Eco Science - Seven - New Constitution, Energy Policy & A Third Party

8/14/2019 Eco Science - Seven - New Constitution, Energy Policy & A Third Party

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,CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS// 857

doggie, convinced Congress that the SST's disadvantagesoutweighed its very questionable advantages, and theU.S. program was killed in 1971.

In 1975 the debate began anew when rights to land inthe United States were requested for the Anglo-French SST, Concorde. The issue is still in doubt, butseveral things are apparent the Concorde is extremelynoisy, fuel-inefficient, and probably uneconomical. If itremains in service, it will be as a monument to govern-ment stupidity and the momentum of technologicalcircuses.

Government PlanningThe fragmentation of responsibility among govern-

ment agencies in the United States makes a reasonableresponse to problems extremely difficult and planning toavert them virtually impossible. The lack of overallcontrol of environmental matters and the virtualsibility of dealing with problems in any coordinated wayare illustrated by the area of urban affairs, aspects ofwhirh no w crime nnder rh p pirisdirtions of the Depart-ment of Housing and Urban Development, the Depart-ment of Health, Education an d Welfare, as well as theDepartments of Labor, Commerce, Interior, Justice, andTransportation, to name just the major ones. It is clearthat the executive branch of me federal governmentbadly needs reorganizing.

Such coordinated planning as takes place in die federalgovernment is largely confined to the preparation andreview of the annual federal budget. It is fair to saydiatthe time horizons considered in this process are typicallyshort and the emphasis on conventional economic indi-cators heavy. Resource and environmental matters ac-cordingly receive less attention than they deserve.1"a

Some detailed suggestions on reforming the politicalstructureof the United States to make it more responsiveto the requirements of die population-resource-environ-ment situation may be found in the bookHr^T/F12 We''"A sense of the planning inpu t s to and implications of the federalbudgeting process is conveyed in the series of volumes, Setting nationalpriorities, published annually by the Brookings Institution since 1970.The 1976 volume, edited byHenry Owen and Charles L. Schultze, takesalonger-range perspective (10 years) on issues raised by the budget, and

examines the problems of coordinated long-range planning in a govern-ment of divided powers."2PiragcsandEhrl ich.

"J"A series of important books on the tools and prospects forcomprehensive governmental planning appeared in 1976 and 1977 underthe authorship of social scientist and modeler Peter W. House andcolleagues: House, The quest far completeness; House and Williams, Thecarrying capacity of a nation; House an d McLeod, Large scale models fo rpoltcv evaluation;House, Trading-off environment, economics, an d energy.

5 ''Alfred Heller, ed., T he California tomorrow plan.

discuss only one such reform here: die institutionaliza-tion of government planning.pieCenter for the Study of Dpmnf-raric Institutions^

has an Ongoing prnjprf un de r the rfirertion nf ^ GTugwell,designed to produce a modern constitution for _ _the United States. The proposed constitution, now in itstfairty-diird draft^. deserves wide circulation and study.One of the features of the Tugwell constitution is aplanning branch of die government, with the mission of doing long-range planning. As should be apparent from Ct ft/T''M "the preceding discussion, without planning we believediere is little chance of saving civilization from a down-ward spiral of deepening social and environmental dis-ruptions and political conflicts. Human societies haveshown little aptitude for planning so far, but it is a skillmat must soon be developed."2a

A private organization, California Tomorrow, spon-sored a group of planners who produced a document thatmight serve as a preliminary model for the kind ofplanning that can be done. The California tomorrow plan:A first sketch presents a skeletal plan for the future of the^state of California.''3 It describes "California zero," theCalifornia of today, and two alternative futures: Califor-nia I is a "current-trends-continue" projection; Califor-nia II is a projection in which various alternative coursesof action are followed.

The plan considers twenty-two major problem areas,including population growtii and various kinds of en-vironmental deterioration, and looks at both the causes ofthe problems and policies to ameliorate them. CaliforniaI is compared with California II, and suggestions forphasing into the California II projection are given.The details of the plan need not concern us here, butthe subjects of concern in the plan are roughly thoseof this book. What is encouraging is that a privateorganization could put together a comprehensive visionof the future of one of the largest political entities in theworld, proving that intelligent, broad-spectrum planningcan be done.


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858 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT

The next question is, how can "USA Zero" be started.toward "USA II"? It may well be necessary to form ane w politicalparty founded on the principles of popula-tion control, environmental quality, a stabilized econ-omv, and dedication f< ? careful Inng-rangp planningajjartv should be national and intfmatronal in korientation, rather than basing its power on parochialissues as the current parties do. In 1854 the Republicanparty was created de novo, founded on the platform ofopposition to the extension of slavery.It seems probablethat in the 1980s and 1990s the environmental issue willbecome even more prominent than the slavery issue wasin the 1850s, and a powerfulnew ecology party might beestablished, as has occurred in several other countries.It could, indeed, grow out of such political organizationsas Zero Population Growth and Friends of the Earth.

Obviously, such changes as those briefly proposedabove will threaten notonly numerous politicians of bothmajor parties, but many economic institutions and prac-tices. They are likely to be opposed by vast segmentsofthe industrial state: by much of the oil and petrochemicalindustry, the steel industry, the automobile industry, thenuclear power industry, the construction industry, andby some labor unions, land developers, the Army Corpsof Engineers, the USDA, the Nuclear Regulatory Com-mission, and the chambers of commerce, to name only afew.

Even a cursory knowledge of the pervasiveness of andthe degree of political control by these interests leads tothe conclusion that the necessary changes in attitudes andbehavior are extremely unlikely to occur among theindividuals and organizations where it would be mosthelpful. Bu t what is at stake is survival of a society and away of life_If these are to be preserved in recognizableform, cooperation of all elements of society, regardless ofpersonal interests, will be required. Some social scientistsbelieve such cooperation can be obtained by the system-atic application of social and political sanctions.U3a Wetend to agree, but doubt that even sanctions will workunless there is also a common goala realistic view of adesirable and attainable futurethat all can strivetoward.

SOMETARGETS FOR EARLY CHANGE

Institutions are shaped by issues, and issues in turn areshaped and evolve in response to the character of theinstitutions that identify and grapple with them. Ac-cordingly, our discussion of American institutions so farhas been framed in the context of the broad issues inpopulation and environment that we believe are centralto the human predicament. It is useful now to arlrl tp th e_discussion some rather more specific problem areaspnergv policy, transportation an d communications. andland use,which need early attention, which will test tfae_ability of institutional change to redirect technology and_social energies in pursuit of saner ends, and which, in _being grappled with, may serve to reshape further theinstitutions themselves. Along with population policyand pollution control, which have already receiveddetailed attention in this and the preceding chapters, weview these problems as high-priority targets for earlychange.

Energy Policy I

"**L. D. Nelson and ]. A. Honnold, Planning for resource scarcity.

Who should make energy policy? _How should it becarried out? What should be its goals? These are theprincipal questions on the policy side of energy, and theyare interdependent. As unfortunately sometimes is for-gotten, it is fruitless to try to answer the first twoquestions without already having some semblance of ananswer for the third.

The United States had an energy policy during thefirst two-thirds of the twentieth century, but it was rarelyarticulated in public. In any event, the public was notpaying much attention. The policy was the result of thegoals of two groupsa few interested politicians andtheir appointees, whose goal was to see that energy wa smade available as cheaply as possible to meet whateverdemand might materialize, and the owners and operatorsof energy companies (oil companies, coal companies,energy-equipment manufacturers, electric utilities, andso on), whose goal was to expand their businesses andtheir profits as rapidly as possible. The goals of the twogroups coincided nicely.

That the interests of private enterprise and of public


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policy coincide is not necessarily a bad thing. As AdamSmith expounded the idea in his famous metaphor of theinvisible hand, this is the w ay a free-market economy fullofentrepreneurs is supposed to work. Unfortunately, thehistory of U.S. energy policy is one of the most tellingavailable examples of what can go wrong with this idealsituation: the consolidation of economic interests intooligopoly and monopoly; the tightening influence of theeconomic interests over the policy-makers and regula-tors, an d indeed the infiltration of the latter by theformer; the resulting vigorous pursuit ofpolicies that stillserve private interests but have long since lost theirrelevance to the public interest.

This complicated set of issues has been the focus ofmany analyses much more extensive than we can providehere.114 What follows is a brief overviewof some of themost important topics: the character of the U.S. energyindustry, government activity in energy, an d energyprices and the poor. International aspects of energypolicy are considered in Chapter 15 .U.S. energy industry. The energy industry is animportant sector of the U.S. economy by any measure:

according to one tabulation, it accounts for 3 percent ofthe total employment, 4 percent of the national income,and 27 percent of the annual business investment in newplants and equipment.115 A different way of counting,which includes taxes and other items missed in thefigures just given, is to add up all the money spent onenergy by consumers. Such a tabulation must includeboth direct purchases (gasoline, electricity, natural gas,heating oil) and indirect purchases of energy (for example,the fraction of an airline ticket's price that pays for jetfuel, the part of the price of an automobile that pays forthe energy needed to build it, the energy to run the hairdrier at the beauty parlor, and so forth). The total

"^Especially recommended as introductions to the subject are: DavidFreeman et al, A time to choose: Th e report of the Energy Policy Project ofthe Ford Foundation, chapters 5-7, 9-11; J. Steinhart and C. Steinhart,Energy, chapters 13 and 14; N. Medvin, Th e energy cartel; Resources forthe Future, U.S. energy policies: An agenda fo r research."'David Freeman et al., A time to choose, p. 142. Included areproduction and processing of coal, oil, and natural gas, gas and electric

utilities, pipeline transport, and wholesale and retail trade. Not includedare manufacturers of energy-handling equipment, such as electricitygenerators andnuclear reactors.

TABLE 14-1Diversification in the Oil Industry(involvement of oil companies with other fuels)Petroleum company Rank in Oil Tarassets Gas shale Coal Uranium sands

Standard Oil ofNe w Jersey (Exxon)TexacoGulfMobilStandard Oil of CaliforniaStandard Oil of IndianaShellAtlantic RichfieldPhillips PetroleumContinental Oil

12345678910

XXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXX

XXX_XXX

XXXXXXXXX

XX_xxXX

Source: N. Medvin, The energy cartel

computed this way was around 10 percent of the grossnational product at pre-embargo (1973) energy prices.The greatest concentration of economic an d pnHtpower in the energy industry is found in the large oiLcompanies. Ten of the top twenty companies on Fortunemagazine's 1975 list of the largest industrial corporationsin the United States were oil companies, and the assets ofthose ten alone topped $154 billion. Their 1974 saleswere $116 billion."6 Those companies have becomelarge both by vertical integration and by diversification.The first term means that a single company is involved inmany stages of processing an energy sourcefor exam-ple, exploration, production, refining, marketing. Diver-sification refers to involvement of a single company withseveral different resourcesfor example, oil, coal, ura-nium, oil shale. (Naturally, diversification can go beyondenergy resourcessome oil companies ow n movie the-aters, for example.) A glance at Table 14-1 reveals tfaat_the major oil companies are really energy companies, asaT l of them are involved with three or more differentresources.As big as the major energy companies are, me concen-tration of the energy business in the few largest organi-zations does no t quite qualify for the label anticompeti-tive under the usual rule of thumb, which is that 70percent of the business be concentrated in the largesteight firms.117 The degree of concentration in varioussectors of the U.S. energy industry is shown in Table

' "Fortune directory of the 500 largest industrial corporations, For-tune, vol. 91, no. 5 (May 1975), pp. 210-211.1 1 'Freeman et al., A time to choose, p. 231.


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TABLE 14-2Concentration in the United StatesEnergy Industries (around 1970)Industry Percentage of total activityin 8 largest firms

Crude-oil productionPetroleum refiningGasoline salesInterstate natural gas salesCoal productionUranium mining and millingElectric generating equipment

505 y52434079100Source: David Freeman et al.,A time to choose, p. 231.

14-2. The effective degree of concentration is probablyhigher than the figures reflect, however, because of thelarge number of joint ventures linking the major compa-nies in collaborative enterprises. These include jointlyowned or operated oil fields, pipelines, refineries, and abewildering variety of other arrangements. Among theten or fifteen largest oil companies, almost all of thepossible two-company combinations in joint ventures areactually in existence.118

The political power of the major energy companies inpractice is reflected in the special treatment by thegovernment they have gained and largely preserved forthemselves in the forms of the depletion allowance,foreign tax credits, and other tax dodges.1183 (Thedepletion allowance for all but the smallest producerswa s at last repealed in 1975.) Between 1962 and 1971 thefive largest U.S. oil companies paid an average of 5.2percent income tax on their profits, compared to anaverage corporate income tax for all industries of about42percent. The diiference could be regarded as a raid onthe U.S. Treasury by those five companies in the amountof about$17billion.119 (These five companies wereall inthe top ten U.S. corporations in profitability in 1976.Their after-tax profits totalled $6.2 billion.'19a)

It may be argued, of course, that developing andmarketing energy resources is an increasingly compli-cated and expensive business that only very large andfinancially vigorous corporations can handle. Indeed,this is precisely what the energy companies do argue. Yetit is not entirely clear what the American people as awhole gain by leaving those very profitable and also very

1 '8Sec Medvin, The energy cartel, chapter 5 and Appendix 1.""See, for example, A. ]. Lichtenberg and R. D. Norgaard, Energy

policy' and the taxation of oil and gas income."Thefigures are from Steinhart and Steinhart, Energy, p, 282.i isaMiit Moskowitz, The top ten money earners, San Francisco Chrani-cJe, April 2, 1977, p. 31.

crucial activities in the hands of private enterprise.Increasingly, the same corporations that swear by thefree-market system in some respects have shown them-selves more than willing to abandon it selectively,campaigning for all manner of special subsidies, taxincentives, and privileges, while expecting the govern-ment to undertake the riskiest and most difficult parts ofthe energy enterprise. Thus thefederal government findsitself providing most of the liability insurancefor nuclearreactors, trying (without much success as of 1976) topersuade private industry to get into the uranium-enrichment business, underwriting most of the cost of ademonstration breeder reactor for the utilities, paying tobring the technology of sulfur control for coaland oil to astate of development deemed economically viable by theutilities, and so on.

On the other hand, the idea of letting the governmenttake over the energy business entirely is not particularlyappetizing. The experiences of other nations where theenergy industry has been nationalized shows that this isno guarantee against bungling and exploitation, as doesthe U.S. experience with government enterprises in otherfields. At the same time, it seems clear that the goals ofthe energy companies have become increasingly removedfrom the public interest in the 1970s. More energy for itsow n sake (or for profit's sake) can no longer serve as thegoal of national energy policy, and it is apparent thatmuch tighter control over the energy industry by gov-ernment is the minimum prescription for steering awayfrom this outmoded view.

Government's role. The response of government tothe growing complexity of energy issues over the pastfew decades hasbeen piecemeal and uncoordinated. Eachemerging set of problems, it seems, has led to creation ofa new agency or assignment of responsibility to anexisting one, without regard for the way pieces of theenergy problem interaa with each other. The result isoverlapping jurisdiction in some casesin which con-flicts arise among federal, state and local governmentalentitiesand no jurisdiction at all in others^ Some of theprincipal federal agencies involved in energy are listed inBox 14-4, along with synopses of their responsibilitiesthat suggest some of the potential conflicts and ambi-guities. Operating sometimes in collaboration with,

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, Some Federal Agencies Involved in EnergyCouncil on Environmental Quality (CEQ)

Consults with other federal agencies onenvironmental impacts of their actions Receives and evaluates environmental im-pact statements on energy facilities

Energy Research an d Development Administra-tion (ERDA) Develops and demonstrates new sources ofenergy supply Analyzes and encourages eneigy conser-vation Makes forecasts of energy needs and pro-poses strategies to meet them Operates certain energy facilities (such asuranium-enrichment plants)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Devises and enforces standards for air andwater quality, bearing on operation ofpower plants and automobiles

Department of Commerce (DOC) Devises and implements programs andstandards for industrial energy conser-vation

Department of Housing an d Urban Develop-ment (HUD) Devises and implements standards for en-ergy conservation in buildings

Department of the Interior (DOT) Controls energy development (for example,

oil drilling, coal mining) on federal lands,including offshore Maintains statistics on reserves and pro-duction of mineral energy resources Produces and markets electric powerthrough four regional administrations(Bonneville, Alaska, Southwest, Southeast)

Federal Energy Administration (FEA) Collects and verifies information about

availability of energy to consumers Regulates the mix of products fromrefineries Allocates energy supplies in times of

shortage Makes forecasts and devises strategies

Federal Power Commission (FPC) Controls prices and standards of service forsales of electricity an d natural gas acrossstate lines Licenses hydropower facilities on navigablewaterways

Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) Regulates interstate oil and coal-slurrypipelines

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Devises and enforces standards for safety of

nuclear-energy facilitiesSecurities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Regulates management practices of electricutilities

sometimes at odds with these agencies is a host of con-gressional committees, themselves engaged in almostcontinuous jockeying with each other fo r jurisdictionand influence.In early 1977 President Carter proposed a sweepingreorganization of energy-related functions in the Execu-tive Branch, centered around a new Department ofEnergy equal in status to Commerce, Interior, Treasury,an d so on^Upon approval by Congress, the Departmentof Energy will replace th e Energy Research an d Devel-opment Administration, the Federal Power Commission,as well as assuming most of the energy-related respon-sibilities of the Department of Interior, the Departmentof Commerce, the Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment, the Interstate Commerce Commission,

and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Two newadministrations would bp created wjth in thment: the Energy Information Administration nan d distributing information about energy suppljes an duses, and the Energy Regulatory Commission, coveringeconomic regulation only. The Nuclear RegulatoryCommission, the Environmental Protection Agency,an d th e Council on Environmental Quality would retaintheir powers as listed in Box 14-4.Th e confusion in Washington /which one may hopethe Carter reorganization will reduce) is compounded, ofcourse, by the existence of public utilities commissions inforty-six of the fifty states, with widely varying respon-sibilities in the energy field. About half of them controlboth public and investor-owned utilities (electricity and

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natural gas, plus nonenergy activities); the other halfcontrol only the investor-owned utilities. Most set therates charged for electricity and gas, to protect theconsumer from the monopoly that the nature of dis-tribution systems for gas and electricity makes almostinevitable. They are also generally responsible for assur-ing the safety of systems under their jurisdiction, one ofseveral overlaps with other agencies.

Jjovernment action in th e energy field is not onlyencumbered by this enormous organizational cnmp|ex-_ity, but it has often been enfeebled as well by internalconflicts of interest. These have arisen from the standardproblem of infiltration of regulatory agencies by com-mitted representatives of the regulated organizations,and also sometimes from the incorporation of promo-tional and regulatory functions within the same agencies.Perhaps the most visible example of the pitfalls of thelatter situation was the Atomic Energy Commission,,which from its creation in 1946 was empowered both to_regulate and to promote the peaceful and military^applications of nuclear energy. Some of the difficultiesthat nuclear fission as a n energy source faces in the late1970s can be attributed to mistakes that arose from thisinherent conflict an d from the cozy relationship thatevolved between the AEG and its supposed congressionalwatchdog, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy,(JCAE).120

The AEC-JCAE combination for many years was themost active and visible agency connected with energy inWashington, and its vigorous promotion of nuclearfission to the near-exclusion of research on other energysources left the United States in the 1970s with far fewerenergy options than it could and should have had. Th eAEG was split in late 1974 into the Nuclear RegulatoryCommission, on the one hand, and several divisions ofthe Energy Research and Development Administrationon theother (see Box 14-4). The JCAE wasstripped of itspower in a Congressional committee reorganization inearly 1977.

Energy prices and the poor.. If it is obvious thatenergy in the United States has been underpriced,

encouraging overexploitation and waste, it is equallyapparent that sharp price increases cause a dispropor-tionate burden on the poor. Th e poor spend a largerfraction of their incomes on direct energy purchases thando higher-income groups, they are less able to cut backon energy consumption because a larger part of theirconsumption is for essential rather than discretionaryuses, and they are less able to im'est money in insulationand other improvements that will reduce energy expen-ditures in the long run .12 1

Increases in energy prices are not quiteasregressiveasthey seem at first glance, however, because total energyexpenditures (for direct purchases plus the "indirect"energy embodied in other goods and services) increasealmost in direct proportion to income.122 Even so, theplight of the poor requires that special measures be takento reduce the impact of higher energy prices on them.Such measures should include changing the rate struc-ture for purchases of electricity and natural gas, so thatsmall users pa y less pe r unit of energy rather than more(compared with large users), as is now generally the case.Subsidies for the purchase of insulation an d similarimprovements could easily be paid for out of increasedtaxes on the profits ofenergy companies. It would not bedifficult to design an energy tax and rebate system thatactually served as an income redistribution device favor-ing the poor while discouraging heavy energy consump-tion in higher-income groups.In short, the special problems of the poor must betaken into account as energy prices rise, and they can be.Indeed, the nation would have to face up to the problemsof the poor whether energy prices were rising or not. Itwould be doubly absurd if the government were to takethe position, having failed to deal adequately with theproblem of poverty directly, that its energy policy mustrevolve around holding energy prices low for everyone inorder to deal with poverty indirectly. At the same time,there is no reason whatever that higher prices for energy,which are needed to help promote conservation and topa y for ameliorating energy's environmental damages,

120Good critical histories are R. Lewis, The nuclear power rebellion:Citizens versus theatomic industrial establishment; P. Metzger, Theatomicestablishment.

mAccording to Freeman et al., chapter 5, poor Americans spent 15percent of their income on natural gas, electricity, and gasoline in theearly 1970s, compared to 7percent, 6 percent, and 4 percent for the lowermiddle class, upper middle class, and the well-off segments of thepopulation.I32R. Herendeen, Energy andaffluence.


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CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 863

must mean higher profits for the energy companies.Preventing this is a straightforward matter of tax policy.

Directions for a rational energy policy. The mainquestions that energy policy must confront can besummarized: (1) How much energy should besupplied?(2) With what technologies should it be supplied? (3)Who should pay the associated costs? At issue under thefirst question are the costs and benefits to society ofvarious levels of energy consumption and various rates ofchange in those levels (growth or decline). The secondquestionwhich should beviewed not as a search for theideal energy source but as a search for the least undesir-able mixture of sourcesis important regardless of theanswer to the first; a stabilized or even a reduced level ofenergy use would not absolve society from makingdifficult choices about ho w best to supply that level.Similarly, the third question-involving how prices,taxes, and regulation are employed to distribute thedirect and indirect costs of energy useis crucial nomatter how the first two questions ar e answered.Still, the three questions are far from independent. Ifthe answer to the question "How much?" is a great deal,the range of choice under "What technology?" dimin-ishes; society may have to choose all the options at once,at great expense. And the greater the costs, the trickier isthe question "Who pays?"

On the question of how much should be supplied^ pu r -view is that the United States is threatened far more bv^foe-hazards of too much energy, too soon, than by the.hazards of too little, too late. That the contrary view is sowidely held seems to be the result of two factors: (1) Theeconomic, environmental, and social costs of today'slevel of energy use, and of rapid growth in this level, havebeen seriously underestimated by most observers. (2)The economic and social costs of slower growth havebeen just as seriously overestimated. The underpinningsfor these assertions are found in Chapters 8, 10, and11. i"a T$e reiterate here in capsule form the relevantconclusions that we draw from that material.122b

122aA particularly cogent and eloquent formulation of the argumentsfor both points was recently published by Amory Lovins, EnergyStrategy: The road not taken.I22bThese arguments were first published in slightly abbreviated formin John P. Holdren, Too much energy, too soon,New York Times,Op-Edpage, July 23, 1975.

Rapid growth in energy use fosters expensive mistakes.Especially where the existing level of energy use isalready high, rapid growth forces exploitation of high-cost energy sources as well as low-cost ones, it strainsavailable supplies of investment capital, and it encour-ages gambles on inadequately tested technologies. Thepressure of growth favors streamlining of assessment andlicensing processes,further enlarging theprobability thatsome of the gambles will failat great economic, en -vironmental, or social cost.

Even at slower growth rates, increases in energy use maydo more harm thangood. While the productive applicationof energy fosters prosperity through the operation of theeconomic system, the environmental and social effects ofthe same energy flows undermine prosperity by meansofdirect damagetohealth, property, andhuman values,andby disrupting "public-service" functions of natural sys-tems. Clearly, the benefits to well-being obtainedthrough the economic side of the relationship by meansof increased energy use could in some circumstances becompletely cancelled by the associated damage to well-being through the environmental side. Not only has thisoutcome probably already occurred for some energysources in some locations, bu t under continued growth itis eventually inevitable overall, irrespective of the energysources chosen.

Conservation of energy means doing better, not doingwithout. Fortunately, the slowing of energy growth, andeven the eventual reduction of the total level of energyuse, need not mean a life of economic privation for thepublic. The essence of conservation is the art of extract-ing more well-being out of each gallon of fuel and eachkilowatt hour of electricity. Much progress in thisdirection can be made through changes that increaseefficiency in industrial processes and electricity genera-tion, and in energy-consuming devices in homes, com-merce, and transportation. Of course, some kinds ofenergy conservation will require changes in individualbehavior, and critics of conservation are quick to suggestthat this implies a return to primitive existence. In asociety whose members use 5000-pound automobiles forhalf-mile round trips to the market to fetch six-packs ofbeer, consume the beer in underinsulated buildings thatare overcooled in summer and overheated in winter, andthen throw the aluminum cans away at an energy loss


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equivalent to one-third of a gallon of gasoline pe rsix-pack, the primitive-existence argument strikes us asthe most offensive kind of nonsense.Saving a barrel of oil is generally cheaper than produc-ing a barrel. Slowing the growth of energy consumptionby means of rational conservation measures can actuallysave a great deal of money. For, although technologicalimprovements to increase energy efficiency often requiresome additional capital investment over conventionalpractice, this investment is usually less than the invest-ment that would be needed to produce from ne w sources(offshore oil, nuclear fission, geothermal development)an amount of energy equal to that saved. In this sense,conservation is the cheapest new energy source. Themoney saved by conservation, of course, would inprinciple be available for some of this country's manyother pressing needs.Less energy can mean more employment. The energy-producing industries comprise the most capital-intensiveand least labor-intensive major sector of the U.S. econ-omy. Accordingly, each dollar of investment capitaltaken out of energy production and invested in anotheractivity, and each dollar saved by an individual byreduced energy use and spent elsewhere in the economy,is likely to benefit employment.We conclude therefore that the high rates of growth ofenergy use and electricity generation traditionally an-ticipated for the period between 1975 and 2000 areneither desirable no r necessary. They are not desirablebecause the economic, environmental, and social costsofsuch grow th are likely to be severe; they are not necessarybecause the application of a modicum of technologicaland economic ingenuity can produce continuedindeed,growingprosperity without them.Both in the short term and thereafter, then, themainstay of a rational energy policy for this countryshould be learning to do more with less. Some efforts atmore efficient use of energy will come about automati-cally through the impact of higher energy prices. Evenwithout industry price-gouging, these are inevitablebecause of the technical intractability, in various re-spects, of the energy sources that remain. Price is likelynot to be a sufficient incentive to wring from thesocioeconomic system all the increased efficiency that is

possible and desirable, however, primarily because ofcertain differences in perceived interests of industriesand consumers; regulations such as efficiency standardsfor appliances, automobiles, and buildings should there-fore be used to supplement the price mechanism. And"lifeline" rates and other subsidies to the poor should beinstituted to alleviate the impact of higher p rices on thoseleast able to make energy-saving adjustments.Knvirnnmentally 1 the first step is to clean up th e_ mainstays of th e present energy budget, the foj|Special attention must be given to finding environmen-tally tolerable ways to exploit the abundant resources ofcoal and possibly of oil shale. The environmental andsocial risks of fission, including the threat of terrorismand sabotage, either at the facilities or elsewhere by usin gstolen nuclear materials, deserve the most searchingreevaluation before a national commitment is made toexpand reliance on this source. In our own view, thethreat posed by fission power to the fabric of the socialand political system through the spread of radiologicalan d explosive nuclear weapons a threat that is a virtu-ally inevitable concomitant of this energy technology isqualitatively different from the risks of other energytechnologies, an d indeed a price no t worth paying for thebenefits of fission power . But the choice is more a socialand political one than a technical one, and it should bemade not by scientists but by the broader public.Th e many forms of solar energy deserve vigorousinvestigation to find the ones most benign environment-ally and most practical technically. Attention should befocused not merely on centralized electric power stationsbut on the my riad po ssibilities fordispersed applications.Fusion an d geothermal power also deserve further in-vestigation to learn whether they ca n meet, in a practicalway and at an affordable price, the conditions of lowenvironmental impact so essential in any long-termenergy source.

It should be recognized by now that there is value indiversity in technological systems as well as in biologicalones. Diversity is insurance against uncertainty, and forinsurance one should be prepared to pay something.Society should no t build only the cheapest energytechnologies, nor even only the ones that seem on today'sanalysis most benign environmentally. If threats over-


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CHANGING AME RICAN INSTITUTIONS / 865

looked or underrated today turn out to be important,altering a mix of energy technologies will be easier andless disruptive than abandoning a monoculture. At thesame time, one should no t conclude from an exaggeratedpreoccupation with diversity that society must developal l possibilities; the very value of diversity is to secure theflexibility to say no to those possibilities that clea rly areunsuitable.

TransportationFuel burned for transportation in industrial nationsaccounts for 15 to 2 5 percent of all energy used by such

countries. Including the energy used to man ufacture andmaintain the transportation systems would raise thatfigure to 2 5 to 40 percent of the total energy use (refer toChapter 8 for details). Transportation's contribution topollution may be taken at a first approximation to beproportional to its share of energy use; its impact onnonfuel resources is also large. Perhaps most important,transportation systems are major forces in determiningthe use of land an d shaping the human environment.What have been the forces that have influenced thissystem, and how might they be changed for the better?

The automobile. The introduction of annual auto-mobile model changes by General Motors in 1923quickly pushed most competitors out of business, reduc-ing the number of automobile manufacturers in theUnited States from eighty-eight in 1921 to ten in 1935.Only four of any economic significance rem ain today. Afew companies therefore have been able to manipulateboth demand an d quality in a way that ha s resulted in acontinual high output of overpowered, overstyled, un -derengineered, quickly obsolescent, and relatively fragileautomobiles. These characteristics of the automobile,together with the dominance of this form of personalmobility over many more sensible alternatives, are re-sponsible for a remarkable array of demands on resourcesan d environmental problems. For example, immediaterelief from a major portion of our air-pollution problemsan d a substantial reduction in the demand for steel, lead ,glass, rubber, and other materials would result from thereplacement of existing automobiles with small, low-

horsepower, long-lasting cars designed for recycling.And, of course, the savings in petroleum would bespectacular. If the average size of the American cars onthe road in 1970 were reduced to that of European cars,the gasoline saved wou ld have run the cars of Europe forthat year!

To facilitate a shift to smaller cars, the U.S. govern-ment might remove tariffs and import restrictions onautomobiles that meet strict exhaust-emission standards,so that small foreign cars would become even moreattractive to American buyers. Heavy excise taxes onlarge Detroit products and reduced taxes on small,gas-economical ones would help shift buying habits inthe domestic market. Gasoline consumption, exhaustemissions, and the components of air pollution producedby the wear of tires on asphalt and from the asbestos ofbrake linings would all be reduc ed by the use of smaller,lighter cars. Recycling old automobiles and buildinglonger-lasting ones would reduce both the consumptionand the environmental impact of obtaining resources, aswell as reducing the pollution directly associated withautomobile production. The rewards of such a programwould not be limited to pollution abatement and thesaving of petroleum and other resources. Because smallcars need less room on the highway and in parking lots,transportation would through that change alone becomepleasanter, safer, and more efficient.

Of course, there would be several adverse conse-quences of even such a mild program of "automobilecontrol." Between 10 and 20 percent of the Am ericanpopulation derives its living directly or indirectly fromthe automobile: its construction, fueling, servicing, sell-ing, and the provision of roads an d other facilities for it.Not all of these jobs would be affected by conversion tosmaller,more durable automobiles and to other forms oftransportation, but many would be. In the long run,workers displaced from auto production could be em-ployed in ways that would reduce reliance on environ-mentally destructive technological processes in otherindustries.Unless there were careful planning to ameliorate theconsequences, such a conversion could have extremelydisruptive effects on the national economy. The econ-omy, however, is demonstrably capable of accommodat-


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systems may make it simpler for the wealthy to liveoutside decaying cities; Amtrak makes it less desirable tolive and work in small towns and rural areas. Suchpatchwork solutions will not work; the planning of ournational transportation system must be comprehensivebecause of the massive social impact of that system.

Stimuli for change. Despite the obviously growingneed for an overhaul of the transport system in theUnited States, it seems unlikely it will be changedsignificantly for the better until the public becomessufficiently fed up with smog, noise, delays, and dangerthat it is willing to forego further growth in both theautomobile population and the gross national product.Emissions from automobiles have been lowered andcertainly will be reduced even further, but until thepublic rebels against cars, their numbers will probablyincrease rapidly enough to keep the overall smog leveldangerously high and gas consumption rising, as moreand more land disappears under freeways. The problemis worst in the United States, but a similar trend exists inother DCs.(growing energy problemsmay eventually provide theneeded catalyst for a rebellion against cars. One cheeringsign by the mid-1970s was a dramatic increase inbicyling, leading even to the designation of bike lanes inthe streets of some municipalities. Whatevercan be doneto stimulate a bicycle cult to rival die big-car cult shouldbe done. If and when a transition can be made to anongrowing population and economy, both the need forbusiness travel and the pressure to build more vehiclesand more goods should be reduced; perhaps then arational and comprehensive land, air, and water trans-port129 system for the nation can be developed.

The kinds of transport problems that now plague theD Cs (the United States in particular) can (and we hopewill) betotally avoided in most LDCs, where there is stillan opportunity to build systems based primarily on a mixof low-cost mass transit and bicycles.130

CommunicationsUnlike most other institutions, the communications

system may have great potential for instituting positivechange in individual attitudes and the direction ofsociety.131 Television and radio seem to have universalappeal and with relatively little expenditure could havevirtually universal coverage. If human problems are tobesolved on a worldwide basis, some means of intercom-munication among the peoples of the world must beemployed. One possibility is for the DCs to supplyLDCs with large numbers of small, transistorized TVsets for communal viewing in villages. Such sets couldprovide the information channels for reaching the largelyrural populations of the less developed world. Thesechannels could provide both a route for supplyingtechnical aid and a meansof reinforcing the idea that thepeople are members of a global community. Such a pro-ject is already underway in Indonesia,132 and a satellite-beamed program was used experimentally with greatsuccess in India until the satellite service was terminatedin 1977.132a

Isaac Asimov has described the potentialities of elec-tronic communicationsas a "fourth revolution" on a par_with rtje developments of speech, writing, and print-^ing.133 Considering the enormous influence of radio andtelevision in Western countries, their future impact inlargely illiterate societies can hardly fail to be evengreater. But that revolution will no t realize its fullpotential nrrpl plpqfnn i r communications are as wide-

viewing public into the communications network.Communications satellites. The first small com-mercial communications satellite station was launched in

1965, with one channel for television and 240 relays forvoice transmissions. A much more sophisticated system,INTELSAT IV, was initiated in 1971 with the launch-

1M In some areas, canals and other inland waterways can be veryefficient in moving freight. See M. G. Miller, The case for watertransport.""See Ivan I l l i c h , Energy and equity; and Allan K. Meier, Becafcs,bemos, lambros, and productive pandemonium, Technology Review, Jan.1977, pp. 56-63.

131 Scientific American, September 1973, was a special issueon commu-nications that included several articles pertinent to this discussion."2Cynthia Parsons, Indonesia studies best use of TV, HonoluluAdvertiser, March 11, 1975.1J2aIndia, however, planned to continue much of the rural programusing ground stations (Yash Pal, A visitor to the village, Bulletin of theAtomic Scientists, January 1977, pp . 5556).'"The fourth revolution.


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ing of two satellites. By 1975 the INTELSAT IV systemwa s complete with seven satellites in place, three over theAtlantic Ocean and two each over the Pacific and Indianoceans. Eighty-six member nations were being served by80 Earth stations with 103antennas in 58 countries.134

The system has permitted a number of countries thatpreviously had had virtually no contact to communicatewith each other by satellite. An interesting example isChile and Argentina; the Andes were once too great abarrier. INTELSAT transmits data, transoceanic tele-phone and teletype messages, television broadcasts, andfacsimilies of letters, newspapers, or photographs. Dis-tributional satellites are also being established to relaymessages within countries as a supplement to the inter-national INTELSATs. Eventually, the hope is to de-velop a system for broadcasting directly to each home.This is not expected to become a reality before the 1980s,however, and even then many think it will be limited tothe sort ofservice described aboveprograms beamed toschools, community centers, and villages, especially inLDCs.

The potential for creating a true rglobal village"through such a communications network should not beignored. Even apart from the opportunity to bringdiverse peoples together for exchange of ideas andinformation, there is a great opportunity for a generallowering of hostilities. Familiarity breeds friendship farmore often than contempt.( Programmingand propaganda. There remains, of^

course, thesubstantial ganger that a worldwide commu-nications network will not be used for thehumanity or will further erode cultural diversity. If, likethe television system in the United States, it is employedto promote the ideas and interests of a controlling^,minority, the world would be better off without it.135 If itis used to create a global desire for plastic junk and thgLos Angelization of Earth, it would be a catastrophe.Concerns over this and related programming problems,have already been raised at the United Nations. One

"'Information on INTELSAT is from Hughes Aircraft Company,Intelsat IV case history: vol. 2, Th e international satellite communicationssystem: Intelsat IV , Hughes Aircraft Company, El Segundo, Calif.,December 1974.A more recent source is Burton I. Edelson, Globalsatellite communications. Scientific American, February 1977, pp.58-73.'"Pirages and Ehrlich, Ark H, pp. 200ff.

delegate, for instance, correctly pointed out that "Filmsconsidered the acme of art in one country [might be]judged pornographic in another."136 The problems ofsupplying channels for information are thus easily solvedin comparison with the problems of determining whatinformation should flow along those channels and inwhat format.Much programming ought to be informational, even ifpresented as entertainment. People in the LDCs needhelp in increasing agricultural production an d improvingpublic health, as well as information on the need forpopulation control and the ways it may be achieved.Programming should be carefully designed by socialscientists an d communications experts thoroughly fa-miliar with the needs and attitudes of the audiences ineach country or locality. This isparticularly important inthe LDCs, where it will be especially difficult because ofthe lack of trained people and the radical change inattitudes that is required. Control of the communicationsmedia obviously should be public, with maximum safe-guard against abuses and against the problems of "cul-tural homogenization."The problem of controlling "BigBrother" will be ever present in all societies.Educating people in the developed nations to theproblems of population and environment is not toodifficult, assuming time and space can be obtained in themedia. Material can be more straightforward, since inmost DCs there is already rather widespread awarenessof many environmental problems. In the United States agreat step could be taken merely by requiring that bothradio and television assign some of their commercial timeto short public-service "spots" calling attention to theproblems of population, resources, and environment.This could be justified under theequal-time doctrine thatpu t the antismoking message sponsored by the AmericanHeart Association and the American Cancer Society onTV (see "Advertising" section). The FCC might beempowered to require that networks donate time for adsto awaken people to the population-resource-environ-ment crisis. Such spots, sponsored by voluntary organi-zations like Planned Parenthood, ZPG, and the SierraClub, have been moderately eifective in drawing public"Paul Hofmann, Curb on world TV is debated at UN, New YorkTimes, November 3, 1974.


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attention to the problems. U nfortunately, the advertisingbudgets a vailable to these group s are pun y compared tothose of General Motors or Exxon. Long documentaryspecials, whethe r prepared by the networks or by educa-tional stations, seem relatively ineffective in initiatingawareness of a problem, although they are useful inproviding detailed information. For the most part, theyreach on ly those who are already aware that a particularproblem exists. Most people want to be entertained; theydo not wan t to hear bad news.

Moving information instead of people. In thelonger term, more am bitious exploitation of the potential-of communications systems may help to relieve pressureon energy supplies and other resources,. Specifically, it isfar less costly in terms of energy to move informationthan to move people and things. Computer terminalscoupled to television sets (for graphic display andface-to-face conversations) and to telephone lines (fordata transmission) could eliminate the need for commut-ing to and from work in many kinds of jobs. Newspapers,which today are responsible for the consumption of greatquantities of wood pulp, could be displayed a page at atime, under the control of the reader, on the computer-television hookup . Scientific and bu siness meetings, eachof which now entails hundre ds of thousands of passengermiles of fuel-gobbling je t travel, could be managed onclosed-circuit television for a tiny fraction of the impacton resources.

Of course, there are problems to be surmounted b eforesuch schemes can be implemented, not the least of whichis the protection of privacy and confidential communica-tions. Such difficulties can, in principle, be solved, an dit seems clear that the comm unication-information-processing area is one field in which technologicalinnovation can make important contributions to alleviat-ing the resource-environment crunch.

Land UseLand use ha s become a catch phrase in the contempo-

rary environm ental debate, but the term calls forth verydifferent images an d priorities in the minds of differentgroups of people. This is so because so many of the

compelling social and environm ental issues of the day aretied rather directly to how the land is used. U rban decay,the existence of ghettos, lack of access to decent low-costhousing, and the problem of busing of schoolchildrencan all be viewed as interrelated consequences of pre-vailing patterns of urba n land use. Another aspect of thepattern is suburbanization and the energy-intensive longcommutes to work that go with it. The loss of primeagricultural land and recreational open space undersettlements, industrial parks, transportation systems, andenergy facilities is yet another dimension. And certainlythe conflict of development of land versus continuedprovision of essential services by natural and lightlyexploited ecosystems (perhaps most strikingly apparenttoday in the destruction of estuaries and wetlands) is acentral ingredient of the human predicament in the longterm.Increasingly, the opinions of thoughtful policy-makers an d observers ar e converging on the view that theresolution of the problems just enumerated will require adegree of comprehensiveness in land-use planning thatexceeds anyt hing contemplated p reviously in the UnitedStates. (Some other Western countriesthe UnitedKingdom an d Sweden, for examplehave been flirtingwith comprehensive planning for longer . '3 7) Here com-prehensive means integrating systematically society's so-cial and environm ental goals with the pattern of land useon regional and nation al scales. It is clear, of course, thatsuch comprehensive planning, even if successful, is not asufficient condition for the solution of social and en-vironmental problems, but a strong case can be m ade thatit is a necessary one. In the remainder of this section oftext, we first discuss some goals of land-use pl an nin g andpolicy and, second, the tools for pursu ing those goals an dthe obstacles that make the task a difficult one.CjGoalsTjThe planner's easiest task is setting downdesirable goals (easy, at least as long as one does no tinquire to o closely about making them al l compatiblewith each other). Here is our own partial list.

137Peter Heimburger,Land policy in Sweden, Ministry of Housing andPhysical Planning, Stockholm, 1976. On this and many other pointsraised here, see also the excellent book by William H. Whyte, The lastlandscape, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1970.


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1. Central cities should be restored to attractivenessan d economic viability. In respect to location,absence ofcompeting uses, value of existing structures, and poten-tial for cultura l and racial integration, they are m uch toovaluable to waste.2. Housing developments should be planned in waysthat integrate low-cost and higher-cost units andthat provide for community open space and resource-conserving community recreational facilities (instead ofprivate)swimming pools, workshops, darkrooms, an dso on.3. Settlement patterns an d transportation systemsshould be integrated in ways that minimize commutingdistances an d reliance on the private automobile.4. Construction of settlements should avoid areasespecially prone to flood, fire, landslide, an d earthquake.

5 . Prime agricultural land should be defended abso-lutely against encroachment by all other potential uses.Th e world food situation and the high environmentalimpact of bringing marginal land under cultivationdictate this highest priority for good land already underagricultural use.

6. Land areas that have remained in wilderness ornear-wilderness c ondition u ntil no w should be preservedas such, permitting them to serve aesthetic an d ecologicalfunctions inconsistent with exploitation or development.More intelligent and efficient use of land already beingexploited is preferable to further encroachments onwilderness.

7. Nonwilderness areas where ecological processesperform particularly crucial services in support of civili-zation should be identified, the extent an d value of theirservices clarified, and the land withdrawn from uses oflesser value that are incompatible with the continuedprovision of the n atural services. Filling of w etlands andestuaries for residential development is an examplewhere even on present know ledge a complete prohibitionclearly is justified.

Tools and obstacles. On the assumption that th eforegoing or some other set of goals were agreed upon bypolicy-makers, the question would remain wha t tools ar eavailable with which the goals might effectively bepursued. Among those that have been used or con-

templated for land-use management in the United Statesare: zoning ordinances; preferential tax assessment ofdifferent types of land; government purchases of openspace; selective siting of facilities owned or substantiallysupported by government; control of building permits toestablish local growth ceilings, moratoria, or timeddevelopment contingent on m eeting specified conditions;use of the environmental impact statement to forceconsideration of adverse impacts and alternatives; an dgovernment-funded urban renewal projects.138

The use of zoning as a tool for land-use planning andmanagement has suffered from three difficulties. Theffirs^ is fragmentation among the decision-making en -tities, rendering comprehensive planning or resultsimpossible. In California alone, more than 1400 govern-ment entities are involved in zoning.13 9 Special-purposeagencies dealing with housing, air pollution, waterpollution, energy development, and fish and game (tocontinue with the California examp le) separately pursueinterests that should influence zoning decisions, but thereis no general mechanism for exerting such influence andno effective machinery for coordinating the goals of theagencies. Th e result of this partial vacuu m is fragmentedcontrol of zoning by local communities, most of wh ichdo so in pursu it of a perceived intere st in local growth.140

Afseconcfrdifficulty with the zoning tool is the ques-tionable constitutionality of zoning ordinances that arediscriminatory in practice? even if not in intent. Keepingdensity down by zoning the land remaining in a commu-nity for single-family dwellings on two-acre lots maysucceed in preserving a status quo that the currentinhabitants cherish, but it excludes low-income peopleand thus preserves a residential stratification that isundesirable for society as a whole. Th e likelihood thatzoning ordinances having this effect will eventually befound unconstitutional places in jeopardy other, more

118A more extensive discussion of these tools than space permits herecan he found in CEQ. Enrinmmental quality-1974. See also Elaine Moss,ed., Land use controls in the United States.139 On this and other aspects of land-use planning in California, see thevery useful study by the Planning and Conservation Foundation, Th eCalifornia land: Planning for people, Kaufmann, Los Altos, Calif., 1975.uThe dynamics of this process and the fallacies underlying he beliefthat such g rowth necessarily will be beneficial are examined perceptivelyby Harvey L . Molotch, The urban growth machine, in Environment,William Murdoch, ed., Sinauer, Sunderland, Mass., 1975.


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enlightened uses of the zoning tool, as well perhaps asother land-use controls.14'C A third difficultjhvith zonin g that also carries over intothe other forms of control is the question of what formsof regulation really are legally a "taking," requiringcompensation of the landowner. Involved here is thebasic conflict between the rights of a holder of privatepropertyone of the most cherished American tradi-t ionsand th e public's interest in sound an d coordinatedmanagement of l and.14 2Close to zoning in influence on land use is taxation,although the influence of taxes on use may be inadvertentmore often than it is used as a tool. Certainly one of themajor driving forces behind the development of primeagricultural land in the United States has been the almostuniversal practice of assessing land for taxation on thebasis of the land's most valuable potential use. Unfortu-nately, agricultural land ha s lower market value thandeveloped land. Thus the spread of suburbs has led toassessment of adjacent agricultural land at the value itwould have if subdivided for residential or commercialdevelopment. This leads of course to taxes that theagricultural revenues from the land cannot support an dforces the farmer to sell out. In this way, assessment ofthe land as a potential subdivision leads inevitably torealization of the potential. Some states have begun toexperiment w ith legislation permitting agricultural landsto escape such discriminatory an d crippling taxation.California's Williamson Act, one of the more widelypublicized examples, has proven too na rrow and restric-tive to be of great value, however, an d more comprehen-sive measures are needed.143

The imposition of ceilings or moratoria on localgrowth by a few communities around the UnitedStatesPetaluma an d Pleasanton, California, an d MountLaurel, New Jersey, for examplehas attracted muchattention. These decisions have been implementedthrough control of building permits, made continge nt in

u!Some recent court decisions are described in CEQ, EnvironmentalQuality, 1975,pp . 186-187.i4 2A n extended discussion of this point is found in Planning andConservation Foundation, The California land.'"Planning and Conservation Foundation, T he California land, p. 49.For a more general discussion, see CEQ, The impact of differentialassessment of farm an d open land, Government Printing Office. Washing-ton, D.C., 1976.

some cases upon achieving in the community somespecified level of adequacy of sewage systems, schools,water supply, or other factors. Like zoning practices, thisapproach ha s come under sharp legal scrutiny to deter-mine its constitutionality.144Possibly as important as all the tools that have beenused by policy-makers to influence patterns of land useintentionally have been the inadvertent effects of gov-ernment investments in certain kinds of growth-shapingfacilities. Transportation systemsmost notably theinterstate highway system, bu t also airports, ports,an d mass-transit systemshave been especially influen-tial. So have water projects, sewage lines, an d water-treatment plants, and centers of government research andbureaucracies.145 Unless these influences are thoroughlyunderstood and taken into account deliberately andcomprehensively, other approaches to land-use planninghave little chance to succeed.

All of the foregoing difficulties underline the necessityfor a more coordinated approach to land use in theUnited States than an y that ha s been implemented upuntil now. Balancing priorities among competing uses isat the core of the problem, and this can only be done in asensible way on a regional (collections of counties or astate or states) or national level. An example of whatmight be accomplished if the political obstacles wereovercome is offered by the remarkable California to-morrow plan, already discussed.146 The plan describeshow trends now underway in California would lead, ifunchecked, to significant disrup tions in the well-being ofthe people of the state before the year 2000, and itdescribes a more sensible alternative futu re based upon astate zoning pl an. The goals of the land -use pla n are verysimilar to those listed above.Perhaps the most comprehensive approach to plann ingthat has a reasonable chance of being enacted in the nearfuture is the California Coastal Plan, produced on themandate of a statewide ballot initiative in 1972 anddelivered to the legislature in December 1975. Th e plancovers the 1600-kilometer California coastline in a stripextending inland to the coastal mountains, an average

'"See, for example, CEQ, Environmental quality, 1975, and Molotch.Th e urban growth machine.M5 CEQ, Th e growth shapers: Land-use impacts of infrastructure invest-ments. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C.. 1976.'"Alfred Heller, ed., Th e California tomorrow plan.


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CHANGING AM ERICA N INSTITUTIONS / 873

width of perhaps 8 kilometers. It takes account of thecompeting pressures of energy development, residentialuse, transportation , recreation, and ecological values, andoffers guidelines an d machinery for resolving the con-flicts in a systematic way.As with al l ambitious undertakings, it is no doubtpossible to find flaws in the California tomorrow planan d in the much m ore detailed California Coastal Plan.The question, however, is not whether they are flawedbu t whether they represent a substantial improvementover the status quo. We believe that they do, and indeedthat they are illustrative of the sort of thoughtful andsystematic approach that must find application aroundthe country if planning for the rational use of land is toemerge from the disarray that has characterized land usein the Un ited States until now.

A QUESTION OF GOALSIt is fitting to close this chapter with some reflections onthe long-range goals of Western society. Can they be, asEnglish economist Wilfred Beckerman apparentlythinks, economic growth for the next 2500 years?147Beckerman reasons that since growth has occurred since"the days ofPericles," there is "no reason to suppose thatit cannot continue for another 2500 years." It turns outthat he is wrong on both counts. Careful studies ofeconomic conditions in England for the past 60 0 years orso, for example, show average growth rates on the orderof 0.5 percent per yearone-tenth of the 5 percentenvisioned bymost growthmenfor "healthy" economies.

Social scientist Jack Parsons has don e some inte restingextrapolations that put long-continued economic growthin perspective. He extrapolated economic growth inEngland backward at the conservative rate of 1 percentper year. At the time of Pericles (490- 424 B.C.), at thatrate the annual income of the average household wouldhave been 1.5 ten-millionths of a penny. Hence, evenBeckerman's history is badgrowth cannot have gone onsince the time of Pericles at even the "low" rate of 1percent per annum. Careful historical analysis indicates

14'Beckerman's views are cited by Jack Parsons in The economictransition, from which most of our figures on growth, past and future, aretaken.

that fluctuation rather than constant growth has been thefundamental characteristic of Western culture's eco-nomic history. Th e purchasing power of builders' wagesin southern England reached a peak between 1450 and1500 that was not attained again until the late years of thenineteenth century.148Economic boom clearly is not and cannot be along-term phenomenon. Until about 1950, economicgrowth rates of more than 2 percent per annu m w ere veryunusual. The 4, 5, or even 6 percent growth rates thateconomists no w seem to regard as the norm are in fact aphenomenon in which a few countries ar e exploitingmuch more than could conceivably be considered theirfair share of the planet's resources over a time span of aquarter of a century. Assuming conservatively thathuman beings have had a 1-million-year tenu re on Earth,it is clear that human societies have existed in whatBeckerman would u ndoubted ly consider economic stag-nation for 99.99 p ercent of that tenure.Economic growththat is, per-capita increases in theavailability of goods and servicesthroughout recordedhistory has been engendered by two sets of circumstancesand/or a combination of them. The first such set is thedevelopment of widescale economic integration, whichallows for the development of more efficient organizationof resources, human and natural. The Hellenistic world,from Alexander the Great until the birth of Christ, wasan example of such a set.149 So were the uniting of formerBritish colonies into the United States and, later, theEuropean Economic Community.

The second and more common set of circumstanceshas been one in which some group on the periphery of acentral cultural zone has managed to gain control overthe exploitation of some vast hinterlan d and then serve asthe broker between that resource-rich frontier and thehigh-consuming metropolis. For example, the rich andattractive Minoan culture on the island of Crete con-trolled the trade from Egypt an d western Asia to theGreek lands to the north in the middle of the secondmillennium B.C. The Hanseatic League of the highMiddle Ages had outposts from London to Novgorod

148 Phelps Brown and J. Hopkins, Seven centuries of the prices ofconsumables, compared with builders' w age rates, Ecanomica, NS vol. 23(1956). November, pp. 296-314.I49See Mikhail Rostovtzeff, Social an d economic history of the Hellenis-tic world.


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that plucked herring, furs, lumber, and all manner ofresources from the North Sea and Baltic basins and soldthem to medieval Europeans, while ornamenting thecities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Liibeck with an eleganceand prestige still visible. The Dutch monopoly on thespice trade in the seventeenth century supported theartistic flowering that is best known to us in the work ofRembrandt van Rijn. Finally, the race for empire ofrecent centuries, characterized above all by Britishmajesty an d wealth before 1945, sponsored the mostrecent expansion, which allowed the citizens of the DCsto enjoy a now-declining affluence.150Systems of economic integration are always veryfragile, and the pattern of economic growth based on thehegemony of exploiters over the resource-rich frontierseems to carry the seeds of its own destruction. In orderto exploit an area, it is necessary to organize it, either byorganizing the indigenous population or by sending forthemigrants from the metropolis. What starts out as anorganization for economic exploitation consistentlytends to become an organization for political resistance tothe metropolis and finally a cadre for political an deconomic independence. Th e Ariadne legend in Greekliterature, retold in a sagacious reconstruction of itshistorical context by Mary Renault in The King MustDie, tells a story of the Greeks breaking the economichold of the Minoans on their culture. The Iliad wasprobably the story of a postdecolonization war foughtover control of the pottery trade, rather than over thebeautiful Helen. The disintegration of the British Em-pire and the other European overseas empires of therecent past began even before the empires were fullyformed.

The loss of mastery over an erstwhile dependency doesno t necessarily mean that the resources of that area arelost to the metropolis as a whole. But it usually does meancomparatively hard times for the previous proprietors ofthe resources and a better deal for the new owners.Minoan culture wascompletely obscured until its redis-covery in the early years of this century. The develop-ment of Baltic powers reduced Hamburg, Bremen, andLiibeck to places of only local significance as Europe

""For a masterful account of the impact of the West's most recentresource capture, see Walter Prescott Webb, The great frontier. Thehistorical discussion in this section owes much to historian D. L.Bilderback.

moved into the modern period. Casual perusal of currentdaily newspapers will illustrate the cost to Britain ofinflexibility in the face of change.Economic growth since the days of Pericles has beenspastic and dependent rather than inexorable and self-generating as Beckerman would have it. When a societyhas achieved a transient economic integration or gainedcontrol over some neglected bonanza, its economy hasgrown. Th e bonanzas of our planet have pretty well beenfound by now, an d those remaining are slipping evermore surely into the hands of proprietors resident in thelands where they occurthe OPEC nations,for example.Americans and Europeans will have to settle down to alifestyle set against the background of a decliningresource base. While today's technological sophisticationma y put us in a better position to ameliorate the effects ofthe end of the boom than were, say, the Minoans, it alsogives us the means to destroy civilization in the process ofsquabbling over the tail end of the resources. Further-more, those past booms did not end with theentire planetoverpopulated and severe ecological constraints limitingwhat new technologies could be adoptedsomethinginvariably ignored by economic Pollyannas whose "his-torical perspective" rarely extends beyond the begin-nings of the most recent boom.151What are the prospectsfor the future?Setting aside thephysical and biological constraints that were alreadybeginning to limit growth by the mid-1970s, couldsustained growth reasonably be expected for the next2500 years? A simple calculation by Parsons showsBeckerman's view of the future to be as preposterous ashis view of the past is fallacious. Again Parsons uses amodest 1 percent per annum growth rate. This gives adoubling time of 70 yearsa lifespanso that on theaverage each person is about twice as well off at death asat birth. At this rate a person's wages for an hour of workreach 1 million pounds (about $2 million) an hour in alittle more than 1500 years, and at the end of Becker-man's 2500 years of growth, "a small child's pocketmoney, at say, 0.5 percent of the GNP per capita perweek (one shilling an d sixpence a week in 1970) wouldbefive thousand million pounds."

'"For example, see Glenn Hueckel, A historical approach to futureeconomic growth. Hueckel's "historical" perspective extends about 20 0years, not evento the beginningoftheWestern boom. Needless tosay, thearticle showsa characteristically blissful ignorance of ecology.


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To emphasize the absurdity of there being 2500 moreyears of economic growth in England, Parsons describeswhat he calls the "millionaire barrier." A t the 1 percentgrowth rate, the average person would have the livingstandard of a millionaire (income of 100,000 per year)just before 2400 A.D. At a "normal" growth rate of 5percent per year, the millionaire barrier would bereached in 85 years. Parsons then asks the logicalquestion: once everyone is a millionaire, who willgenerate the goods and services tha t every bod y wa nts toconsume?

Our long-range goal, then, cannot be continued eco-nom ic growth. Indeed, the main justifications for growthgiven by economiststhat it will generate the economicpower needed to "clean up the environment" and im-prove the lot of the poorimply that theconsequencesofgrowth in the future will be precisely the opposite ofwhat they have been in the past.

We have already described the devastating effects ofeconomic growth on the environment and the continuingefforts of growthmanic politicians and industrialists todestroy it with ever more energy use and ever more"development." The case for improving the lot of thepoor through growth is equally preposterous. Althoughthere has been considerable material improvement in thelot of the poor in industrial nations during the lastcentury, the gap between poor and rich has not closedappreciably; indeed, in most countries (including theUnited States) it has widened over the past two de-cades.152 And, since poverty is a relative concept andthere hasbeen a revolution ofrising expectations, "in theminds of persons with low incomes . . . a $4000 in-come for a family of four might be less tolerable intoday's society than the pittance received by the poor insixteenth-century England."153

Furthermore, the gap between rich and poor nationshas grown during the recent period of rapid economicgrowth in the DCs. This gap is even greater than thatindicated by national per-capita GNP statistics becausethe gap between the rich and the poor within LD Cs h asbeen growing very rapidly in many of those nationsshowing the most "development." Thu s between 1950an d 1970 the ratio between the average income of the

richest 20 percent of the Brazilian population and that ofthe poorest 20 percent increased from 15/1 to 25/1.154Similar increases in inequity of income distribution h aveoccurred alongside economic growth in Mexico, Paki-stan, the Philippines, and G hana, to nam e a few.What, then, if not growth, should the long-range goalsof society be? Haven't the economists explained that theopposite of growth is stagnation? The answer, of course,is that in noncancerous biological systems the oppositeofgrowth is maturity. What a matu re society should be likeought to be (but is not) a matter of wide discussion, andwe are willing to make some suggestions. It will have a"dynamic equilibrium economy"155 in which pressureson nonrenewable resources will be very nearly nonexis-tent, and, of course, the population will be essentiallystationary. Some mechanism will have been found toescape from bignessperhaps through decentralizationof government and industry or political fragmentation orreduction in population size or some combination ofthese.

There seems to be a growing consensus that bigness isbasic to our problemsthat Americansmay have gone tothe point of social diseconomies of scale as well asmaterial ones.156 According to some observers, huntingan d gatherin g societies could be cou nted as truly affluentbecause individuals could fully supply their simple needswith a few hours of work each da y.15 ? But, perhaps moreimportant, groups were small enough that each memb erof a hunting-and-gathering society was a repository forvirtually all the nongenetic informationthe cultureofthat society. Each person knew who he or she was andwhere he or she fit in society. Alienation was not aproblem. Work was not an onerous diversion frompleasure, but a fulfilling part of life itself.

In our conception of a matu re society, there w ould be aconsiderably more equitable distribution of wealth andincome than is found in most contemp orary societies.Possibly this would be achieved by some formal mecha-nism.15 S On the other hand, perhaps it could be achieved

'"Pirages and Ehriich, Ark II, pp. 270-274.'"Ibid, p. 272.

154James P. Grant, Development: The end of trickle down? ForeignPolicy, fall 1973.155The term (though not the idea) was invented by Emile Benoit .'"Pirages and Ehriich, Ark II, p. 59.157For example, Marshall Sahlins, Stone ageeconomics.15sSuch as the national council for the regulation of differential wagesproposed by Wilfred Brown in The earnings conflict, Halsted Press, New

York, 1973.


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automatically as the society shifted away from the pursuitof bigness and the maximization of various indicesdeveloped by economists suffering from "physics envy,"and moved toward maximizing things not amenable tostatistical treatment, such as individual satisfaction andthe quality of life. In a mature society the economicproblem would in essence be solved.

Can a transition to a mature society be achieved in theUnited States? The question is obviously open. But we

reiterate that a central question is that of scak. Cansociety escape the modern massiveness that threatensboth the human environment and the human psychetoday? It is probably no coincidence that the mostintellectually stimulating book written by an economistin the 1970s was entitled Small is beautiful.1

'''Schumacher.

Recommended for Further ReadingBofTey, P. 1975. The brain bank of America. McGraw-Hill, New York. Critique of theNational Academy of Sciences. Slightly too negative, but generally accurate.Bonjean, Charles M., ed. 1976. Scarcity and society, Social science quarterly, vol. 57, no. 2,

September. This collection of essays by social scientists contains many articlespertinent to the issues raised in this chapter.

Boulding, Kenneth E. 1966. The economics of the coming Spaceship Earth. In Environ-mental quality in a growing economy, H. Jarrett, ed. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore.A superb article about making the transition from a cowboy economy to a spacemaneconomy.

Daly, Herman, ed. 1973. Toward a steady-state economy. W. H. Freeman and Company,SanFrancisco. A fine collectionsee especially Daly's contributions.Ehrlich, Paul R., an d Anne H . Ehrlich. 1974. The end of affluence. Ballantine, New York.

Discusses many facets of the ending of economic growth.Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science, vol. 162 (December 13), pp.

1243-1248. A classic article.Heilbroner, R. L. 1974. An inquiry into the human prospect. Norton, New York. Adistinguished economist looks at the human predicament, with special emphasis onpolitical implications. Brief and highly recommended.

Hirsch, Fred. 1976. Social limits to growth. Harvard Press, Cambridge, Mass. Argues thataffluence breeds social dissatisfaction, generating socio-political limits on economicgrowth. Note especially the treatment of positional goals. Thought provoking.

Holdren, John P. 1976. The nuclear controversy and the limitations of decision-making byexperts. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March, pp. 20-22. What to do when expertconsensus is impossible.

Illich, Ivan. 1971. Deschooling society, Harper an d Row, New York. A provocative book ofinterest to all those concerned with the future of the educational system.

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