energy-efficient, resource-efficient economically sound processes, and
the environment will thereby be served. And the market will always flow
to the most efficient process.
We should not direct our thinking to handling waste products. We
should direct our thinking to byproducts and new products.
A microcosm of what I have in mind already exists on the Houston
ship channel. As infamous as this area was in the past, it nevertheless
illustrates that the effluents or emissions of one plant can become the
feedstock for an adjacent process. This is the concept of the energy
complex or the industrial complex. Without this concept even today our
pollution problems and waste of resources would be greater. The exten-
sion and refinement of this concept in our processes will serve energy,
make better use of our resources, and serve the environment—all within
economic reason.
Application of Philosophy to Legislation
The EPA must lead the way in administration, in research, in the
philosophic treatment of our environmental challenges—to show Congress
that the system approach is the way to go in legislation. At the pres-
ent time we have over-legislated too-detailed air and water laws, which
do not relate to the earth or to each other. This creates a heavenly
badminton game for bureaucracy, but industry and the public are taking
a beating as the shuttlecock.
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I would be so bold as to say the day will come when Congress com-
bines our air, water and land legislation into a single more flexible
system package either through amendments to the present laws or repeal
and replacement of existing laws.
Summary
In summation, I have suggested my concept of what the future may
bring in philosophy, administration, research and legislation. I may
have done this with a seeming ingenuous optimism, but I have done so to
stimulate our collective intellectual appetites with a bit of spice and
to present to you my concept of a sound structure on which we can plan
and execute basic and applied research.
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RESEARCH NEEDS
FIRST VIEWPOINT
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AN AGENDA FOR RESEARCH
Lynton K. Caldwell
Indiana University
The primary need in effective research is to properly understand
the problem about which knowledge is sought. Failure to satisfy this
need has accounted substantially for the deficiencies of our environmen-
tal research in meeting the needs of public understanding and policy-
development.
We have attacked specific problems of environmental protection with-
out adequate reference to the general and basic causes of our environ-
mental predicament. We have launched into research unprepared conceptu-
ally or institutionally to deal with the environmental problem in its
true and full dimensions. In consequence, we have no basis for discov-
ering what we need to know to bring our general environmental situation
under control. We cannot be sure that in solving one problem we might
not be inviting others equally unwelcome.
Our primary research task is therefore to construct a hierarchy of
knowledge that would relate what we know to what we need to learn, and
would help us better to understand the multiplex relationships comprising
the total environment. This structure, which would never be finished,
could afford a rational basis for identifying priorities and critical
paths in our research efforts. It would provide a more reliable means
than we have today for determining how most effectively to deploy our
investments in environmental research.
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Identifying Research Needs: A Complex Task
The idea of a coherent structure or hierarchy of knowledge implies
at least three types of research needs that require fulfillment in at-
tacking both the lesser and larger problems of man's environmental rela-
tionships. Our particular focus is upon the environmental impacts of
changing resource usages. But the needs are equally those of environ-
mental research generally.
Three interrelating types of research needs may be identified. They
are (1) substantive, (2) functional, and (3) conceptual. Substantive
needs comprise the knowledge or understanding required to cope with en-
vironmental problems—in our purview, with the impact of changing re-
source usages. Functional needs refer to the skills, methods, and
facilities required to obtain substantive knowledge and to bring it to
public awareness in forms suitable for public response. Conceptual needs
pertain to the comprehension and appreciation of the human environmental
predicament, developing perspective on the total environmental research
task and its complexly interrelated parts. Only to the extent that each
of these needs is met can any of them be satisfied.
Substantive Needs. The knowledge aspect of research needs presents
the following tasks:
The obvious first task is the identification of specific information,
either absent or inadequately developed, concerning the environmental im-
pact of human activities, including resource usages. The need is for
answers to the question: What do we need to know concerning the envi-
ronmental impact of resource usages that we cannot obtain from our infor-
mation base as presently organized? This need for knowledge is often
formulated as a checklist of researchable topics. A recent listing by
the Environmental Studies Board of the National Research Council is
appended herewith (Attachment A). The utility of such lists is limited.
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They are analogous to shopping lists rather than to program budgets.
They may help to identify environmental problems needing attention, but
they provide no indication of interrelationships or of relative priori-
ties for research. Moreover, the shopping list approach provides no
means for discovering what pieces of information, if any, may have been
overlooked.
The second task of meeting substantive research needs is therefore
the structuring of researchable topics into a hierarchy of knowledge
which is also a grand design or map for research effort. The difficulty
of this task will be apparent to anyone familiar with the field of en-
vironmental research. But if successfully accomplished, the rewards
would be commensurate with the effort. The form required for such a
structure may not be determinable a priori. A three or four dimensional,
rather than graphic, model might be required. But, however constructed,
it should reveal linkages, dependencies, and discontinuities in our
knowledge of the environmental impact of resource usages.
Because the time dimension must be reflected in any model describ-
ing change, no hierarchy of environmental knowledge can be made final.
Were it to be finalized, it would rapidly become invalid, failing to
reflect the reality of the world in which change is the normal state.
Among the dynamics to be accounted for are changing physical circumstances,
for example, in human populations; in the economy; in resource availabil-
ity; and in technology among others. In addition, new knowledge alters
the configuration of the previous state of knowledge; public attitudes
and political circumstances also change, with feedback affecting still
other factors. A valid configuration is therefore necessarily dynamic.
Yet for the particular point in time at which environmental impacts
are being examined, it should be possible to determine relative priori-
ties among specific research needs. And so a structuring of knowledge
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provide criteria for priorities. However formulated, these criteria
should reflect: (1) urgencies, as estimated by the imminence, magnitude,
intensity, and duration of the impacts; (2) feasibilities, as determined
by adequacy of existing information, technique, and social acceptability;
and (3) dependencies among interrelating environmental factors. From
these data, projected within a time dimension, it should also be possible
to discern the "critical path" that research must take to solve an envi-
ronmental problem by a specified future time.
Functional Needs. Considerations of the substantive needs of envi-
ronmental research are incomplete until the means to meet these needs
have also been considered. Three interrelating aspects of functional
need may be identified: research capabilities, institutional arrange-
ments, and funding.
Capabilities include personal and professional skills, methods, and
technology required to identify and solve environmental problems. These
capabilities must necessarily match the complex variety of environmental
relationships. This is to say that they must be multidisciplinary, and
yet coherently related through orientation toward common or compatible
research goals—and must be sustainable over time.
These requirements imply need for an institutional infrastructure
designed to help maintain focus, orientation, and personnel capabilities.
Built into these arrangements should be mechanisms for error-detection
and correction, to control quality of output, along with periodic assess-
ment of the course of the research effort and the adequacy of the re-
search product in relation to the needs of society and of a more effec-
tive research design.
There is an obvious need for funding sufficient to sustain the
professional, technological, and institutional capabilities required for
performance of the research tasks. It is less apparent, but equally
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necessary, that the funding commitment be adequate in form and duration
as well as in amount. It is largely on the critical and controversial
issue of institutional support that efforts to respond to this compre-
hensive interpretation of research needs have been, and may continue to
be, rejected.
Conceptual Needs. The third and most basic research need is for
seeing the environmental predicament of modern man in its full dimensions
Meeting this need implies discovery of the nature of these dimensions, a
task not yet fully accomplished. It is neither necessary nor possible
here to describe the circumstances comprising the environmental difficul-
ties of modern man. But a list of writings that attempt to do so is ap-
pended (Attachment B).
To the extent that the conceptual need is adequately answered, it
satisfies three requisites of environmental research. First, it assists
the framing of a set of general organizing propositions that enables the
researcher to assemble discrete facts into a coherent operational struc-
ture of information. Second, the conceptual approach affords a rationale
for the potentially greater efficiency of fundamental research as against
the lesser efficiency of short-term expedient problem-solving. Third,
it reinforces tolerance for the risks associated with creative inquiry
as against the common tendency to insist upon quick, specific, and
politically acceptable results.
In the practical tasks of environmental research, these three as-
pects—substantive, functional, and conceptual—are inseparable. Con-
struction of a hierarchy of knowledge would be a conceptual task, apply-
ing functional means to the organizing and extending of substantive
knowledge through facilitating institutional arrangements. As this proc-
ess continues, the concepts change with the advancement of knowledge,
and even a substantially stable configuration of knowledge will not be
the same from year to year.
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Analyzing and Evaluating Substantive Research Needs
The major impact of human society upon the environmental follows
from its resource usages. A large part of environmental research is
therefore concerned with how the adverse aspects of this impact can be
alleviated. Its foci are primarily on environmentally conserving man-
agement of resources (for example, the regulation of strip mining), and
on changes in consumption that reduce total resource demand or preferen-
tially utilize resources that entail minimal environmental disruption
(for example, sun and wind). A large body of research pertinent to en-
vironmental policy is therefore concerned with resources and their uses.
Hence, an important research need is to understand how our knowledge of
materials and resources can be articulated into the general structure of
environmental knowledge.
This task requires an understanding of the semantics of the re-
source concept. Contrary to the implications of popular usage, resources
are not per se physical materials or their properties. "Resource" is a
techno-economic concept, and materials become resources only when they
are discovered to have a practical utility. Materials that are truly
inaccessible, or for which no use is known, are not resources in any
practical sense. No definition of a resource is adequate that, at least
by implication, does not indicate the usages of the resource and the
technologies through which these usages are actualized. A very large
part of the apparatus of modern industrial society (or indeed of any
human society) consists of resource technologies that implement, among
a wide range of functions, those of: (1) discovering, (2) extracting,
(3) transporting, (4) processing, (5) fabricating, and (6) reclaiming
or recycling.
These technical processes imply a cultural and especially an eco-
nomic infrastructure through which society "selects" what resources are
sought; how, when, in what quantities, and at what cost to the environment
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Consumption patterns are built into this socioeconomic infrastructure,
and environmental research concerned with how resources are used is
inevitably confronted with relevant questions concerning popular values,
preferences, and lifestyles.
Even a superficial probing of the consumption aspect of resource
uses clarifies the preference of politicians and public officials for
dealing with resource-environment problems in their supply rather than
in their consumption phases. The history of both energy and environmen-
tal pollution policy illustrates the understandable tendency of govern-
ment to try to accommodate existing consumption patterns rather than to
propose radical alterations in the infrastructure of the economy that
would significantly change resource usages. For example, in coping with
the impact of the automobile on resources and the environment, political
choice has opted for temporizing alternatives such as emission controls,
improved combustion efficiency, lower speed limits, and car pools, as
contrasted to more fundamental measures such as pollution-free fuels,
electrified rapid transit, drastic controls over land development, in-
dustrial location, and the design and construction of urban facilities.
The reason for the choice should be apparent. In "making the present
system work better/' the politically dangerous value question is con-
tained; in seeking a better system, a Pandora's box of alternative values
is opened.
Because resource uses are built into a complex and relatively stable
techno-economic infrastructure, changes in usage seldom occur abruptly.
A decade is perhaps the shortest span of time in which to ascertain or
to effect significant changes. Studies in the implementation of scien-
tific and technical innovation make doubtful the wisdom of limiting re-
search on the environmental impact of changes in resource usage to inter-
vals of less than a decade. How far into the future research can, or
should, be projected is perhaps best determined pragmatically. Different
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phenomena may proceed on different timetables. Gross and long-range
tendencies are often easier to verify than are short-range changes, sub-
ject to transitory variables of lifestyle, fashion, political inter-
ference, and even fluctuations of the weather. Technological change
takes longer. It is difficult to name any major environment-affecting
technology (for example, pesticides, fission reactors, or jet propul-
sion) that have not required at least a decade to develop to the point
of significant environmental impact.
Because resource uses are technologically implemented, it is hardly
profitable to consider whether environmental research should focus on
the uses of resources or upon their associated technologies. Both must
ultimately be considered although specific aspects of a total resource
use may be sectored out for study, provided its total context is kept
in mind.
Insofar as efforts are made to prevent undesired environmental
impacts from changes in resource usages, the following knowledge is
needed. Basic information concerns the characteristics of the resource
in question: (for example, the properties of the various types of coal).
These data, joined to information regarding the available implementing
technologies, provides factual data for determining the amenability of
the particular resource usage to environment-protection management, at
what costs, and upon what conditions? If the incidents of its environ-
mental impact, its degree of hazard, and alternative methods and costs
of prevention or amelioration can be ascertained, the substantive knowl-
edge is at hand upon which policy decisions can be based.
This knowledge, to be adequate to policy needs, must provide ans-
wers to the following questions. First, how complete and reliable is
the evidence regarding environmental impacts? Second, from what phases
of the resource-use cycle are these impacts incurred? Third, to what
extent are these impacts: (1) unavoidable if the resource is used at
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all; (2) avoidable through alternative approaches to the purpose to be
served (for example, through alternative technologies or resource-use
strategies such as cutting down usage to below the threshold of adverse
effects); and (3) reversible or correctable by physical, technical, eco-
nomic, and political criteria. Fourth, what are the second- and third-
order consequences of initial impacts, including synergistic effects,
sequential chain reactions, and the time-space ramifications of these
phenomena.
A fifth question, which must be answered for responsible public
officials is: What are the true and full costs, including the environ-
mental costs, of meeting a perceived social need through a particular
resource usages? What alternative tradeoffs exist among resource usages,
and against what criteria are competing values to be identified and
weighted? This cost assessment, if complete, will include estimated
opportunity costs of alternative resource uses and strategies. And this
calculus of opportunities need not rest solely on ethical justification,
but equally upon the practical consideration that future possibilities
may materialize much sooner than expected. The international embargo
and cartelization of oil is a dramatic example of the costs that may be
incurred by optimistically discounting future possibilities.
Requisites of an Adequate Agenda for Research
The thesis of this paper has been that the nature of modern man's
present environmental circumstance sets the conditions, and hence the
requirements, of research that can answer to our policy needs. More
than a shopping list of researchable topics is required to construct
a meaningful agenda for research. An agenda that fully corresponds to
pur environmental predicament must somehow attempt to account for all of
the significant factors of that predicament. The outcome of this effort
would be a structure or hierarchy of environmental knowledge that would
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be larger than the operational agenda of any agency, but which could
provide orientation and perspective for the research missions of organi-
zations such as the EPA.
No attempt is made in this paper to outline such a structuring of
knowledge. That function is a primary research task, and it is not
necessary to know precisely how to do it to understand that it needs to
be done. Nor does the probably correct belief that this comprehensive
approach will not be taken argue against its validity. Mankind has
always been the maker of most of its troubles, and only in extreme duress
has it faced its options realistically in preference to acting upon po-
litically or psychologically convenient interpretations of reality.
Hence, there is no compelling reason to believe that in America, or
elsewhere, it will effectively seek the kind of knowledge needed for
coping with its environmental problems.
We may expect that society will continue to seek convenient knowl-
edge, ostensibly of direct and immediate practicality. So far as this
knowledge goes, it may be reliable, but there are dangers in assuming
that this pragmatic approach to our research needs will enable us to
discover them fully or adequately. Two hazards of defining research
needs either in response to ad hoc exigencies or by means of extemporan-
eous checklists, are that these approaches not only provide no means of
ensuring against omission of significant variables from consideration,
but may actually lead toward erraneous conclusions. No structuring of
environmental knowledge is adequate that does not identify the linkages,
cybernetic mechanisms, and discontinuities in the structure. Unless all
significant parameters of the environmental research task have been
recognized, it will be impossible to identify the critical path leading
from mere factual data to coherent policy alternatives.
If the foregoing thesis is valid, it then follows that in the con-
struction of a hierarchy of knowledge, problem analysis and definition
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require major attention. This is especially so because research toward
environmental problem-solving must proceed even while a more adequate
configuration of knowledge is being created. Our environmental exigencies
may not wait until our knowledge is adequate to cope with them. When
there is a necessity to act, action must be taken even if on insufficient
knowledge. But the objective of a comprehensive structuring of knowledge
is to minimize such necessities. Thus research toward more adequate con-
ceptualization of environment-resource problems is as important and prac-
tical, and may be less costly, than practical research directed toward
solving specific problems out of context.
Practical ad hoc research may be applied (perhaps wastefully) toward
solving the "wrong" problems. For example, research in automobile-
emission controls may retrospectively appear to have been a poor invest-
ment, considering the eventual and relatively early need for alternatives
to petroleum-powered propulsion. Moreover, research inadequately concep-
tualized may lead to solutions that create new problems in addition to
those that it presumes to solve. Pesticide research has frequently led
to such unwanted consequences. And finally, problem-solving research
projected on narrow conceptual or technical grounds may completely over-
look simpler and less costly solutions to a problem that would become
apparent only through a broader surveillance of the field of relevant
knowledge.
Any survey of the state of the field will show that our environmen-
tal research needs have largely been defined by ad hoc and shopping-list
approaches. And it is probable that regardless of their inadequacies,
these will continue to be the guiding approaches. They are consistent
with the institutional and political realities that produced them,
whereas the comprehensive structuring of knowledge approach is not.
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Social and Political Constraints on Environmental Research
Our institutionalized arrangements for environmental research—
academic, industrial, and governmental—hopefully produce at least what
they are capable of producing. It is hardly surprising that they seldom
produce more than they were designed and funded to produce. The func-
tional needs of a comprehensive structuring of environmental knowledge—
capabilities, institutional infrastructure, and funding—remain at pres-
ent largely unprovided. Nor are they likely to be provided until the
need for a more adequate concept of our environmental problems is recog-
nized by the American people and their political representatives.
The prospect for an affirmative public response to this comprehen-
sive interpretation of research needs is not promising. Constraints
against adoption of this broad and long-range perspective appear firmly
grounded in the psychological and cultural assumptions prevailing in (but
certainly not unique to) American society. These assumptions are seldom
made explicit. They are instead deducible from behavior, and they indi-
cate tendencies and biases in the following pertinent respects:
• Insistence on quick and direct answers regardless of the com-
plexity of a problem (a penchant for "low-budget spectaculars").
• Optimistic assessment of natural tendencies (matters to turn out
better than we expect).
• Specialization and reductionist approaches to problem-solving
(more appropriate to physical than to environmental problems).
• Temporizing compromise as against lasting but conflict-producing
solutions (no one gets hurt by avoiding trouble).
• Preference for symbolic responses over actual remedies that would
disturb the sociopolitical system (note the tendencies of public
programs pertaining to health, poverty, crime, and environmental
pollution).
But perhaps the greatest constraint on environmental research today
is the strong tendency of governmental and foundation executives to avoid
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or to minimize risk. These officials and their institutions are poorly
equipped for risk assessment in relation to the prospective rewards of
obtaining reliable knowledge of future environmental hazards. Avoidance
of future substantive risks through acceptance of present deprivations
and controls has little political appeal—especially when the future
hazard is not demonstrably certain and is in any case relatively remote.
It is a near axiom of political life that officials are more readily
punished for mistakes than for inaction. Better to avoid personal risk
now than to incur public or official displeasure for attempting to fore-
stall social risks in the future.
The risk-avoidance that tends to characterize official behavior is
also found among researchers. They tend to select projects for which
funds are available, which promise earlier rather than later or uncertain
payoff, which can be made consistent with specialized disciplinary ori-
entations, and which minimize dependence on other researchers. Compre-
hensive approaches to environmental problem-solving imply multidiscipli-
nary inputs and coordinative, collaborative team work to a degree that
may obscure the identity (and thus the distinction) of the individual
researcher. But research as presently instutionalized tends to reward
individuals, not groups. Individuals receive promotions—not research
teams.
The risk in opting for the development of a comprehensive structure
of environmental knowledge is the risk of sponsoring efforts that are
novel, that require changes in values and assumptions, that cannot prom-
ise early or clearly defined returns. Even though a research effort of
the kind here indicated would absorb only a small part of the money spent
on environmental research, and would reinforce rather than compete with
productive work in progress, few are the public officials that may be
expected to recommend it and few are the legislators that would respond
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favorably to a proposition so heavy on theory and so light on politically
usable results.
It therefore follows that the investment needed to meet the primary
environmental research needs of the nation will not be made. It does
not further follow that environmental knowledge will not be advanced.
Useful and important work will be done. But in the long run more money
will have been spent, less useful knowledge will have been acquired, and
fewer environmental and resource policy errors avoided than would be
probable had more support been given to the more fundamental and contin-
uing need for an adequate structure of environmental knowledge. Never-
theless the case for a better approach should be presented, even though
the probabilities of its early acceptance are slight.
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Attachment A
CRITICAL ISSUES IN NATURAL RESOURCES
Agriculture
World Food - U.S. production, technology transfer to foreign nations
Renewable Resources - as substitutes for nonrenewable
Fertilizer - production from other sources than natural gas
biological fixation of N_
&
Runoff pollution by chemicals and fertilizer
Food losses
Air Pollution
Health basis for standards, epidemiology
Automotive emissions, energy relationship
Sulfur oxides and sulfates problems
Acid rain
Atmospheric chemistry and transport
Ozone layer
Atomic Energy
Breeder reactor
Nuclear risks
Role of nuclear in energy mix
Uranium reserves
Radioactive waste disposal
Chemicals in the Environment
Asbestos
Chlorofluorocarbons
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Pesticides
Toxic substances regulation
Biogeochemical cycles
Coal
Increased mining
Strip mining, rehabilitation
Slurry pipelines
Coal conversion processes
Coastal Zone
OCS resources
On-shore impacts
Estuaries
Ecology and Ecosystem Analysis
Fragile ecosystems
Managed ecosystems
Ecology as a predictive science
Electric Power
Fuel sources
Thermal pollution
Energy
Better numbers on world oil and gas reserves
Demand modification and conservation - what is possible and how
much does it help
Coal conversion problems
Increased coal production
Hot rock geothermal
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EPA - $5 Million Program
Decision-making with uncertainty
Comprehensive environmental management, cross-media pollution
considerations
ORD effectivenesss
Fish and Wildlife
Predator control - evaluation of alternative strategies
International
SCOPE - ICSU projects
UNEP liaison
Bilateral projects
Environmental protection requirements as a part of AID
Institutional Problems
Environmental Impact Statement quality and effectiveness
The need for an Environmental Analysis Institute
Obtaining and using proprietary information in public policy
deliberations
Land Use
Scientific basis for land use planning
Local versus federal control issue
Carrying capacity concept
Land quality protection equivalent to AQ and WQ
Patterns of settlement
Marine Affairs
Fisheries management
Mineral resources recovery
Ocean as a sink, dumping, rivers, out falls, etc.
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Marine mammal protection
Deep water ports
Minerals
Forecasting reserves, demand, and possible shortages
Dependence on foreign sources
Mobilization of minor elements
Motor Vehicles
Emissions to ambient relationship
Unregulated emission species
Pollution control versus energy requirement
Oil and Gas
Oil spills
LNG transport
Pesticides
Comprehensive decision making
Eradication
Integrated pest management
R&D
EPA - Office of Research and Development
Interagency coordination
Solid Waste
Containers
Recycling
Incineration
Tailings
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Water Pollution
NCWQ report
Effluent change concept
Dredging
Trace organics
Water reuse
Nonpoint sources
Weather and Climate
Weather modification
Climate and agriculture
Ozone layer.
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Attachment B
REFERENCES ON ENVIRONMENTAL DIFFICULTIES
Mesarovic, Mihajlo, and Eduard Pestel, Mankind at the Turning Point:
The Second Report to the Club of Rome. New York: Dutton, 1974.
Meadows, Donella, Dennis Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A
Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind.
New York: Universe Books, Inc., 1974.
Watt, Kenneth E. F., The Titanic Effect. New York: Dutton, 1974,
268.
Platt, John R. , Perception and Change. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1970, 178.
Heilbroner, Robert, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1974, 150.
Ward, Barbara and Rene Dubos, eds. Only One Earth. New York:
Norton, 1972.
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REVIEW OF THE PAPER BY L. K. CALDWELL
Stanley A. Cain
University of California, Santa Cruz
Professor Caldwell has told us at the start that environmental re-
search has fallen short. He is blunt about it. Having failed to under-
stand the problem about which knowledge is sought, we have launched into
isolated studies without being aware of the true and full dimensions of
our environmental dilemmas. However clever technologically, we have
been unprepared conceptually and institutionally to deal with environ-
mental problems and bring them under control. I accept his indictment
as being generally true.
In comparison with the life sciences, the physical sciences and
their derived technologies have an enviable exactness. The life sciences
lack this except when they can use the knowledge and methods of the
physical sciences. By then we are not dealing with life but with the
substratum through which life phenomena are manifested. In either case,
Caldwell says that we cannot be sure that in getting data on one problem
we might not be inviting others equally unwelcome in terms of environ-
mental quality.
There is no hint from him that we should wish any less support for
the natural sciences. It is, rather, that our not fully understanding
the problems about which knowledge is sought, the branches of science
are not coordinated, especially in relation to the wider understandings,
institutions, and methodologies of the social sciences. Political sci-
ence, economics, and sociology are an embarrassment. People do not behave
like physical particles and reactions; they are unpredictable and seem
to do as they please.
Ill
-------
In the first paragraph he stresses the deficiencies of environmen-
tal research in meeting the needs of public understanding and policy
development. He does not charge that the natural sciences are more at
fault than the social sciences in producing environmental dilemmas.
Lacking a holistic philosophy, we have been unable to anticipate the
problems that are produced by partial solutions which, often, do not in
fact solve an environmental problem or, in doing so, produce others. He
states his thesis in these words: Our primary task is to construct a
hierarchy of knowledge that would relate what we know to what we need
to learn, and would help us better to understand the multiplex relation-
ships comprising the total environment.
I like Caldwell's philosophy and his' wisdom so much that I would be
happier had he not used the word "hierarchy" which indicates a linear
order of authority as from pope to parish priest or from king to com-
moner. However, it turns out that he means that only multidimensional
models will serve well for thinking about and working on environmental
problems. He certainly does not mean that we should establish a linear
list of things to do but, rather, that we contemplate all kinds of knowl-
edge that we need if we are to escape from our environmental predicaments
and stop producing nonsolutions. A nonsolution, of course, consists of
learning about a thing, condition, or process and then putting the re-
sults into practice with scarcely a thought for the consequences. When
a problem is isolated to be attacked we cannot afford any longer to
think of it as existing in isolation. Its isolation is of our creation,
for the purpose of studying one variable at a time. The condition or
process, whatever it may be, will most likely have a family of causes and
any changes that result from research will likely have a complex of con-
sequences. The environment cannot be dealt with satisfactorily by linear
thinking—an improvement over compartmentalized thinking—nor can it be
usefully understood out of context.
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Being a political scientist, and a broadly based and wise one at
that, he immediately emphasizes in his paper the principal deficiency
in environmental research, the failure to relate the environmental ef-
forts of scientists and technologists to the needs of public understand-
ing and policy development. The problems arising from the progressive
loss of environmental quality cannot be solved by the sciences alone,
nor by the familiar engineering technologies that apply them, however
clever they may be, but require the full panoply of the social sciences.
I would add my belief that solutions of environmental problems also re-
quire participation of the humanities, the communication fields, and a
dedication of our institutions of education at all levels.
Caldwell organizes his thoughts. For example, he says that research
needs fall into three interrelated categories. First are substantive
needs for knowledge to cope with a problem. Second are the functional
needs for skills, methods, institutional arrangements and facilities, and
funding. Third are the conceptual needs to see environmental problems
whole, not failing to comprehend that a thing, condition, or process is
likely a mere link in a complex situation. These three sets of research
needs have to be met if the objective of anticipating environmental con-
sequences of our actions are to be anticipated, especially as changing
uses of resources arise.
The record is not one to make us sanguine about the future. We have
not anticipated the environmental consequences of our actions, and we
will do better in the future as resource usages change only if research
is organized so as to deal with all of the cells and linkages of the
complex systems rather than with things, conditions, and processes one
at a time. The encouraging point is this: the core of the wisdom that
has called forth this conference.
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Caldwell also recognizes that no such framework for the guidance of
research is a template of enduring usefulness. It is a device for keep-
ing us humble and reminding us that change is inevitable. As he says,
new knowledge alters the configuration of the previous state of knowledge.
There will be no simplistic and final solutions. This position is not
defeatist. On the contrary, it is the only position that promises some
confidence that life and environment can be satisfactory.
f
He distinguishes between natural resources in being and those that
are latent or potential. He says also that it is of little use to list
known resources in order of importance except, perhaps, as to known and
demonstrated uses at the present. This causes him to conclude that it
is profitless to do research only on existing resource-use patterns.
This would be little more than fine-tuning the wrong engine. He ex-
presses the point more elegantly when he says "the tendency of govern-
ment is to try to accommodate consumption patterns rather than to pro-
pose radical alteration in the infrastructure of the economy that would
significantly change resource usages."
For a variety of reasons, the techno-economic infrastructure is not
geared for rapid change. It is too complicated to do so. For every
resource there exists a sequence of steps between the raw material, con-
dition, or natural process in nature and its practical usage. Every
link in a sequence and every chain that ends in a different usage has its
technological requirements, capital requirements, skilled personnel, mar-
kets and merchandizing system, and profit for some. Each step may have
its own environmental impacts and there is no overall responsibility for
the system. There has been no mechanism for pinpointing the sources and
causes of undesirable environmental consequences, and hence no central-
ized responsibility until recently a start has been made at the federal
level with the EPA.
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It is not unfair, I think, nor unappreciative to say that success
awaits a parallel responsibility in all pertinent governmental agencies
and all private organizations with involvement. As Caldwell says, en-
vironmental impacts occur at every step, not just with the disposal of
the ultimate waste products. This being true, policy requires reliable
and specific information concerning impacts at every stage. Which im-
pacts are unavoidable, granted the nature of the resource and the tech-
nology of extracting it from nature? Which impacts can be ameliorated
or removed with a different technology? Similar questions can be asked
at each step. Which impacts set off a chain of impacts? What is the
duration of the impact? How wide is the area affected? What are the
true and full costs? Who shall bear the costs? How shall those who
suffer get redress?
I do not find Caldwell sanguine about the outcome even though there
is a growing awareness of the loss of environmental quality. He says
that mankind has always been the maker of most of its troubles, and only
in extreme duress has it faced its options realistically in preference
to acting upon politically or psychologically convenient interpretations
of reality. Hence there is no compelling reason to believe that in
America, or elsewhere, it will effectively seek the kind of knowledge
needed for coping with its environmental problems.
There are several reasons for this pessimism. We continue to seek
convenient knowledge of direct and immediate practicality. This approach
provides no means of ensuring against leaving out significant variables.
I would impose an interpretation of my own at this point by ascribing
the prevailing attitude to a general lack of understanding of the intri-
cate interconnectedness of life and environment. We find more holism in
a good mystery novel than in the usual textbook. The further along one
moves in the educational system, the more compartmentalized information
gets. The tendency is to atomize information rather than to synthesize
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it except in specialized fields of learning. On the other hand, religion
and philosphy tend not to deal with the same facts in an objective way
that confront the scientist, the technolgist, the economist, the politi-
cian, and all the rest v/ho run our world for six days a week at least.
It is easy enough to blame someone for an undesirable environmental im-
pact. When the causes are shared by everyone, when the system is at
fault, the victims are the culprits.
Quite properly, Caldwell calls for a structuring of knowledge that
will show the linkages and the feedbacks and loops. We need to try to
see our problems whole. We are not used to this and it is easier to
blame the government: administrators, politicians, or both, forgetting
that vie are the government when we make use of our citizenship. It is
easier to blame industry, bankers, lawyers, merchants, labor, farmers,
or for that matter the Arabs, the Russians, and the people downtown or
in the suburbs. There is enough blame to go around. Scientists and
engineers get some of it, and the economists, political scientists,
sociologists, psychologists, and the planners, too, although they are
more of an enigma.
This situation is uncomfortable but not all that bad because the
people are grasping collectively, if not as individuals, that our lives
are interrelated even though we are not organized to deal with the in-
terrelations. Caldwell has said or implied this, although more elegantly
than I have, in his insistence that we have to learn to think and act in
relation to the system with all of its frustrating linkages, cybernetic
mechanisms, and discontinuities.
I do not find Professor Caldwell optimistic. In his paper I find
such statements as these:
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• The prospect for an affirmative public response to this compre-
hensive interpretation of research needs is not promising.
• Perhaps the greatest constraint on environmental research today
is the strong tendency of governmental and foundation executives
to avoid or minimize risk.
• The risk-avoidance that tends to characterize official behavior
is also found among researchers.
• The investment needed to meet the primary environmental research
needs of the nation will not be made.
• Mankind has always been the maker of most of its troubles, and
only in extreme duress has it faced its options reaslistically
in preference to acting upon politically or psychologically
convenient interpretations of reality. Hence there is no com-
pelling reason to believe that in America, or elsewhere, it will
effectively seek the kind of knowledge needed for coping with
its environmental problems.
An old Irish saying is that we are going to hell in a wheelbarrow.
Today the figure of speech might be anyone of a number of vehicles that
travel at supersonic speeds.
I think that Professor Caldwell is somewhat carried away by his
theme. But he is at this conference telling it like it is, a conference
sponsored by a federal agency with a host that is famous for its share
of atomized research.
The holistic science of ecology is well and working. Earth Week
was not a fiasco for innumerable young persons. Resources for the
Future is staffed by economists who are alert to and concerned about
environmental problems and rewriting a good deal of economics. There
are physicists and chemists doing homely but valuable work adapting
waste disposal systems, energy-capture, and water-conserving devices to
the small landowner and his home. Even some agricultural experiment
stations are showing tolerance for organic farming and a growing unease
about pesticides and inorganic fertilizers. Those who weep for wildlife
arrived instinctively where the genepool geneticists are now coming.
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The young people who have opted out are returning to colleges and uni-
versities and will help when they see that there is a chance for sensible
changes in resource usage and environmental protection. Many are study-
ing natural history, ecology, the earth sciences, and land-use planning,
looking to careers in resources management. This conference will be
appreciated by them and many others.
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RESEARCH NEEDS
SECOND VIEWPOINT
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THE DESIRABILITY OF AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH
TO RESEARCH OX THE ANTICIPATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL
IMPACTS OF CHANGES IN RESOURCE USAGE
Robert C. North
Stanford University
The Compartmentalization of Knowledge
Until recently, a major constraint affecting environmental research
and policy-making has emerged from the fact that human knowledge has
tended to be compartmentalized among many distinct disciplines—physics,
chemistry, geology; engineering, biology, economics, psychology, manage-
ment, political science, law, and so forth—whereas reality involves the
intense interaction of variables that cut across these and other discip-
lines. Especially in the social sciences, each discipline has been in-
clined to approach the study of environmental problems in terms of its
own partial view, specialized conceptual framework, vocabulary, data,
and method of analysis. As a consequence, many experts tend to wear
professional blinders, and policymaking agencies—to say nothing of the
general public—are bombarded with unrelated or conflicting viewpoints
which often confuse, rather than elucidate, the basic issues.
Resource usage and consequent environmental impacts are functions
of the activities of human beings organized, on various societal levels,
into complex social systems. Without human beings and their social sys-
tems no such usages and impacts would take place. It is almost axiomatic,
therefore, that problems of resource usage and environmental impacts are
virtually inseparable from the structure and functioning of social sys-
tems ranging from the community and private firm to the nation and even
the world.
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Because of intense interactivity among critical variables and be-
cause of complex social, economic, and political—as well as technologi-
cal—feedback arrangements, we are dealing with a congeries of problems
that are extremely difficult for analyst and policymaker alike to manage
successfully or even properly understand. To ancipate the environmental
impacts of changing resource usage over any sustained period of time, it
is necessary at the very minimum: (1) to obtain some notion of the ef-
fects of such impacts upon the social systems that produce them and
(2) even beyond that, to identify at least some of the consequences for
subsequent usage change of any social, economic, or political alterations
that take place as a consequence of previous usage change (as well as
usage change resulting from other factors).
The Importance of Population-Resource-Technology Variables
Of the many variables that seem pertinent to an understanding of
environmental problems, there are three--population, resources, and
technology—that are intensely interactive and at the same time funda-
mental to enlightened domestic and foreign policy.* Obviously, a con-
siderable number of other important variables can be derived from these
three.
Once set forth, the simple logic of various population-resource-
technology combinations is difficult to ignore. Human beings are criti-
cally dependent on their physical environments. As biological organisms,
they have certain basic needs, especially food, water, air and some
amount of territory. The larger a given population, the greater will
be the demands for these basic resources.
*Nazli Choucri and Robert C. North, Nations in Conflict: National Growth
and International Violence (San Francisco, W. H. Freeman, Co., 1975).
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In their search for resources, human beings depend upon technology—
the application of knowledge and skills. Changes in resource usage are
normally an indicator of changes in technology. Changes in technology
and resource usage, in turn, bring about alterations in both the natural
and the social environments. By making new resources available and
yielding new uses for old resources, advances in technology often lead
to greater concentration of population. But such advances in technology
create their own demands for resources with the result that the margins
of energy surplus that are required for stability and sustained growth
tend to be variable.
The more advanced the level of technology in a society, the greater
will be the kinds and quantities of resources needed by a society to
sustain that technology and advance it further. Technologies normally
require three types of resources to maintain them: biological and
mechanical energy; structural materials for tools, machines, plants and
other equipment; and those resources such as food, textiles, metals and
so forth that are transported, transformed and distributed for human use.
At least some advances in technology yield greater economies in the
transfer and utilization of primary energy and other resources, that is,
greater utility of output is achieved for each unit of resource input.'''
Over the great sweep of human pre-history and history, however, each
major development in technology has tended to encourage a proliferation
of applications and to catalyze innumerable other technological enter-
prices and uses—each requiring resources for structure (machines, tools,
*Hans Thirring, Energy for Man: Windmills to Nuclear Power (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1958), p. 21.
tCf. T. K. Derry and T. I. Williams, A Short History of Technology (Ox-
ford: The Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. 319-21.
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plant equipment), for fuel (wood, coal, oil) or for processing (wool,
cotton, iron ore, raw rubber and so forth).
Advances in technology tend also to increase the amount and the
range of what people think they need above and beyond such basic neces-
sities as food, water, air and minimal living space. Rising standards
of living mean massive growth in consumption to the point where an aver-
age citizen of the United States uses more than a thousand times as much
energy per year as the average Burundian or Nepalese. As technologies
advance, moreover, even the procurement and distribution of these rela-
tively simple necessities tend to involve larger and larger networks of
instrumentalities. Ancient people acquired water by dipping into the
nearest spring, river or lake. But today their descendants in a high-
rise apartment depend upon hierarchies of complex instrumenalities—all
requiring energy and other resources—when they draw the same amount
of water from the tap of their thirtieth floor apartments. These con-
siderations mean that in terms of environmental impact an increase of
the population of a highly industrialized society by one person may be
equivalent to a population increase of up to a thousand in an under-
developed society.
Social, Economic and Political Institutions on Coping Mechanisms
Both the numbers of people and the characteristics of the prevail-
ing technology influence the way a society organizes itself. Any strong
environmental feature or any peculiarity of population, technology on
availability of resources that stimulates recurrent behavior, and espe-
cially perseverant interactions among numbers of people, influences a
society's customs, laws, institutions, and other domestic structures.
And, in turn, these customs, laws, institutions and other structures
influence, shape and constrain behavior, control resource distributions
and regulate relations established in part, at least, by divisions of
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labor. As population increases, the percentage of the population in
cities tends to increase, and this tendency affects almost every aspect
of life."1"
Technological development has tended not only to increase the range
and amount of resources available to a society, but to influence indi-
vidual and social behavior as well. Indeed, governmental structures on
all levels may be viewed as having emerged, in part, as mechanisms where-
by societies at various levels of development have sought to cope with
the physical environment, oversee the acquisition, transformation and
distribution of resources, and relate to other societies. Major altera-
tions in technology such as the agricultural revolution have contributed
to major alterations in the ways various societies have governed them-
selves domestically and related to each other externally. To the extent
that parts of the world may already be embarked on another such revolu-
tion—perhaps an electronic and massive energy transformation revolution-
the impact of such changes in social, economic and political structures
becomes as critical as societal influences upon the relationships of
population, resources and technology.
Particular technologies require particular divisions of labor which
often become institutionalized, affecting how people live, and often pro-
viding the structure for economic, social and political hierarchies.
Even the form of government will be affected by the size and density of
the population and by the technology and the work people do. Complex
*See Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total
Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959).
tLewis Mumford in William L. Thomas, Jr. (ed.) Man's Role in Changing the
Face of the Earth. Vol. I (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1956), p. 394; cf. Aristotle in Benjamin Jowett, trans. The Politics of
Aristotle (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1885), Vol. I, p. 43.
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feedback effects operate from population, resources, and technology to
economics and politics, and from economics and politics, culture and
society back to these more aggregate and basic "master" variables. Any
marked or significant changes in either the master or the institutional
variables will have reverberating effects throughout the system as a
whole. To a large degree, the domestic and internal politics of a
society, as well as its economics, will thus depend on its prevailing
technology, on population-resource-technology ratios and trends, on who
controls the society's primary energy and other resources (and by what
means), and on its budgetary distributions and other major allocations.
The entire sweep of human pre-history and history has been charac-
terized by larger populations, by more advanced technologies, by the
ability to employ larger amounts of energy and other resources for human
purposes and by demands for greater quantities and wider ranges of goods
and services. Increasingly over time, demands for energy and other re-
sources have escalated because of these overall growth trends. This
means that, whereas in the past the growth of a given society or civil-
ization began eventually to press against local or regional resource
limitations, the constraints of the future are likely to have worldwide
implications.
Such phenomena as resource depletion and environmental pollution
are as old as the human species. During the eras of human pre-history,
scattered bands and tribes normally solved these problems by moving into
new territory. But as towns and cities were established and as sedentary
populations grew, communities and sometimes whole civilizations were af-
fected by pollution and depletion problems. The outcomes were varied.
In some instances, the nuclear society expanded—peacefully or by con-
quest—into fresh territories. In other instances, the development of
a new technology, such as large scale irrigation or commerce by land
or sea, enabled the society to continue growing. In still other cases,
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the depletion of the soil or other resources (often combined with pollu-
tion in various forms) led to stagnation or even the collapse of a whole
society or civilization. Historically, however, it has also been char-
acteristic of great societies and even of whole civilizations that—after
generations of demographic, technological and economic growth—the spi-
ralling demands of the people have exceeded the depleted supply of readily
available resources and the technological capacity for obtaining new re-
sources or for finding new uses for the old resources.
Depletion does not usually mean that a source is exhausted, but
rather that the more readily available, the more concentrated, the richer
or the higher quality deposits have been used up. Monetary costs will
be a critical factor in determining whether a given community or society
exploits resources that are near at hand or reaches out beyond its own
borders to obtain them by one means or another elsewhere. As the more
readily available resources are depleted, is it more economical to de-
velop new capabilities for exploiting harder-to-get substitutable dom-
estic materials, or to acquire them through foreign trade or conquest?
In the past, many countries with sufficient naval or military capabili-
ties acquired overseas colonies or protectorates in order to ensure
access to critical resources. These tendencies often shaped the expec-
tations, dispositions and policies of new nations emerging from old
colonial areas.
In the longer run, the cost of acquiring resources overseas has
often become prohibitive to a previously dominant society—either in
terms of purchase and transportation costs or in political or defense
costs, casualties suffered by expeditionary or occupation forces and the
like. Under such circumstances political, commercial or industrial
leaders of the dominant society sometimes succeeded in developing new
technologies for acquiring the hard-to-get domestic resources more
cheaply or for utilizing other resources in new ways.
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The demands of a society must be combined with suitable capabili-
ties if effective activity is to be generated and sustained. When de-
mands are unmet and existing capabilities are insufficient to satisfy
them, new capabilities may have to be developed. But a society can de-
velop particular capabilities only if it possesses or acquires the tech-
nology and resources necessary for creating them. Much can thus be in-
ferred about the probable behavior of a society according to the pattern
of its demands and capabilities, including the state of its technology.
In this connection, many societies seem to fall roughly into one of the
following categories:
Low Technology
High Technology
High population
Limited access to resources
(China , 1900)
Low population
Limited access to resources
(Afghanistan)
Low population
Favorable access to resources
(Saudi Arabia)
High population
Limited access to resources
(Japan, 1930s)
Low population
Favorable access to resources
(Sweden)
High population
Favorable access to resources
(United States—at least
until recently)
Each one of these six general types of countries faces its own
particular problems. A strong new trend in any one of the three "master"
variables—whether of growth or decline—has implications for the other
two variables, for the society as a whole, and for its relations with
other societies.
Current strains on political, social and economic systems are al-
ready very high. Even more rapid changes are likely to take place in
the immediate future. The forms and practices of government will
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undoubtedly be called upon to meet rising demands and the many problems
associated with the acquisition, transformation and distribution of criti-
cal resources. Until now, however, very little systematic research has
been done on the long-range effects of population, technology and access
to resources on values, custom, law, domestic institutions, demands,
capabilities and forms and procedures of government, and whatever is
formulated about such relationships must be accepted as largely hypo-
thetical, if not speculative.
Some Difficulties Inherent in the Analysis and Regulation of Social
Systems
Among many social scientists there is a growing consensus that rela-
tively little is understood about how large and complex social systems—
including large cities, large public enterprises and large states and
empires—really work. All too often, the intuitively obvious outcome
of a policy or action does not occur. And all too often, the program
that is undertaken to solve a problem has a reverse effect or, in solving
one difficulty, creates or exacerbates another.
There are numerous reasons why social systems are difficult to ana-
lyze, understand, and control. To begin with, all social systems exhibit
equifinality, that is, similar "lines" or "paths" or sequences of behavior
often lead to different outcomes, and similar outcomes are often reached
by different "paths" or by the same antecedents in different sequence.
The consequence is that system structure in many instances may be more
important than system state, i.e., the nature of interrelationships among
elements may be "more critical than the precision of the input data.
Yet analysts and decision-makers alike may be inclined out of precedence
and habit to look at "input" rather than "structure." Also, many complex
social systems tend to be "stable in response to most changes in input,
yet exhibit catastrophic changes in the face of a few gradual alterations
in input." And there are often long time lags in the accommodation of
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systems to change-a tendency that is likely to encourage false causal
inferences among both analysts and policy makers. The consequence is
that the behavioral outcomes of complex systems often appear all the
*
more unexpected or counterintuitive.
There are other reasons why scholars, planners, managers and states-
men, as well as the public at large, may misunderstand and misinterpret
the nature and behavior of large and complex social systems. "it is my
basic theme," wrote Jay W. Forrester a number of years back, "that the
human mind is not adapted to interpreting how social systems behave. Our
social systems belong to the class called multiloop, nonlinear feedback
systems."f Such systems normally involve hierarchies within hierarchies
of complicated and often influential feedback loops involving social,
economic, political, technological and resource variables.
In the long course of human evolution it has not been necessary for
people, until very recent historical times, to understand these systems—
or to acquire enlightened control over them. Because of their limited
population size and technological capacities and because of the buffering
effect of geographical obstacles and sheer distance, societies in the
past could do only limited and localized damage to the natural environ-
ment and to mankind as a whole. Civilizations could "muddle through
for centuries at a time without intolerable damage to the earth or to
the human race. Therefore, experience may not have provided us with the
constructs required to interpret properly the dynamic social and politi-
cal behavior of the systems of which we are not critical parts. As a
*Harold A. Linston, "Planning: Toy or Tool?" JEEE Spectrum (April 1974)
p. 44.
tJay Forrester, "Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems," ZPG
National Reporter (June 1971).
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consequence, a society may suffer "a growing sense of futility" as it
repeatedly attacks deficiencies which the symptoms," in fact, "continue
to worsen."
It appears to be characteristic of many contemporary social systems
that they have a relatively few sensitive influence points through which
the behavior of the system can be changed. Frequently, such influence
points are not located where analysts, planners, managers or politicians
expect them to be. Furthermore, if a sensitive point has been identified
in a location where influence can be exerted, the probabilities often
are that a person "guided by intuition and judgment will alter the sys-
tem in the wrong direction."t In fact, a social system may draw our
attention to the very points at which an attempt to intervene will fail.
"When we look, we discover that the social system presents us with an
apparent cause that is plausible according to what we have learned from
simple systems. But this apparent cause may be a coincident occurrence
that, like the trouble symptom itself, is being produced by the feedback-
Tr j.
loop dynamics of a larger system. +
Whatever its advantages, every course of action also involves costs
which someone must bear. There is no fully satisfactory way of having
one's cake and eating it, too. Critical questions relate to how the
benefits and costs are distributed within the society as a course of
action is undertaken. Also, in any hierarchy of systems, there is often
an inherent conflict between the best interests and goals of a subsystem
and the best interests and goals of the broader system. The interests
will tend to conflict with worldwide human interests, the immediate
*Ibid.
tlbid.
*Ibid.
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interests of the unemployed may run counter to the control of overall
inflation, the conservation of a local environment may be at odds with
a nation-wide demand for oil, and so forth. Yet all these interests and
goals may be legitimate and "just" from one or another perspective.*
These tendencies are exercerbated by the conflicts that often exist
between short-term interests and long-term interests. The solution of
this year's economic problem may be achieved at a cost to the environ-
ment that will not be fully exacted until ten or twenty years hence.
Pressures for a short-run advantage may lead to a minimizing of the
longer-term cost. It is difficult for a living populace to deny itself
in the interest of generations that are not yet born.
In some situations economic growth seems to present another paradox
or decision-making dilemma. Unless a nation's production increases year
by year, the economy may be depressed. Historically, those societies
that have ceased to grow economically and technologically have often
declined or been overrun by their enemies. On the other hand, unlimited
growth over an extended period may contribute to resource scarcities,
pollution, urban stagnation, trade imbalances, international conflicts
on various levels and outright war. And seemingly no society can grow
forever.
Many difficult contradictions emerge from the fact that populations,
resources and technology are differentially distributed among the coun-
tries of the world. Strong growth in a country's economy and production
capacity may increase competition with other countries for resources,
markets and the strategic advantages considered necessary for securing
trade routes. While seeking to strengthen its own position, each country
*Ibid.
tlbid.
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tends to validate the competitive anxieties of its rivals. As resources
are depleted or markets flooded, each of the countries is likely to re-
double its efforts, thus exercerbating demands and possibilities for
conflict.
In recent years this paradox has developed new and complicated
dimensions. Before World War II, and to some extent thereafter; the
industrialized countries of the world were able to obtain protected
access to resources and markets through the acquisition of colonies, and
the acquisition of colonial territory is no longer as feasible. The
social, economic, political and military penetration of these so-called
underdeveloped countries has accordingly become more sophisticated and
more critical—with the realization, by strong and weak societies alike,
of the need for secure access to energy and other resources in a world
of scarcities. Increasingly, also, a number of weaker countries are
beginning to perceive possibilities for increasing their power and in-
fluence by vigorously controlling and regulating access to their domestic
resources by the industrialized countries. This possibility adds to
their potential influence in world monetary affairs, in conferences
dealing with sea bed resources, in debates and critical voting proce-
dures of the United Nations General Assembly, and in the proceedings of
other international agencies.
Our understanding of social systems and how they work is impeded
by the complicated ways in which actions often relate to each other.
Actions are so commonplace in human affairs that we often take them for
granted, scarcely bothering to define what they are. In fact, what we
often identify as a single action turns out to be a complexity of actions
within actions within actions, so that what is referred to as the act or
action is only that aspect which creates the most immediate impact upon
the human senses, or its amounts to a conceptual shorthand for a very
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complicated phenomenon such as the overall effort to generate a 'green
revolution" in South Asia.
For an actor A to do something to actor B (or to the general envi-
ronment C) , he—A—may have to do something else, "not subsequently, but
in order to initiate, continue or complete his action." The activities
of an individual can thus become extremely complicated. Clearly the
decision of state, community, firm, nation state or other large and com-
plex social system is even more complicated than the activity of a single
individual. In any inclusive action or activity the smaller, component
action units may be viewed as "molecular" and the larger ones as "molar."*
The molar units are thus composed of molecular units. This suggests that
"we are trying to describe a process that is organized on several differ-
j.
ent levels."
With respect to organizational as well as individual behavior, a
molar activity may have consequences as a molar unit which are not the
same as the consequences of the molecular units it includes.* In view
of these complexities—and the potential for "side-effects" and other
unanticipated and unwanted consequences—it is unfortunate that much
analysis and decision-making focuses upon the intended outcome of the
"molar" activity, but not upon the possible effects of the various
molecular levels of activity. In parts of South Asia, one effect of
the molecular activities associated with the implementation of the
"green revolution" was to encourage the capitalization of well-to-do
farmers and various entrepreneurs, while the poor peasants found them-
selves even worse off then before. Thus, the previous interactions of
*George A. Miller, Eugene Galanter, and Karl H. Pribram, Plans and the
Structure of Behavior (New York: Henry Holt and Co., Inc., 1960), p. 13.
tlsidor Chien, "The Image of Man," The Journal of Social Issues, Vol.
XVIII (1962), p. 11.
tlbid.
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an individual, community, firm or nation state with the natural or social
environment may have a powerful effect on subsequent interactions. This
is an important reason why changes in environmental policies are often
extremely difficult to implement.*
Because of the hierarchical arrangement of many actions, it also
happens that a molar activity becomes a motive for the molecular activi-
ties it includes. Flood control—an undeniably worthy enterprise—may
provide the motive for lining natural streams with concrete; the mining
of much-needed coal motivates the stripping away of forests,and topsoil;
and so forth. In some situations, a behavior may even "become a motive
of the behavior that initially motivated it."" Thus, since economic
growth may contribute to a country's power and because a powerful coun-
try may find new opportunities for growth,.growth and power-seeking may
become reciprocally motivating—perhaps at the expense of other societal
values.
Perceptual problems complicate growth-competition situations within
and between societies and contribute to another subtle, but very power-
ful type of problem. No human being, including a head of state, can
even know for certain how his own actions will be responded to or inter-
preted by another human being. And, in turn, he has no way of ascertain-
ing beyond any doubt what the other intends by his actions. He can only
infer such predispositions and intentions by what the other does (or has
characteristically done in the past). Obviously, there is no single,
best way of getting at such problems or of understanding better some of
the counter-intuitive aspects of nation-states and other large and com-
plex social systems. But to some extent, they can be attacked through
*_Ibid. , p. 10.
tlbid., p. 17.
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computer modeling, simulation and forecasting. Several such techniques
have been put forward in the last few years as tools for achieving a
better understanding of how social, political and economic systems work.
The objection can be raised that ultimately the critical problems
of resource usage are issues of human value that statistical techniques
tend to by-pass. There is some truth in this allegation, but there are
ways in which linear programming, modeling, simulation, and forecasting
can be used to identify and illuminate values rather than obscure them.
Linear programming, for example, has been used in the past to optimize
war-time logistics, and to maximize commercial profit. It has been used
less often to optimize broader environmental or social outcomes.
Values are implicit, if not explicit, in all human decisions; the
problem is, how to identify them and link them with particular decisions,
actions and outcomes. A crucial step in this direction involves the
distinction between professed values and what may be referred to as
operational values. In the analysis and operation of social systems
there has often been a great deal of confusion about professed as op-
posed to operational values. Speeches, interviews, public relations
handouts, memoires, the preambles of treaties and other state documents
yield professed values in great abundance, and all too frequently they
are accepted as true values. Frequently, such data indicate much about
what a head of state, legislator or other national leader likes to think
he subscribes to or what he wants the public or the leaders of another
country to think he stands for,, but very little about what he actually
does. In general, the record of the decisions he has made in the past
(and the values thus operationalized) will be more accurate predictors
of what he does in the future.
Any increase in a country's population is the outcome of a conscious
or unconscious "decision" on the part of at least two people to have a
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baby. Each invention and each technological refinement is also the
result of human decision, as is each movement of goods, each budgetary
allocation, each investment, and so forth. And to the extent that each
datum represents the outcome or trace of a decision, some value or set
of values is also implicit.
A country's annual budgetary allocations are a useful and accurate
measure of the society's operational as distinguished from its professed
values. Of course, one cannot conclude that all the citizens of a coun-
try necessarily approved the allocations that were made or shared in the
values that were invoked. But the statistical data do tell us, beyond
any doubt, what values were in fact acted upon by whatever individuals
or groups were responsible for that country's investments and other
.expenditures.
Through causal modeling, simulation and retrospective forecasting
the analyst or policy-maker can infer with a high degree of confidence
what values a given society has acted upon with some consistency over a
period of forty or fifty years in the past. A projection can then be
made on the assumptions that past trends, and the values invoked to
produce them, will be continued for thirty, forty, or fifty years into
the real future. Having achieved this base-line forecast, or projection,
on the basis of very explicit—though perhaps unrealistic—assumptions
about the future, we can use sensitivity analysis or linear programming
to introduce alternate values—and observe the probable outcomes. Mod-
erate or massive changes in energy and other resource usage can be intro-
duced and the probable consequences observed—with the rates of change
of other critical variables altered or held constant. Theoretically;
all possible combinations can be tried out.
For each alternative, the effort should be made to ascertain not
only what social benefits and costs are likely to be, but also how these
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benefits and costs are likely to be distributed within the society or
between societies. In this way, not one or a few, but literally thou-
sands of alternative futures can be generated with all assumptions and
each introduction of a new value recorded and made explicit. It will be
possible to introduce a new value in country A's decision-making and
watch the outcome not only for A, but also for countries B, C, D, et al.
Research Needs for Anticipating the Impact of Changing Resource Usage
To understand the environmental impacts of changing resource usage,
it is necessary to examine the ways in which such changes are linked with
the levels and rates of change of population and technology—as well with
various social and political variables. In these terms, politics not
only bears on ecology but will increasingly involve the regulation and
management of population growth and distribution, of resource usages and
allocations and of technological advancement and applications,* including
the control of pollution. The modes and characteristics of prevailing
resource usages may be expected to influence—and be influenced by—
levels and rates of change of population, the technological advances,
and social, economic and political mechanisms.t The modes and charac-
teristics of resource usage during an earlier period may also be expected
to influence resource usages in subsequent periods.
Fortunately, we need not wait for challenging events to take place
before addressing ourselves to them in systematic ways. Tools are now
at hand to identify various important linkages, to simulate historical
*Harold Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: Meri-
dian Books, 1958).
•(•Walt Anderson, ed. Politics and Environment: A Reader in the Ecological
Crlsis (Pacific Palisades, California: Goodyear Publishing Co., 1970).
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process, and to generate future alternatives. Appropriate data are
generally available, although much is of uneven quality, and great im-
provements need to be made in social and political indicators. The ap-
plication of econometric, system analysis and operations techniques to
social and political as well as technical and economic problems may help
us expand our thinking and thus facilitate "social learning."
Previously, unlimited growth and expansion have provided solutions
to certain human problems. Today, however, many people see growth and
expansion as "part of the problem"—although others are equally disturbed
by the prospect of a low-growth economy. Is there an unambiguous answer?
It is entirely possible that whatever we do in trying to anticipate
tomorrow's problems, we may once again set the stage for future diffi-
culties. The equifinal nature of human affairs rules out certainties.
Ultimately, the course of events will depend heavily upon the as-
sumptions that are accepted. It is therefore of utmost importance in
both research and policy making to make operational assumptions as ex-
plicit as possible. To a large extent such assumptions depend upon past
experience which can be elucidated through the application of appropriate
research strategies. Alternative theories and models can be tried out—
with the result that the implications of different sets of assumptions
can be made somewhat more explicit and their implications systematically
explored.
The course of events will depend also upon the values that are
evoked and acted upon. Who is to decide upon the alternatives that are
to be considered preferable—and why and how? Should "multiple advocacy"
be combined with "multiple theories," "multiple models" and "multiple
methodologies"? Is "multiple advocacy" desirable, and if so, how can
it be institutionalized? And if a strategy of "multiple advocacy" is
followed, how is it decided how the ultimate choice will be made?
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With an appropriate conceptual framework, new tools, and access to
data it should be possible to provide a favorable context for answer-
ing". . . if this then probably that. . ." types of questions. What are
likely to be the broad social, economic and political (as well as tech-
nological) outcomes, for example, if current (baseline) trends are pro-
jected to the turn of the century or beyond?
If current trends of variables other than resource usage (popula-
tion, and so forth) are held constant, what are likely to be the direct
and derivative impacts (social, economic and political) of various pos-
sible petroleum, natural gas, coal, geothermal, nuclear and other
programs? What could be the social, political, economic and environmen-
tal complications of a major breakthrough in solar energy or fusion? To
what extent will the further development of each of these programs in-
crease or reduce demands for scarce minerals and other hard-to-get re-
sources. What are the implications for food production, quality of air,
availability of fresh water and so forth? Can some of the "unanticipated
consequences" of each of these resource strategies be identified in ad-
vance? What are the implications of relatively equal as opposed to
grossly unequal access to critical resources within given countries and
among countries throughout the world?
Since most of these questions have worldwide, as well as domestic
implications, what are likely to be the effects upon international trade?
The international monetary system? International relations, including
international conflict and warfare? What are the implications for re-
source usage (and its consequences) of continuing competitions in nuclear
weaponry? What are the domestic and international implications of the
exploitation of the continental shelf and the deep sea beds? What are
the possible tradeoffs in terms of various international divisions of
labor relating to resource usage?
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To what extent can "steady-state" economies be developed—and would
they be desirable? Can industrialized countries learn anything from the
"Buddhist economies" put forward by E. F. Schumaker and others?* In
what new ways can the principles of inverse feedback be used to combine
regulated growth with stability and environmental protection?^
To the extent that alternative responses are obtained to basic
". ...if this then probably that" kinds of questions, a foundation and
context will exist for the discussion of values, options, compromises,
optimizations and tradeoffs and the solution of more specific or narrower,
perhaps more technical problems of concern. But if we want even reason-
ably adequate answers, most fundamental issues of the future need to be
raised and examined within a context which brings biology, engineering,
economics, politics, ethics and other disciplines into systematic rela-
tionships with each other.
More often than not, major redistributions of benefits and costs
have been an outcome of major disruption and violence. Is it possible
to design and subject to controlled testing various new institutions and
other mechanisms for achieving—peacefully and with less disruption—some
more stable and equitable distributions of benefits and costs?
Modern economies illustrate some of the problems that we face. In
many respects economies today are the most developed and rigorous of the
social science disciplines. But rigor has not been achieved without
cost. To a large extent, economists have achieved success by holding a
great many "soft" variables constant, or even assuming them away. This
tendency has contributed to the strength of the discipline, but it can
*E. F. Schumaker, Small is Beautiful (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1973)
fJack C. Page, "Engineering Social Systems," Technology Review, Vol. 74,
No. 8, p. 43 (July/August 1972).
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be costly—perhaps even catastrophic—in terms of solving human problems.
Indeed these "soft" variables are precisely those which pertain to human
motivation, perception, cognition, feeling, value, preference, decision
and policy. To a considerable extent it is these "soft" variables that
tend to guide and influence the outcome of economic and engineering
variables. A major effort needs to be made in the direction of expand-
ing essentially economic models to include various "soft" and exceedingly
"messy" social and political variables.
Since resource usage, technology and work methods are continually
changing as human capabilities and values change, the nature of any
given economy tends also to change and to generate new characteristics
and new requirements.* However, in view of several basic assumptions
that underlie the discipline—contemporary economics tends to perpetuate
certain biases, not always made explicit, with respect to how societies
have been, are now, or might be organized and managed. In this connec-
tion, some of the ideas put forward by Schumaker could well be consid-
ered and extended.'
Within this broad conceptual and methodological framework a large
number of specific issues can be examined. The few that follow are only
illustrative:
1. In a recent article entitled "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against
Helping the Poor,"* Garret Hardin has argued that foreign aid to "improve-
ment" and "ineffective" countries with large and growing populations
should be ended, allowing such societies, in effect, to sink or adapt.
*P. J. Bohannan, Social Anthropology, p. 321 (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, Inc., 1963).
•fSchumaker (1973) .
^Psychology Today (September 1971).
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What would be some of the highly probable economic and political effects
of a Life Boat policy on the United States, other countries and the world
at large? What other "models" might be tested?
2. A great deal more work needs to be done on social indicators—
including the devising of new means for measuring social well-being and
the overall quality of life. GNP, useful for many measurement problems,
can be misleading as an all-purpose indicator. It would also be useful
to examine ways of distinguishing "needs" from demands. How can the
problem of "need" be handled equitably across national and cultural
boundaries? Is it fair to assert that the satisfaction of "needs" in
the United States places a much greater strain on the environment than
the satisfaction of "needs" as defined in Bangladesh or the Sahel?
3. If rising prices for foreign oil were combined with a series of
drought years in the Soviet Union or elsewhere, what would be the effect
in terms of marginal land use in the United States? What would be the
domestic and foreign consequences of a competition for marginal land
between grain-growing interests in the United States and domestic energy
extraction interests? How much arable land can we afford to mine or
urbanize?
4. The acquisition of foreign exchange surpluses by OPEC countries
has already effected a shift in world wealth. What would be some of the
future implications—diplomatic, political, economic, and military—for
the United States if this trend were to continue at present rates? At
an accelerated rate? What are the potentials for an "economic war for
survival"? Would the United States be prepared to protect Japan and the
NATO allies—as well as itself—from extortion?
5. Are there grounds for the assertion that an oil exporting coun-
try that is also a food exporter has the possibility of dominating the
world in many ways. How?
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6. At a time when various peoples of the world, including revolu-
tionary groups and dissident minorities, are becoming increasingly aware
of and vocal about unequal access to resources both within and between
countries, new types of weapons are becoming increasingly available which
are useful not only for guerrilla warfare but also for political assas-
sination, highjacking and political-military blackmail. It would be
entirely possible for such a group to present a country like the United
States with the choice of sending food or losing Chicago. These possi-
bilities suggest a range of psycho-political-military topics that need
investigation.
7. What are the correlations, if any, between world energy flows
(production, consumption, imports and exports) and world arms flows
(production, consumption, imports and exports)? What effect are rising
prices for energy likely to have upon the manufacture and distribution
of arms, arms expenditures, and efforts to control arms?
8. To what extent, historically, have the defense of trade routes
and the securing of access to critical resources contributed to warfare
in major ways? What are the possible implications of such dynamics in
a world where demands are skyrocketing and readily available supplies
becoming scarcer?
9. How can the social, economic, and political feedbacks of tech-
nology transfers — the exportation of the "green revolution" to Indian
providing an historical case—be monitored and analyzed systematically
in terms of positive impacts and also unanticipated and possibly unwanted
side effects and other consequences?
10. China—which used to be considered energy-poor and where only
twenty-five years ago millions of people starved annually—now seems
able to feed itself and export energy at the same time. We need to
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know more about Chinese methods and their domestic and foreign implica-
tions and impacts.
11. In case of a major breakthrough, what would be the implications
of massive supplies of solar or other energy, more or less equally avail-
able for all people, in terms of employment, traditional work and leisure
ethics; competitive economic systems, and so forth?
12. By analyzing trends in various countries over the last thirty
years in terms of population, technology, resources and their charac-
teristic patterns of allocation and distributions, it should be possible
to ascertain more as compared with less desirable combinations or ratios
of the major variables in terms of quality of life. For any particular
country: in view of its territorial size, geographical location and so
forth (1) what would be an optimal population for a given level of tech-
nology, or (2) if population is accepted as a given, what would be an
optimal level of technology and production, or (3) if access to resources
is constrained, how could technology, production and various other domes-
tic allocations be adjusted or modified in the shorter run and population
reduced in the longer run to yield an optimal quality of social, politi-
cal, and economic life?
These are only a few of the many problems that confront us, that
are important for the future and that are best investigated within a
broad interdisciplinary framework.
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REVIEW OF THE PAPER BY R. C. NORTH
Earl 0. Heady
Iowa State University
In the first half of his paper, Professor North has given an ex-
tremely interesting and useful explanation of the interrelationships
among population, resources, and technology; and the manner in which they
have feedbacks to social systems, politics, cultures, economic systems,
commodity and resource demands, and environmental quality. He emphasizes
appropriately the greater complexities of these interrelationships and
interdependencies as societies become geographically bounded by space and
cannot move on to other locations or draw down from other countries as
their populations enlarge against given resources. It is, of course,
this set of interrelated variables and conditions which give rise to our
crises of resource demands against supplies (e.g., energy) and to growing
problems of environmental quality.
He is correct that these complex systems are difficult to analyze
and that policies frequently fail because they do not encompass a suffi-
cient number of variables or facets of these complex systems representing
interactions among population, technology, and resources. However, I do
feel more optimistic about research possibilities and potentials than is
reflected in the last half of his paper.
Professor North touches on an extremely broad range of problems and
variables. Some of them are closely related to problems of environmental
impacts linked to changed patterns of resource usage, while some are only
remotely so. He discusses, in this single paper, the more conventional
environmental set of variables but also devotes considerable time to
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problems surrounding energy, international exploitation of developing
countries by developed nations through shifting from colonies to markets,
the green revolution in India and others—without indicating clearly how
these are part of the core environmental problem set. The paper does
not "focus down" very clearly or sharply on environmental problems or
issues, or on where and how interdisciplinary research can be organized
and directed to solving them (although this was a major element in the
title of his paper). But perhaps there is some merit that he did not
do so since his range over a broad set of problems and variables, not
all closely linked into the core problems of the environment, indirectly
suggests how difficult it is to understand social systems—either in how
they react to new stimuli or how they can be controlled to attain vari-
ous goals or ends.
He is indeed correct in emphasizing the complexity of these social
systems. He appropriately outlines their hierarchial nature and the
conflicts of interest generated therein. Further, he is certainly on
sound ground when he emphasizes the interdisciplinary (or multidiscipli-
nary) nature of environmental problems and their cause or solutions.
Unfortunately, however, he did not provide a systematic outline or model
of how and where interdisciplinary research can be organized to allow
either (1) better predictions of environmental impacts in changed re-
source usage or (2) solutions of problems and impacts that are already
evident and are unwanted. Is this void due to the complexity of social
systems, including our universities and research institutes, which pro-
vide ineffective means for integrating the research of different fields
of social science and of social science with physical, biological and
engineering sciences.
He correctly indicates that the different sciences, and even fields
within given sciences, have increasingly insulated themselves from each
other. The reasons for this are quite obvious and need not exist. They
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exist for a collection of reasons causing scientists in one discipline
or field to talk to each other through their own journals, rather than
in solving problems on a multi- or interdisciplinary basis. Part of the
reason for this "tighter trend" stems from the administration, research,
and graduate deans or universities and research institutes who (1) hold
back promotions and salary enhancements unless researchers publish in
their journals, (2) will not promote personnel to graduate colleges un-
less they publish single-authored articles in referred journals, (3) give
little or no weight to a mimeographed or multilithed paper by a team of
scientists rushing research findings out to solve the problem of a com-
munity or set of administrators, and (4) other actions and restraints.
True, these complexities prevail and Professor North seems pessi-
mistic throughout his paper. However, I believe there are means for
organizing multi- or interdisciplinary research for better prediction of
environmental impacts from changed patterns or greater usage of resources,
or in solving negative impacts that now prevail. I have long worked on
an interdisciplinary basis and do not find the insulation that disciplines
and fields have thrown up around themselves to be insurmountable. In
fact, it seems easier to work on an interdisciplinary basis with person-
nel of physical, biological, and engineering sciences than with those of
other social sciences. I am a bit puzzled as to why this is true. Per-
haps, in my case, the methods of research and models available and used
by economists more nearly parallel those of biological and physical sci-
entists than other social sciences. But to be specific, I also believe
that other social sciences can beneficially draw on those same methods
and models—and at a later time will do so much more than now.
I now turn to means of overcoming the barriers and insulation that
scientists have thrown up around themselves that prevent them from a
direct and integrated attack on priority environmental and social prob-
lems. One barrier is the organization of our universities and colleges
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by disciplines and fields therein, with budget power allocated accord-
ingly. This problem can be solved, and has in some instances, through
an organizational matrix which has disciplines as columns and problems
as rows. The rows have as much control over budgets and personnel as
do the columns and they become integrated accordingly. Interdiscipli-
nary research can be encouraged by university administrators who insist
on the importance of the problem, rather than discipline purity, and
organize teams accordingly. Administrators can encourage it through the
reward system which amply favors a person whose name appears with a
group of others on a publication appearing elsewhere than in a 'pure
discipline journal." (Our current reward system tends to be the inverse
of this approach.) The grantor of research funds can both suggest and
insist on an interdisciplinary approach and require that it not be just
a "paper proposal" for the same but is, in fact, exercised as the proj-
ect is implemented. When university administrators or donors of research
funds become serious enough, they have in their hands the means of gen-
erating and implementing the interdisciplinary research almost always
involved in major environmental problems.
The individual scientist also can accomplish much more than he be-
lieves, if he is willing to amble across the campus or to the next floor
of the institute and try. I have done much interdisciplinary research
with physical, biological, and engineering scientists over the last 20
years. I have yet to register a failure when I decided I wanted to work
interdisciplinarily on a problem. I have almost always done it outside
of a formal project or contract. I have accomplished it by explaining
in detail the importance of the problem and the methodology to be used.
Quite frequently the methodology has involved concepts (e.g., a produc-
tion function), research designs, and models which are rather foreign to
the biological, physical, or engineering scientists and he has been
challenged to attempt it.
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Thus, while the various scientific disciplines have increasingly
tried, or have been successful in, isolating themselves from each other,
I am much more optimistic than Professor North in our potential ability
to mount interdisciplinary teams to tackle problems of environmental im-
pacts. Some of our universities, particularly state or land grant uni-
versities such as the one in which I serve, were created to serve the
public and help it in decision-making processes and in solving its prob-
lems. Generally, they have good records in doing so and in carrying the
results of research to the public through the cooperative extension serv-
ice. In my state, we have a long history and tradition in carrying
policy analyses to the public—to help aid in choice and decision, not
by prescribing a one alternative solution but by explaining the tradeoffs
among alternative policy attainments or different means to attain a given
policy end. If the public finds that state or land grant universities
(the research and educational arms of the public) are void in organizing
interdisciplinary teams to better predict environmental impacts or to
solve the problems they have generated, it has a means to right the
situation through the funds it appropriates or through the program ad-
ministrators it employs. While we have too little interdisciplinary
research, we certainly have some, and both the public and university
administrators have within their grasps means for attaining more.
I again express my optimism for the future, at least between eco-
nomics and the biological, physical, and engineering sciences, since
increasing knowledge and application of the same or similar quantitative
models fall in the domain of these different sciences.
One obstacle in organizing useful interdisciplinary research for
practical evaluation of environmental impacts is the extremely short-term
and hurried projects under which the EPA extends its contracts. The time
constraint on many of these is so great that at best a "slap dash" study
must be thrown together, drawing mostly on the basis of what is known or
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can be systematically "drawn out of the air." At best, these "quickies"
must be done mostly with models and data that already exist. They give
little time for specifying original interdisciplinary models and in gen-
erating data for their application. An interdisciplinary approach typi-
cally requires considerable pre-study and various seminars among groups
of persons. This added time for seminars and knowledge buildup steers
some people away from interdisciplinary approaches (they say they can do
more quickly on a lonewolf basis) and is a step which is nearly impos-
sible under the short timing of many EPA contracts.
Progress in Modeling
I believe the progress and potentials in modeling to predict or
evaluate impacts of technology and changed mixes and levels of resource
inputs on the environment have progressed further and are more readily
applicable than is suggested by Professor North. Of course, his empha-
sis tends to be on overall social systems where the task is admittedly
difficult, but he overly discounts the extent to which various types of
models have been applied and the further potentials for applying them.
For example, he states "Linear programming, for example, has been used
in the past in order to optimize wartime logistics or kill ratios, or to
maximize commercial profit, or to serve the special interest. It has
not been used as often as it might to optimize broader environmental or
social outcomes."
Actually, linear programming has been used broadly over the last
dozen years to evaluate alternative policies and social and environmen-
tal outcomes. My colleagues and I used the method broadly during the
1960s to evaluate alternative farm policies and generate the tradeoffs
in food costs, treasury outlays, farm income, export potentials, rural
employment, and other "outcome variables." We have evaluated nationally
and simultaneously by 150 regions the impact of large and small farm
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technology on farm numbers, total farm income, income per farm, chemical
and other nonfarm input usage, farm prices, consumer food costs, rural
community employment and income generation. We have applied a national
water model which evaluates alternative techniques, the substitutability
of land and water and certain environmental restraints in determing the
availability of water for food production, export tradeoffs and urban
and industrial uses in the future. We also have a very large-scale
environmental model of the entire United States for the land and water
resources of agriculture which extends up to 10,000 equations and over
100,000 variables relating to 1,891 land resource regions, 50 water sup-
ply regions, 35 consumers markets, all commodities produced and all tech-
nologies used in agriculture. These models allow simultaneous evaluations
at the national, regional, watershed, state and other levels of technolo-
gies, and land and water use practices on the environment. They allow us
to examine pollution levels or potentials in the absence of restraints on
soil loss or sedimentation, chemical fertilizer and pesticide use, or
animal waste controls. Similarly, they allow, region-by-region or na-
tionally, evaluation of outcomes when soil loss, nitrogen and phosphate
application, pesticide use, and animal wastes,are controlled at various
levels. They are capable of quantitatively measuring income redistribu-
tions among regions and producer groups as alternative environmental
restrictions might be applied. All of them indicate tradeoffs in envi-
ronmental attainment, farm prices and incomes, food costs, commodity
exportability, resource conservation, resource values, and related 'out-
put variables." Finally, linear programming models have been used for
evaluations in particular watersheds and many other problem areas which
impinge on society. While Professor North may be correct in stating that
linear programming has not been used enough, I believe that he is either
unaware or discounts too greatly the extent to which it has been used to
generate information for public choice.
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In general, I believe our ability to model large systems has pro-
gressed further than Professor North suggests—particularly in the physi-
cal, biological, engineering, economics, and demography fields. Less
progress has been made in other fields of social science but also I be-
lieve the attempts have been fewer and more scattered. Hence, I am more
optimistic than Professor North that we can both (1) model these systems,
and (2) use interdisciplinary teams in doing so.
I do not understand why he separates and distinguishes between
linear programming, modeling, simulation, and forecasting; I find this
distinction unuseful. Linear programming, simulation (either systems
simulation or econometric simulations) and forecasting all involve spe-
cifying a model then generating data to make quantitative application
of the methods. Typically, forecasting involves modeling of a behavioral
system, and a great amount of it has been accomplished in econometrics.
In fact, we have modeled a recursive econometric simulation model for
the agricultural sector, which allows evaluation of alternative futures
and indicates the tradeoffs of different policies as they impact on soil
loss, chemical and pesticide use, commodity prices, consumer food costs,
export potentials, treasury costs, and so forth. A model is not separate
and distinct from mathematical programming, simulation, or statistical
regression forecasting. Also, whereas Professor North correctly points
out lags in choice and decision, but seems pessimistic in handling it,
lag in decision processes also can be modeled through different quanti-
tative approaches. Use of distributed lag regression models to reflect
delays in decision have been rather widely used. Similarly, recursive
mathematical programming models have been used to reflect restraints on
the rate of change in technologies, resource use and decisions as re-
flected by a milieu of conditions giving rise to uncertainty.
In the realm of environmental regulations, perhaps there is great
need for developing and applying more distributed lag or recursive models
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so that we can measure and express the tradeoffs or advantages and dis-
advantages in (1) moving to certain environmental restraints on a step-
by-step or slower basis, or (2) making them fully effective at one dis-
crete time. I doubt that all segments of society are able to adjust to
change as suddenly and discretely as EPA regulations sometimes suppose.
Hence, I suggest that research is needed which employs models with dis-
tributed lag and recursive characteristics to better outline the alter-
native rates or paths of adjustment and imposition of environmental
controls. The distributed lag nature of adjustment, and the greater
long-run than short-run elasticity of response may have positive as well
as negative implication.
Professor North mentions several times, seemingly with considerable
despair, that solution of one problem by one means typically causes one
or more other problems to appear elsewhere. For example, urban renewal
may create new ghettos, welfare programs may produce more crimes, indus-
trial growth conflicts with environmental production, and so on. Rather
than despair over these multiple outcomes stemming from a policy, as I
believe is implied in his paper, I suggest that they present an immense
research challenge and an area that is insufficiently exploited in the
imposition of EPA regulations. Rather than accept the notion that
"there's no reason to take action on a problem because its solution may
cause emergence of another problem," I recommend that more research ef-
fort be devoted to analysis of the joint-production multiple outcomes
that result from specific environmental policies, technologies, or mixes
and levels of resource inputs. Models and means exist for doing so.
However, EPA is taking actions where these tradeoffs have neither
been inventoried or measured. They need to be inventoried and measured
so that compensation can be paid sacrificing groups and individuals in
extreme cases. We do try to measure these tradeoffs in our national and
interregional environmental models. Under circumstances of reducing
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chemical fertilizer and pesticide inputs we find (1) that total farm
income increases because supply is decreased and demand is inelastic,
(2) farm unit costs are raised to the individual farmer and his inde-
pendent profit maximizing alternatives are restrained, (3) the environ-
ment is affected positively, (4) food costs increase to consumers,
(5) the supply price of export commodities is increased and export quan-
tities are decreased, and (6) farmers in areas of limited rainfall less
dependent on chemical fertilizers tend to gain relative to those in humid
areas. In a similar vein, multiple outcomes of a technology or policy
prevail for other resource uses affecting the environment. I suggest
that this is a priority area of research for EPA; that we know too little
of these tradeoffs and more should be invested in research on them. Eco-
nomizing in resource use where multiple products are involved, as they
always are in the process of allocating scarce resources, involves a
negative sloping (and even concave) production possibility curve; indi-
cating that as more of one goal and/or objective is attained another must
be sacrificed. The rate of sacrifice (the marginal rate of substitution
or the first derivative of the production possibility curve) itself may
increase as one goal or product is increasingly pursued. Yet these are
rather standard concepts open to model specification and quantification.
I reemphasize that they are not reasons for despair, but are entirely
researchable and represent realms of knowledge where EPA is yet in ex-
treme poverty.
I tend to view other problems and research areas in this more posi-
tive realm—in the sense that they are concepts that can be modeled,
quantified, and used to make environmental controls more acceptable than
many now are. Also, the ability to conceptualize them rather readily and
research them can provide information elsewhere where EPA and society are
in great poverty of knowledge and need the supply increased if environ-
mental programs are to be equitable in their distribution of costs and
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benefits. Professor North does mention systems that possess both micro
and macro components and relationships in a systems hierarchy, and that
what is good for a subsystem (i.e., a micro component) does not always
result in a positive product for the macro or complete system. This is
the crux of the environmental problem. Elsewhere, it is given the term
of externalities. The large-scale feedlot can lower its costs by letting
its livestock wastes be transported by air and water to other points
where other entities of society pay costs through a damaged environment.
These are costs which are external to the firm, or micro unit. If forced
to pay them, its decisions and resource or product use and mix would
often be different. ly is the case of the industrial plant and fixed
point pollution or the city delivery truck and its use of fuel and
throw-off of exhaust contaminants. In some cases, the extent and nature
of these externalities are evident and simple steps to cause the produc-
ing entity to suffer their incidence and cost are available and evident.
In other cases, the situation is much more complex, the need for compen-
sation to prevent severe income and capital losses prevails and much
research is needed to identify and quantify the extent.
I believe that existence of a hierarchy of systems does not preclude
progress in environmental improvement but poses great need for research
where we now have too little knowledge. I will cite some examples.
Numerous environmental restrictions now being posed or already legis-
lated stand to reduce greatly the value of resources and income streams
for private property owners. For example, Iowa has a soil conservancy
law which, if fully and actually implemented, would restrict sedimenta-
tion and soil loss to five tons per acre per year. But the outcome, as
reflected by an analysis we have made through our national models, would
cause the income of Iowa farmers to decline while returns to farmers
elsewhere in the nation would increase. This outcome prevails because
food demand is inelastic and a reduced supply enhances total income, but
distributes the increment to farmers in stares other than Iowa.
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A somewhat parallel case is that where a farmer has been using
pesticides and chemical fertilizer over a long period. Society or con-
sumers at large have not previously placed a positive or negative weight
on improved environmental conditions relating to these inputs. Accord-
ingly, he uses them and the return is capitalized into his land resources.
Now, suddenly society or EPA decides they are going to restrict or eli-
minate his use of chemicals and pesticides. Since his income flow and
asset values will thus decline, it is possible that the sum outcome need
not be positive—unless we can prove that the gain in utility to the
rest of the community in society is greater than the loss in utility to
the farmer. Interpersonal utility comparisons are generally impossible
and the only way we can guarantee a positive sum outcome is to compen-
sate him for his loss in income and asset values in refraining from use
of these particular resource inputs.
The conflict between micro and macro or subsystem and total system
outcomes complicates the implementation of environmental restraints, but
it does not complicate research in measuring these externalities and
redistributions and in devising means of compensation which will cause
them to be equitable and acceptable. EPA is charged with action programs
to be implemented under a great void in knowledge of the distribution of
benefits and costs involved as these programs are discretely put into
effect. This void in knowledge causes programs to be enacted on persons
and localities which impose no external costs or sacrifice on others but
must pay costs or restrain resource usage as if they did. For example,
at a point of time in the future, car and truck owners in the thinly
population areas of the Great Plains will suffer incidence of costs in
atmospheric pollution control as if they lived in New York, Washington,
D.C., or Los Angeles.
Distinction needs to be better made between the location and time
of the resources and technologies and their creation of externalities.
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I mentioned the case of the farmer whose income and asset values are
reduced because he is siddenly restricted from using certain toxic in-
puts. I proposed that compensation could readily be due him if we were
to be certain of a positive sum outcome in welfare. However, if a new
technology which he has never used appears on the horizon and promises
similar toxic effects or externalities, it is a different case. Pre-
venting him from using it does not depress his existing income and asset
values, and compensation hardly seems equitable only to cover this Oppor-
tunity cost foregone.
EPA operates with a void of information about externalities, cost,
and benefit distributions and compensation needs or justification. En-
vironmental enhancement could be made much easier if this void were even
partially overcome through research which can be rather readily conceptu-
alized and implemented. We are using our large-scale models to do so
for the agriculture sector, the major user of the nation's land and
water resources. It is not an impossible complex task in which we must
throw up our hands in despair. Frequently, the distributions take inter-
esting twists. We found, for example, that if all farmers were required
to restrict soil loss per acre per year to 10 tons (since sedimentation
is the major pollutant of streams and also serves as the transportation
mode for nitrates and phosphates) farm and rural area income would be
greatly reduced in the Southeast because of soil topography and more
abundant rainfall. But at 10 tons soil loss, farmers in the Great Plains
would have increased income because U.S. total food supplies are les-
sened, demand is inelastic and this region has scant rainfall and a
greater proportion of level land. At a 5-ton loss limit, however, the
Great Plains also would have to change its technology rather drastically
and experience an income decline.
Professor North discusses conflicts between short-run and long-run
interests. The concept is a standard one in economic analysis:
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discounting future income streams to arrive at present capital values of
different alternative future investments. It is not a difficult problem
to conceptualize and model. Discounting under alternative interest or
discount rates can even be incorporated into recursive mathematical pro-
gramming or other models to evaluate different policies or subsidy and
compensation schemes to encourage conservation of resources for the
future. In Scandinavian countries a complex of tax rebates, special low
interest rates tied to the purpose, and even subsidies on plantings are
used to encourage tree farming—an activity which does not result in a
product until 30-50 years, as compared to an immediate income from annual
crops.
Certainly means do exist which can cause conservation or protection
of resources to take on priority equal to or greater than current use.
It is a topic subject to research and should relate to the consumer as
well as the producer. The consumer typically speaks to the producer in
one manner or signals one use of resources through the market mechanisms;
whereas he also may hold an opposite set of preferences which cannot be
expressed through the market. Policies expressed through subsidies or
monetary compensation may then be required to offset the consumer's sig-
nal through the market. Soil usage is an example. Consumers with higher
incomes place heavy emphasis on row crops and feed grain production to
produce fed beef. The row crops encourage soil erosion, sedimentation
of streams, and proliferation of animal wastes. These negative products
are produced because the consumer causes this mix to be the most prof-
itable use of resources. The food producer does not exploit the resources
because "he is a bad man acting against society's long-run interests and
well-being." However, the consumer may simultaneously wish that the
streams be kept clear and that land productivity be preserved for future
generations. He has no way to speak through the market for these out-
comes and offset his market signal that the land should be devoted to
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eroding row crops and fed beef. However, he can vote appropriations
which allow the public to pay the farmer to cover the land with grass
and market grass-fat beef at lower suppy prices.
Many problems of environment and use rates of stock resources fall
into this realm of discounting the future and speaking through the mar-
ket mechanism relative to preferences which the consumer cannot express.
It is an extremely important research area. In contrast to ongoing EPA
policy, which in majority supposes that the producer or transformer of
resources into consumer products is a "bad guy" who should suddenly and
fully bear the costs of improved environmental conditions, it is one
which has been highly overlooked but should be researched much more in
the future. Similarly, research or efficient policies to better reflect
and attain consumer and societal preferences, which cannot be reflected
through the market or are negated through heavy discounts of future
returns, should be undertaken on a rather broad scale.
In summary, I believe that EPA needs a much broader and longer run
research program covering the economic and social impacts of various
programs to alter and conserve resources and to protect the environment
from damaging technologies and resource use patterns. EPA research con-
tracts almost seem based on the assumption that the organizations has
two years of existence—within which it must obtain all research answers
and impose all environmental restriction forever on producers and re-
source users. The result is too many very short-term research projects
so strongly restrained by time that their products must be small and
incomplete. Not infrequently the research contract period is so short
and the problem is so complex that the time allowed is not long enough
to fully conceptualize the problem and specify the model—let alone quan-
tify it and come up with systematic and well-based research results and
solutions.
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Similarly, numerous environmental measures are enacted as discrete
acts and means, without consideration of other alternatives and policies
relating to the distribution of costs and benefits. As mentioned previ-
ously, environmental restraints are applied uniformly over the nation—
as if everyone lived in the nation's large polluted cities. Also, it is
not necessarily true that societal welfare functions will be maximized
by absolute edicts requiring all persons to comply at their own cost to
an environmental restraint. Often, the nature and pattern of the measure
can give inequitable distributions of the costs and benefits.
In a preface paper to this conference, it was suggested that too
much EPA work has had two steps; namely, a physical or biological impact
study which found out that economic problems prevailed, followed by an
economic study which showed that other social problems also prevailed.
My recommendations to avoid these outcomes are for EPA to (1) drop the
"aura" that it has only a two-year existence to organize as many as pos-
sible short-run studies--and devote more resources to long-run analyses
which can better incorporate in single models the various physical, eco-
nomical, and social facets; (2) devote more resources to policy studies
which evaluate all of the tradeoffs in changing patterns of technology
and resource use. In the latter case, alternative policy means to reach
given environmental ends or objectives could be explored. We could then
better indicate where and when subsidies and compensation should be used
to alter these patterns and who should receive them, as compared to
simple edicts or outright legislative prevention with which all must
uniformly comply even though some gain while others sacrifice in income,
resource values, and utility.
Professor North has well pointed out the complex setting within
which fall actions to influence resource use and environmental impacts.
However, I am optimistic and believe, as I have emphasized, that if we
are serious, (1) we possess the means to organize the appropriate
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Interdisciplinary teams; (2) the physical, biological, economical, and
social variables can be adequately modeled—especially in a large number
of cases if research projects and the view of EPA is turned more away
from "do tomorrow the research we wanted yesterday" to longer term analy-
ses; and (3) alternative policy means can be used appropriately and ef-
fectively in overcoming the problems of externalities that characterize
environmental concerns.
Finally, it is possible that EPA should greatly alter its approach
to research which has a focus on negative impacts and on restraining
technologies and resource uses which give rise to them. The altered ap-
proach would be a more positive long-term one of catalyzing research to
obviate the need for technologies and resource uses that pollute the
environment. EPA would become less a "hand slapper," through legislated
restraints of producer and resource owners, and more a leader to new
technologies that possess fewer negative externalities and environmental
impacts.
An example policy could be directed to feed grain production. Under
economic growth, declining real cost of capital and subsequently more
specialized farms have concentrated the production of food commodities
and increased both the use of industrial inputs and the emission of
products which are transported to streams (e.g., sediment, nitrate,
animal wastes) as pollutants. Rather than purely a negative legislative
approach, EPA could catalyze identification and assessment of the 264 mil-
lion acres of Class I and II land (about 40 percent of land now cropped)
which is not currently cropped and if used, could lessen the concentration
of production. It could catalyze research on the feeding of carbon diox-
ide to plants so that .greater yields per acre would allow more land to be
substituted for chemical and pesticide inputs. It could catalyze re-
search on symbolic nitrogen fixation and pest resistance of the major
feed crops so that they could be grown over a wider area and be less
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dependent on large doses of nitrogen and insecticides. This more posi-
tive approach would require EPA to look upon itself less as a short-run
"watch dog" and more as a positive institution reacting in a long-run
cooperative manner with our well-established and long-existing public
institutions, such as the land grant universities and other federal
research organizations.
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RESEARCH NEEDS
THIRD VIEWPOINT
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RESEARCH IN AN ACCELERATING HUMAN ENVIRONMENT:
THE PROBLEM IN OUTLINE
Ralph C. d'Arge
The hunter is camped on a great plain with a small fire
providing a flickering light and intermittent warmth. Tiny
wisps of smoke ascend into a vast, clear night sky. Tomorrow
the hunter will move, leaving behind ashes, food scraps, and
his own excreta. After ten steps these are lost from sight
and smell, probably forever. With them he leaves too his
brief speculation about sky and earth, brought on by the
loneliness of night, and he peers toward the horizon in
search of prey.
The Administrator of the World Environmental Control
Authority sits at his desk. Along one wall of the huge room
are real-time displays, processed by computer from satellite
data, of developing atmospheric and ocean patterns, as well
as flow and quality of the world's great river systems....
Observing a dangerous red glow in the eastern Mediterranean,
the Administrator dials sub-control station Athens and orders
a step-up of removal by the liquid residuals handling plants
there. Over northern Europe, the brown smudge of a projected
air quality violation appears and sub-control station Essen
is ordered to take the Ruhr area off sludge incineration for
24 hours."
Kneese, Ayres, d'Arge1*
(1970)
To quote one's own coauthored writings as a starting point for seri-
ous discussion is perhaps highly presumptuous, but may be an effective
device for summarizing quikcly a particular viewpoint of the future. I
*Footnotes are listed at the end of this paper.
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obviously believe that environmental issues will become so overwhelming
as to ultimately require international control and problem solving.
During the past few decades, we have observed extremely rapid growth
in: technology and technological complexity, per capita income, energy
use, exotic chemicals, waste flows, environmental disamenities, environ-
mentally related health problems, and bureaucratic structures to "solve"
these problems. And I suspect such growth will continue unmitigated at
least to the start of the next century. This suggests that certain types
of environmental problems may begin to dominate our concerns. To be sim-
plistic, let me taxonomically classify the types of environmental problems
by the following ground divisions: (1) extent of impacts, (2) timing of
impacts.
A quick glance at Figure 1 should indicate the direction toward
which I believe we are moving. In terms of environmental problems, a
specific new class seems to be emerging. This class can perhaps be typi-
fied as having the following characteristics:
The problems are of long duration and may or may not be
technically and/or economically irreversible.
A current example of a problem with the above characteristics is
the emission of fluorocarbons 11 and 12 into the atmosphere. At current
(1972) emission rates it is estimated that the global decrease in 03 will
not reach 5 percent before 2064 and the final effect on skin cancer inci-
dence more than a generation beyond that.3 Consequently, economic-
environmental tradeoffs are over a span of at least 100 years. Can con-
ventional benefit-cost analysis come to grips with this highly uncertain
intergenerational choice? I think not, since a loss of our current GNP
($1 trillion plus) in 100 years at 6.125 percent3 would be currently
valued at less than $3 billion, less than the current gross product of
the Libyan Arab Republic. Likewise, a loss of life at the fictional
"public" value of $250,000 would be worth less than $600.
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Extent
of
Impacts
Local
Timing of Impacts
Short Term
Regional
Global
Irreversibility
Long Term <
| Smoke I I Lead Poisoning
T
]
[Thalidomide
Asbestos Fibers
Modern Insecticides
S!
D)
3
(t
01
FIGURE I. EXTENT AND TIMING OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
169
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A second striking example of the timing of impacts problem is the
storage of nuclear wastes, thereby potentially endowing future genera-
tions with both the responsibility and risk. Kneese has typified the
nuclear waste storage problem as a "Faustian Bargain." To quote him at
length:
"It is my belief that benefit-cost analysis cannot answer
the most important policy questions associated with the desira-
bility of developing a large-scale, fission-based economy. To
expect it to do so is to ask it to bear a burden, it cannot sus-
tain. This is so because these questions are of a deep ethical
character. Benefit-cost analyses certainly cannot solve such
questions and may well obscure them.
These questions have to do with whether society should
strike the Faustian bargain with atomic scientists and engi-
neers described by Alvin M. Weinberg in Science. If so un-
forgiving a technology as large-scale nuclear fission produc-
tion is adopted, it will impose a burden of continuous
monitoring and sophisticated management of a dangerous mate-
rial, essentially forever. The penalty of not bearing this
burden may be unparalleled disaster. This irreversible
burden would be imposed even if nuclear fission were to be
used only for a few decades, a mere instant in the pertinent
time scales. . . ."
Other examples of intergenerational environmental tradeoffs are
plentiful. What is important ethically on such "timing" problems is the
absolute inability of future generations to actively participate in
policy decisions. While the environmental problems themselves may be
reversible in the future, the decision is not once made. One special
case of the long-term timing of impacts is where, for the foreseeable
future, once an impact has occurred it is forever irreversible. That is
it will be impossible in the future to technically, economically, or
socially return to a previously attained or natural environmental state.
Irreversibility is defined differently here than commonly used in the
physical sciences. Irreversibility in economics is often defined as
being a new state where "there are no technical means of restoring the
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original character" of the state.5 Draining of the Everglades, construc-
tion of Glen Canyon Dam, and the elimination of various natural species
are often cited examples. Economists have argued that the possibility
of time irreversibility of an environmental state requires the inclusion
of new nonmarket values for the extra loss inherent in making an irre-
versible decision.6 Whether such values can be measured for current
generations is now in the pretesting stage, but it should be obvious
that they cannot be measured for future generations.
It is clear that environmental issues with irreversible aspects
have been growing rapidly in the recent past and there is no reason to
suspect an amelioration in growth in decades to come.7 What is of ex-
treme importance is a decision methodology capable of at least partially
accounting for actual or probable irreversible states.8 Conventional
decision analyses appear not to be sensitive to the unique attributes
of long-term and potentially irreversible outcomes. We next turn to
another attribute of the new class of environmental problems cited
earlier.
The environmental problems have suspected outcomes, but
these are only vaguely understood and may never be.
Here perhaps is the heart of the difficulty in managing complex
ecosystems. There may be a large number (at least as many as active
scientists or advocates) of potential and feasible outcomes of a partcu-
lar environmental decision. None are adequately quantifiable without
being substantially simplified and thereby reduced to a mechanistic and
sometimes arbitrary prediction(s). This is, in my opinion, the basic
problem of the "holistic" approach adopted by many environmental prac-
titioners. To quote one obviously optimistic advocate:
"The President charged EPA to take a holistic approach
to the environment, to view it not as an isolated series of
events or pollution situations but rather, as an entity in
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which disciplines overlap and all segments are interrelated
and interwoven. This "systems approach" rejects as simplis-
tic the notion that we can protect the environment or enhance
the quality of life by stacking a series of separate airtight
119
Washington-based programs on top of one another.
Thus emerges a recognition that "everything depends on everything
else" and "complete modeling" will provide all of the useful answers.
What is not recognized is the basic uncertainty underlying most, if not
all, cause and effect relationships or, more popularly, "transfer func-
tions." Coupling basically unknown or only slightly tested relation-
ships compounds the likelihood of pronounced errors in establishing im-
pacts or the range of policy choices.
As an example, if stratospheric flight through aerosol loadings
reduces global average temperatures by say 0.5°C, policymakers would
like to know what impacts this will have on world wheat production by
region, prices, balance of trade and, most importantly, who will be hurt
and who will gain. Given historical records (with few degrees of free-
dom) , researchers can model wheat yields by region as related to climate
and other factors (fertilizer use, available equipment, farm knowledge,
frost-free days, soil type, terrain, elevation, insect infestations)
and attempt to predict changes in yield by locale or region.
Figure 2 shows a very revealing diagram of how winter wheat in all
regions of the USSR may vary with combinations of average temperature
and precipitation changes.10 Unfortunately, statistical data on yields
and all other variables are imprecise. With given statistical and in-
formational error, predictions are made, but the policymakers cannot
interpret an average 1/10 bushel decrease (or increase) in yield for
42 major global regions. What they wish to know is at minimum dollars
lost and dollars gained by country. In consequence, an econometric
model of world wheat trade needs to be developed, again with historical
data. The result is a set of statistical relationships based on $2.00
172
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00
0.066
0.0
-0.143.,
0.0
HINTER HHEHT
RZIHUTH = 35
HIDTH = 9.00
HLTMIN= 0
RLTITJDE
HEIGHT =
RLTHBX =
'Views 3-D Plot developed by and courtesy of Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, Californis
Special thanks are extended to Eric F. Harnden and Ronald Eid of the Department of Earth Sciences,
University of California, Riverside.
FIGURE 2- PROFILE OF YIELD CHANGES (AY) IN WINTER WHEAT FOR CHANGES
IN TEMPERATURE (AT) AND PRECIPITATION (AP) U.S.S.R.
-------
per bushel wheat with no substantial climatic variations (1958-71). Then
along comes a substantial climatic variation causing an extreme regional
shortage of wheat, with the price almost doubling. The models yield in-
accurate predictions on two counts at least: yield is not calibrated
for extreme variations and neither is price, yet extremes in both will
occur almost simultaneously. The net effect is to almost nullify the
value of modeling for policymakers. They do not want " surprise free"
estimates but the range of possibilities and likelihood of them. But
such a range or "window" of possibilities is always bounded by the his-
torical past or the "reasoned" imagination. As you are well aware, the
"bite the bullet" philosophy of indiscriminate policy groping has per-
vaded in such situations. Often there is an added dimension, one which
Arrow identified as "learning by doing."11 Basically, for environmental
problems this amounts to testing on a small scale (small enough to avoid
thresholds) the impacts of economic activity, be it introducing a new
cosmetic or limited multiple use of the stratosphere. The question is
how fast to allow emission or introduction without surpassing irrever-
sible and/or costly thresholds. And a decision methodology for such
questions is in need of development.
My central point is that it may pay society to approach certain en-
vironmental problems in terms of a "guinea pig" approach, where limited
testing is undertaken but not to the point of subjecting large groups to
substantial environmental risk. By recognizing that at least a part of
man's technological future depends on taking some risk (and evaluating
it beforehand), might we be able to have our cake and eat it too? That
is, discovering new products that are both desirable and not very harm-
ful to either present or future generations. The element of uncertainty
as to long-term future impacts will always be looming and depend crucially
on our understanding of both natural and perturbed ecosystems. But
"learning by doing" appears to be a dominant strain in human nature and
beyond recall.
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A third characteristic of the emerging environmental problem is its
extent by population, by geographical domain, and perhaps by cultural
domain. Let me generalize this characteristic as follows:
The extent of environmental problems, in geographic domain,
is growing rapidly; and in the future problems with the
commons will be global or, at minimum, multinational in
scope.
About six years ago, rather facetiously, I suggested that if the
world were a flat plain, Los Angeles grew by a factor of seven, and pre-
vailing winds continued, Cambridge (Massachusetts) would become a recip-
ient of Los Angeles' smog.18 It received a long laugh but few serious
comments by the economists in attendance. But perhaps Harvard is now
not so sure.
With the advent of nuclear explosions and fallout, mercury; oscil-
lation in fish species, continuous contrails, regionalized heat islands,
multinational water pollution problems (i.e., Baltic, Mediterranean,
Great Lakes, North Sea, and Colorado River), the extent of multinational
environmental dependency has become apparent. With oceanic oil spills,
crowding of air waves, potential rabies transmission across Europe, the
recurrent flu epidemics constrained at Marseille and Genoa before spread-
ing to the European continent and the Americas, the "Cousteau" ocean
litter reports, and worldwide fluorocarbon pollution of the stratosphere,
we have all become aware of potential "closeness." What is obvious is
the degree of environmental dependence among nations even though tradi-
1 *3
tional problems of trade discrimination and power are still prevalent.
The "global commons" will be with us an an international issue with or
without the "oil Cartel." In order to provide a bench mark for studying
rational decisionmaking in a world characterized by the class of envi-
ronmental problems identified earlier, I should like to present a short
parable.
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Let us assume that there is a world environmental agency with a
one-minded directorate that is suddenly confronted with the realization
that they will not be able to sustain life endlessly on earth. They are
irretrievably confronted with finite and given resources. Within their
"spaceship earth" are stored enough provisions to sustain life for a
period of time shorter than the communities' "normal" evolutionary life-
span, even if they consume at minimal subsistence in terms of caloric
intake. Clearly, if the communities' criterion of welfare is the singu-
lar objective of maximizing the length of existence, they collectively
will not consume above the minimum subsistence level. Alternatively,
they may be more or less myopic, depending on one's philosophy, and de-
cide to consume at a faster rate, particularly if they evaluate an addi-
tional year of existence at near starvation levels to be of less value
than an increment of present consumption. The rational committee would
consume at a rate during each period of consumption such that they
equated the marginal utility of a unit of consumption in that period
with the foregone opportunity, in terms of utility, of consuming that
unit in any future consumption period including the period following the
one in which they run out of provisions. The price of this foregone
opportunity will also include a positive shadow price for not being able
to consume below a minimal subsistence level if such a level is constrain-
ing to their desired rate of consumption.
From this extremely naive model, we are able to make several infer-
erences. First, if the committee has a positive finite rate of time pref-
erence they will consider consuming at a higher rate than minimal sub-
sistence only if their evaluation of an additional time interval of sur-
vival is not infinite. Second, if their preferences and capacity are
such that they exhibit diminishing marginal utility of consumption indi-
vidually, they are likely to spread consumption over a longer time span
than if they achieved bliss through an immediate orgy of satiation.
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Next, let us revise our assumptions and introduce the idea that
since the community resides in a sealed capsule, they must endure the
effects of their own waste generation. The community is now confronted
with the problem that higher immediate rates of consumption will mean a
higher density of wastes to live with during future time intervals. To
analyze the question of rational planning, let us stipulate the following
assumptions: (1) the communities' preferences are such that they have
individually and collectively diminishing marginal utility of consumption
and increasing marginal disutility induced by expanding waste density;
(2) there is some waste density or concentration that is lethal to the
community and they are aware of this; (3) there is very little or no
assimilation of wastes or recycling within the "spaceship earth"; (4) the
community has totally enough provisions to last all normal lifetimes and
this lifetime is a very large number such that their only binding con-
straint is their generation of wastes; (5) consumption and waste emis-
sions are joint products, i.e., the principle of conservation of matter-
energy is operative; and (6) the community is not decreasing in size and
does not discount future consumption at a negative or too high a positive
rate.14 These assumptions lead to at least two alternative rules of
rational decisionmaking, depending on what goal is to be achieved.
Rule 1: If maximizing the length of existence is of primary concern,
the community will immediately reduce consumption to the minimal sub-
sistence level and remain there until decimation occurs. Rule 2: If
continued existence is not of overriding importance, the community will
immediately reduce consumption upon discovering the finite dimensions of
the planet earth but increase it thereafter.
The logic underlying this proposition can be seen by describing the
problem as one of campers entering a campground and planning to stay for
some finite interval of time. The campers are confronted with the prob-
lem that if they consume their provisions and discard waste at a high
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rate initially they will have to suffer the "disutilities' of this waste
during the remainder of their stay. However, if the campers consume at
a low rate initially and build up consumption over time, they need not
suffer too much from waste generated in early intervals and yet increas-
ing consumption allows them to compensate for the increasing waste den-
sity. At some point they will depart following an orgy of consumption.15
Whether this parable is plausible remains to be seen; but current "ra-
tional planning" is toward a "steady state" gradually in the long run,
the exact opposite of the optimal path identified here which is to move
to a "steady state" immediately, if at all.
Man is no longer a hunter within an infinite environment, but he
may not have yet reached the pinnacle of despair where he must absolutely
plan for each year of future existence analogous to a virtually bounded
community. He has reached, in my opinion, a turning point—one that
could be irreversible; and one that is dangerous for his future survival.
Let us turn to the question of what he should do now. I would like to
set forth several assumptions on the milieu shrouding the interactions
between man and the natural environment as I perceive them.
First, and overwhelmingly, man will not understand in detail the
interweaving patterns and forces within his own ecosystem. (Me may be
able to discover parts and even at times the whole of a subsystem such
as how a particular wasp ovideposits eggs into the stomach of the larval
form of cotton leaf beetles.) Why? Because he can never observe all the
interdependencies that exist. Laboratory experiments will never yield
empirical estimates of immediate and simultaneously long-term interactions
between thousands of species. The ecological system has been described
as a "Rube Goldberg" world with an almost infinite set of causes and ef-
fects. We can only perceive what our minds (with the aid of digital com-
puters) will allow us to conceive. And, being an economist, I would as-
sert that diminishing returns to individual inputs occur, not only for
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men's minds, but also for digital computers. Thus, we will continually
be faced with environmental uncertainties and substantive ones, for which
little or no information exists. This will induce, in my opinion, the
continued appearance of the following type of problem—an uncertain world
with potential eco-catastrophies as a tradeoff with immediate but very
costly actions to reduce this probability.
A fourth aspect involves man's conditioning to believe he resides
in a cowboy economy where by definition positive incentives yield posi-
tive actions. But do they? Restrictive effluent charges may include
firms to bribe administrators of control programs to look the other way
or design devices to electronically "jam" monitoring devices.
The EPA's control strategy for vehicle emissions so far has empha-
sized new vehicle emissions standards but has left all technical deci-
sions to achieve these standards to the manufacturer. The automobile
manufacturers have decided to utilize and develop catalytic exhaust
reactors with relatively low fixed costs but high operation costs rather
than other devices of a thermal type with potentially high fixed costs
but lower maintenance costs. Whether catalytic reactors will be more
efficient is unclear now, but what is clear is that even if they were
not, allowing automobile manufacturers to make this decision would lead
to their adoption. The reason, of course, is that it is more costly for
manufacturers to charge a higher price for their product directly than
to pass on higher servicing charges to consumers. This would not happen
in a purely competitive static market where all consumers had complete
information prior to purchase nor would it happen if less indirect con-
trols were adopted. Further, the decision to emphasize catalytic reac-
tors had induced expenditure on this particular type of technology.
Whether such expenditure is an efficient allocation of research funds
is at least debatable, given current assessments of other possibilities
including the external combustion engine. Finally, the choice of
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catalytic reactors requires the elimination of lead additives in gaso-
line with a higher "natural" octane rating will have to be produced. It
has been hypothesized that such high octane gasolines without lead will
cause greater emissions of olefins and other complex reactive hydrocar-
bons. Whether olefins or lead is the more harmful pollutant in urban
environments is not at this time known, yet a decision for catalytic
reactors has already been adopted. The indirect control strategy of
new automobile emission standards contains dynamic and uncertain ele-
ments which, if left to the choice of private and profit-seeking manu-
facturers, may lead to new externalities arising from the health effects
of olefins or unexpected vehicle operating costs.
What this boils down to is the inability of society to adequately
predict and thereby regulate individual behavior via the traditional
"tools" such as taxes, standards, or subsidies, since behavior is gen-
erally unpredictable and has not been adequately modeled. Unimagined
responses may predominate unless intensive testing of behavioral "trans-
fer functions" is undertaken.
A fifth major issue is the observed lack of ability of current en-
vironmental institutions to respond to the class of problems identified
earlier. This is in part due to the internal-external incentive system
which aggressively supports short-term solutions of short-term issues
with little or no thought given to the long-term implications of either
the issue or solution. Further, the incentive and administrative struc-
tures may not even permit active coordination and research on this class
of problems. Research is needed on alternative environmental institu-
tional designs and internal incentive systems and on the optimal rela-
tionships among institutions at different levels of the administrative
or regulatory hierarchy.
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Can these five rather dominating aspects of the new class of envi-
ronmental problems be solved? I believe so, but not by utilizing (ex-
cept in particular circumstances) either traditional tools of regulation
or traditional institutional structures for implementation. The EPA
currently is operated as a reactive agency. A particular problem emerges
and the EPA studies it and then institutes some form of regulatory action
But at least some damage has occurred before regulatory action is imple-
mented. And in those cases where pervasive environmental consequences
emerge, such an agency is equivalent to a salesman inquiring whether the
malaria patient would like to purchase a mosquito net.
Let us briefly review the subset of environmental problems taxonomi-
cally identified earlier: they are long term in the sense that choices
now involve effects on multiple future generations; they may involve
irreversible decisions now; they are vaguely understood as to all pos-
sible ramifications and may involve the possibility that to learn about
impacts, trials must be attempted, and finally; this environmental prob-
lem subset tends to be more than national in impact and likely to be
amorphously global. Can we design a decision methodology that is pub-
licly acceptable and yet socially productive? Optimistically I believe
so but only with a well-conceived research design. The following list
for EPA of general research needs may be useful as a preliminary design:
• EPA's research strategy in the past has been one of spending
dollars on every conceivable problem. While perhaps such an
approach assures "safety first" when all environmental prob-
lems have an equal probability of being catastrophes, it is
a bit naive today, even given current uncertainties. The
type of problems identified earlier seem overwhelmingly im-
portant. Let the lawyers and a few economists haggle over
the more mundane ones.
• Concentrate research funds on environmental issues where
"back of the envelope" policy decisions are unlikely to be
valid and where interdependencies and/or long range impacts
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are pervasive. Enough has been spent on automotive emissions
controls and mundane water quality models.
• Develop approaches to weigh consistently intergenerational costs,
benefits, risks, and uncertainties.
• Initiate a research program on the problem of environmental ir-
reversibility, including irreversible losses of flexibility,
resiliency, stability, and resources.
• Emphasize the development of simple, straightforward, general-
izable policy models that are comprehensible in structure and
variables to policymakers, and hopefully to the general public.
• Conduct research in an experimental mode on new approaches to
regulation and human behavioral transfer functions. That is,
on a limited scale, test alternative control strategies as to
their behavioral impact.
• Develop an active research program on alternative types of
instiutional structures for organizations involved in monitoring,
regulation, and policymaking for the environment.
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Footnotes
1. A. V. Kneese, R. U. Ayres, and R. C. d'Arge, Economics and the En-
vironment: A Materials Balance Approach (Johns Hopkins Press:
Baltimore, 1970).
2. Federal Council for Science and Technology, CEQ, Fluorocarbons and
the Environment, Report of Federal Task Force on Inadvertent Modifi-
cation of the Stratosphere (IMOS), p. 28 (June 1975).
3. Current rate of discount adopted by the U.S. Water Resources Council
for benefit-cost evaluation of water-related projects. The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission proposes the use of 10 percent for evaluation
of privately financed environmental projects. A 10 percent rate of
discount would reduce the present value of the $1 trillion in 100
years to less than $80 million and the "value of a human life" to
less than $20.00 currently. See Environmental Report to Accompany
Application for Facility License Amendment for Extension of Operation
with Once-Through Cooling for Indian Point Unit No. 2, Consolidated
Edison, for the U.S. NRC, Source 8.4, Appendix B (June 1975).
4. A. V. Kneese, "Benefit-Cost Analysis and Unscheduled Events in the
Nuclear Fuel Cycle," Resources No. 44, Resource for the Future, Inc.,
(September 1973).
5. Anthony C. Fisher and John V. Krutilla, "Valuing Long-Run Ecological
Consequences and Irreversibilities," in H. M. Peskin and E. P. Seskin,
editors, Cost Benefit Analysis and Water Pollution Policy, the Urban
Institute: Washington, D.C. (1975).
6. The various nonmarket values have been called "option value," "exist-
ence value," etc. For an exhaustive discussion of "option value" and
preliminary empirical tests, see J. V. Krutilla and A. C. Fisher,
The Economics of Natural Environment: Studies in the Valuation of
Commodity and Amenity Resources (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore,
1975).
7. In recent years, more than 5,000 new toxic substances have been in-
troduced in the United States per year with little or no understand-
ing of their long-term impacts on ecosystems. The recent work of
Ames and Commoner in designing tests for probable carcinogenecity is
a step in the right direction but appears small compared to the on-
going capacity for development of new, exotic chemicals. The Toxic
Substances List, 1974 edition, U.S. Department of Health, Education
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and Welfare, Publication No. (NIOSH) 74-135, Rockville, Maryland
(June 1974). The proposed Toxic Substances Control Act, however,
may through "regulatory lag" reduce the rate of growth in "potential"
chemical irreversibilities.
8. Even if we abstract from the problem of future generations values
and losses or now to weight them against the present, traditional
decision approaches may be faulty. Consider the following problem
(abstracted and simplified from recent studies of pollution by
stratospheric flight):
Temperature Cost
Change Probability (Billions U.S. $)
-lc° .001 $400
Unregulated flight^— 0 .740 0
Decision^ +.25c° .259 -2
Regulated flight <±.05c° 1.0 <.100
Given the expected value criterion unregulated flight yields ex-
pected costs of .001 ($400) + .740 (0) + .259 (-$2.0) = $.118 bil-
lion or a net expected benefit! But should society take a 1/1000
chance of losing 1/2 the U.S. GNP? I think not if the problem can
be resolved for less than 1/10,000 of GNP or less than a 20 percent
increase in ticket prices. For detailed cost and benefit estimates,
see R. d'Arge, et al, Economic and Social Measures of Biologic and
Climatic Change, U.S. Department of Transportation, GPO (1975).
For subjective probabilities of climatic change, see Climatic Im-
pacts of Stratospheric Flight, National Academy of Sciences, Wash-
ington, B.C. (1975).
9. Gary H. Baise, "Regionalism in EPA: From Programs to Policy" in
L. E. Coate-P. A. Bonner, editors, Regional Environmental Management:
Selected Proceedings of the National Conference (John Wiley and
Sons, New York, 1975).
10. The analyses were undertaken under my direction at the University
of California, Riverside, by David Mayo and Jane McMillan. For a
complete description, see D. Mayo and J. McMillan, "An Empirical
Analysis of the Effects of Changes in Climate on USSR Wheat Yields,"
Draft prepared for U.S. Department of Transportation, UCR (June
1975) .
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11. K. J. Arrow, "Economic Implications of Learning by Doing," Review
of Economic Studies, pages 155-173 (June 1962).
12. R. d'Arge, "Economic Growth and the Natural Environment," in A. V.
Kneese-B. T. Bower, editors, Environmental Quality Analysis (Johns
Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1971K
13. While almost everyone would agree energy cost is now a dominant
issue, it depends fragilely on a "cartel, and as economists have
recognized, cartels tend to be short-lived because it pays for at
least one member to undercut the others provided the remainder
remain as a cartel. The optimum is to be the noncooperative mem-
ber of a cartel, realizing gains from the restricted price, yet
selling slightly below in large quantities. It is generally the
economists assumption (unproved) that such cartels are inherently
unstable unless side-payments can be made among members.
14. If the community discounts the future, this implies it values con-
sumption or death at less in future years than the present, which
appears logical if the community has no future generations. If it
does, then a case can be made for valuing future generations equal
with the present, in terms of happiness, utility, or loss due to
premature death. If such a case can be made, then a zero discount
rate is implied, i.e., one that weights benefits and costs equally
for all generations. For discussions of these and other issues,
see W. Schulze, "Social Welfare Functions for the Future," American
Economist, pages 70-81 (Spring 1974).
15. Have you ever observed a group of campers having a big party on the
first night of their visit to a beautiful alpine lake?
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REVIEW OF THE PAPER BY R. C. D'ARGE
W. E. Cooper
The paper focuses on one of the most important classes of environ-
mental problems concerning ecologists. This involves the regulation of
residuals emitted into the biosphere from agricultural, industrial, and
domestic material cycles which are toxic, long lasting, broad spectrum
in effect, and mobile due to their solubility in water. The author
correctly characterizes the future trends in resource utilization as one
of increasing intensity and distribution of emissions of toxic substances.
Toxic increases will occur particularly as synthetic compounds are devel-
oped and produced in a frantic effort to escape the ultimate constraints
of material limitations and the thermodynamic implications of dependence
on closed energetic systems. He discusses the dominant systemic charac-
teristics in terms of future research, policy development, and manage-
ment strategies given technical uncertainties, time lags in the response
of the ecological systems, and irreversible damage functions resulting
from this class of ecological insults.
My response will focus on the critical assumptions that must be
tested and the new technologies that must be researched if d'Arges' para-
digm is to be operationalized in the real world.
Control versus Design
The initial decision must involve the choice between basic strate-
gies of protecting the public from the results of residual emissions.
One alternative is to develop more and more sophisticated control devices
oriented towards regulating the flows of residuals at the points of dis-
charge. Such a system can be implemented through the market system
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utilizing economic incentives and/or disincentives as presented in
d'Arges' paper or by constraints codified as performance criteria (emis-
sion standards) or by liabilities associated with legal statutes prohib-
iting "unreasonable pollution." Much literature and experience is avail-
able on all three strategies. If one hopes to rely on the control ap-
proach given the cost of being wrong, it must be designed to perform
flawlessly. Given the specificity and dynamic nature of the ecological
system, the prices and standards must be regionally specific and equally
as dynamic as the object to be controlled. There are a number of formal
characteristics of the control structure that must be researched and de-
veloped if this level of performance is to be expected. These include:
• Observability—It is critical that sufficient parameters can
be adequately monitored. In a control system, what cannot be
modeled must be monitored. This monitoring must approximate
on-line (continuous information flows). Currently, many of
the sensors and the information networks do not exist.
• Integration—The information must be integrated without sig-
nificant distortion or deletion. The "biological" systems
integrate with physiological weights (degree days) while the
"human" system has a series of social weights. Little is
known about when and how to determine and then synthesize
these functions.
• Time lags—All biological systems are characterized with time
lags in responses to all kinds of stimuli. Most human insti-
tutions are similarly structured. Because of this, one can
foreget the myth of the "Balance of Nature." These systems
will not converge to equilibria. The control problem is one
of managing a continuously unstable system. The instabili-
ties are directly related to the nature and distribution of the
time coefficients of the critical processes. These involve the
dynamics of energy, materials, and information. Not even the
most simplistic analyses have been completed in this area. We
are trying to design a control structure without even having
the basic system characteristics as design constraints. This
is poor engineering.
• Energy Costs—One of the limitations to this approach will be
the energy costs required to obtain adequate controls. With
high throughputs of materials (sewage disposal, agriculture,
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and the like) and relatively homogeneous (simple) systems, the
benefits will probably justify the energy costs of construction
and maintenance of the control system. As the system is more
highly dispersed and/or the ecological-industrial couplings
more heterogeneous, the energy costs per unit control must in-
crease. Little if any research has been directed toward deter-
mining when this control approach is energetically feasible.
The alternative option is to assume that the control structures will
not be adequately designed and maintained to prevent individual or insti-
tutional mistakes. If the weakest link in the system is an individual,
then one must design the system to be "idiot proof." We have just buried
about 23,000 dairy cattle in Michigan because of PBB contamination of the
agricultural food chain as the result of a human error at a routinized
but critical node in the system. To design a system to be idiot proof,
one must utilize ecologically sound criteria so that the environment is
biologically tough and spatially buffered enough to assimilate the re-
sults of a human error without experiencing irreversible effects. These
criteria include:
• Spatial Patchiness—Ecological systems are exceedingly tough
because they are composed of a redundant pattern of semiautono-
mous biological units (communities). In general, human activi-
ties minimize this critical design feature. What are the
economic and energetic tradeoffs between maintaining environmen-
tal heterogenity and increasing the costs of external control
strategies associated with homogeneous biological landscapes?
Little research on this has been completed.
• Open Systems—Ecological systems are resilient predominately
because they are open (at least to information). Recolonization
following local extermination is a major factor in maintaining
bounded instabilities. Utilizing regional zoning to maintain
the integrity of ecological enclaves is a critical design option
to increasingly costly controls. This is specifically true with
lake, stream, and estuarine ecosystems. Again, little has been
done to determine required size, spacing, environment, and so
forth. Ecological engineering is a future option that must be
researched. The alternative is an electronic engineering ap-
proach that is capital intensive and energetically costly.
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• Regionally Specific—Local ecosystems have significantly dif-
ferent properties and capabilities. If the object of environ-
mental programs is to protect the integrity of the "natural
ecosystem," then the control criteria must be ecosystem spe-
cific. More intensive care must be taken with fragile systems
than with resilient systems. Exactly how one translates frag-
ility into regional emission standards, land-use patterns, and
capital investment strategies is only poorly understood.
Other Related Issues
There are a number of other issues related to points presented in
Ralph d'Arges' paper. I will discuss these briefly in a somewhat random
order. The list is not inclusive, but will more than keep EPA busy if
they attempt to concentrate on all of them at once.
Distributive Source—Considerable work has been completed by
economists and engineers on the control and design options of dealing
with point source emissions. The problems of dealing with distributive
sources is far more ecologically important and technically difficult.
In Michigan, we have buried over 4 million salmon because of PCBs in the
fish. No feasible substitutes are currently available for use in trans-
formers and capacitors, and no one is yet capable of preventing dispersed
and multiple inputs of PCB into the biosphere. User charges and discharge
standards do not do a bit of good to the fish in Lake Michigan. Consid-
erable effort should be spent in identifying and solving problems associ-
ated with synthetic compounds with these generic characteristics. With
the approximately 500,000 synthetic compounds currently produced and dis-
charged, I am sure that similar "horror stories" are carefully nested
within the pot of social ignorance.
Management by Objectives—Ecologists have considerable flexi-
bility in the design of biological landscapes. If you want Lake Erie to
produce animal protein, you could manage it concurrently as a. tertiary
treatment plant and as a carp farm and most probably maximize its
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"throughput" of materials and energy. If society wants a "Walleye Pike"
lake and gets one, there is no problem. If they want a "Carp Pond" and
get one, again no problem. But, if they want Walleye Pike and get Carp,
society calls it a polluted lake. As far as I can tell, we have NO
management objectives towards which we can work with both control and
design strategies. Given this, we most probably will have to assume
multivariate objectives and attempt to minimize unhappiness. Nobody
will really win. How can EPA policies suboptimize distributive systems
that are nonlinear, hierarchically organized, with time lags when society
has a large number of object functions?
Perturbation Experiments—Considerable importance is attributed
to the concept of irreversibility. At the population level of ecologi-
cal organization, extinctions of species is an obvious irreversibility.
The majority of social concern over "threat to the environment," however,
involves community level ecological responses. At this level, species
populations are expendable. Extinction is one of the more deterministic
events in ecology, given a long enough time horizon. What is uncertain
is knowing the limits to the community's ability to "adequately recover"
from external perturbations. Community ecology is only in an embryonic
stage of development. Our ability to model community dynamics and antic-
ipate biological significance is extremely limited. Empirical experimen-
tation must be utilized to gain immediate insight into the array of
response behaviors for various types of communities. You systematically
kick them and see which way they jump. Determinations of the frequency,
intensity, and distribution of external insults that are critical at
various seasons in the year must be obtained. Good, old field experi-
mentation is probably the best way to start.
Open Loop versus Closed Loop Controls—A basic problem arises
when one considers controls over a system where public and private com-
ponents are coupled. The environment is generally considered public and
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the major emphasis is given to the responsbilities of stewardship. The
private sector deals with a subset of resources that enter the market
due to their societal utility. This component emphasizes the rights of
ownership. When coupled together, the private sector more often oper-
ates around the benefit/cost of being right, while the public sector
makes decisions around the risk/cost of being wrong. There is no way
that the Michigan Allied Chemical Company or the Michigan Farm Bureau
can compensate the people of Michigan for the damages resulting from
their errors with PBBs . Neither can Reserve Mining be held accountable,
if the asbestos from their taconite tailings entering Lake Superior is
causing intestinal cancer. Control policies that internalize the lia-
bilities of being wrong in necessary and sufficient forms must be devel-
oped if the control approach is to function satisfactorily.
The above are a subset of issues resulting from the paper presented
by Ralph d'Arge. The selection reflects my personal priorities of needed
research that should be initiated soon. Many of these are generic de-
faults in our current institutional approaches to research and manage-
ment and, therefore, are common to constellations of perceived problems
such as energy, food production, land use, nuclear waste, and so forth.
If EPA is really a regulatory agency, and if their goal is to manage the
couplings between industrialized societies and their ecological environ-
ment, then the research priorities must be cast in a testable and useful
fashion compatible with a general system paradigm of control and design.
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RESEARCH NEEDS
FOURTH VIEWPOINT
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RESEARCH FOR REGULATORS
George M. Woodwell
Marine Biological Laboratory
Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Georges Banks is a large shoal area off southern New England. It
is one of the world's richest fishing grounds and an area of spawning
and nurture for the fisheries of the northwestern Atlantic. Georges
Banks is also one of two or three of the most promising sites for oil
exploration on the eastern seaboard. Almost no one believes that oil
wells in the area will enhance the fisheries; some believe the develop-
ment will be disastrous.
The controversy surrounding the prospect of oil developments on fish-
ing grounds is a good example for us because of its contrasts. The in-
dustrial machine, starving for oil, monstrous, wealthy, politically power-
ful, is driven by soaring oil prices to compete on the fishing grounds
with a hunting-and-gathering culture that harvests poorly managed natural
ecocystems that are obviously being rapidly degraded by over-harvest and
other factors quite apart from oil. When measured by our economic system,
the fisheries have at present small value compared to the value of the
oil. The oil interests, if allowed, could buy the fishery or any part of
it they damaged.
The situation seems anomalous: with starvation endemic in larger
and larger areas of the world, how can the value of industrialization so
far exceed the value of food that the search for oil can displace fisher-
ies, a potentially renewable source of protein and virtually the only
method we have of harvesting food from two-thirds of the surface of the
earth.
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There are many reasons and one can pick and choose. One reason is
simply that those who are hungry are hungry because they are poor. They
are not participants in international commerce in food or almost any-
thing else. Their needs are not a factor in the controversy except as
governments choose to make them so. The rich, those who have energy,
are not yet short of food and the economic system has not swung to put
these values in balance. It may never do so; such is the complex of
forces in the economics of resources.
If our perspective is of the world as a whole, the world needs the
fishery more than it needs the oil. If our perspective is limited to the
national level, the competition among industrial nations may demand the
oil now in support of our own position in politics and commerce. Because
we have enough food at the moment, we can lose the fishery if need be.
If we ignore one perfectly sound stance, despair, there are two
polar schools among those who explore such issues. Certain technologists,
politicians, economists, and others believe still in the salvation of a
technological growth that feeds economic growth indefinitely. Energy is
the key; with cheap energy we can make whatever other resource we require,
potentially including food. On this basis a no-holds-barred approach to
energy is justified. The fishery is a trifling cost. No research is
required and no regulation appropriate.
Others argue with equal force that technology has made no new re-
source; it has simply allowed the transformation and transport of other
resources around the earth to forms and places convenient for man. They
would not abandon technology; far from it, but they would assert that
the benefits of industrial growth, at least in the present form of indus-
try, are finite and are now outweighed by costs not yet properly tallied.
Industry will not follow this path, of course. It falls to the regula-
tors—to government.
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The arithmetic of exponential growth, growth in population, growth
in demand for food and other resources; coupled with recognition of
finite oil reserves, limited agricultural production, the effects of the
accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, the effects of released of sulfate
and nitrates into air, the leveling of fisheries yields, the limitations
of debt in cities, the problems of sewage treatment, nuclear waste sto-
rage, limited fresh water supplies, the growth of welfare and many other
new constraints all assure not only the series of changes in our lives
that we see in motion now but soaring pressures on all resources. Almost
no one will accept an unbridled reliance on growth and technology these
days.
The confrontation between the industrial system with its emphasis
on short-term profits and those segments of human welfare that depend on
biotic resources, the competition we see between oil and fisheries in the
northwestern Atlantic, will become steadily more commom and more acute.
This does not address the competition within the fishery among those who
would harvest fish; that competition too, is soaring. More than that,
the pressures cannot be isolated, geographically or politically. Air
and oceans are international resources. How must their use be regulated?
What is fair? What research will best support that regulation? How can
we best "restore and enhance the quality" of environment as the Water
Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 command?
There seems to be very little choice. The pattern we have at the
moment is largely based on the false assumption that resources are large
in proportion to the pressures we place on them and that this relation-
ship will hold indefinitely. A corollary has been the concept of an
"assimilative capacity," presumably a finite capacity for absorbing a
waste, a series of wastes, or an effect.
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An assimilative capacity can presumably be divided among different
users, and redivided as potential users increase in numbers. It is
elusive, however. A stream may have the capacity for oxidizing organic
matter at a certain rate and be assigned an assimilative capacity. But
the reality of such an assimilative capacity for organic matter does not
automatically extend to other substances introduced with the organic
matter. We believe that there is no assimilative capacity for DDT and
other toxic chemicals. The concept of assimilative capacity is not
merely vague but illusory. It encourages a pattern of use of water and
air that virtually assures progressive degradation by encouraging the
assumption that pollution is acceptable. The burden of regulation,
which is government's, becomes virtually impossible: the criteria are
necessarily vague, the sources of pollutants may be large and numerous,
the political and economic pressures to allow various pollutions, con-
tinuous. Small wonder that the system fails; it is designed to fail.
Added to this is the difficulty of regulating it. There is a per-
fectly reasonable propensity for a species-by-species and toxin-by-toxin
approach using classical toxicological techniques. The array of species,
the problems of culturing them, the array of toxins, the possibility of
interactions, the remoteness of laboratory from nature all make such
approaches virtually impossible when pressures to exploit are high.
The alternative is clear. In a world condemned to soaring popula-
tions and more rapidly soaring demands on resources, the basic pattern
in use of environment must be the closed system: countries that do not
infringe on one another by fouling air or water held in common; cities
that recirculate their water, nutrients, metals, and certain fibers; in-
dustries that accept responsibility for their wastes as they do their
saleable products; agriculture that does not poison waterways with pes-
ticides or fertilizers; and power plants that do not infringe on biotic
resources with extraordinary demands for cooling waters. This pattern
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of use of the surface of the earth is the cost of intensive use. The
basic principle is no pollution; not pollution within limits.
You will immediately think of exceptions: How can we burn fossil
fuels without releasing COa? The answer of course is that we cannot,
but it is conceivable that the amount of C02 emitted in total should be
a matter of public interest and, possibly, controlled. Certainly the
amount in the atmosphere, its patterns of circulation, its fate, and its
effects through the next years should be known. We can make clear deci-
sions to allow normal geochemical fluxes to be modified within certain
limits, if we choose. But the central principle remains the preserva-
tion of the earth's basic chemical and biotic patterns.
All of this is set forth to establish the background for discussing
the research that is appropriate for the EPA in support of its regulatory
activities. The early steps in the transition toward closed systems have
been written into the law. The policy statement of the Water Pollution
Control Act Amendments of 1972 set that forth boldly and the law itself,
complex as it is, provides details of the transition. No one expects a
transition to closed systems to occur immediately. Indeed, the transi-
tion will probably not occur until its feasibility has been demonstrated.
It is a challenge for the EPA to provide the background necessary in re-
search.
The research program in support of this transition is obviously
going to be complex, developed over a period of years, and include much
of the work already under way in support of current patterns of regula-
tion. I shall mention three segments that should be added now as a part
of the program that must emerge: first, a continuing analysis of the
world carbon budget; second, a new program designed to discover the de-
tails of biotic impoverishment and how to recognize the earliest stages
of it; and third, new ventures in the recirculation of water and nu-
trients in sewage. I have chosen these not only because they are
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important topics, but because they are examples of types of research in
which the EPA must now become expert. I can do no more than outline
these topics superficially.
The basic resource in support of human activities is carbon fixed
in photosynthesis and made available in various forms to man. There is
abundant evidence that the world carbon budget is being affected grossly
by human activities. The major evidence is through the accumulation of
carbon dioxide in air. The concentration is now increasing at the rate
of about 1.5 parts per million per year and the rate seems to be increas-
ing. The cause of the increase is generally believed to be the combus-
tion of fossil fuels but the destruction of forests and the oxidation of
humus are probably also contributory causes. Despite the fact that two-
thirds of the surface of the earth is water, two-thirds of the total
photosynthesis on earth occurs on land and most of that is attributable
to forests. There is good reason to believe that the total amount of
photosynthesis on earth is diminishing, although there is at present no
detailed analysis of this problem.
To the extent that photosynthesis is a measure of the functioning
of the biosphere, a decline in worldwide photosynthesis would be a seri-
ous matter. There is moreover the possibility that increasing amounts
of C02 in the atmosphere will lead to temperature and climatic changes
that can occur suddenly and change agricultural productivity over large
areas. The topic is of obvious importance to governments and it would
seem that the EPA would do well to develop primary competence in it,
either through research in its own laboratories or through research under
contract in other places.
The second topic emerges from a detailed consideration of the first.
If we accept the principle of ecology that the qualities of the biosphere
essential for support of man are maintained by the matrix of late suc-
cessional ecosystems that have dominated the earth throughout all of
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human history, then we recognize that the preservation of this matrix is
a major challenge in the regulation of human activities. Chronic or
long-lasting changes in the physical or chemical environment bring changes
in the biotic structure of this matrix of natural systems. The changes
themselves are an index of the effects of man. Just as changes in bird
populations gave us clues that persistent pesticides were accumulating
in places they should not be, so changes in the incidence of disease in
forests, changes in the composition of phytoplankton communities, changes
in the spectrum of zooplankton and fish in bays give us an indication
that the physics or chemistry of environment has been modified.
With experience we learn that the patterns of change are consistent
among many types of disturbance in any community. The patterns of change
in terrestrial systems extend not only from shifts in populations of
plants and animals but to reductions in net primary production and to
increased fluxes of nutrients into waterways. Thus we can predict with
broad accuracy the effects of long-term exposure of forests to acid
rains. We will be able to predict in detail the amount of acidity re-
quired to cause varying degrees of damage. We require now, first, rec-
ognition of the patterns of change associated with chronic disturbance;
second, the establishment of quantitative relationships between disturb-
ance and the degree of change produced. The work must be both terres-
trial and marine. It spans the full gamut of studies of natural eco-
systems. The knowledge gained from it, however, will be the basic
knowledge required for management of the earth's surface.
The third topic is somewhat less ephemeral and one in which I have
acquired considerable recent experience: the treatment of sewage. The
review that I have offered here makes it abundantly clear that the pat-
tern of sewage disposal we have developed over the past century or so is
totally inconsistent with continuously expanding and ever more intensive
use of environmental resources. Even the most modern and bold steps in
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the current pattern will not stand scrutiny under this test. The devel-
opment of large collecting systems for urban areas with the objective of
releasing treated sewage into the coastal oceans makes no sense whatso-
ever if one recognizes a shortage of fresh water, a shortage of ferti-
lizer elements, the problems of pollution of coastal oceans, and an
increasing shortage of energy. One of the costs of having cities is the
recovery of sewage, the release of usable fresh water into places where
it will be available again, and the recovery of nutrients.
The possibilities for making changes in the patterns of treating
sewage are bein.g explored in various places around the world. They in-
clude especially the use of man-made or natural ecosystems for filtering
particulate matter, absorbing nutrients, and releasing fresh water either
into surface water courses or into ground water channels. Experience at
Brookhaven over the past several years has led me to be convinced that
both of these are practical approaches. It is possible to devise agri-
cultural and natural terrestrial communities, used in sequence, to treat
sewage over the long term. The treated water is released into the ground
water for reuse as drinking water. It is also possible to treat sewage
on the surface by a combination of marshes and ponds and to release the
treated water into a variety of uses including the irrigation of agri-
culture or the recharge of streams. These studies obviously have a much
longer term to run but their potential cannot be dismissed.
Some such plan for management of liquid wastes is clearly essential.
When coupled with the requirement that industrial wastes not be intro-
duced into municipal collection systems but be treated at the site of
the industry, the development of biotic communities for the management
of both water and nutrients in domestic sewage becomes very attractive
indeed. It offers the possibility of larger numbers of smaller treat-
ment facilities located in various places rather than simply on the mar-
gins of rivers or bays in places where disposal of water in large
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quantities is convenient. It is my belief that the EPA must pursue
these techniques with all vigor immediately and that the proceeds of
this research will be extraordinarily rewarding.
The issues of management of environment seem excessively complicated,
coupled as they are to economic interests, to historical views of rights
in resources, to traditional views of politics, and to what every man
thinks of as his own personal freedom. They are complicated only if we
wish them to be so. The central principles of the science of environ-
ment are no more complicated than the central principles of thermody-
namics or literacy or arithmetic. Their essentials help us see with some
clarity and simplicity what is happening and how to solve the problem.
The problems can be solved but only by rearranging our approaches
into a pattern that can lead to a solution. To the extent that we devote
ourselves to accentuating the trends of the past decades that tend to
cause the further diffusion of human influences around the globe, we
become causes rather than cures. There is a powerful argument at pres-
ent that much of the scientific effort of the country including that of
some of its major national laboratories is more detrimental than con-
structive. It is long past time that we changed this situation.
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REVIEW OF THE PAPER BY G. M. WOODWELL
Sidney R. Galler
U.S. Department of Commerce
Dr. George Woodwell is a distinguished ecologist whose contributions
to our understanding of natural ecosystems have deservedly received high
praise and international recognition. It is not surprising, therefore,
that the high point of Woodwell's presentation is his eloquently articu-
lated ecological perceptions which, appropriately enough, come into
sharp focus midway in his paper: "in a world condemned to soaring popu-
lations and more rapidly soaring demands on resources, not to speak of
demands on the regulators, the basic pattern in use of the environment
must be the closed system: countries that do not infringe on one another
by fouling air or water held in common; .... The basic principle is
no pollution; not pollution within limits."
However, the intellectual climb up to this sunny promontory is both
steep and labored for this reader. The descent is even more precipitous
with the high point of the discussion quickly lost in a mist of pessi-
mistic observation on the state of mankind's environmental affairs, sim-
plistic diagnosis of the environmental maladies, and an ingenuous pre-
scription for solutions.
I find no fault with Woodwell's basic proposition even though I am
not prepared to rule out the potential for developing a technology that
could yield enough energy to meet human demands without degrading the
environment. However, I do take exception to his opening Georges Bank
illustration and I disagree vigorously with his proposed designation of
a Federal regulatory agency to be responsible for the support of the
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requisite research programs that will have to provide the knowledge for
meeting the needs of both man and his natural environment.
First, let us examine the validity of Woodwell's selection of the
proposed outer continental shelf oil development in the Georges Banks
area as the opening scene in his scenario for justifying his concept of
the closed system. The Georges Bank controversy, while genuine, derives
from the spurious notion that offshore oil development and a healthy com-
mercial fishery must always remain mutually exclusive. It has yet to be
established that outer continental shelf-oil exploration and extraction
are intrinsically harmful to marine fisheries, notwithstanding vocifer-
ously voiced allegations. The facts are that the great bulk of oil pol-
lution of the oceans stems from a combination of tanker deballasting
operations and runoff from shoreside point sources . Oil pollution re-
sulting from accidental oil spillage, e.g., tanker collisions, pipeline
ruptures, etc., runs a distant second, while oil pollution from station-
ary platforms, including the Santa Barbara channel episode, has been
negligible by comparison.
Undoubtedly, sloppy practices and inadequate quality control meas-
ures have caused oil pollution and damage to marine ecosystems in certain
locations. However, I take issue with the Spenglerian-like view that
offshore fixed platform oil developments must invariably be inimical to
the maintenance of marine fisheries or marine ecosystems in general. It
has been demonstrated on many stationary drilling and pumping platforms
that scrupulously observed safety practices utilizing currently available
technology can protect the marine sports and commercial fisheries in those
areas.
The offshore oil development versus commercial fishery argument ty-
pifies a rather tendentious and sometimes sanctimonious environmentalist
handwringing. This attitude handicaps objective and constructive
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cooperation among the principal sectors of our society towards protecting
the natural environment without eroding the quality of life of man.
In my view, the competitive pressures on the world's arable lands
causing their removal from agricultural production would have been much
more supportive of Woodwell's thesis. While a relatively small percent-
age of the world's population is dependent upon marine fisheries for its
principal source of protein, the vast majority of the peoples of the
world are completely dependent upon the products of agriculture (much of
it imported) for their survival. The Arab oil embargo, followed by the
OPEC quadrupling of oil prices, have had devastating effects on both
agricultural and fishery economies of many of the nations of the world.
It is not easy for a developing nation to sustain a rapidly growing pop-
ulation with a "two-mule" agriculture or a "sailboat" fishery. A rich
commercial fishery which cannot be fished because the fishermen are
unable to pay the high price for oil is of no benefit from a practical
point of view to a protein deficient population. Thus, while one may
agree with Woodwell's ultimate goal, support for his thesis is eroded by
the doubtful validity of his supporting illustration.
Dr. Woodwell's proposal, presaged by the title of his paper "Re-
search for Regulators," reminds one of the comment attributed to the
distinguished scholar, Sir Ritchie Calder, to the effect that science
yields knowledge, not wisdom. Wisdom derives from knowledge tempered
with judgment. One might add that since sound judgment frequently de-
rives from experience, one might assume that Dr. Woodwell's experience
with regulatory agencies has been rather limited. His notion that the
Environmental Protection Agency would be the appropriate agency for
sponsoring basic research needed to preserve ". . . . the earth's basic
chemical and biotic patterns," is naive in my opinion. One does not
subtract from the Environmental Protection Agency's well deserved credit
for sponsoring this symposium, by taking exception to Dr. Woodwell's
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proposal to assign to it a national research responsibility, the imple-
mentation of which could exceed the capabilities and resources of all of
the civilian Federal R&D agencies lumped together.
If the achievement of Dr. Woodwell's ultimate goal is as important
for the future of mankind as I believe it to be, then the knowledge re-
quired to achieve that goal must perforce derive from a wide variety of
basic and applied research investigations, many of them seemingly un-
related. The identification of research objectives, as well as the
selection of the requisite cadre of competent scientists and technolo-
gists from the natural and social science disciplines will require a
capability for research program planning and administration that may well
extend beyond the available resources in the oldline and experienced,
R&D agencies like NSF, NIH, and ONR; much less a small, albeit capable
R&D unit within a single, mission oriented regulatory agency like EPA.
Perhaps the most prescient of Dr. Woodwell's views is his assertion
that "The basic resource in support of human activities is carbon fixed
in photosynthesis and made available in various forms to man. There is
abundant evidence that the world carbon budget is being affected grossly
by human activities." The validation of that assertion and the means to
minimize and perhaps eliminate man's adverse impacts on the global car-
bon budget merits the highest priority attention from legislative and
executive branch leaders, and certainly deserves both the development of
a unified national policy and the coordinated mobilization of our national
intellectual and material resources. Anything less than a carefully or-
chestrated national program of research and development cannot do justice
to our ultimate goal (so perceptively presented by Dr. Woodwell) of pro-
tecting the life support capacities of our global environment while at
the same time delivering the necessities and amenities which in the
aggregate add the dimension of quality to the human experience. Cer-
tainly Dr. Woodwell's thesis deserves more than any single regulatory
agency could possibly deliver.
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RESEARCH NEEDS
FIFTH VIEWPOINT
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SCARCITY, GEOPOLITICS, AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
John Zierold
Overview
The United States and the entire world are in the midst of sudden
transformations that have led to the most massive shift of capital wealth
in the history of mankind. It is a situation which has led to a multi-
plicity of crises with which the industrialized nations as well as the
underdeveloped countries cannot cope.
The result of the energy crisis, brought about by the oil embargo,
has been the imminent prospect of starvation for millions in India,
Sahel, West Africa, and Latin America. The energy crisis and the world
food crisis bring the greatest challenge to this country it has yet faced,
and will bring about discontinuity in resource management whether we like
it or not. Actions taken by the other nations will affect us to an ex-
tent greater than we have anticipated and choices will be forced upon us
despite our unwillingness to acknowledge their existence.
Possible Impacts
The world food crisis is really the sum of many crises: the energy
crisis, the population crisis, the urbanization crisis, and, most criti-
cal of all, the policy crisis.
The population growth rate worldwide is 2 percent per annum, which
means a doubling time of approximately 35 years. Thus, shortly after
the year 2000 there will be 6 billion inhabitants to be fed, employed,
and governed. That figure is not the top of speculative conjecture, but,
in fact an ineluctable mathematical certainty.
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There is serious doubt that all these billions can be properly
nourished,let alone saved from famine. With the fourfold increase in
the price of petroleum—soon to be bumped upwards again—it is clear
that countries like India and Bangladesh have been priced out of the
fertilizer market, which seriously hampers their food production. The
same is true for many other countries too numerous to list.
How to deal with this awesome spectre is beyond the comprehension
of virtually everyone. Yet it is a crisis that will not go away and one
for which this country and all other countries must prepare with the
least possible delay.
Some, like Professor Garrett Hardin, may argue for the adoption of
lifeboat ethics, by which they mean that we must resist our humanitarian
impulses and allow the starving to perish—in order that they do not re-
produce and therefore create famine and death of even greater magnitude
in the decades to come. It is a seductive theory for the affluent na-
tions, which can cool down the fever of their conscience through the
ministrations of situational ethics. But the hard, bitter reality is
that we cannot sail Professor Hardin's lifeboat unmolested through a sea
teeming with people who wish to climb aboard. In point of fact, Hardin's
metaphor is ill chosen. The better comparison is a long train with one
firstclass carriage—in which the rich nations dine on the most lavish
provender—and a hundred cattle cars crowded with the hungry who at any
moment may move up to the firstclass carriage and take it over.
Possible Policy Responses
Assuming that the United States were to adopt the lifeboat ethic
as the linchpin of its foreign policy, and assuming further that other
rich nations did the same, then we would see before long the rise of
iron governments in the third world: elite coalitions of military and
civilian interests based, probably, on either the Red Chinese or
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Brazilian model. Wars of redistribution or forced migration, nuclear
blackmail for a share of the world's food and other resources would be
all too likely an outcome.
This scenario must surely be evident to those who compose white
papers deep in the recesses of the Pentagon and the State Department:
those experts who now are fumbling with such mercurial policy questions
as how to ameliorate energy shortages through energy independence in
this country, and how to frustrate Persian Gulf hopes to extort foreign
policy decisions from our allies in Western Europe and elsewhere.
One possibility under consideration must certainly be the large
scale extraction and use of shale oil and coal. With some 300 years of
coal reserves, the production of petroleum substitutes for use here and
for the supply of our allies to insulate them from the harsh winds of
embargo, must certainly be seen as a tempting solution to impending
disaster.
The nation that can export energy and food will exert its logic on
other governments in a way enormously more effective than the use of
armaments in the post World War II period.
Environmental Consequences
The impact of strip mining the Great Plains for coal, pulverizing
the Rockies for shale oil, and scaling ever upwards highly mechanized
fertilizer and energy intensive agriculture, suggests the possibility
of very grave consequences indeed. To pursue such a course of action
carries with it the possibility that we will confront biological and
physical laws under the harshest and most punitive of terms for the
loser.
All this suggests that we must begin now to formulate research pri-
orities that reduce the enormity of these impending problems. Research
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policies properly drawn will not stultify economic growth, but enhance
it. The late 1970s and the decade of the 80s will see the emergence of
a vast and profitable new industry: how to make sense out of change.
Suggested Research Programs
Our view of the future is too often based upon a body of conven-
tional wisdom, but that orthodoxy is useful only under trouble-free
scenarios; i.e., so long as there are no factors inducing major system
breaks—discontinuities caused by such phenomena as resource limitations,
market saturation, or a slow response to crisis by a rigid bureaucracy.
In essence, anything that has not happened in the past is not accounted
for in the conceptual models based upon the conventional wisdom. As a
result, as a harbinger of the future, conventional wisdom has been shown
to be no more accurate in anticipating the current economic difficulties
than it was in predicting or projecting the impacts of the energy crisis.
It is clear, therefore, that to more accurately predict the future
we must understand the interrelationships and trends that now shape it.
Cheap energy has fostered a throw-away society. As the cost of
energy increases, the social and economic impacts may cause significant
changes in historic trends. Labor-intensive, as opposed to energy-
intensive industries will be encouraged and a society will evolve that
stresses reusability as opposed to discard. These changes in trends can
be called system breaks, and they are the surprises in the future unan-
ticipated by practitioners of conventional wisdom.
Environmental Impacts and Economies of Urban Densities
The nation can no longer afford sprawl. In a recent study, the
Council on Environmental Quality compared the costs of low-density
sprawl with those of high density. It found that sprav/ling communities
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use up to 44 percent more energy and 35 percent more water, while high-
density communities produce 45 percent less air pollution.
Largely as a result of private auto-intensive transportation sys-
tems, U.S. urban centers have expanded as sprawling low-density suburban
areas. It has recently been widely recognized that this low-density
sprawl has caused air pollution, consumed vast quantities of prime agri-
cultural land, and helped bring about the energy crunch. As a result,
recent efforts in some sectors have been aimed at reducing sprawl and
promoting greater densities.
Containment of the city is an economic imperative. Consider the
distribution of water. Mr. Gordon spoke about extrapolating the forces
at work for greater and greater consumption; and that the doubling of
the world's population—if people were to exist at our levels of con-
sumption—would mean before long that the planet would be virtually
picked clean of its resources.
If one doubles peoples' water supply by doubling the service area,
at constant density, it is necessary to accept the cost of doubling pipe
mileage, the cross-section of the old system, and upgrading pipe joints
to hold extra pressure. And that is but one feature of the economies of
density.
In some circumstances, however, greater numbers can be accommodated
without doubling. If the demand for water doubles within a fixed serv-
ice area, it is not necessary to double all the service facilities. It
is probable that it would only be necessary to expand all pipe diameters —
not by double, but by the square root of two, since—as mathematicians
tell us—cross-sections increase with the square of the radius.
On the other hand, the environmental effects of increased urban
densities are not obvious. It is clear that with less sprawl, per capita
miles driven should be reduced, resulting in less per capita air pollutant
215
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generation. However; with the increased density, the concentration of
air pollutants may, in fact, increase. Although less energy would be
used for transportation, denser urban areas may be more energy intensive
to provide for cooling (due to urban heat island effects) and for high-
rise living if that is the trend. It may be necessary to provide for
more vegetation and green areas as sinks for air pollutants and as cli-
mate moderators.
Environmental Impacts of Recovering Subeconomic Deposits
Many estimates have been developed of world reserves of various
materials, known deposits recoverable with current technology and at
current costs. Other estimates consider so-called hypothetical and
speculative deposits—supplies occurring in lesser concentrations, in
more remote locations/depths and of lesser known quantities. These de-
posits are cited as evidence of no serious material shortage problems.
However, it should be recognized that all other than proved resources
require significant increases in expenditures (including operating costs,
capital investment, energy costs, and technology improvement) to make
recovery of these resources feasible. In addition, it is also essential
to consider the potentially huge environmental impact of recovering ma-
terials in small concentrations from isolated or environmentally sensi-
tive locations. Taken together, such considerations may put many sup-
posed material deposits out of reach.
Research programs should be formulated to identify existing quan-
tities of subeconomic deposits of critical materials. The locations and
physical conditions of these deposits should be determined. Finally,
the environmental impacts of recovering these deposits should be
evaluated.
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Environmental Costs of Mineral Extraction and Processing
In the extraction, transportation, processing, use, and disposition
of goods and materials, the protection of the environment—especially air
and water—has historically been largely ignored. Our market system that
allocates the use of material resources by putting prices on them has
traditionally regarded environmental resources as free goods; they have
customarily not been written into the equation for the cost of producing
goods and services, and have therefore not been reflected in the prices
consumers have paid. Unless the true costs of commodities are reflected
in their prices, there is a tendency to over-consume certain materials
or to delay development of substitutes when such development is in the
public interest. A related example is the fact that cost/benefit analy-
ses of highway systems rarely if ever include the costs of air pollution
attributable to cars. These costs are borne separately by other agencies
(e.g., EPA) or by consumers through increased health care costs.
These considerations are of special relevance in the case of min-
erals. Improper pricing policies can result in the unnecessary depletion
of strategic minerals.
Preservation of Prime Agricultural Lands
Worldwide increases in food production have been obtained by the use
of high yield "green revolution" crop strains and the increased use of
fertilizers and pesticides. Green revolution crops are extremely fer-
tilizer sensitive—great quantities of fertilizer are required and the
use of lesser quantities results in smaller yields than would have been
achieved by older, unimproved strains. In addition, the newer improved
strains are more susceptible to a greater variety of pests.
With the fourfold price increase in crude oil, the supply of
petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides has been put out of reach
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of less-developed countries. For every million tons of reduction in
fertilizer supply, there is a corresponding 10-million-ton drop in grain
production in these countries. Moreover, the problems will become worse,
since a worldwide shortage of nitrogen-based fertilizers is likely to
occur over the next several decades because of the anticipated shortfall
of natural gas.
Such developments will exert pressure on the use of more lands for
the production of lower yield and less energy-intensive crop strains.
However, significant quantities of prime agricultural lands are lost to
urbanization each year in the United States. Preservation of these lands
will be essential as will be development of less petroleum-intensive means
to make these and other lands more productive.
Preservation of Green Spaces Within Urban Areas
With pressures for increased density within urban areas, the amount
of open space land preserved within urban regions may rapidly decrease.
There is growing evidence, however, that those lands serve important pur-
poses in urban regions. They permit natural recharge of ground water
supplies (much development has occurred in prime recharge areas thus
exacerbating ground water depletion problems); vegetation helps to save
energy by cooling areas (by transpiration), while reducing dust and noise
pollution levels; vegetation has been shown to be an important element in
reducing concentrations of air pollutants since many plants naturally up-
take many air pollutants, e.g., sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and
ozone. Furthermore, many urban areas include marsh lands, which have
been found to be of great value for tertiary wastewater treatment. It
is important that these benefits be recognized by planners and policy-
makers so that provisions for the proper preservation of such lands be
undertaken before open space lands within urban areas are completely lost
to development.
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REVIEW OF PAPER BY J. ZIEROLD
Frank P, Sebastian
Envirotech Corporation
I should like to go through John's excellent paper commenting in
the areas where I feel I may have something to offer: for instance, his
reference to nuclear blackmail for a share of the world's food and other
resources from such governments as his example of the People's Republic
of China (PRC). I would add that, having had an opportunity to visit
the PRC in 1972 among the first 30 Americans who visited mainland China
after that 20-year gap, I learned two things that relate to the scenario
John drew out. The Chinese say, contrary to what we and they learned in
school books, that they are self-sufficient in oil and are able to pro-
vide all their oil resources.1 In fact, they are exporting oil to Japan
and possibly to other countries.
Along with this, representatives of the PRC also reported that after
years, decades, generations of starvation they were now substantially
able to feed themselves. My wife and I visited two of their communes—
one, particularly, outside Canton that was the county seat for 980,000
people. It was pointed out by commune leaders that following the PRC's
takeover of the government 20 years ago a decision was made to augment
the reuse of nightsoil, or the recycle of waste material, which they had
been practicing for centuries, by using chemical fertilizer. Later I
learned from U.S. Commerce Department reports that the exportation of
Japanese chemical fertilizer to the Chinese was really the basis for the
rapid growth of the Japanese fertilizer industry following World War II.
The Chinese imported vast quantities of chemical fertilizer, increased
their food production, and then embarked on a program of building
219
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fertilizer plants in the communes. In the communes we visited, there
were fertilizer plants of various sizes that were much smaller than any-
thing we would consider building in the United States today.
The point I want to make is that it was only through the addition of
chemical fertilizer that the Chinese were able to increase their food
production and, since 1970, to be self-sufficient. In one brigade at
Tung Fan County they pointed to a granary of rice and said, "We are no
longer at the peril of the drought or flood; we have several years' sup-
ply of grain and are able to sell some of our production."
So hopefully in other lesser developed countries there is some
parallel opportunity for improvement in food production that will help
reduce the number of people trying to get on John's proverbial lifeboat.
In connection with environmental consequences, John states that re-
search policies, properly drawn, will not stultify economic growth but
enhance it, and with that I most heartily agree. I think Mr. Ruckelshaus
in his excellent paper set the stage for this when he talked about having
four times as many economists in his agency as he had ecologists. It is
in this arena that the studies on the benefits of pollution cleanup and
the elimination of damages from pollution are really critical economic
and social factors. I am referring to damages created from pollution
that are being suffered by us individually, and are being paid for by us
individually. We sorely need more research on these social costs, as
well as on the extent to which air and water pollution cleanup will eli-
minate damages so that the figures will be less controversial and we can
have broader support of them.
These facts are just emerging in the United States and are not gen-
erally recognized. However, England was the first country to take strin-
gent action on a national pollution problem and reap the national benefits,
220
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Let me shift the subject to air pollution and draw on the message
from President Nixon to the Congress to illustrate:
"in London in December 1952 an air pollution episode
lasted five days and was associated with 4,000 excess
deaths. During the episode 1,100 patients per day,
or 48 percent above normal, were admitted to the
hospitals of London."
I would like to add that four years later stringent air pollution
control legislation was passed in England, but it was not until 14 years
later that tangible benefits were broadly reported. Sunshine increased
over 50 percent in London in December, infamous London fogs disappeared,
and rare birds—the snow bunting, the hoopoe, and the great northern
diver—have reappeared. House martins have returned to nest near Prim-
rose Hill after an 80-year absence. Though no estimate is available,
substantial savings can be expected in reduction of the $700 million of
annual damages from air pollution. The national cost of controls was
$1 billion over 10 years.3
Table 1 shows 1972 EPA figures for water pollution; it indicates
that cleanup yields some overall savings. The benefits of water pollu-
tion cleanup can be observed this way: that the damages throughout the
United States were estimated at about $12.8 billion. The savings from
cleaning up that water were estimated at about $11.5 billion, whereas
the costs in that level of cleanup were only about $6.3 billion, giving
a net savings of $5.2 billion.3
In the air sector, we have a somewhat similar equation. The damages
were estimated at $16.1 billion, the savings through cleanup were $10.7
billion. The cleanup costs at that time were estimated to be less than
$4 billion, giving a net savings of about $6.8 billion. I believe those
o
figures include something like $6 billion a year for health costs.
Subsequent reports estimate that the cost of treating environmentally
caused illnesses amounts to something over $30 billion a year. There
221
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is, thus, a huge potential increase in the savings figure if those medi-
cal figures are correct. Of course, here is an area that I am suggesting
needs a great deal of research attention to improve the accuracy of the
savings figures so that they can be used with a greater degree of con-
fidence.
Table 1
BENEFITS OF WATER POLLUTION CLEANUP
Annual Amounts
All USA Per Family
1972 damages $12.8 billion $213
Cleanup savings $11.5 billion $192
Cleanup costs $ 6.3 billion $105
Net savings $ 5.2 billion $ 87
BENEFITS OF AIR POLLUTION CLEANUP
Annual Amounts
All USA Per Family
1972 damages $16.1 billion $268
Cleanup savings $10.7 billion $178
Cleanup costs $ 3.9 billion $ 65
Net savings $ 6.8 billion $113
As a result of the end of cheap energy, John pointed out, there
will be an era where labor-intensive as opposed to energy-intensive in-
dustries will be encouraged. Certainly, a reevaluation must take place.
However, our societies individually will reorder their priorities and
may not go all the way. For example, this past Sunday when I was in
Athens, the traffic jam at 10:00 o'clock in the morning was enormous.
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The cab driver explained that it was hot and the Athenians were going to
the beach. In talking about other things we learned later that the price
of gasoline was $3.00 a gallon. By our normal logic, we would think that
when the price reached $3.00 a gallon for gas we would find some other
way to get to the beach besides using our individual automobiles. But
that does not seem to be the case in Greece, which is already facing
these kinds of problems.
Rather than totally labor-intensive industry being developed, I
would think that improved efficiency through improved technology offers
an intermediate ground and will present great opportunity for R&D ac-
tivities.
With regard to the problems and opportunities in R&D for increased
water demand, as pointed out by John Zierold, I think here a partial
technical answer lies in the field of water reuse. The incremental cost
of producing reusable water is less in many cases than the costs of
water from new sources. The incremental cost will narrow further as the
1983 effluent standards are met. Another benefit to figure into the
equation is the elimination of the cost of damage from polluted water,
as well as a huge plus from the value of the reclaimed water!
To further illustrate, there are economic advantages to upgrading
existing plants to produce high quality effluent suitable for reuse.
The incremental cost to achieve high quality water over and above second-
ary effluent is shown in Figure 1. Secondary treatment is assumed as the
base standard. The tertiary treatment incremental costs are for upgrad-
ing secondary treatment processes to facilities that would produce an
effluent complying with WHO or in laboratory tests with USPHS standards.
(The USPHS standards do not apply to reclaimed water even though the
water meets the required laboratory tests.) The assumed tertiary treat-
ment consists of lime clarification, filtration, and carbon adsorption,
223
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as well as reclamation and reuse of the lime and carbon, and thus has
favorable environmental impact.
Given the incremental cost to produce a reusable quality water in
most existing plants, the potential net benefit of this water can be
estimated. This benefit is the difference between the present market
value of tap water and the incremental cost of producing the tap water
from secondary effluent (Figure 1).
The present market values for tap water vary widely across the
United States. For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area, tap water
costs range from about $0.18 to $0.38/1,000 gal ($0.048 to $0.10/m3),
and price increases have been reported since 1972 and to 1975. Figure 2
shows the estimated net potential benefit of water reclamation that can
be realized by adding tertiary treatment to a conventional plant.
Any projected cost for increased supply of tap water (for a given
flow) that lies above the marginal cost curve will realize a benefit for
reuse. For example, if an average cost of tap water is assumed to be
$0.25/1,000 gal ($0.066/m3), the benefit of reclaiming wastewater with
tertiary treatment would range from $0.03/1,000 gal ($0.008/m3) at 10
mgd (37,900 m3/day) to $0.12/1,000 gal ($0.032/m3) at 100 mgd (379,000
irrVday) . These benefit statistics indicate that water reuse offers a
unique opportunity not only to eliminate pollution but also to reuse a
finite, limited resource economically.
Not only will water reuse make good economic sense in many cases,
but dwindling freshwater supplies for agricultural, industrial, and muni-
cipal needs will make it a necessity in the future. In 1957 the total
freshwater use in the United States began to exceed the dependable sup-
ply. The gross water deficit is expected to increase for the foreseeable
future, far outstretching the total supply capable of development by the
year 2000. The only way to overcome the deficit is through a greater
reliance on water reuse.
224
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o
o>
in
8
!5
LU
40
30
20
10
INCREMENTAL COST'
•JOF REUSABLE WATER
20 40 60 80
PLANT SIZE-mil. gal./day
SECONDARY
AND TERTIARY
SECONDARY
100
Note: January 1971 cost (6%, 25 yr.) amortization included
FIGURE I. COST OF CONVENTIONAL AND ADVANCED
TREATMENT OF WA STEW ATE R
225
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40
30
o
o
2 20
EC
UJ
O-
z
LJ
0 10
INCREMENTAL COST OF
REUSABLE WATER
20 40 60 80
PLANT SIZE-mil. gal./day
100
FIGURE 2. POTENTIAL BENEFIT OF WATER REUSE
226
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What is the problem with this scenario? We have not done the neces-
sary health effects R&D to be sure that the reclaimed water can be cut
into the tap supply. Also, the evaluation of any psychological consid-
erations should be undertaken to obtain all the necessary answers to per-
mit the safe and widespread use of reclaimed water.
A great deal of effort needs to be put forward in sounding out the
true public attitudes toward the direct reuse of water. I think the per-
ceived public attitude is that the public is unwilling to come to grips
with reclaimed water. However, a U.S. government survey of 155 cities
with populations over 25,000 using surface water showed that 145 of them
have some raw waste in the water supply and up to 17 to 18.5 percent raw
waste in their source of water in the dry season. Cleveland, Ohio gets
its drinking water from Lake Erie, which is known to contain industrial
and municipal wastes. London obtains about one-fifth of its metropolitan
drinking water supply from the River Lee, 10 miles (16.1 km) downstream
from the Rye Meads Treatment Plant, the highest quality wastewater treat-
ment plant in the United Kingdom. Paris draws its tap water from the
River Seine, but I am told that France is a bottled water society.
A recent U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS)6 survey of community
water supply systems showed that 41 percent of the systems, serving one-
third of the study population, delivered water with a quality lower than
the effluent from some of the advanced waste treatment plants to be dis-
cussed. Projected nationally, this is equal to about 50 million people
in the United States drinking water of a quality lower than that pro-
duced from an advanced waste treatment plant.
Most recently, of course, the great conduit between dirty water and
clean water has come to light in terms of the New Orleans tap water re-
port, and I suggest that it would be a great contribution to determine
what indeed the public attitudes are toward direct reuse of water and
227
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make the additional R&D necessary to determine the long-range health ef-
fects from such use.
I should mention that there is one plant that some of you know has
existed since 1967,7 and that is directly recycling sewage into its tap
water supply. There was no public outcry when the plant was turned on.
I visited the plant—in Windhoek, Namibia—in 1969; I'll always remember
the moment of truth when my daughter poked her head out of the bathroom
with a toothbrush in her hand, saying, "is it safe to use the water?" I
knew that 30 percent of the water supply came directly from the sewage
treatment plant. But they had done all of the reliability, viral, and
epidemicological studies that showed, as we also found, it is safe.
However, this brings up a curious facet about technology. The tech-
nology used in Windhoek to treat the water is not greatly dissimilar from
that used at the Lake Tahoe, California Water Reclamation Plant, but their
technicians were not sure that the technology existed to economically re-
generate the activated carbon used in one of the process steps. So they
just spread the spent, expensive material on the ground. From experience
in the United States we knew that one could economically regenerate car-
bon and reuse it on site. Conversely, we are not sure one can safely
drink the water. So we throw away the water!
I should like to cite some specific examples of the state of the
technology; i.e., the technology on which the equipment manufacturers
are bidding, and indeed guaranteeing performance today without waiting
for any additional R&D output.
I suggest that in developing future R&.D programs, serious consider-
ation should be given to such existing technology as that in operation
at the South Tahoe Water Reclamation Plant which is one of the most ad-
vanced plants in the United States. This 7.5-mgd plant, as you undoubt-
edly know, has been operating since 1967 and has been converting municipal
228
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sewage to a water that will meet laboratory tests for drinking water;
it has not failed to meet its standard for the full period of its opera-
tion. Please note that I am not saying that this water can be connected
directly to the U.S. tap water supply, but it will meet laboratory tests
for drinking water, and, as we all are now aware from recent reports on
contaminants, much of the surface water in our tap supplies today does
contain elements of sewage effluent that have not been anywhere near as
highly treated as the Tahoe wastewater.
A key aspect of this most advanced plant is the sludge processing
and handling, for as you increase the level of pollutants removed you in-
crease the amount of sludge generated. The Tahoe plant received a gen-
erous amount of federal funding for the liquid stage but it was not until
the Clean Water Restoration Act of 1966 was passed in December of that
year, providing R&D funds, that sufficient money was available to install
the solids handling and processing system. Tahoe received one of the
very first R&D grants under the 1966 Act for over $1 million to demon-
strate an incineration/reclamation process that would reclaim the treat-
ment chemicals—lime, in this case—for on-site reuse.
It is pertinent to my point that although this sludge project was
fully funded by the federal government as an R&D project the successful
equipment bidder had to guarantee the performance of this equipment, thus
in effect guaranteeing the results of an R&D program. The results spe-
cified were achieved. Thus, for the first time it was demonstrated that
a complete environmentally compatible wastewater treatment plant could
make a drinkable quality water from sewage, reclaiming chemicals on site,
and converting all residue to a sterile ash that, as I shall mention
later, has some other resource reclamation potentials.
You may be wondering: "What about the impact of the incineration
reclamation process on the pristine air quality in the Lake Tahoe area?
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The environmental impact on the air quality is nil: there is no visible
plume and the highly cleansed exhaust gases are recirculated through
partially treated waters at one stage of the process to reclaim the car-
bon dioxide for reuse in the process.
Both of these facilities involve conventional biological treatment
with a tertiary physical chemical treatment facility added. Since these
plants were built there have also been other industry and government de-
velopments in physical chemical treatment, commonly called PCT processes,
which are of great significance. In July 1971 the EPA announced its
lime/activated carbon physical chemical process, including on-site lime
and carbon reclamation through high temperature thermal processes.
My company has also developed somewhat similar PCT processes that
produce a product water comparable to Tahoe quality water. A further
step of development in sludge processing beyond that achieved at Tahoe
has been attained which combines in a patented process the two steps of
lime recovery and incineration into one step utilizing the fuel value of
the sludge as a partial source of fuel to reclaim the lime for on-site
reuse. Several plants utilizing these PCT processes are currently under
construction involving many millions of dollars of EPA construction grant
support.
Another industry development, similar to one in the current EPA R&D
budget, is that of energy reclamation from sewage plants. Although I
have already mentioned reclamation of the fuel value of sewage sludge to
reclaim chemicals on-site for reuse, this has been taken a step further
in three EPA-funded municipal plants currently under construction involv-
ing the use of third-generation multiple-hearth furnace systems called
Closed Loop Energy Systems (Figure 3). In these systems a sludge heat
treatment step is installed to break loose the water bound in the bio-
logical cells to enable normal dewatering equipment (vacuum filters or
230
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REACTOR
DECANT TANK
VACUUM FILTER
WASTE HEAT BOILER
SCUM CONCENTRATOR
MULTIPLE HEARTH
FURNACE
FIGURE 3. CLOSED ENERGY LOOP, SLUDGE HANDLING SYSTEMS
INCORPORATES HEAT TREATMENT, INCINERATION,
AND HEAT RECOVERY
231
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centrifuges) to be used to obtain a 250 percent increase in the normal
solids content of the sludge. This brings the sludge to a fuel value
approximately equal to that of soft coal. The heat-treated sludge is
then processed through a similar but differently designed furnace to
convert itself to a sterile, potentially useful ash without the need for
auxiliary operating fuels and with sufficient excess heat reclaimed to
provide process heat and steam at the treatment plant.
Because of the often prevalent view of the strong need for more
sludge processing technology, you must be wondering about the impact
upon air quality of these incineration/reclamation units. Thanks to both
EPA and industry-sponsored R&.D activities in detailed analyses of the
exhaust gases, the heretofore unknown environmental benefits of these
processes have recently been discovered. Several points are worth
noting:
(1) These combustion units will meet the new air quality standards
under the Clean Air Act.
(2) The exhaust gases have been ruled by one of the most stringent
air pollution control agencies in the United States, the San
Francisco Bay Area Air Pollution Control District, to have an
insignificant impact on air quality.
(3) Combustion decomposes worrisome pesticides, such as DDT and
2,4,5-T, that may be contained in the sludge at normal op-
erating temperatures at no extra cost, and such materials
are not contained in the exhaust air or in the ash product.
(4) Destroyed in the process are polychlorinated biphenyls (or
PCBs), which have been determined by the EPA to be the most
persisent of the chlorinated hydrocarbon group found in sludge.
In fact, based on a search of the literature, it would appear
the only way that PCBs are being removed from our environment
once they are introduced is through modern sludge incineration
as employed at wastewater treatment plants.
Although EPA research efforts of 1971 and 1972 were uncertain
as to the fate of incinerated PCBs, independent laboratory tests
sponsored by private industry showed that PCBs and most of the
232
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other substances on EPA's proposed toxic chemicals list were
destroyed under normal operating temperatures. EPA-sponsored
tests in 1974 confirmed these 1972 data, showing the complete
decomposition of DDT and 2,4,5-T.
(5) These systems control heavy metals contained in sludge. Mer-
cury in the EPA proposed toxic substances list was found, con-
trary to conventional thinking, to be controlled. From 83 per-
cent to 96 percent of the trace amounts of mercury normally
found in sludge is removed from the exhaust gases in two dif-
ferent multiple-hearth installations. These studies were
sponsored by the EPA air quality group at Research Triangle
Park.
(6) These systems employ recovery processes to reclaim both lime
and carbon dioxide in advanced PCT plants.
(7) They create a product—ash—that is potentially useful as a
quasi-fertilizer because it normally contains 6 percent to
15 percent phosphate (Table 2). Over 50,000 tons of sludge
ash have been used experimentally in Japan as a quasi-
fertilizer and deserve more R&D consideration. Sludge ash
is purified of PCBs and pesticides and, because the nutrients
are more concentrated, has a potential value of $48.00 per
ton—four times that of wet sludge (Figure 4).
To bring the air quality impact of advanced sludge combustion sys-
tems into perspective and to furnish the basis for future R&D needs, it
would be helpful to compare automobile pollution emissions with exhaust
emissions from sludge combustion equipment. When comparing one average
automobile, which reportedly travels 12 miles per day, against the air
quality impact from sludge combustion on a per capita basis, we find that
sludge combustion is about equivalent to burning one ounce of gasoline in
an automobile. With sludge combustion, however, we are removing harmful
chemicals from the environment and reclaiming increasingly precious re-
sources—water, lime, carbon, and others. A detailed comparison of these
emissions is shown in Figure 5.
What about the costs of this treatment technology? In the GAO re-
port to the Congress on EPA R&D last year, it was stated that "The high
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cost of sludge handling and disposal is well recognized." Well, let's
take a look at those costs.
Table 2
TYPICAL ANALYSIS OF ASH FROM TERTIARY QUALITY
ADVANCED WASTE TREATMENT SYSTEM
Percent of Total
Silica (SiOa)
Alumina (A1203)
Iron oxide (Feg03)
Magnesium oxide (MgO)
Total calcium oxide (CaO)
Available (free) calcium oxide (CaO)
Sodium (Na)
Potassium (K)
Boron (B)
Phosphorus pentoxide (P205)
Sulfate ion (S04)
Loss on ignition
Sample 1
Lake Tahoe
11/19/69
23.85
16.34
3.44
2.12
29.76
1.16
0.73
0.14
0.02
6.87
2.79
2.59
Sample 2
Lake Tahoe
11/25/69
23.75
22.10
2.65
2.17
24.47
1.37
0.35
0.11
0.02
15.35
2.84
2.24
At the Tahoe plant, sludge incineration costs amount to one-sixth
of the total plant operating and amortization costs, or about $1.74 per
capita per year. Fuel costs and labor and material costs have gone up
sharply since these data were developed, but as mentioned earlier the
new Closed Loop Energy Systems furnaces eliminate the need for auxiliary
operating fuel. For cities of one million population, Closed Energy Loop
Systems cost about 38
-------
to
CO
en
804
60
v*
i
-------
SLUDGE FURNACE vs. AUTOMOBILE
HYDROCARBON EMISSIONS
PER PERSON PER DAY
1970 ACTU
35 1 glam
*•**•
'Based on 12 mile
AUTOMOBILE EXHAUST EM 5SIONS BSP MULTIPLE HEARTH
Grams pei mile i 12 m lei' Grim* par day "
40 B grams 4 S grams 019 grami
per day ' -Batad on 0 2 Ibs dry iludg*
solid, per day per p*>aon
SLUDGE FURNACE vs. AUTOMOBILE
CARBON MONOXIDE EMISSIONS
PER PERSON PER DAY
1970 ACTU*
564 grami
•BaMdon 12 mil**
Hal: EPA 4/12/71
1972 STANDARDS ! 1975 STANDARDS FU™*CE EM.SSIONS
Gram, per mlto . 12 milW Grami p., day ' '
4CB grami 40,8 B'ami 057 grami
|
P*' dl> "Bawd m 0.2 Iba. dry aludg*
•vHBflfl ol 60 U.S. aulo prolotypM. tolld' P" dl" f*1 P*™"1
SLUDGE FURNACE vs. AUTOMOBILE
NITROGEN OXIDE EMISSIONS
PER PERSON PER DAY
1
1170 ACTUA
4B 2 gram.
l>a*a>
*B*M<) on 11 milmt
R«f EPA 4/13/7
AUTOMOBILE EXHAUST EMISSIONS BSP MULTIPLE HEARTH
1972 STANDARDS | 1976 STANDARDS I^NACE LMiettlUHa
Grami par mlto » IS miiw QrBmi p,, day . .
36 0 gram* 4.8 grimi 0.29 grami
pw day " B*Md on 0 2 lb» dry aludfl*
•olkl* p*> d*y p«f pwaon
a**rag« ol 60 U S aulo pfOlot»p*»
SLUDGE FURNACE vs. AUTOMOBILE
HYDROCARBON EMISSIONS
1970 COMPARATIVE RATIO 1975 COMPARATIVE RATIO
29OO:1
250:1
S. •*
AUTOMOBILE SLUDGE FURNACE AUTOMOBILE SLUDGE FUBNACE
SLUDGE FURNACE vs. AUTOMOBILE
CARBON MONOXIDE EMISSIONS
1970 COMPARATIVE RATIO
10,6OO: 1
_ fJB^I
1975 COMPARATIVE RATIO
700:1
AUTOMOBILE SLUDGE FURNACE AUTOMOBILE SLUDGE FURNACE
SLUDGE FURNACE vs. AUTOMOBILE
NITROGEN OXIDE EMISSIONS
1970 COMPARATIVE RATIO
170:1
1976 COMPARATIVE RATIO
16:1
I
AUTOMOBILE SLUDGE FURNACE AUTOMOBILE SLUDGE FURNACE
FIGURE 5. EMISSIONS OF SLUDGE FURNACE SYSTEM VS. AUTOMOBILE
236
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For some years, systems have been operating in Europe that also use
shredded waste paper as an auxiliary support source of fuel. However
when the price of waste paper went up recently, the source dried up and
created problems. Obviously, availability is a potential limit to refuse
scrap paper systems. A more reliable source of fuel would seem to be
that of the sludge itself since one is literally converting a "sow's ear
into a silk purse" on site, i.e., using the integral fuel value in the
sludge to purify itself.
In the industrial sector, I should like to draw on a pulp and paper
industry example to illustrate the advanced technology available. In
the already mentioned GAO report to the Congress last year, it was esti-
mated that only 5 percent to 20 percent of the technology needed for zero
discharge was available as of June 1973. As an indication of either tech-
nology overlooked or progress made since that time, I should like to use
an example from the bleached pulp industry to show what can be done on
zero discharge. Our firm, through its joint venture with a Canadian firm,
has successfully conducted pilot demonstration of a process for bleached
kraft mills which produces no contaminated liquid effluent from the plant.
It has just been announced that we are supplying Great Lakes Paper Com-
pany with the Erco-Envirotech Salt Recovery Process for a new 700-ton-
per-day bleached kraft mill at Thunder Bay, Ontario.
In summary, briefly, some areas in which proven technology does
exist and is frequently overlooked are in the water pollution control
field. Water reuse technology has proved its availability to the point
where treated water will meet laboratory tests for drinking water, but
we need the additional R&D on long-range health effects and monitoring
systems to be sure that the water continues to meet standards. Progress
is being made toward zero pollution discharge requirements in the paper
industry.
237
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There are also new developments in sludge processing technology
where sludge can be processed with insignificant effects on air quality
and phosphate can be reclaimed as an integral part of the process.
There is a need for far more R&D on damage caused by pollution,
damage eliminated by cleanup, pollutant related health effects, and the
utilization of sludge ash residues for their fertilizer value, for both
wet sludge and ash.
238
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REFERENCES
1. F. P. Sebastian, Jr., "Environmental Technology in Developing and
Developed Nations," Uniting Nations for Biosurvival, An Interna-
tional Symposium sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation,
Stockholm, June 10-12, 1972. ~
2. Ibid.
3. T. L. Kimball, "Hidden Savings from a Cleaner America," National
Wildlife Magazine (February-March 1972).
4. F. Green, Keynote Speech at ENVIRONMENT '73, Office of International
Activities, EPA, presented at Sydney, Austrialia.
5. "Studies Relating to Market Projections for Advanced Waste Treatment,"
U.S. Department of Interior, FWPCA, WP-20-AWTR-17.
6. "Community Water Supply Study - Analysis of National Survey Findings,"
USPHS, NEW (July 1970).
7. F. P. Sebastian, "Tahoe and Windhoek: Promise and Proof of Clean
Water," Chemical Engineering Progress Symposium Series, 1970.
8. Statement of F. P. Sebastian, Jr., at Hearings before the Subcommittee
on the Environment and the Atmosphere of the Committee on Science and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, March 4-6, 1975.
239
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CONCLUSIONS
Kendall D. Moll
-------
CONCLUSIONS
Kendall D. Moll
The systems viewpoint that permeates this proceedings is not quite
what one might expect in a discussion of environmental and resource
issues. It is a social rather than a physical viewpoint, reflecting the
increased realization that EPA's responsibilities are basically social
even though they deal with physical systems. Accordingly, EPA research
programs must be set in a socia-1 systems context.
Lynton Caldwell points out in his paper that one cannot make a
reasonable listing of research priorities without a structure within
which to fit the various priorities. Such a structure is shown in the
following illustration. Its components are the same as the six themes
mentioned in the Summary. These components describe a hierarchy of re-
search program areas organized partly by function, partly by the time
horizon of the research that is needed in that component, and partly by
the degree of specialization required. All of the components are re-
lated to each other either directly or indirectly within the common
structure.
The top box, Environmental Systemic Interactions, represents the
ties required among systems that impact on the environment. The defined
systems then provide the structure for describing lower level research
programs and for using research results from the lower components. Be-
cause of the large degree of abstraction of research dealing with inter-
actions and its remoteness from direct applications, this component may
be considered of long-term research interest with payoffs that may take
10 years or more.
243
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RESEARCH THEMES
LEAD TIMES
RESOURCE USAGE
PATTERNS
APPLIED RESEARCH
AND TECHNOLOGY
DEVELOPMENT
ENVIRONMENTAL
SYSTEMIC
INTERACTIONS
INCENTIVES
FOR CONTROLLING
ENVIRONMENT
ENVIRONMENTAL
MONITORING AND
ASSESSMENT
LONG TERM:
10 YEARS OR MORE
TO IMPLEMENT
INTERMEDIATE:
5 YEARS OR MORE
TO IMPLEMENT
SHORT TERM:
LESS THAN 5 YEARS
TO IMPLEMENT
FIGURE I. HIERARCHY OF RESEARCH PRIORITIES
244
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At the next lower level of the hierarchy, reflecting more concrete
applications and a somewhat shorter period of response, is the component
for Resource Usage Patterns. Resource usage patterns describe activities
systems of a physically observable nature—such as the production and
consumption patterns of asbestos. These patterns are necessary to gain
an appreciation of the material, operational, and geographic nature of the
processes involved.
Also at the intermediate level of response time is the third compo-
nent, Incentives for Control of Environment. This subset of research
tasks is designed to provide answers to motivational problems involving
social and economic responses to environmental regulations.
One of the short-term response categories, Critical Ecological Prob-
lems, has become more prominent as a formal research objective in recent
years because of accumulating evidence that resource usages can cause
unexpected and even irreversible impacts on the environment.
Another specific area is that of Applied Research and Technology
Development, in which many of the standard types of research carried on
in the past can be developed more efficiently.
Finally, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment operations requires
increased research and scientific inputs, to provide more complete and
better integrated feedback for control of undesirable environmental
impacts.
Environmental Systems Interactions
Both in terms of priority and frequency of mention in the various
papers, the overriding research requirement is to develop better knowl-
edge of the systemic interactions involved in environmental impacts,
research usage, and the public interest. Several existing difficulties
must be overcome. Caldwell noted that government research programs
245
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favor the immediate, low-risk, and fragmentary over comprehensive and
long-term studies. Stanley Cain pointed out that the sciences (except
for ecology) are not coordinated; he suggested a version of the classic
land-labor-capital economic model to yield integrated insights. Robert
North described several promising but still inadequate interdisciplinary
approaches.
A general consensus emerged in audience discussions supporting the
thesis of a new agenda for environmental research, including a systematic
approach and a conceptual basis extending beyond the boundaries imposed
by existing institutional arrangements. Attendees agreed that EPA should
avoid the shopping list approach to R&D and instead develop a hierarchical
structure based on long-term investigations such as alternative futures
studies, even though the findings might go beyond typical mission-oriented
agency boundaries.
Other comments dealt with the need for feedback of results: "We
should pursue the grand design but at the same time we need to look at
the feedback from what has been done." One iconoclast suggested "We
should declare a moratorium on research until we can look back on what
has been done and decide where we should go."
Other audience participants mentioned limitations that must be ac-
cepted in systems research: "There are behavioral limits to human coop-
eration and human skills." "Costs of not doing certain things are not
accounted for."
Needs for improving implementation of objectives seem equally appar-
ent. William Ruckelshaus pointed out that, although the founders of EPA
had intentionally built the organization to tie together the different
aspects of environmental control, they did not, and still do not adequately
deal with the interrelationships of environment and society. Industry
in particular finds extreme difficulty operating under the existing
246
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fragmentation of environmental control laws and agencies. One indus-
trial attendee stated that "environmental laws are impossible because
there seems to be no process or understanding between institutions."
His example illustrated that meeting a standard set by a regional con-
trol board did not necessarily mean that the state agency would approve.
Another discussant pointed out conflicting agency regulations for the
water use that have been set by the California Water Quality Control
Board on the one hand and the Coastal Commission on the other hand.
Other perspectives on the same problem put the responsibility back
on industry. "industry must take the lead toward establishing a holistic
approach to environmental protection." "An understanding of the process
is necessary," and "a piecemeal approach will only result in nit-picking
by control agencies."
According to another discussant, the benefits of a process approach
would foster the public feedback that policymaking needs. But others
added that public perception of the holistic approach requires apprecia-
tion of the risks taken by institutions moving in this direction. Simi-
larly, legislative decision-makers who have not been educated to take a
systems view of problems "need to adopt a new orientation." Typical of
such barriers are the views of a prominent governor who does not like
the word systematic because "he wants to see a product not a process."
A final discussant from government thought that the situation was
either "serious but not hopeless or hopeless but not serious." Pre-
ferring the latter view, he remarked that "we should be relieved by the
fact that a holistic approach is constrained by the political arena" and
that the big picture is actually easier for an institution with fewer
constraints. He suggested the university environment because of their
broad investigative charters.
247
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Flexibility is a characteristic of our present environmental control
structure that must be improved. Cain noted that our social structure
is not geared to technical change, but Maurice Eastin speculated that
Congress will soon develop more flexible environmental control systems.
Ralph d'Arge went even further in foreseeing a fundamental reorganization
of control systems to deal with the emergent new class of environmental
issues that are both uncertain and long term in nature.
Adaptations to the multivariate and interactive consequences of re-
source impacts will involve more complex information and understanding.
Among the kinds of secondary and remote effects that must be addressed
are those of intergenerational tradeoffs (mentioned by d'Arge), antici-
pated reductions in the intensiveness of agricultural production (men-
tioned by Zierold), organization of research efforts within or including
EPA (debated by Woodwell and Caller), and constraints imposed by state
and local institutions (mentioned in one of the workshops) . The overall
need arises from increasing evidence, as McHale pointed out, that infor-
mation may be our only really unique resource, that it is inexhaustible,
and that it can be applied to break the historic correlation between de-
velopment and degradation.
Resource Usage Patterns
At the second level of the conceptual hierarchy, better knowledge of
resource usage forms a major need. Participants noted a lack of precise
and well-documented models of resource flows in the economy and environ-
ment, and Earl Heady described how agricultural models, in particular,
need improvement to predict joint production functions, tradeoffs, and
multiple outcomes.
Past operational experience seems sufficient to recommend certain
resource policy changes even without improved research models.
Ruckelshaus, in recommending more realistic policies, reflected that
248
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tough laws and spending have proved to be inadequate criteria for serving
the public interest. Eastin predicted that EPA programs will shift from
a negative emphasis on waste products to a more positive concern with
by-products, and that to do this the programs will be reorganized around
17 resource processes instead of the present 15 functions. Another ob-
server felt that too little use is being made of practical know-how de-
veloped by private firms operating in specialized areas and processes.
Policy conflicts should be resolved by considering the prospective
marginal tradeoffs, but these are not always evident. For example,
George Woodwell and Sidney Galler disagree over whether oil drilling
will significantly harm fisheries on the Georges Bank. Galler agreed
with John Zierold that emphasis should be given to preserving agricul-
tural land even at large economic cost, but a member of the audience
protested that no one knows if land is actually better used in agricul-
ture than in urban development. Even knowledge of the dominant trends
is not always adequate to indicate specific policy; Frank Sebastian
documents how the People's Republic of China seeks food sufficiency not
only by perfecting labor intensive agricultural production, but by opting
when necessary for capital intensive fertilizer imports. Yet fertilizer
requires large amounts of energy and other resources, and it may be del-
eterious to long-term soil quality and even to the ionosphere.
Because of the complexities involved in analysis of resource usage,
both Caldwell and Cain recommended more impact research. Several discus-
sants suggested cost-benefit studies of an advanced nature (but other
discussants discounted the value of conventional cost-benefit and statis-
tical work). North recommended analysis of the distribution question as
well, so that social alternatives can be defined in advance of expected
technical breakthroughs.
249
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Many specific ideas for research were suggested:
(1) Analysis of resource substitutability.
(2) Options for energy transitions away from the use of fossil
fuels, such as burning of forest wood.
(3) Environmental experiments.
(4) Analyses of ecosystems management objectives .
Incentives for Controlling the Environment
The second intermediate level component in the figure deals with the
problem of incentives. North speculated that energy and resource problems
are multiplying to the point where they threaten national and world sta-
bility, and that a breakthrough in the form of fusion, solar energy, or
some comparable technology will challenge the values, institutions and
lifestyles of the present society. But Zierold noted that, in the ab-
sence of breakthroughs in energy and food, exporting countries will gain
more power in the world of the future than the victors of World War II
had in the past. It is obviously important to attempt to maintain the
social stability and incentive structure whether such changes occur or
not. But discussants agreed that there is now no really unified or co-
herent national environmental policy aimed at future stability.
A strategy is needed not only to derive incentives for the present,
but also for the future. The incentives must be designed to adapt suc-
cessfully to dynamic instabilities in the resource-environment confron-
tation. McHale mentioned satiation as one stabilizing influence. He
illustrated its effect with fat ladies, who in ancient times were status
symbols as conspicuous consumers of food, but have lost their status in
the current age of food abundance. Satiation will tend to limit increas-
ing consumption of many of our resources. However, satiation will not
have a chance to occur when the balance between resources and demands
changes too rapidly.
250
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Economic "externalities," in which some of the benefits or costs of
an activity are not imposed directly upon the user but rather on some
external group, may be destabilizing influences. This problem, men-
tioned by Cooper and others, must be minimized if an incentive system
is to be ultimately successful. For example, recycling activities are
presently inhibited by the lack of a depletion tax allowance on recycled
materials and the favoritism shown for raw materials in railroad tariffs.
Ruckelshaus advocated the concept that a control system must be re-
sponsive to new conditions as well as to its original conditions. In
the case of EPA, he observed that the legal adversary relationship that
is developed around most issues has created a hard "win-lose" atmosphere
in which accommodation and adjustment are difficult. Eastin also noted
that adjustment of the existing EPA arms-length relationship with indus-
try and the citizenry prevents mutually cooperative efforts in resolving
problems. Rigidity arises in the context of environmental regulations.
Red tape, conflicting laws, agency conflict, and public apathy were all
mentioned by members of the audience as reasons why large-scale progress
is difficult. One observer noted that only when special legislative
action is taken (as for instance in the case of the Alaskan Pipeline)
can major, long-term projects be accomplished.
Lack of planning and coordination has especially deleterious effects
on a company designing and building a plant, for example, where long
lead times are required. Many of the strongest incentives programs men-
tioned by the speakers — taxes, subsidies, stockpiling programs, ration-
ing, international cooperation (all mentioned by Gordon), and open-space
reserves (mentioned by Zierold)—would be either excessively expensive
or completely infeasible if operated under erratic and rapidly changing
policy guidelines. Some progress in alleviating this uncertainty was
reported by Frank Sebastian by the setting of recommended 1977 and 1983
water quality effluent control standards.
251
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On the international scene, it is important to ensure that all coun-
tries accept joint environmental and resource goals. Robert North sug-
gested that research on international political systems and on compara-
tive national trends can help in these problems, and that economic trade
and technology transfer studies may provide the basis for exchanges that
encompass environmental values as well as national interests.
Income distribution aspects may become increasingly significant in
domestic programs. Problems of public response, which were addressed in
several of the workshops, were largely oriented around how to derive and
apply social indicators. In general, incentives research requires such
techniques as computer simulation, forecasting, communications and edu-
cation skills, economic studies such as the analysis of revealed behavior
and its relationship to professed values, and (as mentioned by Cain),
even insights obtained from the humanities.
In designing controls for EPA implementation, the first step is to
investigate where the greatest leverage might be obtained. Also, one
must examine whether this leverage is available at a reasonable cost in
terms of both social acceptance and technical feasibility.
Cooper saw two types of control alternatives: one to more effec-
tively monitor contaminant discharges and actively enforce compliance
through economic incentives, emission standards, or damage liabilities;
and the other to design an "idiot proof" system utilizing ecologically
sound criteria that can provide redundant safeguards. The first of these
alternatives would require considerable development in the areas of mon-
itoring and control, whereas the second would require research in the
area of ecological stability and hardiness. d'Arge mentioned the possi-
bility of testing regulatory programs on a limited basis so that experi-
ence can be gained without risking large-scale ecological catastrophes.
Also, experience in control activities at state and local levels can
252
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influence policies in wider areas; e.g., Wyoming has adopted some of
Montana's environmental regulations.
Whatever the techniques involved, several observers note the neces-
sity of developing better methods of information dissemination and com-
munication to the general public on such issues as recycling. One ex-
pressed it that "the format of information receives too little attention—
particularly for discrimination among different scientific disciplines by
public agencies and the general public."
Beyond the EPA structure, research must be extended to consider in-
centives of agencies and institutions outside the EPA structure so that
alternative and overlapping approaches may be considered. One member of
the audience stated that he had flown over an industrial complex at
3 p.m. on a workday and noticed no dirty stack effluents, but at 5:30 p.m.
he observed many smoke emissions. He presumed this change occurs because
the local air quality control authorities leave work at 4:45 p.m.
Critical Ecological Problems
At the lowest level of the hierarchy of research priorities in the
figure, programs with the most immediate expected payoff are gathered
together. One is Critical Ecological Problems—defining research to
discover environmental problems that hold the greatest hazard of severe
or irreversible damage to the environment.
It is necessary if not sufficient to review discoveries and theories
of academics and interested environmentalists within the system. Poten-
tial hazards, remote as they may seem upon a first hypothesis, may there-
by be evaluated as quickly as possible. But the history of science is
ample illustration of the difficulty of establishing review processes
within the structure of an organized establishment. Ruckelshaus proposed
that we build in ways for the EPA organization to systematically anticipate
253
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emergent future problems. Workshop participants suggested special stud-
ies to seek out and investigate potentially urgent environmental problems
Other discussants identified a particular problem in the field of
synthetic plastics. R&D and manufacturing capacities increasingly are
used to develop synthetics as substitute materials for essential and
critical materials in short supply. Since some of the new materials may
be quite hazardous environmentally, EPA should sponsor "early warning"
research to devise appropriate control mechanisms before these new syn-
thetics get into full production. The group recognized that this is dif-
ficult because of industry's propensity for secrecy, especially with
chemicals.
In some ways the long-term hazards are more insidious and difficult
than the short-term hazards. Long-term hazards are harder to identify
and eliminate unless a specific effort is made to identify these trends.
Short-term hazards, on the other hand, are generally much more evident
because of the obvious shifts in environmental balances that they create.
d'Arge suggested that EPA focus on long-term uncertainties as a major
problem area. He added that the most difficult aspect of these uncer-
tainties are those in which interactive effects are operating. Woodwell
described a specific example of uncertainty in the observed long-term
buildup of carbon in the atmosphere, and its unknown future impact.
In the worst situation, uncertain hazards may result in irreversible
changes. Cooper notes that extinction is such an irreversible change.
Therefore, he agrees with d'Arge that irreversibility is the ultimate
environmental hazard.
Applied Research and Technology Development
The central base for EPA's research program must remain its existing
applied research and technology development. Among these kinds of activ-
ities, the most notable emphasis was on recycling. Zierold stated that
254
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reusability as opposed to discard will be a mandatory trend in future
society. Among specific suggestions for reuse, Woodwell urged that
"closed systems" be developed for local recirculation and recycling of
water and sewage. Such developments would not only reduce pollution,
but would also reduce the size and complexity of sewage releasing sys-
tems at great savings in resources, energy, and environment.
Sebastian documented existing progress in cleaning up areas: the
British in London, Americans in Lake Tahoe, California, and South Afri-
cans in Windhoek, Namibia, have all been able to demonstrate that ad-
vanced environmental cleanup efforts provide positive savings on a cost-
benefit basis alone. But additional recycling research is needed in the
health and public acceptance aspects of recycled municipal water supplies,
and possibly on health problems associated with the use of sludge and
incinerator ash residue for commercial fertilizer. Primarily, additional
information is needed on environmentally safe limits for the heavy metals
in these residues.
Design and employment of resources to extend life cycles represents
an alternative to the recycling approach. Zierold suggested that labor
intensive activities, which necessarily involve more careful husbanding
of resources, will replace current high consumptive, intensive uses.
A third approach is to find more efficiently the kinds of resources
that already exist. Most of the emphasis in current U.S. energy policy
reflects this approach. Gordon suggested better development and appli-
cation of a number of extraction technologies; he mentions geological
survey techniques such as aerial, geochemical, geophysical, seismographic,
and electrical methods, and analytical techniques such as the use of
mathematics and statistics in reducing geological data. He also men-
tioned the need for improved mining methods such as novel rock cutting
and increased mine automation, economical methods of treating low-grade
ores, and ocean mining and sea water recovery technologies.
255
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As a fourth approach, Gordon and McHale both mention mineral substi-
tution. Substitution can involve either the search for new applications
of old materials, or the development of new synthetic materials.
Several attendees mentioned the need for more effective utilization
of existing research results by EPA. One mentioned need for a more ade-
quate knowledge of the state of the art in various environmental special-
ties. To a considerable extent, such knowledge may be available among a
small group of experts, so the need might be for more effective communi-
cations with the technical community and the general public.
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment
Workshop participants agreed that continuing demands by our society
to maintain current standards of living in the face of resource shortages
will impose increasing pressures upon EPA. As certain of our limited re-
sources become less available (e.g., minerals, conventional energy sources)
new products will be developed and used not only as substitutes for exist-
ing products, but also in new niches for which they are especially suited.
These new and substitute products with potential new problems could force
EPA to expend increasing efforts in monitoring the environment. Yet, as
Cooper pointed out, effective control even of existing substances will
require considerable development of present monitoring methods.
Long-term environmental effects deserve particular emphasis in the
monitoring problem. For planning purposes, McHale recommended that as-
sessments be projected to periods as long as 30 to 50 years into the
future.
Another frequently mentioned aspect of the monitoring problem is the
need for developing quantitative relationships between the original
source of disturbance and the resultant environmental change. For ex-
ample, Woodwell stated his belief that the total amount of photosynthesis
256
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in the world is declining but points out that no detailed quantitative
analysis yet exists to either confirm or disprove his thesis. Gordon
agreed that EPA needs better economic and planning tools to assess such
long-term impacts, and McHale provided another example in the need to
assess agriculture pollution along with industrial pollution.
Finally, members of the audience in several of the workshops elabo-
rated on the dominant conference theme that social assessments as well
as physical environmental assessments are needed so that EPA may maintain
its policies in harmony with society. Social assessment needs point to a
frequently cited requirement for development of better social indicators,
so that environmental and resource programs can be designed to be respon-
sive to a fuller, more far-sighted "quality of life."
257
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APPENDIX
SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS AND ATTENDEES
-------
Appendix
SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS AND ATTENDEES
SRI contributors were:
Conference Staff:
Kendall D. Moll, Senior Operations Analyst
Joni Rosenbaum, Research Assistant
Pamela M. Halton, Research Analyst
Cynthia Kroll, Operations Analyst
Workshop Rapporteurs:
Marilyn D. Bagley, Operations Analyst
Robert E. Fullen, Energy Economist
Ronald T. Collis, Director, Atmospheric Sciences
Eric E. Duckstad, Director, Urban and Regional Studies
Gordon W. Newell, Director, Toxicology Department
Workshop Moderators:
Mark D. Levine, Operations Analyst
Egils Milbergs, Policy Analyst
James D. Bray, Senior Economist
John W. Ryan, Senior Operations Analyst
Buford B. Holt, Ecologist
Speakers, participants, and attendees of the symposium are listed as
follows:
Eugene S. Allen, Vice President
Technical Services
Cyprus Mines Corporation
Los Angeles, CA
261
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Wallace B. Allen, Director
Environmental Quality
Pacific Gas and Electric Company
San Francisco, CA
*Charles A. Anderson, President
Stanford Research Institute
Menlo Park, CA
Kiat Ang
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
University of California
Berkeley, CA
William C. Arntz, Regional Administrator
Federal Energy Administration
San Francisco, CA
John R. Bagby, Director
Institute of Environmental Health
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO
Sandra Baron
Palo Alto, CA
Peter Benenson
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
University of California
Berkeley, CA
('Ferial S. Bishop, Ecologist
Environmental Protection Agency - R&D
Washington, DC
Stephen C. Brown, Director
Industrial Market Development
Envlrotech
Belmont, CA
*Stanley A. Cain, Professor
Environmental Studies
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA
262
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*Lynton K. Caldwell, Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Indiana
Bloomington, IN
John Charbonneau
Office of Pesticide Programs
Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, DC
*William E. Cooper, Professor
Department of Zoology
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI
Charles F. Cooper, Director
Center for Regional Environmental Studies
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA
Paul Cox, Assistant Director
California Department of Conservation
Sacramento, CA
Linda Craig, Solid Waste Consultant
League of Women Voters of California
Menlo Park, CA
*Ralph d'Arge, Professor
Department of Economics
University of Wyoming
Laramie, WY
David De Bruyn
Environmental Protection Agency
Seattle, WA
Robert Dunkle, Business Administrator
Envirotech
Belmont, CA
*Maurice R. Eastin, Special Consultant to the Administrator
Office of the Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, DC
263
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Stanley Euston, Chief Planner
Bay Conservation and Development Agency
San Francisco, CA
James M. Erickson, Professor
Department of Ecology
California State University at Hayward
Hayward, CA
Leon H. Fisher, Dean
School of Science
California State University at Hayward
Hayward, CA
William B. Freeman, Board Chairman
Miller Freeman Publications
Diablo, CA
*Sidney R. Caller, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment
Affairs
Department of Commerce
Washington, DC
Carl Gerber, Associate Assistant to Administrator, R&D
Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, DC
Michael R. Gill, Professor
Department of Political Science
San Jose State University
San Jose, CA
John S. Gilmore, Senior Research Economist
University of Denver Research Institute
University Park
Denver, CO
*Theodore J. Gordon
The Futures Group
Galstonbury, CT
W. Scott Gray, Manager
Environmental Sciences Group
Bechtel
San Francisco, CA
264
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Edward Groth III, Staff Officer
Environmental Studies Board
National Academy of Sciences and Research Council
Washington, DC
Joel Gustafson, Chairman
Ecology Section, Biology Department
San Francisco,State University
San Francisco, CA
*Willis W. Harman, Director
Center for Study of Social Policy
Stanford Research Institute
Menlo Park, CA
*Earl O. Heady, Director
The Center for Agricultural & Rural Development
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa
James Hibbs
Envirommental Protection Agency
Washington, DC
Frederic Hoffman, Research & Development Representative
Environmental Protection Agency
Alameda, CA
David L. Jameson, Professor
Biology Department
University of Houston
Houston, Texas
Robert A. Jones, Chief
Division of Environmental Management, Dept. of the Interior
Bureau of Land and Planning Coordination
Washington, DC
Joseph Jutten, Fire Protection Engineer
U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration
Oakland, CA
265
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Hugh Kaufman, Assistant to Director
Office of Solid Waste
Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, DC
Ted Kreines, Consultant
American Institute of Planners
Tiburon, CA
Ralph A. Kuiper, Manager
Fluid Mechanics Laboratory
Lockheed Research Laboratory
Palo Alto, CA
Lawrence Leopold, Coastal Resource Analyst
Sea Grant Program
University of Southern California
University Park
Los Angeles, CA
William Lockett
Air Resources Board, Evaluation & Planning
Sacramento, CA
Dennis Lachtman, Assistant to Senior Vice President
Envirotech
Menlo Park, CA
*John McHale, Director
Center for Integrative Studies
State University of New York at Binghamton
Binghamton, NY
Dean Merrill
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
University of California
Berkeley, CA
Frank J. Mesaros, Manager-Environmental Affairs
Gulf Mineral Resources Company
Denver, CO
Flora Milans, Statistician
Bureau of Land Management
Dept. of the Interior
Washington, DC
266
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*Robert C. North, Professor
Political Science Department
Stanford, CA
M. J. Ownings
Non-Petroleum Fuel Economics
Gulf Oil Corporation
Pittsburgh, PA
Thomas Priestley
Association of Bay Area Governments
Berkeley, CA
John B. Richardson
ASARCO, Inc.
Salt Lake City, Utah
Michael Rothenberg, Chief of Engineering Evaluation
Bay Area Air Pollution Control District
San Francisco, CA
Edwin B. Royce, Physical Scientist
Industrial Extractive Processes Division
Office of Energy, Minerals and Industry
Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, DC
*William D. Ruckelshaus, Attorney
RuckelShaus, Beveridge and Fairbanks
Washington, DC
Jayant Sathaye, Economist
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
University of California
Berkeley, CA
John D. Saussaman, Vice President
Domestic Raw Materials
Kaiser Steel Corporation
Oakland, CA
Crichton Schacht, Environmental Officer
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Seattle, WA
267
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Richard A. Schmidt, Geologist
Electric Power Research Institute
Palo Alto, CA
*Frank P. Sebastian, Senior Vice President
Envirotech
Menlo Park, CA
Ian R. Straughan, Research Scientist
Southern California Edison Company
Rosemead, CA
Susan Tubbesing, Research Technician
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO
R. E. Whiting, Chief
Environmental Quality Branch
California Department of Water Resources
Sa cramento, CA
C. Peairs Wilson
Office of Western Director at Large
University of California
Berkeley, CA
*George M. Woodwell, Director
The Ecosystems Center
Marine Biological Laboratory
Woods Hole, MA
Ronald Wyzga
Environmental Assessment Department
Electric Power Research Institute
Palo Alto, CA
*John Zierold, Legislative Advocate
Sierra Club
Sacramento, CA
*
Asterisks indicate speakers and program participants
268
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