CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 829
tence."54 We believe that a technological society, espe-
cially a democracy, cannot afford such a large proportion
of poorly educated citizens.
Every citizen should be drawn into the problems of
societal decision-making. We would suggest that all
people be required to take sabbatical leaves every seventh
year, which could be financed in various ways depending
on the choice of activity (this and the employment
"problems" created by such a program are considered
under "Economic and Political Change"). Each person
would be required to spend the year bettering society and
himself or herself in a way approved by the individual's
immediate colleagues. A physician might petition his or
her county medical society for permission to study new
surgical techniques or anthropology. A garbage collector
might petition coworkers to permit him or her to take a
year's course in sanitary engineering or recycling tech-
niques at a university. A secretary might apply to the
government for a grant to spend a sabbatical serving on
an ad hoc citizens' committee to evaluate the direction of
research in high-energy physics. A business executive
might apply for one of the open sabbatical chairs that
could be established on the city council (as well as in all
other legislative bodies). A flight instructor might per-
suade the local pilot's association to appoint him or her to
one of the exchange positions in the local Federal
Aviation Administration office, with an FAA counterpart
being required (if qualified) to take over the instructor's
job for a year. All bureaucrats should be required to take
some of their sabbaticals as nongovernmental workers in
the areas they administer and all professors to take some
of theirs outside the groves of academe —or at least
outside their own fields.
The details of such a program would be complicated,
but its benefits, we believe, would far outweigh its costs.
A growing rigidity of roles in our society must be broken,
and virtually everyone must be brought into its deci-
sion-making processes. Indeed, the discontent expressed
today by many groups is based on their feeling of being
cut off from participation in important decisions that
affect their lives.
Some moves in this general direction have been made
in the People's Republic of China, where city people and
54
Based on a U.S. Office of Education study, reported in Time,
November 10, 1975, p. 6.
academics have been forced to join rural communes and
participate in completely different work from what they
had done before. It would be interesting to know what
success the Chinese have had. We would certainly not
advocate forcing people to change their occupations
against their wishes, any more than we would advocate
adopting the Chinese communist system of government.
But the basic idea behind this policy seems valuable, and
an adaptation of it that fit our political system might well
be worth exploring.
As an example of how citizen participation in political
decision-making can work, a group of scientists led by
ecologist C. S. Holling at the University of British
Columbia have involved local businessmen, politicians,
and private citizens in a computer simulation of a
prospective development project, as an experiment in the
results of citizen decision-making.55 Everyone contrib-
uted to the assumptions of the model, and all were
satisfied with the model created. Then various people
were allowed to try out their pet development plans on
the model. When a politician found that his or her plan
led to environmental disaster, the politician had to
acknowledge the error. The politician could not blame
the model because he or she had been involved in
building what was believed to be a realistic one.
We believe that it is possible, at least in theory, to get
away from a we-they system of running the country, to
give everyone a chance to participate. Grave problems
would unquestionably accompany the attempt, but since
we are both morally committed to some form of democ-
racy and intellectually convinced that the present system
is both undemocratic and lethally ineffectual, we see no
choice but to try a change.
THE LEGAL SYSTEM
Perhaps the greatest potential for reversing environmen-
tal deterioration in the United States and for bringing our
population growth under control lies in the effective
utilization of our legal system.56 A law may be defined as
55
Personal communication.
"Much of this section is based on discussions with attorney Johnson C.
Montgomery, whose death in December 1Q74 was a loss deeply felt by
people in the ZFG movement.
830 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
a "rule of conduct for a community, prescribed by a
governing authority and enforced by sanction." The
sanction enforcing a law may be either a reward or a
punishment. For instance, to control agricultural pro-
duction, the government might pay a subsidy for not
raising crops on part of his land (a reward) or jail a farmer
who raises crops (a punishment). Where a government
wishes to induce an affirmative action, a promised reward
is often more effective than the threat of punishment. In
the United States, constitutional questions involving due
process, equal protection, and so forth are more likely to
arise where punishment, rather than reward, is involved.
Bonuses for not having children would certainly raise
fewer constitutional questions than jail for overrepro-
ducers, for example.
Law is also sometimes defined as codified custom. In a
sense, legislators, police officers, and judges are merely
social instruments for enforcing customary behavior.
Historically they have also helped to create custom by-
defining acceptable conduct. This has been especially
true of legislators and is becoming increasingly true of
judges. When the new problems of local and global
overpopulation and environmental deterioration arose,
they clearly demanded the establishment of new rules of
conduct and new customs—in short, new laws. Just as the
ancient laws relating to trespass had to be modified by the
courts and by the legislatures to handle the new circum-
stances created by automobiles and airplanes, new de-
vices are now being developed for dealing with pollution
and population pressure. The laws of the free-enterprise
system were failing to meet the needs of everyone
everywhere as long as they permitted—let alone en-
couraged—unrestricted reproduction and pollution.
Environmental Law and Lawsuits
Many aspects of environmental deterioration can be
curbed or controlled through legal means. Probably the
easiest form to control is pollution, whether caused by
industry in the processes of mining and manufacturing or
by individuals in their ordinary lives (air pollution from
automobiles and home heating, for instance). Before
1965, there was relatively little control by law of
pollution, and the existing regulatory mechanisms were
quickly becoming obsolete and inadequate as the volume
and variety of pollutants multiplied. Fortunately, there
are many legal precedents that have permitted society to
oppose polluters legally. Two examples are the legal
precepts of nuisance and trespass.
Nuisance. Under common law (the law generally
applicable in the United Kingdom and former British
colonies) and under civil law (the law generally applica-
ble in the rest of the Western world), the concept of
nuisance has for centuries permitted governments to
bring some of their coercive powers to bear on those who
create excessive smoke, noise, odor, filth, and the like. In
some jurisdictions access to sunlight and even an attrac-
tive view are among the aesthetic values protected by
public administrators. Public administrators, however,
in general have not been noted for their diligence in
complaining about local businesses. Nuisances have
more often been successfully stopped by individual
citizens who have obtained injunctions to stop them.
(Private citizens may receive money damages for injuries
caused them by a nuisance.)
Existing nuisance laws have presented a number of
difficulties, however. First, the nuisance doctrine gener-
ally serves only to protect rights associated with real
property. As matters now stand, a private nuisance can be
stopped only by a person occupying adjacent or nearby
property. Even in the most enlightened jurisdictions,
little if anything can be done to protect people in the
vicinity who do not own or occupy property.
Second, the nuisance doctrine requires that a com-
plainant show a causal relationship between the condi-
tion he or she is complaining about—for example, smoke
or noise—and a direct injury to himself. Generally he has
to show that the condition is the cause of injury.
Obviously, if each of several polluters contributes a little
to the overall problem, the nuisance doctrine is not much
help. On the other hand, there is growing authority for
the proposition that if a suit is filed against all the persons
who are contributing to a nuisance, it is up to them to
show to what extent each has contributed. Thus there
have been successful cases involving river pollution in
which all upstream contributors have been sued.
Third, the nuisance doctrine is applied only if in the
eyes of the court the polluter is causing more harm than

good. Unfortunately, it has been held by many courts
that a so-called lawful business (paint manufacturing, for
example) cannot constitute a nuisance. Today there is an
increasing public tendency to recognize the dangers from
pollution, however, and, in balancing them against
economic considerations, to require businesses to do
whatever a court or an administrative agency may think is
economically reasonable. For instance, in the case of
Boomer versus Atlantic Cement Company,*1 individual
plaintiifs were awarded damages for cement dust falling
on their property, but the court refused to issue an
injunction that would halt the plant's operations, even
though it found those operations created a nuisance. The
court reasoned that the economic activities of the com-
pany were too valuable to the area and too many other
people would be harmed if the plant were closed down.
That the economic interests of the polluters are taken
into consideration by government authorities, however,
often leads to spurious arguments based on the notion
that restrictions would foster unfair competition: "We
can't compete with the Jones Company if we can't spray
our crops with DDT." The answer to this argument of
course is: "We will stop the Jones Company too." Often
the best way of avoiding unfair-competition arguments is
to pass legislation that affects an entire industry. For
example, if a law were passed prohibiting the manufac-
ture of all persistent insecticides (for instance, all those
with half-lives of more than one week under average field
conditions), the chemical companies would very quickly
increase production of those that met the requirements
and would develop new ones that would also break down
rapidly.
The serious defects in the existing nuisance laws might
make it appear that they cannot really assist in controlling
pollution, but that is not so. With relatively minor
adjustments, those laws could be made very effective.
These are among the changes that must be made: (1)
expand the nuisance doctrine to include people who are
hurt by the pollution but who do not occupy nearby
property; (2) permit individuals to bring actions not only
on their own behalf, but also on behalf of all other
individuals in similar circumstances who are being
damaged by pollution; (3) permit recovery of punitive
"1970. 26 N.Y. 2d 219, 257 N.E. 2d 870, 309 N.Y.S. 2d 312.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 831
damages (damages in excess of the dollar value of the
injury suffered) in cases where the polluter could have
avoided some or all of the pollution; (4) organize
public-spirited scientists so that they might become a
more readily available source of testimony. The real
value of the nuisance laws is that they provide an existing
framework within which to elaborate newer and more
restrictive rules of conduct without also requiring the
development of previously unrecognized rights and
duties.
Trespass. Another ancient legal doctrine, that of
trespass, can also assist in stopping pollution. According
to law, if you hit another person with your fist or with
your automobile, or if you hike over another person's
land, you have committed a trespass. Trespass is both a
crime (a public offense) and a tort (an individual, private
injury).
For many years there have been metaphysical ar-
guments concerning what constitutes a trespass—for
example, whether it is necessary to be able to see
whatever hits you or falls on your land. It has been said
that rays of light cannot constitute a trespass, and in the
past not even smoke could constitute a trespass. How-
ever, the old idea that it was necessary to be able to see,
feel, and even weigh the offensive object is going out of
style. The decision in one California case permitted
recovery of substantial damages for lung injuries sus-
tained by a motorist who drove through invisible chemi-
cal fumes emitted by a factory.
One serious defect in applying the trespass laws to the
control of pollution is that the most an individual can
recover are the damages to that individual, which are
generally limited to the monetary value of the private
injuries. In one case, however, the Oregon Supreme
Court permitted a private individual to collect punitive
damages in addition to his actual personal damages. The
court reasoned that some private wrongs are so evil that
the wrongdoer should be punished as well as being
forced to pay for the actual injury to the complainant.
Punitive damages have long been recognized in our legal
systems. If industries guilty of pollution are assessed for
punitive damages, private individuals will have some
incentive to initiate lawsuits against them. Recently, this
possibility has induced some industries to curtail their
832 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
pollution. It has also induced some insurance companies
to withdraw insurance against such suits, and a few states
have contemplated the prohibition of insurance for
pollution liability.
Like nuisance laws, the trespass laws could be made
much more effective merely by permitting an individual
to sue for the value of the injuries sustained by all
individuals similarly situated. Such suits are called class
actions, and the individual represents not only himself or
herself, but also all others similarly situated or in the
same class. There exists ample authority for class actions
in other circumstances. For example, a stockholder has
long been able to bring a class action on behalf of all
stockholders against a corporation or its officers or
directors. Today, there is evidence that trespass laws will
increasingly be used in what are essentially class actions
against polluters. The suits against the Union Oil
Company by the State of California and by individuals in
connection with the 1969 oil leak in the Santa Barbara
Channel were class actions. In 1973, however, the
class-action approach to legal intervention to improve
environmental quality received a setback. The United
States Supreme Court declared that each member of a
class must suffer damages of more than $10,000 (rather
than pooled damages amounting to that much) before a
federal court could hear an environmental lawsuit.38
Since such individual damage is rarely demonstrable,
environmental class actions successfully prosecuted in
federal courts will become relatively rare.
Suits and interventions by public-interest
groups. Perhaps the most impressive success story in
the legal battle for the environment has been the rising
influence of a relatively few organized public-interest
groups that have been using the lawsuit and other forms
of legal intervention in a persistent and systematic way. A
pioneer in this respect has been the Environmental
Defense Fund (EOF). This organization, composed of
scientists, lawyers, and other citizens, has been going into
the courts and appearing before government regulatory
agencies since the late 1960s in its efforts to protect the
environment. It started in 1966 by using the courts to
stop spraying with DDT in Suffolk County, Long Island.
58
Zahn versus International Paper Company, 42 U.S.L.W. 4087.
As a result of the publicity accompanying the EDF suit,
the state of Michigan rigidly restricted the use of DDT.
Then, in an adversary-style hearing before the Wisconsin
Department of Resources between December 1965 and
May 1969, EDF was able to demolish the flimsy case of
those attempting to defend continued use of DDT.59
Faced with the certainty of cross-examination, many of
the scientists who usually defended the petrochemical
industry were noticeably absent from the witness chair
(although not from the public press).
As a result of those hearings, DDT was banned in
Wisconsin. EDF then carried its battle to the federal
level, where it played a major role in persuading the
Environmental Protection Agency to declare a virtually
complete ban on use of DDT in the United States at the
end of 1972 (see below).60 Originally a shoestring
operation, EDF has gained considerable admiration and
support from scientists and others aware of such en-
vironmental threats. Other groups, such as the National
Resources Defense Council (NRDC, founded in 1970),^
have also become very active in taking environmental
issues to court. In 1975 NRDC had a staff of four
scientists and fourteen attorneys, and had on its docket
more than 100 lawsuits and other legal actions of national
significance. Environmental groups like Friends of the
Earth and the Sierra Club have also been involved, alone
or in coalition with other groups, in many such actions in
defense of the environment, frequently in cooperation
with the legal staffs of EDF or NRDC. Some of the most
notable accomplishments of the legal actions undertaken
by the growing and increasingly sophisticated collection
of environmental public-interest groups are discussed in
the sections that follow.
Legislation and Administrative Agencies
Both the need for and the effectiveness of legal action
by individuals and citizen groups are linked to the larger
M
Thc story of the EDF at Madison is told in a very lively fashion by H.
Henkin, M. Merta, and J. Staples, The environment, ike establishment, and
the law.
""The ban was lifted in 1974 so that DDT could be used against the
tussock moth in the Northwest a very unfortunate decision. See Robert
F. Harwood, Economics, esthetics, environment, and entomologists: The
tussock moth dilemma.

framework of existing laws and the agencies that admin-
ister them. In some sense the easiest route to improve-
ments in environmental protection would seem to be
the passage of more comprehensive controls and the
establishment of streamlined procedures for administer-
ing them. Almost certainly, the courts would have no
constitutional objections to any reasonable legislative
limitations on the activities of polluting industries—for
example, requirements that effluents be purified, re-
duced, or eliminated. The courts could even sustain
statutes that would put certain corporations out of
business.
There are two major difficulties in getting effective
legislative action. First is the notion that if a higher
government authority (for example, the United States
Congress) enacts a law regulating a certain activity, it
may have preempted the field so that a lesser government
authority (for example, a state) cannot enact legislation
dealing with the same subject. This has led die tobacco
and automobile industries to push for federal regula-
tion in order to avoid the enactment of possibly more-
restrictive state laws. Inconsistencies in laws of different
jurisdictions create a problem for industry, and there is
no easy answer. A national economy does require na-
tional standards; it would be extremely difficult for the
automobile manufacturers to satisfy fifty different statu-
tory schemes to regulate automobile pollution. Yet some
local problems are so severe that they require more
drastic solutions than need be applied to the country at
large. Thus California (and only California) is permitted
tougher automobile emission standards than those es-
tablished by the Environmental Protection Agency for
the rest of the nation.
The second difficulty with legislative action is that
legislators are often not cognizant of new problems, and
some are notoriously at the beck and call of established
pressure groups, such as the automobile manufacturers
and die oil industry. Furthermore, in those situations
where a legislature has taken action, the action has
generally consisted of setting up regulatory agencies like
the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade
Commission, or the Federal Communications Commis-
sion. Such agencies in time have tended to become
dominated by the industries they are intended to regu-
late—ultimately the foxes wind up minding the
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 833
chickens.61 Nevertheless, as public pressure has grown,
the public has already seen and can expect to see more
results from legislation and from regulatory agencies
than it has in the past.
In the early 1970s steps were taken in the United States
toward placing stricter controls on the release of pollut-
ants into air and water. The Clean Air Act (as amended in
1970) and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act
amendments (1972) set national pollution standards for
air and water.62 As we discussed in Chapter 11, however,
it was clear by the mid-1970s that the high expectations
of environmentalists were not to be realized—at least not
as rapidly as they had hoped. There remains a need for
establishing and implementing a nationwide (to say
nothing of worldwide) program drastically limiting
emissions of harmful materials from industry, automo-
biles, homes, and other sources.
National Environmental Policy Act. A major
landmark in the fight for environmental quality in the
United States was the passage of the National Environ-
mental Policy Act (familiarly known as NEPA)63, which
became law on January 1,1970. The bill was modeled in
large part after the Employment Act of 1946, which
"declared a responsibility in the Federal Government to
maintain a prosperous and stable national economy."64
In a similar vein, NEPA declared a responsibility in the
federal government to restore and maintain environ-
mental quality.
NEPA created in the Executive Office of the President
a three-member Council on Environmental Quality
(CEQ), which was charged with assisting and advising
the president in the preparation of the annual Environ-
mental Quality Report and with carrying out a number of
other survey and advisory capacities for monitoring the
quality of the environment and the influence of govern-
ment agencies and actions on it.
"For a fascinating description of industry-government "cooperation"
on air pollution, see J. C. Esposito, Vanishing air, which, although
somewhat out of date, gives the flavor of interactions among politicians,
agencies, and businessmen.
62
For a useful citizen's guide to these acts, see J. Cannon, A clear view.
"The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, public law 91-190,
January 1, 1970 (42 U.S.C. 4321-4347).
^Council on Environmental Quality, Environmental Quality,
1972, p.222.
834 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
The key provision of NEPA, however, is its famous
Section 102(C):
The Congress authorizes and directs that, to the
fullest extent possible: (1) the policies, regulations, and
public laws of the United States shall be interpreted
and administered in accordance with the policies set
forth in this act and (2) all agencies of the Federal
Government shall—
(C) Include in every recommendation or report on
proposals for legislation and other major Federal
actions significantly affecting the quality of the
human environment, a detailed statement by the
responsible official on—
(i) The environmental impact of the proposed
action,
(ii) Any adverse environmental effects which
cannot be avoided should the proposal be
implemented,
(iii) Alternatives to the proposed action,
(iv) The relationship between local short-term
uses of man's environment and on the maintenance
and enhancement of long-term productivity, and
(v) Any irreversible and irretrievable commit-
ments of resources which would be involved in the
proposed action should it be implemented. Prior to
making any detailed statement, the responsible
Federal official shall consult with and obtain com-
ments of any Federal agency which has jurisdiction
by law or special expertise with respect to any
environmental impact involved. Copies of such
statement and the comments and views of the
appropriate Federal, State, and local agencies,
which are authorized to develop and enforce en-
vironmental standards, shall be made available to
the President, the Council on Environmental Qual-
ity and to the public as provided by section 552 of
title 5, United States Code, and shall accompany the
proposal through the existing agency review
processes.
This is the section of NEPA that established the
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which provided
a crucial legal lever for public intervention on the side of
the environment. The vast majority of environmental
suits have been in the area of public law (concerning the
relationship of citizens to the government) in contrast to
private law (which deals with the relationship of citizens
with one another). An early instance was the famous
Storm King case,65 a lawsuit brought by an environmen-
tal group against the Federal Power Commission, which
had granted Consolidated Edison of New York a permit
to build a pumped-storage hydroelectric plant below
scenic Storm King Mountain on the Hudson River. The
1965 decision in the Storm King case helped establish the
standing (a position from which to assert legal rights or
duties) of individuals or groups with records of concern
for the environment—in other words, it established that
environmentalists could sue to protect environmental
values from the adverse effects of administrative
decisions.
That legal step forward was followed by a half-step
back in another public law case (the Mineral King case),
in which the Sierra Club sued to prevent Walt Disney
Productions from turning a lovely part of the Sierra
Nevada into a plastic wonderland.66 In the Mineral King
case, the United States Supreme Court held that mem-
bers of the Sierra Club had to use the area in question in
order to gain standing; the interest of the club members
in preserving the wilderness was not sufficient cause to
stop the Disney project. (For a novel approach to the
question of standing—an approach that would have
served the environment well in the Mineral King case—
see Box 14-2.)
In the context of concerned groups having standing in
environmental cases, NEPA's requirement of environ-
mental impact statements (and the required public airing
of the EIS) has proven to be a godsend. A series of cases
brought by groups such as the Committee for Nuclear
Responsibility, the Environmental Defense Fund, the
Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council
have determined that an EIS is to provide "full disclo-
sure" of the environmental implications of any impend-
ing decision, that it must set forth opposing views on
significant environmental issues raised by the proposal,
that it must contain a full analysis of costs and impacts of
alternatives, and that it must balance adverse environ-
65
Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference versus Federal Power
Commission, 1965.354 F 2d 608. For a brief discussion of the case, see J.
Holdren and P. Herrera, Energy, pp. 181—183.
"'Sierra Club versus Morton, 1972, U.S.L.W. 4397. For good discus-
sions of the question of standing and environmental law in general, see J.
E. Krier, Environmental law and its administration; and C. D. Stone,
Should trees have standing? Toward legal rights far natural objects.
 BOX 14-2 A Note on Standing
The legal machinery and the basic legal notions
needed to control pollution are already in exis-
tence. Slight changes in the legal notions and
diligent application of the legal machinery are all
that are necessary to induce a great reduction in
pollution in the United States. One change in
those notions that would have a most salubrious
effect on the quality of the environment has been
proposed by law professor Christopher D. Stone
in his celebrated monograph, Should trees have
Standing?* In that tightly reasoned essay, Stone
*Originaily published in 1972 in the Southern California Lam
Review; available as a book, which also reprints the U.S.
mental effects against the benefits of the proposal.67
Failure to conform fully to the requirements has been the
basis of numerous successful lawsuits in which projects
have been stopped until proper environmental impact
statements were prepared.
The strength of NEPA lies in the formal commitment
of the government to environmental quality and the
required public airing of potential impacts by the EIS
procedures. In the five years 1970 through 1974, more
than 6000 impact statements were filed. In the opinion of
the CEQ, by 1974 NEPA had "succeeded in its objective
of incorporating an environmental perspective into the
decision-making process of Federal agencies."68 This
statement seems accurate to us, both because it agrees
with our impressions and because, when it was made,
Russell W. Peterson, one of the brightest and most
straightforward of Washington bureaucrats, was chair-
man of the CEQ.68a In addition, the general approach of
NEPA has been adopted by local and state governments.
By 1974 twenty-one states and Puerto Rico had adopted
the EIS process, as had governments in such nations as
Australia, Canada, and Israel.69 One of the most impres-
sive of the state acts is California's 1970 Environmental
Quality Act (amended), which requires impact state-
67
CEQ Environmental Quality, 1972, pp. 242-246.
M
CEQ, Environmental Quality, 1974, p, 372. This report has a good
brief historical account of the evolution of NEPA (pp. 372^13).
^"In 1976 he resigned and in 1977 was succeeded by Charles Warren, a
California State legislator with a thorough understanding of environ-
mental issues. President Carter's appointment of Warren continues the
tradition of excellence in this position.
M
Ibid., pp. 399-413.
points out the obvious advantages of giving
natural objects standing, just as such inanimate
objects as corporations, trusts, and ships are now
held to have legal rights and duties. If this were
done, questions such as that of the standing of
the Sierra Club in the Mineral King case,
mentioned earlier, would disappear—for, as Jus-
tice William 0. Douglas pointed out in his
dissenting opinion in that case, Sierra Club
versus Morton would "be more properly labeled
as Mineral King v. Morton."
Supreme Court's opinions in Sierra Club versus Morton (the
Mineral King controversy).
merits on all projects, private or government, that will
significantly affect the environment. In the mid-1970s
some 6000 statements were being filed annually.70
As far-reaching and successful as NEPA has been in
this context, some weaknesses are also evident. While it
has raised consciousness of the environment in govern-
ment agencies and in the business community, concrete
results in terms of prevention and repair of environmen-
tal deterioration have been less apparent. Thus far,
NEPA has been mainly an instrument for disseminating
information rather than one for guiding policy. It cannot,
in itself, lead to the cancellation of a project—even
though citizens groups have repeatedly employed it to
delay projects where EIS provisions have not been
meticulously followed. Indeed, a key flaw in the act as
first applied was that its enforcement depended entirely
upon the public, and the public could use it only to delay,
not to halt, projects that would have massive negative
impacts on the environment.71 As far as NEPA was
concerned, the Army Corps of Engineers legally could
plow the United States under, or the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission could permit the country to be totally
contaminated with lethal amounts of radioactive wastes,
as long as the EIS requirements of the law were followed
scrupulously. In applying NEPA, the courts seem to be
moving toward substantive rather than procedural re-
70
In California they are technically known as environmental impact
reports (EIR).
"D. W. Fischer, Environmental impact assessment as an instrument
of public policy lor controlling economic growth. The appendix 10 ihe
article contains an informative critique of NEPA.
836 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
view, however. This means that projects may be halted
for reasons other than failure to follow the ELS provision
meticulously.72
Several landmark court cases have clarified the obliga-
tions of government agencies under NEPA. In Calvert
Cliff's coordinating committee versus A EC (1971), the
United States Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia held that the Atomic Energy Commission
could not exclude water quality considerations from its
environmental impact statement merely because the
power plant in question had already received a certificate
of compliance with federal water quality regulations
from the state. The court found that the "crabbed
interpretation" of NEPA by the AEC would prevent the
AEC from making a balanced determination of the best
course of action. In Scientists' Institute for Public Infor-
mation versus AEC (1973), the District of Columbia
Court of Appeals ruled in connection with the liquid
metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR) that comprehensive
environmental impact statements must be prepared for
acknowledged programs, not merely for individual facil-
ities; that is, the combined impact of many LMFBRs and
the associated facilities had to be examined in advance
since the AEC had acknowledged that it had a program
and not a single facility in mind. In Sierra Club versus
Morton (1974), involving fossil-fuel development on the
Great Plains, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals
denned requirements for a programmatic environmental
impact statement in certain circumstances even where an
agency had not recognized its actions as a program.
NEPA was one important step in the right direction,
and it may become a prime weapon in the fight for
environmental quality. But it will prove inadequate
unless ways are found to introduce comprehensive
environmental planning throughout the nation, in which
legal standards for balancing environmental values
against other values are applied to all projects with
significant impact, government or private. How this
might be accomplished—and some existing legislation is
leading in this direction—is discussed further in "Eco-
nomics and Political Change." That section also dis-
cusses the possibility that relatively simple legislation
dealing with the consumption of resources might even-
2 7J
J. E. Krier, personal communication.
tually replace much of the cumbersome ad hoc system
that is now evolving for the control of environmental
impact.
Environmental Protection Agency. Contrary to a
rather widespread misimpression, the Environmental
Protection Agency was not created by NEPA but rather
by an administrative reorganization that took place in
December 1970. It consolidated the Federal Water
Quality Administration (formerly in the Department of
Interior); the National Air Pollution Control Adminis-
tration (formerly in the Department of Health, Educa-
tion and Welfare, HEW); the pesticide registration,
research, and standard-setting programs of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Adminis-
tration; the solid-waste management programs of HEW;
and some of the functions of the Federal Radiation
Council and the Atomic Energy Commission for setting
standards for radiation exposure. The EPA was given all
the functions and responsibilities necessary to carry out
the Clean Air Act and the Federal Water Pollution
Control Act; and under its first administrator, William D.
Ruckelshaus, it made a reasonably rapid start at doing
so.73 His successor, Russell E. Train, continued to build
an increasingly effective organization in an often difficult
political environment.
Unlike CEQ, which is a small advisory group in the
Executive Office of the President, the EPA is a large
operating agency with a staff in 1976 of 8800 people and
estimated budget outlays in that year of $3 billion. I:
maintains research laboratories in several parts of the
country. The best concise record of the accomplishments
as well as the shortcomings of the EPA are the CEQ's
annual reports on the state of the nation's environment.
Occupational Safety and Health Act. As noted in
Chapter 10, workers are often exposed to much higher
concentrations of dangerous substances than are consid-
ered acceptable for the population at large. The ma;r,
legal protection for workers is provided under the
Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which
authorized the Labor Department to establish standard:
for exposure of workers to hazardous pollutants. :c
See CEQ, Environmental quality, 1970 and 1971.

provide training programs, and to set up a system for
reporting occupational illness and injury. These duties
are carried out by the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA). The National Institute of Oc-
cupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) does research for
and recommends standards to OSHA.
Three types of standards for exposure to pollutants can
be set by OSHA: consensus standards adopted from a list
provided by a group of government and industrial
scientists, permanent standards, and temporary emer-
gency standards. Permanent standards generally include,
in addition to the eight-hour limits for worker exposure
provided by consensus standards, regulations covering
work practices, monitoring, and medical surveillance.
Temporary standards are effective only for a six-month
period, an interim during which permanent standards are
developed.
By_1975, consensus standards had been set for about.
400 chemicals, and OSHA and NIOSH were moving to
change them to permanent standards. Permanent stan-
dards had already been established for asbestos, vinyl
chloride, and a group of fourteen carcinogens; and
permanent standards have been proposed for arsenic,
coke-oven emissions, and noise. Some groups feel that
those standards are not strict enough; for example, a
chemical workers union unsuccessfully challenged in
court those established for the fourteen carcinogens.
It seems certain that a constant tug-of-war will ensue
between consideration of the costs (real or imagined) to
industry of lowering workers' exposure to hazards and
consideration of the legitimate desires of workers to
protect their health. In view of the large numbers of
people directly or indirectly involved (remember, haz-
ardous materials like asbestos and plutonium can be
taken home inadvertently by workers, placing their
families and friends at risk), it seems clear that OSHA's
activities are a long-overdue step in the right direction.
Population Law
The impact of laws and policies on population size and
growth has, until very recently, largely been ignored by
the legal profession. The first comprehensive treatment
of population law was that of the late Johnson C.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 837
Montgomery/4 an aitnrnpy who was president of Zero
Population Growth, and whose ideas are the basis of
much of the following discussion.
To date, there has been no serious attempt in Western
countries to use laws to control excessive population
growth, although there exists ample authority under
which population growth could be regulated. For exam-
ple, under the United States Constitution, effective.
population-control programs could be enacter) u."d,er the
clauses that empower Congress to appropriate funds to
provide for the(general welfare and to regulate com-
e^ or under the equal-protection clause: _of_ the
Fourteenth Amendment.^5 Such laws constitutionally
could be very broad. Indeed, it has been concluded that_
compulsory population-control laws, even including
laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained _
under the existing Constitution if the population crisis,
became sufficiently severe to endanger the society. Few
today consider the situation in the United States serious
enough to justify compulsion, however.
The most compelling arguments that might be used to
justify government regulation of reproduction are based .
upon the rapid population growth relative to the capacity
of environmental and social svstems to absorb the
associated impacts. To provide a high quality of life for
all, there must be fewer people. But there are other sound
reasons that support the use of law to regulate repro-
duction.
It is accepted that the law has as its proper function the
protection of each person and each group of people. A
legal restriction on the right to have more than a given
number of children could easily be based on the needs of
the first children. Studies have indicated that the larger
the family, the less healthy the children are likely to be
and the less likely they are to realize their potential levels
of achievement.76 Certainly there is no question that
children of a small family can be cared for better and can
"Population explosion and United States law.
75
"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process
of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection
of the laws."
76
Joe D. Wray, Population pressure on families: Family size and
child-spacing, in Roger Revelle, ed.. Rapid population growth: Con-
sequences and policy implications, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1971;
R. B. Zajonc, Family configuration and intelligence, Science, vol. 192, pp.
227-236 (April 16,1976).
838 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
be educated better than children of a large family,
oxfcvir . ec\\vaV. TVve \aNV
properly say to a mother that, in order to protect the
children she already has, she could have no more.
(Presumably, regulations on the sizes of adopted families ._
wpuld have to be the same.1)
A legal restriction on the right to have children could
also be based on a right not to be disadvantaged by
excessive numbers of children produced by others.^
Differing rates of reproduction among groups can give
rise to serious social problems. For example, differential
rates of reproduction between ethnic, racial, religious, or
economic groups might result in increased competition
for resources and political power and thereby undermine
social order. If some individuals contribute to general
social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the
need is compelling, they can be required by law to
exercise reproductive responsibility— just as they can be
required to excercise responsibility in their resource-
consumption patterns— providing they are not denied
equal protection.
Individual rights. Individual rights must be bal-
anced against the power of the government to control
human reproduction. Some people— respected legisla-
tors, judges, and lawyers included— have viewed the .
right to have children as a fundamental and inalienable _
right. Yet neither the Declaration of Independence nor_
the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce. Nor does
the UK Charter describe such a right, although a
resolution of the United Nations affirms the "right
responsibly to choose" the number and spacing of chil-,
dren (our emphasis). In the United States, individuals
have a constitutional right to privacy and it has been held
that the right to privacy includes the right to choose
whether or not to have children, at least to the extent that
a woman has a right to choose not to have children. But
the right is not unlimited. Where the society has a
"compelling, subordinating interest" in regulating pop-
ulation size, the right of the individual may be curtailed.
If society's survival depended on having more children,
women could be required to bear children, just as men
can constitutionally be required to serve in the armed
forces. Similarly, given a crisis caused by overpopula-
tion, reasonably necessary laws to control excessive
reproduction could be enacted.
It is often argued that The t\gYix to Yiave ctexYdteu w so
personal that the government should not regulate it. In an
ideal society, no doubt the state should leave family size
and composition solely to the desires of the parents. In
today's world, however, the number of children in a
family is a matter of profound public concern. The law
regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no
one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time.
Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from
having more than two children?
The legal argument has been made that the First
Amendment provision for separation of church and state
prevents the United States government from regulating
family size. The notion is that family size is God's affair
and no business of the state. But the same argument has
been made against the taxation of church property,
prohibition of polygamy, compulsory education of and
medical treatment for children, and many similar mea-
sures that have been enacted. From a legal standpoint,
the First Amendment argument against family-size reg-
ulation is devoid of merit.
There are two valid constitutional limitations on the
kinds of population-control policies that could be en-
acted. First, any enactments must satisfy the require-
ments of due process of law; they must be reasonably
designed to meet real problems, and they must not be
arbitrary. Second, any enactments must ensure that equal
protection under the law is afforded to every person; they
must not be permitted to discriminate against any
particular group or person. This should be as true of laws
giving economic encouragement to small families as it
would be of laws directly regulating the number of
children a person may have. This does not mean that the
impact of the laws must be exactly the same on everyone.
A law limiting each couple to two children obviously
would have a greater impact on persons who desire large
families than it would on persons who do not. Thus,
while the due-process and equal-protection limitations
preclude the passage of capricious or discriminatory
laws, neither guarantees anyone the right to have more
than his or her fair share of children, if such a right is
shown to conflict with other rights and freedoms.

It is often argued that a fetus or an embryo is a person
who has a right to life, and therefore abortion as a
birth-control measure must be rejected. Supporters of
this argument point out that certain rights of a fetus have
been legally recognized. For example, some states permit
a fetus to recover money damages for personal injuries
sustained before birth. Under some circumstances the
common law has permitted a fetus, if subsequently born
alive, to inherit property. The intentional killing of a
fetus (through injury to the mother) has been declared by
statute to constitute murder, although under the statute
the fetus is not defined as a human being.
Although some rights of the fetus after quickening
have been protected in some states, most of those states
require that the infant be born and living before the
rights vested prior to birth actually are recognized and
enforced. Most jurisdictions afford no protection to
property rights or personal rights of the unquickened
fetus, and no jurisdiction has protected the rights of
embryos. Furthermore, analysis of the situations in
which rights of the fetus have been recognized disclose
that it is generally not the fetus's rights, but rather the
rights of its parents or others that are being protected.
For example, when a fetus did receive money damages
for prenatal injuries, in reality it was the parents' and the
society's economic interests that were being protected.
Those who argue that a fetus has a right to life usually
proceed from the assumption that life begins at or soon
after conception. As stated elsewhere, the question,
When does life begin? is misleading. Life does not begin;
it began. The real question, from a legal as well as from
religious, moral, and ethical points of view, is as follows:
in what forms, at what stages, and for what purposes
should society protect human life? Obviously overweight
people regard their fat cells differently from their brain
cells. A wandering sperm cell is not the same thing as a
fertilized egg; nor is a fetus a child. Yet a fat cell, a sperm
cell, a fetus, a child, an adult, and even a group of people
are all human life.
The common law and the drafters of the U.S. Consti-
tution did not consider a fetus a human being. Feticide
was not murder in common law because the fetus was not
considered to be a human being, and for purposes of the
Constitution a fetus is probably not a "person" within
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 839
the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, under
the Constitution, abortion is apparently not unlawful,
although infanticide obviously is. This is a very impor-
tant distinction, particularly since most rights, privileges,
and duties in our society are dated from birth and not
from some earlier point in time. Capacity to contract, to
vote, to be drafted, to obtain Social Security rights,
drivers' licenses, and the like, are all dated from birth,
which is a very convenient, relatively definite point in
time from which to date most rights. Certainly, the
moment of birth is easier to ascertain than the moment of
conception, implantation, or quickening. Such an easily
ascertainable point in time is a sensible point from which
to date Constitutional rights, which should not depend
upon imprecisions.
The fact that a fetus is probably not a "person" with _
Constitutional rights does not, however, mean that_ y^
society has no interest in the fetus. Society does have an
in ensuring that an appropriate number of
healthy children are born. To protect the health of the
mother, some regulation of abortion is still necessary and
appropriate. For example, laws requiring that abortions
be performed only by qualified medical personnel in
appropriately licensed institutions now exist in most
states, and there are regulations governing eligibility for
insurance or other financial aid.
\ Legal reform.) In predecessors of this book, we
recommended a series of reasonable, constinitinnaj. and
desirable lep;ai chants in rhp TTnir^
age population growth;
1. A federal statute could be enacted that would
prohibit any restrictions on safe, voluntary coptra^p- _
tion, sterilization, and abortion, and the dissemination oL_
information about them.,
2. State and federal governments could subsidize
voluntary contraception, sterilization, and abortion^
\ .aws could require that birth-control clinics be opened
at public expens_e in all suitable locations. They could
also require that group and individual health insurance
policies cover the costs of abortion and sterilization.
i. Tax laws could be revised, and new laws could be _
passed that would provide incentives for late marriage,
840 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
smaU families, and alternative roles for women. The tax
disadvantage to single, childless persons could be_
jliminated. _
4. State and federal laws could make sex education,.
including instruction about contraception, mandatory in
all schools, and the government could sponsor public
education programs designed to encourage people to
want fewer children.
5._ Federal support and encouragement for the devel-
opment of more effective birth-control drugs and device;
could be greatly increased.
We are to report that between J97Q ?n(J
all of these _changes took place, at least to
Much of what remains to be done consists of extending
or more fully implementing programs that now exist.
The only real exception is mandatory sex education, but
even on a voluntary basis the trend is toward expansion,
and there is support and encouragement both from the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare and from
private organizations such as the Sex Information and
Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
If these relatively uncoercive policies should fail to
maintain a low American birth rate, more coercive laws
might well be written (see Chapter 13 for examples). At
the moment, there might be little justification or public
support for such laws, but if the resource and environ-
mental situations are allowed to deteriorate, popular
support might develop rapidly. There has been consid-
erable talk in some quarters at times of forcibly sup-
pressing reproduction among welfare recipients (perhaps
by requiring the use of contraceptives or even by
involuntary sterilization). This may sadly foreshadow
what our society might do if the human predicament gets
out of hand. We hope that population growth can be
controlled in the United States without resorting to such
discriminatory and socially disruptive measures. That, in
fact, has been one purpose of this and our previous
books— to stimulate population control by the least
coercive means before it is too late. The decline in birth
rates in the United States and other developed countries
since 1970 is a most hopeful sign that population control
can be easily achieved in those countries, but we must
reiterate that the United States and most other DCs are
still a long way from zero population growth.
BUSINESS, LABOR, AND ADVERTISING
Although legal and legislative action are essential to the
solution of pollution problems in the United States, it is
to be hoped that American industries will not wait to be
coerced into responsible behavior. In fact, a few indus-
tries took the initiative for cleaning up their effluents
before it was legally required, and some found it possible
to make profits from pollution by-products. Such unex-
pected bonuses are not possible in all cases, of course.
Tax incentives and government subsidies for cleaning up
pollution may be applied when costs are high, but in the
long run abating pollution will best be achieved as a part
of a complete overhaul of our tottering economic system.
Meanwhile, many industrial organizations are explor-
ing technological methods for dealing with various kinds
of pollution; indeed, new companies have appeared
whose entire business is pollution abatement or waste
disposal of one sort or another. On the preventive side of
the coin, environmental consulting firms have begun to
appear. Their business is to advise communities and
businesses in planning development with the least possi-
ble damage to the environment and the most benefit to
the human inhabitants. Many of them are involved in
writing the environmental impact statements required by
the NEPA and several states. These trends and others,
such as research on recyclable or biodegradable contain-
ers, should certainly be encouraged.
Labor ,
Labor also has an important role to play in easing the
pressure on the environment. In the United States an
unfortunate "jobs versus the environment" attitude was
promoted as the mid-1970s recession developed. Many
business and labor leaders, believing that the only
solution to problems of unemployment was to fire up the
old ecologically destructive economic machine once
again, lobbied for the relaxation of measures to protect
the environment. The basic message of environmen-
talists that not only were many jobs threatened by the
continuing rape of the environment, but that many lives,
and indeed the persistence of civilization, were threat-
ened also, obviously had not penetrated.
Environmental protection in reality has proven to be

far more a creator of jobs than a destroyer. The Council
on Environmental Quality in 1975 estimated that
through 1974 fewer than 14,000 workers had lost their
jobs as a result of environmental controls, most of them
through closure of plants that were obsolescent, ineffi-
cient, and already only marginally profitable. In most
cases environmental controls only hastened the inevita-
ble. But, although a precise estimate would be difficult to
make, it is clear that thousands more jobs have been
created by environmental protection. Building and mod-
ernizing urban sewage systems alone provides perhaps
85,000 jobs for each $1 billion spent. People are needed
to administer and enforce environmental programs and
to build, install, operate, and maintain pollution abate-
ment equipment, and so forth.77
Labor should be among the leaders in the movement to
maintain environmental quality, even though workers,
along with the rest of society, will have to pay part of the
costs. Many more working people are exposed to en-
vironmental hazards, from poor safety standards in
workplaces to smog, than are industrialists and bankers
who work in plush, air-conditioned offices and can
afford to live beyond the smog belt.
In Australia, labor has moved into the forefront,
battling against development of Australia's uranium
deposits and against other projects deemed socially or
environmentally injurious. Led by Jack Mundey, a
leader in the building trades in New South Wales,
"Green Bans" have been instituted, in which union
members simply refuse to work on such projects.78 In
1974 many millions of dollars' worth of construction
work was being held up by Green Bans in Sydney alone.
If only such a sense of social responsibility pervaded the
labor movement everywhere!
There is every reason to believe that in years to come
environmentalists and workers (two groups whose inter-
ests already greatly overlap) more and more will find
their interests becoming congruent. For example, en-
vironmentalists are increasingly concerned about the
energy-intensiveness of our economic system—as are
many people in the labor movement as they see energy
77
Environmental quality—1975, pp. 533—536. See also Patrick Heffer-
nan, Jobs and the environment.
78
^l. Hardmann and P. Alanmng, Green bans; The Green Bans, Sierra
Club Bulletin, April 1975, p. 18; R. Roddewig and J. S. Rosenberg, In
Australia, unions strike for the environment.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 841
being substituted for workers. The important idea that
improvements in energy efficiency not only spare the
environment (by reducing energy requirements) but also
increase employment is well illustrated in the following
discussion by Schipper:
Compare, for example, two air conditioners of equal
capacity, operating in similar homes under similar
loads in the same climatic region, one requiring half
the power of the other. If a consumer buys the more
efficient unit, some of the money otherwise spent on
energy is used for extra materials and labor, and this
expenditure results in a more carefully constructed,
more efficient air conditioner. Since manufacturing is
generally more labor-intensive than electric utilities,
the redirection of spending—from paying for electric-
ity to investment in a more efficient unit— raises the
total demand for labor per unit of air conditioning and
still provides for the consumer's desire for comfort.
[Moreover] when the consumer spends the money
saved by energy conservation, the new purchase will
require increased labor in comparison to buying
electricity. The result is more goods or services and
more employment, with less energy consumed.79
Higher energy costs, which are now resulting from the
appearance in the balance sheets of the costs of depletion
and pollution, increase the potential savings and em-
ployment benefits derivable from greater energy effi-
ciency (see also Chapter 8).
A reorientation of business, labor, and consumer val-
ues is obviously in order. Resources of all kinds are
limited, but Americans behave as though they were not.
The neglected virtues of economy and thrift must be
restored to the pedestals that they once occupied in this
country.
Advertising
Advertising plays a leading role in perpetuating the
American system of consumerism. Whether the blame
for this lies largely with industry or with the consumers is
difficult to determine and probably does not much
matter. What does seem evident is that advertising does
not have to be mostly antienvironmental. In the late
1960s many advertisements began to appear featuring
various companies' efforts at pollution abatement. Such
79
Lee Schipper, Raising the productivity of energy use.
842 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
concern over the corporate image with respect to pollu-
tion was no doubt a necessary first step, but more than
advertising of environmental protection is required.
Environmentalists have been increasingly irritated by-
self-serving ads showing how Company XX has always
been deeply involved in protecting the environment.
Those emanating from oil companies—among the great-
est destroyers of the environment—are especially galling.
Ads from polluters posing as environmentalists have
been christened "ecopornography." Much more accept-
able are ads that offer useful information to consumers on
how they can cooperate with business in environmentally
beneficial projects, such as energy conservation or re-
cycling materials. While we certainly do not condone
heavy promotion of new versions of products whose
environmental contribution is negligible or questionable,
such as certain gasoline additives or disposable flash-
lights, we welcome ads that feature genuine improve-
ments, such as unleaded gasolines or non-aerosol spray
containers. Admittedly, the line dividing such cases is
not always easy to draw.
The advertising industry can do much more than it has
so far to encourage its clients to promote products by
stressing such qualities as durability, economy, and
versatility. For example, automobile advertising should
emphasize economy of purchase and operation, espe-
cially low gasoline consumption, durability, compact-
ness, comfort (but not massiveness—interior room can be
maintained even as weight is greatly trimmed), engine
efficiency, safety, and low pollution emissions. For a time
after the energy crisis of 1974 the trend was in that
direction, but by 1976 there was a move back toward the
bad old days. Advertising that stresses large size and high
power in cars should be permanently discontinued.
Beyond cooperating with clients in antipollution pro-
motions, advertising companies could by agreement
refuse to design ads promoting wasteful or polluting
products—for example, ads featuring throwaway prod-
ucts, food in throwaway cans and bottles, or goods
wrapped in unnecessary layers of packaging. Above all,
every effort should be made to expunge from advertising
the idea that the quality of life is closely related to the rate
at which new products are purchased or energy is
consumed.
Advertising agencies can also make a contribution to
the population situation by refusing to produce ads
featuring large families. Under pressure from population
and women's organizations, some of the obvious changes
have already been made in ads for many products. Other
ways have been found to promote heavy-duty washing
machines than as an item for large families—dormitories,
hospitals, and other institutions use them also, for
instance. Families with three or more children have
lately been depicted as large families, and the two-child
family appears the norm. Women are increasingly fea-
tured playing roles other than homemaker and mother,
and the convenience of many goods is being stressed
more as a value for working women than for the
overburdened mother, as they once were exclusively.
This trend should be encouraged.
The critical problem, of course, is to find a way to
swing both advertising clients and agencies in the right
direction. While public utilities, for example, could and
should be prohibited from promoting greater use of
electric power through advertising, similar legal controls
over all advertising would undoubtedly prove too
cumbersome.
A court decision in August 197180 held that, under the
fairness doctrine, radio and television stations that carry
advertising for big, high-horsepower cars also must
broadcast information about the environmental threat
such cars represent. The suit had been brought by
Friends of the Earth and the Environmental Defense
Fund after the Federal Communications Commission
had ruled against such a policy. If it were widely applied,
this interpretation of the fairness doctrine might dis-
courage manufacturers and advertisers from promoting
socially and environmentally undesirable products; to
date, unfortunately, it has not been widely applied.
The late 1970s and early 1980s will be crucial years for
everyone. The business community in the United States
and around the world is faced with a particularly difficult
choice. It can continue to pursue the economic goals of
the past decades until either an environmental disaster
overtakes civilization or until governments and the
public compel a change; or it can actively initiate novel
approaches to production and industry, with a view to
protecting the environment, preserving limited re-
sources, and truly benefiting humanity.
""Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals.

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CHANGE
Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt
from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves to
some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear
voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some
academic scribbler of a few years back.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1936
In relation to the population-resources-environment
crisis, economics81 and politics can usually be viewed as
two sides of a single coin. A very large number of
political decisions are made on an economic basis,
especially those relating to environmental and resource
problems. Illustrating the influence of economics, Lord
Keynes wrote (in the lines just preceding the epigraph of
this chapter): "The ideas of economists and political
philosophers, both when they are right and when they are
wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.
Indeed the world is ruled by little else."82 If anything, his
statement is even more true today than it was then.
Economics nevertheless is sometimes wrongly blamed
for political problems. Although the major political
division of the developed world—that between capitalist
and communist nations—is thought to be based on
differences in economic ideology, the actual differences
are relatively few. A major cause of humanity's current
plight lies not in the economic differences between those
two political spheres but in the economic attitudes that
they hold in common.
Gross National Product and
Economic Growthmanship
Economists are not unanimous in their views of eco-
nomic growth. Some have perceived that perpetual eco-
nomic growth is as impossible to sustain as perpetual
"For a general review of orthodox economics, we recommend the
latest edition of Paul A. Samuelson's fine text, Economics (latest edition at
this writing, the tenth, 1976). For a more detailed treatment of environ-
mental economics, see Richard Lecomber, Economic growth versus the
environment. For the latter, familiarity with economic concepts such as
indifference curves and inferior goods (explained in Samuelson) is
required.
82
The general theory of employment, interest, and money, Harcourt, New
York, 1964 (originally published in 1936).
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 843
population growth. Herman Daly in 1975 told a Con-
gressional committee:
In 1936 John Maynard Keynes remarked that "The
part played by orthodox economists, whose common
sense has been insufficient to check their faulty logic,
has been disastrous to the latest act." The same words
ring true in 1975. It is easy to be trapped by the
excessive rigidity of our own values and goals. The
South Indian Monkey Trap, for example, works solely
on the basis of rigid goals. A hollowed-out coconut is
filled with rice and fastened by a chain to a stake in the
ground. There is a hole in the coconut just large
enough to allow the monkey to insert its extended
hand, but not large enough to permit withdrawal of his
clenched fist full of rice. The monkey is trapped by
nothing more than his refusal to let go of the rice, to
reorder his goals, and to realize that in the given
circumstances his freedom is more important than die
fistful of rice. We seem to be trapped in a growth-
dominated economic system that is causing growing
depletion, pollution, and disamenity, as well as in-
creasing the probability of ecological catastrophe. We
must open our collective fist and let go of the doctrine
of perpetual growth, or else we will be caught by the
consequences.83
In the 1967 edition of his classic economics text, by
contrast, Paul A. Samuelson of M.I.T. wrote: "The ghost
of Carlyle should be relieved to know that economics,
after all, has not been a dismal science. It has been the
cheerful, but impatient, science of growth."84 In 1976,
viewing the prospects for continued economic growth in
the United States and the rest of the world, he still found
them cheering.85 The majority of economic theorists
agree with Samuelson, as do most businessmen and
politicians. Some economists besides Daly have ques-
tioned the growth ethic, however. For example, E. J.
Mishan stated in 1967:
The skilled economist, immersed for the greater
part of the day in pages of formulae and statistics, does
occasionally glance at the world about him and, if
"Herman E. Daly, in testimony before the Joint Economic Committee
of Congress, hearings on economic growth, October 23, 1975.
^Economics: An introductory analvsh, McGraw-Hill, Ne\v York, 1967.
8i
Limits to growth: VX'hat lies ahead? Honolulu Advertiser, March 15.
1976. In fairness to Samuelson, part of his cheer was engendered by the
declining rate of population growth in the United States.
844 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
perceptive, does occasionally feel a twinge of doubt
about the relevance of his contribution. . . . For a
moment, perhaps, he will dare wonder whether it is
really worth it. Like the rest of us, however, the
economist must keep moving, and since such misgiv-
ings about the overall value of economic growth
cannot be formalized or numerically expressed, they
are not permitted seriously to modify his practical
recommendations.86
GNP. In much of the world—indeed, in all countries
with any aspirations toward modernization, progress, or
development—a general economic index of advancement
is growth of the gross national product (GNP). The GNP
is the total national output of goods and services valued at
market prices. Stated another way, it consists of the sum
of personal and government expenditure on goods and
services, plus the value of net exports (exports minus
imports) and private expenditure on investment. It can
be a very useful economic indicator.
More important than what the GNP is, however, is
what it is not: it is not a measure of the degree of freedom
of the people of a nation; it is not a measure of the health
of a population; it is not a measure of the equity of
distribution of wealth; it is not a measure of the state of
depletion of natural resources; it is not a measure of the
stability of the environmental systems upon which life
depends; it is not a measure of security from the threat of
war. It is not, in sum, a comprehensive measure of the
quality of life, although, unhappily, it is often believed
to be.
When the standards of living of two nations are
compared, it is customary to examine their per-capita
GNPs. Per-capita GNP is an especially unfortunate
statistic. First of all, it is the ratio of two statistics that are
at best crude estimates, especially in the LDCs where
neither GNP nor population size is known with any
accuracy. More important, comparisons of per-capita
GNP overestimate many kinds of differences. For in-
stance, a comparison of per-capita GNPs would lead to
the conclusion that the average person in the United
States lives almost 10 times as well as the average
Portuguese and some 60 times as well as the average
&<t
The costs of economic growtil, pp. i.t—x, Praeger, New York.
Burmese. This, of course, is meaningless, since virtually
all services and some goods are? much cheaper in the
LDCs, and GNP calculates only what enters the re-
corded money economy. Americans pay perhaps 5 or 10
times as much for farm labor, domestic help, haircuts,
carpentry, plumbing, and so forth as do people in the
LDCs, and the services in the United States may be of
inferior quality. And yet, because of the accounting
system, those services contribute between 5 and 10 times
as much to our GNP as the same services do to the GNPs
of, say, Burma or India.
Furthermore, figures on the increase of per-capita
GNP in LDCs do not take into account such things as
rise in literacy rate, and thus may underrate the amount
of progress a country has made toward modernization.
Nor does the GNP measure many negative aspects of the
standard of living. Although the average Burmese un-
questionably lives much less well than the average person
in the United States, the average American may cause
100 times as much ecological destruction to the planet.
Another problem with GNP and per-capita GNP
reckoning is that they are measures devised by and for
DCs, in which accurate government record-keeping is an
established tradition and virtually all of a society's
productive activity enters the money economy, where it
is recorded and can be totaled. Yet even in the United
States, agricultural, dairy, and livestock production con-
sumed on the farm either is ignored or loosely estimated
in the calculation of our total food production. This does
not significantly affect decisions based on food produc-
tion because production for consumption on the farm
represents only a small part of overall United States food
production (even though it would still account for
millions of dollars' worth of food). In an LDC, where
subsistence agriculture, home manufacture of household
items, barter, and money transactions too small and
casual to be noted are the rule, an analysis of the overall
situation by government-published production records
can and commonly does lead to very serious misjudge-
ments about the real condition of an economy and
society.
Finally, it must be remembered that the per-capita
GNP statistic can and often does conceal gross inequities
within countries in the distribution of goods and services.
This makes it an even more fallible index of well-being.

Growthmanship. A serious criticism that can be
leveled at the majority of economists applies equally to
most people and societies: they accept a doctrine of
economic determinism. The myths of cornucopian eco-
nomics, as opposed to the realities of geology and
biology, have already been discussed, but the problem is
much more pervasive than that. Economic growth has
become ffe standard for progress, the benefit for which
almost any social cost is to be paid.
This prejudice in economic thought can be fully
appreciated by a perusal of Samuelson's Economics. The
book, of course, is oriented toward economic growth.
The increasing scarcity of nonrenewable resources is
presented in it only briefly as a problem of less developed
countries. The eventual physical constraint placed on
material growth by the conversion to heat of all the
energy people consume is not discussed in the text, nor
are the more imminent environmental constraints con-
sidered in our earlier chapters. Implicit in Samuelson's
treatment of economic development is the idea that it is
possible for 5 billion to 7 billion people to achieve a
standard of living similar to that of the average American
of the 1960s. Excessive technological optimism is explicit
or implicit throughout the book.
Nevertheless, Samuelson's text reveals more under-
standing of problems related to population size and
environmental quality than the writings of many other
economists. He does realize that growth of GNP must be
"qualified by data on leisure, population size, relative
distribution, quality, and noneconomic factors." In the
1970 edition, Samuelson added two chapters dealing
with economic inequality, the quality of life, and prob-
lems of race, cities, and pollution. Furthermore, in 1969
Samuelson wrote:
Most of us are poorer than we realize. Hidden costs are
accruing all the time; and because we tend to ignore
them, we overstate our incomes. Thomas Hobbes said
that in the state of nature the life of man was nasty,
brutish and short. In the state of modern civilization it
has become nasty, brutish and long.87
Most economists subscribe to the "bigger and more is
better" philosophy: the growing mixed economy is
something to analyze, improve, and by all means to keep
"Newsweek, October 6, 1969.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 845
growing. In an article that appeared in the New York
Review of Books, Nobel laureate economist Wassily
Leontief of Harvard remarked, "If the 'external costs' of
growth clearly seem to pose dangers to the quality of life,
there is as yet no discernible tendency among economists
or economic managers to divert their attention from this
single-minded pursuit of economic growth."88
Indeed, when those external costs (various kinds of
environmental and social deterioration) do come to the
attention of economists, growth is seen as the way to deal
with them. Walter Heller, once chairman of the Presi-
dent's Council of Economic Advisers, has stated, "I
cannot conceive a successful economy without
growth."89 Accordingly, he urges expansion of the
United States economy so that resources will become
available to fight pollution. Heller, like many other
economists, confuses more of the disease with the cure!
That economists have clung to their "growthmania" is
not surprising, however. After all, natural scientists often
cling to outmoded ideas that have produced far less
palpable benefits than the growing mixed economies of
the Western world in the twentieth century. The ques-
tion of whether a different economic system might have
produced a more equitable distribution of benefits is not
one that Western economists like to dwell on. Further-
more, the idea of perpetual growth is congruent with the
conventional wisdom of most of the businessmen of the
world; indeed, of most of the world's population.
The people of the LDCs naturally wish to emulate the
economic growth of the West, and they long for "devel-
opment" with all its shiny accoutrements. Why should
they be expected to know that it is physically and
ecologically impossible for them to catch up with the
United States when many of the "best informed" Amer-
icans are still unaware of that fact? Before attempting to
pursue the Western pattern of development, perhaps
they should contemplate Heller's belief that the best
""Quoted in Ehrlich and Ehrlich, Population, resources, environment,
2nd ed., p. 382.
"'Undoubtedly an accurate statement. This quote and some of his other
views are cited in E. F. Schumacher, Small is beautiful; Economics as if
people mattered, pp. 111-112. For direct access to the views of Heller and
other modern growthmen, see his Perspectives on economic growth. See also
William Nordhaus and James Tobin who conclude in Is growth obsolete?
that it is not, and that GNP is a pretty good measure of "secular progress."
For a wonderful (if unintentional) parody of the writing of an uninformed
economist, see Norman Macrae, America's third century.
846 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
hope for pulling the United States out of its environ-
mental difficulties is yet more growth—even though the
United States already co-opts some 30 percent of the
world's resource use. Under that prescription, even
catching up would not suffice.
New approaches to the national product. It is by
now abundantly clear that the GNP cannot grow forever.
Why should it? Why should we not strive for zero
economic growth (ZEG) as well as zero population
growth? As John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out in The
new industrial state, it would be entirely logical to set
limits on the amount of product a nation needs and then
to strive to reduce the amount of work required to
produce such a product (and, we might add, to see that
the product is much more equitably distributed than it is
today). Of course, such a program would be a threat to
some of the most dearly held beliefs of this society. It
would attack the Protestant work ethic, which insists that
one must be kept busy on the job for forty hours a week.
It is even better to work several more hours moonlight-
ing, so that the money can be earned to buy all those
wonderful automobiles, detergents, appliances, and as-
sorted gimcracks that must be bought if the economy is to
continue to grow. But this tradition is outmoded; the only
hope for civilization in the future is to work for quality in
the context of a nongrowing economy, or at least an
economy in which growth is carefully restricted to
certain activities.90
A number of interesting suggestions about GNP have
been made by economist Edwin G. Dolan in his fine little
1969 book, TANSTAAFL: The economic strategy for
environmental crisis, TANSTAAFL (which stands for
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) contains a
lucid consideration of population-environment econom-
ics, and we recommend it, even though we differ with the
author on some points. Dolan, along with some other
economists, would rename the GNP the gross national
cost (GNC).91
Tor an informative, brief discussion of work, leisure, and ZEG, see
Paul W. Barkley and David W. Seckler, Economic growth and environ-
mental decay: The solution becomes the problem. See also Chapter 3 of
Pirages and Ehrlich, Ark II.; Herman Daly, The economics of the steady
state; and Fred Hirsch, Social limits to growth.
9!
Kenneth E. Boulding has long championed that name change. Sec
also the chapter on "GNP-Fetishism" in Victor A. Weisskopf s Alien-
ation and economics.
More important, Dolan would distinguish between
two types of GNC. Type I GNC would measure that
fraction of GNC produced with renewable resources and
recycling of wastes. Type II GNC would be that
depending on the depletion of nonrenewable resources
and the production of indestructible wastes. The prob-
lems of discrimination might be difficult (consider, for
instance, calculating the energy component involved in
the production of Type I GNC), but the basic ami is
sound. As Dolan says, "Politicians and economists would
then design their policies to maximize Type I and
minimize Type II. In the eyes of world opinion a high
Type I component would be a source of national pride,
while high production of the Type II variety would be a
source of shame."
In a more technical vein, economists William Nord-
haus and James Tobin, recognizing the problems inher-
ent in GNP as a measure of what people value, have
suggested some tentative (and sensible) modifications in
GNP to produce a measure of economic welfare
(MEW).92 Their discussion gives hope that better eco-
nomic measures can and should be developed—even
though it is obvious to them and other thoughtful
economists that no single measure of economic welfare is
ever going to be fully satisfactory.93
The problem of finding even a partially satisfactory
measure of total welfare, or quality of life (QOL), is
infinitely more difficult.93" Beyond the question of
refining the concept of GNP as a measure (or perhaps,
more realistically, of disseminating the limitations of its
usefulness throughout the economic, business, and po-
litical communities, which all too often act as though
maximizing GNP were the ultimate human value), lies a
more important issue. That is the perception by many
people that the relationship between GNP and QOL has
become negative; as GNP rises, QOL declines.94
Since there is no agreed-upon measure of QOL, this
perception is unlikely to be tested by classical economic
methods—but that does not mean that the phenomenon is
not real. Perhaps the attempts by economists to refine the
"Is growth obsolete?
"See, for example, Arthur M. Oltun, Social welfare has no price tag.
93
"An extensive discussion of the problem of defining QOL is
contained in Peter W. House, The quest for completeness: Comprehensive
analysis in modeling, indicators, gaming, planning and management.
94
P. R. Ehrlich and R. Harriman, How to be a survivor: A plan to save
Spaceship Earth.

concept of GNP or to define QOL95 eventually will
permit a more precise tracking of the relationship, but it
seems unlikely that human social systems or the ecologi-
cal systems of the planet can afford to wait. We suspect
that the era of indiscriminate growth will come to an end
soon—preferably through political action generated by
subjective perceptions of declining QOL by large
numbers of people—but if not, by the intervention of
ecocatastrophes. Hints of the former could be seen in
such phenomena as the popularity in 1976 of California
governor Jerry Brown's "limits to growth" campaign for
the presidency.
Cost-benefit analyses. One of the problems with
growthmania is that for too long the penalties of growth
have been ignored by the economic system. Cost-benefit
calculations until very recently were done with too
narrow an outlook and over too short a time span.
For example, consider the history of a contemporary
housing development. A developer carves up a southern
California hillside, builds houses on it, and sells them,
reaping the benefits in a very short time. Then society
starts to pay the costs. The houses have been built in an
area where the native plant community is chaparral
(Chapter 4). Chaparral, known to plant ecologists as a
"fire climax," would not exist as a stable vegetation type
unless the area burned over occasionally. When it does,
the homes are destroyed, and the buyers and the public
start paying hidden costs in the form of increased
insurance rates and emergency relief.
Of course, there are hidden costs even in the absence of
such a catastrophe. A housing development puts a further
load on the water supply and probably will be a con-
tributing political factor in the ultimate flooding of
distant farmland to make a reservoir. Perhaps wind
patterns cause smog to be especially thick in the area of
the development, and as it begins to affect the inhabitants
they and society pay additional costs in hospital bills and
high life-insurance premiums. And, of course, by help-
ing to attract more people into the area, the development
helps to increase the general smog burden.
"See, for example, Lowdon Wingo, The quality of life: Toward a
microeconomic definition. See also the discussions in Chapter 12 and
below of the connections between quality of life and diversity of personal
options, and Richard Easterlin's fascinating Does economic growth
improve the human lot?
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 847
Then there are the problems of additional roads,
schools, sewage-treatment plants, and other community
requirements created by the subdivision. While the
builder may have put the roads in the subdivision,
increased taxes must pay for increased upkeep on roads
in the subdivision area, and eventually for new roads
demanded by increasing congestion. Among the saddest
phenomena of our time are the attempts by politicians
and chambers of commerce to attract industry and
developers to their areas to "broaden the tax base." The
usual result, when the dust has settled, is that the people
who previously lived in the area have a degraded
environment and higher taxes.
In short, the benefits are easily calculated and quickly
reaped by a select few; the costs, on the other hand, are
diffuse, spread over time, and difficult to calculate. For
example, how would one assess the cost of weather
modification by pollution, which might result in the
deaths of millions from starvation? What is the value of
an ecological system destroyed by chlorinated hydrocar-
bons? What is the value of one life lost to emphysema?
The disparity between the few elements accounted for
in present methods of cost-benefit analysis and the real
costs borne by society is even more obvious when the
problem of industrial pollution is considered. Here the
benefit is usually the absence of a cost. Garbage is spewed
into the environment, rather than being retained and
reclaimed. The industry avoids real or imagined finan-
cial loss by this process. The term imagined loss is used
because some industries have found that reclaiming
pollutants has more than paid for the cost of retaining
them. More often than not, however, the industry
benefits from pollution, and the public pays the short-
and long-term costs. Air pollutants damage crops, ruin
paint, soil clothes, dissolve nylon stockings, etch glass,
rot windshield-wiper blades, and so on. Pollutants must
be removed, often at considerable expense, from water
supplies. People with emphysema, lung cancer, liver
cancer, and hepatitis must be given expensive hospital-
ization. Insurance costs go up. In these, and in myriad
other ways, everyone pays.
Perhaps the most subtle and least appreciated costs are
those society must shoulder when it damages or destroys
ecosystems that formerly performed essential free ser-
vices. For example, destruction of natural areas, espe-
848 THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
daily forests, can change climate locally, often resulting
in greater frequency and intensity of floods and droughts
and a need for water management projects. Soil erosion
can be greatly accelerated, leading to silting of streams
and lakes, with damage to fisheries and polluted water
supplies. With the loss of the air purifying functions of
ecosystems, air pollution is increased.95'1
These costs are what accountants euphemistically call
external diseconomies, because they are external to the
accounting system of the polluter. A persuasive case can
be made that, at an advanced stage of industrialization,
the diseconomies far outweigh the benefits of growth.
Such a case was made in detail by economist Ezra Mishan
some years ago and refined since.96
That the costs to society of pollution and environ-
mental destruction far exceed those of abatement or
prevention is no longer in serious doubt. U.S. national
pollution-control expenditures for 1972, both public and
private, amounted to $19 billion; the annual costs of just
air and water pollution were variously estimated (so far as
they could be) in a range from $10 billion to $50 billion
around 1970.97 And those estimates probably left out
many of the indirect costs, which are often impossible to
sort out from other causes, and some for which there is no
price tag, such as aesthetic value.
The simplest way to attack external diseconomies
directly is to require industry to internalize them.
Companies can be forced by law to absorb the costs of
greatly reducing the release of pollutants. Profits would
then be added on after all costs were paid. Clearly, the
most sensible solution in most cases is for society to insist
on pollution abatement at the source. It is cheaper in
every way to curtail it there, rather than attempt to
ameliorate the complex problems pollutants cause after
they are released into the environment.
Society, having permitted the pollution situation to
develop, should also shoulder some of the burden of its
correction. As a theoretical example, Steel Company X,
located on the shores of Lake Michigan, is pouring filth
into the lake at a horrendous rate. A study shows that it
95a
F. H. Bormann, An inseparable linkage: Conservation of natural
ecosystems and the conservation of fossil energy.
9(>
The costs of economic growth; Ills, bads, and disamenities: The wages
of growth.
97
CEQ, Environmental quality, 1975, pp. 496-543.
would cost two dollars per share of common stock to
build the necessary apparatus for retaining and process-
ing the waste. Should the company be forced to stop
polluting and pay the price?
Certainly it must be forced to stop, but it seems fair
that society should pay some of the cost. When Company
X located on the lake, everyone knew that it would spew
pollutants into the lake, but no one objected. The local
people wanted to encourage industry. Now, finally,
society has changed its mind, and the pollution must
stop. But should Company X be forced into bankruptcy
by pollution regulations, penalizing stockholders and
putting its employees out of work? Should the local
politicians who lured the company into locating there
and the citizens who encouraged them not pay a cent?
Clearly society should order the pollution stopped and
pick up at least part of the bill. It would be a bargain in the
long run; society is already paying a much higher cost for
the pollution.
Such a situation actually occurred in 1971. Congress
refused to vote funds for the continuance of the SST
project, in part because of environmental considerations.
As mentioned earlier, the decision cost thousands of
existing jobs and even more potential jobs. Society must
find mechanisms to compensate people who lost jobs in
such a way, and it must retrain and, if necessary, relocate
them. Such dislocations are certain to occur more often
and on a larger scale as polluting, energy-wasting, and
socially dangerous industries and projects are phased out.
Fortunately, time should be available to smooth the
transitions in most situations.
It has become obvious that one needed change in the
economic system is to adopt a new method of cost-
accounting that fully incorporates such items as resource
depletion and environmental degradation, even though
such a change might involve grave political reper-
cussions.
Economics, Resources,
and the Environment
The Bucky Fulfilling dreams of technologically based
abundance of the sixties now seem adolescent and remote.
—Hazel Henderson,
Planning Review, April/May 1974

Economist Kenneth Boulding once described the
present economic system of the United States as a cowboy
economy.9* The cowboy metaphor refers to a reckless,
exploitive philosophy based on two premises: more re-
sources are waiting just over the horizon, and nature has a
boundless capacity to absorb garbage. For practical pur-
poses, those premises were valid in the days of the Amer-
ican frontier. In that world it made some sense to seek
rapid improvements in human welfare strictly through
economic growth, with little regard for what kind of
growth or for the sorts of waste that accompanied it.
But today the old premises are wrong. It is now clear
that physical resources are limited and that humanity is
straining the capacity of the biological environment to
absorb abuse on a global scale. The blind growth of a
cowboy economy is no longer a viable proposition—even
though, as noted above, an astonishing number of
economists (and others) still cling to the belief that it is.
The accepted measure of success in a cowboy economy
is a large throughput. Throughput refers to the rate at
which dollars flow through the economy and, insofar as
dollar flow depends on the sale of physical goods rather
than services, to the speed with which natural resources
are converted into artifacts and rubbish. A conventional
indicator of throughput is the GNP.
Boulding has described a rational alternative to the
GNP-oriented cowboy economy, calling this alternative
the spaceman economy, in harmony with the concept of
Spaceship Earth. Consistent with the finiteness of this
planet's supply of resources and the fragility of the
biological processes that support human life, such an
economy would be nongrowing in terms of the size of the
human population, the quantity of physical resources in
use, and human impact on the biological environment.
The spaceman economy need not be stagnant, however;
human ingenuity would be constantly at work increasing
the amount of actual prosperity and well-being derivable
from the fixed amount of resources in use.
Quite the opposite of the cowboy economy, which
thrives on throughput, the spaceman economy would
seek to minimize the throughput needed to maintain its
stable stock of goods. This is an obvious goal for any
economy as regards population. A given population size
96
The economics of the coming Spaceship Earth.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 849
can be maintained by a high birth rate balanced by a high
death rate (high throughput) or by a low birth rate
balanced by a low death rate (low throughput). Most
people would agree that the low-throughput situation is
preferable. Applying this to material goods, the "birth
rate" is the production rate and the "death rate" is the
rate at which the goods wear out or become obsolete. A
given level of affluence, measured in terms of the stock of
goods per person, can be maintained by very different
levels of resource flow. Thus, a society with one refrig-
erator for ever}' three people can maintain this level of
affluence with refrigerators that need replacement every
ten years (high throughput) or every forty years (low
throughput).
Quality of life in a spaceman economy. Could
people's desires for material comforts and a high quality
of life be met in a spaceman economy? There are good
reasons to believe the answer is yes. With an unchanging
number of people, society's efforts can be devoted
entirely to improving conditions for the population that
exists, rather than to struggling to provide the necessities
of existence for new additions. Moreover, focusing
attention on the quality of a fixed stock of goods in a
spaceman economy is in many respects a more direct
route to prosperity than emphasizing throughput in a
cowboy economy. This is so because, as Boulding has
argued, quality of stock is often a better measure of
well-being than throughput. Most people would rather
own one Rolls Royce than a succession of Fords.
Furthermore, once a good diet, adequate housing,
clean water, sanitation facilities, and a certain basic level
of well-made material goods have been provided, quality
of life becomes largely a matter of the availability of
services and personal options. Services include educa-
tion, medical care, entertainment and recreation, fire and
police protection, and the administration of justice.
Services do involve the use of material resources and do
affect the environment. For example, commercial office
space, much of it associated with the provision of
services, is a major consumer of electricity for lighting,
heating, and air conditioning. Nevertheless, there is great
potential for improving and extending services while
reducing the associated material, energy, and environ-
mental demands.
850 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
Personal options consist of access to a variety of
landscapes, living accommodations, career possibilities,
cultural environments, recreational opportunities, inter-
personal relationships, degrees of privacy, and so forth.
Personal options are an important part of the quality of
an individual's life even when they are not exercised—it
pleases us to know we could live in the country, even
though we may choose to live in cities. Options also have
value beyond the preferences of the majority of people in
any given society. If the majority of citizens preferred an
urban environment, that would not be sufficient reason to
transform all living areas of the planet into urban
environments—this is tyranny of the majority. Even
those who enjoy neither canoeing nor golf should
concede that a society with room for golf courses and
free-flowing rivers is preferable to a society without those
options. It is even reasonable to suppose that in human
society diversity on a small scale (individual choice)
promotes stability on a large scale (society as a whole).
Insofar as personal options are part of quality of life,
the spaceman economy is a clear choice over the cowboy
economy. Population growth and the transformation of
an ever larger fraction of the biosphere to maintain the
growth of throughput are destroying options in the
United States now and for the future. By stabilizing the
population and reducing the level of environmentally
disruptive activities associated with throughput of re-
sources, the spaceman economy would preserve remain-
ing options; by focusing on services and finding new
ways that "people can live more gently on the Earth,"99 it
would create new ones.
( Converting to a spaceman economyjHow can the
world society make the transition from a cowboy econ-
omy to a spaceman economy? How do we get from here
to there?_(Population controfcof course, is absolutely,
essential, with an eventual target of a smaller population
than today's.100 Another task that must be faced squarely
is the ^redistribution of wealtl^ within and between
nations. Otherwise, fixing the quantity of physical goods
"See S. Page, Jr., and W. Clark, The new alchemy: How to survive in
your spare time.
lo
°See, for example, Emile Benoit, A dynamic equilibrium economy,
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 1976; Ehrlich and Ehrlich,
Population, resources, environment, 1st ed., p. 322.
in use would freeze the majority of human beings in
state of poverty.
Within rich countries such as the United States, the
problem could be alleviated by a relatively moderate,
amount of redistribution. Economist Herman Daly has
called for the establishment of a distributist institution,
which would limit the range of financial inequity in the
United States. He suggests establishing maximum and
minimum incomes, arguing, "Most people are not so
stupid as to believe that an income in excess of say
$100,000 per year has any real functional justifica-
tion . . . especially . . . when the high paid jobs are
also usually the most interesting and pleasant." He would
also limit personal and corporate wealth and then "put
responsible social Emits on the exercise of monopoly
power by labor unions, since the countervailing monop-
oly power of corporations will have been limited."101
The critical question, of course, is how to get arnnnH
the extraordinary power interests that would be unalter-_
ably opposed to maximum income limits and (if possible1)
even more opposed to direct taxation of wealth^ Greed
and the desire for power are extraordinarily strong forces
against any serious attempts to curb income and wealth,
and many conventional economists (with their hands
firmly clenched on Daly's symbolic rice) would oppose
such limitation on the grounds that it would kill the
incentive system that keeps the economy growing. Daly
suggests gradual implementation as a strategy—and
perhaps that could be made to work, since the principles
of progressive income taxation and some sort of "floor"
under individual income are rather well established in
our society. The real sticky wicket would be direct
taxation of wealth, since that would threaten the en-
trenched power of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Fords,
Kennedys, and countless other beneficiaries of enter-
prising and acquisitive ancestors. But once some system
of further redistribution were established in the United
States, it would then be justifiable to implement a
transition to a spaceman economy as quickly as possible.
In the poor countries, a degree of careful expansion of
productive activities—that is, continued economic
growth sufficient to raise per-capita living standards—as
""Testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress,
October 23, 1975, pp. 10 and 11; see also the book he edited, Toward a
steady-state economy.

well as massive transfers of goods and technical assis-
tance from the rich countries (see Chapter 15) will be
necessary before the notion of a spaceman economy can
be seriously entertained. It is clear that redistribution
alone would be insufficient to give all human beings an
acceptable standard of living—at least, acceptable by
today's DC standards. That would mean a per-capita
GNP of only about $1000, even if population size were
also frozen at 4 billion.
Reducing throughput. The strategy of converting
productive capacity from frivolous and wasteful enter-
prises to legitimate social needs should be accompanied,
even in the short term, by efforts to minimize the
throughput of resources associated with production.
Herman Daly has suggested a specific mechanism for
accomplishing such a reduction: putting strict depletion
quotas on the natural resources of the United States.102
That is, limits would be placed on the total amount of
each resource that could be extracted or imported by the
United States each year. This would not only directly
reduce the pressure Americans place on the resources of
the planet, but would also automatically generate a trend
toward recycling and pollution abatement. With re-
sources scarce (and thus expensive), a premium would be
placed on the durability of goods, recycling, and the
restriction of effluents (which often contain "resources"
not now economically recoverable). Environmental de-
terioration from the processes of resource extraction and
transport would be reduced, as would that resulting from
manufacturing resources into finished goods. Less en-
ergy is usually required to recycle materials than to start
anew from basic resources. And depletion quotas on
fossil fuels and fissionable materials would encourage the
frugal use of energy.
Limiting the amount of energy available would, of
course, also tend to limit the weight and number of
automobiles, encourage the use of mass transit, and
promote the substitution of efficient high-speed trains for
energetically wasteful short- and medium-haul jet air-
planes. As Daly notes, a basic system of depletion quotas
would have to be supplemented to some degree with such
102
The stationary state economy. See also his Toward a steady-state
economy, for expansion of these ideas.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 851
devices as taxes on effluents, but we agree with him that
operating at the resource rather than the rubbish end of
the system is fundamentally the better approach. It
requires controls at many fewer points and thus would be
simpler to institute, because it tackles the system where
the materials are still concentrated rather than dispersed.
One of the most difficult problems in implementing
the Daly system would be dealing with imports. Ob-
viously, quotas would have to be established on imported
raw materials, or the primary result of the system would
be merely to shift pressure from U.S. resources to the
resources of the rest of the world. If American manufac-
turers alone were strictly rationed, there would surely be
an upsurge in manufactured imports. Restrictions there-
fore would have to be placed on the import of manufac-
tured goods, perhaps based on their "resource content."
Those restrictions might best be put only on imports
from other developed countries to encourage them to
establish depletion quotas also. Restrictions could be
omitted for certain manufactured goods from less devel-
oped countries wherever it seemed that access to United
States markets would be a genuine economic help to the
exporter.
Another suggestion for a government system that
could be employed to limit throughput has been put
forward by two ecologists (described in Box 14-3). It is a
more complex system than Daly's, but has the big
advantage of making the public aware of the environ-
mental impact of human activities.
Daly claims that cornucopians should make no object-
ion to schemes that limit resource depletion, for they are
eternally assuring us that technological progress (such as
substitutions for depleted resources) would be
encouraged by rising resource prices, and that such
advances would make resource supplies virtually infi-
nite.103 Since depletion quotas would increase the price
incentives, they could be viewed as a test of the faith of
the technological optimists—a test that would simulta-
depletion quotas would increase the price incentives,
they could be viewed as a test of the faith of the
technological optimists—a test that would simulta-
neously conserve our resource heritage in case not
enough technological rabbits appear from the hat.
101
See, for example, H. E. Goeller and A. Weinberg, The age of
substitutability.
 BOX 14-3 A Novel Scheme for Limiting Environmental Deterioration
Two Australian ecologists, Walter E. Westman
and Roger M. Gifford, have put forth a novel
suggestion for maintaining the quality of the
environment at any level desired by society.*
They propose establishing a money-independent
"price" on every activity that has a clear en-
vironmental impact. The basic nonmonetary
unit would be the natural resource unit (NRU).
NRUs would be distributed equally among
individuals and by special means to business
firms, government entities, and nonprofit
organizations.
The overall level of environmental impact
would be regulated by government establish-
ment of both the total yearly allocation of NRUs
and the price in NRUs of every good, service,
and activity of environmental significance. This
would lead in effect to a "rationing" of rights to
pollute, destroy habitats, add to population
pressure, or extract natural resources.
The advantages of such a system are nu-
merous. Open, rather than covert, decisions on
the quality of the environment would be made.
Since NRUs would not be transferable, the
system would be equitable—the rich would not
be allowed greater per-capita impact than the
poor. Individuals, however, would be able to
accumulate NRUs throughout their lives and
* Environmental impact: Controlling the overall level.
Daly summarized his distributive and throughput-
limiting proposals as follows:
In spite of their somewhat radical implications, these
proposals are based on impeccably respectable conser-
vative premises: private property and the free market.
If private property is good, then everyone should share
in it; and, making allowances for a range of legitimate
inequality, no one should be allowed to hog too much
of it, lest it become the instrument of exploitation
rather than the barrier to exploitation that was its
classical justification. Even orthodox economic theory
has long recognized that the market fails to deal
adequately with depletion, pollution, and distribution.
These proposals supplement the market at its weak
points, allowing it to allocate resources within imposed
could determine how to spend them free of
arbitrary government decision-making. It might
be possible, for instance, for an individual to
have a second child or to fly a light aircraft 100
hours per year, but not both. Or one might
decide to have an air-conditioned house, but if
so, an overseas vacation might be possible only
once every ten years. Instead of direct constraints
being placed by society on activities, each per-
son's life-style would be partially determined by
a series of environmental trade-oifs of his or her
own choosing.
On the debit side would be the enormous
bureaucratic problem of setting up the equiva-
lent of a second monetary system, the great
problem of assigning reasonable values to goods
and activities, and the inevitable corruption and
scheming that institution of such a plan would
induce. Its authors present a most interesting
discussion of its details and offer it in the full
knowledge that it is not politically feasible at
present. But it is hard to disagree with one of
their major conclusions: "Although involving
more planning and more governmental regula-
tion than is currently deemed feasible or accept-
able, we believe the mechanism would lead to
less restriction of personal freedom in a steady-
state society than would the current trend toward
unsystematic imposition of governmental
regulations."
ethical and ecological limits.104
Much additional effort by economists and others will
be required to work out details of the changes required in
order to minimize throughput in the economic system.
One further step, however, is already clear. Both before
and after depletion quotas are established, ways must be
found to control advertising. Advertising plays a key role
in promoting growthmania in the DCs. In those nations
the basic human needs for food, clothing, shelter, medi-
cal care, and education are being met for perhaps 90
percent of the populations. In order to keep those
economies growing, therefore, new "needs" must be
created. E. F. Schumacher has written, "The cultivation
1041975 testimony, p. 12.
 CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 853

and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is Of course, the whole employment problem would be
also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase badly aggravated if society attempted to discontinue too
of needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside abruptly those jobs that are unnecessary or socially and
forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore environmentally destructive. Maintaining some of those
creates existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can activities is probably necessary in the short run while
one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which changes in employment patterns are worked out. But
are the ultimate cause of strife and war."105 now is the time to start planning and maneuvering to
phase out both disguised unemployment and destructive
The employment problem. Redirecting pioduction products without damaging society and without creating
into more useful channels and reducing the throughput enormous levels of overt unemployment.
associated with production will entail considerable re- The transition should be greatly assisted by the
training and temporary unemployment in the work force. obvious potential for expanded employment in services
These problems will be all the more difficult in the
such as health care and education (including adult
United States because of the unemployment problem
education); in developing energetically efficient trans-
that already exists. The 4 to 10 percent unemployment
portation systems for people and freight; in perfecting
figures commonly quoted as the economy cycles between
and deploying solar and other environmentally desirable
boom and recession do not reveal the true seriousness of
energy technologies; in recycling and pollution-control
the problem. First of all, this overt unemployment is very
industries; in environmental improvement activities such
unevenly distributed in the population. Racial minor-
as reclamation of strip-mined land, reforestation, and the
ities, young workers, women, and, above all, young construction of urban parks; in converting the food
minority workers suffer disproportionately. The pressure
production system to more wholesome, less wasteful and
of unemployment at the younger end of the labor pool is
energy-consumptive practices; and in the development,
probably a major reason that American society has been
production, and distribution of better contraceptives.106
so rigid about retirement around the age of 65. Many
The transition should also be eased somewhat because
talented people are removed from the labor force even
the numbers of new young job-seekers will begin to
though they may still be capable of ten years or more of
decline after 1980, because of the smaller number of
productive work and do not wish to be "put out to
births in the United States in the 1960s compared to the
pasture." The enforced separation of older people from
1950s. And, if the trend of past decades in which workers
their economic lives also clearly contributes to their
have been increasingly replaced by fuel-burning ma-
general problems.
chinery is reversed, the result obviously will be more
Added to these components of the employment picture
jobs.
is disguised unemployment: people doing jobs that are
In the longer term, even with greater use of labor
either unnecessary or detrimental to society, or both.
instead of machines in some areas of the economy, the
Anyone familiar with government, big business, univer-
solution to the employment problem may well require a
sities, the military, or any large bureaucracy, knows how
reduction in the amount of work done by each worker in
many people are just doing busywork or pushing paper.
order to create more jobs. Gradually shortening the work
When those people are combined with workers who are
week (ultimately to twenty-five hours or less) or decreas-
engaged in such fundamentally counterproductive activ-
ing the number of work weeks per year (companies could
ities as building freeways, producing oversized cars and
have different spring-summer and fall-winter shifts)
unneeded appliances, devising deceptive advertising, or
would accomplish this. There would be more time for
manufacturing superfluous weapons systems, the
leisure, which might be better enjoyed by a more
number of people who are unemployed, underemployed,
educated population. There would also be more time for
or misemployed is seen to make up a substantial portion
people both to obtain that education and to put it to good
of the work force.
105 106
'Small is beautiful, p. 31. See, for example, Patrick Heffernan, Jobs and the environment.
856 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT

within the agricultural sector—namely, the declining system. At least in theory, then, a transition to such
efficacy of pesticides with the development of resistance management could be accomplished with a net gain of
in pests—demanded greater attention to alternative jobs in the economy, although many individuals would
methods of pest control. The committee was especially certainly have to be retrained.
concerned with the impact of regulation on the develop-
ment of new technologies to replace the conventional
Economics versus environmental reality. Defen-
broad-spectrum chemicals that have dominated the pest-
sive reactions have also come from other industries
control scene since 1950. It is clear, of course, that the
whose activities contribute heavily to pollution. Repre-
required technologies are unlikely to be generated within
sentatives of the inorganic-nitrogen-fertilizer industry
the chemical industry. The NAS report went on to point
have given extensive testimony before Congress, most of
out:
which confirmed the belief of many biologists that the
The products produced by the chemical industry industry just cannot (or does not want to) grasp the
appear admirably to meet the economic goals that we dimensions of the problems that result from failure to
assume dominate the decision-making processes in maintain an adequate supply of humus in the soil.
private industry. Unfortunately, the sole example of Manufacturers of fluorocarbons and aerosol cans have
overlap between the properties desired by the industry
vigorously lobbied against restrictive legislation. Makers
and those of the most promising alternatives would
of nonreturnable containers and poisonous food addi-
seem to be the observation that the industry favors
short persistence over long by a wide margin. Con- tives have fought to continue marketing their products.
versely, however, industry favors a broad spectrum of The list is both interminable and understandable; no
biological activity over a narrow spectrum by almost person or corporation likes to see income or economic
the same margin.1'' survival threatened.
It is most difficult to protect the environment when
In short, a compound that must be repeatedly applied,
economists, industries, and government agencies team up
that kills natural enemies, and produces rapid evolution
to wreak havoc, as they did, in effect, in the case of the
of resistance is preferred by pesticide manufacturers—
supersonic transport. Building and marketing a com-
merely because, in the process of not working, it can be
mercial SST was "justified" in the United States largely
recommended in ever-increasing doses and eventually
on the grounds that it was needed economically to protect
can be replaced by another ecological sledgehammer
the balance of payments. President Richard M. Nixon, in
marketed by the same industry. Pest-control techniques
endorsing the nation's SST program in 1969, stated, "I
that were truly effective, of course, would be a disaster
want the United States to continue to lead the world in
for the pesticide industry.
air transport." The economic penalties that would be
Implementation of one regulatory recommendation of
incurred from damage caused by sonic booms were
the NAS study, that the availability of alternatives should
probably not included in the administration's consider-
influence registration judgements, would be another
ation of whether to proceed with the project, nor were the
serious blow for the industry, as well as a major step
psychological and emotional damages people would
toward protecting humanity from its activities. Tougher
suffer, nor the possible effects on the world's climate
regulations quite likely would cause some decline in
(which themselves might cause heavy economic damage)
traditional firms involved in manufacturing pesticides.
from the operation of these high-altitude jets. Indeed,
Fortunately, as noted in Chapter 11, ecologically sound
even the lethal possibility of reducing Earth's ozone
pest management (which would include sparing use of
shield took second place to the balance of payments.
chemicals integrated with other techniques) would be
Fortunately, a combination of factors, including in-
more labor-intensive than the present broadcast-spray
tensive lobbying on the adverse side effects of the SST by
environmental organizations and testimony by several
'"Ibid., vol. l,p. 139. distinguished economists that it was an economic boon-