ECOSCIENCE:

POPULATION,
RESOURCES,
ENVIRONMENT

PAUL R. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

ANNE H. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

JOHN P. HOLDREN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANY

San Francisco
 POPULATION, RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT: DIMENSIONS OF THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT /
Nor can the public-service functions of the environ-
ment be safely replaced by technology if technology
destroys them. Often the foresight, scientific knowledge,
and technological skill that would be required to perform
this substitution just do not exist. Where they do exist,
the economic cost of an operation on the needed scale is
almost invariably too high; and where the economic cost
at first seems acceptable, the attempt to replace environ-
mental services with technological ones initiates a vicious
circle: the side effects of the additional technology
disrupt more environmental services, which must be
replaced with still more technology, and so on.
THE PROSPECTS: TWO VIEWS
The foregoing brief survey of the dimensions of the
human predicament suggests a discouraging outlook for
the coming decades. A continuing set of interlocking
shortages is likely—food, energy, raw materials—gen-
erating not only direct increases in human suffering and
deprivation, but also increased political tension and
(perversely) increased availability of the military
wherewithal for LDCs to relieve their frustrations ag-
gressively. Resort to military action is possible, not only
in the case of LDCs unwilling to suffer quietly, but, with
equal or greater likelihood, in the case of industrial
powers whose high standard of living is threatened by
denial of external resources. The probability that con-
flicts of any origin will escalate into an exchange of
nuclear weapons, moreover, can hardly fail to be greater
in 1985's world of perhaps fifteen or twenty nuclear-
armed nations than it has been in the recent world of five.
The growth of population—very rapid in the LDCs,
but not negligible in most DCs, either—will continue to
compound the predicament by increasing pressure on
resources, on the environment, and on human institu-
tions. Rapid expansion of old technologies and the hasty
deployment of new ones, stimulated by the pressure of
more people wanting more goods and services per
person, will surely lead to some major mistakes—actions
whose environmental or social impacts erode well-being
far more than their economic results enhance it.
5
This gloomy prognosis, to which a growing number of
scholars and other observers reluctantly subscribes, has
motivated a host of proposals for organized evasive
action: population control, limitation of material con-
sumption, redistribution of wealth, transitions to tech-
nologies that are environmentally and socially less dis-
ruptive than today's, and movement toward some kind of
world government, among others. Implementation of
such action would itself have some significant economic
and social costs, and it would require an unprecedented
international consensus and exercise of public will to
succeed. That no such consensus is even in sight has been
illustrated clearly by the diplomatic squabbling and
nonperformance that have characterized major interna-
tional conferences on the environment, population, and
resources, such as the Stockholm conference on the
environment in 1972, the Bucharest Conference on
World Population in 1974, the Rome Food Conference
in 1974, and the Conferences on the Law of the Sea in the
early 1970s.
One reason for the lack of consensus is the existence
and continuing wide appeal of a quite different view of
civilization's prospects. This view holds that humanity
sits on the edge of a technological golden age; that cheap
energy and the vast stores of minerals available at low
concentration in seawater and common rock will permit
technology to produce more of everything and to do it
cheaply enough that the poor can become prosperous;
and that all this can be accomplished even in the face of
continued population growth. In this view—one might
call it the cornucopian vision—the benefits of expanded
technology almost always greatly outweigh the environ-
mental and social costs, which are perceived as having
been greatly exaggerated, anyway. The vision holds that
industrial civilization is very much on the right track, and
that more of the same—continued economic growth—
with perhaps a little luck in avoiding a major war are all
that is needed to usher in an era of permanent, worldwide
prosperity.'
'Outstanding proponents of this view include British economist
Wilfred Beckerman (Two cheers for the affluent society, St. Martin's Press,
London, 1974): British physicist John Maddox (The doomsday syndrome,
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1972); and American futurologist Herman
Kahn (Tltc next 2OO years, with William Brown and L«on
William Morrow, New York, 1976).

this, perhaps 2 micrograms is retained. Smokers may
absorb 0.2 micrograms per cigarette, making a pack per
day equivalent to twice the absorption in the diet. An
intake of 5 pans per million cadmium in air for 8 hours
delivers a lethal dose, and 1 part per million for 8 hours is
dangerous. The recommended Threshold Limit Value
(recommended not to be exceeded in work environments)
in the United States is 100 parts per billion (0.1 ppm),
although it is unlikely that this level is harmless. Part of
the cadmium problem is that the fraction not excreted
immediately has an exceedingly long half-life in the
body—around several hundred days—so that low doses
received over a long period can lead to accumulation of a
high body-burden. The U.S. drinking water standard for
cadmium is 10 parts per billion, a level that is not
infrequently exceeded.
Major toxic effects due to cadmium poisoning have
been documented in industrial workers and in villages in
Japan whose water supply was contaminated with drain-
age from a cadmium mine. Acute cadmium poisoning
received the name Itai-Itai or "ouch-ouch" disease in
Japan, because of the painfulness of the associated bone
and muscle abnormalities. Effects on people at lower
dose rates are still undocumented, but are suspected.
There is every reason to believe that cadmium is
accumulating steadily in the environment, and its known
characteristics as a persistent cumulative poison in the
body give much reason for concern.123
FLUORIDES
Fluoridation of public water supplies for partial protec-
tion against tooth decay is an emotion-charged subject.
The scientific evidence supporting the efficacy and safety
of mass fluoridation at the generally recommended level
of 1 milligram per liter of water (1 ppm) is not as good as
it ought to be, but neither is there convincing evidence
that it is harmful.124 Although there are certainly some
cranks in the antifluoridation school, there are also some
12!
For a discussion of the difficulties of dealing in an economic
framework with cadmium and pollutants with similar characteristics of
accumulation and longevity, see C. L. Nobbs and D. W. Pierce, The
economics of stock pollutants: The example of cadmium.
134
NAS, Fluorides; World Health Organization, Fluoride and human
health.
DIRECT ASSAULTS ON WELL-BEING / 575
serious and competent scientists and responsible laymen
who have been unmercifully abused because of the
position they have taken on this controversial issue.
Perhaps the strongest argument against mass fluoridation
of drinking water is that individual treatment with
fluoride is simple and can be supplied cheaply on public
funds for those wishing to use it.
There is no question that fluoride is toxic in high
concentrations, and fluoride pollution from a variety of
industrial activities is a significant problem. Fluorides
are discharged into the air from steel, aluminum, phos-
phate, pottery, glass, and brick works. These sources
together emit perhaps 150,000 tons of hydrogen fluoride
annually, and the same activities emit some tens of
thousands of tons of fluorides annually into water-
ways.125 Intentional addition of fluorides in fluoridation
programs makes a modest but not negligible contribution
of perhaps 20,000 tons per year to the human-caused
fluoride inputs to the environment.
The main problems encountered in trying to evaluate
health threats from fluoride pollution are familiar ones:
the boundary between safe and unsafe levels is a fuzzy
one; some individuals are more sensitive than others; and
fluorides may act in combination with other pollutants to
do damage at concentrations where the fluorides alone
would not be harmful.
Fluorides have been shown to concentrate in food
chains, and evidence suggesting a potential for signifi-
cant ecological effects is accumulating.126 Harm to
terrestrial plants and algae at concentrations encountered
in polluted environments has been documented, and the
ability of certain plants and microorganisms to synthe-
size particularly toxic organic fluorides has been demon-
strated. The toxicity of inorganic and organic fluorides to
soil organisms is essentially unexplored and is a potential
danger point.
CHEMICAL MUTAGENS
Many chemicals found in the environment are consid-
ered hazardous because they, like ionizing radiation
(discussed in the following section), are able to cause
12
'Edward Groth III, Fluoride pollution.
'"Ibid.
688 / UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL DISRUPTION
length of the growing season substantially. Not surpris-
ingly, then, there is a strong and well-documented
connection between weather and agricultural production
nationally and worldwide—"good" weather means high
yields; "bad" weather means low yields. Furthermore,
increased variability in weather can be as disruptive of
agriculture as changes in mean conditions.221
This phenomenon is the reason that no rapid change in
climate is likely to be an improvement; the crops grown
in a given region generally are quite closely adapted to
the typical weather pattern—the climate—in that region.
Therefore, any significant change tends to be, from the
standpoint of growing a particular crop, a change from
good weather to bad. Farming practices —time of plant-
ing, in particular—are also based on expected weather
patterns. Naturally, patterns of agriculture could be
modified to follow at least some kinds of climatic change,
if the change were gradual enough. Artificially induced
climatic change might be quite rapid, however, as indeed
some natural changes apparently have been in the past.
As discussed in Chapter 7, there is no leeway in the world
food situation to absorb a significant climate-induced
drop in production over broad areas of the world.
Whatever adjustments in crop characteristics and culti-
vation patterns might eventually be made in response to
rapid climate change would come too late to save
hundreds of millions from famine.
Another, somewhat more speculative respect in which
climate change could lead to great increases in human
misery is by altering the abundance and the geographical
distribution of various disease-producing organisms. As
is the case with crops, the degree to which such organ-
isms and the other organisms that transport them (vec-
tors) thrive is governed by such environmental condi-
tions as temperature and moisture, in terms of both
averages and extremes. Changes in climatic patterns
therefore might give certain of those organisms access to
human populations that have no prior evolutionary
experience with them and hence little or no resistance to
them. Alternatively, such changes might remove checks
on the abundance of organisms preexisting in an area, to
the extent that a previously minor hazard becomes a
22
'For more extensive discussion and more reviews of recent statistics,
see Chapter 7 and Schneider and Mesirow, The getiesis strategy.
plague. (This is true of pathogens that attack crops and
trees, as well as those that attack people.)222
It is obvious, of course, that sustained climatic change
either in the form of a new glaciation or a prolonged
wanning that involved substantial melting of the Green-
land and Antarctic ice sheets would change the pattern of
human settlement as well as that of agriculture. The
melting of half the volume of present ice sheets would
raise sea level by about 40 meters, enough to flood most
coastal cities and cover many fertile coastal plains. Such
extensive melting would require enormous amounts of
energy, however, and so could not occur overnight. If
climate changed so drastically that an additional 5
percent of all the solar energy now reaching Earth's
surface were absorbed in the melting of ice (compared to
the fraction of a percent presently absorbed in summer
melting of ice that is restored in winter), sea level would
rise about 1.1 meters per year.223 A climate change great
enough to produce this result would damage world
agriculture so severely that the effect of the initial change
in sea level would hardly be noticed by comparison.
Intentional Modification
of Weather and Climate
The idea of influencing the weather intentionally dates
back to the rain dances and related rituals of many
nontechnological civilizations. Modifying the weather
by technological means, however, had its real beginnings
in 1946, when it was demonstrated that seeding clouds
with dry ice or silver iodide could produce precipitation
when none would have occurred naturally. Thirty years
later, rainmaking was rather widely practiced in some
parts of the world, but many details of its effectiveness
and side effects remained controversial. Rainmaking
works under some meteorological conditions but not
under others; sometimes the attempt may actually pro-
222
See ]. M. May, Influence of environmental transformation in
changing the map of disease, in The careless technology, Farvar and
Milton, eds.; G. H. Hepting, Climate and forest diseases, in Man's impact,
Matthews, Kellogg, and Robinson, eds., pp. 203-226.
223
This figure is readily obtained from the following data: heat of
melting of ice, 330 megajoules per cubic meter of water produced; area of
oceans, 360 X 1012 square meters; solar energy reaching Earth's surface,
2.7 X 101B megajoules per year.

duce less precipitation than would have occurred natu-
rally. How far downwind of the seeding activity the
effects persist is not known, and the genuine possibility
of decreasing needed rainfall on neighboring regions
(including neighboring nations) poses serious political
problems.224
Seeding has been used not only to produce rain, but
also, under varying circumstances, to dissipate cold fog
(by initiating formation of ice crystals that fall out), to
suppress hail (by fostering formation of many small
particles rather than fewer large ones), and to steer
hurricanes and/or weaken the winds associated with
them. These measures, too, have the potential for inad-
vertent side effects and for transferring bad weather to
one's neighbors. Indeed, Honduras blamed its disastrous
hurricane (Fifi) of 1974 on just such activity by the
United States, although there is no evidence to support
the claim and the United States weather bureau denied it.
The practice of altering hurricanes contains the re-
markable possibility that intentional weather modifica-
tion on one scale will lead to unintentional climate
modification on another. This is so because those tropical
storms play a crucial role in the global climatic balance
by transporting energy from the warm tropics into the
cooler middle latitudes. Systematic disruption of that
function would unquestionably produce significant al-
terations of climate over large regions, in forms not now-
predictable in detail.
Intentionally modifying not merely the local phenom-
ena that make up the weather, but also the climate over
large regions, has been discussed for years. We might
hope that the rather primitive state of knowledge con-
cerning climatic machinery and how civilization may
unintentionally be modifying it would discourage all
groups from any deliberate intervention for a long time
to come, but governments and other bodies have all too
often shown themselves incapable of sensible restraint.
Among the schemes that have been mentioned are:
sprinkling soot on the Arctic sea ice to melt it, causing
warmer but probably more snowy winters in the Arctic
224
For good introductions to the subject of weather modification,
see National Academy of Sciences, Weather and climate modification:
Problem!, and prospects, 1966, and Weather and climate modification:
Proble»is and progress, 1973, Washington, 0.C-
DISRUPTION OF ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS / 689
region; damming the Bering Strait, another way of
causing the Arctic sea ice to melt; damming the Gulf
Stream between Florida and Cuba; and creating a layer
of stratospheric dust to counteract global warming due to
carbon-dioxide buildup.225 In all these cases, present
knowledge is inadequate to show that the unintended
consequences would not exceed the intended ones.
Naturally, the possibility of using weather modifica-
tion as a weapon has not escaped the notice of military
planners. The only known instance of actual use of such
techniques, as of 1977, was the use of cloud seeding by
the United States in Vietnam between 1967 and 1972.
The aim of those operations was to inhibit the movement
of troops and supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The
actual physical effect was probably minimal: 5 or 6
centimeters may have been added to the typical monsoon
rainfall of about 50 cm.226 The international political
impact of the precedent of American use of weather as a
weapon may be much greater.
As understanding of climatic processes increases, the
possibilities of misusing the new knowledge for weap-
onry become more awesome. The possibility of using
chemicals to poke holes deliberately in another nation's
ozone shield is now obvious enough, and intentional
manipulation of storms and droughts does not seem
entirely farfetched. Geophysicist Gordon MacDonald
has emphasized the possibility that environmental war-
fare using climate modification could be carried out
covertly over a period of years without the victims' being
aware of the cause of their misfortunes.227
The potential for destruction, both intentional and
inadvertent, associated with climatic warfare is second
only to that of biological and nuclear war (and even this
ranking may eventually prove to be questionable). It is
therefore of the greatest importance to outlaw the use of
weather- and climate-modification weapons by interna-
tional agreement, notwithstanding the obvious difficul-
ties of monitoring and enforcement. The Soviet Union
and the United States submitted a joint proposal for a
22s
See Kellogg and Schneider, Climate stabilization.
"The Vietnam operations and other important elements of military
weather modification are described in G. J. F. MacDonald, Weather as a
weapon, Technology Review, vol. 78, no. 1 (Oct./Nov. 1975), pp. 57-63.
22'Ibid.
1
 690
pact prohibiting environmental warfare to the Geneva
disarmament talks in August 1975. The pact would rule
I out "military or other hostile use of environmental
modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting
or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage, or
injury to another state."228 This wording would preclude
not only modification of weather and climate for military
purposes, but also the intentional production of earth-
quakes, tidal waves, and ecological imbalances of various
kinds.
THERMONUCLEAR WARFARE
Much has been written, especially by military theoreti-
cian Herman Kahn, on the effects of thermonuclear
warfare, the possibilities of limited thermonuclear war-
fare, and so on.229 Since modern societies seem bent on
continuing to prepare for such conflicts, we have little
sympathy for those of Kahn's critics who feel that it is
immoral to try to analyze the possible results. It would be
pleasant (but probably incorrect) to assume that if
everyone were aware of the terrible magnitude of the
devastation that could result from a nuclear war, the
stockpiles of fission and fusion weapons would soon be
dismantled. This does not mean that Kahn's analysis is
sound—quite the contrary. It has the major flaw of
grossly underrating the possible environmental conse-
quences of those projected wars. In addition to the
instantaneous slaughter of millions of people and the
demolition of property, the effects of any large thermo-
nuclear exchange would inevitably constitute an enor-
mous ecological and genetic disaster—especially for a
world already on the edge of nutritional and environ-
mental catastrophe.
Consider the effects that even a rather limited nuclear
exchange among the United States, USSR, China, and
various European powers would have on the world food
supply. Suddenly, international trade would be greatly
reduced, and the developed world would be in no
position to supply either food or technological aid to the
less developed. No more high-yield seed, no more
fertilizers, no more grain shipments, no more tractors, no
225
Ibid., p. 63.
329
Herman Kahn, On tJiermonuclear war; and On escalation.
more pumps and well-drilling equipment, trucks, other
manufactured products or machines would be delivered.
Similarly, the LDCs would not be able to send DCs
minerals, petroleum, and food products. The world
could be pitched into chaos and massive famine almost
immediately, even if most countries were themselves
untouched by the nuclear explosions.
But of course no country would be left unscathed. All
over the world radiation levels would rise, possibly
preventing cultivation of crops in many areas. Blast
effects and huge fires burning in the Northern Hemi-
sphere would send large amounts of debris into the
atmosphere, conceivably dwarfing the volcanic and pol-
lution effects previously discussed.230 The entire climate
of the Earth could be altered, especially since large holes
would probably be punched in the ozone layer. In many
areas, where the supply of combustible materials was
sufficient, huge fire storms would be generated, some of
them covering many hundreds of square kilometers in
heavily forested or metropolitan areas.
Something is known about such storms from-experi-
ence during World War II. On the night of July 27,1943,
Lancaster and Halifax heavy bombers of the British
Royal Air Force dropped 2200 metric tons of incendiary
and high-explosive bombs on the city of Hamburg.
Thousands of individual fires coalesced into a fire storm
covering about 15 square kilometers. Flames reached
4500 meters into the atmosphere, and smoke and gases
rose to 12,000 meters. Winds, created by huge updrafts
and blowing in toward the center of the fire, reached a
velocity of more than 240 kilometers per hour. The
temperature in the fire exceeded 787° C, high enough to
melt aluminum and lead. Air in underground shelters
was heated to a point where, when they were opened and
oxygen was admitted, flammable materials and even
corpses burst into flame. The shelters had to cool for ten
days to two weeks before rescuers could enter.
Anyone interested in further details of what a small
fire storm is like is referred to Martin Caidin's excellent
book, The night Hamburg died.2*1 From his account, we
2M
The extent of fires is a matter of some controversy—see W. S.
Osburn, Jr., Forecasting long-range ecological recovery from nuclear
attack.
231
Ballantine, New York, 1960. For a literary view, see Kurt Von-
negut's Slaughterhouse five, which describes the results of a similar raid on
Dresden (Dell, New York, 1971).

can imagine the ecological consequences of generating
numerous fire storms and burning off a substantial
portion of the Northern Hemisphere. In areas where
conditions led to the development of fire storms, the
removal of all vegetation would not be the only effect; the
soil might be partly or completely sterilized, as well.
There would be few plant communities nearby to donate
the seeds for rapid repopulation, and rains would wash
away the topsoil. Picture what now happens on defo-
liated California hills during the winter rains, and then
imagine the vast loads of silt and radioactive debris being
washed from immense bare areas of northern continents
into offshore waters, the site of most of the ocean's
productivity. Consider the fate of aquatic life, which is
especially sensitive to the turbidity of the water, and
think of the many offshore oil wells and supertankers that
would be destroyed by blast in the vicinity of large cities
and left to pour their loads of crude oil into the ocean.
Think of the runoff of solvents, fuels, and other chemi-
cals from ruptured storage tanks and pipelines. And
radioactivity from nuclear reactors, fuel reprocessing
plants, and other nuclear-power facilities would be
added to that of the bombs themselves.
Ecosystems would be assaulted as they are assaulted in
peacetime (as we have seen, radiation stresses do not
differ greatly from others), but the scale of the assault and
its rapidity would be unprecedented. Recovery would
inevitably be much slower than from other kinds of
ecocatastrophes.232
The human survivors of any large-scale thermonuclear
war would face a severely devastated environment. If a
full-scale war were waged in which a substantial portion
of United States and Soviet weapons were detonated,
most of the survivors would be in the Southern Hemi-
sphere. They would lack many of the tools needed to
maintain a modern civilization, since much technology
would be irretrievably lost. If the technological structure
of society were destroyed, it would be almost impossible
for survivors to rebuild it because of resource depletion.
Most high-grade ores and rich and accessible fossil-fuel
deposits have long since been used up. Technology itself
232
E. P. Odum, Summary, in Ecological effects of nuclear mar, G. M.
Woodwell, ed., pp. 69-72. See also NAS, Long-term, which is incomplete
and has poorly-thought-through conclusions but contains useful data and
bibliographies.
DISRUPTION OF ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS / 691
is necessary for access to what remains. Only if enough
scrap metals and stored fuel remained available would
there be a hope of reconstruction, which would have to
begin promptly before those stocks rusted, drained away,
or were lost in other ways. Even more serious, banks of
plant genetic material would certainly be destroyed or
lost through lack of care, making the regeneration of
high-yield agriculture difficult or impossible. From what
is known of past large disasters, it seems unlikely that
survivors, without outside assistance, would be able
psychologically to start rapid reconstruction.233
If there were extensive use of nuclear weapons in both
hemispheres, or if chemical or biological weapons were
used simultaneously, the survivors would probably con-
sist of scattered, isolated groups. Such groups would face
genetic problems, since each would possess only a small
part of humanity's genetic variability and would be
subject to a further loss of variability through inbreed-
ing. Studies of human populations have shown that
inbreeding increases infant mortality. In addition, it
appears that prenatal damage increases linearly with the
degree of inbreeding.234 In such a situation it is proble-
matical whether culturally and genetically deprived
groups of survivors could persist in die face of much
harsher environmental conditions than they had faced
previously. In short, it would not be necessary to kill
every individual with blast, fire, radiation, nerve gas, and
padiogens in order to force Homo sapiens into extinction.
ECOLOGICAL ACCOUNTING
Many existing and potential forms of ecological disrup-
tion have been described in this chapter, sometimes in
rather technical detail. It may be helpful at this point to
summarize the relevance of these considerations to
human welfare. In other words, just what could an
ecological catastrophe mean for human beings?
The various ways in which the biosphere supports
human life were outlined at the beginning of the chapter.
233
There is a fascinating literature on reactions to and recovery from
catastrophes. See A. H. Barton, Communities in disaster: A sociological
analysis of collective stress situations, especially the last chapter.
•""L. L. Livaili-Siorza and W. F. Bodmer, The genetics of Human
populations, W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1971.
71 6 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
many benefits of specialization and division of labor, of
economies of scale in the use of technology, of cultural
diversity, and so on. The optimum population size, then,
lies somewhere between the minimum and maximum
possible sizes.
THE OPTIMUM POPULATION
Biochemist H. R. Hulett has made some interesting
calculations bearing on the subject of an optimum
population. He assumed that the average United States
citizen would not consider the resources available to him
or her excessive, and he then divided estimates of the
world production of those resources by the American
per-capita consumption. On this basis, Hulett concluded:
" . . . it appears that (about) a billion people is the
maximum population supportable by the present agri-
cultural and industrial system of the world at U.S. levels
of affluence."1 By Hulett's criteria, then, even ignoring
depletion of nonrenewable resources and environmental
deterioration, the population of the Earth is already 3
billion people above the present optimum.
Since decisions that determine population size are
made, consciously and unconsciously, by the people alive
at a given time, it seems reasonable to define the optimum
size in terms of their interests. Accordingly, one might
define the optimum as the population size below which
well-being per person is increased by further growth and
above which well-being per person is decreased by
further growth.
Like most definitions of elusive concepts, this one
raises more questions than it answers. How is well-being
to be measured? How does one deal with the uneven
distribution of well-being and particularly with the fact
that population growth may increase the well-being of
some people while decreasing that of others? What if a
region is overpopulated in terms of one aspect of
well-being but underpopulated in terms of another?
What about the well-being of future generations? One
cannot define an optimum population for any part of the
'Optimum world population. Note that there is a large volume of
conventional economic literature in existence that focuses on a narrowly
denned economic optimum. This literature is of little interest to the
discussion here (see, e.g., Spengler, Optimum population theory).
world at any time without reference to the situation in all
other parts of the world and in the future.
No complete answers are possible, but it is time that
such questions be seriously addressed. The following
observations are intended mainly to stimulate further
discussion.
Priorities
The physical necessities—food, water, clothing, shel-
ter, a healthful environment—are indispensable ingredi-
ents of well-being. A population too large and too poor to
be supplied adequately with them has exceeded the
optimum, regardless of whatever other aspects of well-
being might, in theory, be enhanced by further growth.
Similarly, a population so large that it can be supplied
with physical necessities only by the rapid consumption
of nonrenewable resources or by activities that irrevers-
ibly degrade the environment has also exceeded the
optimum, for it is reducing Earth's carrying capacity for
future generations. If an increase in population decreases
the well-being of a substantial number of people in terms
of necessities while increasing that of others in terms of
luxuries, the population has exceeded the optimum for
the existing sociopolitical system. The same is true when
population increase leads to a larger absolute number of
people being denied the necessities—even if the fraction
of the population so denied remains constant (or even
shrinks).
It is frequently claimed that the human population is
not now above the optimum because if the available food
(and other necessities) were in some way equitably
distributed there would be enough for everyone.2 But it
is only sensible to evaluate optimum population size in
terms of the organisms in the population under consid-
eration, not in terms of hypothetical organisms. Thus, if
an area of Africa has more lions than the local prey can
support and the lions are starving, then there is an
overpopulation of lions even though all the lions could
have enough to eat if they evolved the capacity to eat
grass.
Grossly unequal distribution of food and other goods
is characteristic of contemporary Homo sapiens just as
2
For example, Barry Commoner, How poverty breeds overpopulation
(and not the other way around), Ramparts, August/September 1975.

Their results showed that some form of disaster
lies ahead unless all the factors are controlled:
population growth, pollution, resource con-
sumption, and the rate of capital investment
(industrialization).
This was hardly a new conclusion in 1972.
Indeed, the argumentation and evidence for this
general world-view had been accumulating
steadily since the time of Mai thus (see Box 13-2),
and a rash of books drawing substantially similar
conclusions had appeared in the decades follow-
ing World War II.C What accounts, then, for the
extraordinary response—both disparaging and
laudatory—that these views elicited when they
appeared in Limits to Growth in 1972?
Several factors contributed: first, the status of
M.I.T. as virtually a worldwide synonym for
careful scientific analysis; second, the sponsor-
ship of the project by the vaguely mysterious
Club of Rome, an international collection of
influential academicians, industrialists, and pub-
lic figures; third, the extraordinarily direct and
lucid style with which the authors presented
their conclusions; and fourth, the major role
played in the underlying analysis by a "computer
model" of the world.
Of these factors, the last was almost certainly
the most important. The book appeared at a time
when the capabilities of large computers had
already become part of public conventional
wisdom (or folklore), but when the idea that
computer results are no better than the informa-
tion fed into them was not so widespread. Thus
the notion that a computer had certified the
bankruptcy of growth gave the conclusion public
credibility, and at the same time provided a
target for indignant economists and others who
saw the outcome as an illustration of the syn-
drome known in the computing trade as "gar-
bage in, garbage out.'"*
How do computer models in general, and the
Limits model in particular, actually work? The
'For example, William Vogt, Road to survival; Fairfield
Osbome, Our plundered planet; Harrison Brown, The challenge
of man's future; Georg Borgstrom, The hungry planet, Mac-
millan, New York, 1965; Paul Ehrlich, The population bomb,
Ballantine, New York, 1968; Preston Cloud, ed., Resources and
man, W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1969; P. R. Ehrlich and
A. H. Ehrlich, Population resources, environment, W. H.
Freeman, San Francisco, 1970.
'See, for example, K. Kaysen, The computer that printed out
W*O*L*F, Foreign Affairs, 1972, which tries but fails to stick
the "garbage" label on Limits to Growth, missing the point in
major respects.
HUMANITY AT THE CROSSROADS / 731
Resources*-^
Food per capita
1900 1950 2000 2100
FIGURE 12-2
The "standard" world model run assumes no major
change in the physical, economic, or social
relationships that have historically governed the
development of the world system. All variables
plotted here follow historical values from 1900 to
1970. Food, industrial output, and population grow
exponentially until the rapidly diminishing resource
base forces a slowdown in industrial growth.
Because of natural delays in the system, both
population and pollution continue to increase for
some time after the peak of industrialization.
Population growth is finally halted by a rise in the
death rate due to decreased food and medical
services. (After Meadows et al., 1972.)
idea behind computer modeling is to simulate in
a general way the behavior of complicated phys-
ical systems. The technique is used when the
situation of interest is too complicated to analyze
with equations solvable with pencil and paper, or
with laboratory or field experiments on a rea-
sonable scale; and when it is too time-consuming
or too risky simply to observe the real system and
see what happens. Systems or processes that meet
these conditions and that accordingly have been
studied with computer models include the global
meteorological system, various ecosystems, the
safety systems of nuclear reactors, the growth of
cities, and the evolution of galaxies.
In all such cases, models are constructed by
identifying what seem to be the most important
(Continued)

technology would reduce resource input and
pollutant output per unit of material standard of
living to zero.
The first assumption is contrary to all recent
experience; doublings of agricultural productiv-
ity have required triplings and quadruplings of
technological inputs. The second assumption is
impossible in principle since it violates the
second law of thermodynamics, one of the most
thoroughly verified laws of nature. All one could
safely conclude from this work is that Forrester's
model is "sensitive" to the introduction of mira-
cles into the assumptions. Presumably, the more
sophisticated model in Limits to Growth would
also be "sensitive" in this way, but that is hardly
a defect.
The most detailed critique of the Limits model
was performed by a group at the University of
Sussex, England, and was published together
with a reply by the authors of Limits of Growth in
a book called Models of Doom.11 The Sussex ^
critics accused the Limits group of leaving out
economics and social change, of underestimating
the power of technology, and of daring to make
policy recommendations on the basis of a flawed
model. The response of the Limits group was that
their model probably overestimated the effec-
tiveness of the price mechanism rather than
underestimated it, that evidence of the limita-
tions of technology has been accumulating rap-
idly, that in the absence of any perfect models
one must make policy recommendations with the
best ones available, and that social change (which
is hard to model) is precisely what they were
trying to stimulate by their recommendations.
On the issue of whether the model overstated or
understated the imminence of disaster, we might
add that the simplistic treatment of environmen-
tal risks probably understated the danger more
than other flaws overstated it.
Probably the most imposing attempt to con-
struct a more realistic model than that in Limits
was described in 1974 inMankindat the Turning
Point: The Second Report to the Club of Rome, by
M. Mesarovic and E. Pestel. This model divided
the world into ten political/geographical re-
gions, modeling each of these on five "strata": (1)
physical environment; (2) technology; (3) eco-
*H. Cole, C. Freeman, M. Jahoda, K. Pravitt, eds., Models of
doom. Universe Books, New York, 1973.
HUMANITY AT THE CROSSROADS / 733
nomic systems; (4) institutional and social re-
sponses; and (5) individual needs and responses.
Notwithstanding Turning Point's occasional
gratuitous disparagement of the oversimplifica-
tion in Limits to Growth (difficult to understand
in view of its obvious debt to the earlier work),
the conclusions were strikingly similar: continu-
ation of recent trends in population growth,
industrialization, and environmental disruption
will lead to disaster; deliberate and massive
social and economic change will be necessary-to
avoid this outcome. The added sophistication of
Turning Point's regional disaggregation, show-
ing the problems that can arise from such
interactions as competition among regions for
scarce resources, should be welcomed. At the
same time, it seems fair to say that the net effect
of this added degree of detail is to make the
prognosis more pessimistic than that in Limits,
not less so. Basically, regional disaster or nega-
tive interactions leading to wars seem more
imminent than a uniform global disaster, which
was the only kind the aggregated model in Limits
could reveal. (This, of course, is another conclu-
sion that many analysts have reached over the
years without benefit of computer modeling).
Obviously, the model in Turning Point is still
far from perfect. Certainly neither it nor other
computer models can be used to predict the
future in detail. Nevertheless, computer model-
ing seems a useful way to acquire or communi-
cate insights about the implications of present
trends, and it has the great advantage of requir-
ing that assumptions about relevant relationships
be made explicit. Surely this is an improvement
over the situation most likely to prevail when
people think about the future of a complicated
world—the "models" in their heads are full of
assumptions that are not only unstated but
perhaps even unrecognized. In short, those crit-
ics who believe the world cannot be modeled
should stop thinking about the future entirely,
for implicitly all who do are modeling in their
heads.
The purpose of caring at all where humanity is
going, of course, whether one finds out with or
without the aid of a computer, is not prediction
for its own sake. It is, rather, that if we do not like
the projected consequences of present trends and
values, we can take conscious action to change
course.
Of all things people are the most precious.
—Mao Tse Tung
Population Policies
Any set of programs that is to be successful in alleviating
the set of problems described in the foregoing chapters
must include measures to control the growth of the
human population. The potential goals of such measures
in order of possible achievement are:
1. Reduce the rate of growth of the population,
although not necessarily to zero.
2. Stabilize the size of the population; that is, achieve a
zero rate of growth.
3. Achieve a negative rate of growth in order to reduce
the size of the population.
Presumably, most people would agree that the only
humane means of achieving any of these goals on a global
basis is by reducing the birth rate. The alternative is to
737
CHAPTER 13
permit the death rate to increase, which, of course, will
inevitably occur by the agonizing "natural" processes
already described if mankind does not rationally reduce
its birth rate in time.
Even given a consensus that curbing population
growth is necessary and that limiting births is the best
approach, however, there is much less agreement as to
how far and how fast population limitation should
proceed. Acceptance of the first goal listed above requires
only that one recognize the obvious adverse conse-
quences of rapid population growth—for example, dilu-
tion of economic progress in less developed countries,
and aggravation of environmental and social problems in
both developed and less developed countries. Econo-
mists and demographers, many of whom will not accept
738 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
the third goal at all and ascribe no urgency to the second,
generally do espouse the first one (at least for the LDCs).
Accepting the second^goal simply means recognizing
that Earth's capacity to support human beings is limited
and that, even short of the limits, many problems are
related to population size itself rather than only to its rate
of growth. Accepting the idea that stabilizing the size of
the population is urgently necessary requires recognizing
that the limits are already being approached and that,
although technological and cultural change may eventu-
ally push the limits back somewhat, the prudent course is
to halt population growth until existing problems can be
solved. Virtually all physical and natural scientists accept
the ultimate inevitability of halting population growth,
and most of them accept the urgency of this goal. Much
of the first part of this book has been an exposition of why
the "inevitable and urgent" position is reasonable.
The most controversial goal is the third one listed
above—reducing the size of the human population.
Accepting this goal implies a belief that there is an
optimum population size and that this optimum has
already been exceeded (or will have been exceeded by the
time population growth can be stopped). It also implies
that each society has a right—indeed a responsibility—to
regulate its population size in reference to the agreed-
upon optimum. In a world where the right (and the
responsibility) of married couples to determine their own
family size has become a widely accepted notion only in
the past generation or two, the idea that nations have such
a right or obligation is a truly radical one. Unfortunately,
humanity cannot afford to wait another quarter century
for the idea to gain complete acceptance.
Given the threat to the environment posed by today's
population in combination with today's technology, and
given the menace this situation represents to an already
faltering ability to provide enough food for the people
now alive, it is clear that the human population is already
above the optimum size. (How/ar above the optimum is
more difficult to determine; see Chapter 12). It is, of
course, conceivable that technological and social change
will push up the optimum in the time it takes to bring
population growth to zero. More probably, however, the
population size will have to be reduced eventually to
below today's level if a decent life is to be assured for
everyone.
Whether this view of long-term necessity is accepted
or not, of course, the goal of any sensible population
policy for the immediate future is the same—to gain
control over growth. This chapter describes the recent
evolution of population policies, explores some potential
(but still largely unexploited) means of achieving such
control over population growth, and discusses the inter-
acting effects of other policies (especially development
policies) on population growth.
FAMILY PLANNING
An essential feature of any humane program to reguias
the size of the human population must be provision ::
effective means for individuals to control the number i^~
timing of births. This approach is commonly terrzez
"family planning," and family planning programs h=';
been introduced in many LDCs in the past two decades
with the goal of providing the means of birth control::
the people. These are the main population policies zc~
in existence.
The family planning movement, however, historically
has been oriented to the needs of individuals ST.:
families, not of societies. Although birth control :;
essential for achieving population control, family pla-
ning and population control are not synonymous. Before
proceeding to an examination of the important differ e~;c
between the two, some historical perspective on the
practice of birth control and the family planning move-
ment is in order.
Birth Control
Many birth control practices are at least as old as
recorded history. The Old Testament contains obvious
references to the practice of withdrawal, or coitus inter-
ruptus (removal of the penis from the woman's vagina
before ejaculation). The ancient Egyptians used crude
barriers to the cervix made from leaves or cloth, and even
blocked the cervical canal with cotton fibers. The ancient
Greeks practiced population control through their social
system as well as through contraception; they dis-
couraged marriage and encouraged homosexual rela-
 BOX 13-1 Institutionalized Infanticide in the Eighteenth Century*
Where the Number of lusty Batchelors is large,
many are the merry-begotten Babes: On these
Occasions, if the Father is an honest Fellow and
a true Church of England-Man, the new-born
Infant is baptized by an indigent Priest, and the
Father provides for the Child: But the Dissent-
ers, Papists, Jews, and other Sects send their
Bastards to the Foundling Hospital; if they are
not admitted, there are Men and Women, that for
a certain Sum of Money will take them, and the
Fathers never hear what becomes of their Chil-
dren afterwards . . . in and about London a
prodigious Number of Infants are cruelly mur-
dered unchristened, by those Infernals, called
Nurses; these detestable Monsters throw a
Spoonful of Gin, Spirits of Wine, or Hungary-
Water down a Child's Throat, which instantly
'This material is quoted from George Burrington's pamphlet
"An answer to Dr. William Brakenridge's letter concerning the
number of inhabitants, with the London bills of mortality,"
London, J.Scott (1757).
tionships, especially for men. The condom, or penis
sheath, dates back at least to the Middle Ages. Douching,
the practice of flushing out the vagina with water or a
solution immediately after intercourse, has had a simi-
larly long history. Abortion is a very ancient practice and
is believed to have been the single most common form of
birth control in the world throughout history, even
during the past century when it was illegal in most
countries. The simplest, most effective, and perhaps the
oldest method of birth control is abstention; but this
method seems to have been favored mainly by older men,
particularly unmarried members of the clergy.
Infanticide, which is viewed with horror today by
prosperous people in industrialized societies, has proba-
bly always been practiced by societies lacking effective
contraceptive methods.1 It was a rather common practice
among the ancient Greeks, and the Chinese and Japanese
are known to have used it for centuries, especially in
times of famine. In agrarian or warlike societies, female
infanticide has often been practiced to provide a greater
proportion of men or to consolidate upper classes. Only a
century or two ago, infanticide was widely practiced in
'Mildred Dickeman, Demographic consequences of infanticide in
man.
strangles the Babe; when the Searchers come to
inspect the Body, and enquire what Distemper
caused the Death, it is answered, Convulsions,
this occasions the Article of Convulsions in the
Bills of Mortality so much to exceed all others.
The price of destroying and interring a Child is
but Two Guineas; and these are the Causes that
near a Third die under the Age of Two Years,
and not unlikely under two Months.
I have been informed by a Man now living,
that the Officers of one Parish in Westminster,
received Money for more than Five Hundred
Bastards, and reared but One out of the whole
Number. How surprizing and shocking must this
dismal Relation appear, to all that are not
hardened in Sin? Will it not strike every one, but
the Causers and Perpetrators with Dread and
Horror? Let it be considered what a heinous and
detestable Crime Child-murder is, in the Sight
of die Almighty, and how much it ought to be
abhorred and prevented by all good people.
Europe in an institutionalized, although socially disap-
proved system sometimes called "baby farming" (Box
13-1).2
Infanticide rarely takes the form of outright murder.
Usually it consists of deliberate neglect or exposure to
the elements. Among the Eskimos and other primitive
peoples who live in harsh environments where food is
often scarce, infanticide was, until recently, a common
practice, as greater importance was placed on the survival
of the group than on the survival of an additional child.
There is a strong suspicion that female infanticide
persists in parts of rural India. It exists even in our own
society, especially among the overburdened poor, al-
though intent might be hard to prove. Certainly "masked
infanticide" is extremely common among the poor and
hungry in less developed countries, where women often
neglect ill children, refuse to take them to medical
facilities, and may even show resentment toward anyone
who attempts treatment. According to Dr. Sumner
Kalman of the Stanford University Medical Center, the
average poor mother in Colombia—where 80 percent or
more of a large family's income may be needed to provide
^William L. Langer, Checks on population growth: 1750-1850.

BOX 13-2 Thomas Robert Malthus, 1766-1834
The name Malthus and the terms Malthusian
and neo-Malthusian are so completely identified
with concern about population pressure that a
note about the man seems appropriate. Robert
Malthus enjoyed what was certainly one of the
happiest personal situations ever devised by
man; he was an eighteenth-century English
country gentleman of independent means. His
youth and early manhood were spent in the last
years of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, a
time when learned and wise men saw themselves
on the threshold of a world of concord among
men and nations in which want and oppression
would not exist. Man's imminent entry into this
paradise was to be achieved through his discov-
ery of the immutable Laws of Nature which were
thought to be such that they could be understood
by the human faculty of Reason. All discord,
want, and cruelty-were held to result from an
ignorance of these Laws, which led man to their
disobedience. It was an age of very great hope
when Nature and Reason were enshrined.
Malthus' father, Daniel, the very embodiment
of these values, was well connected in the
intellectual and philosophical circles of the time,
being a close associate of David Hume and a
correspondent, friend, and finally, an executor of
Jean Jacques Rousseau.
In 1784, after a preparation through home
tutoring, Malthus entered Cambridge, where in
1788 he graduated with first-class honors in
mathematics. With graduation he took Holy
Orders in the Church of England but remained
at Cambridge, where he achieved his M.A. in
1791 and became a Fellow of his College in 1793.
In 1796 he became curate of the church at
Albury, where his father resided, and settled
down to country life.
sterilization had become the single most popular method.
By 1970 one-quarter of American women over 30 either
were sterilized or their husbands were; by 1973, 23
percent of married couples of all ages relied on steriliza-
tion for birth control. Most of the women not using birth
control in the 1965 and 1970 surveys were subfertile,
pregnant, or planning to use contraceptives only when
their families were complete. Moreover, despite the
official position of the Roman Catholic church, Catholic
women in these surveys showed a level of use of
742
BHHBBBBHBI
These were the years of the French Revolu-
tion, years that Dickens called "the best of times,
the worst of times." Neither the Revolution's
war, internal and external, nor even its Terror yet
dampened the ambience of optimism that char-
acterized the world of thought. In 1793 William
Godwin published his Enquiry Concerning Po-
litical Justice and the next year saw the appear-
ance of the Marquis de Condorcet's Essay on the
Progress of the Human Spirit, both of which
sought to demonstrate that man's progress from
darkness, superstition, and cruelty into the light
of Concord through Reason was almost com-
plete. Daniel Malthus, like most of the thought-
ful men of the time, was much taken by these
writings, but Robert could not share his enthu-
siasm. Cambridge had not, as he put it, given him
"that command over his understanding which
would enable him to believe what he wished
without evidence." The concern that haunted
Robert was population growth. How could a
perfect society be achieved, let alone maintained,
if population was constantly pressing against
resources? Finally, Robert committed his mis-
givings to writing so he could present them
systematically to his father. Daniel was so im-
pressed with the arguments that he encouraged
his son to publish them, which he did anon-
ymously in 1798, under the tide, An Essay on the
Principle of Population as it Affects the Future
Improvement of Society With Remarks on the
Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet and
Oilier Writers. His speculations centered on the
proposition that man's "power of population is
indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to
produce subsistence. . . . " This he pro-
pounded with strict immutability and mathe-
matical regularity characteristic of the Natural
"artificial" contraceptives nearly as high as that of
non-Catholic women.8
How much of recent U.S. population growth was due
to unwanted births has been a matter for debate among
demographers. The National Fertility Study of 1965
indicated that 17 percent of all births between 1960 and
8
Charles F. Westoff, Changes in contraceptive practices among married
couples, in Westoff, ed. Toward the end of growth, population in America;
C. F. Westoff and L. Bumpass, The revolution in birth control practices
of U.S. Roman Catholics.
Laws of the Age of Reason as "population, when
unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical
ratio . . . " The first Essay challenged the vi-
sions of an age and the reactions were immediate
and predictably hostile, though many listened.
The controversy led to the publication in 1803 of
an enlarged, less speculative, more documented,
but equally dampening second essay. This one
was signed and bore the title, An Essay on the
Principle of Population or a View of its Past and
Present Effects on Human Happiness with an
Inquiry into our Prospects Respecting the Future
Removal or Mitigation of the Evils it Occasions.*
Malthus added to and modified the Essay in
subsequent editions, but it stood substantially
unchanged.
In 1804 he accepted a post at the East India
Company's college at Haileybury which pre-
pared young men for the rule of India, where he
remained until his death. His marriage, in the
same year, ultimately produced three children.
The ironies in Malthus' life are obvious. He
was one of eight children. He occupied a position
of comfort in an intellectual atmosphere of
optimism, but was compelled by the rigor of his
intellect to argue that nature condemned the bulk
of humanity to live in the margin between barely
enough and too little. Finally, his message as a
teacher fell on the ears of future colonial bu-
reaucrats who would guide or preside over the
destinies of India.
Since the conversations between Robert
Malthus and his father almost two centuries ago,
two sets of factors which were beyond their ken
*Reprinted with numerous other articles on the same topic in
Philip Appleman, ed., An essay on the principle of population.
1965 were not wanted by both parents and 22 percent
were not wanted by at least one parent. The incidence of
unwanted births was found, not unexpectedly, to be
highest among the poor, to whom birth control and safe
abortion were least available. Demographer Charles
Westoff estimated that eliminating such a high propor-
tion of unwanted births might reduce the U.S. rate of
natural increase by as much as 35 to 45 percent.9
9
L. A. Westoff and C. F. Westoff, From now to zero: fertility,
contraception and abortion in America.
have emerged. The first set combined to put
elements into a population-subsistence relation-
ship that Malthus could not have foreseen. On
one hand, the introjiuction of massive death
control procedures—immunization, purification
of drinking water, the control of disease-carrying
organisms., imprnvpfj sanitation, etc.—have re-
moved many of the checks that Malthus assumed_
as "natural." On the other hand, developments
in agriculture—high-yield plant strains, the
powering of equipment with fossil fuels, the use
of new techniques of fertilization and pest con-
trol—have massively increased food production.
The second set of factors has become widely
significant only in the last quarter century and
evident to most laymen only in the last decade.
These are the deleterious effects on the biosphere
resulting from agriculture and industry. With
our planet" s population bloated by death control
and sustained only poorly through an agriculture
based on nonrenewable resources and techniques
which buy short-run, high yields at the expense
of long-run, permanent damage to the "Earth's
power to produce subsistence," we face a pros-
pect inconceivable in the Age of Reason.
Malthus looked into a dismal future of "vice and
misery" begot of an uncontrolled, and, to his
mind, uncontrollable population growth. We
look into one where the dismal is compounded
with peril, not because humanity cannot control
its population, but because it will not.**
"This box is a modification of an essay supplied to us by
historian D. L. Bilderback. For further reading about Malthus,
see particularly John Maynard Keynes, Essays in biography; ].
Sonar, Malthus and his avrk, 2d ed., 1924; G. F. McCleary,
The Mahhusian population theory; and. of course, Malthus'
First and Second Essavs.
However, another distinguished demographer, Judith
Blake, pointed out that the high incidence of unwanted
births calculated by Westoff for the U.S. during 1960-
1965 was caused in large part by births occurring
disproportionately to women who already had several
children.10 During those six years, there were unusually
small proportions of first and second children born and
unusually large proportions of births of higher orders
(which are more likely to be unwanted). Hence, due to
'"Reproductive motivation and population policy.
743
744 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
the age composition of the population, the total propor-
tion of unwanted births in the U.S. was higher for those
years than it has been at other times.
During the late 1960s, such changes as the increasing
use of the pill and lUDs and relaxation of restrictions
against voluntary sterilization substantially reduced the
incidence of unwanted births of all orders. Results of the
1970 National Fertility Study confirmed this change,
indicating that only about 14 percent of births between
1965 and 1970 were unwanted.1' Most of the reduction
in fertility in that period was due to reductions in
unwanted and unplanned births. Since 1970, the exten-
sion of family planning services to the poor and the
reversal of abortion laws (see below) have evidently-
further extended the trend, as attested by record low
fertility rates.
There is no question that providing better contracep-
tives and simplified sterilization procedures, legalizing
abortion, and ensuring that all are easily available to all
members of the population reduces the incidence of
unwanted pregnancy—a socially desirable end in itself.
But even if a perfect contraceptive were available, the
contraceptive-using population probably never will be
perfect. People forget, are careless, and take chances.
They are also often willing to live with their mistakes
when the mistakes are babies. The complete elimination
of unwanted births therefore is probably not possible.
Nor does that alone account for the dramatic drop in the
U.S. birth rate in the early 1970s. Rather, it appears that a
significant change in family-size goals took place around
that time, especially among young people who were just
starting their families.12
Changing attitudes in the United States. Public
surveys taken between 1965 and 1972 revealed a growing
awareness of the population problem on the part of the
American public. In 1965, about half of the people
interviewed in a Gallup Poll thought that U.S. popula-
tion growth might be a serious problem; in 1971, 87
percent thought that it was a problem now or would be
by the year 2000. In January 1971 only 23 percent of
"Charles F. Westoff, The modernization of U.S. contraceptive prac-
tice; Trends in contraceptive practice: 1965-1973; The decline of
unplanned births in the United States.
I2
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fertility history and prospects of
American women: June 1975.
adults polled thought four or more children constituted
the ideal family size, in contrast to 40 percent in 1967.
One of the three most commonly given reasons for
favoring small families in 1971 was concern about
crowding and overpopulation; the others were the cost of
living and uncertainty about the future.
In October 1971, a survey sponsored by the U.S.
Commission on Population Growth and the American
Future disclosed a still greater level of concern about the
population explosion among Americans. Specifically, it
was discovered that:
1. Over 90 percent of Americans viewed U.S. popu-
lation growth as a problem; 65 percent saw it as a serious
•problem.
2. Over 50 percent favored government efforts to slow
population growth and promote population redistri-
bution.
3. Well over 50 percent favored family limitation even
if a family could afford more children.
4. About 56 percent favored adoption after births of
two biological children if more were desired.
5. Only 19 percent felt that four or more children
were the ideal number for a family; 45 percent favored
two or less. The mean was 2.33.
6. Only 8 percent thought the U.S. population should
be larger than its current size.
Concurrent with the rise in public concern about
population growth, ^ZeroJ'opulation Growth^ Inc., was
founded in late 1968 to promote an end to U.S. popula-
tion growth through lowered birth rates as soon as
possible and, secondarily, to encourage the same goal for
world population. The organization hoped to achieve
this by educating the public to the dangers of uncon-
trolled population growth and its relation to resource
depletion, environmental deterioration, and various so-
cial problems; and by lobbying and taking other political
action to encourage the development of antinatalist
policies in the government. Since its founding, ZPG has
taken an active role in promoting access to birth control
for all citizens, legalized abortion, women's rights, and
environmental protection. More recently it has begun to
explore changes in U.S. immigration policies. ZPG has
clearly been a factor in changing attitudes toward family
size and population control.

The growth of the \yr>tn^n's Hhpr^p'nn movement in
the U.S. since 1965 has almost certainly been another
important influence on attitudes (and thus on birthrates)
through its emphasis on opportunities for women to
fulfill themselves in roles other than motherhood. Many
young women today are refreshingly honest about their
personal lack of interest in having children and their
concern for obtaining opportunities and pay equal to
those of men. Such attitudes were virtually unthinkable
in the United States before 1965.
The women's movement was a potent force behind the
liberalization of U.S. abortion laws, and has also actively
campaigned for the establishment of low cost day-care
centers for children and tax deductions for the costs of
child care and household work. Such facilities and
policies lighten the costs of childbearing, but they also
encourage mothers to find work outside the home. The
experience of many societies suggests that outside em-
ployment of mothers discourages large families more
than the existence of child-care facilities encourages
them.
Both the growing concern about the population prob-
lem and the ideas of women's liberation doubtless
contributed to changing attitudes toward family size in
the 1970s. The economic uncertainty of the period may
also have been a factor. While it may never be possible to
determine the causes exactly, the achievement of subre-
placement fertility in the United States is one of the most
encouraging developments since 1970.
POPULATION POLICIES
IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
Although birth control in some form is almost univer-
sally practiced in developed countries, very few have
formulated any explicit national policies on population
growth other than regulation of migration. Some Euro-
pean countries still have officially pronatalist policies left
over from before World War II, when low birth rates led
to concern about population decline.
Of course, many laws and regulations enacted for
economic, health, or welfare reasons have demographic
effects: for instance, those governing the availability of
contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion; marriage and
POPULATION POLICIES / 745
divorce; income taxes and family allowances; and immi-
gration regulations.
The United States
The United States has no specific population policy,
although various laws, including those regulating immi-
gration and the administration of income taxes, have
always had demographic consequences. Most tax and
other laws were until recently implicitly pronatalist in
effect. In the late 1960s this situation began to change as
state laws restricting the distribution of contraceptive
materials and information were repealed and as abortion
laws were relaxed in several states. In 1970 Congress
passed the Family Planning Services and Population
Research Act, established the Commission on Population
Growth and the American Future, and passed the
Housing and Urban Development Act, which authorized
urban redevelopment and the building of new towns. In
1972, an amendment to the Constitution affirming equal
rights for women passed Congress, but as of 1977 it was
not yet ratified by the required number of states.
The Family Planning Services and Population Re-
search Act of 1970 had the goal of extending family
planning counselling and services to all who needed
them, particularly the poor. It also provided funds for
research on human reproduction. Some 3.8 million
women were being provided with family planning ser-
vices by 1975, 90 percent of whom had low or marginal
incomes. Another 1.9 million were being served by
private physicians. But it has been estimated that another
3.6 million eligible women (including about 2.5 million
sexually active teenagers) were still not receiving needed
help in the mid-1970s. Particularly neglected were
women in rural areas and small towns. Government-
subsidized services have been provided through local
health departments, hospitals, and private agencies (pri-
marily Planned Parenthood), most of which are located
in urban areas. A leveling-off of increases in clients in
1974 and 1975 over previous years has been attributed
mainly to lack of increased funding by the government
rather than to lack of need.13
1
'Marsha Corey, U.S. organized family planning programs in F 1974;
Joy G. Dryfoos, The United States national family planning program,
1968-74; The Alan Guttmacher Institute. Organized family planning
sen-ices in [he United States: FY 1975; T. H. Firpo and D. A. Lewis,
Family planning needs and services in nomnetropolitan areas.
746 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
Since 1967, the U.S. Agency for International Devel-
opment (AID) has been permitted to include family
planning assistance in its programs. Funding for overseas
family planning assistance has been steadily increasing
since then, and by fiscal 1976 had reached a level of
$201.5 million.14
The U.S. Commission on Population Growth and the
American Future presented its findings and recommen-
dations in 1972 in the areas of demographic develop-
ment, resource utilization, and the probable effects of
population growth on governmental activities.15 After
two years of study, the Commission concluded that there
were no substantial benefits to be gained from continued
population growth, and indeed that there were many
serious disadvantages. Besides recommending the liber-
alization of abortion laws and numerous other popula-
tion-related policies, the report strongly recommended
that contraceptives be made available to all who needed
them, including minors; that hospital restrictions on
voluntary sterilization be relaxed; that sex education be
universally available; and that health services related to
fertility be covered by health insurance. It also recom-
mended policies to deal with immigration, population
distribution, and land use. Perhaps most important, the
Commission stated:
Recognizing that our population cannot grow indefi-
nitely, and appreciating the advantages of moving now
toward the stabilization of population, the Commis-
sion recommends that the nation welcome and plan for
a stabilized population.16
Unfortunately, apart from expressing strong disagree-
ment with the recommendations on abortion, President
Nixon took no action on the Commission's report, nor
did President Ford show any inclination to do so. The
abortion question was made moot by the Supreme
Court's decision in 1973 (see section on abortion below).
Congress has contented itself mainly with expanding
U
AID in an Interdependent World, War on hunger special supplement,
June 1975; see Phyllis T. Piotrow, World population crisis: The United
States response for an historical account of U.S. involvement in overseas
population programs.
"Population and the American future.
^Population and the American future. By a "stabilized population," the
Commission meant a stationary one.
federal family planning services. Thus, although the
United States has not hesitated to advocate the establish-
ment of official antinatalist population policies in less
developed countries, it has not established one for itself.
The current low fertility of American women seems to
have taken the urgency from the zero population growth
movement—even though that fertility trend could easily
reverse itself at any time. Given its present age composi-
tion, the U.S. still could reach the higher population
projections of the Census Bureau (Chapter 5) if another
baby boom occurred. In the mid-1970s, however, no
consensus for immediate ZPG existed, and interest in
population problems has been focused on aspects other
than the birth rate—primarily on distribution and
immigration.
Social objections to ZPG. The proposal to stop
population growth naturally aroused considerable oppo-
sition on religious, social, and economic grounds. The
role of religion in determining attitudes toward popula-
tion growth, as well as toward the environment and
resource limitation, is discussed in more detail in Chap-
ter 14.
The primary social argument that has been raised
against halting U.S. population growth is that it would
substantially change the nation's age composition.17 As
the population stabilized, the median age would increase
from about 28 to about 37. Less than 20 percent of the
population would then be under 15, and about the same
percentage would be over 65 years old. At present, about
25 percent of the population is under 15, and 11 percent
is over 65. It is assumed that such an old population
would present serious social problems. Figure 5-15
(Chapter 5) shows the age compositions of the U.S. in
1900 and 1970 and how it would look in a future
stationary population.
It is true that old people tend to be more conservative
than young people, and they seem to have difficulty
adjusting to a fast-changing, complex world. In an older
population there would be relatively less opportunity for
advancement in authority (there would be nearly as many
60 year-olds as 30 year-olds—so the number of potential
l7
Ansley J. Coale, Man and his environment, Science, vol. 170, pp.
132-136 (9 Oct. 1970).

chiefs would be about the same as the number of
Indians). There would also be many more retired people,
a group already considered a burden on society.
But even those who raise this argument must realize its
fundamental fallacy. In the relatively near future, growth
of the human population will stop. It would be far better
for it to stop gradually through birth limitation than by
the premature deaths of billions of people. (In the latter
case, there would be other, much more serious problems
to worry about). Therefore, if this generation does not
initiate population control, we simply will be postponing
the age composition problems, leaving them to be dealt
with by our grandchildren or great grandchildren. Our
descendants will be forced to wrestle with these problems
in a world even more overcrowded, resource-poor, and
environmentally degraded than today's.
Moreover, the assumption that an older population
must be much less desirable than a younger one is
questionable in this society. Today, chronic underem-
ployment and high unemployment are exacerbated by a
labor pool constantly replenished by growing numbers of
young people, which forces early retirement of the old,
making them dependents on society. Many of our current
social problems, including the recently skyrocketing
crime rates and serious drug problems, are associated
with the younger members of the population. If popula-
tion growth stopped, the pressure of young people
entering the labor pool would decline, while crime and
unemployment problems could be expected to abate, as
would the need for forced retirement of older workers.
Old people today are obsolete to a distressing degree.
But this is the fault of our social structure and especially
of our educational system. The problem with old people
is not that there are or will be so many of them, but that
they have been so neglected. If underemployment were
reduced, outside interests encouraged during the middle
years, and education continued throughout adult life (as
suggested in Chapter 14), older people would be able to
continue making valuable contributions to society well
into their advanced years. Maintaining the habits of
active interest in society and learning new, useful skills
might effectively prevent obsolescence and the tendency
to become conservative and inflexible with advancing age.
Thus, although there may be some disadvantages to an
POPULATION POLICIES / 747
older population, there are also some definite advantages.
While the proportion of dependent retired people grew,
that of young children would shrink. The ever-rising
taxes demanded in recent decades to support expanding
school systems and higher educational facilities would
cease to be such a burden; indeed, that has begun to
happen already. The same is true of resources now
devoted to crime control and other problems primarily of
young people. Some of that money could be diverted
instead to programs to help the aged. Moreover, the
growth in the proportion of senior citizens (the numbers
will not change; they are already born) will be far more
gradual than the decline in numbers of babies and small
children that has already occurred, allowing ample time
for society to adjust to the change.
In the meantime, if birth rates remain low, the overall
dependency ratio of the population will decline. In 1970
there were 138 dependents for every 100 workers in the
United States; by 1980 the ratio will drop to about 118
and may be 112 or less by 1990.18 Even after the numbers
of the aged begin to rise in the population, the depen-
dency ratio will remain relatively low. As Kingsley Davis
pointed out, the highest proportion (about 75 percent) of
people in productive ages (15—65) is found in a popula-
tion that is making the transition from growth to ZPG.
The proportion is nearly as high in a stationary popula-
tion (about 63 percent).19 And if years of productivity
were extended to 70 and beyond, the proportion would
be even higher, of course. By contrast, in very rapidly
growing LDC populations, the proportion of people in
their productive years (15 to 65) can be 50 percent or less.
Economic objections to ZPG. The economic ob-
jections to ZPG are based upon the realization that a
nongrowing population implies at least a much more
slowly growing economy, if not a nongrowing one. This
thought strikes fear in the breasts of most businessmen
and economists, even though a perpetually growing
economy is no more sustainable than a perpetually
growing population. The implications of a steady-state
economy are discussed in Chapter 14; here we limit
18
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population of the United States: Trends
and prospects 1950-1990.
"Zero population growth: the goal and the means,
no. 4, 1973, pp. 15-30.
748 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
ourselves to some of the aspects more obviously related to
population growth.20
In 1971, economist J. J. Spengler noted the economic
advantages and disadvantages of ZPG.21 One of the
advantages is increased productivity per person, partly
because of greater capital available for investment, and
partly because of a reduced dependency ratio. Other
advantages include stabilized demand for goods and
services; increased family stability as a result of there
being fewer unwanted children; reduction of costs of
environmental side effects; and opportunities to mini-
mize the effects of population maldistribution. On the
minus side, Spengler mentioned the problems associated
with the changed age structure and pointed out that there
would be a relative lack of mobility for workers and less
flexibility in the economy because there would be fewer
entrants into the labor force. He was also concerned that
there might be a tendency toward inflation, due in part to
increases in the service sector and in part to pressure to
raise wages more than rising productivity justified.
Recent events, as population growth has slowed (though
there is not yet a decline in growth of the labor pool),
suggest that Spengler may be right about the inflation
pressures, although many other influences clearly are
involved too. And certainly there are ways to compensate
for those pressures.
The question of labor shortage for an expanding
economy in a stationary population has also been raised.
But, as economist Alan Sweezy has pointed out, workers
(and their families) are the main consumers as well as the
producers.22 And, as mentioned above, the productive
portion of a population is largest in stationary and
transitional populations.
There was speculation by economists during the 1930s
and 1940s that consumption patterns would be drasti-
cally, and presumably adversely, changed if population
growth stopped. But a recent study comparing con-
sumption patterns in the U.S. population of 1960/1961
(when it was growing relatively fast) with those of a
M
For a further discussion, see U.S. Commission on Population
Growth, Population and the American future, vol. 2.
2
'Economic growth in a stationary population. PRB selection no. 38,
Population Reference Bureau, Inc., Washington, D.C., July 1971; see also
Spengler, Population and American future.
22
Labor shortage and population policy.
projected stationary population indicated thai -Jr.;
changes would be surprisingly minor.23 The most nob-
ble difference was that there would be proportions..;
more households (called spending units by economists) IT.
an older stationary population; families would be small;:
but more numerous. Many of the changes in acruil
spending patterns would balance each other; in a sta-
tionary population there would be a greater demand for
housing, for instance, but a lower demand for clothing
and transportation. In no case were the changes more
than a few percent.
Differential reproduction and genetic quality. A
common concern about population control is that it will
in some way lead to a reduction in the genetic quality of
Homo sapiens.24 This concern is often expressed in such
questions as "if the smart and responsible people limit
their families while the stupid and irresponsible do not.
couldn't that lead to a decline of intelligence and
responsibility in humanity as a whole?" The technically
correct answer is "no one knows"; the practical answer is
"there is no point in worrying."
No one knows, because it is not at all clear what, if any;
portion of the variation in traits like "intelligence" or
"responsibility" (however defined, and definition is dif-
ficult and controversial) is influenced by genetics. The
most intensively studied example of such "mental" traits
is performance on various so-called intelligence tests,
and it has not been possible to demonstrate unambigu-
ously that genes make any significant contribution to an
individual's scores.25
There is no point in worrying about it because, even if
these traits had a substantial genetic component and
people with "bad" genes greatly outproduced people
with "good" ones, it would take a great many generations
(hundreds of years at a minimum) for the differential
reproduction to produce a socially significant effect.
Moreover, if such an effect were discovered, it could then
2!
D. Eilenstine and J. P. Cunningham. Projected consumption patterns
for a stationary population.
24
For discussion of this question, sec papers in C. J. Bajema (cd).
Natural selection in hitman populations.
25
See especially Leon J. Kamin, The science and politics of IO for a
critique of the twin data on which most of the evidence for the heritability
of IQ rests.

be reversed either by reversing the selective pressures
(for example, encouraging reproduction of those with
high IQ test scores) or, more likely, by modifying the
social environment in order to improve the performance
of those with poor scores ("bad" genes).
Note that we have put quotation marks around "good"
and "bad." It is common for nonbiologists to think that
heredity is a fixed endowment that rigidly establishes or
limits skills, abilities, attitudes, or even social class. In
fact, heredity is at most one of two sets of interacting
factors, the other being the cultural and physical envi-
ronment. When heredity does play a significant role (and
it often may not), it is the product of this interaction that
is of interest, and that product may be modified very
effectively by changing the environment.26 There is
therefore no need for deep concern about the possible
genetic effects of population control.
Another related issue that seems to encourage a
pronatalist attitude in many people is the question of the
differential reproduction of social or ethnic groups. Many
people seem to be possessed by fear that their group may
be outbred by other groups. White Americans and South
Africans are worried there will be too many blacks, and
vice versa. The Jews in Israel are disturbed by the high
birth rates of Israeli Arabs, Protestants are worried about
Catholics, and Ibos about Hausas. Obviously, if every-
one tries to outbreed everyone else, the result will be
catastrophe for all. This is another case of the "tragedy of
the commons," wherein the "commons" is the planet
Earth.26a Fortunately, it appears that, at least in the DCs,
virtually all groups are exercising reproductive restraint.
For example, in the United States fertility in the black
population has consistently been higher than white
fertility (black mortality has also been higher). Since
birth control materials and information began to be made
available to low-income people in the late 1960s, black
fertility has been declining even more rapidly than white
fertility. By 1974, black women under 25 expected to
have essentially the same number of children as white
26
A detailed explanation for the layman of the complex issues of the
inheritance of intelligence can be found in P. Ehrlich and S. Feldman,
Race bomb. See also F. Osborn and C. J. Bajema, The eugenic hypothesis,
for an optimistic evaluation of the genetic consequences of population
control.
26a
Garrett Hardin3 The tragedy of the commons.
749
women their age: an average of 2.2 (see Box 13-3).27
The ideal situation, in our opinion, would be for all
peoples to place a high value on diversity. The advan-
tages of cultural diversity are discussed in Chapter 15;
the reasons for avoiding a genetic monoculture in Homo
sapiens are essentially the same as those for avoiding one
in a crop plant—to maintain resistance to disease and a
genetic reservoir for potential adaptation to changed
environments in the future. The advantages also include
the possibility of aesthetic enjoyment of physical diver-
sity.28 Some day we hope that whites will become
distressed if blacks have too few children, and that, in
general, humanity will strive to maximize its diversity
while also maximizing the harmony in which diverse
groups coexist.
Distribution and mobility. Obscuring the popula-
tion controversy in the United States in the late 1960s
was the tendency of some demographers and government
officials to blame population-related problems on popu-
lation maldistribution. The claim was that pollution and
urban social problems are the result of an uneven
distribution of people, that troubled cities may be
overpopulated, while in other areas of the country the
population has declined.29 The cure promulgated in the
1960s was the creation of "new cities" to absorb the 80
million or so people then expected to be added to the U.S.
population between 1970 and 2000.
It is of course true that there is a distribution problem
in the United States. Some parts of the country are
economically depressed and have been losing popula-
tion—often the most talented, productive, and capable
elements—while other areas have been growing so rap-
idly that they are nearly overwhelmed. Patterns of
migration and settlement are such that residential areas
have become racially and economically segregated to an
-'Frederick S. Jaffe, Low-income families: fertility changes in the
1960s; Population Reference Bureau, Family Size and the Black
American.
-sThere is more genetic variation within groups of human beings than
between them, but some of the inter-group variation may be biologically
important (and is more widely recognized by lay persons).
29
For instance, demographer Conrad Taeuber, who supervised the
1970 U.S. Census, in a speech delivered at Mount Holyoke College in
January 1971 (quoted in the New York Times, Jan. 14, 1971).
 BOX 13-4 Abortion in the United States
Before 1967, abortion was illegal in the United
States except when the mother's life was endan-
gered by continuing the pregnancy. Only six
years later, the situation had been completely
reversed, legally if not everywhere in practice.
Yet the change was not effected overnight; it was
the result of changed public attitudes in response
to a growing reform movement.
By the end of 1970, 15 of the 50 states had at
least partially moderated their abortion laws.
Most of these new laws permitted abortion only
in cases where bearing the child presented a
grave risk to the mental or physical health of the
mother, where the pregnancy was a result of
incest or rape, and where (except in California)
there was a substantial likelihood that the child
would be physically or mentally defective. To
obtain an abortion, a woman usually had to
submit her case to a hospital reviewing board of
physicians, a time-consuming and expensive
process. Although the laws ostensibly were re-
laxed to reduce the problem of illegal abortions,
hospital boards at first interpreted the changes in
the law so conservatively that they had little
effect. The number of illegal abortions per year
in the U.S. during the 1960s has been variously
estimated at between 200,000 and 2 million, with
1 million being the most often quoted figure.
This amounted to more than one abortion for
every four births. At that time, there were
estimated to be 120,000 illegal abortions per year
in California; in the first year after the passage of
California's "liberalized" law there were just
over 2,000 legal ones. The figures were similar
for the other states.
In 1970 Hawaii, Alaska, and New York passed
new laws essentially permitting abortion on
request, and Washington State legalized abortion
on request not by legislation but by referendum.
Meanwhile, several other states began to inter-
pret their relatively restrictive laws much more
liberally, and the legal abortion rate rose consid-
erably. These changes in state laws were pre-
ceded and accompanied by an erosion of public
opposition to abortion. Table 13-1 shows the
changes in public disapproval as revealed in polls
taken between 1962 and 1969 for demographer
Judith Blake.
A poll taken early in 1970 asked: Should an
abortion be available to any woman who requests
one? In apparent contradiction to the earlier
opinions, more than half of those interviewed
said yes. Although most respondents did not
approve of abortion except for the more serious
reasons, the majority apparently felt that mothers
should be free to make their own decisions.
Continuing this trend, a poll conducted in
1971 for the U.S. Commission on Population
Growth and the American Future found that 50
percent of the adults interviewed felt that the
decision to have an abortion should be made by
the woman and her doctor, 41 percent would
permit abortions under certain circumstances,
and only 6 percent opposed abortion under all
circumstances. Similar results have been ob-
tained in subsequent surveys."
In January 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court
announced its decision on an abortion case which
in effect legalized abortion on request nation-
wide, at least for the first trimester (13 weeks),
with restrictions on the second trimester being
permitted in the interest of protecting women's
health. Only in the last ten weeks of pregnancy,
(when the child, if born, had a chance of
survival) the court ruled, could states prohibit
abortion except "to preserve the life or health of
the mother."6
The number of legal abortions performed in
1972 (before the Supreme Court decision) was
about 600,000; in 1975 it was about one mil-
lion—approximately the estimated previous
number of illegal abortions. At least two-thirds
of these abortions probably would have been
obtained illegally if legal abortions had been
unavailable.1" Nor had illegal abortions entirely
disappeared—25 of the 47 deaths from abortions
in 1973 were from illegal ones (those not per-
formed under proper medical supervision)—al-
though the incidence of such deaths clearly had
been drastically reduced by 1975.d
Yet, three years after the Supreme Court
decision, there were still large discrepancies
from one region to another and between medical
facilities in providing abortion services. An
ongoing national study by the Gutrmacher In-
stitute1' in 1975 concluded that between 260,000
and 770,000 women who needed abortions in
1975—20 to 40 percent of the women in need—
"W. R. Arney and W. H. Trescher, Trends in Attitudes toward
abortion, 1972-1975.
'For a lively account of the campaign to change U.S. abortion
laws, see Lawrence Lader, Abtmion II: making the revolution.
''Edward Weinstock, et al., Legal abonions in the United States
since the 1973 Supreme Court decisions; Abortion need and
services in the United States, 1974-1975, Family Planning
Perspectives, vol. 8, no. 2, March 1976.
''Richard Lincoln, The Institute of Medicine reports on
legalized abortion and the public health.
e
Part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The
1976 Study was titled: Provisional estimates of abortion need
and services in the year following the Supreme Court decisions:
United States, each state and metropolitan area. The 1976
Study was Abortion 1974-1975—need and services in the
United States, each state and metropolitan area.

were still unable to obtain them. More than half
of all abortions after 1973 were carried out in
specialized clinics, while public hospitals (which
provide most medical services to the poor) were
lagging even behind private hospitals in provid-
ing services. Only one in five U.S. public hospi-
tals reported performing any abortions in 1975.
Thus in many areas it was substantially more
difficult for poor women to obtain abortions than
for middle-class or wealthy women, even though
government funds were available to cover the
costs. Teenagers, who account for about one-
third of the need for abortion services and for a
large and growing portion of the illegitimate
birth rate, also seem to have poor access to safe
abortions. Finally, abortion services were found
to be generally less available in the southern and
central regions of the U.S. than on either coast.
In the United States, the majority of abortion
recipients are young and/or unmarried. There is
some debate over the degree to which legal
abortion has affected American fertility overall,
but it seems to have had a significant effect on the
rate of illegitimate births. In 1971 reductions in
illegitimate births in states with legal abortion
ranged as high as 19 percent, while in most states
without legal abortion they continued to in-
crease/ Following the Supreme Court decision,
the rising rate of illegitimacy halted briefly, then
began again. The rise was accounted for by an
increase in teenage pregnancy.
There is no evidence that abortion has re-
placed contraceptives to any significant degree,
despite the apprehensions of antiabortion groups
on this score. Most women seeking abortion have
a history of little or no contraceptive practice,
and many are essentially ignorant of other means
of birth control. Those who return for sub-
sequent abortions have been found to be still
ignorant of facts of reproduction, using contra-
ceptives improperly, or to have been poorly
guided by their physicians."
Paralleling the trend toward liberalized abor-
tion policies in the U.S. has been the growth of
right-to-life groups who are adamantly opposed
to abortion. These groups have lobbied actively
against reform of state laws and, since the
Supreme Court decision, have tried to persuade
Congress to reimpose sanctions against abortion
through Constitutional amendments. Under
their pressure, Congress has removed funds for
']. Sklar and B. Berkov, Abortion, illegitimacy, and the
American birth rate.
"Blame MD mismanagement for contraceptive faihirej Family
Planning Perspectives, vol. 8, no. 2, March/April 1976, pp.
72-76.
TABLE 13-1
Change in Disapproval of Abortion (all white respondents)
Percentage of disapproval
Reason for abortion 1962 1965 1968 1969
Mother's health endangered 16 15 10 13
Child may be deformed 29 31 25 25
74 74 72 68
Can't afford child
No more children wanted - - 85 79
Source: Judith Blake, Abortion and public opinion.
abortion services from Foreign Aid grants to
LDCs. In 1976, Congress also passed a law
forbidding federal assistance for abortions in the
U.S., a move that denies these services to low-
income women—precisely the group whose
chances for a decent and productive life are most
likely to be jeopardized by an unwanted child.
Whether the courts will consider such a dis-
criminatory law constitutional is another ques-
tion. Right-to-life groups have also played a part
in harassing clinics, hospitals, and other organi-
zations that provide abortion. This activity often
embarrasses clients and possibly has also dis-
couraged other institutions from providing
abortion services.
Action by right-to-life groups in Boston re-
sulted in the trial and conviction for manslaugh-
ter in early 1975 of physician Kenneth Edelin
following a late-term abortion (about 20 weeks).
The prosecution maintained that the fetus might
have survived if given life-supporting treatment.
(The conviction was overturned in December
1976 by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court.)" The consequence of the original verdict
nevertheless was to discourage late second-
trimester abortions (31 states already had laws
against them except to protect the mother's life
or health; in most states abortion by choice was
available only through the 20th week). Unfortu-
nately, this change also will affect mainly the
poor and/or very young women, who through
ignorance or fear are more likely to delay seeking
an abortion until the second trimester.
In 1976, a Right-to-Life political party was
formed, centering on the abortion issue. Its
candidate, Ellen McCormack, entered primaries
in several states, but never succeeded in winning
more than 5 percent of the vote. Most Ameri-
cans, it appears, accept the present legal situation
at least as the lesser of evils.
* Time and Nesisweek, March 3, 1975. Both magazines covered
the trial and the issues it raised in some detail. See also Barbara
Culliton's thoughtful article, Edelin trial; jury not persuaded,
and Edelin conviction overturned, Science, vol. 195, January 7,
1977, pp. 36-37.
760 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
abortion on the grounds that it will encourage promiscu-
ity—exactly the same reason given in Japan for banning
the pill and the IUD. There is no evidence to support
either point of view on promiscuity, but, even if there
were an increase, it would seem a small price to pay for a
chance to ameliorate the mass misery of unwanted
pregnancies—especially since the main ostensible reason
for social disapproval of promiscuity is the production of
unwanted children.
Many Protestant theologians hold that the time when a
child acquires a soul is unknown and perhaps unimpor-
tant. They see no difficulty in establishing it at the time of
"quickening," when movements of the fetus first become
discernible to the mother; or at the time, around 28
weeks, when the infant, if prematurely born, might
survive outside its mother's body. To them, the evil of
abortion is far outweighed by the evil of bringing into the
world an unwanted child under less than ideal
circumstances.
To a biologist the question of when life begins for a
human child is almost meaningless, since life is continu-
ous and has been since it first began on Earth several
billion years ago. The precursors of the egg and sperm
cells that create the next generation have been present in
the parents since they were embryos themselves. To most
biologists, an embryo or ajetus is no more a complete
human being than a blueprint is a complete building.55"
The_fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly
before birth, and given the essential early socializing,
experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the
crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop
into a human being. Where any^ of these is lacking,jjie_
resultant individual will be deficient in some respect.
From this point of view, a fetus is only a potential human
being, with no particular rights. Historically, the law has
dated most rights and privileges from the moment of
birth, and legal scholars generally agree that a fetus is not
a "person" within the meaning of the U.S. Constitution^
until it is born and living independent of its mother.
From the standpoint of a terminated fetus, it makes no
difference whether the mother had an induced or a
spontaneous abortion. On the other hand, it subsequently
makes a great deal of difference to the child if an abortion
""Garrett Hardin, Abortion—compulsory pregnancy?
is denied and the mother, contrary to her wishes, is forced
to devote her body and life to the production and care of
the child. In Sweden, a study was made to determine
what eventually happened to children born to mothers
whose requests for abortions had been turned down.
When compared to a group of children from similar
backgrounds who had been wanted, more than twice as
many of the unwanted youngsters grew up in undesirable
circumstances (illegitimate, in broken homes, or in
institutions); more than twice as many had records of
delinquency, or were deemed unfit for military service;
almost twice as many had needed psychiatric care; and
nearly five times as many had been on public assistance
during their teens.56
In a 1975 study in Czechoslovakia, nine-year old
children whose mothers had been denied abortions were
compared with carefully matched "controls."57 The
unwanted children tended to have more problems of
health and social adjustment and to perform less well in
school than did their peers who had been Wanted.
Further, it appeared that the disadvantages of being
unwanted—initially, at least—affected boys more
strongly than girls.
There seems little doubt that the forced bearing of
unwanted children has undesirable consequences not
only for the children and their families, but for society as
well, apart from the problems of overpopulation. The
latter factor, however, adds further urgency to the need
for alleviating the other situations. An abortion is clearly
preferable to adding one more child to an overburdened
family or an overburdened society, where the chances
that it will realize its full potential are slight. The
argument that a decision is being made for an unborn
person who "has no say" is often raised by those
opposing abortion. But unthinking actions of the very
same people help to commit future unheard generations
to misery and early death on an overcrowded planet. One
can also challenge the notion that older men, be they
medical doctors, legislators, or celibate clergymen, have
the right to make decisions whose consequences are
borne largely by young women and their families.
There are those who claim that free access to abortion
'"Lars Huldt, Outcome of pregnancy when legal abortion is readily
available.
57
Z. Dytrych, et al.. Children born to women denied abortion.

will lead to genocide. It is hard to see how this could
happen if the decision is left to the mother. A mother who
takes the moral view that abortion is equivalent to
murder is free to bear her child. If she cannot care for it,
placement for adoption is still possible in most societies.
Few people would claim that abortion is preferable to
contraception, not only because of moral questions, but
also because the risk of subsequent health problems for
the mother may be greater. Death rates for first-
trimester, medically supervised abortions are a fraction
of those for pregnancy and childbirth but considerably
higher in later months.58 Large and rapidly growing
numbers of people nevertheless feel that abortion is
vastly preferable to the births of unwanted children,
especially in an overpopulated world. Until more effec-
tive forms of contraception than now exist are developed,
and until people become more conscientious in use of
contraceptives, abortion will remain a needed back-up
method of birth control when contraception fails.
Attitudes on abortion have changed in most countries
in recent years, and they can reasonably be expected to
change more in the future. The female part of the world's
population has long since cast its silent vote. Every year
over one million women in the United States, and an
estimated 30 to 55 million more elsewhere, have made
their desires abundantly clear by seeking and obtaining
abortions. Until the 1970s, these women were forced to
seek their abortions more often than not in the face of
their societies' disapproval and of very real dangers and
difficulties. Millions still must do so.
There is little question that legalized abortion can
contribute to a reduction in birth rates. Wherever liberal
laws have been enacted, they have been followed by
lowered fertility. Longstanding evidence is available
from Japan and Eastern Europe, where abortion was the
primary effective form of birth control available for some
years after liberalization, and where the decline in
fertility was substantial. The extent of decline is bound
to be related to the availability of other birth control
methods; but even in the United States and England,
where contraceptives have been widely available, the
decline in fertility after reversal of abortion policies was
significant.
)8
Tietze and Murstein, Induced abortion.
POPULATION POLICIES / 761
According to at least one study, availability of abortion
(legal or illegal) may be necessary in order for a
population to reach and maintain fertility near replace-
ment level, given current contraceptive technology and
patterns of sexual behavior.59 Liberalization of abortion
policies in those countries where it is still largely or
entirely illegal is therefore justifiable both on humani-
tarian and health grounds and as an aid to population
control.
POPULATION POLICIES IN
LESS DEVELOPED NATIONS
In response to rising alarm during the 1950s over the
population explosion in less developed countries, both
private and governmental organizations in the United
States and other nations began to be involved in popula-
tion research and overseas family planning programs.
First among these, naturally, was the International
Planned Parenthood Federation.,, which grew out of the
established national groups. By 1975 there were Planned
Parenthood organizations in 84 countries, supported by
their own governments, private donations, government
grants from developed countries, or some combination of
these sources.60
Various other private and governmental organizations
followed Planned Parenthood, into the field, including
the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, the Population _
Council, the U.S. Agency for International development
(AID), and agencies of several other DC governments.
International organizations such as the World Bank and
various UN agencies, particularly the UN Fund for
Population Activities,, had joined bv 1970, The 1960s
brought a great proliferation of family planning pro-
grams in LDCs, which were assisted or administered by
one or another of these groups. Most assistance from
DCs was provided through one of the international or
private organizations. In 1960 some $2 million was spent
by developed countries (and the U.S. was not then among
them) to assist LDC family planning programs; by 1974
5
'C. Tietze and J. Bongaarts, Fertility rates and abortion rates:
simulations of family limitation, Studiesin family planning, vol. 6, no. 5,
May 1975, p. 119.
'"Population Reference Bureau, World population growth and response,
pp. 243-248.
TABLE 13-2
Family Planning in LDCs
Population Have official support
(millions, Have an official policy to of family planning Neither have policy nor
1975) reduce population growth rate for other reasons support family planning

400+ People's Republic of China (1962)

India (1952, reorganized 1965)

100-400 Indonesia (1968) Brazil (1974)

50-100 Mexico (1974) Nigeria (1970)

Pakistan (1960, reorganized 1965)
Bangladesh (1971)

25-50 Turkey (1965) Zaire (1973) Burma

Egypt (1965) Ethiopa
Iran (1967) Argentina
Philippines (1970)
Thailand (1970)
South Korea (1961)
Vietnam (1962 in North)

15-25 Morocco (1968) Tanzania (1970) North Korea

Taiwan (1968) South Africa (1966) Peru
Colombia (1970) Afghanistan (1970)
Sudan (1970)
Algeria (1971)

10-15 Nepal (1966) Venezuela (1968)

Sri Lanka (Ceylon) (1965) Chile (1966)
Malaysia (1966) Iraq (1972)
Kenya (1966) Uganda (1972)

Less than 10 Tunisia (1964) Cuba (early 1960s) Cameroon

Barbados (1967) Nicaragua (1967) Angola
Dominican Republic (1968) Syria (1974) Malawi
Singapore (1965) Panama (1969) Jordan
Hong Kong (1973) Honduras (1966) Lebanon
Jamaica (1966) Dahomey (1969) Saudi Arabia
Trinidad and Tobago (1967) Gambia "(1969) Syria
Laos (1972, possibly discontinued) Rhodesia (1968) Yemen
Ghana (1969) Senegal (1970) Mali
Mauritius (1965) Ecuador (1968) Upper Volta
Puerto Rico (1970) Honduras (1965) Mozambique
Botswana (1970) Benin (early 1970s) Burundi
Fiji (1962) Haiti (1971) Central African Republic
El Salvador (1968) Papua-New Guinea (1969) Chad
Gilbert and Ellice Islands (1970) Paraguay (1972) Comoros
Guatemala (1975) Liberia (1973) Congo
Grenada (1974) Lesotho (1974) Equatorial Guinea
Bolivia (1968, reorganized 1973) Western Samoa (1971) Guinea-Bisseau
Costa Rica (1968) Madagascar (1974) Ivory Coast
El Salvador (1968) Sierra Leone (early 1970s) Libya
Swaziland (1969) Mauritania
Togo (early 1970s) Niger
Zambia (early 1970s) Rwanda
Cambodia (1972, possibly discontinued) Seychelles
Guyana (1975) Somalia
Surinam (1974) Namibia
Uruguay (1971) Israel
Other small Caribbean countries (1960s)
Sources: Berelson, Population control programs; Nortman, Population and family planning programs, 1975; Population Reference Bureau, World
population growth and response.

At the other extreme, Brazil and Argentina have
policies generally promoting growth. Brazil does permit
private family planning groups to operate, however,
especially in the poverty-stricken Northeast. Argentina,
having a relatively low birth rate and feeling threatened
by rapidly growing Brazil, in 1974 banned dissemination
of birth control information and closed family planning
clinics. Since the practice of birth control is well
established in the Argentine population, the action is not
likely to have great effect except perhaps to raise the
already high abortion rate, mostly illegal.
Asia. Asia includes over half of the human population
and is growing at about 2.3 percent per year. Both
mortality and birth rates are generally lower than those in
Africa, and both have been declining in several countries.
Asia presents a widely varied picture in regard to
population policies. At one extreme, China, India, Thai-
land, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Taiwan, and South Korea are pursuing strong family
planning policies, in several cases reinforced by social
and economic measures, some of which are described
below. All of these countries have recorded declines in
birth rates, some of them quite substantial. Family
planning programs have also been established in Paki-
stan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia, and the Philippines,
but the impact, if any, on birth rates is negligible so far.
A few rapidly growing countries, notably Cambodia
and Burma, currently are pursuing pronatalist popula-
tion policies, although family planning is privately
available in the latter country. Other "centrally planned"
countries in Southeast Asia seem to be following China's
example in population policies; North Vietnam has had a
family planning program for some time, which presum-
ably was extended to South Vietnam when the nation was
unified. Policies in North Korea are unknown.
Middle Eastern nations are still largely pronatalist in
their outlook, with the exceptions of Turkey and Iran
which have national family planning programs. Several
countries, including Afghanistan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Iraq,
Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, are interested in establish-
ing family planning services for health and welfare
reasons. The remaining countries favor continued
growth, although they may tolerate family planning
POPULATION POLICIES
activity in the private sector. Among these is Israel, for
obvious reasons. At the furthest extreme is Saudi Arabia,
which has outlawed importation of contraceptives.
Nearly all Middle Eastern countries are growing rapidly
with relatively high, although declining death rates.
The United Nations. For many years, the United
Nations limited its participation in population policies to
the gathering of demographic data. This, however, was
instrumental in developing awareness of the need for
population policies, especially among LDCs, whose
governments often had no other information about their
population growth. Since the late 1960s the UN has taken
an active role in coordinating assistance for and directly
participating in family planning programs of various
member nations, while continuing the demographic
studies. A special body, the UN Fund for Population
Activities (UNFPA), advises governments on policies
and programs, coordinates private donors and contribu-
tions from DC governments, and sometimes directly
provides supplies, equipment, and personnel through
other UN agencies.
In 1967 the UN Declaration on Social Progress and
Development stated that "parents have the exclusive
right to determine freely and responsibly the number and
spacing of their children."67 The statement affirmed the
UN's increasing involvement in making family planning
available to all peoples everywhere and contained an
implicit criticism of any government policy that might
deny family planning to people who wanted it. The
statement has sometimes been interpreted as a stand
against compulsory governmental policies to control
births; however, the right to choose whether or not to
have children is specifically limited to "responsible"
choices. Thus, the Declaration also provides govern-
ments with the right to control irresponsible choices.
In 1974 the United Nations' World Population Con-
ference, the first worldwide, government-participating
forum on the subject, was convened in Bucharest.
Publicity attending the event gave an impression of
enormous disagreement among participating groups. But
in fact it provided a valuable forum for an exchange of
"Declaration on Population, Teheran, 1968, Studies in Family Plan-
ning, no. 16, January, 1967.
786 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
large, relatively untapped pool of intellectual and tech-
nical talent; tapping that pool effectively could help
reduce population growth and also would provide many
other direct benefits to any society.
Social pressures on both men and women to marry anoL
have children must be removed. As former Secretary of_
Tptprjnr Stewart Udall observed, "All lives are not
enhanced by marital union; parenthood is not necessarily
a fulfillment for every married couple."98 If society were
convinced of the need for low birth rates, no doubt the
stigma that has customarily been assigned to bachelors,
spinsters, and childless couples would soon disappear.
But alternative lifestyles should be open to single people,
and perhaps the institution of an informal, easily dis-
solved "marriage" for the childless is one possibility.
Indeed, many DC societies now seem to be evolving in
this direction as women's liberation gains momentum."
It is possible that fully developed societies may produce
such arrangements naturally, and their association with
lower fertility is becoming increasingly clear. In LDCs a
childless or single lifestyle might be encouraged deliber-
ately as the status of women approaches parity with that
of men.
Although free and easy association of the sexes might
be tolerated in such a society, responsible parenthood
ought to be encouraged and illegitimate childbearing
could be strongly discouraged. One way to carry out this
disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies
be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors,
who generally are not capable of caring properly for a
child alone.100 If a single mother really wished to keep
her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption
proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and
care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should re-
main more difficult for single people than for married
couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising
children alone. It would even be possible to require
**&1976: Agenda for tomorrow.
99
Judith Blake, The changing status of women in developed countries;
E. Peck and J. Senderowitz (eds.), Pronatalism, tlie niyth of mom and apple
pie; Ellen Peck, The baby trap.
100
The tragedy of teenage single mothers in the U.S. is described by
Leslie Aldridge Westoff in Kids with kids. The adverse health and social
effects of teenage child-bearing in an affluent society have recently been
documented by several studies. One good sample can be found in a special
issue of Family planning perspectives, Teenagers, USA.
pregnant single women to marry or have abort
perhaps as an alternative to placement for adopticr..
depending on the society.
Somewhat more repressive measures for discouraging
large families have also been proposed, such as assigning
public housing without regard for family size and
removing dependency allowances from student grants at
military pay. Some of these have been implemented u:
crowded Singapore, whose population program has been
counted as one of the most successful.
All socioeconomic measures are derived from knowl-
edge of social conditions that have been associated with
low birth rates in the past. The more repressive sugges-
tions are based on observations that people have volun-
tarily controlled their reproduction most stringently
during periods of great social and economic stress and
insecurity, such as the Depression of the 1930s.101 In a
sense, all such proposals are shots in the dark. Not
enough is known about fertility motivation to predict the
effectiveness of such policies. Studies by demographer
Judith Blake102 and by economist Alan Sweezy103 for
instance, have cast serious doubt on the belief that
economic considerations are of the greatest importance in
determining fertility trends. Sweezy has shown that the
decline of fertility in the 1930s in the United States was
merely a continuation of an earlier trend. If their views
are correct, then severely repressive economic measures
might prove to be both ineffective and unnecessary as a
vehicle for population control, as well as socially
undesirable. At the very least, they should be considered
only if milder measures fail completely.
Involuntary Fertility Control
The third approach to population limitation is that of
involuntary fertility control. Several coercive proposals
deserve discussion, mainly because some countries may
ultimately have to resort to them unless current trends in
birth rates are rapidly reversed by other means.104 Some
""Richard A. Easterlin, Population, labor force, and long swings in
economic growth. Further discussion of Easterlin's ideas can be found in
Deborah Freedman, ed., Fertility, aspirations and resources: A sympo-
sium on the Easterlin hypothesis.
102
Are babies consumer durables? and Reproductive motivation.
""The economic explanation of fertility changes in the U.S.
104
Edgar R. Chasteen, The case for compulsory birth control.

involuntary measures could be less repressive or dis-
criminatory, in fact, than some of the socioeconomic
measures suggested.
In the 1960s it was proposed to vasectomize all fathers
of three or more children in India. The proposal was
defeated then not only on moral grounds but on practical
ones as well; there simply were not enough medical
personnel available even to start on the eligible candi-
dates, let alone to deal with the new recruits added each
day! Massive assistance from the developed world in the
form of medical and paramedical personnel and/or a
training program for local people nevertheless might
have put the policy within the realm of possibility. India
in the mid-1970s not only entertained the idea of com-
pulsory sterilization, but moved toward implementing
it, perhaps fearing that famine, war, or disease might
otherwise take the problem out of its hands. This deci-
sion was greeted with dismay abroad, but Indira Gandhi's
government felt it had little other choice. There is too
little time left to experiment further with educational
programs and hope that social change will generate a
spontaneous fertility decline, and most of the Indian
population is too poor for direct economic pressures
(especially penalties) to be effective.
A program of sterilizing women after their second or
third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the
operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement
than trying to sterilize men. This of course would be
feasible only in countries where the majority of births are
medically assisted. Unfortunately, such a program
therefore is not practical for most less developed coun-
tries (although in China mothers of three children are
commonly "expected" to undergo sterilization).
The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule
that could be implanted under the skin and removed
when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities
for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be
implanted at puberty and might be removable, with
official permission, for a limited number of births. No
capsule that would last that long (30 years or more) has
yet been developed, but it is technically within the realm
of possibility.
Various approaches to administering such a system
have been offered, including one by economist Kenneth
I
POPULATION POLICIES / 787
Boulding.105 His proposal was to issue to each woman at
maturity a marketable license that would entitle her to a
given number of children—say, 2.2 in order to have an
NRR = 1. Under such a system the number could be two
if the society desired to reduce the population size slowly.
To maintain a steady size, some couples might be
allowed to have a third child if they purchased "deci-
child" units from the government or from other women
who had decided not to have their full allotments of
children or who found they had a greater need for the
money. Others have elaborated on Boulding's idea,
discussing possible ways of regulating the license scheme
and alternative ways of alloting the third children.106
One such idea is that permission to have a third child
might be granted to a limited number of couples by
lottery. This system would allow governments to regu-
late more or less exactly the number of births over a given
period of time.
Social scientist David Heer has compared the social
effects of marketable license schemes with some of the
more repressive economic incentives that have been
proposed and with straightforward quota systems.107 His
conclusions are shown in Table 13-5.
Of course, a government might require only implan- \
tation of the contraceptive capsule, leaving its removal to
the individual's discretion but requiring reimplantation
after childbirth^ Since having a child would require
positive action (removal of the capsule), many more
births would be prevented than in the reverse situation.
Certainly unwanted births and the problem of abortion
would both be entirely avoided. The disadvantages
(apart from the obvious moral objections) include the
questionable desirability of keeping the entire female
population on a continuous steroid dosage with the
contingent health risks, and the logistics of implanting
capsules in 50 percent of the population between the ages
of 15 and 50.
Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a
suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most
proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this
I05
7°fe meaning of the 20lh century, pp. 135-136.
J
""Bruce M. Russert. Licensing: for cars and babies; David M. Heer,
Marketing licenses for babies; Boulding's proposal revisited.
107
Ibid.
TABLE 13-5
Evaluation of Some Relatively Coercive Measures for Fertility Reduction
Effect Marketable license systems ___ __ Financialjtueutwe^ystems Quota systems

C
CBqby licenses^ ./Monthly subsidy\ Monthly tex\ /" ~\
that may be sold \ to persons jj on persons \ f One-time tax \
Boulding proposal or lent at interest V vi ith no more than I with more than I 1 for excess babies J Identical quota
for baby licenses to the government \^ two children _x two children^/ \_ over two / for all couples

Restriction on Moderately severe Moderately severe Moderately severe Moderately severe Moderately severe Very severe
individual
liberty
Effect on quality Probably Probably Unknown Unknown Probably Slightly beneficial
of children's beneficial beneficial beneficial
financial
support
Effectiveness and Effective Effective Fairly effective Fairly effective Effective Effective
acceptability of enforcement at enforcement at enforcement enforcement enforcement at enforcement at
enforcement possible price possible price possible price possible price
mechanisms of depriving of depriving of depriving of depriving
some children some children some children some children
of a family of a family of a family of a family
environment environment environment environment
Effectiveness for Moderate High Low Low Low Moderate
precise
regulation of
the birth rate
Source: Adapted from David Heer, Marketing licenses.

would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social
questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No
such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be
under development. To be acceptable, such a substance
would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it
must be uniformly effective, despite \videly varying
doses received by individuals, and despite varying de-
grees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it
must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and
it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex,
children, old people, pets, or livestock.
Physiologist Melvin Ketchel, of the Tufts University
School of Medicine, suggested that a sterilant could be
developed that would have a very specific action—for
example, preventing implantation of the fertilized
ovum.108 He proposed that it be used to reduce fertility
levels by adjustable amounts, anywhere from 5 to 75
percent, rather than to sterilize the whole population
completely. In this way, fertility could be adjusted from
time to time to meet a society's changing needs, and there
would be no need to provide an antidote. Contraceptives
would still be needed for couples who were highly
""Fertility control agents as a possible solution to the world popula-
tion problem, pp. 687-703.
motivated to have small families. Subfertile and func-
tionally sterile couples who strongly desired children
would be medically assisted, as they are now, or en-
couraged to adopt. Again, there is no sign of such an
agent on the horizon. And the risk of serious, unforeseen
side effects would, in our opinion, militate against the use
of any such agent, even though this plan has the
advantage of avoiding the need for socioeconomic pres-
sures that might tend to discriminate against particular
groups or penalize children.
Most of the population control measures beyond
family planning discussed above have never been tried.
Some are as yet technically impossible and others are and
probably will remain unacceptable to most societies
(although, of course, the potential effectiveness of those
least acceptable measures may be great).
Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable
idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying.
As those alternatives become clearer to an increasing
number of people in the 1980s, they may begin demand-
ing such control. A far better choice, in our view, is to
expand the use of milder methods of influencing family
size preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure that
the means of birth control, including abortion and
806 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
existing institutions; there is neither the time nor the
leadership to dismantle them completely and replace
them with others. Today's institutions must be bent and
reshaped but not destroyed.
No one is more acutely aware than we are of the
difficulties and hazards of trying to criticize and com-
ment constructively on such broad areas as religion,
education, economics, legal and political systems, and the
psychology of individuals and societies. We believe,
however, that in order for people to translate into
effective and constructive political action what is now
known about the roots of the crisis, new, far-reaching and
positive programs must be undertaken immediately.
In this chapter and the next, we therefore depart from
the realm of relatively hard data in the physical, biologi-
cal, and social sciences to embark on an exploration of the
many other areas of human endeavor that are critically
important to a solution of our problems.' In doing so we
are making the assumption that many reforms are
essential. The dangers of making the opposite assump-
tion are beautifully set forth in the following quotation
from biologist Garrett Hardin's article, "The Tragedy of
the Commons":
It is one of the peculiarities of the warfare between
reform and the status quo that it is thoughtlessly
governed by a double standard. Whenever a reform
measure is proposed it is often defeated when its
opponents triumphantly discover a flaw in it. As
Kingsley Davis has pointed out, worshippers of the
status quo sometimes imply that no reform is possible
without unanimous agreement, an implication con-
trary to historical fact. As nearly as I can make out,
automatic rejection of proposed reforms is based on
one of two unconscious assumptions: (i) that the status
quo is perfect; or (ii) that the choice we face is between
reform and no action; if the proposed reform is
imperfect, we presumably should take no action at all,
while we wait for a perfect proposal.
But we can never do nothing. That which we have
done for thousands of }'ears is also action. It also
produces evils. Once we are aware that the status quo is
action, we can then compare its discoverable advan-
'Many of these topics are treated in greater depth in Dennis C. Pirages
and Paul R. Ehrlich. Ark II:.SodaI response to environmental imperatives;
its footnotes and bibliographies provide further access to the pertinent
literature, especially in political science.
tages and disadvantages with the predicted advantages
and disadvantages of the proposed reform, discounting
as best we can for our lack of experience. On the basis
of such a comparison, we can make a rational decision
which will not involve the unworkable assumption
that only perfect systems are tolerable.
RELIGION
Religion, broadly denned, would include all the belief
systems that allow Homo sapiens to achieve a sense of
transcendence of self and a sense of the possession of a
right and proper place in the universe and a right and
proper way of life. In short, everyone wants to feel
important and in tune with a right-ordered world. The
attempt to achieve a sense of well-being in these terms is
so pervasive among human cultures that it may be
counted as a necessity of human life. With religion so
broadly denned, political parties, labor unions, nation
states, academic disciplines, and the organized structure
of the environment-ecology movement would have to be
counted among our religious institutions. Certainly, t
representatives of all those groups have struggled to
protect and propagate their views as assiduously (and
sometimes as fiercely) in our time as Genghis Khan, the
Christian Crusaders, or the Protestant Christian mis-
sionaries did in theirs. In this discussion, however, we
limit our attention to those groups customarily called the
world's_great religions, the traditions of belief and
practice belonging to members of the Tudeo-Christian.
Moslem, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions.
Religion must always be viewed in its two parts: the
first and more readily evident element being the formal
structure of authority and administration that in our
Western tradition is called "the church;" and the second,
more elusive, and in the long run more important
element, the system of attitudes called, in the Western.
manner, "die faith," In our treatment of the two parts, we
concentrate upon the relationship between organi/.pH
religion and population control because that is the area
where contemporary social needs and imperatives have
most clearly come into conflict with cherished traditional
values usually promulgated and supported by religions.
Moreover, humane population control calls for the

integration of contraceptive techniques into culturally
accepted sexual practices, and sexual practice is the area
of human activity that is typically most extensively
regulated by taboo. Thus, the acceptance or rejection of
birth control and various methods of carrying it out have
been important issues in organized Western religion for
several decades.
Our treatment of religious attitudes also focuses upon
perceptions of the environment, because how an indi-
vidual perceives and treats the world is determined by his
or her overall view of his or her place in that world. The
Christian concept of life in this world, as voiced by Saint
Paul, that "here we have no abiding city," for example,
conceivably could help explain why some people show
rather little concern for the long-term future of the global
environment or for the well-being of future generations.
Most of our attention is on the Western. Judeo-..
Christian religious tradition because it is primarily
within that tradition that the population-resource-
environment crisis has been engendered.
Organized Religious Groups
and Population Control
Within the theological community in the Western
world, there has recently been a heartening revolution in
thought and action on such varied social concerns as the
quality of life in urban areas, civil rights for minority
groups, and the war in Vietnam. Since the late 1960s,
environmental deterioration and the population explo-
sion have become important concerns. Protestant, Cath-
olic, and Jewish clergy have come more and more to the_^
forefront of public activities in these areas, often at
considerable personal sacrifice and risk.
Conspicuous among clergy who have risked their
careers have been Catholic theologians who opposed the
official pronatalist position of the Vatican. For example,
Father John A. O'Brien, a distinguished professor of
theology at Notre Dame University in Indiana, edited the
excellent book Family planning in an exploding popula-
tion in 1968,. He also was a leader in criticizing Pope Paul
VFs 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which reiterated
the church's condemnation of contraceptives. Com-
menting on the encyclical, Father O'Brien wrote, "Since
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 807
the decision is bound to be reversed by his [Pope Paul's]
successor, it would be far more honorable, proper and
just for the Pope to rescind it himself."2 Ivan Illich, who_
renounced his priesthood after a contrnversy nv^r birth-
control in Puerto Rico^ wrote that the encyclical "lacks
courage, is in bad taste, and takes the initiative away from
Rome in the attempt to lead modern man in Christian
humanism."3 Thousands of others, from cardinals to lay
people, have also spoken out. Since its publication, the
encyclical has caused immense anguish among Catholics,
millions of whom have followed their consciences and
used contraceptives, often after a period of intense
soul-searching.4 Indeed, clergyman sociologist Father
Andrew7 Greeley attributes the recent substantial erosion
in religious practices and church support among Ameri-
can Catholics almost entirely to Humanae Vitae.5
Adamant opposition to birth control by the Roman
Catholic Church and other conservative religious groups
for many years helped delay the reversal in developed
countries (including the United States) of laws restricting
access to contraceptives and the extension of family-
planning assistance to LDCs. Support of outdated dogma
among Catholic spokespeople still sometimes hinders
effective attacks on the population problem in Catholic
countries and in international agencies that support
family-planning programs. Thus, as late as 1969, elderly
Catholic economist Colin Clark claimed on a television
program that India would, in a decade, be the most
powerful country in the world because of its growing
population! He also wrote, "Population growth, however
strange and unwelcome some of its consequences may
appear at the time, must be regarded, I think, as one of
the instruments of Divine Providence, which we should
welcome, not oppose."6
By the mid-1970s, however, the influence of such
persons was on the wane— so much so that a reaffirma-
tion by Pope Paul of his anti-population-contrn], dngrna,
at the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome vyas greeted
by almost universal ridicule. Within the church, Pope
-Reader's Digest, January 1969.
'Celebration oj aizartness.
*F. X. Murphy and J. F. Erhart, Catholic perspectives on population
issues.. Population Bulletin, vol. 30 (1975), no. 6.
^Catholic schools in a declining church, Sheed & Ward, Mission,
Kans., 1976.
6
'Los Angelas Times, November 9, 1969.

about the disappearance of public land and the con-
sequent disappearance of the frontier, Frederick Jackson
Turner, then at the University of Wisconsin and sub-
sequently at Harvard, observed:
American social development has been continually
beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial
rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion
westward with its new opportunities . . . furnish the
forces dominating American character.14
A generation earlier, E. L. Godkin, editor of the
Nation, had written that the American frontier popula-
tion had "spread itself thinly over a vast area of soil, of
such extraordinary fertility that a very slight amount of
toil expended on it affords returns that might have
satisfied even the dreams of Spanish avarice."15
Traditional North American (and, to some extent,
European) attitudes toward the environment thus are not
exclusively products of our religious heritage, although
that doubtless played an important part. These attitudes
may just spring from ordinary human nature, which in
Western culture was provided with extraordinary social,
political, technical, and physical opportunities, particu-
larly connected with the nineteenth-century American
frontier. Such opportunities were bound to engender
optimism, confidence in the future, and faith in the
abundance of resources and the bounty of nature. That
they also produced habits of wastefulness and profligacy
was not noticed. Past institutions in the United States,
rarely dealt with environmental problems; if they were
recognized at all, they were usually considered to be
someone else's responsibility.
In the twentieth century, as the growing population
became increasingly urban and industrialized, the en-^
vironmental effects multiplied, and the nation was rather
suddenly confronted with a crisis. How today's Ameri-
cans ultimately resolve the environmental crisis will
depend on much more than changes in philosophical
outlook, but such changes unquestionably must precede
or at least accompany whatever measures are taken.
Individual conduct is clearly capable of being modified
and directed by an appropriate social environment—the
14
The significance of the frontier in American history, in The early
writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, ed- F. J. Turner.
1
'Aristocratic opinions of democracy.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 811
change in reproductive habits in the United States
testifies to that, as does the great increase in environ-
mental consciousness, t Tnfnrrunately. the e,pvirrmmental
problem may prove more difficult because it requires
changing more than the attitudes and behavior of indi-
viduals: those of firmly established, powerful institu-
tions— primaril business and governmental organiza-
tions— must hp
How large a role organized religion may play in
guiding the needed changes in individual attitudes
toward the environment or in influencing the behavior of _
other institutions is still uncertain. Many religious
groups have already shown leadership, including some
already mentioned in connection with population-
related issues. A particularly hopeful sign was the_
concern expressed in January 1976 by the National-
Council of Churches about the ethics of using and .
spreading the technology of nuclear power, and the
discussion promoted by the World Council of Churches^
on_the mirier ijjgiigjn,^L nr l rhp relation of energy policy _
to the prospects for adjust and sustainable^ world.16
Ecological Ethics
Many persons believe that an entirely new philosophy
must now be developed—one based on ecological reali-
ties. Such a philosophy—and the ethics based upon
it—would be antihumanist and against Judeo-Christian
tradition in the sense that it would not focus on an
anthropocentric universe.17 Instead, it would focus on
human beings as an integral part of nature, as just one
part of a much more comprehensive system.
This is not really a new perspective. In one sense,
Western philosophy has been a continuous attempt to
establish the position of Homo sapiens in the universe,
and the extreme anthropocentrism of thinkers like Karl
Marx and John Dewey has been strongly attacked by,
among others, Bertrand Russell.18 Russell, for example,
1
'See The plutonium economy: A statement of concern, Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, January 1976, pp. 48—49; P. M. Boffey, Plutonium: its
morality questioned by National Council of Churches, Science, vol. 192,
pp. 356—359 (April 23, 1976); Paul Abrecht, ed., Facing up to nuclear
power. Anticipation, no. 21, October 1975, pp. 1-47.
17
See Frank E. Egler, The zcay of science: A philosophy of ecology for the
layman; and George S. Sessions, Anthropocentrism and the environmen-
tal crisis. The latter is a good, brief summary with a useful bibliography.
1B
A hiswry of Wesiem philosophyj the debate is summarized in Sessions,
Anthropocentrism.
828 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
and Donald Lunde, which has enjoyed great success as a
college text and is highly recommended for any adoles-
cent or adult who wants to understand his or her
sexuality.
The Brain Drain
Our educational system is failing to produce not only
those competent to teach sex education, but also the
ecologists, agricultural scientists and technicians, social
scientists, paramedical personnel, and various other
specialists needed to help solve the pressing problems of
the world—especially in the less developed countries.
Indeed, for decades there has been a brain drain. Trained
personnel from the LDCs, especially medical doctors,
are understandably attracted to the United States and
other DCs, where they can earn a good living. Ironically,
this often happens because, despite their great needs for
trained people, LDCs may have no jobs for them. That
many individuals from the LDCs who are educated in
the DCs do not wish to return to their homelands is even
sadder. Although some DCs, notably the Soviet Union,
virtually force a return to the homeland, most do not.
One relatively simple and humane solution would be for
the DCs to establish and help staff more training centers
•within the LDCs. This should have the additional ben-
efits of training local people to work on problems of local
significance and of familiarizing visiting faculty mem-
bers from the DCs with those problems.
Changing the Educational Structure
While a great deal can be done to improve the
educational system within the general framework now
recognized, more fundamental changes will probably be
required if large technological societies are to discover
ways to govern themselves satisfactorily while solving or
preventing the social and environmental problems that
now threaten to destroy them. Ivan Illich has suggested
the abolition of formal education and the making of
educational materials and institutions available to all on a
cafeteria basis.52 To those struggling in the present
system, the idea has considerable appeal; but even Illich
''-Deschooling society.
recognizes the enormous drawbacks inherent in such an
unstructured approach.
We would suggest another strategy, one that expands
on ideas already current in education. First of all, we
think that a major effort should be made to extend
education throughout the life span, rather than attempt-
ing to cram all education into the first fifteen to twenty-
five years. It is becoming widely recognized that maturity
and experience are often a benefit in learning. Students
who have dropped out, worked, and then returned to
school generally do so with renewed vigor and increased
performance. Experience in the real world can lead
students to avoid much wasted effort in the educational
world. A program of encouraging interruption of educa-
tion, perhaps for one or two years during or directly after
high school and another two years after receiving an
undergraduate degree might be a good start. For exam-
ple, a student interested in becoming a physician might
spend two years after high school doing clerical work in a
hospital or doctor's office or serving as an orderly. When
his or her undergraduate education was completed, two
additional years could be spent working with a doctor as
a paramedic. Similarly, individuals going into business,
government, science, bricklaying, plumbing, or what-
have-you should have a chance to try out their chosen
professions and trades at the bottom before completing
their educations."
The benefits of the program would be many, including
better understanding of the problems faced by associates
(a doctor who has been an orderly should have more
insight into the situation of the orderlies), and fewer cases
of people committing themselves to careers too early,
with too little knowledge of what the commitment
involves, and discovering the error too late to make
another choice. Students who, on completing high
school, were unsure of what their futures should be,
could try out several possibilities.
What about youngsters who have no desire to go
beyond high school or vocational school? Should their
educations end at that point? In the United States, for
instance, nearly 1 adult in 5 reportedly lacks "those skills
and knowledges which are requisite to adult compe-
"For a more detailed discussion of restructuring our educational
system, see Dennis C. Pirages and Paul R. Ehrlich, Ark II: Social response
to environmental imperatives, chapter 6.

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 dus 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.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 829
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 trv 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
'^Personal communication.
56
Much of this section is based on discussions with attorney Johnson C.
Montgomery, whose death in December 1974 was a loss deeply felt bv
people in the ZPG movement.

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 the 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 the 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.
6!
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.
"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-
"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 ].
E. Krier, Environmental law and its administration; and C. D. Stone,
Should trees have standing? Toward legal rights for 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
*Originaliy published in 1972 in the Southern California Law
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.
'"CEQ, Environmental Quality, 1974, p. 372. This report has a good
brief historical account of the evolution of NEPA (pp. 372—413).
68a
ln 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.
6
'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 O. 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).
ments 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 for controlling economic growth. The appendix to the
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 EIS provision
meticulously.72
Several landmark court cases have clarified the obliga-
tions of government agencies under NEPA. In Calvert
Cliff's coordinating committee versus AEC (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
defined 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-
72
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 m&:.~
legal protection for workers is provided under :h;
Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which
authorized the Labor Department to establish standard:
for exposure of workers to hazardous pollutants, to
;
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. Thejirst cojnprehensive treatment
of population law was that of the late Johnson C.
Montgomery.,74 "" arrnrnpy 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
jrowth^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 enacted under the
clauses that empower Congress to appropriate funds to
provide for tlie(general welfare and to regulate com-
or under the equal-protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment.^5 Such laws constitutionally
could be very broad. Indeed, it has been concluded thaL
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 systems 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.
7!
"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."
;6
Joe D. Wtay, 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,
income axul oti^er tV\\Yvg,s \3*im^, ec\ua\, TVve VaNv CQM\d
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 _
would 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 UN 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 uie T\g\vx to Yvave ctuldtetv v& 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.
890 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
the programs were selfless); American resources have
been devoted mainly to providing additional material
goods for ourselves and to an expensive and dangerous
arms race, rather than to improving the lot of our fellow
human beings.
Latin America and the United States:
Problems of Paternalism
The pattern of relationships among DCs and LDCs
prevailing until recently is exemplified by the behavior of
the United States toward Latin America in this century.
The United States has long claimed a special relf ti^n^'p-
with its neighbors to the south, but this more often than
not has meant a desire for exclusive exploitation rights._
The one-sidedness of the agreement has not gone unno-_
ticed by Latin Americans.
When Sol Linowitz resigned in 1969 as U.S. ambassa-
dor to the Organization of Ampric-iffl Staffis, he warned of
the possibility of "a series of Vietnams" in Latin
America. The same year Nelson A. Rockefeller,,then
governor of New York, was sent on a fact-finding tour
south of the border for President Nixon. He was greeted
with a violence that underlined the Linowitz warning.
Rockefeller was, of course, an especially ironic choice
since his family's association with Standard Oil is so
much a jymbol of U.S. economic imperialism. But one
does not have to look far for more fundamental reasons
for his hostile reception.
Population growth in Latin America was proceeding
at an average of 2.9 percent per year during the first eight
years of the Alliance for Progress, while per-capita
economic growth only averaged about 1.5 percent per
year, a full percentage point below the Alliance target. A
large portion of the Latin American population was
then—and still is—for the most part living in appalling
poverty. For millions, diets were inadequate, infant and
child mortality sky-high, and decent housing often
nonexistent. If 10,000 houses had been built per day in
Latin America between 1969 and 1979, something on the
order of 100 million of our southern neighbors (more
than one-fourth of the expected population there) would
still not be adequately housed. Although land reform has
begun in some countries—most recently in Peru—10
percent of the people in Latin America still owned 90
percent of the land in 1976. And in most Latin American
countries, progress toward an equitable distribution 01
income has been slow, especially for the rural
populations.
Development in most of Latin America has scarcely
touched the poor. The rich-poor gap has widened in
many countries, especially the richer ones such as Brazil
and Mexico, and national economies have tended to
become two-tiered. The upper tier consists of large
landholders and the urban upper and middle classes,
especially in such industrial centers as Sao Paulo and
Mexico City. In the lower tier are The urban poor ancL
peasants, bypassed by modernization. In Mexico City,
for example, a skilled worker in 1976 earned more than
$500 a month, including benefits. But outside the city,
minimum wages for farm workers were $5 a day, and
because of underemployment many earned as little as
$100 per year.12
In several countries, notably Brazil, Peru, and Para-
guay, there is a third, even lower tier—primitive Indians,
who are being systematically exterminated as roadblocks _
in the path of progress. In Paraguay, which is heavik-
under U.S. influence, there have been charges of United
States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA1 complicity' in
those programs.'3 True or not, that such charges are
widely believed south of the border says something about
U.S.-Latin American relations.
Latin America's political instability is legendary (Fig-
ure 15-2). Between 1961 and mid-1976 political changes
were made by military force in Argentina, Bolivia.
Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Sal-
vador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Peru—in
some countries more than once. This political turmoil
cannot all be blamed on the United States, but American
behavior in Latin America has done little to foster
stability there. Although the days when United States
corporations directly controlled small countries are over,
a huge reservoir of ill will remains from those days, when
those corporations openly took what they wanted of the
mineral and agricultural wealth of the continent. This
12
A no-nonsense mood takes hold in Mexico, U.S. News and World
Report, June 21, 1976, pp. 63-66. For a description of the situation in
Brazil, see Robert Harvey, Brazil: The next nuclear power?
13
John Hillaby, Genocide in Paraguay.
 UNITED STATES
62.3

S1710

110.2

TYPES OF GOVERNMENTS
Constitutional
Military regime
0m Civilian dictatorship

© Number of government
changes since 1944
FIGURE 15-2
Population 1976 est. (in millions)
Latin American summary: population, per-capita
Per capita G.N.P. gross national product, amounts of American
(in U.S. dollars) 1976 investment, forms of government, and numbers
Annual growth •
$1000 of government changes since 1944 (excluding
Private, direct long-term investments, those resulting from elections, unless they have
value at end of 1973 (millions, U.S. dollars) been interspersed with coups).

widespread resentment was deepened by revelation of
CIA involvement in Chile before the 1974 coup that
overthrew the Allende government in Chile. Moreover.
North American economic exploitation of Latin America
is even now far from finished. While some United States
multinational companies are now so well-behaved that
they can serve as examples of benevolence, having made
significant contributions to their host nations, they still
drain vast amounts nf natural-resource capital from those
nations. And the actions of some other United Stales
multinational firms have had dramatically undesirable
effects, especially on the poorest segments of the
populations.14
"For example, see R. J. Earner and R. E. Mullet, Global reach: The
piwurr of the multinational corporations, chapter 7; and Robert J. Ledogar,
Hungry for profits: U.S. food and drug multinationals in Latin America.
 RICH NATIONS, POOR NATIONS, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT
ties, the two most powerful DCs, the United States and
USSR, have approached aid differently. The United
States, with a vast store of capital to draw on, has seen the
problems of the LDCs primarily in terms of a shortage of
capital. The Soviets, on the other hand, because of their
relatively recent history of revolution and the more
recent successful revolutions in two LDCs—China and
Cuba—tend to emphasize the export not of capital but of
political change, of revolution.
Unhappily, many nations threw off the yoke of colo-
nial exploiters after World War II only to have it
replaced by home-grown repressive governments. Polit-
ical scientist Harlan Cleveland put it succinctly: "Nor
did freedom for nations lead directly to freedom for
individuals. Colonial rule was often supplanted by
military rule, Czars were succeeded by commissars,
white domination gave way to black dictatorships, extra-
territoriality was pushed out by totalitarianism."55
The need for dramatic political change in many
countries is obvious—but most recent changes have been
in the wrong direction. Haiti (with a per-capita GNP of
$70 in 1972) had no chance while it was under dictator
Frangois Duvalier, and its present prospects seem no
better. The assumption of "emergency powers" by Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi of India in 1975, including
suppression of dissent, did not encourage optimism for
the political future of that troubled country. The auto-
cratic regimes, military or civilian, in many Latin
American and African nations, many of them beset by
terrorism and revolutionary activity, seem barely able to
keep the peace and their seats in power, let alone do much
to improve the lives of their peoples. Tales of severe
repression and torture of dissidents in Brazil and
Chile—both countries that ostensibly have a great deal
going for them—horrify outsiders and frighten off
tourists (if not foreign investors).
Democracy is a fragile form of government, especially
where it is not backed by appropriate traditions and some
degree of economic equity. Economic equity may be
especially important, and a fundamental aspect of equity
is landholding. In many nominal democracies, land
reform unquestionably is sorely needed to give the
people incentive to improve their agricultural practices
"Our coming foreign policy crisis, p. 11.
/ 905
and a chance to participate in the modernization process.
Revolution is one potentially effective way to achieve
land reform.
Both the capitalist and revolutionary points of view on
aid have a certain validity, but both are also sadly
deficient. If real progress in helping LDCs is to be made,
both superpowers will have to change their ways. The
United States must stop supporting assorted dictators
around the world merely because they claim to be
anticommunist. It must accept that in many countries
most of the people might well be better off under regimes
that the U.S. perceives as communist than under their
present regimes. In Latin America, in particular, the
need for social justice as a first step toward economic
development has been widely recognized (but rarely
implemented). If badly needed reforms do not take place
peacefully, they will sooner or later be attempted by I
revolution. It is imperative that U.S. officials in LDCs
realize that their contacts within those countries are all
too often unrepresentative of the people as a whole. The
attitudes of the governing classes in the capitol cities are
unlikely to resemble those of peasants or of the masses in
urban slums.
There is, of course, no doubt that corporate interests,
sensitive to the resource limits of the United States and
motivated by the desire for profits, play a substantial role
in shaping American foreign policy. The interlocking
directorates of the government and various industrial
giants are well known. Executives move freely from big
business into administrative positions in the government,
while high-level bureaucrats and military leaders are
welcomed into executive positions with corporations
doing business with the government. In 1969, for in-
stance, each of the top twenty defense contractors in the
United States employed an average of 65 retired military
men of the rank of colonel, navy captain, or higher.56 The
military-industrial complex, among other things, wishes
to assure the United States control over the resources it_
deems essential—and in the process often has attempted,
to control the destinies of LDCs.
It is evident that the LDCs can undertake and would
profit from having control over their own resources and
destinies. The contrary view has often been held in the
"Dennis C. Pirages and Paul R. Ehrlich, Ark II: Social response to
environmental imperatives.
906 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
past as doctrine by the DCs. For example, there weredire
(and erroneous) warnings that the Egyptians would be_
unable to run the Suez Canal when they took it over from — international politicoeconomic relationships can be dra-
the British in 1956. The success of OPEC surely has put
that fairy tale to rest once and for all!
Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that there is much tn he
gained in attempting to shatter the power of international
corporations, many of which, among other things, are
heavily engagsjjjn the exploitation of LDC resources.^A ^ rangements that require general consent—nuclear saife
primary reason is that it probably would be impossible in " guards, weather watch, crop forecasting, public health*
the absence of supporting changes in attitude in DC
societies. As long as economic standards reign supreme,
economic power will tend to become concentrated; only
more fundamental changes will suffice. And those
changes must be made with great care. International
corporations supply planning, coordination, capital, and
expertise in their operations within LDCs; considerable
economic hardship could result from a sudden dissolu-
tion of those giants. But they could be quickly stopped
from draining capital away from the LDCs; after all, the
extraction of capital goes against the West's conventional
wisdom of what is required to eliminate poverty in those
nations.
Russia should face the facts of life, too. The Soviets
blame most of the problems of the world on capitalist
imperialism, but that just is not supported by the
evidence. Revolution is at best a partial answer; it cannot
remove the biological and physical constraints upon
development, although it may well remove some of the
social and economic barriers. At worst, as noted above,
revolution only replaces one despotism with another.
Furthermore, the Soviet Union's intervention in other
countries in defense of what it perceives as its vital
interests has been fully as blatant and brutal as that of the Establishment of a New Economic Order, whose stated
capitalist imperialists, as the Soviet invasion of Czecho-
slovakia in 1968 so clearly demonstrated. It is ironic that
the USSR, in Angola and elsewhere, now seems to be
emulating the grand imperialism pioneered in the nine-
teenth century by western European powers and the
United States.
But the differing approaches of the United States (as
well as other Western nations) and the USSR, which
dominated international politics in the first two decades
after World War II, must now share the stage with the
policies of the LDCs themselves, which are increasingly
determined to narrow the gap between the rich and the
poor. The OPEC revolution has shown that traditional
matically and profoundly altered. And even if, as some
claim, the case of oil is unique, the self-interest of the rich*
nations is clearly tied to the condition of the poor. As
Harlan Cleveland has written, "If two-thirds of the
world simply failed to cooperate in international ar-
narcotics control, environmental monitoring, and mea^
sures against hijacking and terrorism— everybody would
lose, but the world powers would likely lose the most."j7
In short, for the world commons to operate for
benefit of all people requires it to be administered
cooperatively —and the poor can demand a price for their
cooperation. More positively, there is general agreement
among the rich that poverty should be wiped out— and
that consensus would make selfishness a more difficult
course (although one that certainly might yet be taken).
International politics in the near future will most
likely he focused on the question of whether the rich and_
the poor can strike a new planetary bargain, to us^Harlan
Cleveland's term. Can the developed countries show the
necessary self-restraint and the less developed countries
die necessary changes in attitudes and organization to
rearrange the relationships among nations successfully?,
There are some hopeful signs.
A group consisting of most Third World nations.
calling themselves the Group of 77, in 1974 presented a
case to the United Nations for a New International
Order. In May 1974 the United Nations General As-^
sembly adopted by consensus a Declaration on the^
aims include: "to correct inequalities andredress existing
injustices and ensure steadily accelerating economic-
development, peace and justice for present and future,
generations."58
The Declaration called for stabilization of commodity
prices and markets for them and for establishment of a
link between those prices and prices paid for manufac-
tured products imported from DCs. It also called for
"Our coming foreign policy crisis, p. 13.
5
"The new economic order. Nae Internationalist, October 1975 '•"-
special issue on this subject).
 RICH NATIONS, POOR NATIONS, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT /
restraint of research into synthetic substitutes for com-
modities, which have already damaged markets for some
products, such as sisal, jute, and rubber. (Higher prices
and diminishing resources of petroleum will eventually
undermine this activity, but that is little comfort to
LDCs today.) Finally, the New Economic Order would
encourage the development of producer associations and
trade unions among LDCs in order to negotiate favorable
trade terms more effectively. Such trade associations,
while not having the clout of OPEC (where conditions
were uniquely suitable for setting up a cartel), have
already been established for several commodities, in-
cluding bananas, cocoa, coffee, copper, phosphates, tea,
and tin.59
The reaction to the New Economic Order among DCs,
especially at first, was generally negative, and the United I
States was the most recalcitrant. But it soon became
obvious that the demands of the Group of 77 could not be
ignored. United Nations Secretary General Kurt Wald-
heim told a later United Nations conference in Lima,
Peru: "the New Economic Order is the price of peace."60
In September 1975, in an address before the United
Nations, by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the
United States officially took a stand favoring new bar-
gains, including a "fundamental structural improvement
in the relationship of the developing countries to the
world trading system . . . such as preferences, favor-
able concessions, and exceptions which reflect their
economic status."61 Kissinger also urged the world
community to address the basic problems of access of
LDCs to capital markets, the transfer of technology, and
"the principles to guide the beneficial operation of_
transnational enterprises." He pointed out the need for
controlling population growth, for increasing food re-
serves, and for reducing food wastage, and he pledged the
United States to contribute to a program of action if all
nations "met in a spirit of common endeavor/' The
speech ended with some interesting rhetoric:
My government does not offer these propositions as
""New Internationalist" guide to UNCTADIV, New Internationalist,
April 1976, pp. 6-7.
M
The New Economic Order, New Internationalist, 1975.
'''Address by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinyer (delivered bv
Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan), seventh special session of the United
Nations General Assembly, New York, September 1,1975. Reprinted in
the Nevi York Times, September 2, 1975, p. 20.
907
an act of charity, nor should they be received as if due.
We know that the world economy nourishes us all, we
know that we live on a shrinking planet. Materially as
well as morally, our destinies are intertwined. . . .
There remain enormous things for us to do. We can
say once more to the new nations: We have heard your
voices. We embrace your hopes. We will join your
efforts. We commit ourselves to our common success. 1
Although the speech did not indicate awareness of
many of the concerns of this chapter, it did indicate a
growing power within the United States government of
persons who realize the degree to which all nations are__
interdependent and understand that the future of the
United States depends on how well the entire world deals _
with the population-resource-environment crisis.No
doubt the success of the OPEC cartel's embargo and
raising of oil prices also had much to do with the United,
States change of heart toward trig aspirations of poor
countries. History makes it difficult to he)ieve that the.
change in attitude could have been accomplished without
the bludgeon of OPEC oil or some similar weapon in the __
control of the nonindustrial nations.
How much action will follow the rhetoric remains to
be seen. And how ready the LDCs are to put aside their
own rhetoric and join in common solutions to common
problems also is in doubt. Unfortunately, less than three_
months after the Kissinger speech, the use of the United
Nations as a forum for divisive propaganda on the part of
the Eastern and Third World blocks reached an extreme
with the unfortunate ^'Zionism is racism/62 declaration.
That declaration strengthened, at a critical time, isola-
tionist forces in the United States who already
ered both the United Nations and foreign aid utterly _ .
useless. The declaration was followed a few months later _j
by a failure of Third World and communist nations to
join the Western nations in a worldwide condemnation
of international terrorism or to agree to oppose it and
refuse cooperation with extortionists.
Thereis £eal danger that the past colossal failures of
both the\ United Nations] and foreign-assistance efforts
will lead to a withdrawal of the United States from
efforts to help solve vital international problems. It
would behoove all governments to remember that, with-
"Time, November 24, 1975.
908 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
out the wholehearted collaboration of the United States,
western Europe, the USSR, and the People's Republic of
China, any resolution of world problems is extremely
unlikely. And failure to resolve them will most likely lead
to war.
POPULATION, RESOURCES, AND WAR_
Desmond Morris some years ago observed, " . . . the
best solution for ensuring world peace is the widespread
promotion of contraception and abortion . . . moraliz-
ing factions that oppose it must face the fact that they are
engaged in dangerous war mongering."63 As he sug-
gested, population-related problems may be increasing
the probability of a thermonuclear Armageddon. Avoid-
ing such a denouement for civilization is the most
pressing political-economic problem of our time.
In 1969 the world saw in a microcosm what may be in
store: Two grossly overpopulated Central American
countries, El Salvador and Honduras, went to war against
each other. El Salvador had an estimated population of
3.3 million, a population density of 160 people per square
kilometer, with a doubling time of 21 years. Honduras
had a population of 2.5 million, a density of only 22 per
square kilometer, and the same doubling time as El
Salvador. More significant statistics have been provided
by the Latin American Demographic Center; they show
that in El Salvador the population density per square
kilometer of arable land was 300 persons, while in
Honduras it was only 60 persons.
Almost 300,000 Salvadorans had moved into Hon-
duras in search of land and jobs because of overpopula-
tion and resulting unemployment at home. Friction
developed among the immigrants and the Honduran
natives; El Salvador accused Honduras of maltreating the
Salvadorans; and the problem escalated into a brief but
nasty war. The conflict was ended by the intervention of
the Organization of American States (OASV In a prece-
dent-shattering move, the OAS recognized demographic
factors in its formula for settling the dispute—an inter-
national body acknowledged that population pressure
was a root cause of a war.64
'"'The naked ape, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967.
"Population Bulletin, December 1969, pp. 134-135.
Systematic analyses of the role of population pressures
in generating wars, carried out by political scientist
Robert C. North and his colleagues at Stanford Univer-
sity, have supported earlier conclusions based on anec-
dotal evidence. Statistical studies of the involvement of
major European powers in wars in modern times have
revealed very high correlations among rates of popula-
tion growth, rising GNP, expanding military budgets,
and involvement in wars, although technical consider-
ations make drawing conclusions about causes and
effects hazardous. In more detailed multivariate analyses.
Professor North found a complex causal chain involving
population growth in relation to static or slowly growing
resources, technological development, a tendency to
invest energy beyond previous boundaries of society, and
increases in the presumed needs and demands of a
populace.
Writing about the root causes of World War I, North
and political scientist Nazli Choucri of the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology concluded:
Our most important finding is that domestic growth
(as measured by population density and national
income per capita) is generally a strong determinant of
national expansion. Our investigations have identified
strong linkages from domestic growth and national
expansion to military expenditures, to alliances, and to
international interactions with a relatively high poten-
tial for violence.65
In ancient times such tendencies were somewhat
buffered by oceans, mountain ranges, deserts, vast dis-
tances, and slow means of travel. Rome could raze
Carthage but not China or the cities of South American
and Central American Indians. Today, however, with
vast increases of population and unprecedented develop-
ments in technology, transportation, and communica-
tions, the peoples of the world are cheek by jowl, and
there is little geographical buffering left. North pointed
out that states in nonaggressive phases, like modern
Sweden, tend to share certain characteristics: "A rela-
tively small and stable population, a relatively high and
steadily developing technology, and good access to
^Nations in conflict: National growth and intertiational violence.
 RICH NATIONS, POOR NATIONS, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT
In our view, the most serious risk associated with
nuclear power is the attendant increase in the number
of countries that have access to technology, materials,
and facilities leading to a nuclear weapons capabil-
ity. . . . If widespread proliferation actually occurs,
it will prove an extremely serious danger to U.S.
security and to world peace and stability in general.860
The Ford group recommended that the U.S. defer the
recycle of plutonium and the commercialization of the
breeder reactor and that it seek "common supplier action
to ban the export of such technology." It recommended
also that the U.S. and other supplier nations provide
assured supplies of slightly enriched uranium to other
countries at favorable prices, a plan whose drawbacks we
have already mentioned above. In April 1977, President
Carter announced a nuclear policy for his administration
essentially congruent with the Ford Study's recommen-
dation.
While we applaud the progress represented by the
positions taken by the Flowers, Ranger, and Ford reports
and by the Carter administration's position, our own
preference is for a stronger stance. We believe there
should be an absolute embargo on the export of enrich-
ment and reprocessing technology by any nation.86d The
United States should cajole and, if necessary, coerce its
allies into compliance, using every incentive and/or
peaceful sanction at its disposal. (The possibilities are
considerable, not least of which is the fact that West
Germany and France will be dependent on U.S. enriched
uranium for their own nuclear power programs into the
1980s.) Since the Soviets are also intensely concerned
about proliferation, there is a chance that they would
cooperate. Countries that have power reactors but no
enrichment or reprocessing capability could be supplied
with low-enriched uranium by the sort of consortium
mentioned above, but there is reason to question whether
any additional power reactors should be exported by
anyone. A universal embargo on reactor exports may
seem a drastic measure—certainly drastic enough to
require rewriting the NPT—but lowering the probability
of a nuclear holocaust is a desperately important task.
"""Spurgeon Kceny et al.. Nuclear power issues and choices.
8sd
See also the chapter on proliferation in A. Lovins, Soft energy paths:
Toward a durable peace.
/ 91 7
The sort of pussyfooting that characterized attempts to
stem proliferation before 1977 was not merely a scandal
but a threat to the survival of civilization.
Chemical, biological, and environmental weap-
ons. Even if humanity does manage to stop the proli-
feration of nuclear weapons, it still must deal with the
ever-increasing deadliness of conventional weapons and
the prospective horrors of chemical and biological war-
fare (CBW) and environmental warfare. Biological and
chemical weapons, which could be nearly as destructive_
of lives as nuclear arms, seem to have some prospects of
being eventually considered "conventional."87 Environ-
mental warfare is newer and potentially perhaps even
more threatening.88
Achieving disarmament. The third element of
difficulty in changing the rules of international relations
is uncertainty about the best way to achieve disarmament
and security in a world where in the past security has_
usually been provided by brute force^either threatened
or overtly exercised. Unfortunately, the effort going into
the study of peaceful means to world security has been
infinitesimal compared with that going into military
research, although almost no area needs greater immedi-
ate attention. The basic requirement is evident: once
again it is a change in human attitudes so that the
in-group against which aggression is forbidden expands
to include all human beings.
If this could be accomplished, jjeciirity might HP
provided by an armed international organization, a
global analogue of a police force. Many people have
recognized this as a goal, but the way to reach it remains
obscure in a world where factionalism seems, if anything,
to be increasing. The first step necessarily jnyn1'""'
partiaj (surrender of sovereignty^ to an intematinpal
organization.JJut it seems probable that, as long as most
people fail to comprehend the magnitude of the danger,-
that step will be impossible. At the very least, societies
87
J. P. Perry Robinson, The special case of chemical and biological
weapons; see also Bo Holmberg, Biological aspects of chemical and
biological weapons.
88
For example, see Chapter 11 and Frank Barnaby, The spread of the
capability to do violence: An introduction to environmental warfare:
Jozef Goldblat, The prohibition of environmental warfare; and Bhupen-
Ctra M. Jasanij Environmental muUificauon; New weapons of war?
91 8 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
must learn to weigh the risks inherent in attempting to
achieve controlled disarmament against the risks of
continuing the arms race. An attempt at disarmament
could lead to a war, or to the destruction or domination of
the United States through Chinese or Soviet "cheating."
But, if disarmament were successfully carried out, and if
an international police force were established, the reward _
would be a very much safer world in which resources
would be freed for raising the standard of living for all
people.81} No problem deserves more intensive study and
international discussion.
The dynamics of disarmament appear to be even more
complex than those of arms races. Nevertheless, in 1970
the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA),
the only United States agency charged with planning in
this area, had a budget of only a few million dollars
(contrasted with $80 billion for "defense"). Representa-
tive John F. Seiberling of Ohio put it succinctly: ^'The ,
Pentagon has 3000 people working on arms sales to other
countries while the Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency has 12 people monitoring arms sales. That gives
you an idea of where the executive branch priorities
are."90 Moreover, the ACDA is heavily influenced by the
Department of State bureaucracy, still a stronghold of
cold-war thinking.
It has been suggested that an important step toward
disarmament could be taken by the pstahHshmpnT nf an
internationaljiisarmament control organization, which
would serve as a clearinghouse for informtinn nn the
quantity and quality of weapons in various nations and
would thus help to detect cheating on international--
agreements.91 As a semi-independent Unir*^ Nflfi""'
agency, such an organization could play a vital role— buL
so far there has been no significant effort to establish one.
Diverting the military to peaceful purposes. The-
fourtfa element of difficulty involves economics and the
89
See, for example, Ronald Huisken, The consumption of raw materials
for military purposes; and Ruth L. Sivard, Let them eat bullets! The
military budgets of the United States and USSR in 1973 were greater than
the combined annual income of more than 1 billion people in thirty-three
of the poorest nations and almost 20 times the value of all foreign aid from
all sources.
90
Quoted in San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, November 9.
1975.
"Alva Myrdal, The international control of disarmament.
military establishment. Although this will be discussed
in terms of the United States, there is every reason to
believe that an analogous situation exists in the Soviet
Union, the other military superpower. Civilians should
realize that peace and freedom from tension are not
viewed as an ideal situation by many members of the _
military-industrial-government complex. By and large,
professional military officers, especially field grade and
higher, hope for an end to international tensions about as
fervently as farmers hope for drought. When there is an
atmosphere of national security, military budgets are
usually small, military power minimal, and military
promotions slow. The founders of the United States,
recognized that the military services were unlikely Jo,
w_ork against their own interests, so they carefully,
Established ultimate civilian control over the army and
navy^ It worked rather well for a long time.
But times have changed. Wars are no longer fought
with simple, understandable weapons like axes, swords,
and cannon. Now a nation needs weapons systems with
complex and often arcane components, such as acquisi-
tion radar, VTOL fighters, Doppler navigators, MIRVs,
cruise missiles, and nuclear submarines. Such systems
cannot be produced rapidly, on demand, by a few
government contractors. Long-term planning is re-
quired, involving not only the military services but also a
large number of industrial organizations that supply
various components.
Those organizations, not unnaturally, often hire re^
tired military officers to help them in their negotiations,
with the government; where decisions on appropriations
for armaments are made. The necessary intimacy of the
military and industry in development and procurement,
of weapons led Dwight D. Eisenhower to "~"'" rhp ff m _
military-industrial complex^ The term military-
industrial-labor-government complex sometimes seems
more accurate. In his heavily documented 1970 book.
Pentagon capitalism, industrial engineer Seymour Mel-
man of Columbia University showed that even that term
is inadequate to describe the Frankenstein's monster that
has hppn created.92
This complex seems to have an aversion to peace, but it
'2See especially Melman's chapter 7.
 RICH NATIONS, POOR NATIONS, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT /
uses of outer space and Antarctica. More recently, there
have been extensive negotiations on a treaty to control
the use of oceans.
[ j.aw of the Seap What has been described as "the
greatest international conference ever held"126 met in
Caracas in summer 1974 to begin work on a treaty
dealing with the control of the oceans. The second
session of the third United Nations Conference on the
Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)127 reached no final agree-
ments, but in its tortuous proceedings several trends
could be discerned. The emphasis was on dividing up the
pie—on how to allocate rights to exploit the oceans rather
than how to protect their vital functioning in the
ecosystems of Earth. The less developed nations were
anxious to "augment their meager natural resources with
none of the unpleasant connotations of economic aid."128
The overdeveloped countries, on the other hand, were
primarily trying to retain as much as possible of their
hegemony over the seas (which they, far more than the
LDCs, have the ability to exploit).
A dominant trend has been toward establishing a
200-mile economic zone, which would effectively bal-
kanize most of the oceans' known wealth. One view is
that this would lead to having humanity's common
heritage decimated piecemeal as individual nations exer-
cised dominion over all living and nonliving resources
within their zones. About the only good thing that can be
said about the 200-mile zone is that its establishment
might lead eventually to more rational use of those
resources since their individual ownership by nations
would at least tend to avoid the problems involved in
multilateral exploitation of a commons.
Other topics discussed in detail at the ongoing confer-
ence have been rights of passage through straits, the
rights of landlocked nations to a share of oceanic
resources, the establishment of an international authority
'"Elizabeth Mann Borgese, Report from Caracas, the law of the sea,
Center Magazine, November/December, 1974.
I27
The first session in New York in 1973 dealt only with procedures:
the first and second conferences in 1958 and 1960 had accomplished little
but reveal the complexities of the problems and the diverse positions of
states and blocs (see Edward Wenk, Jr., The politics of the ocean, chapter
6).
13S
C. R. Pinto of Sri Lanka, quoted in Time, July 29,1974. It has been
suggested that "The uses of international commons should be taxed for
the benefit of the poorest strata of the poor countries" (Barbara Ward, The
Cocoyoc Declaration}, but there is thus far little sign that this will occur.
941
for the mining of seabed minerals outside the economic
zones, the responsibility of nations to control pollution
originating from their shores and to protect the marine
environment, and the establishment of means of settling
disputes and enforcing agreements.
A third eight-week session of UNCLOS in Geneva in
May 1975 produced a draft treaty, which was not voted
on by the participating nations but was instead consid-
ered the basis for further negotiation.12'' The draft
extended the territorial waters of all nations to 12 miles
from shore, provided for a 200-mile economic zone,
specified means to control polluting activities, and en-
couraged the transfer of technology from rich to poor
nations. The most controversial provision was for an
International Seabed Authority, controlled de facto by
the LDCs (who would be a majority in the agency), that
would regulate deep-sea mining. The United States has
held out for "private initiative" to share in managing the
seabed resource.
Further negotiations are scheduled for 1977. In part,
their success will depend on what unilateral actions are
taken by nations in the meantime. The United States, for
example, has extended its jurisdiction over fisheries up to
200 miles from shore, which conforms with the draft
treaty. Several other countries, including Mexico and
Canada, have followed suit. But legislation being con^
sidered by Congress on deep-sea mining does not
conform to the draft treaty. This places U.S. negotiators,
who have tried to dissuade other nations from taking
unilateral action, in an awkward position. If Congress
passes such legislation, it could have a less than salu-
brious effect on future negotiations—especially if Amer-
ican firms are permitted to begin deep-sea mining before
the treaty is finally passed and ratified. On the other hand,
these unilateral actions may be pushing negotiators to
examine other alternatives. By 1977, Elizabeth Mann-
Borgese was envisioning a third possibility for the
Seabed Authority as "a comprehensive and flexible
system of joint ventures, acceptable to states and compa-
nies under the control of the [Ajuthority and for the
benefit of all countries, especially the poorer
"'.Material in this paragraph is based primarily on Deborah Shapley,
Now, a draft sea law treaty: But what comes after?
'"•Quoted in Claiborae Pell, The most complex treaty ever negotiated
in history, World Issues, vol II, no. 1 (February/March), 1977.
942 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
The complexity and comprehensiveness of the treaty
account for the lengthiness of the negotiations. But,
unfortunately, even a definitive treaty may fail to pro-
vide the kind of apparatus required to administer,
conserve, and distribute the resources of the seas in a way
that is equitable and that fully protects the vitally
important ecosystems of the oceans, just because an
exploitative view of the environment continues to domi-
nate all such discussions.
U.N. Environment Program. The exploitative view
of the environment first surfaced explicitly at the inter-
national level at the United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment at Stockholm in 1972. That gath-
ering featured platitudes from the ODCs, who are busily
engaged in looting the planet and destroying its ecologi-
cal systems, and demands from the LDCs that they get a
piece of the action. One could only take heart that the__
world's nations even took the condition of the environ-
ment seriously enough to attend such a conference. That
they did was a tribute to the brilliance, persuasiveness,
and persistence of one man, Canadian businessman,
Maurice Strong, secretary general of the conference.
Strong became the first executive director of the
United Nations Environment Program (UNF.P). the,
major positive result of the Stockholm conference.
UNEP was given only a small budget, and its head-
quarters was tucked away in Nairobi, perhaps in the hope
that it would not make waves. Under Strong's leadership,
it nevertheless began to serve several vital functions. For
instance, it has established the Earth Watch monitoring
system to serve as an international clearinghouse for
environmental information. Earth Watch is explicitly
designed also to help bridge the gap between scientists
and technologists on one hand and political decision-
makers on the other.130 The kinds of information to be
collected include an international register of toxic chem-
icals, which list properties of those chemicals, their uses,
their effects, and their known or inferred pathways in the
environment.
UNEP's very location in Nairobi (the first such United
Nations agency headquartered in an LDC) has resulted
in its first major contribution—an enormous and growing
''"Maurice Strong, A global imperative for the environment.
interest and concern in poor nations about environmental
problems.131 This concern was already well established
in some areas among the people132 but had been notably
absent in most LDC governments.
Under Strong's leadership a list of high-priority areas
was established at UNEP: (1) human settlement, health,
habitat, and well-being; (2) land, water, and desertifica-
tion; (3) trade, economics, technology, and the transfer of
technology; (4) oceans; (5) conservation of nature, wild-
life, and genetic resources; (6) energy.
A program has been started in each area, and by early
1975 more than 200 projects had been initiated, projects
that according to Strong were designed "to create a
leverage to move the programme towards our prjor--
ities."U3 Unfortunately for UNEP. Maurice Strong left
theagency in 1975; whether the<acorri)bf UNEP will ever
grow into the^reat oakjpf ari^iernationaTenvironmental)
protection organization^ so
depend on many things—not least of which will be the
quality of its leadership.
Toward a Planetary Regime
International attempts to tackle global problems— or at
least to start a dialogue among nations— have proliferated
in recentjear|. Besides(the UNCTAPLaw ofthe Sea,^
and(EnvIroninenTal conference^ the United Nations has
sponsored World Population and World, Food confer-
ences (discussed earlier) in 1974, a conference on the
Status of Women in 1975. the pahirat Crmferpnrp nf
1976 (dealing with the problems of cities), and^a, confer-
ence on Water Resources in 1977. A Conference on
Science and Technology is scheduled for 1978, and it is
expected to create a new agency for World Science and.
Technplogv Development. The agency's mission will be
to facilitate the transfer of needed technologies to LDCs
and to foster development of indigenous scientific and
technological education and research in those \
~coun tries.134
n
'Rogcr Lewin, Environment in a developing world; Jon Sigurdson,
Resources and environment in China; Conor Reilly, Environmental
action in Zambia.
132
For example, see Amil Agarvval, Ghandi's ghost saves the Himala-
yan trees.
'"Lewin, Environment in a developing world, p. 632.
134
Salam, Ideals and realities.
 RICH NATIONS, POOR NATIONS, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT /
Superficially, it usually appears that such conferences
do little more than highlight the political differences
between rich and poor countries, but in fact they can lead
to constructive action on the problems discussed. Be-
cause of the diversity of interests and viewpoints of
individual nations, and because of the inequities of the
world economy, it seems to take an unconscionably long
time to reach a consensus on dealing with each problem.
But an important Step often is tn nhtain agreement that a
ttrpblem exists, first of all, and, second, that international
action is appropriate and necessary. Each of the confer-
ences named has been the culmination of this process;
but what counts for the future is whether agreement can
be reached on solutions to the problems and whether
controls can be established before it is too late.
»^P (Regulation of one vital global common^ has not yet
been seriously discussed—that commons is the atmo-
sphere. Even more than the resources of the oceans, the_
atmosphere is shared by all human beings—and other
organisms as well. It is crucial to preserve the atmo-
sphere's quality and the stability of global climate.135 But
that these are now threatened and should be protected by
international agreement is only beginning to be recog-
nized in a few quarters.
Should ^Law of theSelftbe successfully established, it
could serve as a model for a future(Law of the Atmoj
(^sphere)to regulate the use of airspace, to monitor climate
change, and to control atmospheric pollution.} Perhaps^
those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United,
Rations population agencies, might eventually be devel^
oped into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international
superagency for population, resources, and environment.
"Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control
the development, administration, conservation, and dis-
tribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonre-
newable, at least insofar as international implications
exist. Thus, the Regime could have the power to control
pollution not only in the atmosphere and the oceans, but
also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that
cross international boundaries or that discharge into the
oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central
agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps
including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including
S. H. Schneider and L. E. Alesirow, The genesis strategy.
943
all food on the international market. ^^^~ ^r
The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility
for determining the optimum population for the world
and for each region and for arbitrating various countries'
shares within their regional limits. Control of population
size might remain the responsibility of each govern-
ment, but the Regime should have some power to enforce
the agreed limits. As with the Law of the Sea and other
international agreements, all agreements for regulating
population sizes, resource development, and pollution
should be subject to revision and modification in accord-
ance with changing conditions.
The Planetary Regime might have the advantage over
earlier proposed world government schemes in not being
primarily political in its emphasis—even though politics
would inevitably be a part of all discussions, implicitly or
explicitly. Since most of the areas the Regime would
control are not now being regulated or controlled by
nations or anyone else, establishment of the Regime
would involve far less surrendering of national power.
Nevertheless, it might function powerfully to suppress
international conflict simply because the interrelated
global resource-environment structure would not permit
such an outdated luxury.
What the Human Community Can Do
Humanity has reached a critical point in its history.
Either the fissioning of societies into two distinct
groups—rich and poor—will proceed, leading inevitably
to conflict and possibly to economic collapse of some
regions, at least; or serious efforts will be made to bring
the two groups closer together. With regard to the latter
course, as we have discussed at some length, there are
plenty of ideas on how to go about it. The main obstacles
are, as usual, social, political, and economic. Too few
people in ODCs are convinced of the absolute necessity
of reducing their consumption of material and environ-
mental resources—of de-development. Too few people
in all countries appreciate the environmental and re-
source constraints within which society must operate.
And too many people with power oppose changing the
present course because, for the time being, they are
profiting from the status quo. And it may not be possible
944 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT

to change the course of human society until those 4. The use of nuclear and biological weapons is
powerful people are fully convinced that their benefits unacceptable; and
will vanish unless they do. 5. Political, cultural, and ideological diversity—
Assuming that the formidable obstacles can neverthe- within some limits—ought to be tolerated.138
less be overcome and the two separate "worlds" started
Managing the ttansition-itL-what some people ha^e-
on the appropriate paths—the rich world begins to
called atystainable worlds9 without; a. major catastrophe
de-develop, and the poor world undertakes grass-roots
of some kind (war, mass famine, pandemic, ec-nlngical
development—full cooperation between the two groups
disaster, or economlccollapse), will require far more than,
will be required to make it work. Biologist Charles Birch,
good luck. It will require careful planning and hedging
paraphrasing Garrett Hardin, described such coopera-
against such unpredictable eventualities: Schneider and
tion as "mutual concern mutually agreed upon."136 The
Mesirow's "Genesis strategy." (The Genesis strategy is
LDCs cannot succeed without substantial assistance
based on the biblical story in which Joseph warned the
from ODCs, and the ODCs will continue to need
pharaoh of Egypt that seven fat years would be followed
commodities and resources from LDCs to maintain their
by seven lean years, and he advised the pharaoh to store
industrial structures, even if those structures are made
up grain during the fat years to tide the population over
vastly more efficient and are partially transferred to
when famine came.) Thus, high priorities must bf given,
LDCs. The most crucial decades are those just ahead, in
by the international community to building up food
which there must be a transition to a size-controlled
reserves,topreventing and repairing major environment
(eventually declining) population, an internationally
tal damage, tp^ protecting the ocean and atmospheric
regulated Planetary Regime for the global commons, and
commons, to preventing high casualties from natural
something resembling the "dynamic equilibrium econ-
disasters (earthquakes, volcanic explosions, hurricanes,
omy" espoused by Herman Daly and Emile Benoit.
and such), to protecting populations against disease, to
Certain guiding principles for national behavior have
avoiding conflict between nations, and to that essential
been proposed by many individuals as being essential to
concomitant of all of these {^population controjp There is
the establishment of a genuine world community in
movement toward these precautionary measures, but so
which such cooperative measures could be carried out.
far the movement is dishearteningly slow.
As outlined by United States Assistant Secretary of State
Humanity cannot afford to muddle through the rest of
John Richardson, Jr., a consensus is emerging:
the twentieth century; the risks are too great, and the
stakes are too high. This may be the last opportunity to
1. Governments ought to promote the general welfare
choose our own and our descendants' destiny. Failing to
of those they govern, not merely enlarge their own and
choose or making the wrong choices may lead to catas-
the nation's power;
trophe. But it must never be forgotten that the right
2. Starvation anywhere is unacceptable;
choices could lead to a much better world.
3. Torture by governments anywhere is unacceptable;
'"Preparing for a human community, Department of State News
Release, May 18, 1976.
^'"Confronting the future, p. 348. '"Birch, Confronting the future; Dennis Pirages, A sustainable society:
Social and political implications.

have often slipped into the work uncredited. Their assis-
tance has been extraordinary. The help of our good friend
and attorney, Johnson C. Montgomery, was sorely missed
after his death in December 1974. Much of the material
on legal matters still bears the stamp of his thinking—
especially his pioneering work on the legal aspects of
population control.
Peggy Craig, Claire Shoens, and other staff members
of the Falconer Biology Library at Stanford have once
more been of enormous assistance to us. Their highly
competent and cheerfully given help has time and again
permitted us to solve difficult bibliographic problems.
Reuben Pennant has patiently Xeroxed reference materi-
als and several drafts of manuscript. Thanks for invalu-
able reference work are also due Mari Wilson, librarian
for the Energy and Resources Information Center at the
University of California at Berkeley.
Typing chores for this edition have been handled ex-
pertly by Darryl Wheye at Stanford and Sue Black, Linda
Elliott, Linda Marczak, George Moon, Becky New, Deb-
bie Tyber, and Denise Wior at Berkeley. Seemingly end-
less proofreading of galleys was accomplished with the
able assistance of Robert Wise and Kim Binette (in
Hawaii), and Susan Mann, Glenn Lunde, Jennifer
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / 1003
Montgomery, and Julia Kennedy (all of Palo Alto and
Stanford). We are especially grateful to Julie, who
devoted many hours of spare time for six weeks to the
job. Julie, Jenny, and Glenn also helped in assembling
the chapter bibliographies. Jane Lawson Bavelas at
Stanford once again helped us with myriad aspects of
the work.
Judith Quinn, our project editor, has done a superb job
of polishing the manuscript, dealing cheerfully with the
numerous crises inevitable in the final stages of a project
of this scale. Her skill and patience have made our task
much easier. The reader doubtless will appreciate the
skill and attention to detail that Jean Mclntosh devoted
to the indices, as we appreciated her good humor in the
face of preposterous time pressures.
Fina re would like to express our deep appreciation
tcftheri Holdren^ who put up with many "social" even-
ings that were long working sessions on the manuscript _
of this book. She cheerfully gave us aid and comfort while
continuing to balance with great success the needs of her
children and the initial stages of her own career as a re-
search biologist. We hope now that the book is in hand
she will think the effort worth it.
ECOSCIENCE:
POPULATION,
RESOURCES,
ENVIRONMENT

PAUL R. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

ANNE H. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

JOHN P. HOLDREN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANY

San Francisco
 Ill

SECTION

V
The Human Predicament:
Finding a Way Out
MMMMMHi mauumansuuaaaeaim

We have presented a survey of the "hard" sciences associated with the human
predicament in the first eleven chapters of this book; the final section considers
various aspects of societal response to that predicament. Chapter 12 is relatively
brief and transitional. In it are examined the difficult question of how optimum
population size might be defined and the ways in which population growth,
increasing affluence1 and faulty technologies interact to generate environmental
^impjict. The conclusion that all of these causes are inextricably intertwined—that
responsibility for the predicament cannot be ascribed to any one of them in
isolation—provides fundamental background for the chapters that follow. Given
this "web of responsibility," how can the world society change its collective
behavior in order to permit civilization to persist into the indefinite future? What
changes now can assure that in the future people will live reasonably secure and
happy lives, supported by properly functioning ecological and social systems?
One step is obvious. The necessity of restraining the growth of the human
population has long been evident to thoughtful people. Chapter 13 deals witn ways'
in which this has been attempted in the past, how it might be dealt with in the
future, and the current controversy about population control and development.
Questions of technology (how effective and safe are contraceptives?), motivation
(how can people be persuaded to use contraceptives, sterilization, or abortion?), and
morality (should they?) are strongly interconnected. And these issues are not
divorced from others equally knotty—poverty, racial discrimination and political
power, to mention a few. While achieving population control rapidly would be very
difficult if only for the numerical reasons given in Chapter 5, the difficulty is
compounded by various social problems discussed in Chapter 13.
 THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT / 713

Chapter 14 focuses on American society and its institutions. The United States
serves as a model for all developed countries—the one that in most respects has
developed farthest, for better or for worse. If developed countries are to exercise
leadership in a revolution of human attitudes and behavior, the most appropriate
source for such leadership is the United States. And if such a revolution is to occur,
it must involve virtually all parts of the sociopolitical system because of the
pervasive nature of the crisis now building. Institutions that help individuals to
relate to their environments—religion, science, medicine, education, and the
law-all are sorely in need of modification to reflect the new realities of existence in
the last part of the twentieth century. And the economic and political systems
through which individuals have their major impact on the environment require
equally drastic revision.
Similarly, as discussed in Chapter 15, the international system as presently
constituted offers little hope of resolving the human predicament. A world divided
by a vast and widening gap in wealth and income seems even less capable of solving
serious problems than is a nation divided into rich and poor—especially while the
poverty-stricken vastly outnumber the wealthy. Some possibilities for reorganizing
the world, first to reduce and then to eliminate the gap between rich and poor, is the
theme of that chapter. Our conclusion is that the only hope for closing the gap
involves changing the ways of life of both the affluent and the hungry. The affluent
must recognize that their futures are heavily dependent on the fate of the poor; the
poor must accept new goals if their condition is to improve rather than deteriorate.
Ever present in any consideration of the international situation is the threat of
nuclear Armageddon. A thermonuclear war is one event that would make almost all
the issues and arguments raised in this book academic. Sadly, the probability of
such a denouement may well be increasing—and this adds special urgency to the
need for changing the ways in which nations interact.
In Chapter 14 and Chapter 15 especially, we frequently leave the solid ground of
facts and venture into the quicksand of opinion and speculation. To do otherwise
would be to omit topics that we feel may hold the key to the survival of society. No
one can demonstrate "scientifically" that a given modification of the legal system of
the United States or of the development goals of Kenya or Brazil will lead to an
improvement in the prognosis for humanity, but we do not consider this a valid
reason for not discussing such changes. We hope that at the very least our ideas in
these and similar areas will stimulate discussion, which in turn may lead to action.
For, as should be obvious, we are not sanguine about the prospects for civilization if
it continues down its present path.
Maximum welfare, not maximum population,^
is our human objective. 2
—Arnold Toynbee, Man and hunger, 1963
Humanity at the Crossroads
The maximum size the human population can attain is
determined by the physical capacity of Earth to support
people. This capacity, as discussed earlier, is determined
by such diverse factors as land area; availability of
resources such as energy, minerals, and water; levels of
technology; potential for food production; and ability of
biological systems to absorb civilization's wastes without
breakdowns that would deprive mankind of essential
environmental services. Of course, no one knows exactly
what the maximum carrying capacity of Earth is; it
would certainly vary from time to time in any case.
Presumably, the capacity would be sustainable at a very
high level for a short period by means of rapid con-
sumption of nonrenewable resources. In the longer term,
715
CHAPTER 12
a lower capacity would be determined by the rate of
replenishment of renewable resources and the accom-
plishments of technology in employing very common
materials. Whatever the maximum sustainable human
population may be, however, few thoughtful people
would argue that the maximum population could be the
same as the optimum. The maximum implies the barest
level of subsistence for all. Unless sheer quantity of
human beings is seen as the ultimate good, this situation
certainly cannot be considered optimal.
The minimum size of the human population, on the
other hand, is that of the smallest group that can
reproduce itself. Like the maximum, the minimum size is
also not the optimum. It would be too small to permit the
71 6 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
many benefits of specialization and division of labor, of
economies of scale in the use of technology, of cultural
diversity, and so on. The optimum population size, then,
lies somewhere between the minimum and maximum
possible sizes.
THE OPTIMUM POPULATION
Biochemist H. R. Hulett has made some interesting
calculations bearing on the subject of an optimum
population. He assumed that the average United States
citizen would not consider the resources available to him
or her excessive, and he then divided estimates of the
world production of those resources by the American
per-capita consumption. On this basis, Hulett concluded:
" . . . it appears that (about) a billion people is the
maximum population supportable by the present agri-
cultural and industrial system of the world at U.S. levels
of affluence."1 By Hulett's criteria, then, even ignoring
depletion of nonrenewable resources and environmental
deterioration, the population of the Earth is already 3
billion people above the present optimum.
Since decisions that determine population size are
made, consciously and unconsciously, by the people alive
at a given time, it seems reasonable to define the optimum
size in terms of their interests. Accordingly, one might
define the optimum as the population size below which
well-being per person is increased by further growth and
above which well-being per person is decreased by
further growth.
Like most definitions of elusive concepts, this one
raises more questions than it answers. How is well-being
to be measured? How does one deal with the uneven
distribution of well-being and particularly with the fact
that population growth may increase the well-being of
some people while decreasing that of others? What if a
region is overpopulated in terms of one aspect of
well-being but underpopulated in terms of another?
What about the well-being of future generations? One
cannot define an optimum population for any part of the
'Optimum world population. Note that there is a large volume of
conventional economic literature in existence that focuses on a narrowly
defined economic optimum. This literature is of little interest to the
discussion here (see, e.g., Spengler, Optimum population theory).
world at any time without reference to the situation in all
other parts of the world and in the future.
No complete answers are possible, but it is time that
such questions be seriously addressed. The following
observations are intended mainly to stimulate further
discussion.
Priorities
The physical necessities—food, water, clothing, shel-
ter, a healthful environment—are indispensable ingredi-
ents of well-being. A population too large and too poor to
be supplied adequately with them has exceeded the
optimum, regardless of whatever other aspects of well-
being might, in theory, be enhanced by further growth.
Similarly, a population so large that it can be supplied
with physical necessities only by the rapid consumption
of nonrenewable resources or by activities that irrevers-
ibly degrade the environment has also exceeded the
optimum, for it is reducing Earth's carrying capacity for
future generations. If an increase in population decreases
the well-being of a substantial number of people in terms
of necessities while increasing that of others in terms of
luxuries, the population has exceeded the optimum for
the existing sociopolitical system. The same is true when
population increase leads to a larger absolute number of
people being denied the necessities—even if the fraction
of the population so denied remains constant (or even
shrinks).
It is frequently claimed that the human population is
not now above the optimum because if the available food
(and other necessities) were in some way equitably
distributed there would be enough for everyone.2 But it
is only sensible to evaluate optimum population size in
terms of the organisms in the population under consid-
eration, not in terms of hypothetical organisms. Thus, if
an area of Africa has more lions than the local prey can
support and the lions are starving, then there is an
overpopulation of lions even though all the lions could
have enough to eat if they evolved the capacity to eat
grass.
Grossly unequal distribution of food and other goods
is characteristic of contemporary Homo sapiens just as
2
For example, Barry Commoner, How poverty breeds overpopulation
(and not the other way around), Ramparts, August/September 1975.

Their results showed that some form of disaster
lies ahead unless all the factors are controlled:
population growth, pollution, resource con-
sumption, and the rate of capital investment
(industrialization).
This was hardly a new conclusion in 1972.
Indeed, the argumentation and evidence for this
general world-view had been accumulating
steadily since the time of Mai thus (see Box 13-2),
and a rash of books drawing substantially similar
conclusions had appeared in the decades follow-
ing World War II.C What accounts, then, for the
extraordinary response—both disparaging and
laudatory—that these views elicited when they
appeared in Limits to Growth in 1972?
Several factors contributed: first, the status of
M.I.T. as virtually a worldwide synonym for
careful scientific analysis; second, the sponsor-
ship of the project by the vaguely mysterious
Club of Rome, an international collection of
influential academicians, industrialists, and pub-
lic figures; third, the extraordinarily direct and
lucid style with which the authors presented
their conclusions; and fourth, the major role
played in the underlying analysis by a "computer
model" of the world.
Of these factors, the last was almost certainly
the most important. The book appeared at a time
when the capabilities of large computers had
already become part of public conventional
wisdom (or folklore), but when the idea that
computer results are no better than the informa-
tion fed into them was not so widespread. Thus
the notion that a computer had certified the
bankruptcy of growth gave the conclusion public
credibility, and at the same time provided a
target for indignant economists and others who
saw the outcome as an illustration of the syn-
drome known in the computing trade as "gar-
bage in, garbage out."d
How do computer models in general, and the
Limits model in particular, actually work? The
c
For example, William Vogt, Road to survival; Fairfield
Q^OQrrxz, Our plundered planet; Harrison Brown, The challenge
of man's future; Georg Borgstrom, The hungry planet, Mac-
millan, New York, 1965; Paul Ehrlich, The population bomb,
Ballantine, New York, 1968; Preston Cloud, ed., Resources and
man, W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1969; P. R. Ehrlich and
A. H. Ehrlich, Population resources, environment, W. H.
Freeman, San Francisco, 1970.
rf
See, for example, K. Kaysen, The computer that printed out
W*O*L*F, Foreign Affairs, 1972, which tries but fails to stick
the "garbage" label on Limits to Growth, missing the point in
major respects.
HUMANITY AT THE CROSSROADS / 731
Resources
\ A
\
PopulationN,
X
J<
Food per capita
1900 2000
FIGURE 12-2
The "standard" world model run assumes no major
change in the physical, economic, or social
relationships that have historically governed the
development of the world system. All variables
plotted here follow historical values from 1900 to
1970. Food, industrial output, and population grow
exponentially until the rapidly diminishing resource
base forces a slowdown in industrial growth.
Because of natural delays in the system, both
population and pollution continue to increase for
some time after the peak of industrialization.
Population growth is finally halted by a rise in the
death rate due to decreased food and medical
services. (After Meadows et al., 1972.)
idea behind computer modeling is to simulate in
a general way the behavior of complicated phys-
ical systems. The technique is used when the
situation of interest is too complicated to analyze
with equations solvable with pencil and paper, or
with laboratory or field experiments on a rea-
sonable scale; and when it is too time-consuming
or too risky simply to observe the real system and
see what happens. Systems or processes that meet
these conditions and that accordingly have been
studied with computer models include the global
meteorological system, various ecosystems, the
safety systems of nuclear reactors, the growth of
cities, and the evolution of galaxies.
In all such cases, models are constructed by
identifying what seem to be the most important
(Continued)

technology would reduce resource input and
pollutant output per unit of material standard of
living to zero.
The first assumption is contrary to all recent
experience; doublings of agricultural productiv-
ity have required triplings and quadruplings of
technological inputs. The second assumption is
impossible in principle since it violates the
second law of thermodynamics, one of the most
thoroughly verified laws of nature. All one could
safely conclude from this work is that Forrester's
model is "sensitive" to the introduction of mira-
cles into the assumptions. Presumably, the more
sophisticated model in Limits to Growth would
also be "sensitive" in this way, but that is hardly
a defect.
The most detailed critique of the Limits model
was performed by a group at the University of
Sussex, England, and was published together
with a reply by the authors of Limits of Growth in
a book called Models of Doom.1' The Sussex **
critics accused the Limits group of leaving out
economics and social change, of underestimating
the power of technology, and of daring to make
policy recommendations on the basis of a flawed
model. The response of the Limits group was that
their model probably overestimated the effec-
tiveness of the price mechanism rather than
underestimated it, that evidence of the limita-
tions of technology has been accumulating rap-
idly, that in the absence of any perfect models
one must make policy recommendations with the
best ones available, and that social change (which
is hard to model) is precisely what they were
trying to stimulate by their recommendations.
On the issue of whether the model overstated or
understated the imminence of disaster, we might
add that the simplistic treatment of environmen-
tal risks probably understated the danger more
than other flaws overstated it.
Probably the most imposing attempt to con-
struct a more realistic model than that in Limits
was described in 1974 in Mankind at the Turning
Point: The Second Report to the Club of Rome, by
M. Mesarovic and E. Pestel. This model divided
the world into ten political/geographical re-
gions, modeling each of these on five "strata": (1)
physical environment; (2) technology; (3) eco-
*H. Cole, C. Freeman, M. Jahoda. K. Pravitt, eds., Models of
doom. Universe Books, New York, 1973.
"1
HUMANITY AT THE CROSSROADS / 733
nomic systems; (4) institutional and social re-
sponses; and (5) individual needs and responses.
Notwithstanding Turning Point's occasional
gratuitous disparagement of the oversimplifica-
tion in Limits to Growth (difficult to understand
in view of its obvious debt to the earlier work),
the conclusions were strikingly similaj': continu-
ation of recent trends in population growth,
industrialization, and environmental disruption
will lead to disaster; ddibexatc-and-,massive
social and economic change will be necessary- to
avoid this outcome. The added sophistication of
Turning Point's regional disaggregation, show-
ing the problems that can arise from such
interactions as competition among regions for
scarce resources, should be welcomed. At the
same time, it seems fair to say that the net effect
of this added degree of detail is to make the
prognosis more pessimistic than that in Limits,
not less so. Basically, regional disaster or nega-
tive interactions leading to wars seem more
imminent than a uniform global disaster, which
was the only kind the aggregated model in Limits
could reveal. (This, of course, is another conclu-
sion that many analysts have reached over the
years without benefit of computer modeling).
Obviously, the model in Turning Point is still
far from perfect. Certainly neither it nor other
computer models can be used to predict the
future in detail. Nevertheless, computer model-
ing seems a useful way to acquire or communi-
cate insights about the implications of present
trends, and it has the great advantage of requir-
ing that assumptions about relevant relationships
be made explicit. Surely this is an improvement
over the situation most likely to prevail when
people think about the future of a complicated
world—the "models" in their heads are full of
assumptions that are not only unstated but
perhaps even unrecognized. In short, those crit-
ics who believe the world cannot be modeled
should stop thinking about the future entirely,
for implicitly all who do are modeling in their
heads.
The purpose of caring at all where humanity is
going, of course, whether one finds out with or
without the aid of a computer, is not prediction
for its own sake. It is, rather, that if we do not like
the projected consequences of present trends and
values, we can take conscious action to change
course.
Of all things people are the most precious.
—Mao Tse Tung
Population Policies
Any set of programs that is to be successful in alleviating
the set of problems described in the foregoing chapters
must include measures to control the growth of the
human population. The potential goals of such measures
in order of possible achievement are:
1. Reduce the rate of growth of the population,
although not necessarily to zero.
2. Stabilize the size of the population; that is, achieve a
zero rate of growth.
3. Achieve a negative rate of growth in order to reduce
the size of the population.
Presumably, most people would agree that the only
humane means of achieving any of these goals on a global
basis is by reducing the birth rate. The alternative is to
737
CHAPTER 13
permit the death rate to increase, which, of course, will
inevitably occur by the agonizing "natural" processes
already described if mankind does not rationally reduce
its birth rate in time.
Even given a consensus that curbing population
growth is necessary and that limiting births is the best
approach, however, there is much less agreement as to
how far and how fast population limitation should
proceed. Acceptance of the first goal listed above requires
only that one recognize the obvious adverse conse-
quences of rapid population growth—for example, dilu-
tion of economic progress in less developed countries,
and aggravation of environmental and social problems in
both developed and less developed countries. Econo-
mists and demographers, many of whom will not accept
738 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
the third goal at all and ascribe no urgency to the second,
generally do espouse the first one (at least for the LDCs).
Accepting the second^goal simply means recognizing
that Earth's capacity to support human beings is limited
and that, even short of the limits, many problems are
related to population size itself rather than only to its rate
of growth. Accepting the idea that stabilizing the size of
the population is urgently necessary requires recognizing
that the limits are already being approached and that,
although technological and cultural change may eventu-
ally push the limits back somewhat, the prudent course is
to halt population growth until existing problems can be
solved. Virtually all physical and natural scientists accept
the ultimate inevitability of halting population growth,
and most of them accept the urgency of this goal. Much
of the first part of this book has been an exposition of why
the "inevitable and urgent" position is reasonable.
The most controversial goal is the third, one listed
above—reducing the size of the human population.
Accepting this goal implies a belief that there is an
optimum population size and that this optimum has
already been exceeded (or will have been exceeded by the
time population growth can be stopped). It also implies
that each society has a right—indeed a responsibility—to
regulate its population size in reference to the agreed-
upon optimum. In a world where the right (and the
responsibility) of married couples to determine their own
family size has become a widely accepted notion only in
the past generation or two, the idea that nations have such
a right or obligation is a truly radical one. Unfortunately,
humanity cannot afford to wait another quarter century
for the idea to gain complete acceptance.
Given the threat to the environment posed by today's
population in combination with today's technology, and
given the menace this situation represents to an already
faltering ability to provide enough food for the people
now alive, it is clear that the human population is already
above the optimum size. (How far above the optimum is
more difficult to determine; see Chapter 12). It is, of
course, conceivable that technological and social change
will push up the optimum in the time it takes to bring
population growth to zero. More probably, however, the
population size will have to be reduced eventually to
below today's level if a decent life is to be assured for
everyone.
Whether this view of long-term necessity is accepted
or not, of course, the goal of any sensible population
policy for the immediate future is the same—to gain
control over growth. This chapter describes the recent
evolution of population policies, explores some potential
(but still largely unexploited) means of achieving such
control over population growth, and discusses the inter-
acting effects of other policies (especially development
policies) on population growth.
FAMILY PLANNING
An essential feature of any humane program to regies
the size of the human population must be provision :f
effective means for individuals to control the number ,-_ r
timing of births. This approach is commonly te—s;
"family planning," and family planning programs h=v;
been introduced in many LDCs in the past two decades
with the goal of providing the means of birth control::
the people. These are the main population policies - :~
in existence.
The family planning movement, however, historically
has been oriented to the needs of individuals sni
families, not of societies. Although birth control 15
essential for achieving population control, family ff-*:-
ning and population control are not synonymous. Befcre
proceeding to an examination of the important different
between the two, some historical perspective on the
practice of birth control and the family planning move-
ment is in order.
Birth Control
Many birth control practices are at least as old as
recorded history. The Old Testament contains obvious
references to the practice of withdrawal, or coitus inter-
ruptus (removal of the penis from the woman's vagina
before ejaculation). The ancient Egyptians used crude
barriers to the cervix made from leaves or cloth, and even
blocked the cervical canal with cotton fibers. The ancient
Greeks practiced population control through their social
system as well as through contraception; they dis-
couraged marriage and encouraged homosexual rela-
 BOX 13-1 Institutionalized Infanticide in the Eighteenth Century*
Where the Number of lusty Batchelors is large,
many are the merry-begotten Babes: On these
Occasions, if the Father is an honest Fellow and
a true Church of England-Man, the new-born
Infant is baptized by an indigent Priest, and the
Father provides for the Child: But the Dissent-
ers, Papists, Jews, and other Sects send their
Bastards to the Foundling Hospital; if they are
not admitted, there are Men and Women, that for
a certain Sum of Money will take them, and the
Fathers never hear what becomes of their Chil-
dren afterwards . . . in and about London a
prodigious Number of Infants are cruelly mur-
dered unchristened, by those Internals, called
Nurses; these detestable Monsters throw a
Spoonful of Gin, Spirits of Wine, or Hungary-
Water down a Child's Throat, which instantly
*This material is quoted from George Burrington's pamphlet
"An answer to Dr. William Brakenridge's letter concerning the
number of inhabitants, with the London bills of mortality,"
London, J. Scon (1757).
tionships, especially for men. The condom, or penis
sheath, dates back at least to the Middle Ages. Douching,
the practice of flushing out the vagina with water or a
solution immediately after intercourse, has had a simi-
larly long history. Abortion is a very ancient practice and
is believed to have been the single most common form of
birth control in the world throughout history, even
during the past century when it was illegal in most
countries. The simplest, most effective, and perhaps the
oldest method of birth control is abstention; but this
method seems to have been favored mainly by older men,
particularly unmarried members of the clergy.
Infanticide, which is viewed with horror today by
prosperous people in industrialized societies, has proba-
bly always been practiced by societies lacking effective
contraceptive methods.1 It was a rather common practice
among the ancient Greeks, and the Chinese and Japanese
are known to have used it for centuries, especially in
times of famine. In agrarian or warlike societies, female
infanticide has often been practiced to provide a greater
proportion of men or to consolidate upper classes. Only a
century or two ago, infanticide was widely practiced in
'Mildred Dicfccman, Demographic consequences of infanticide in
man.
strangles me Babe; when the Searchers come to
inspect the Body, and enquire what Distemper
caused the Death, it is answered, Convulsions,
this occasions the Article of Convulsions in the
Bills of Mortality so much to exceed all others.
The price of destroying and interring a Child is
but Two Guineas; and these are the Causes that
near a Third die under the Age of Two Years,
and not unlikely under two Months.
I have been informed by a Man now living,
that the Officers of one Parish in Westminster,
received Money for more than Five Hundred
Bastards, and reared but One out of the whole
Number. How surprizing and shocking must this
dismal Relation appear, to all that are not
hardened in Sin? Will it not strike every one, but
the Causers and Perpetrators with Dread and
Horror? Let it be considered what a heinous and
detestable Crime Child-murder is, in the Sight
of the Almighty, and how much it ought to be
abhorred and prevented by all good people.
Europe in an institutionalized, although socially disap-
proved system sometimes called "baby farming" (Box
13-1).2
Infanticide rarely takes the form of outright murder.
Usually it consists of deliberate neglect or exposure to
the elements. Among the Eskimos and other primitive
peoples who live in harsh environments where food is
often scarce, infanticide was, until recently, a common
practice, as greater importance was placed on the survival
of the group than on the survival of an additional child.
There is a strong suspicion that female infanticide
persists in parts of rural India. It exists even in our own
society, especially among the overburdened poor, al-
though intent might be hard to prove. Certainly "masked
infanticide" is extremely common among the poor and
hungry in less developed countries, where women often
neglect ill children, refuse to take them to medical
facilities, and may even show resentment toward anyone
who attempts treatment. According to Dr. Sumner
Kalman of the Stanford University Medical Center, the
average poor mother in Colombia—where 80 percent or
more of a large family's income may be needed to provide
^William L. Langer, Checks on population growth: 1750-1850.

FIGURE 13-1
This machine makes oral contraceptive pills at the rate of 10,000 tablets
per minute. The operator wears a protective mask to avoid inhaling
steroids, which could cause hormonal changes. (Photo courtesy of
Syntex Laboratories, Inc.)
food alone—goes through a progression of attempts to
limit the number of her children. She starts with
ineffective native forms of contraception and moves on to
quack abortion, infanticide, frigidity, and all too often to
suicide.3
The development of modern methods of contraception
and the spread of family planning have eliminated the
need for such desperate measures as infanticide and
self-induced abortion in most developed nations and
among the wealthier classes of most less developed
countries. But modern methods of birth control are still
by no means available to every potential parent in the
world. The most effective contraceptives—oral contra-
ceptives (Figure 13-1), lUDs, and safe, simple steriliza-
tion— have been available even to the affluent only since
the early 1960s. A description of the modern methods of
birth control most used today and others still under
development can be found in Appendix 4 in the back of
this book.
'Modern methods of contraception. Bulletin of the Santa Clara County
(Calif.) Medical Association, March 1967.
Family Planning: A Short History
During the Industrial Revolution in England, an early
advocate of limiting the size of families through contra-
ception was labor leader Francis Place. Realizing that a
limited labor pool would be likelier to win high wages
and better working conditions from employers than
would a plentiful supply of workers, in 1822, Place
published a treatise, Illustrations and Proofs of the
Principle of Population, which reached large numbers of
people.4 This was followed by a series of handbills that
urged birth control in the interest of better economic and
physical health and also described various contraceptive
methods. Additional books on birth control appeared
both in England and the United States during the 1830s
and continued to circulate until the 1870s, when legal
attempts were made to suppress them in both countries.
The attempt failed in England, but in the United States
the "Comstock Law" was passed by Congress in 1873. It
forbade the dissemination by mail of birth control
information, classing it as "obscene literature." Many
states also passed laws against birth control literature,
known as "little Comstock laws," and in 1890 importa-
tion of such literature was outlawed.5
America's heroine in the family planning movement
was Margaret Sanger, a nurse. Her main objective was to
free women from the bondage of unlimited childbearing
through birth control, and her efforts thus were a part of
the women's emancipation movement. In 1916 Mrs.
Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn,
for which she was arrested and jailed. As a result of her
case, however, court decisions subsequently permitted
physicians to prescribe birth control in New York for
health reasons.
These were the first of many such decisions and
changes in state laws that ultimately permitted the sale
and advertisement of contraceptive materials and the
dissemination of information about birth control. But the
change was slow. The last such court decision was made
in 1965, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the
Connecticut statute forbidding the use of contraceptives
was an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. In 1966 the
'Reprinted in 1930 by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.
5
\V. Best and L. Dupre, Birth control. Much of the historical material
in this section is based on this source.

Massachusetts legislature repealed the last of the state
Comstock Laws. Margaret Sanger and others who joined
her rapidly growing birth control movement (first known
as the Birth Control League, later as the Planned
Parenthood Federation) after World War I led the fight
for these legal changes and for support from medical,
educational, health, and religious organizations.
Counterparts to Margaret Sanger existed in many
other countries, especially in northern and western
Europe, and planned parenthood movements became
independently established in several nations. Their
founders, like Mrs. Sanger, were motivated primarily by
concern for the health and welfare of mothers and
children, and their campaigns emphasized these
considerations.
Concurrently, intellectual organizations concerned
primarily with population growth, known as Malthusian
Leagues, were also promoting birth control. These, of
course, were intellectual descendants of Robert Malthus,
who first put forth warnings about the dangers of
overpopulation (see Box 13-2). They were active in
several European countries; but after World War I, when
European birth rates had reached quite low levels,
Malthusian concerns seemed to lose relevance and the
movement died out.
The birth control movement in the United States was
at first opposed by the medical profession. As the health
and welfare benefits of family planning became apparent,
the medical profession moved to a position of neutrality.
In 1937 the American Medical Association (AMA)
finally called for instruction on contraception in medical
schools and medical supervision in family planning
clinics. But it was not until 1964 that the AMA recog-
nized matters of reproduction, "including the need for
population control," as subjects for responsible medical
concern.6
Religious opposition to the birth-control movement
was initially even stronger than medical opposition. The
Roman Catholic church still opposes "artificial" methods
of birth control, but Planned Parenthood clinics cooper-
ate in teaching the rhythm method to Catholics who
request it. Acceptance of birth control came gradually
from the various Protestant and Jewish groups after
initial opposition. Official sanction was given by the
'Best and Dupre, Birth control.
POPULATION POLICIES / 741
Anglican (Episcopal) Communion in England and the
United States in 1958, by the Central Conference of
American Rabbis (Reform) in 1960, and by the National
Council of Churches in 1961.
Birth rates in America and Europe had already begun
to decline long before the first birth-control clinics were
established (Chapter 5). Nevertheless, the family-
planning movement, particularly in the United States,
probably deserves some credit for today's relatively low
birth rates. It certainly played a great role in increasing
the availability of contraceptives and birth control infor-
mation. This was accomplished not so much through
Planned Parenthood clinics, which never have reached
more than a small fraction of the total population, but
through the removal of restrictive laws, the development
of medical and religious support, and the creation of a
social climate in which birth control information could
circulate freely. Since passage of the U.S. Family Plan-
ning Act in 1970, Planned Parenthood clinics have been a
major provider of free and low-cost contraceptive ser-
vices to low-income people through government grants.
Throughout its history, the emphasis and primary
concern of the family planning movement has been the
welfare of the family; it has stressed the economic,
educational, and health advantages of well-spaced, lim-
ited numbers of children." Its policy has been to provide
information and materials for birth control in volunteer-
staffed clinics, serving any interested client, but primar-
ily the poor who could not afford treatment by a private
physician. Once the movement was established in the
United States, little effort was made to recruit clients,
beyond the routine promotion that accompanied the
opening of a new clinic. For the United States this policy
was apparently adequate; this nation is now overwhelm-
ingly committed to the idea of family planning and the
practice of birth control.
Contraceptive practice in the United States. By
1965, survey results showed that some 85 percent of
married women in the United States had used some
method of birth control. Most by then favored the more
effective methods such as the pill. Among older couples,
'These advantages are very real, as the World Health Organization has
recently confirmed. See Dr. Abdel R. Omran, Health benefits for mother
and child.
Laws of the Age of Reason as "population, when
unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical
ratio . . . " The first Essay challenged the vi-
sions of an age and the reactions were immediate
and predictably hostile, though many listened.
The controversy led to the publication in 1803 of
an enlarged, less speculative, more documented,
but equally dampening second essay. This one
was signed and bore the title, An Essay on the
Principle of Population or a View of its Past and
Present Effects on Human Happiness with an
Inquiry into our Prospects Respecting the Future
Removal or Mitigation of the Evils it Occasions*
Malthus added to and modified the Essay in
subsequent editions, but it stood substantially
unchanged.
In 1804 he accepted a post at the East India
Company's college at Haileybury which pre-
pared young men for the rule of India, where he
remained until his death. His marriage, in the
same year, ultimately produced three children.
The ironies in Malthus' life are obvious. He
was one of eight children. He occupied a position
of comfort in an intellectual atmosphere of
optimism, but was compelled by the rigor of his
intellect to argue that nature condemned the bulk
of humanity to live in the margin between barely
enough and too little. Finally, his message as a
teacher fell on the ears of future colonial bu-
reaucrats who would guide or preside over the
destinies of India.
Since the conversations between Robert
Malthus and his father almost two centuries ago,
two sets of factors which were beyond their ken
*Reprinted with numerous other articles on the same topic in
Philip Appleman, ed., An essay on the principle of population.
1965 were not wanted by both parents and 22 percent
were not wanted by at least one parent. The incidence of
unwanted births was found, not unexpectedly, to be
highest among the poor, to whom birth control and safe
abortion were least available. Demographer Charles
Westoff estimated that eliminating such a high propor-
tion of unwanted births might reduce the U.S. rate of
natural increase by as much as 35 to 45 percent.9
9
L. A. Westoff and C. F. Westoff, From now to zero: fertility,
contraception and abortion in America.
have emerged. The first set combined to put
elements into a population-subsistence relation-
ship that Malthus could not have foreseen. On
one hand, the introjiuction of massive death
control procedures— immunization, purification
ater, the control of disease-carrying
nrpanisim., improved. sanitation, etc. — hqve re-
moved many of the cheCRs that Malthus assumed^
as natural." On the other hand, developments'
in agriculture— high-yield plant strains, the
powering of equipment with fossil fuels, the use
of new techniques of fertilization and pest con-
trol—have massively increased food production.
The second set of factors has become widely
significant only in the last quarter century and
evident to most laymen only in the last decade.
These are the deleterious effects on the biosphere
resulting from agriculture and industry. With
our planet's population bloated by death control
and sustained only poorly through an agriculture
based on nonrenewable resources and techniques
which buy short-run, high yields at the expense
of long-run, permanent damage to the "Earth's
power to produce subsistence," we face a pros-
pect inconceivable in the Age of Reason.
Malthus looked into a dismal future of "vice and
misery" begot of an uncontrolled, and, to his
mind, uncontrollable population growth. We
look into one where the dismal is compounded
with peril, not because humanity cannot control
its population, but because it will not.**
**This box is a modification of an essay supplied to us by
historian D. L. Bilderback. For further reading about Malthus,
see particularly John Maynard Keynes, Essays in biography; J.
Bonar, Malthus and his viork, 2d ed., 1924; G. F. McCleary,
The Mahhusian population Theory; and, of course, iMalthus'
First and Second Essavs.
However, another distinguished demographer, Judith
Blake, pointed out that the high incidence of unwanted
births calculated by Westoff for the U.S. during 1960-
1965 was caused in large part by births occurring
disproportionately to women who already had several
children.10 During those six years, there were unusually
small proportions of first and second children born and
unusually large proportions of births of higher orders
(which are more likely to be unwanted). Hence, due to
1
Reproductive motivation and population policy.
743
744 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
the age composition of the population, the total propor-
tion of unwanted births in the U.S. was higher for those
years than it has been at other times.
During the kte 1960s, such changes as the increasing
use of the pill and lUDs and relaxation of restrictions
against voluntary sterilization substantially reduced the
incidence of unwanted births of all orders. Results of the
1970 National Fertility Study confirmed this change,
indicating that only about 14 percent of births between
1965 and 1970 were unwanted." Most of the reduction
in fertility in that period was due to reductions in
unwanted and unplanned births. Since 1970, the exten-
sion of family planning services to the poor and the
reversal of abortion laws (see below) have evidently
further extended the trend, as attested by record low
fertility rates.
There is no question that providing better contracep-
tives and simplified sterilization procedures, legalizing
abortion, and ensuring that all are easily available to all
members of the population reduces the incidence of
unwanted pregnancy—a socially desirable end in itself.
But even if a perfect contraceptive were available, the
contraceptive-using population probably never will be
perfect. People forget, are careless, and take chances.
They are also often willing to live with their mistakes
when the mistakes are babies. The complete elimination
of unwanted births therefore is probably not possible.
Nor does that alone account for the dramatic drop in the
U.S. birth rate in the early 1970s. Rather, it appears that a
significant change in family-size goals took place around
that time, especially among young people who were just
starting their families.12
Changing attitudes in the United States. Public
surveys taken between 1965 and 1972 revealed a growing
awareness of the population problem on the part of the
American public. In 1965, about half of the people
interviewed in a Gallup Poll thought that U.S. popula-
tion growth might be a serious problem; in 1971, 87
percent thought that it was a problem now or would be
by the year 2000. In January 1971 only 23 percent of
"Charles F. Westoff, The modernization of U.S. contraceptive prac-
tice; Trends in contraceptive practice: 1965-1973; The decline of
unplanned births in the United States.
12
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fertility history and prospects of
American women: June 1975.
adults polled thought four or more children constituted
the ideal family size, in contrast to 40 percent in 1967.
One of the three most commonly given reasons for
favoring small families in 1971 was concern about
crowding and overpopulation; the others were the cost of
living and uncertainty about the future.
In October 1971, a survey sponsored by the U.S.
Commission on Population Growth and the American
Future disclosed a still greater level of concern about the
population explosion among Americans. Specifically, it
was discovered that:
1. Over 90 percent of Americans viewed U.S. popu-
lation growth as a problem; 65 percent saw it as a serious
problem.
2. Over 50 percent favored government efforts to slow
population growth and promote population redistri-
bution.
3. Well over 50 percent favored family limitation even
if a family could afford more children.
4. About 56 percent favored adoption after births of
two biological children if more were desired.
5. Only 19 percent felt that four or more children
were the ideal number for a family; 45 percent favored
two or less. The mean was 2.33.
6. Only 8 percent thought the U.S. population should
be larger than its current size.
Concurrent with the rise in public concern about
population growth, Zero_Population Growth^Inc., was
founded in late 1968 to promote an end to U.S. popula-
tion growth through lowered birth rates as soon as
possible and, secondarily, to encourage the same goal for
world population. The organization hoped to achieve
this by educating the public to the dangers of uncon-
trolled population growth and its relation to resource
depletion, environmental deterioration, and various so-
cial problems; and by lobbying and taking other political
action to encourage the development of antinatalist
policies in the government. Since its founding, ZPG has
taken an active role in promoting access to birth control
for all citizens, legalized abortion, women's rights, and
environmental protection. More recently it has begun to
explore changes in U.S. immigration policies. ZPG has
clearly been a factor in changing attitudes toward family
size and population control.

The growth of the wnmpn's Hhpr^p'nn movement in
the U.S. since 1965 has almost certainly been another
important influence on attitudes (and thus on birthrates)
through its emphasis on opportunities for women to
fulfill themselves in roles other than motherhood. Many
young women today are refreshingly honest about their
personal lack of interest in having children and their
concern for obtaining opportunities and pay equal to
those of men. Such attitudes were virtually unthinkable
in the United States before 1965.
The women's movement was a potent force behind the
liberalization of U.S. abortion laws, and has also actively
campaigned for the establishment of low cost day-care
centers for children and tax deductions for the costs of
child care and household work. Such facilities and
policies lighten the costs of childbearing, but they also
encourage mothers to find work outside the home. The
experience of many societies suggests that outside em-
ployment of mothers discourages large families more
than the existence of child-care facilities encourages
them.
Both the growing concern about the population prob-
lem and the ideas of women's liberation doubtless
contributed to changing attitudes toward family size in
the 1970s. The economic uncertainty of the period may
also have been a factor. While it may never be possible to
determine the causes exactly, the achievement of subre-
placement fertility in the United States is one of the most
encouraging developments since 1970.
POPULATION POLICIES
IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
Although birth control in some form is almost univer-
sally practiced in developed countries, very few have
formulated any explicit national policies on population
growth other than regulation of migration. Some Euro-
pean countries still have officially pronatalist policies left
over from before World War II, when low birth rates led
to concern about population decline.
Of course, many laws and regulations enacted for
economic, health, or welfare reasons have demographic
effects: for instance, those governing the availability of
contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion; marriage and
POPULATION POLICIES / 745
divorce; income taxes and family allowances; and immi-
gration regulations.
The United States
The United States has no specific population policy,
although various laws, including those regulating immi-
gration and the administration of income taxes, have
always had demographic consequences. Most tax and
other laws were until recently implicitly pronatalist in
effect. In the late 1960s this situation began to change as
state laws restricting the distribution of contraceptive
materials and information were repealed and as abortion
laws were relaxed in several states. In 1970 Congress
passed the Family Planning Services and Population
Research Act, established the Commission on Population
Growth and the American Future, and passed the
Housing and Urban Development Act, which authorized
urban redevelopment and the building of new towns. In
1972, an amendment to the Constitution affirming equal
rights for women passed Congress, but as of 1977 it was
not yet ratified by the required number of states.
The Family Planning Services and Population Re-
search Act of 1970 had the goal of extending family
planning counselling and services to all who needed
them, particularly the poor. It also provided funds for
research on human reproduction. Some 3.8 million
women were being provided with family planning ser-
vices by 1975, 90 percent of whom had low or marginal
incomes. Another 1.9 million were being served by
private physicians. But it has been estimated that another
3.6 million eligible women (including about 2.5 million
sexually active teenagers) were still not receiving needed
help in the mid-1970s. Particularly neglected were
women in rural areas and small towns. Government-
subsidized sendees have been provided through local
health departments, hospitals, and private agencies (pri-
marily Planned Parenthood), most of which are located
in urban areas. A leveling-off of increases in clients in
1974 and 1975 over previous years has been attributed
mainly to lack of increased funding by the government
rather than to lack of need.13
13
Marsha Corey. U.S. organized family planning programs in F 1974;
Joy G. Dryfoos, The United Stales national family planning program;
1968-74; The Alan Guttmacher Institute, Organized family planning
services in the United States: FY 1975: T. H. Firpo and D. A. Lewis,
Family planning needs and services in nonmetropolitan areas.
746 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
Since 1967, the U.S. Agency for International Devel-
opment (AID) has been permitted to include family
planning assistance in its programs. Funding for overseas
family planning assistance has been steadily increasing
since then, and by fiscal 1976 had reached a level of
$201.5 million.14
The U.S. Commission on Population Growth and the
American Future presented its findings and recommen-
dations in 1972 in the areas of demographic develop-
ment, resource utilization, and the probable effects of
population growth on governmental activities.15 After
two years of study, the Commission concluded that there
were no substantial benefits to be gained from continued
population growth, and indeed that there were many
serious disadvantages. Besides recommending the liber-
alization of abortion laws and numerous other popula-
tion-related policies, the report strongly recommended
that contraceptives be made available to all who needed
them, including minors; that hospital restrictions on
voluntary sterilization be relaxed; that sex education be
universally available; and that health services related to
fertility be covered by health insurance. It also recom-
mended policies to deal with immigration, population
distribution, and land use. Perhaps most important, the
Commission stated:
Recognizing that our population cannot grow indefi-
nitely, and appreciating the advantages of moving now
toward the stabilization of population, the Commis-
sion recommends that the nation welcome and plan for
a stabilized population.16
Unfortunately, apart from expressing strong disagree-
ment with the recommendations on abortion, President
Nixon took no action on the Commission's report, nor
did President Ford show any inclination to do so. The
abortion question was made moot by the Supreme
Court's decision in 1973 (see section on abortion below).
Congress has contented itself mainly with expanding
14
AID in an Interdependent World, War on hunger special supplement,
June 1975; see Phyllis T. Piotrow, World population crisis: The United
States response for an historical account of U.S. involvement in overseas
population programs.
"Population and the American future.
^Population and the American future. By a "stabilized population," the
Commission meant a stationary one.
federal family planning services. Thus, although the
United States has not hesitated to advocate the establish-
ment of official antinatalist population policies in less
developed countries, it has not established one for itself.
The current low fertility of American women seems to
have taken the urgency from the zero population growth
movement-even though that fertility trend could easily
reverse itself at any time. Given its present age composi-
tion, the U.S. still could reach the higher population
projections of the Census Bureau (Chapter 5) if another
baby boom occurred. In the mid-1970s, however, no
consensus for immediate ZPG existed, and interest in
population problems has been focused on aspects other
than the birth rate—primarily on distribution and
immigration.
Social objections to ZPG. The proposal to stop
population growth naturally aroused considerable oppo-
sition on religious, social, and economic grounds. The
role of religion in determining attitudes toward popula-
tion growth, as well as toward the environment and
resource limitation, is discussed in more detail in Chap-
ter 14.
The primary social argument that has been raised
against halting U.S. population growth is that it would
substantially change the nation's age composition.17 As
the population stabilized, the median age would increase
from about 28 to about 37. Less than 20 percent of the
population would then be under 15, and about the same
percentage would be over 65 years old. At present, about
25 percent of the population is under 15, and 11 percent
is over 65. It is assumed that such an old population
would present serious social problems. Figure 5-15
(Chapter 5) shows the age compositions of the U.S. in
1900 and 1970 and how it would look in a future
stationary population.
It is true that old people tend to be more conservative
than young people, and they seem to have difficulty
adjusting to a fast-changing, complex world. In an older
population there would be relatively less opportunity for
advancement in authority (there would be nearly as many
60 year-olds as 30 year-olds—so the number of potential
"Ansley J. Coale, Man and his environment, Science, vol. 170, pp.
132-136 (9 Oct. 1970).

chiefs would be about the same as the number of
Indians). There would also be many more retired people,
a group already considered a burden on society.
But even those who raise this argument must realize its
fundamental fallacy. In the relatively near future, growth
of the human population will stop. It would be far better
for it to stop gradually through birth limitation than by
the premature deaths of billions of people. (In the latter
case, there would be other, much more serious problems
to worry about). Therefore, if this generation does not
initiate population control, we simply will be postponing
the age composition problems, leaving them to be dealt
with by our grandchildren or great grandchildren. Our
descendants will be forced to wrestle with these problems
in a world even more overcrowded, resource-poor, and
environmentally degraded than today's.
Moreover, the assumption that an older population
must be much less desirable than a younger one is
questionable in this society. Today, chronic underem-
ployment and high unemployment are exacerbated by a
labor pool constantly replenished by growing numbers of
young people, which forces early retirement of the old,
making them dependents on society. Many of our current
social problems, including the recently skyrocketing
crime rates and serious drug problems, are associated
with the younger members of the population. If popula-
tion growth stopped, the pressure of young people
entering the labor pool would decline, while crime and
unemployment problems could be expected to abate, as
would the need for forced retirement of older workers.
Old people today are obsolete to a distressing degree.
But this is the fault of our social structure and especially
of our educational system. The problem with old people
is not that there are or will be so many of them, but that
they have been so neglected. If underemployment were
reduced, outside interests encouraged during the middle
years, and education continued throughout adult life (as
suggested in Chapter 14), older people would be able to
continue making valuable contributions to society well
into their advanced years. Maintaining the habits of
active interest in society and learning new, useful skills
might effectively prevent obsolescence and the tendency
to become conservative and inflexible with advancing age.
Thus, although there may be some disadvantages to an
POPULATION POLICIES / 747
older population, there are also some definite advantages.
While the proportion of dependent retired people grew,
that of young children would shrink. The ever-rising
taxes demanded in recent decades to support expanding
school systems and higher educational facilities would
cease to be such a burden; indeed, that has begun to
happen already. The same is true of resources now
devoted to crime control and other problems primarily of
young people. Some of that money could be diverted
instead to programs to help the aged. Moreover, the
growth in the proportion of senior citizens (the numbers
will not change; they are already born) will be far more
gradual than the decline in numbers of babies and small
children that has already occurred, allowing ample time
for society to adjust to the change.
In the meantime, if birth rates remain low, the overall
dependency ratio of the population will decline. In 1970
there were 138 dependents for every 100 workers in the
United States; by 1980 the ratio will drop to about 118
and may be 112 or less by 1990.18 Even after the numbers
of the aged begin to rise in the population, the depen-
dency ratio will remain relatively low. As Kingsley Davis
pointed out, the highest proportion (about 75 percent) of
people in productive ages (15-65) is found in a popula-
tion that is making the transition from growth to ZPG.
The proportion is nearly as high in a stationary popula-
tion (about 63 percent).19 And if years of productivity
were extended to 70 and beyond, the proportion would
be even higher, of course. By contrast, in very rapidly
growing LDC populations, the proportion of people in
their productive years (15 to 65) can be 50 percent or less.
Economic objections to ZPG. The economic ob-
jections to ZPG are based upon the realization that a
nongrowing population implies at least a much more
slowly growing economy, if not a nongrowing one. This
thought strikes fear in the breasts of most businessmen
and economists, even though a perpetually growing
economy is no more sustainable than a perpetually
growing population. The implications of a steady-state
economy are discussed in Chapter 14; here we limit
I8
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population of the United States: Trends
and prospects 1950-1990.
"Zero population growth: the goal and the means.
no. 4, 1973, pp. 15-30.
748 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
ourselves to some of the aspects more obviously related to
population growth.20
In 1971, economist J. J. Spengler noted the economic
advantages and disadvantages of ZPG.21 One of the
advantages is increased productivity per person, partly
because of greater capital available for investment, and
partly because of a reduced dependency ratio. Other
advantages include stabilized demand for goods and
services; increased family stability as a result of there
being fewer unwanted children; reduction of costs of
environmental side effects; and opportunities to mini-
mize the effects of population maldistribution. On the
minus side, Spengler mentioned the problems associated
with the changed age structure and pointed out that there
would be a relative lack of mobility for workers and less
flexibility in the economy because there would be fewer
entrants into the labor force. He was also concerned that
there might be a tendency toward inflation, due in part to
increases in the service sector and in part to pressure to
raise wages more than rising productivity justified.
Recent events, as population growth has slowed (though
there is not yet a decline in growth of the labor pool),
suggest that Spengler may be right about the inflation
pressures, although many other influences clearly are
involved too. And certainly there are ways to compensate
for those pressures.
The question of labor shortage for an expanding
economy in a stationary population has also been raised.
But, as economist Alan Sweezy has pointed out, workers
(and their families) are the main consumers as well as the
producers.22 And, as mentioned above, the productive
portion of a population is largest in stationary and
transitional populations.
There was speculation by economists during the 1930s
and 1940s that consumption patterns would be drasti-
cally, and presumably adversely, changed if population
growth stopped. But a recent study comparing con-
sumption patterns in the U.S. population of 1960/1961
(when it was growing relatively fast) with those of a
M
For a further discussion, see U.S. Commission on Population
Growth, Population and ike American future, vol. 2.
2
'Economic growth in a stationary population, PRB selection no. 38,
Population Reference Bureau, Inc., Washington, D.C., July 1971; see also
Spengler, Population and American future.
22
Labor shortage and population policy.
projected stationary population indicated that ths
changes would be surprisingly minor.23 The most nota-
ble difference was that there would be proportional;
more households (called spending units by economists in
an older stationary population; families would be smaller
but more numerous. Many of the changes in acr.;;!
spending patterns would balance each other; in a sta-
tionary population there would be a greater demand for
housing, for instance, but a lower demand for clothing
and transportation. In no case were the changes more
than a few percent.
Differential reproduction and genetic quality. A
common concern about population control is that it will
in some way lead to a reduction in the genetic quality of
Homo sapiens.^ This concern is often expressed in such
questions as "if the smart and responsible people limit
their families while the stupid and irresponsible do not,
couldn't that lead to a decline of intelligence and
responsibility in humanity as a whole?" The technically
correct answer is "no one knows"; the practical answer is
"there is no point in worrying."
No one knows, because it is not at all clear what, if any.
portion of the %'ariation in traits like "intelligence" or
"responsibility" (however defined, and definition is dif-
ficult and controversial) is influenced by genetics. The
most intensively studied example of such "mental" traits
is performance on various so-called intelligence tests.
and it has not been possible to demonstrate unambigu-
ously that genes make any significant contribution to an
individual's scores.25
There is no point in worrying about it because, even if
these traits had a substantial genetic component and
people with "bad" genes greatly outproduced people
with "good" ones, it would take a great many generations
(hundreds of years at a minimum) for the differential
reproduction to produce a socially significant effect.
Moreover, if such an effect were discovered, it could then
2
"'D. Eilenstine and J. P. Cunningham, Projected consumption patterns
for a stationary population.
-•'For discussion of this question, see papers in C. J. Bajema (ed),
Natural selection in human populations.
35
See especially Leon J. Kamin, The science and politics of 10 for a
critique of the twin data on which most of the evidence for the heritability
of IQ rests.

be reversed either by reversing the selective pressures
(for example, encouraging reproduction of those with
high IQ test scores) or, more likely, by modifying the
social environment in order to improve the performance
of those with poor scores ("bad" genes).
Note that we have put quotation marks around "good"
and "bad." It is common for nonbiologists to think that
heredity is a fixed endowment that rigidly establishes or
limits skills, abilities, attitudes, or even social class. In
fact, heredity is at most one of two sets of interacting
factors, the other being the cultural and physical envi-
ronment. When heredity does play a significant role (and
it often may not), it is the product of this interaction that
is of interest, and that product may be modified very
effectively by changing the environment.26 There is
therefore no need for deep concern about the possible
genetic effects of population control.
Another related issue that seems to encourage a
pronatalist attitude in many people is the question of the
differential reproduction of social or ethnic groups. Many
people seem to be possessed by fear that their group may
be outbred by other groups. White Americans and South
Africans are worried there will be too many blacks, and
vice versa. The Jews in Israel are disturbed by the high
birth rates of Israeli Arabs, Protestants are worried about
Catholics, and Ibos about Hausas. Obviously, if every-
one tries to outbreed everyone else, the result will be
catastrophe for all. This is another case of the "tragedy of
the commons," wherein the "commons" is the planet
Earth.268 Fortunately, it appears that, at least in the DCs,
virtually all groups are exercising reproductive restraint.
For example, in the United States fertility in the black
population has consistently been higher than white
fertility (black mortality has also been higher). Since
birth control materials and information began to be made
available to low-income people in the late 1960s, black
fertility has been declining even more rapidly than white
fertility. By 1974, black women under 25 expected to
have essentially the same number of children as white
26
A detailed explanation for the layman of the complex issues of the
inheritance of intelligence can be found in P. Ehrlich and S. Feldman,
Race bomb. See also F. Osborn and C. J. Bajema, The eugenic hypothesis,
for an optimistic evaluation of the genetic consequences of population
control.
""Garret! Hardin, The tragedy of the commons.
POPULATION POLICIES / 749
women their age: an average of 2.2 (see Box 13-3).27
The ideal situation, in our opinion, would be for all
peoples to place a high value on diversity. The advan-
tages of cultural diversity are discussed in Chapter 15;
the reasons for avoiding a genetic monoculture in Homo
sapiens are essentially the same as those for avoiding one
in a crop plant—to maintain resistance to disease and a
genetic reservoir for potential adaptation to changed
environments in the future. The advantages also include
the possibility of aesthetic enjoyment of physical diver-
sity.28 Some day we hope that whites will become
distressed if blacks have too few children, and that, in
general, humanity will strive to maximize its diversity
while also maximizing the harmony in which diverse
groups coexist.
Distribution and mobility. Obscuring the popula-
tion controversy in the United States in the late 1960s
was the tendency of some demographers and government
officials to blame population-related problems on popu-
lation maldistribution. The claim was that pollution and
urban social problems are the result of an uneven
distribution of people, that troubled cities may be
overpopulated, while in other areas of the country the
population has declined.29 The cure promulgated in the
1960s was the creation of "new cities" to absorb the 80
million or so people then expected to be added to the U.S.
population between 1970 and 2000.
It is of course true that there is a distribution problem
in the United States. Some parts of the country are
economically depressed and have been losing popula-
tion-often the most talented, productive, and capable
elements—while other areas have been growing so rap-
idly that they are nearly overwhelmed. Patterns of
migration and settlement are such that residential areas
have become racially and economically segregated to an
-'Frederick S. Jaffe, Low-income families: fertility changes in the
1960s; Population Reference Bureau, Family Size and the Black
American.
->&There is more genetic variation within groups of human beings than
between diem, but some of the inter-group variation may be biologically
important (and is more widely recognized by lay persons).
29
For instance, demographer Conrad Taeuber, who supervised the
1970 U.S. Census, in a speech delivered at Mount Holyoke College in
January 1971 (quoted in the Nets York Times, Jan. 14, 1971).
 BOX 13-3 Poverty, Race, and Birth Control in the United States*
The entrance of the United States government
into the field of birth control through the exten-
sion of family planning services to the poor
aroused a controversy quite out of proportion to
its potential effect on the national birth rate,
particularly in the black community, some
members of which perceived it as a policy of
"genocide" against racial minorities.
In the United States, birth rates have long
been higher among the poor and among non-
whites (blacks, orientals, and native Americans)
than among the nonpoor and among whites.
High birth rates are generally associated with
low economic and educational levels in most
countries, including the United States. At the
same time, the poor and nonwhites also have had
consistently higher death rates, especially among
infants and children. Above the poverty level,
the birth rate difference between races dimin-
ishes, and college-educated nonwhites have fewer
children than their white peers. In recent years
(especially since the national family planning
program was established) the birth rates of the
poor and nonwhites have been declining even
more rapidly than those of the population as a
whole.**
Although there is conflicting evidence regard-
ing desired family size among the poor, several
surveys conducted in the 1960s indicated that
poor couples wished to have only slightly more
children than middle-class couples, and non-
white couples in most socioeconomic classes
wanted fewer children than comparable whites
did. This was especially true among the younger
couples in their prime childbearing years.
At the same time, the incidence of unwanted
children among the poor and near-poor in the
early 1960s was estimated to be as high as 40
percent. For nonpoor couples the incidence was
about 14 percent.1' The reasons for this disparity
between desires and actual reproductive perfor-
mance appear to have lain less in the lack of
knowledge of contraceptives than in the un-
availability of effective ones. The poor who used
birth control tended to use cheaper and less
reliable methods than did members of the middle
"Source: Population Reference Bureau, Family size and the
black American; Robert G. Weisbord, Genocide? birth control
and the black American, Greenwood, Westport, Conn., 1975.
For a discussion of the social and biological meanings of race.
see Ehrlich and Feldman, Race bomb.
**P. Cutright and F. S. Jaffe, Family planning program effects
on the fertility of low-income U.S. women.
*L. A. WestofF and C. F. Westoff, Front now to zero.
750
class. Because poor people simply could not
afford the more effective contraceptives, and
because no family planning information or ser-
vices were provided through welfare health
services until the late 1960s, most low-income
people were until then deprived of effective
methods of birth control.
Between 1965 and 1970, fertility among the
poor and near-poor declined by 21 percent,
doubtless due in part to the new services that by
1970 were reaching an estimated 1.5 million
women. The greatest fertility decline occurred
among nonwhite women below the poverty level.
As family planning services have expanded,
nonwhite fertility has continued to drop rapidly.
Despite the tendency of black militants to
regard the provision of birth control information
and services to the poor as a policy of "genocide"
against blacks, and although the potential for
abuse exists, it should be emphasized that the
government's present program is basically in-
tended to benefit the poor, and poor children in
particular. In this connection it is unfortunate
that the government chose to label its policy as a
"population control" measure, which it is not;
rather it was a logical and long overdue extension
both of the family planning movement and of the
welfare program.
Fears of discrimination have been aroused in
areas where middle-class social workers of peo-
ple operating birth control clinics in poor neigh-
borhoods have put pressure on women to accept
birth control services. There have also been cases
of black women being sterilized without in-
formed consent, and laws have been proposed for
compulsory sterilization of welfare mothers.
Hence black fears of genocide are not altogether
unfounded. The recent decline in black fertility,
however, may have defused much of the white
prejudice against "black welfare mothers." The
best way to avoid either the appearance or the
actuality of discrimination in administration of
birth control services is to have the services
administered by residents of the same neigh-
borhoods they serve as far as possible.
Although many middle-class Americans favor
population control for others, especially the
poor, they must realize that it is really their own
excessive reproduction that accounts for most of
the U.S. population growth rate. Furthermore,
the middle class and the wealthy are responsible
for the high rate of consumption and pollution,
which are the most obvious symptoms of over-
population in the United States.
 extreme degree. This trend could be expected to have
many undesirable social consequences (one has been the
school-busing controversy). Central cities are being
economically strangled and abandoned, while industry
and members of the taxpaying middle class flee to the
suburbs. But some social scientists have advanced the
notion that, rather than being the cause of our social
problems, maldistribution and migration might be
symptoms of a deeper, more general malady.30
Population maldistribution is different from, although
related to, the problem of absolute growth, and it
demands a different set of solutions. Nevertheless, the
distribution situation would certainly be exacerbated by
a continuation of rapid population growth.
Unfortunately, the proposal to create new cities has
several drawbacks. The scale of the project alone is FIGURE 13-2
dismaying. New cities would have to be built at the An aerial view of Spokane, Washington. If the population of the United
improbable rate of one the size of Spokane (Figure 13-2), States had continued to grow as fast as it did in the late 1960s, a city of
Washington, per month until the end of the century just this size would have to be built each month between 1970 and the end
in order to absorb the population growth that in the late of the century to accommodate the additions to the population. (Photo
1960s was projected for that period. In order to provide courtesy of Spokane Chamber of Commerce.)
space alone for that many more people, the United States
would have to sacrifice substantial amounts of land now
in agricultural production. Three hundred Spokanes older cities. The populations of new cities, unless con-
would occupy about 10 million acres, which is equivalent trolled by explicit resettling policies, might be even more
to the land producing the entire U.S. cotton crop. homogenous than that of today's suburbs and would tend
Wasteland or grazing land could be used instead, but to be even more mobile. Thus new cities would be quite
most people would not find such areas desirable places to unstable and would tend to intensify, rather than relieve,
live, and shortage of water might also be a limiting factor. the problems of social segregation.
Furthermore, new cities would not necessarily reduce Morrison suggested that a better solution to distribu-
pollution; rather, they would provide additional foci of tion problems would be to revitalize existing cities and
environmental deterioration. Thus the net effect on total form policies that encouraged migration in desired
environmental impact nationwide, aside from redistri- directions. People who move to new areas are usually
buting it, would be beneficial only if careful planning attracted to better job opportunities or higher wages.
were used to minimize commuting and other destructive Most go where they already have friends or relatives, a
activities in the new communities. factor that militates against the successful establishment
Peter Morrison of the Rand Corporation has pointed of new cities. Most migration in the United States occurs
out several social and economic disadvantages of new between urban areas; relatively few people now move
cities.31 The first difficulty is the enormous cost of from rural to urban areas. Such policies as local tax
building each new city, including the creation of a solid situations that encourage or discourage the development
economic base to attract: immigrants, in competition with of industries, and differences among states in welfare
benefits have considerable potential influence on
'"Peter Morrison, Urban growth, new cities, and the population migration.
problem.
''Ibid; U.S. Commission on Population Growth, Population and the Since passage of the Population Act in 1970, the
American future, vol. 5.
government has encouraged the development of new

751
752 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
cities by providing funds and guaranteeing loans to
developers. Some new communities have been developed
within old cities—Roosevelt Island in New York and
Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis, for example—but most
are built some distance from older centers. The new
community program was plagued with funding problems
in the early 1970s, partly because of President Nixon's
penchant for impoundment of funds, and partly because
of HUD's fondness for red tape and failure to come
through with promised technical and planning assistance
or aid in starting transportation and school systems.
Despite these obstacles, several new towns have come
into being. The best of them incorporate housing for all
income levels and try to attract minority groups. At least
one new town, Woodlands, Texas, was planned by
ecological architect Ian McHarg with an eye to preserv-
ing the local forest and recycling the water supply.32
The issue of new cities has faded somewhat since 1970,
possibly because it has become increasingly difficult just
to finance the maintenance of existing cities and suburbs,
without taking on the even greater burden of building
new ones. Another limiting factor may have been the
1973/1974 energy crisis, which starkly illuminated many
of the faults of today's settlement and commuting
patterns. Lowering population growth rates and some
abatement of internal migration may also have caused
politicians to view the need as less urgent than it seemed a
few years earlier. Nevertheless, the problem remains of
accomodating the tens of millions of people who will be
added to the U.S. population by the end of the century.
In addition, the numerous social difficulties caused by
present and past movements of people must be solved
and efforts made to prevent their being intensified in the
future. Between 1950 and 1970, one American in five
moved each year, about 22 percent of these to a different
state. Disproportionate numbers of the people who move
are young couples in their twenties and their children.
The destructive effects of such mobility on people and on
communities have been vividly described by Vance
Packard." People are not inclined to develop loyalty or
civic concern toward a town in which they feel them-
selves temporary residents. The community thereby
"New towns in trouble. Time, March 24,1975.
r
'A nation of strangers; see also Urie Bronfenbrenner, The origins of
alienation.
loses potential support from many of its most active and
talented citizens. High mobility may be hardest on
children. When children cannot establish community
roots, it is not surprising that they grow up alienated
from older generations and from society at large.
As a result of undirected migration since World War
II, many urban areas in the United States have ex-
perienced severe problems. Some cities have grown
enormously while others have lost population. Peter
Morrison has described the demographic effects of rapid
growth on one city, San Jose, California, which tripled its
population between 1950 and 1970, and population
decline on another, St. Louis, Missouri.34 San Jose's
mostly young, extremely mobile population provides the
advantages of a highly flexible job market and a low rate
of dependency (retirees and jobless poor). But the city's
population has grown almost faster than urban services
such as sewers, schools, and streets could be provided for
it. No time was available for planning; developers put up
houses wherever land was available. In the early 1970s,
San Jose looked at itself and was appalled: a classic
example of unplanned urban sprawl—"slurbia" it is
called in the vernacular.
St. Louis, by contrast, is an acute example of central
city decay. The central city's population declined by 17
percent during the 1960s, while the surrounding suburbs
grew by 29 percent. Those who moved out were pre-
dominantly young families, leaving behind a rising
proportion of aging and retired people and disadvan-
taged minorities, especially blacks. High and middle-
income families, both black and white, departed for
suburbs or other cities, leaving the city of St. Louis to
support a high proportion of low-income people on an
inadequate tax base.
One approach to ameliorating the problems of over-
burdened cities is to encourage people to return to rural
areas and small towns and cities. Such a policy, however,
might require considerable revamping of American
agricultural and industrial employment systems, as well
as of local welfare policies that inadvertently stimulate
migration from rural areas to cities. Such explicit policy
"Urban growth and decline: San Jose and St. Louis in the 1960s.
Another recent study, in which many of the economic, social and
environmental effects of unplanned urban growth are examined, is Irving
Hoch. City size effects, trends, and policies.

changes, although there are many powerful arguments in
their favor, have only begun to appear, and those have
come mainly from the private sector as business firms
relocated in smaller cities and towns. There has been
considerable discussion of reorganizing welfare policies
on a federal standard so that no locality will provide more
attractive benefits than any other, but to date the discus-
sion has not been turned into action.
Even without policy changes, however, a reversal of
the centuries-long trend toward urbanization in the U.S.
may now have occurred spontaneously.35Fed up with the
growing disadvantages of life in large cities—rising
crime rates and declining levels of services and ameni-
ties—millions of Americans have moved from cities to
rural areas and small towns. A surprisingly large number
of them have taken up farming, but with varied success.
Some of this back-to-the-farm movement derives from
the earlier hippie movement and from a growing desire
among young, well-educated people for a more self-
sufficient, independent way of life than is possible in a
large city. Eventually, this change in life-style and
personal goals may influence large companies and the
government to develop policies that encourage decen-
tralization and discourage unnecessary mobility.
Policies and Practices
in Other Developed Countries
Explicit population policies are the exception rather
than the rule in most developed countries.36 Where laws
affecting demographic trends have existed, they have
generally been indirect, most commonly regulating or
prohibiting abortion or the distribution of contraceptive
information and materials. As in the United States, most
such laws until recently have been pronatalist in intent.
Nevertheless, a predominant social trend throughout the
twentieth century has been the growth in acceptance of
the idea of family limitation.
Canada. Canada's population policies have generally
followed the same lines as those in the United States,
"Roy Reed, Rural areas' population gains now outpacing urban
regions; Americans on the move. Time, March 15, 1976.
36
Bernard Berelson, ed.. Population policy in developed countries.
POPULATION POLICIES / 753
with the exception that family allowances—small allot-
ments to subsidize support of children—have been
provided for decades. Prohibitions on distribution of
contraceptive devices or information were repealed in
1969, and soon afterwards a government family planning
program was launched. Regulation of abortion was also
liberalized somewhat in 1969, but the new law has been
applied very conservatively. Easy access to abortion is by
no means a reality in Canada.37
The Canadian birth rate is slightly higher (15.7 in
1975) than that of the United States and has also been
dropping rapidly. A major factor in Canadian population
growth has been immigration, which in the 1960s made
up about one-third of the nation's annual growth. In the
early 1970s immigration increased as fertility declined.
Traditionally liberal immigration policies are currently
being reevaluated with a view to tightening restrictions
and reducing the inflow.38
Western Europe. Western European countries gen-
erally have no official population policies other than
pronatalist policies left over from before World War II
when birth rates were very low.39 Many of these coun-
tries still have family allowances to help support children
in large families. Predominantly Catholic European
countries still banned or restricted contraceptives and
abortion as late as the 1970s.
In Europe, widespread practice of coitus interruptus
has been given the major credit for lowering birth rates
during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with
illegal abortion also playing an important role. In most of
Western Europe by the 1970s, coitus interruptus and the
condom were still the most used contraceptive methods,
followed by the pill and the rhythm method. Among
Western European countries, only in England and Scan-
dinavia are other contraceptive devices as well known
and readily available as they are in the United States. The
condom is still the most commonly used device, however,
and withdrawal is much more widely practiced than it is
in America. However, use of the pill is increasing.40
"Margot Zimmerman, Abortion law and practice—a status report.
"Wendy Dobson, National population objectives are slowly taking
shape.
39
Much of the information on current policies come from Richard C.
Shroeder, Policies on population around the world.
40
Norman B. Ryder, The family in developed countries.
754 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
Sweden is an exception among European countries in
that it has had an official population policy since the
1930s. This policy provided for sex education (including
birth control) in schools, permitted abortion in some
circumstances, and offered family planning services as
part of the national health organization. In addition,
Sweden was the first country to have a program to assist
other family planning programs abroad.
England, since 1974, has provided contraceptives and
abortions through its National Health Service, and
Parliament has begun discussion of developing an anti-
natalist policy. England also provides some family plan-
ning assistanceto LDCs, mostly its former colonies.
Even though birth control has been illegal to some
degree in most Catholic countries, late marriage, high
rates of illegal abortion, and the use of withdrawal and
the rhythm method have helped keep birth rates down.
Planned parenthood groups have long existed in France,
Belgium, and the Netherlands in a quasi-legal status, but
until recently they were hampered by laws restricting the
dissemination of information and materials. When
France legalized contraceptives in the late 1960s, family
allowances were also increased. Birth control devices are
still entirely illegal in Ireland, although a movement for
change has begun. They are also essentially illegal in
Spain and Portugal. Italy has legalized the pill for
"medical purposes" (presumably to combat the ex-
tremely high illegal abortion rate—see next section), and
condoms are available "for disease prevention." In 1971,
Italian laws prohibiting the dissemination of birth con-
trol information were declared unconstitutional, thus
opening the way for much greater access to contracep-
tives. In 1975 a new law authorized local governments to
establish "family centers" to counsel citizens on family
matters, including family planning.4'
Immigration policies are also being reevaluated in
several Western European countries. In recent years,
much of the labor force (11 percent in France and West
Germany, 7 percent in Britain, and 37 percent in
Switzerland) has been composed of "guest workers" —
temporary migrants from poorer countries in Southern
Europe, Northern and Central Africa, and the Middle
4!
Brenda Vumbaco, Recent law and policy changes in fertility control.
East.42 The worldwide economic recession in the mid-
1970s led to an intensification of the controversy, espe-
cially in Switzerland, which has twice considered out-
right deportation of all immigrants (thus throwing many
firms, dependent on migrants, into panic).43 So far such
proposals have been rejected, although many social
problems continue to be blamed on the foreigners in
most of these countries. Should economic conditions
seriously worsen, such xenophobic policies could be
revived and even implemented.
Eastern Europe and USSR. In the Soviet Union
and Eastern European countries, the substantial post-
World War II declines in fertility were achieved mostly
through abortion, which is provided by their national
health services. These countries now also distribute
contraceptives, including the pill, partly in an effort to
reduce the abortion rate. This policy seems to be
succeeding in some countries, although abortion is still
the primary means of birth control. Discouragement of
early marriage, an emphasis on training, education, and
the full outside employment of women also undoubtedly
strongly encourage the small family trend.
Extremely low birth rates in Eastern European coun-
tries have caused a reversion to more pronatalist policies
—especially a tightening of abortion laws—in response,
apparently, to concern about future labor supplies.
Communist ideology officially calls for a pronatalis:
posture, and the Soviet government periodically exhorts
its people to have more children. Interestingly, however,
the Russians have cautiously begun to recommend lower
fertility in rapidly growing less developed countries.44
Oceania. Australia and New Zealand have histori-
cally regarded themselves as underpopulated. Conse-
quently their policies until recently were pronatalist and
pro-immigration. These policies are currently being
reevaluated as the public becomes aware of the world
population problem, and neither country any longer
"Clyde H. Farnsworth, The doors are closing to world's immigrants.
New York Times, December 22, 1974.
43
A bout of xenophobia, Time, October 28, 1974.
44
Boris Urlanis, The hour of decision, Uncsco Courier, July/August
1974, pp. 26-29. The author is described as "the USSR's leading
demographer."

subsidizes the transport costs of immigrants. A Zero
Population Growth movement was founded in Australia
in 1971. As former English colonies, both countries have
long had family planning organizations and access to
contraceptives. Their birth rates have been well within
the usual DC range, although their growth rates have
been inflated by high immigration rates. As in many
European countries and the United States, the birth rates
in Australia and New Zealand have been declining
toward replacement levels since 1970.
Japan. Japan, the only fully industrialized country in
Asia, reduced its birth rate rapidly to DC levels after
World War II, largely by legalizing abortion. A policy of
encouraging the use of contraceptives has since reduced
the abortion rate without changing the birth rate, even
though Japan has been slow to legalize the pill and the
IUD. The social policy on population, which was
promoted through massive educational and communica-
tions programs in the 1950s, very strongly discouraged
having a family with more than 2 children. Accordingly,
fertility has been close to replacement levels since then.
Around 1970, alarmed by an apparent labor shortage,
Japanese industry began campaigning for more births.
The crude birth rate rose during the mid-1970s, but the
rise was essentially an artifact of age composition; the
postwar baby boom children born before legalized
abortion halved the birth rate (1945-1955) were then in
their twenties—the prime reproductive years. The reces-
sion of 1974 effectively seems to have silenced the
campaign for higher fertility. At the same time, the
growth of both environmental concern and a women's
liberation movement in Japan may have a fertility-
reducing effect in future years.
Abortion
The most controversial method of birth control with-
out question is abortion, which is surrounded by legal,
ethical, and moral dilemmas. Despite this, it seems to
have been practiced in all societies and is probably still
the commonest method of birth control today, especially
in LDCs. Until the early 1970s, abortion was illegal in
most countries, including the United States (see Box
POPULATION POLICIES / 755
13-4). Disapproval of the practice probably originated
with the Judeo-Christian ethic, yet it was not made
illegal until the nineteenth century. Then it was oudawed
on the grounds that it was dangerous to the mother—
which it was before sterile techniques were developed.
When performed today under appropriate medical cir-
cumstances by a qualified physician, however, abortion is
much safer than a full-term pregnancy. The death rate in
the United States for legal abortion in the first trimester
(first three months of pregnancy) is less than 2 in 100,000.
For second-trimester abortions the rate rises to 12 per
100,000, still only half die maternal death rate for
childbirth.45
But danger to the mother escalates alarmingly when
the abortion is illegal, as it still is in many countries. The
amount of risk varies according to the circumstances,
which may range from self-inducement with a knitting
needle or, almost equally hazardous, unsterile help from
untrained people, to reasonably safe treatment by a
physician in a hotel or clandestine clinic.
Changing abortion laws in DCs. Before abortion
was legalized in the United States, bungled illegal
abortions were the greatest single cause of maternal
deaths, accounting for a conservatively estimated 300 or
more deaths per year.46 They still are in those countries
where abortion remains illegal or not yet widely avail-
able. In Italy, for example, contraceptives were entirely
banned until 1971, and the illegal abortion rate at that
time was estimated to be equal to or higher than die birth
rate—800,000 to 1.5 million per year—and costing as
many as 3000 lives per year.47 Most of these abortions
were self-inflicted or accomplished with the aid of a
sympathetic but untrained friend. When a woman with a
hemorrhage was brought to a hospital, she was automat-
ically given tetanus and penicillin shots. She never
"Family planning perspectives, Abortion-related deaths down 40
percent. . . . See also C. Tietze and S. Lewit. Legal abortion, whose
figures for abortion mortality, derived from the U.S. and the U.K., show
abortion mortality risks approximate!}' equal to childbirth between the
twelfth and sixteenth weeks, and somewhat higher thereafter. Both
sources agree on the low risks of first trimester abortions.
"Christopher Tietze, The effect of legalization of abortion on popula-
tion growth and public health. For an excellent overview of the changing
legality of abortion worldwide and related social issues, see Tietze and
Lewitj Legal abortion.
J7
Rcportcd by David Burlington fui NBC News, February 5, 1975.
 BOX 13-4 Abortion in the United States
Before 1967, abortion was illegal in the United
States except when the mother's life was endan-
gered by continuing the pregnancy. Only six
years later, the situation had been completely
reversed, legally if not everywhere in practice.
Yet the change was not eifected overnight; it was
the result of changed public attitudes in response
to a growing reform movement.
By the end of 1970, 15 of the 50 states had at
least partially moderated their abortion laws.
Most of these new laws permitted abortion only
in cases where bearing the child presented a
grave risk to the mental or physical health of the
mother, where the pregnancy was a result of
incest or rape, and where (except in California)
there was a substantial likelihood that the child
would be physically or mentally defective. To
obtain an abortion, a woman usually had to
submit her case to a hospital reviewing board of
physicians, a time-consuming and expensive
process. Although the laws ostensibly were re-
laxed to reduce the problem of illegal abortions,
hospital boards at first interpreted the changes in
the law so conservatively that they had little
effect. The number of illegal abortions per year
in the U.S. during the 1960s has been variously
estimated at between 200,000 and 2 million, with
1 million being the most often quoted figure.
This amounted to more than one abortion for
every four births. At that time, there were
estimated to be 120,000 illegal abortions per year
in California; in the first year after the passage of
California's "liberalized" law there were just
over 2,000 legal ones. The figures were similar
for the other states.
In 1970 Hawaii, Alaska, and New York passed
new laws essentially permitting abortion on
request, and Washington State legalized abortion
on request not by legislation but by referendum.
Meanwhile, several other states began to inter-
pret their relatively restrictive laws much more
liberally, and the legal abortion rate rose consid-
erably. These changes in state laws were pre-
ceded and accompanied by an erosion of public
opposition to abortion. Table 13-1 shows the
changes in public disapproval as revealed in polls
taken between 1962 and 1969 for demographer
Judith Blake.
A poll taken early in 1970 asked: Should an
abortion be available to any woman who requests
one? In apparent contradiction to the earlier
opinions, more than half of those interviewed
said yes. Although most respondents did not
approve of abortion except for the more serious
reasons, the majority apparently felt that mothers
should be free to make their own decisions.
Continuing this trend, a poll conducted in
1971 for the U.S. Commission on Population
Growth and the American Future found that 50
percent of the adults interviewed felt that the
decision to have an abortion should be made by
the woman and her doctor, 41 percent would
permit abortions under certain circumstances,
and only 6 percent opposed abortion under all
circumstances. Similar results have been ob-
tained in subsequent surveys."
In January 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court
announced its decision on an abortion case which
in effect legalized abortion on request nation-
wide, at least for the first trimester (13 weeks),
with restrictions on the second trimester being
permitted in the interest of protecting women's
health. Only in the last ten weeks of pregnancy,
(when the child, if born, had a chance of
survival) the court ruled, could states prohibit
abortion except "to preserve the life or health of
the mother."6
The number of legal abortions performed in
1972 (before the Supreme Court decision) was
about 600,000; in 1975 it was about one mil-
lion—approximately the estimated previous
number of illegal abortions. At least two-thirds
of these abortions probably would have been
obtained illegally if legal abortions had been
unavailable.1" Nor had illegal abortions entirely
disappeared—25 of the 47 deaths from abortions
in 1973 were from illegal ones (those not per-
formed under proper medical supervision)—al-
though the incidence of such deaths clearly had
been drastically reduced by 1975.1*
Yet, three years after the Supreme Court
decision, there were still large discrepancies
from one region to another and between medical
facilities in providing abortion services. An
ongoing national study by the Guttmacher In-
stitutee in 1975 concluded that between 260,000
and 770,000 women who needed abortions in
1975—20 to 40 percent of the women in need—
"W. R. Arney and W. H. Trescher, Trends in Attitudes toward
abortion, 1972-1975.
'For a lively account of the campaign to change U.S. abortion
laws, see Lawrence Lader, Abortion II: making the revolution.
'"Edward Weinstock, et al., Legal abortions in the United States
since the 1973 Supreme Court decisions; Abortion need and
services in the United States, 1974-1975, Family Planning
Perspectives, vol. 8, no. 2, March 1976.
''Richard Lincoln, The Institute of Medicine reports on
legalized abortion and the public health.
Tan of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The
1976 Study was titled: Provisional estimates of abortion need
and services in the year following the Supreme Court decisions:
United States, each state and metropolitan area. The 1976
Study was Abortion 1974-1975—need and services in the
United States, each state and metropolitan area.

were still unable to obtain them. More than half
of all abortions after 1973 were carried out in
specialized clinics, while public hospitals (which
provide most medical services to the poor) were
lagging even behind private hospitals in provid-
ing services. Only one in five U.S. public hospi-
tals reported performing any abortions in 1975.
Thus in many areas it was substantially more
difficult for poor women to obtain abortions than
for middle-class or wealthy women, even though
government funds were available to cover the
costs. Teenagers, who account for about one-
third of the need for abortion services and for a
large and growing portion of the illegitimate
birth rate, also seem to have poor access to safe
abortions. Finally, abortion services were found
to be generally less available in the southern and
central regions of the U.S. than on either coast.
In the United States, the majority of abortion
recipients are young and/or unmarried. There is
some debate over the degree to which legal
abortion has affected American fertility overall,
but it seems to have had a significant effect on the
rate of illegitimate births. In 1971 reductions in
illegitimate births in states with legal abortion
ranged as high as 19 percent, while in most states
without legal abortion they continued to in-
crease/ Following the Supreme Court decision,
the rising rate of illegitimacy halted briefly, then
began again. The rise was accounted for by an
increase in teenage pregnancy.
There is no evidence that abortion has re-
placed contraceptives to any significant degree,
despite the apprehensions of antiabortion groups
on this score. Most women seeking abortion have
a history of little or no contraceptive practice,
and many are essentially ignorant of other means
of birth control. Those who return for sub-
sequent abortions have been found to be still
ignorant of facts of reproduction, using contra-
ceptives improperly, or to have been poorly
guided by their physicians."
Paralleling the trend toward liberalized abor-
tion policies in the U.S. has been the growth of
right-to-life groups who are adamantly opposed
to abortion. These groups have lobbied actively
against reform of state laws and, since the
Supreme Court decision, have tried to persuade
Congress to reimpose sanctions against abortion
through Constitutional amendments. Under
their pressure, Congress has removed funds for
1. Sklar and B. Berkov, Abortion, illegitimacy, and the
American birth rate.
"Blame MD mismanagement for contraceptive failure, Family
Planning Perspectives, vol. 8, no. 2, March/April 1976, pp.
72-76.
TABLE 13-1
Change in Disapproval of Abortion (all white respondents)
Percentage of disapproval
Reason for abortion 1962 1965 1968 1969
Mother's health endangered 16 15 10 13
Child may be deformed 29 31 25 25
74 74 72 68
Can't afford child
No more children wanted - - 85 79
Source: Judith Blake, Abortion and public opinion.
abortion services from Foreign Aid grants to
LDCs. In 1976, Congress also passed a law
forbidding federal assistance for abortions in the
U.S., a move that denies these services to low-
income women—precisely the group whose
chances for a decent and productive life are most
likely to be jeopardized by an unwanted child.
Whether the courts will consider such a dis-
criminatory law constitutional is another ques-
tion. Right-to-life groups have also played a part
in harassing clinics, hospitals, and other organi-
zations that provide abortion. This activity often
embarrasses clients and possibly has also dis-
couraged other institutions from providing
abortion services.
Action by right-to-life groups in Boston re-
sulted in the trial and conviction for manslaugh-
ter in early 1975 of physician Kenneth Edelin
following a late-term abortion (about 20 weeks).
The prosecution maintained that the fetus might
have survived if given life-supporting treatment.
(The conviction was overturned in December
1976 by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court.)'1 The consequence of the original verdict
nevertheless was to discourage late second-
trimester abortions (31 states already had laws
against them except to protect the mother's life
or health; in most states abortion by choice was
available only through the 20th week). Unfortu-
nately, this change also will affect mainly the
poor and/or very young women, who through
ignorance or fear are more likely to delay seeking
an abortion until the second trimester.
In 1976, a Right-to-Life political party was
formed, centering on the abortion issue. Its
candidate, Ellen McCormack, entered primaries
in several states, but never succeeded in winning
more than 5 percent of the vote. Most Ameri-
cans, it appears, accept the present legal situation
at least as the lesser of evils.
* Time and Nescstceek, March 3, 1975. Both magazines covered
the trial and the issues it raised in some detail. See also Barbara
Culliton's thoughtful article, Edelin trial; jury not persuaded,
and Edelin conviction overturned, Science, vol. 195, January 7,
1977, pp. 36-37.
758 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
admitted having had an abortion; under Italian law she
had committed a crime and could be sent to prison. Some
years ago in a confidential survey of 4000 married women
of all classes, all admitted to having had abortions, most
of them many times.48
A movement is now underway to loosen the laws
against abortion in Italy, following the limited legaliza-
tion of the pill in 1971, despite strong opposition from
the Vatican and conservative political elements. The
Italian constitutional court in early 1975 ruled that
abortion is legal if doctors determine that the pregnancy
threatens the physical or mental health of the mother.
Before the 1970s, variations on the Italian abortion
tragedy prevailed in several other Western European
countries. In France, contraceptives were available but
not openly, and the illegal abortion rate and attendant
rates of death and injury nearly matched those of Italy. In
late 1974, abortion was legalized in France, shortly after
a new law was passed greatly increasing public access to
contraceptive devices and information.
Similar reversals have occurred in many DCs since
1965. West Germany, Denmark, and Austria legalized
abortion on request between 1973 and 1975, although its
status in Germany was changed by a court decision and
remains to be reestablished by legislation. In 1975
Sweden changed its already moderately liberal law to
allow abortion up to the twelfth week as a decision for the
woman alone to make. Finland, Norway, and Iceland
have long had liberal policies, but they fall short of
availability on request. Laws against abortion in Greece
and the Netherlands have been neither observed nor
enforced and soon may be reversed. The same was
formerly true of Switzerland, which in 1975 moved to
liberalize its abortion laws. Great Britain has in effect
permitted abortion on request since 1967. Spain, Por-
tugal, Belgium, and Ireland still had very restrictive laws
in 1976.4'
In most of Eastern Europe, abortion has long been
legal and usually subsidized by the state. Abortion has
been legal since 1920 in the Soviet Union, and in most
Eastern European countries (except Albania) since the
•"L. Zanetti, The shame of Italy.
"Zimmerman, Abortion, law and practice; C. Tietze and M. C.
Murstein, Induced abortion: a factbook, 1975. These two are the major
sources for what follows.
1950s. Abortion brought birth rates so low that Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, and Hungary tightened their regulations
in 1973. Romania severely restricted access to abortion in
1966, with the result that its birth rate virtually doubled
the following year. Since then, the birth rate has declined
toward the 1966 level, indicating an increase in illegal
abortions. The rates of hospitalizations and deaths from
abortion complications have also risen substantially.
Meanwhile the huge cohort of children born in 1967 has
caused havoc in the Romanian school systems.50
Canada has relaxed its abortion law somewhat; prac-
tice is considerably short of "on request," but widely
liberal interpretation of the new law might make it close.
Canadians denied abortions often go to the United
States. Australia is moving toward liberal policies, al-
though access varies by state. New Zealand remains
restrictive, but discussion of change has begun.
Abortion in LDCs. The tragedy of illegal abortion
thus is rapidly becoming a thing of the past in most of the
developed world, but change is coming more slowly in
much of the less developed world. In some countries the
problem of illegal abortion is increasing because the need
for abortion seems to be rising. There are important
exceptions, particularly China, where abortion has been
liberally provided by medical services since 1957. In
India abortion was legalized in 1972, but there was so
little publicity that even large segments of the medical
community as well as the public were unaware of it for
the first few years. For those who knew, high costs and
excessive red tape were effective deterrents. For at least
the first three years, the number of legal abortions was
extremely low (41,000 in the first five months), while the
number of nonmedical illegal abortions was appallingly
high (at least 4 million a year).51
Elsewhere in Asia, abortion has been legalized in
South Korea (1973), North Vietnam (1971), Hong Kong
(1972), and Singapore (1969, further liberalized in 1974).
Abortion is firmly illegal in Taiwan, but apparently
easily obtainable from medical practitioners, nonethe-
less. Laws are still restrictive in Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri
Lanka, Thailand, and the Philippines, but there are signs
50
Teitze and Murstein, Induced abortion; Charles F. Westoff, The
populations of the developed countries.
51
The abortion dilemma, Atlas, November 1974, pp. 16-18.

that they may soon be changed in several of these
countries.
In the Middle East and North Africa, laws are
generally very restrictive, except in Tunisia (which has
had abortion on request in the first trimester since 1973)
and Cyprus, which partially liberalized its law in 1974.
Israel's tough anti-abortion law was weakened by a
challenging court decision in 1952 and is seldom ob-
served today. Abortions reportedly are also available
through medical facilities in Egypt despite a strict
anti-abortion law.
In Africa south of the Sahara, abortion is generally
prohibited (the exceptions being Zambia since 1972 and
some liberalization in South Africa). Ironically, these
restrictive laws are holdovers from colonial times; they
are not rooted in local culture.52
Abortion is still illegal in most Latin American
countries, although laws have recently been relaxed to
permit it under certain circumstances in El Salvador,
Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Brazil, Chile, Argentina,
Ecuador, and Peru. Abortion essentially on request is
available only in Uruguay and Cuba (since 1968 in both
cases).
Illegal abortion is rampant in Latin America. Contra-
ceptives are legally available in most Latin American
countries, but in practice only accessible to the rich. The
illiterate poor, who make up a large share of the Latin
American population are generally unaware of the exis-
tence of birth control other than by ancient folk methods,
and could not afford modern methods even if they knew
of them. There are exceptions where governments and
volunteer organizations such as Planned Parenthood
have established free birth control clinics (see next
section). Although these can help, they as yet reach only a
small fraction of the population, mainly in cities. In rural
areas where hunger and malnutrition are often wide-
spread, a failure of primitive birth control methods
leaves women with no alternative but to practice equally
crude forms of abortion.
In the 1960s bungled abortions were estimated to
account for more than 40 percent of hospital admissions
in Santiago, Chile. In that country, an estimated one-
third of all pregnancies end in abortion. In Mexico,
"Sue Tuckwell, Abortion, the hidden plague.
POPULATION POLICIES / 759
400,000 women per year are treated in hospitals for
illegal abortions; the abortion rate is conservatively
estimated at one-fourth the birth rate.53 For South
America as a whole, some authorities believe that one-
fourth of all pregnancies end in abortion; others estimate
that abortions outnumber births.
Liberalizing abortion laws in various countries has
been shown to have two important effects. The first is a
very large decline in maternal deaths and morbidity
(illness) associated with illegal abortion. The degree of
reduction of death and illness depends on the degree of
change in the law, the previous rate of illegal abortions,
and how they were usually performed (i.e., self-inflicted
under unsanitary circumstances or performed clandes-
tinely by medical personnel). The number of annual
abortion deaths in the U.S. dropped from over 150 per
year before 1970 to 47 (25 of which were from illegal
abortions) in 1973; in England the decline was from 60
before 1968 to 11 in 1974.54 Declines in many European
countries and LDCs, where crude self-abortion has been
more common, will probably be much greater. Con-
versely, the number of deaths in Romania, where abor-
tion regulations were tightened, rose from about 70 in
1965 to over 370 in 1971.»
The other result of liberalizing abortion laws is to
provide such services safely to low-income women.
When abortion is illegal, the rich can usually still obtain a
safe illegal procedure or can afford to travel to another
country where legal abortion is available. The poor have
no such options; it is they who suffer most either from the
burdens of large families or from dangerously unsafe
illegal abortions.
The moral issue. The greatest obstacles to freely
available, medically safe abortion in many developed
countries and in Latin America are the Roman Catholic
Church and other religious groups that consider abortion
immoral. The crux of the Catholic argument is that the
embryo is, from the moment of conception, a complete
individual with a soul. In the Catholic view, induced
abortion amounts to murder. Some Catholics also oppose
53
/4r/as, The abortion dilemma; Tuckwell, Abortion, p. 20.
'4C. Tietze and M. C. Murstein, Induced Abortion: a factbook. The
rate of abortion deaths was declining during the 1960s, especially after
1967 when several states relaxed laws to permit more legal abortions.
"Ibid.

will lead to genocide. It is hard to see how this could
happen if the decision is left to the mother. A mother who
takes the moral view that abortion is equivalent to
murder is free to bear her child. If she cannot care for it,
placement for adoption is still possible in most societies.
Few people would claim that abortion is preferable to
contraception, not only because of moral questions, but
also because the risk of subsequent health problems for
the mother may be greater. Death rates for first-
trimester, medically supervised abortions are a fraction
of those for pregnancy and childbirth but considerably
higher in later months.58 Large and rapidly growing
numbers of people nevertheless feel that abortion is
vastly preferable to the births of unwanted children,
especially in an overpopulated world. Until more effec-
tive forms of contraception than now exist are developed,
and until people become more conscientious in use of
contraceptives, abortion will remain a needed back-up
method of birth control when contraception fails.
Attitudes on abortion have changed in most countries
in recent years, and they can reasonably be expected to
change more in the future. The female part of the world's
population has long since cast its silent vote. Every year
over one million women in the United States, and an
estimated 30 to 55 million more elsewhere, have made
their desires abundantly clear by seeking and obtaining
abortions. Until the 1970s, these women were forced to
seek their abortions more often than not in the face of
their societies' disapproval and of very real dangers and
difficulties. Millions still must do so.
There is little question that legalized abortion can
contribute to a reduction in birth rates. Wherever liberal
laws have been enacted, they have been followed by
lowered fertility. Longstanding evidence is available
from Japan and Eastern Europe, where abortion was the
primary effective form of birth control available for some
years after liberalization, and where the decline in
fertility was substantial. The extent of decline is bound
to be related to the availability of other birth control
methods; but even in the United States and England,
where contraceptives have been widely available, the
decline in fertility after reversal of abortion policies was
significant.
58
Tietze and Murstein, Induced abortion.
POPULATION POLICIES / 761
According to at least one study, availability of abortion
(legal or illegal) may be necessary in order for a
population to reach and maintain fertility near replace-
ment level, given current contraceptive technology and
patterns of sexual behavior.59 Liberalization of abortion
policies in those countries where it is still largely or
entirely illegal is therefore justifiable both on humani-
tarian and health grounds and as an aid to population
control.
POPULATION POLICIES IN
LESS DEVELOPED NATIONS
In response to rising alarm during the 1950s over the
population explosion in less developed countries, both
private and governmental organizations in the United
States and other nations began to be involved in popula-
tion research and overseas family planning programs.
First among these, naturally, was the International
Planned Parenthood Federatiork which grew out of the
established national groups. By 1975 there were Planned,,
Parenthood organizations in 84 countries, supported by
their own governments, private donations, government
grants from developed countries, or some combination of
these sources.60
Various other private and governmental organizations
followed Planned Parenthood into the field, including
the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, the Population _
Council, the U.S. Agency for International development
(AID), and agencies of several other DC governments.
International organizations such as the World Bank and
various UN agencies, particularly the UN Fund for
Population Activities,, had joined bv 197CL The 1960s
brought a great proliferation of family planning pro-
grams in LDCs, which were assisted or administered by
one or another of these groups. Most assistance from
DCs was provided through one of the international or
private organizations. In 1960 some $2 million was spent
by developed countries (and the U.S. was not then among
them) to assist LDC family planning programs; by 1974
59
C. Tietze and J. Bongaarts, Fertility rates and abortion rates:
simulations of family limitation, Studies in familv planning, vol. 6, no. 5.
May 1975, p. 119.
^Population Reference Bureau, World population growth and response,
pp. 243-248.
TABLE 13-2
Family Planning in LDCs

Population Have official support

(millions, Have an official policy to of family planning Neither have policy nor
1975) reduce population growth rate for other reasons support family planning

400+ People's Republic of China (1962)

India (1952, reorganized 1965)

100-400 Indonesia (1968) Brazil (1974)

50-100 Mexico (1974) Nigeria (1970)

Pakistan (1960, reorganized 1965)
Bangladesh (1971)

25-50 Turkey (1965) Zaire (1973) Burma

Egypt (1965) Ethiopa
Iran (1967) Argentina
Philippines (1970)
Thailand (1970)
South Korea (1961)
Vietnam (1962 in North)

15-25 Morocco (1968) Tanzania (1970) North Korea

Taiwan (1968) South Africa (1966) Peru
Colombia (1970) Afghanistan (1970)
Sudan (1970)
Algeria (1971)

10-15 Nepal (1966) Venezuela (1968)

Sri Lanka (Ceylon) (1965) Chile (1966)
Malaysia (1966) Iraq (1972)
Kenya (1966) Uganda (1972)

Less than 10 Tunisia (1964) Cuba (early 1960s) Cameroon

Barbados (1967) Nicaragua (1967) Angola
Dominican Republic (1968) Syria (1974) Malawi
Singapore (1965) Panama (1969) Jordan
Hong Kong (1973) Honduras (1966) Lebanon
Jamaica (1966) Dahomey (1969) Saudi Arabia
Trinidad and Tobago (1967) Gambia (1969) Syria
Laos (1972, possibly discontinued) Rhodesia (1968) Yemen
Ghana (1969) Senegal (1970) Mali
Mauritius (1965) Ecuador (1968) Upper Volta
Puerto Rico (1970) Honduras (1965) Mozambique
Botswana (1970) Benin (early 1970s) Burundi
Fiji (1962) Haiti (1971) Central African Republic
El Salvador (1968) Papua-New Guinea (1969) Chad
Gilbert and Ellice Islands (1970) Paraguay (1972) Comoros
Guatemala (1975) Liberia (1973) Congo
Grenada (1974) Lesotho (1974) Equatorial Guinea
Bolivia (1968, reorganized 1973) Western Samoa (1971) Guinea-Bisseau
Costa Rica (1968) Madagascar (1974) Ivory Coast
El Salvador (1968) Sierra Leone (early 1970s) Libya
Swaziland (1969) Mauritania
Togo (early 1970s) Niger
Zambia (early 1970s) Rwanda
Cambodia (1972, possibly discontinued) Seychelles
Guyana (1975) Somalia
Surinam (1974) Namibia
Uruguay (1971) Israel
Other small Caribbean countries (1960s)
Sources: Berelson, Population control programs; Nortman, Population and family planning programs, 1975; Population Reference Bureau, World
population growth and response.

•the amount was over $200 million, more than half of it
from USAID. Yet less than two percent of all foreign
assistance goes to LDC family planning programs, and
most LDCs allot less than one percent of their budgets
to it.61
During the 1960s national family planning programs
were established in some 25 LDCs, while 17 other
governments began supporting or assisting the activities
of private Planned Parenthood organizations. The early
1970s saw a further proliferation of these programs until
by 1975,34 less developed countries officially favored the
reduction of population growth, and 32 more supported
family planning activities for other reasons. Some 55
additional LDCs still did not support family planning, or
in a few cases opposed it. But the combined 1973
populations of the pro-family planning countries were
nearly 2.5 billion, whereas the total combined population
of the anti-family planning nations was only about 250
million.62 Table 13-2 shows details.
Government Policies in LDCs
So far family planning programs are the primary
policies that have been brought into action against the
population explosion in most LDCs. Outstanding ex-
ceptions are the People's Republic of China,63 Indonesia,
India, Pakistan, South Korea, Singapore, Tunisia, Egypt,
and a few other countries where other social and eco-
nomic policies have been adopted to supplement family
planning.64 However, many family planning programs
have been established and are even being supported by
governments for reasons other than reduction of popula-
tion growth, usually to protect the health and welfare of
mothers and children. Although no country has yet
adopted attainment of ZPG as a goal, many have aimed at
an ultimate reduction of growth rates to DC levels—
around 1 percent per year or less. A few countries, by
"Dorothy Nortman, Population and family planning programs: A
factbook, 1974. Population Reference Bureau, World population growth
and response.
W
D. Nortman, Population and family planning programs, 1974 and
1975.
"See Edgar Snow, Report from China—III: population care and
control, for an early report on China. More recent reports have generally
confirmed that first impression: for example, Pi-Chao Chen, China:
population program at the grass roots, in Population: perspective 1973, H.
Brown, J, Holdren, A. Sweezy, B. West, eds,
M
Vumbaco, Recent law and policy changes.
POPULATION POLICIES 763
contrast, still want to increase their usually already rapid
growth. Many others are beginning to reevaluate their
pronatalist policies as consequences of rapid growth
become increasingly evident. The following discussion
sums up these various approaches by continent.65
Africa. Africa, an extremely diverse continent, grow-
ing at about 2.6 percent per year, includes some of the
world's poorest and most rapidly growing nations. Be-
cause high mortalities, especially of infants, are also
commonly found in these countries, concern over rapid
growth and action to curb it have developed only
relatively recently in most of them. Indeed, some African
governments remain staunchly pronatalist.
The belief that more people are needed for develop-
ment is common among African nations south of the
Sahara. Policies in Cameroon, Malawi, and Upper Volta
still frankly favor growth, while Zambia and the Mala-
gasy Republic have only recently reversed their positions
(in 1975). Concern about poorly controlled migration is
greater in many of these countries than concern about
high birth rates.
In general, family planning on a private basis has long
been available in former African colonies of England,
but not in those of such Catholic countries as France,
Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Former English
colonies were among the first to establish national family
planning policies, although emphasis in some cases is put
on health and family welfare justifications. Kenya and
Ghana have two of the oldest and strongest family
planning programs in subSaharan Africa, and both have
goals of reducing population growth. Interest in family
planning at least for health reasons is growing in most
former English colonies, although a few such as Malawi
still discourage or ignore the activities of private family
planning organizations. Nigeria, the most populous and
one of the richest (in terms of resource endowment)
African countries, was only beginning to show interest in
family planning for health reasons in 1976, despite rapid
growth.
"For country-by-country details of policies and recent demographic
trends, Population Reference Bureau, World population growth and
response, prepared with the assistance of the U.S. Agency for International
Development, is invaluable.Schroeder and Vumbaco each provide useful
summaries, as does the more recent D. Nortman and E. Hofstatter,
Population and family planning programs: a factbook, 1976.
764 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
In South Africa and Rhodesia, the dominant European
populations have traditionally practiced birth control.
These countries are now trying to extend family plan-
ning services to their African populations. South Africa's
family planning is offered through its Planned Parent-
hood affiliate and funded by the government; Rhodesia's
services are government-supported, but operated by
several private international groups.
Former French colonies have begun to relax their
prohibitions to allow the commercial sale of contracep-
tives and to support some family planning activities. The
first family planning clinics in French-speaking conti-
nental Africa have been established in Senegal, whose
government is beginning to show interest in family
planning. Most former French colonies, however, re-
main complacent about their rates of population growth.
An exception is Mauritius, an island nation with one of
the highest population densities in the world (see Chap-
ter 5). Mauritius has a vigorous and comparatively
successful family planning program. Since the 1950s, the
growth rate has been reduced to about 2.1, despite an
unusually low death rate of 7 per 1000 population.
The Portuguese colonies, Mozambique and Angola,
remained pronatalist and strongly opposed to birth
control until they achieved independence in 1975. Es-
tablishment of population programs must await the
stabilization of the new governments.
Some North African countries have initiated family
planning programs; Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco have
fairly strong, antinatalist policies. Tunisia, in particular,
has ventured beyond family planning to legalize sterili-
zation (considered immoral and against Moslem law in
most Islamic countries) and abortion, to limit financial
allowances for children to four per family, raise the legal
marriage age, and ban polygamy. In addition, women's
rights, usually very restricted in Moslem societies, are
being promoted. Some other North African countries—
Algeria, Libya, Mauritania—remain pronatalist or
uninterested.
Many African countries still have death rates above 20
per thousand, and some even more than 30. A number of
demographers and family planning officials believe that
interest in population control will remain low in those
countries until the death rates have been substantially
reduced, especially among infants and children. R is
vitally important to change this point of view so that
efforts can be made to lower birth rates along with death
rates; that most family planning efforts have begun in
African countries as a part of maternal and child health
services is an encouraging sign.
Latin America. Latin America as a region, despite
having some of the highest population growth rates in the
world (about 2.9 percent for the entire region), has also
been very reluctant to accept a need for population
control. This is probably due in part to the influence of
the Roman Catholic Church, but there is also a wide-
spread belief, at least in South America, that the conti-
nent still contains vast untapped resources of land and
minerals, that the answer to all problems is development,
and that more people are needed for development. Latin
American politicians, moreover, tend to view proposals
originating in the United States for birth control with
understandable suspicion. Some seem to believe the U.S.
is trying to impose a new and subtle form of imperial-
ism.66 In some countries, this reaction has even had the
effect of inhibiting the teaching of demography and
family planning in universities.
Latin American economists and politicians have come
to accept family planning (often referred to as "respon-
sible parenthood") mainly on health and welfare grounds
and as a means of reducing the horrendous illegal
abortion rate. Some leaders are beginning to realize,
however, that the galloping population growth rate is
swallowing all the economic progress each year, leaving a
per-capita rate of progress of zero or less. A few countries
have established essentially, though not always explic-
itly, antinatalist policies as a result—notably Chile.
Colombia, several Caribbean countries, and all of the
Central American countries. The efforts of some family
planning programs in the Caribbean (mainly former
British colonies) have been counted among the most
successful, especially those of Barbados and Trinidad
and Tobago. Birth rates have declined there since the
early 1960s, and have declined as well in Chile, Colom-
bia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela.
"National Academy of Sciences, In starch of population policy: views
from the developing world; Population policy in Latin America.

At the other extreme, Brazil and Argentina have
policies generally promoting growth. Brazil does permit
private family planning groups to operate, however,
especially in the poverty-stricken Northeast. Argentina,
having a relatively low birth rate and feeling threatened
by rapidly growing Brazil, in 1974 banned dissemination
of birth control information and closed family planning
clinics. Since the practice of birth control is well
established in the Argentine population, the action is not
likely to have great effect except perhaps to raise the
already high abortion rate, mostly illegal.
Asia. Asia includes over half of the human population
and is growing at about 2.3 percent per year. Both
mortality and birth rates are generally lower than those in
Africa, and both have been declining in several countries.
Asia presents a widely varied picture in regard to
population policies. At one extreme, China, India, Thai-
land, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Taiwan, and South Korea are pursuing strong family
planning policies, in several cases reinforced by social
and economic measures, some of which are described
below. All of these countries have recorded declines in
birth rates, some of them quite substantial. Family
planning programs have also been established in Paki-
stan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia, and the Philippines,
but the impact, if any, on birth rates is negligible so far.
A few rapidly growing countries, notably Cambodia
and Burma, currently are pursuing pronatalist popula-
tion policies, although family planning is privately
available in the latter country. Other "centrally planned"
countries in Southeast Asia seem to be following China's
example in population policies; North Vietnam has had a
family planning program for some time, which presum-
ably was extended to South Vietnam when the nation was
unified. Policies in North Korea are unknown.
Middle Eastern nations are still largely pronatalist in
their outlook, with the exceptions of Turkey and Iran
which have national family planning programs. Several
countries, including Afghanistan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Iraq,
Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, are interested in establish-
ing family planning services for health and welfare
reasons. The remaining countries favor continued
growth, although they may tolerate family planning
POPULATION POLICIES / 765
activity in the private sector. Among these is Israel, for
obvious reasons. At the furthest extreme is Saudi Arabia,
which has outlawed importation of contraceptives.
Nearly all Middle Eastern countries are growing rapidly
with relatively high, although declining death rates.
The United Nations. For many years, the United
Nations limited its participation in population policies to
the gathering of demographic data. This, however, was
instrumental in developing awareness of the need for
population policies, especially among LDCs, whose
governments often had no other information about their
population growth. Since the late 1960s the UN has taken
an active role in coordinating assistance for and directly
participating in family planning programs of various
member nations, while continuing the demographic
studies. A special body, the UN Fund for Population
Activities (UNFPA), advises governments on policies
and programs, coordinates private donors and contribu-
tions from DC governments, and sometimes directly
provides supplies, equipment, and personnel through
other UN agencies.
In 1967 the UN Declaration on Social Progress and
Development stated that "parents have the exclusive
right to determine freely and responsibly the number and
spacing of their children."67 The statement affirmed the
UN's increasing involvement in making family planning
available to all peoples everywhere and contained an
implicit criticism of any government policy that might
deny family planning to people who wanted it. The
statement has sometimes been interpreted as a stand
against compulsory governmental policies to control
births; however, the right to choose whether or not to
have children is specifically limited to "responsible"
choices. Thus, the Declaration also provides govern-
ments with the right to control irresponsible choices.
In 1974 the United Nations' World Population Con-
ference, the first worldwide, government-participating
forum on the subject, was convened in Bucharest.
Publicity attending the event gave an impression of
enormous disagreement among participating groups. But
in fact it provided a valuable forum for an exchange of
"Declaration on Population, Teheran, 1968, Studies in Family Plan-
ning, no. 16, January, 1967.
 BOX 13-6 China: An Apparent Success Story
Any brief treatment of Chinese society is
difficult and necessarily contains elements of
overgeneralization. First of all, the huge geo-
graphical expanse and the vastness of the popu-
lation—nearly a billion people—are difficult to
envision. Second, the Chinese people possess a
cultural diversity possibly as rich as that of
Europe, and even older traditions. Finally, it
seems that there is no overall, systematic keeping
of vital statistics and population figures in China,
and those statistics that do exist are not readily
available to outsiders. The Chinese are tradi-
tionally xenophobic, and the Western intrusion
of the last century and a quarter—from the
Opium Wars through the United States debacle
in Vietnam and Soviet pressure on northern
Chinese borders—have only heightened this tra-
ditional aloofness. The available information is
therefore fragmentary and has to some extent
been filtered by a highly centralized and auto-
cratic regime. Still, the accounts of foreign
travellers in China and the release of official
statements and figures allow some conclusions to
be drawn about the nature of population policy
in the People's Republic."
Superficially, the expressed population poli-
cies of the People's Republic of China seem
slightly schizophrenic. Official rhetoric preached
abroad roundly condemns Malthusian ideas:
"The poor countries have not always been poor.
Nor are they poor because they have too many
people. They are poor because they are plun-
dered and exploited by imperialism."6 The same
article goes on to blame "relative overpopulation
and widespread poverty" in the United States
and the Soviet Union on "ruthless oppression
and exploitation which the superpowers practice
at home."
But, despite assertions that there is no such
thing as overpopulation, China admits to having
a policy of "planned population growth," with
this rationale:
We do not believe in anarchy in material produc-
tion, and we do not believe in anarchy in human
reproduction. Man must control nature, and he must
also control his numbers. .
"For a recent overview, see International Planned Parenthood
Federation, China 1976: a new perspective.
'China on the Population Question, China Reconstructs.
We believe China's policy benefits many aspects
of life—national construction, the emancipation of
women, protection of mothers and women and
children, proper bringing up of the young, better
health for the people and prosperity for the nation. It
is, in other words, in the interests of the masses of the
people.''
In recent years, as China has begun to open up
to the outside world, it has become increasingly
clear not only that "birth planning," as it is
called, is seriously advocated and supported by
the government, but that it has begun to reap
results. Exactly how successful the policy has
been overall is impossible to say because there
are no reliable nationwide population statistics.
The last reasonably comprehensive census was
conducted in 1953 (when a total mainland popu-
lation of about 583 million was found), and
estimates of vital rates since then are basically
guesswork.1' Hence the estimates of total popu-
lation in 1975 range from below 800 million to
962 million/ China specialist Leo Orleans has
proposed a set of estimates and projections of
China's population from 1954 to 1980, and his
arguments in support of them are convincing. He
suggests that the 1975 population was about 850
million, with a birth rate of 27 per thousand, a
death rate of 12 per thousand, and a natural
increase of 1.5 percent. These figures are slightly
above those of the UN.
China's efforts to curb population growth
began in the 1950s following the release of the
census results and a period of heated discussions
of the pros and cons of birth control. An
organized campaign implemented by the Minis-
try of Public Health was launched in 1957 but
then was suspended in 1958 during the Great
Leap Forward, an intensive effort at economic
development. The period 1959-1961 was one of
food shortage and economic crises, and, although
established birth control clinics continued to
Ibid.
rf
Leo A. Orleans, China: Population in the People's Republic.
This is an excellent source for historical background, although
otherwise somewhat out of date.
c
Orleans, China's population figures: Can the contradictions be
resolved? The lowest are based on casual statements by Chinese
officials at the UN; the highest are from the World Population
Estitnates of the Environmental Fund, which bases its estimates
on the figures of John Aird, a demographer in the U.S.
Department of Commerce Foreign Demographic Analysis
Division.

function, there was no official encouragement for
their use.
While China was recovering from this crisis
period, the government again began advocating
"birth planning" to protect the health of mothers
and children. An important part of this campaign
was promotion of late marriage (23 to 25 for
women, 25 to 28 for men) and the two-child
family spaced by 3 to 5 years/ Both abortion and
sterilization were legal from the start, but the
middle 1960s were a period of active expansion
of facilities (along with expansion of health care
in general) and experimentation in improved
techniques. It was men that the Chinese devel-
oped the vacuum technique for abortion, which
has made the procedure much safer than before,
and which has since been adopted around the
world. Active research was also carried out on
simplified sterilization procedures. It appears,
for instance, that the Chinese may have been the
first to do female sterilizations with very small
incisions."
China has all along manufactured all its own
contraceptive devices and Pharmaceuticals, un-
like other LDCs. The latest invention is the
"paper pill," sheets of water-soluble paper im-
pregnated with oral contraceptives, which are
easy to transport, store, and distribute.* Each
sheet contains a month's supply of "pills" in
perforated squares that dissolve in the mouth
when eaten. This development is expected to
increase use of oral contraceptives considerably,
especially in remote rural areas where the pills
have been less accepted than in the cities.
Virtually every method of birth control is
being actively used in China: sterilization, abor-
tion, the combined steroid pill and the progestin
mini-pill, long-term injections, lUDs (the Chi-
nese developed their own, a stainless steel ring),
condoms, diaphragms, foams, and jellies.
The various forms of birth control have long
been available to the people in the major cities
and their suburbs. During the 1960s, health care,
including birth control services, was increasingly
extended to more remote rural areas. As an
indication of the success of the health care
programs, the death rate for the entire country is
estimated to have dropped from nearly 35 per
Ti-Chao Chen, China's population program at the grass-roots
level.
'Orleans, Family planning developments in China, 1960-
1966: abstracts from medical journals.
*Carl Djerassi, Fertility limitation through contraceptive
steroids in the People's Republic of China.
POPULATION POLICIES / 771
1000 population in 1949 to about 17 per 1000 in
1970* and perhaps 13 in 1974.j Infant mortality,
which fairly accurately reflects levels of both
health care and nutrition, is thought to have been
between 20 and 30 per 1000 births in 1974.k In
some urban communes (which apparently do
keep careful demographic statistics), the crude
death rate is 5 or less, and an infant mortality rate
of 8.8 per 1000 live births has been claimed for
the city of Shanghai.'
China's unique health care system, together
with greatly improved distribution of the food
supply, can claim credit for this remarkable
change. At the time of the Revolution, a grossly
inadequate corps of trained medical personnel
existed, mainly concentrated in the large cities.
While actively training thousands of doctors,
paramedics, and nurses and establishing hospi-
tals and health centers in smaller cities, the
Chinese also promptly tackled sanitation and
hygiene at the grass-roots level through educa-
tional campaigns.
More recently, selected people have been
given four to six months' basic medical training
and assigned part-time to care for basic health
needs in their production brigades. These indi-
viduals are called "native doctors" in the cities
and "barefoot doctors" in the country. Their
responsibilities include giving injections and
innoculations, administering first aid and simple
treatments for diseases, supervising sanitation
measures, teaching hygiene in schools, and dis-
tributing contraceptive materials. For medical
treatment beyond their competence (including
abortions and sterilizations), the barefoot doctors
refer patients to the nearest regional hospital.
Barefoot doctors in turn are assisted by part-time
volunteer health aides, usually housewives,
whom they train themselves.'"
It now appears that China is attempting to
upgrade the quality of grass-roots health care by
sending fully trained medical personnel from
city hospitals on rotation to rural health centers,
where, among other things, they provide addi-
tional training for local health workers. Some
barefoot doctors have thereby become qualified
to do abortions, IUD insertions, and steriliza-
'Orleans, China: Population in the People's Republic.
'Norman Myers, Of all things people are the most precious.
"•Ibid.
'Joe Wray, How China is achieving the unbelievable.
'"Pi-Chao Chen, China's population program at the grass-roots
level; V. W. Sidel and R. Sidel, The delivery of medical care in
China.
(Continued)
 BOX 13-6 (Continued)
tions, as well as other minor operations."
Both child bearing and birth control are fully
supported and helped in China, Paid maternity
leave, time off for breast-feeding, free nursery
care, and all needed medical attention are pro-
vided for mothers. Paid leave is also given for
abortion, sterilization, and IUD insertions, and
all birth control services are essentially free.
While the means of birth control are provided
through the health care system in China, primary
responsibility for motivating couples to make use
of them rests with the Revolutionary Committee
(or governing council) of the production brigade
or commune. Usually one member of the com-
mittee is the "responsible member" for birth
planning.0 In rural areas, "women's cadres" —
married women with children, who are known
and respected by their neighbors—carry contra-
ceptives and the pro-birth control message house
to house."
In some of the cities, low birth rates have been
so enthusiastically adopted as a goal that neigh-
borhoods collectively decide how many births
will be allowed each year and award the privilege
of having babies to "deserving couples."" Prior-
ity is given to newlyweds, then to couples with
only one child who have waited the favored
period of time for the second birth/ The result
has been phenomenally low birth rates for these
neighborhoods, ranging from 4 to 7 per 1000
population. The center city of Shanghai report-
edly had a 1972 birth rate of 6.4, while that for
the city plus suburbs was 10.8.s The 1972 birth
rate for Peking was reported by Joe Wray to have
been about 14 per 1000 population; Myers
placed it at 18.8 for city and suburbs combined.
Joe Wray has speculated that these low rates
may have been helped by a relatively low pro-
portion of women in their child-bearing years.
Given the recent Chinese policy of sending
urban young people to rural areas to work, this
may be so, even though China's demographic
history would indicate a relatively large and
growing proportion of people in their teens and
twenties for the country as a whole by 1975.
Exiling young people "temporarily" to rural
communes probably was done for political rea-
"Chen, China's population program.
"Wray, How China is achieving the unbelievable.
"Han Suyin, The Chinese experiment.
"Wray, Achieving the unbelievable; Han, Chinese experiment.
Treedman and Berelson, The record of family planning
programs.
8
Wray, Achieving the unbelievable; Myers, People are the most
precious.
sons. Large numbers of urban youth are a
potential source of insurgent trouble, especially
if insufficient jobs are available. Scattering the
young people in the countryside could effec-
tively defuse that threat. Moreover, the relatively
well-educated city youth could help spread the
ideology of the central government to remote
rural areas. But it appears that the policy may
also have had demographic effects. Most of the
city children are not happy down on the farm;
consequently, they are reluctant to marry, settle,
and raise families there. Nor are rural young
people eager to marry the sophisticated city
people with their strange ways.'
The official Chinese position on birth plan-
ning—an ideal of late marriage and a small,
well-spaced family of two children—appears to
have been overwhelmingly accepted in cities and
is rapidly gaining acceptance in rural areas,
according to reports from foreign visitors." The
prevailing attitude is that early marriage and
having more than two children are prime exam-
ples of irresponsible behavior. Nevertheless,
there is still resistance from older generations,
especially mothers-in-law, who by tradition have
long wielded considerable power within families
and apparently still do.
Besides official encouragement to limit fami-
lies, there are other incentives built into the
social and economic system as well. Emancipa-
tion of women and their incorporation as full
working members of society was an early, im-
portant goal of the Revolution. It has apparently
been realized to a great extent, especially among
younger women, and undoubtedly exerts a pow-
erful influence on childbearing.
Pi-Chao Chen has pointed out disincentives to
family limitation in the per capita grain allow-
ance, which augments a family's supply when a
child is added, and in the addition of another
worker (preferably a boy who will remain in the
family) to contribute to family income.1' But it
has also been observed that, even though another
worker may help increase a family's total income,
that income must still be divided among all
family members. Additional members reduce the
share available per person."' Furthermore, since
'Joseph Lelyveld, The great leap farmward.
"Tameyoshi Katagiri, A report on the family planning program
in the People's Republic of China; Sidel and Sidel, Medical
care; Han, Chinese experiment; Myers, People are the most
precious; Chen, China's population program; Wray, Achieving
the unbelievable.
''Chen, China's population program.
'"Sterling Wortman, Agriculture in China.

compulsory primary education is rapidly be-
coming the rule in China, children's productivity
is inevitably deferred at least until the teenage
years.
While there is no question whatever about the
Chinese leadership's position on birth planning,
coercion does not appear to be a part of the
program beyond the extensive use of peer pres-
sure and the dissemination of propaganda on all
levels. There were reports of curtailed maternal
benefits, reduced grain rations, and discrimina-
tory housing and employment assignments for
parents of three or more children in some areas
during the 1960s, but these measures seem to
have been largely abandoned. Possibly they
aroused more resentment than cooperation and
were found to be less than beneficial to the
children.
By the mid-1970s, China's far-reaching pop-
ulation program evidently had been extended to
the far corners of the nation—no mean trick in
itself. What the results have been is impossible to
assess with accuracy, but it is becoming increas-
ingly clear that they are significant indeed. The
remarkable vital rates prevailing in major cities
have already been cited, but those of rural
communes for which data exist, while higher
than the cities', show significant reductions from
pre-revolutionary levels (birth rate about 45,
death rate 34 to 40, infant mortality above 200). *
Reported birth rates for rural districts in the
early 1970s range from as low as 14 in an area
near Shanghai" to 20-24 in communes near
Peking- and some others in more remote prov-
inces.™ These areas generally report very low
death rates also. Levels of contraceptive usage in
urban and rural areas are compared in Figure
13-4. Certainly the communes visited by outsid-
ers are among the most successful by Chinese
standards, and so their birth and death rates
should not be taken as representative of the
entire country. But they may represent the
leading edge of an established trend. That the
policy has been so successful in many areas,
especially where it is long established, indicates
that similar success can be expected elsewhere in
time.
'Orleans, China: Population in the People's Republic.
"Katagiri, A report.
'Sidel and Sidel, Medical care.
QS
Chen, China's population program.
773
1. PERMANENTLY
STERILIZED
Tubal ligation
Vasectomy
2. PRACTICING
CONTRACEPTION
Pill
3. NOT PRACTICING
CONTRACEPTION
10 20 30 -0
COUPLES (%)
FIGURE 13-4
Contraceptive practices in an urban area (light grey)
and in a rural area (dark grey) in China are
compared; the urban sample is from the city of
Hangchow, a provincial capital, and the rural
sample is from a commune outside Peking.
Sterilization is nearly three times commoner in
the urban than in the rural sample, and
substantially fewer rural males use contraceptives.
The bias seems to be reflected in the difference
between urban and rural birth rates: below 10 per
1000 in some urban areas and above 20 per 1000
in some rural ones. (From Sidel and Sidel, 1974.)
If available estimates of vital rates for all of
China reflect reality, there has already been a
substantial reduction in birth and death rates.
Norman Myers of the FAO quotes birth rate
estimates for large cities of between 10 and 19
per 1000 population, for medium-sized cities, 14
to 23, and for rural areas 20 to 35. He put the
national 1974 birth rate at 29 and the death rate at
13, giving a natural increase of 1.6 percent per
year. Comparison of these estimates with those
of other Asian nations at similar levels of devel-
opment is striking, to say the least. And no doubt
other less developed countries—and perhaps
some developed countries as well—can learn a
great deal from the Chinese experience.66
M
Chen, Lessons from the Chinese experience: China's planned
birth program and its transferability.
780
customs are also subject to varying attitudes and mores.
These conflicting attitudes allow societies to fine-tune
their responses to external changes without having to
change the basic ideological structure itself. Thus, when
overpopulation threatens food supplies, for example,
antinatalist behavior can be encouraged, and when
epidemics or war have decimated a population, antina-
talism can again be discouraged. Pronatalist attitudes are
very strong in traditional societies because through most
of humanity's evolutionary history they have been
needed to maintain populations and to allow a moderate
amount of growth when warranted.
The sudden introduction of death control, Western
morality, and access to communications and other re-
sources, as Western technology impinged upon the
.underdeveloped world in the wake of the colonial era and
World War II, disrupted social perceptions of the
consequences of high birth rates in those areas. The
impact was characterized by "rapid and fluctuating
changes in agricultural productivity, labor demand,
urbanization, emigration, and military expansion, often
coupled with introduced epidemic disease."83 Because
most of these disturbed societies have adopted Western
ideology, their traditional methods of controlling popu-
lation have been abandoned and unfortunately replaced
by less efficient and less desirable ones, mainly self-
induced abortion and disguised infanticide through
neglect, abuse, and even starvation. Dickeman concludes
that the world population can only be controlled when
less developed societies are socially stabilized and inte-
grated and the people can realistically assess their actual
resource and ecological position. Then, she feels, the
people will make reasonable family-size choices in
accordance with that position.
The Demographic Transition
A great many social and economic factors have been
associated in the past with declining fertility in various
societies. Among them are the general level of education,
the availability and quality of health care, the degree of
urbanization, the social and economic status of women
and the opportunities open to them for education and
"Ibid.
employment outside the home, the provision of social
security for old age, and the costs to families of raising
and educating each child. The more extensive each of
these factors is, the lower fertility generally will be. In
addition, later marriage, lower tolerance for illegitimacy,
low infant mortality, and extended breast-feeding all
operate directly to reduce fertility. In most LDCs, levels
of health care, education, and women's status remain low
for the poor majority, while marriage comes early and
infant mortality rates are high.
Most family planning programs in the 1960s made
little effort to influence any of these factors, as demogra-
pher Kingsley Davis pointed out in 1967.84 Those that
tried to influence people at all confined themselves to
emphasizing the economic and health advantages of
small families to parents and their children.
In the 1950s and 1960s, government officials, eco-
nomic advisors, and many demographers believed that
the process of economic development would automati-
cally bring about the higher levels of education and
urbanization in LDCs that have elsewhere been asso-
ciated with declines in fertility, and thus would cause
a "demographic transition" in LDCs. These people
favored family planning because they thought it would
facilitate the supposedly inevitable demographic transi-
tion, although they believed that no significant reduction
in fertility could occur until the prerequisite (but
unknown) degree of development had been reached.
Numerous studies have established quite clearly that
population growth is in itself a major barrier to economic
development. Economist Goran Ohlin wrote in 1967:
The simple and incontestable case against rapid popu-
lation growth in poor countries is that it absorbs very
large amounts of resources which may otherwise be
used both for increased consumption and above all, for
development . . . The stress and strain caused by
rapid demographic growth in the developing world is
actually so tangible that there are few, and least of all
planners and economists of the countries, who doubt
that per capita incomes would be increased faster if
fertility and growth rates were lower . . . .85
"Population policy: will current programs succeed? See also Davis,
Zero population growth: The Goal and the Means.
^Population control and economic development, p. 53.
 The potential value of population control in aid
programs to LDCs has also been studied intensively. The
late economist Stephen Enke did much of the analysis,
and his conclusions may be summarized in three points:
(1) channeling economic resources into population con-
trol rather than into increasing production "could be 100
or so times more effective in raising per capita incomes in
many LDCs"; (2) an effective birth control program
might cost only 30 cents per capita per year, about 3
percent of current development programs; and (3) the use
of bonuses to promote population control is "obvious in
countries where the 'worth* of permanently preventing a
birth is roughly twice the income per head."86
Enke's results were strongly supported by computer
simulation work by systems analyst Douglas Daetz, who
examined the effects of various kinds of aid in a
labor-limited, nonmechanized agricultural society.87 His
results brought into sharp question the desirability of aid
programs not coupled with population control programs.
They might provide temporary increases in the standard
of living, but these would soon be eaten up by population
expansion. In many circumstances, population growth
and aid inputs may interact to cause the standard of living
to decline below the pre-aid level.
As a result of studies like Ohlin's, Enke's, and Daetz',
family planning began to be incorporated into assistance
programs for LDCs in the 1960s. But the purpose in most
cases was only to reduce growth rates to more "manage-
able" levels by eliminating "unwanted births." This
great faith of economists and demographers in the
potential of industrial development to bring about a
spontaneous demographic transition, which, aided by
family planning, would reduce population growth and
accelerate the development process, encouraged LDC
governments to relax under the illusion that all their
social and economic problems were being solved. Un-
fortunately, their faith was misplaced.
Reliance on a demographic transition was misplaced
for many reasons, not the least of which is uncertainty as
to exactly what caused the original one in nineteenth-
""Birth control for economic development.
*~ Energy utilization and aid effectiveness in non-mechanised agriculture:
a computer simulation of a socioeconomic system. PhD. diss.. University of
California, 1968.
century Europe.88 And, as was pointed out in Chapter 5,
conditions in contemporary LDCs in many ways are
markedly different from those in Europe and North
America one to two centuries ago when fertility began to
decline there.
By the mid-1960s, although several LDCs had ap-
parently reached quite advanced degrees of industrial
development, there was little sign of a general decline in
fertility. Birth rates dropped in some countries, but they
remained high, or in a few cases even rose, in other,
supposedly eligible countries. Because of this unex-
pected result, there has been some argument among
demographers whether the theory of the demographic
transition can even be applied to LDCs and whether
there is good reason to hope that it will occur in most of
them.
An analysis of fertility trends in some Latin American
countries (often cited as prime examples of nonconfor-
mity to demographic transition theory) by demographer
Stephen Beaver indicates that a demographic transition
has begun or is at least incipient in the countries he
examined.89 But, he suggests, cultural and economic
factors can cause time lags in the process. A considerably
broader spectrum of factors may influence fertility than
just reduced mortality (especially of infants), increasing
urbanization, and industrialization, which are classically
believed to be the primary causes of declining fertility.
It is becoming increasingly clear that industrializa-
tion—the style of development undertaken by most
developing countries—is not conducive to a demo-
graphic transition. This seems to be so because industry
in most LDCs employs and benefits only a fraction of the
population, creating a two-tiered society in which the
majority are left untouched by modernization.90 Such
unequal distribution of the benefits of modernization
(access to adequate food, clothing, decent shelter, educa-
tion, full-time employment, medical and health care,
etc.) is most pronounced in rural areas, where some 70
percent of the population of LDCs live.
ss
Michael S. Teitelbaum, Relevance of demographic transition theory
for developing countries; Alan Svreezy, Recent light on the relation
between socioeconomic development and fertility decline.
^Demographic transition theory reinterpreted.
'"James E. Kocher, Rural development; and James P. Grant, Develop-
ment: the end of trickle down?
 55

Ethiopia
•-Afghanistan
Algeria
Nigeria • Iran
Sudan* • "Kenya .
Morocco • Iraq
• Tanzania
Indonesia _. Uganda
• • Nepal North Korea
~ Pakistan
• Zaire
•
Philippines • • •
•
Bangladesh Colombia Mexico
Thailand •
cc India •
Peru
LU South Vietnam •
Q_ Burma South Africa Venezuela
CC
Turkey •
<
LU
> Malaysia
North Vietnam •
Eg'ypt Brazil

03
35
I
F
cc
CD

• China
30
Sri Lanka
South Korea

25
•
Taiwan
Argentina
20
75 100 150 250 400 600 1000 1500

GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT ($ PER CAPITA)

FIGURE 13-5

There is an absence of any clear relation between the birth rate and the level of development (as
measured by per-capital GNP) in the less developed countries with more than 10 million population.
A decline in birth rates has occurred recently in a number of these nations. (From Demeny, 1974.)

Per capita Gross National Product is a statistic often
used to measure the extent of "development" that has
taken place in a given country; per-capita GNP, however,
is an averaged figure that may conceal very large differ-
ences among income groups. And the correlation of
degrees of development as measured by per-capita GNP
with reduction in fertility is extremely mixed, to say the
least (Figure 13-5). One explanation is that, in strongly
two-tiered societies, birth control may be adopted by the
affluent, educated minority, but not by the majority still
living in poverty. The conclusion from this is that
fertility will decline significantly only when the benefits
of modernization are extended to all economic levels.
Economist Alan Sweezy has pointed out that, while
this explanation may account for fertility declines in
some instances, the expected declines have not occurred
in some countries—notably in Latin America—even
among the affluent and middle classes.90" He suggests
that lingering strong traditions, including pro-natalist
attitudes, may be a reason. In Latin America such
traditions are supported by the Roman Catholic Church,
which still officially opposes "artificial" methods of birth
control and abortion.
If a demographic transition should take place in
""'Economic development and fertility change.

LDCs, a decline from present high fertility to replace-
ment level alone would require considerable time, prob-
ably at least a generation. And time is running very short.
If appropriate kinds of development and vigorous family
planning programs had been initiated just after World
War II, when death control and the ideas of economic
assistance were first introduced in LDCs, the population
problem might be of more manageable dimensions
today. But plainly it would still be with us. Without such
a history, even if the strongest feasible population control
measures were everywhere in force today, the time lag
before runaway population growth could be appreciably
slowed, let alone arrested, would still be discouragingly
long. For most LDCs it will be at least four generations
before their populations cease to expand—unless catas-
trophe intervenes—because of the age composition of
their populations. Even if replacement reproduction
were attained by 2005, most LDC populations would at
least double their 1970 populations, and some would
increase 3.5-fold!*1
This built-in momentum virtually guarantees that, for
many less developed countries, shortage of resources and
the environmental and social effects of overpopulation
will combine to prevent sufficient "development" to
induce a demographic transition. Complacently counting
on either a spontaneous demographic transition or on
voluntary family planning programs—or even a combi-
nation—to reduce population growth and thereby ensure
successful development would therefore be a serious
mistake. The establishment of family planning programs
may make it easier to improve social conditions in poor
countries, but it is no substitute for appropriate develop-
ment; and it is also clear that development alone cannot
lead to a reduction of population growth on the needed
scale.
POPULATION CONTROL:
DIRECT MEASURES
Before any really effective population control can be
established, the political leaders, economists, national
planners, and others who determine such policies must
be convinced of its necessity. Most governments have
91
Thomas trejka, The future of population growth; alternative patlis to
equilibrium.
POPULATION POLICIES / 783
been reluctant to try measures beyond traditional family
planning that might be effective because they considered
them too strong, too restrictive, and too much against
traditional attitudes. They are also, reasonably enough,
concerned about resistance from political opponents or
the populace at large. In many countries such measures
may never be considered until massive famines, political
unrest, or ecological disasters make their initiation im-
perative. In such emergencies, whatever measures are
economically and technologically expedient will be like-
liest to be imposed, regardless of their political or social
acceptability. A case in point was the sudden imposition
in 1976 of compulsory sterilization in some Indian states
and for government employees in Delhi, following two
decades of discouraging results from voluntary family
planning.
People should long ago have begun exploring, devel-
oping, and discussing all possible means of population
control. But they did not, and time has nearly run out.
Policies that may seem totally unacceptable today to the
majority of people at large or to their national leaders
may be seen as very much the lesser of evils only a few
years from now. The decade 1965-1975 witnessed a
virtual revolution in attitudes toward curbing population
growth among LDC leaders, if not necessarily among
their people. Even family planning, easily justified on
health and welfare grounds alone and economically
feasible for even the poorest of countries, was widely
considered totally unacceptable as a government policy
as recently as 1960.
Among objections to population control measures
cited by demographer Bernard Berelson in 1969 were the
need for improved contraceptive technology; lack of
funds and trained personnel to carry out all proposed
programs; doubt about effectiveness of some measures,
leading to failure to implement them; and moral object-
ions to some proposals such as abortion, sterilization,
various social measures, and especially to any kind of
compulsion.92
Most objections to population control policies, how-
92
See Berelson's Beyond family planning, for a conservative view of
potential measures for population control. Since 1969, Berelson has found
many formerly unacceptable measures to have become much more
acceptable: for instance, An evaluation of the effects of population control
programs; and Freedman and Berelson, The record of family planning
programs, published in 1974 and 1975 respectively.
784 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
ever, can be overcome or are likely to disappear with time
and changing conditions; indeed man}' of them already
have. Contraceptive technology has been improved in
recent years (see Appendix 4). Promising methods of
birth control that are not now technologically possible
should also be developed, so that they can be made
available.92" Further generous assistance from developed
countries could remove remaining economic and lack of
personnel barriers to population-control programs in
LDCs. The effectiveness of a measure can only be
evaluated after it has been tried. Moral acceptability is
very likely to change as social and economic conditions
change in most societies, as demonstrated by the rever-
sal of abortion policies in many countries between 1967
and 1975.
The struggle for economic development in the LDCs
is producing considerable social upheaval, which will
particularly affect such basic elements of society as
family structure. Radical changes in family structure and
relationships are inevitable, whether population control
is instituted or not. Inaction, attended by a steady
deterioration in living conditions for the poor majority,
will bring changes everywhere that no one could consider
beneficial. Thus, it is beside the point to object to
population-control measures simply on the grounds that
they might change the social structure or family
relationships.
Among proposed general approaches to population
control are family planning, the use of socioeconomic
pressures, and compulsory fertility control. Maximum
freedom of choice is provided by traditional family
planning; but family planning alone should not be
regarded as "population control" when it includes no
consideration of optimum population size for the society
and makes no attempt to influence parental goals.
The use of abortion and voluntary sterilization to
supplement other forms of birth control can quite
properly be included as part of family planning and made
""Unfortunately, this area is still being seriously neglected. It has been
estimated that funds could fruitfully be tripled over 1974 levels to take
advantage of existing knowledge and trained personnel in research on
reproduction and development of new contraceptives. (M. A. Koblinsky,
F. S. Jaffe, and R. O. Greep, Funding for reproductive research: The
status and the needs.) See also Barbara J. Culliton, Birth control: Report
argues new leads are neglected (Science, vol. 194, pp. 921 -922, November
26, 1976) for a discussion of a forthcoming Ford Foundation Report,
Reproduction and human welfare.
available at costs everyone can afford. This, of course, has
been done in a few countries with considerable apparent
success (Table 13-4). Moreover, there is still a good deal
of room for expansion of family planning services in
LDCs, where they are not yet available to more than a
fraction of most populations. Family planning programs
not only provide the means of contraception, but,
through their activities and educational campaigns, they
spread the idea of birth control among the people. These
programs should be expanded and supported throughout the
world as rapidly and asfully as possible, but other measures
should lie instituted immediately as well. Given the family
size aspirations of people everywhere, additional mea-
sures beyond family planning will unquestionably be
required in order to halt the population explosion—quite
possibly in many DCs as well as LDCs.
Socioeconomic Measures
Population control through the use of socioeconomic
pressures to encourage or discourage reproduction is the
approach advocated by, among others, demographer
Kingsley Davis, who originated many of the following
suggestions.93 The objective of this approach would be to
influence the attitudes and motivations of individual
couples. An important aspect would be a large-scale
educational program through schools and communica-
tions media to persuade people of the advantages of small
families to themselves and to their society. Information
on birth control, of course, must accompany such educa-
tional efforts. This is one of the first measures that can be
adopted, and it has been increasingly employed in many
of the more active family planning programs in LDCs. It
has also been used in some DCs, notably the U.S. and
England, mainly, but not entirely, by private groups such
as Planned Parenthood and ZPG.
As United States taxpayers know, income tax laws
have long implicitly encouraged marriage and child-
bearing, although recent changes have reduced the effect
somewhat. Such a pronatalist bias of course is no longer
appropriate. In countries that are affluent enough for the
majority of citizens to pay taxes, tax laws could be
adjusted to favor (instead of penalize) single people,
''Davis, Population policy.

working wives, and small families. Other tax measures
might also include high marriage fees, taxes on luxury
baby goods and toys, and removal of family allowances
where they exist.
Other possibilities include the limitation of maternal
or educational benefits to two children per family. These
proposals, however, have the potential disadvantage of
heavily penalizing children (and in the long run society
as well). The same criticism may be made of some other
tax plans, unless they can be carefully adjusted to avoid
denying at least minimum care for poor families, regard-
less of the number of children they may have.
A somewhat different approach might be to provide
incentives for late marriage and childlessness, such as
paying bonuses to first-time brides who are over 25, to
couples after five childless years, or to men who accept
vasectomies after their wives have had a given number of
children.94 Lotteries open only to childless adults have
also been proposed. The savings in environmental de-
terioration, education, and other costs would probably
justify the expenditure. All of these measures, of course,
suffer the drawback of influencing the poor to a greater
degree than the rich. That would be unfortunate, since
the addition of a child to an affluent family (which has a
disproportionate impact on resources and environment)
is in many ways more harmful to society than the
addition of a child to a poor family.
Adoption to supplement small families for couples
who especially enjoy children can be encouraged through
subsidies and simplified procedures. It can also be a way
to satisfy couples who have a definite desire for a son or
daughter; further research on sex determination should
be pursued for the same reason. A special kind of
social-security pension or bond could be provided for
aging adults who have few or no children to support them
in their old age.
The latter idea, proposed in detail by economist
Ronald Ridker, has been tried with some success on tea
estates in southern India.95 As implemented, the plan
made monthly deposits in a pension fund for each female
worker enrolled in the plan as long as she spaced her
M
A study has been made o; :he economic feasibility of such a policy for
the United States by Larry D. Barnett (Population policy: payments for
fertility limitation in the U.S.).
"Synopsis of a proposal for a family planning bond; and Saving
accounts for family planning, an illustration from the tea estates of India.
POPULATION POLICIES / 785
children at least three years apart and had no more than
three. If more children were born, the payments were
reduced. Since managers of the tea estates were already
paying maternity and health benefits, the costs of the
pension fund were at least partially offset by savings from
those. A large majority of the women signed up for the
program, and within the first four years there were
substantial drops not only in fertility, but in infant
mortality and in worker absenteeism.96 The first pilot
project included only about 700 women; it remains to be
seen whether implementation of the pension plan on
other tea estates and in other situations in India will be
equally successful.
There are many possibilities in the sphere of family
structure, sexual mores, and the status of women that can
be explored.97 With some exceptions, women have
traditionally been allowed to fulfill only the roles of wife
and mother. Although this has changed in most DCs in
recent decades, it is still the prevailing situation in most
LDCs, particularly among the poor and uneducated.
Anything that can be done to diminish the emphasis
upon these traditional roles and provide women with
equal opportunities in education, employment, and other
areas is likely to reduce the birth rate. Measures that
postpone marriage and then delay the first child's birth
also help to encourage a reduction in birth rates. The
later that marriage and the first child occur, the more time
the woman will have to develop other interests. One of
the most important potential measures for delaying
marriage, and directly influencing childbearing goals as
well, is educating and providing employment for women.
Women can be encouraged to develop interests outside
the family other than employment, and social life could
be centered around diese outside interests or the couple's
work, rather than exclusively within the neighborhood
and family. Adequate care for pre-school children should
be provided at low cost (which, moreover, could provide
an important new source of employment). Provision of
child care seems more likely to encourage employment
outside the home, with concomitant low reproduction,
than to encourage reproduction. Women represent a
"V. I. Chacko, Family planners earn retirement bonus on plantations
in India.
97
Judith Blake. Demographic science and the redirection of population
policy; Reproductive motivation; Alice Taylor Day, Population control
and personal freedom: are they compatible?
786 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
large, relatively untapped pool of intellectual and tech-
nical talent; tapping that pool effectively could help
reduce population growth and also would provide many
other direct benefits to any society.
Social pressures on both men and women to marry and.
have children must be removed. As former Secretary of __
Tptprjnr Stewart Udall observed, "All lives are not.
enhanced by marital union; parenthood is not necessarily
a fulfillment for every married couple."98 If society were
convinced of the need for low birth rates, no doubt the
stigma that has customarily been assigned to bachelors,
spinsters, and childless couples would soon disappear.
But alternative lifestyles should be open to single people,
and perhaps the institution of an informal, easily dis-
solved "marriage" for the childless is one possibility.
Indeed, many DC societies now seem to be evolving in
this direction as women's liberation gains momentum."
It is possible that fully developed societies may produce
such arrangements naturally, and their association with
lower fertility is becoming increasingly clear. In LDCs a
childless or single lifestyle might be encouraged deliber-
ately as the status of women approaches parity with that
of men.
Although free and easy association of the sexes might
be tolerated in such a society, responsible parenthood
ought to be encouraged and illegitimate childbearing
could be strongly discouraged. One way to carry out this
disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies
be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors,
who generally are not capable of caring properly for a
child alone.100 If a single mother really wished to keep
her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption
proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and
care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should re-
main more difficult for single people than for married
couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising
children alone. It would even be possible to require
9S
7976: Agenda for tomorrow.
"Judith Blake, The changing status of women in developed countries;
E. Peck and J. Senderowitz (eds.), Pronatalism, the myth ofnioni and apple
pie; Ellen Peck, The baby trap.
100
The tragedy of teenage single mothers in the U.S. is described by
Leslie Aldridge Westoff in Kids with kids. The adverse health and social
effects of teenage child-bearing in an affluent society have recently betn
documented by several studies. One good sample can be found in a special
issue of Family planning perspectives, Teenagers. USA.
pregnant single women to marry or have abortions,
perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption,
depending on the society.
Somewhat more repressive measures for discouraging
large families have also been proposed, such as assigning
public housing without regard for family size and
removing dependency allowances from student grants or
military pay. Some of these have been implemented in
crowded Singapore, whose population program has been
counted as one of the most successful.
All socioeconomic measures are derived from knowl-
edge of social conditions that have been associated with
low birth rates in the past. The more repressive sugges-
tions are based on observations that people have volun-
tarily controlled their reproduction most stringently
during periods of great social and economic stress and
insecurity, such as the Depression of the 1930s.101 In a
sense, all such proposals are shots in the dark. Not
enough is known about fertility motivation to predict the
effectiveness of such policies. Studies by demographer
Judith Blake102 and by economist Alan Sweezy103 for
instance, have cast serious doubt on the belief that
economic considerations are of the greatest importance in
determining fertility trends. Sweezy has shown that the
decline of fertility in the 1930s in the United States was
merely a continuation of an earlier trend. If their views
are correct, then severely repressive economic measures
might prove to be both ineffective and unnecessary as a
vehicle for population control, as vrell as socially
undesirable. At the very least, they should be considered
only if milder measures fail completely.
Involuntary Fertility Control
The third approach to population limitation is that of
involuntary fertility control. Several coercive proposals
deserve discussion, mainly because some countries may
ultimately have to resort to them unless current trends in
birth rates are rapidly reversed by other means.104 Some
101
Richard A. Easterlm, Population, labor force, and long swings in
economic growth. Further discussion of Easterlies ideas can be found in
Deborah Freedman. ed., Fertility, aspirations and resources: A sympo-
sium on the Easterlin hypothesis.
102
Are babies consumer durables? and Reproductive motivation.
""The economic explanation of fertility changes in the U.S.
io4
Edgar R. Chasteen, The case for compulsory birth control.

involuntary measures could be less repressive or dis-
criminatory, in fact, than some of the socioeconomic
measures suggested.
In the 1960s it was proposed to vasectomize all fathers
of three or more children in India. The proposal was
defeated then not only on moral grounds but on practical
ones as well; there simply were not enough medical
personnel available even to start on the eligible candi-
dates, let alone to deal with the new recruits added each
day! Massive assistance from the developed world in the
form of medical and paramedical personnel and/or a
training program for local people nevertheless might
have put the policy within the realm of possibility. India
in the mid-1970s not only entertained the idea of com-
pulsory sterilization, but moved toward implementing
it, perhaps fearing that famine, war, or disease might
otherwise take the problem out of its hands. This deci-
sion was greeted with dismay abroad, but Indira Gandhi's
government felt it had little other choice. There is too
little time left to experiment further with educational
programs and hope that social change will generate a
spontaneous fertility decline, and most of the Indian
population is too poor for direct economic pressures
(especially penalties) to be effective.
A program of sterilizing women after their second or
third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the
operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement
than trying to sterilize men. This of course would be
feasible only in countries where the majority of births are
medically assisted. Unfortunately, such a program
therefore is not practical for most less developed coun-
tries (although in China mothers of three children are
commonly "expected" to undergo sterilization).
The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule
that could be implanted under the skin and removed
when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities
for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be
implanted at puberty and might be removable, with
official permission, for a limited number of births. No
capsule that would last that long (30 years or more) has
yet been developed, but it is technically within the realm
of possibility.
Various approaches to administering such a system
have been offeredj including one by economist Kenneth
POPULATION POLICIES / 787
Boulding.105 His proposal was to issue to each woman at
maturity a marketable license that would entitle her to a
given number of children—say, 2.2 in order to have an
NRR = 1. Under such a system the number could be two
if the society desired to reduce the population size slowly.
To maintain a steady size, some couples might be
allowed to have a third child if they purchased "deci-
child" units from the government or from other women
who had decided not to have their full allotments of
children or who found they had a greater need for the
money. Others have elaborated on Boulding's idea,
discussing possible ways of regulating the license scheme
and alternative ways of alloting the third children.106
One such idea is that permission to have a third child
might be granted to a limited number of couples by
lottery. This system would allow governments to regu-
late more or less exactly the number of births over a given
period of time.
Social scientist David Heer has compared the social
effects of marketable license schemes with some of the
more repressive economic incentives that have been
proposed and with straightforward quota systems.107 His
conclusions are shown in Table 13-5.
Of course, a government might require only implan-
tation of the contraceptive capsule, leaving its removal to
the individual's discretion but requiring reimplantation
after childbirth^ Since having a child would require
positive action (removal of the capsule), many more
births would be prevented than in the reverse situation.
Certainly unwanted births and the problem of abortion
would both be entirely avoided. The disadvantages
(apart from the obvious moral objections) include the
questionable desirability of keeping the entire female
population on a continuous steroid dosage with the
contingent health risks, and the logistics of implanting
capsules in 50 percent of the population between the ages
of 15 and 50.
Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a
suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most
proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this
lG5
The meaning ofiht 20th csnmrv, pp. 135—136.
J
106
Bruce M. Russect. Licensing: for cars and babies; David M. Heer,
Marketing licenses for babies; Boulding's proposal revisited.
'"Ibid.
TABLE 13-5
Evaluation of Some Relatively Coercive Measures for Fertility Reduction
Effect Marketable license systems Financialjucentiaie^ystems Quota systems
CBqby licenses'} /monthly subsidy\ / Monthly tax*\ .^
that may be sold to persons X on persons \ f One-time tax \
Boulding proposal or lent at interest \ uith no more than Jl with more than 1 1 for excess babies J Identical quota
for baby licenses to the government \^ two children ^X N ^ f r o o children^/ \^^ over j
two / for all couples
^^*^~~ ,
Restriction on Moderately severe Moderately severe Moderately severe Moderately severe Moderately severe Very severe
individual
liberty
Effect on quality Probably Probably Unknown Unknown Probably Slightly beneficial
of children's beneficial beneficial beneficial
financial
support
Effecti%7eness and Effective Effective Fairly effective Fairly effective Effective Effective
acceptability of enforcement at enforcement at enforcement enforcement enforcement at enforcement at
enforcement possible price possible price possible price possible price
mechanisms of depriving of depriving of depriving of depriving
some children some children some children some children
of a family of a family of a family of a family
environment environment environment environment
Effectiveness for Moderate High Low Low Low Moderate
precise
regulation of
the birth rate
Source: Adapted from David Heer, Marketing licenses.

would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social
questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No
such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be
under development. To be acceptable, such a substance
would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it
must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying
doses received by individuals, and despite varying de-
grees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it
must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and
it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex,
children, old people, pets, or livestock.
Physiologist Melvin Ketchel, of the Tufts University
School of Medicine, suggested that a sterilant could be
developed that would have a very specific action—for
example, preventing implantation of the fertilized
ovum.108 He proposed that it be used to reduce fertility
levels by adjustable amounts, anywhere from 5 to 75
percent, rather than to sterilize the whole population
completely. In this way, fertility could be adjusted from
time to time to meet a society's changing needs, and there
would be no need to provide an antidote. Contraceptives
would still be needed for couples who were highly
""Fertility control agents as a possible solution to the world popula-
tion problem, pp. 687-703.
motivated to have small families. Subfertile and func-
tionally sterile couples who strongly desired children
would be medically assisted, as they are now, or en-
couraged to adopt. Again, there is no sign of such an
agent on the horizon. And the risk of serious, unforeseen
side effects would, in our opinion, militate against the use
of any such agent, even though this plan has the
advantage of avoiding the need for socioeconomic pres-
sures that might tend to discriminate against particular
groups or penalize children.
Most of the population control measures beyond
family planning discussed above have never been tried.
Some are as yet technically impossible and others are and
probably will remain unacceptable to most societies
(although, of course, the potential effectiveness of those
least acceptable measures may be great).
Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable
idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying.
As those alternatives become clearer to an increasing
number of people in the 1980s, they may begin demand-
ing such control. A far better choice, in our view, is to
expand the use of milder methods of influencing family
size preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure that
the means of birth control, including abortion and

sterilization, are accessible to every human being on
Earth within the shortest possible time. If effective action
is taken promptly against population growth, perhaps the
need for the more extreme involuntary or repressive
measures can be averted in most countries.
POPULATION CONTROL
AND DEVELOPMENT
Population control cannot be achieved in a social or
economic vacuum, of course. To formulate effective
population control measures, much greater understand-
ing is needed about all peoples' attitudes toward repro-
duction, and how these attitudes are affected by various
living conditions, including some that seem virtually
intolerable to people in developed countries. Even more,
it is essential to know what influences and conditions will
lead to changes in attitudes in favor of smaller families.
The economists and demographers who believed that
urbanization and industrialization of LDCs would auto-
matically induce a demographic transition in those
societies seem to have been disastrously wrong. While
they waited for the birth rate to fall, one billion people
were added to the human population. At the very least, it
is obvious that the causes of demographic transitions are
far more complex than was once believed. But the social
scientists may have been wrong mainly in their approach.
Many aspects of modernization may indeed have impor-
tant influences on reproductive behavior.
Such influences, of course, fall outside the purview of
population programs; they are an integral part of devel-
opment as it affects—or fails to affect—each member of a
society. When development is the kind that improves the
living conditions of everyone down to the poorest farm
worker, development that starts at the grass roots level,
then there is hope that poverty, hunger, disease, and
hopelessness might be reduced—and along with them the
desire for many children.109
The general problems of LDC development are dis-
cussed in detail in Chapter 15, but its indirect effects on
fertility are worth mentioning here. While no one factor
of development can be singled out as ever having
""William Rich, Smaller families through social and economic prog-
ress; Kocher, Rural development; Grant, Development.
POPULATION POLICIES / 789
"triggered" a decline in fertility—no particular level of
infant mortality or per-capita GNP, for instance—a
constellation of factors does often seem to be associated
with such declines. Among these are rural development
and land reform favoring small, family-owned farms;
availability of adequate food, basic health care, and
education (especially of women) to the entire population;
industries favoring labor-intensive, rather than capital-
intensive, means of production; and a relatively small
income gap between the richest and poorest segments of
the population.110
Table 13-6 compares some of these interrelated factors
in nine less developed nations, four of which have shown
significant drops in fertility since 1960 and five of which
have not. While each of the nine countries, like nearly all
LDCs, exhibits some of the salient factors listed above,
those with substantially reduced fertility much more
commonly manifest them. Understanding of the impor-
tant influences on reproductive behavior and how they
operate is so far sketchy at best. Achieving a solid base for
population policy may be one of the most important—
and perhaps most difficult—research assignments for the
next decade.
Since the goals of both development and population
control are supposedly identical—an improvement in the
well-being of all human beings in this and future
generations—it seems only reasonable to plan each to
reinforce the other. Emphasis accordingly should be
placed on policies that would further the goals of both
family limitation and development—for example, rural
development and land tenure reform; increased agricul-
tural output; universal primary education for children;
old-age support schemes; and improved health care and
nutrition, especially for mothers and children.
Survival of human society nevertheless seems likely to
require the imposition of direct population control
measures beyond family planning in most LDCs. There
is no guarantee that processes of modernization can
quickly enough induce the necessary changes in attitudes
that might bring growth to a halt. High priority should be
given to stimulating those attitude changes and counter-
acting the effects of pronatalist traditions.
"°Ibid. See also Freedman and Bcrclson, The record of family
planning programs.

But while some people seek the best means of achiev-
ing population control, in other quarters the debate
continues as to whether it is necessary—or even
desirable.
Population Politics
/ am not sure that the dictatorship of the proletariat,
especially if led by an elite, will solve the problem of
social justice; I am certain starvation will not solve
the problem of overpopulation.
-Tom O'Brien,
Marrying Malthas and Marx
Family planning programs have spread throughout the
less developed world and are now established in the
majority of less developed countries. Many countries,
especially those with long-established programs that
have been frustrated by lack of success in reducing birth
rates simply through making means of birth control
available, have progressed to measures beyond family
planning. As could be expected, this has aroused opposi-
tion, informed and uninformed, from many quarters.
Some groups see threats to their personal liberties; even
more commonly, people see threats to their economic or
political interests. In addition, there are many propo-
nents of population control who strongly disagree on the
most appropriate approach.'n By 1974, when the United
Nations World Population Conference took place in
Bucharest, the chorus of clashing viewpoints was almost
deafening."2 Most press reports and coverage of the
Conference by special groups conveyed an impression of
enormous confusion and prevailing disagreement,113
1
' 'National Academy of Sciences, In search of population policy.
"2J. Mayone Stycos, Demographic chic at the UN.
"3The list of accounts is very long, even leaving out a plethora of
anticipatory books and articles. Here is a partial one: Anthony Astrachan,
People are the most precious; Donald Gould, Population polarized; P. T.
Piotrow, World plan of action and health strategy approved at population
conferences; Conrad Taeuber, Policies on population around the world;
Brian Johnson, The recycling of Count Malthus; M. Carder and B. Park,
Bombast in Bucharest; D. B. Brooks and L. Douglas, Population,
resources, environment: the view from the UN; W. P. Mauldin, et al., A
report on Bucharest; Marcus P. Franda, Reactions to America at
Bucharest; Concerned Demography, Emerging population alternatives;
International Planned Parenthood Federation, (IPPF) People, special
issue, vol. 1, no. 3,1974; in addition, Ifff published a daily newspaper
called Planet during the conference.
POPULATION POLICIES / 791
despite the ultimate ratification of a World Population
Plan of Action and 21 resolutions.114
A very useful summary of all the various views of the
population problem and how (or whether) to deal with it
has been compiled by demographer Michael S. Teitel-
baum.''' Because it is the best listing we have seen, we
are borrowing Teitelbaum's outline for the framework of
the following discussion.115
Positions Against Special Population
Programs and Policies
Pronatalist. This viewpoint favors rapid population
growth to boost economic growth and an expanding
labor supply, as well as to increase opportunities for
economies of scale in small countries. Pronatalists be-
lieve there is strength in numbers (both political and
military) and are more concerned about competition with
rapidly growing neighboring countries or among seg-
ments of their own populations than about the disadvan-
tages of rapid growth. This group now seems to be a
diminishing minority.
Revolutionist. Revolutionaries oppose population
programs because they may alleviate the social and
political injustices that might otherwise lead to the
revolution they seek. This view is particularly common
in Latin America.1'7 (Conversely, many politicians sup-
port family planning in the hope that it will dampen the
revolutionary fires.)
Anti-colonial and genocide positions. This group
is very suspicious of the motives of Western population
control advocates. Some believe that effective population
programs would retard development and maintain LDCs
in economic subservience to DCs. Others see population
'"UnitedNarions, Report ofthe UN World Population Conference, 1974.
"'Population and development: is a consensus possible?
11
'Bernard Berelson has also described the conflicting views on
population in the Population Council Annual Report 1973, pp. 19—27, and
The great debate on population policy. The latter was written as a dialog
among three 'Voices," representing the family planning advocates, those
who see "development" as the important issue, and academic critics of the
family planning approach to population control. The dialog is informa-
tive, often witty, but unfortunately leaves the reader with an impression
of much greater consensus than probably exists among the viewpoints.
"7J. Mayone Stycos, Family planning: reform and revolution.
792 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
programs as an effort by DCs to "buy development
cheaply." The most extreme position is taken by those
who regard population control as a racist or genocidal
plot against nonwhite citizens of LDCs. Holders of this
position blame resource shortage and environmental
problems exclusively on the greediness of rich countries.
To the extent that high fertility in LDCs is a problem,
they emphasize that it is due to their poverty, which in
turn is caused by overconsumption in DCs.118
Accommodationist. This viewpoint is basically
anti-Malthusian: because history shows that Earth is
capable of supporting far more people than Malthus
thought, he was wrong; these people believe that further
improvements in agriculture and technology will permit
accommodation of a much larger population than
today's. To them what is called overpopulation is really
underemployment; restructuring the economic system
will allow societies to provide jobs and meet the basic
needs of everyone, no matter how many. The slogan
adopted by the New Internationalist for the Population
Conference—"Look after the people and population will
look after itself—epitomizes this position.119
The problem-is-population-distribution. Some
people holding this view simplistically compare popula-
tion densities of different regions without regard to
available resources and means of support. They also
focus on the serious problem of urban migration in
LDCs and conclude that policies should concentrate on
population redistribution rather than on birth control.120
Mortality and social security. This view concen-
trates on the significance of infant and child mortality in
motivating reproductive behavior; if infant mortality
were reduced, fertility would automatically decline. This
view is also held in varying degrees by many pro-
population control advocates as well as those against it.
"8This perspective has been put forth by Barry Commoner, How
poverty breeds overpopulation (and not the other way around); and Pierre
Pradervand, The Malthusian man. Pradervand and Commoner, among
others, also oppose present population programs on anticolonialist
grounds.
119
Peter Adamson, A population policy and a development policy are
one and the same thing.
l20
Maaza Bekele, False prophets of doom. This article expresses this
and the above three viewpoints dearly.
Barry Commoner121 subscribes to it, but he quotes a
formula devised by AID. Whether the relationship is as
clear as is commonly believed has been called into
question by Alan Sweezy, among others.122
The other side of this coin is social security-the need
for children, especially sons, to support parents in old
Status and roles of women. Social pressures defin-
ing the role of women as wives and mothers, with status
attached primarily to that role, are a major cause of high
fertility, according to this view. Large families are likely
to prevail until alternative roles are made available to all
women.124
The religious doctrinal position. There are two
distinct, but not necessarily mutually exclusive views
here. One is essentially fatalistic: "Be fruitful and
multiply, God will provide." This view is common
among both Western and Eastern religions. The other
(mainly the Roman Catholic Church) sees population
growth as a problem, but regards most forms of birth
control as more or less immoral.125
Medical risk. People holding this view are more
impressed by the risks that attend the use of contracep-
tives such as the pill and the IUD, and surgical proce-
dures such as abortion and sterilization than by the risks
run by not using them. (The risk of death from child-
bearing alone is considerably higher, especially among
the poor in LDCs, than any of these, and both maternal
and infant mortality are known to be reduced substan-
tially by the use of birth control for birth spacing.)126 A
milder version of this view is held by large segments of
the medical profession who oppose the distribution of
the pill without prescription and the insertion of ITJDs
by paramedical personnel, despite the established safety
of both procedures compared to the consequences of not
using them.127
12
'Commoner, How poverty breeds overpopulation.
'"Recent light.
'"Mamdani, Myth of population control.
'24Blake, Reproductive motivation; Day, Population control and
personal freedom; Ceres, Women: a long-silent majority.
125
Pope Paul VI, Humanae Viiae.
126
A. Omran, Health benefits; Buchanan, Effects of childbearing;
Eckholm and Newland, Health.
'27Mauldin, Family planning programs and fertility declines.

Holistic development. Holders of this view are
"demographic transition" believers who are convinced
that social and economic development are responsible for
whatever declines in fertility have occurred in LDCs, not
family planning programs, which they consider a waste
of effort and funds that should be put into
development.128
Social justice. This position emphasizes redistribu-
tion of wealth within and among nations to improve the
condition of the poor.129 It is related to the idea of
grassroots development, but is somewhat more extreme
in that many of its proponents feel that redistribution of
wealth is the only policy that will reduce population
growth and solve other problems as well.
Positions Supporting the Need
for Population Programs and Policies
Population hawks. Teitelbaum sums up this position
as follows:
. . . Unrestrained population growth is the principal
cause of poverty, malnutrition, and environmental
disruption, and other social problems. Indeed we are
faced with impending catastrophe on food and en-
vironmental fronts.130
. . . Such a desperate situation necessitates draconian
action to restrain population growth, even if coercion
' 28Bekele, False prophets; Commoner, How poverty breeds overpopu-
lation. A more sophisticated form is Adamson's (A population policy)—at
least he advocates development at the grass-roots level (see Social Justice
section).
129
Pradervand, Malthusian man; some writers for Concerned
Demography.
130
We, along with some colleagues, are considered among the principal
proponents of this position (see especially P. Ehrlich, The population
bomb, which is the most commonly cited source). Like most of the
statements in this summary, this one is both exaggerated and over-
simplified. We would not, for example, blame poverty or malnutrition
principally on overpopulation, although it certainly contributes to their
perpetuation. Likewise, population growth is one of three interacting
causes of environmental deterioration; the others are misused technology
and increasing affluence (see Chapter 12). As an aside, it is interesting that
the first edition of the Population bomb, written almost a decade before
this book, is still often cited both as if it reflected the situation in the
mid-1970s and as if we still held precisely the same views today as we did
then.
POPULATION POLICIES / 793
is required. "Mutual coercion, mutually agreed
upon."131
. . . Population programs are fine as far as they go,
but they are wholly insufficient in scope and strength
to meet the desperate situation.132
Provision of services. This viewpoint holds that
family planning programs are essential for reducing birth
rates and that there is still a great unmet demand for birth
control in LDCs; what is needed is to expand family
planning services to meet the demand.133 Part of the
failure of family planning is due to provision of inade-
quate contraceptive technologies.134 This position is held
most strongly by administrators and associates of family
planning programs and their donor agencies.
Human rights. This position, held by virtually
everyone who is in favor of family planning or other
population control policies, derives from the idea that
there is a fundamental human right for each person
responsibly to determine the size of his or her family.135
Another right that has been recognized in many
countries including the United States'36 is that of women
to control their bodies. This is especially relevant to the
issue of abortion, but applies also to contraception and
sterilization. Family planning also contributes to health,
especially of women and children; and one more human
right is that to health care.
Population programs plus development. Here
again we quote Teitelbaum, who expressed it well:
. . . Social and economic development are necessary
but not sufficient to bring about a new equilibrium of
population at low mortality and fertility levels. Special
population programs are also required.137
J
'' Garrett Hardin, The tragedy of the commons.
1
"Davis, Population policy; P. R. Ehrlich and A. H. Ehrlich, Popula-
tion resources environment, W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco,
1970 and 1972, chapter 10.
'"Stj'cos. Demographic chic; Berelson, Effects of Population Control
Programs.
m
Mauldin, Family planning programs and fertility declines.
115
UN Declaration on Population, Tehran, 1968, printed in Studies in
Family Planning, no. 16, January 1967 and no. 26, January 1968.
Teitelbaum omitted the important word "responsibly" in his discussion.
136
Supreme Court decision on abortion, 1973.
137
Advocates of this include Rich. Smaller families; James E. Kocher,
Rural development; Grant, Development; and Lester R. Brown, In the
human interest.
794 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
While we are usually classified by others as "population
hawks," we agree more closely with this position in terms
of what should be done. What follows, however, is far too
mild a statement on the urgency of ending population
growth; Teitelbaum discusses only the social aspects and
completely leaves out environmental and resource con-
straints on population growth:
Too rapid population growth is a serious intensifier
of other social and economic problems, and is one,
though only one, of a number of factors behind lagging
social and economic progress in many countries.
Some countries might benefit from larger popula-
tions, but would be better served by moderate rates of
growth over a long period than by very rapid rates of
growth over a shorter period.
An effective population program therefore is an
essential component of any sensible development
program.
This general position (including the portion just quoted)
is widely held by social scientists, politicians, econ-
omists, and quite likely by Teitelbaum himself.
Like the blind men with the elephant, each viewpoint
grasps a piece of the truth, but none encompasses all of it.
As should be evident, the above positions are by no
means mutually exclusive, and probably none is held
monolithically by anyone. Rather, most people argue
from several related positions at once. Some apparently
violent disagreements, when analyzed, turn out to be
only a matter of emphasis or of leaving something out of
the picture.
Teitelbaum, Berelson, and others see the germ of a
consensus emerging from the debate. If so, and if the
consensus produces an effective approach to the popula-
tion problem that all can more or less agree on, the
controversy will have been worthwhile. But to the extent
that population policies are connected to the larger
confrontation between the rich developed world and the
poor less developed world (with waters frequently mud-
died by China and the Soviet Union who say one thing
about population control and practice another), con-
sensus may prove to be elusive. Even more important,
LDCs are unlikely to take very seriously population goals
and policies recommended by DCs that do not impose
such goals and policies upon their own people.
World Population Plan of Action
In view of the diversity of opinions held by various
individuals and groups on population control, it is not
surprising that the United Nations' World Population
Plan of Action turned out to be a bulky, nearly unread-
able document some 50 pages long.158 Summing it up is
almost impossible; the 20 resolutions and numerous
recommendations covered virtually every subject that
might affect or be affected by population growth. In the
initial statement of "Principles and Objectives," the Plan
declared:
The principal aim of social, economic and cultural
development, of which population goals and policies
are integral parts, is to improve levels of living and the
quality of life of the people. Of all things in the world,
people are the most precious. . . .
It then proceeded to affirm the rights of nations to
formulate their own population policies, of couples and
individuals to plan their families, and of women to
participate fully in the development process. It con-
demned racial and ethnic discrimination, colonialism,
foreign domination, and war. And it also expressed
concern for preserving environmental quality, for main-
taining supplies and distribution of resources, and for
increasing food production to meet growing needs.
More specifically with regard to population policies,
the following recommendations were made:139
• Governments should develop national policies on
population growth and distribution, and should
incorporate demographic factors into their devel-
opment planning.
• Developed countries should also develop policies
on population, investment, and consumption with
an eye to increasing international equity.
• Nations should strive for low rather than high
birth and death rates.
• Reducing death rates should be a priority goal,
aiming for an average life expectancy in all
1
"United Nations, Report of the UN World Population Conference,
1974.
1
"Adapted from a summary by Piotrow, World Plan of Action.
 POPULATION POLICIES / 795

countries of 62 by 1985 and 74 by 2000, and an the UN's Second Development Decade strategy,
infant mortality rate below 120 by 2000. reviewed every five years, and appropriately
All nations should ensure the rights of parents "to modified.
determine in a free, informed and responsible
Unfortunately, a sense of urgency about reducing
manner the number and spacing of their chil-
population growth, which had been present in the draft
dren," and provide the information and means for
Plan, was lost in the final version under the pressure of
doing so.
political disagreement. The environmental and resource
Family planning programs should be coordinated
constraints on population growth were essentially left out
with health and other social services, and the poor
of conference discussions and hence omitted from the
in rural and urban areas should receive special
Plan of Action.140 Also, the value of family planning
attention.
programs tended to be downgraded in favor of an
Efforts should be made to reduce LDC birth rates
overwhelming emphasis on "development" as the way to
from an average of 38 in 1974 to 30 per 1000 by
reduce birth rates.
1985.
The conference may not have blazed any radically new
Nations are encouraged to set their own birth rate
trails in its recommendations, but it still cannot be
goals for 1985 and to implement policies to reach
accused of taking a strictly narrow view of the population
them.
problem. Its neglect of environmental and resource
Nations should make special efforts to assist
aspects and the political problems that will accrue to
families as the basic social unit.
those limitations is deplorable, but social and economic
Equality of opportunity for women in education,
aspects were fully explored. Probably the conference's
employment and social and political spheres
greatest value was to expose participants (many of whom
should be ensured.
did hold narrow views or were uninformed about some of
Undesired migration, especially to cities, should
the issues) to the information and viewpoints of others.
be discouraged, principally by concentrating de-
And the mere existence of a world conference helped
velopment in rural areas and small towns, but
draw world attention to the population issue and empha-
without restricting people's rights to move within
sized that nations have a responsibility to manage their
their nation. populations. Before the conference most national gov-
International agreements are needed to protect
ernments still seemed to believe that population prob-
rights and welfare of migrant workers between lems were neither their concern nor within their ability to
countries and to decrease the "brain drain."
control.
Demographic information should be collected,
The final Plan of Action was adopted by consensus of
including censuses, in all countries. the 136 member nations (with reservations by the
More research is needed on the relation of
Vatican). Whether the resolutions and recommendations
population to various institutions and to social
will be taken with the seriousness the problem warrants
and economic trends and policies; on improving
remains to be seen. For many countries it will not be
health; on better contraceptive technologies; on
easy, given the overwhelming problems their govern-
the relation of health, nutrition, and reproduc-
ments face. But on the answer hangs the future of
tion; and on ways to improve delivery of social
humanity.
services (including family planning). It was repeatedly emphasized at Bucharest that popu-
Education programs in population should be lation control is no panacea for solving the problems of
strengthened. development or social and economic justice. This is
Population assistance from international, govern- perfectly true, of course; but unless the runaway human
mental, and private agencies should be increased.
WO
The Plan of Action should be coordinated with W. P. Mauldin et al., A report on Bucharest.
796 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT

population is brought under control—and soon—the
result will be catastrophe. What kind of catastrophe
cannot be predicted, but numerous candidates have been
discussed in this book: ecological collapses of various
kinds, large-scale crop failures due to ecological stress or
changes in climate and leading to mass famine; severe
resource shortages, which could lead either to crop
failures or to social problems or both; epidemic diseases;
wars over diminishing resources; perhaps even thermo-
nuclear war. The list of possibilities is long, and over-
population enhances the probability that any one of them
will occur. Population control may be no panacea, but
without it there is no way to win.

Recommended for Further Reading

Blake, Judith. 1971. Reproductive motivation and population policy. BioScience, vol. 21,
no. 5, pp. 215-220. An analysis of what sorts of policies might lower U.S. birth rate.
Berelson, Bernard. 1974. An evaluation of the effects of population control programs.
Studies in Family Planning, vol. 5, no. 1. An important contribution to the
controversy by a distinguished demographer active in the family planning field.
Chen, Pi-Chao. 1973. China's population program at the grass-roots level. Studies in
Family Planning, vol. 4, no. 8, pp. 219-227. Also published in Population
perspective: 1973, Brown, Holdren, Sweezy, and West, eds. Excellent summary'.
Davis, Kingsley. 1973. Zero population growth: The goal and the means. Daedalus, vol.
102, no. 4, pp. 15-30. Useful critique of population policies, actual and proposed,
especially of the United States.
Katchadourian, H. A., and D. T. Lunde. 1975. Fundamentals of human sexuality. 2nd ed.
Holt, New York. A superb text for sex education; useful for birth control information
also.
Kocher, James E. 1973. Rural development, income distribution and fertility decline.
Population Council Occasional Papers. An important work on the connection
between grass-roots development and fertility.
Population Reference Bureau, Inc. 1975. Family size and the black American. Population
Bulletin vol. 30, no. 4. A study of black reproductive behavior and attitudes in
the U.S.
—. 1976. World population grotvth and response 1965-1975: A decade of global action.
A compendium on recent demographic trends and the evolution of population
policies around the world.
Revelle, Roger. 1971. Rapid population growth: Consequences and policy implications.
Report of a study committee, National Academy of Sciences. Johns Hopkins Press,
Baltimore. Contains a number of interesting papers on social and economic effects of
population growth, but weak on environmental and resource aspects.
Teitelbaum, Michael S. 1974. Population and development: Is a consensus possible?
Foreign Affairs, July, pp. 742-760. An excellent discussion of the myriad viewpoints
on population control.
ECOSCIENCE:
POPULATION,
RESOURCES,
ENVIRONMENT

PAUL R. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

ANNE H. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

JOHN P. HOLDREN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

a
W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANY
San Francisco
The ecological constraints on population and
technological growth will inevitably lead to social
and economic systems different from the ones in
which we live today.
In order to survive, mankind will have to develop
what might be called a steady state.
The steady state formula is so different from the
philosophy of endless quantitative growth, which
has so far governed Western civilization, that it
may cause widespread public alarm. <—
-Rene Dubos, 1969

Mistrust of technology is an attitude that ought

to be taken seriously. It has positive value in
avoiding grave disasters.
-Roberto Vacca, 1974 CHAPTER 14
Changing
American Institutions

Changing individual attitudes on population size in
general and family size in particular is only part of the
problem facing humanity today. This chapter and the
next examine the need for institutional changes to meet
the population-resource-environment crisis. Here we
focus primarily on the institutions of the most influential
country in the world. It is the United States that in the
past few decades has been the leader in humanity's
reckless exploitation of Earth; it was also in the United
States that the resistance to that exploitation first became
well organized. It seems unlikely to us that disaster can
be averted without dramatic changes in the structure of
many American institutions—changes that could support
and consolidate gains in such areas as family size,
resource conservation and environmental awareness that
have already been made on the basis of transformed
individual attitudes.
Many of the institutional problems discussed here also
have relevance to other nations, especially other DCs that
since World War II have emulated the United States in
many respects. Readers in other countries, therefore, may
find some of this text directly relevant, even though the
focus is on the United States In Chapter 15 we expand
nnr outlook to examine international institutions. All
these institutions must be altered—and soon—or they
and society as we know it will not survive. Whether
significant changes in attitudes can occur fast enough to
affect humanity's destiny is an open question. In our
discussion we have held to one overriding principle:
today's problems cannot be solved by destroying the

805
806 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
existing institutions; there is neither the time nor the
leadership to dismantle them completely and replace
them with others. Today's institutions must be bent and
reshaped but not destroyed.
No one is more acutely aware than we are of the
difficulties and hazards of trying to criticize and com-
ment constructively on such broad areas as religion,
education, economics, legal and political systems, and the
psychology of individuals and societies. We believe,
however, that in order for people to translate into
effective and constructive political action what is now
known about the roots of the crisis, new, far-reaching and
positive programs must be undertaken immediately.
In this chapter and the next, we therefore depart from
the realm of relatively hard data in the physical, biologi-
cal, and social sciences to embark on an exploration of the
many other areas of human endeavor that are critically
important to a solution of our problems.1 In doing so we
are making the assumption that many reforms are
essential. The dangers of making the opposite assump-
tion are beautifully set forth in the following quotation
from biologist Garrett Hardin's article, "The Tragedy of
the Commons":
It is one of the peculiarities of the warfare between
reform and the status quo that it is thoughtlessly
governed by a double standard. Whenever a reform
measure is proposed it is often defeated when its
opponents triumphantly discover a flaw in it. As
Kingsley Davis has pointed out, worshippers of the
status quo sometimes imply that no reform is possible
without unanimous agreement, an implication con-
trary to historical fact. As nearly as I can make out,
automatic rejection of proposed reforms is based on
one of two unconscious assumptions: (i) that the status
quo is perfect; or (ii) that the choice we face is between
reform and no action; if the proposed reform is
imperfect, we presumably should take no action at all,
while we wait for a perfect proposal.
But we can never do nothing. That which we have
done for thousands of years is also action. It also
produces evils. Once we are aware that the status quo is
action, we can then compare its discoverable advan-
'Many of these topics are treated in greater depth in Dennis C. Pirages
and Paul R. Ehrlich, Ark IL.Social response to environmental imperatives;
its footnotes and bibliographies provide further access to the peninent
literature, especially in political science.
tages and disadvantages with the predicted advantages
and disadvantages of the proposed reform, discounting
as best we can for our lack of experience. On the basis
of such a comparison, we can make a rational decision
which will not involve the unworkable assumption
that only perfect systems are tolerable.
RELIGION
Religion, broadly defined, would include all the belief
systems that allow Homo sapiens to achieve a sense of
transcendence of self and a sense of the possession of a
right and proper place in the universe and a right and
proper way of life. In short, everyone wants to feel
important and in tune with a right-ordered world. The
attempt to achieve a sense of well-being in these terms is
so pervasive among human cultures that it may be
counted as a necessity of human life. With religion so
broadly defined, political parties, labor unions, nation
states, academic disciplines, and the organized structure
of the environment-ecology movement would have to be
counted among our religious institutions. Certainly, t
representatives of all those groups have struggled to
protect and propagate their views as assiduously (and
sometimes as fiercely) in our time as Genghis Khan, the
Christian Crusaders, or the Protestant Christian mis-
sionaries did in theirs. In this discussion, however, we
limit our attention to those groups customarily called the
world's j^reat religions, the traditions of belief and
practice belonging to members of the Tudeo-Christian.
Moslem, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions.
Religion must always be viewed in its two parts: the
firsthand more readily evident element being the formal
structure of authority and administration that in our
Western tradition is called "the church;" and the second,
more elusive, and in the long run more important
element, the system of attitudes called, in the Western.
manner, "the faith." In our treatment of the two parts, we
concentrate upon the relationship between organised
religion and population control because that^ is the area
where contemporary social needs and imperatives have
most clearly come into conflict with cherished traditional
values usually promulgated and supported by religions.
Moreover, humane population control calls for the

integration of contraceptive techniques into culturally
accepted sexual practices, and sexual practice is the area
of human activity that is typically most extensively
regulated by taboo. Thus, the acceptance or rejection of
birth control and various methods of carrying it out have
been important issues in organized Western religion for
several decades.
Our treatment of religious attitudes also focuses upon
perceptions of the environment, because how an indi-
vidual perceives and treats the world is determined by his
or her overall view of his or her place in that world. The
Christian concept of life in this world, as voiced by Saint
Paul, that "here we have no abiding city," for example,
conceivably could help explain why some people show
rather little concern for the long-term future of the global
environment or for the well-being of future generations.
Most of our attention is on the Western. Juden-..
Christian religious tradition because it is primarily
within that tradition that the population-resource-
environment crisis has been engendered.
Organized Religious Groups
and Population Control
Within the theological community in the Western
world, there has recently been a heartening revolution in
thought and action on such varied social concerns as the
quality of life in urban areas, civil rights for minority
groups, and the war in Vietnam. Since the late 1960s,
environmental deterioration and the population explo-
sion have become important concerns. Protestant, Cath-
olic, and Jewish clergy have come more and more to the_
forefront of public activities in these areas, often at
considerable personal sacrifice and risk.
Conspicuous among clergy who have risked their
careers have_been Catholic theologians who opposed the
official pronatalist position of the Vatican. For example,
Father John JA. O'Briem a distinguished professor of
theology at Notre Dame University in Indiana, edited the
excellent book Family planning in an exploding popula-
tion in 1968, He also was a leader in criticizing Pope Paul
VI's 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which reiterated
the church's condemnation of contraceptives. Com-
menting on the encyclical, Father O'Brien wrote, "Since
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 807
the decision is bound to be reversed by his [Pope Paul's]
successor, it would be far more honorable, proper and
just for the Pope to rescind it himself."2 Ivan Illich, who_
renounced his priesthood after a controversy over hirtb-
cpmrol in Puerto Rico., wrote that the encyclical "lacks
courage, is in bad taste, and takes the initiative awayjrom^
Rome in the attempt to lead modern man in Christian
humanism."3 Thousands of others, from cardinals to lay
people, have also spoken out. Since its publication, the
encyclical has caused immense anguish among Catholics,
millions of whom have followed their consciences and
used contraceptives, often after a period of intense
soul-searching.4 Indeed, clergyman sociologist Father
Andrew Greeley attributes the recent substantial erosion
in religious practices and church support among Ameri-
can Catholics almost entirely to Humanae Vitae.5
Adamant opposition to birth control by the Roman
Catholic Church and other conservative religious groups
for many years helped delay the reversal in developed
countries (including the United States) of laws restricting
access to contraceptives and the extension of family-
planning assistance to LDCs. Support of outdated dogma
among Catholic spokespeople still sometimes hinders
effective attacks on the population problem in Catholic
countries and in international agencies that support
family-planning programs. Thus, as late as 1969, elderly
Catholic economist Colin Clark claimed on a television
program that India would, in a decade, be the most
powerful country in the world because of its growing
population! He also wrote, "Population growth, however
strange and unwelcome some of its consequences may
appear at the time, must be regarded, I think, as one of
the instruments of Divine Providence, which we should
welcome, not oppose."6
By the mid-1970s, however, the influence of such
persons was on the wane—so much so that a reaffirma-
tion by Pope Paul of his anti-popuiation-coptrol dngrna,
at the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome was greeted
by almost universal ridicule^ Within the church, Pope
2
ReaJcr's Digest, January 1969.
'Celebration of awareness.
4
F. X. Murphy and J. F. Erhart, Catholic perspectives on population
issues. Population Bulletin, vol. 30 (1975), no. 6.
^Catholic schools in a declining church, Sheed & Ward, Mission,
Kans., 1976.
6
Z,os Angeles Times, November 9, 1969.
808 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
Paul's influence seems likely to decline as older members
of the hierarchy are replaced by administrators more in
touch with humanity and modern times. Growing
numbers of priests and other clerics in the lower ranks of
the hierarchy no longer condemn the use of contracep-
tives—some even condone abortion under some circum-
stances, although the hierarchy is, if anything, even more
rigidly opposed to that. A great many Catholic laymen
are ahead of the Church in changing their attitudes; by
the mid-1970s more than 80 percent of Catholics in the
United States approved of the use of contraceptives.7
The new look in attitudes is typified by those of
Catholic' hinlfigisr Tnhn H Thomas of Stanford Univer- .
siry, who in 1968 wrote to San Francisco's Archbishop
Joseph T. McGucken:
The Church must affirm that the birth rate most soon
be brought in line with the death rate—i.e., a growth
rate of zero. This is the responsibility of all people
regardless of race or religion. The Church most
recognize and state that all means of birth control are
licit . . . (it) must put its concern for people, their
welfare, and their happiness above its concern for
doctrine, dogma, and canon law . . . It is time that
the Church stop being like a reluctant little child,
always needing to be dragged into the present.
John Thomas was also a prime mover in promoting the
Scientists' statement against the birth-control encyclical,
which within five weeks in 1968 was signed by more than
2600 scientists.8 He was joined by two other Catholic
biologists, Dennis R. Parnell (California State Univer-
sity at Hayward) and Brother Lawrence Corey (St.
Mary's College, Moraga, California) in mailing the
statement with their endorsement to the approximately
150 Roman Catholic bishops in the United States.
Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that physician
John Rock, who played a leading role in developing the
contraceptive pill, is a Catholic. He also participated in
the theological debate on the morality of birth control
until the encyclical was issued, effectively squelching the
debate.
Except for the Roman Catholic church, all major
Western religious groups had by 1970 officially sanc-
tioned "artificial" contraception, although some contin-
7
Greeley, Catholic schools.
s 9
J. J. W. Baker. Three modes of protest action.
ued to oppose liberal abortion policies. Religious leaders
of various faiths in the United States have helped
overcome ancient cultural taboos related to reproduction
by emphasizing the quality of human life rather than its
quantity. Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish theologians,
for example, have been active in promoting sex education
in schools, and many Protestant and Jewish theologians
and lay people have supported liberal abortion policies.
Bishop C. Kilmer Myers, of the Episcopal diocese of
California, for example, in the late 1960s established the
Ad Hoc Metropolitan Planning Group, which has been
deeply concerned with the problems of population and
environment. The Social Ministry of the Lutheran
Church in America promulgated a highly enlightened
policy on population in the 1960s; Methodist groups
were in the forefront of abortion-law reform in the
United States. Thus, there is good reason to hope that
organized Western religious groups may become a pow-
erful force in working toward population control world-
wide, especially as the human suffering caused by
overpopulation becomes more widely recognized.
i. Nop-Wcst£r3|i religions] The possible rolf*s of pon-
Western r lisdous institutions in the population crisis are
rnorejrohlemaTiral th^n rhar nf Western religion;. For
example, withimlslamic religTon)there is no organized,
deep involvement in social problems, although Islamic
scholars have tried to find religious justification for
practicing birth control in some countries h; d-pressed _
by exploding populations. There are^t least 500 milliony
• Moslem^ in the world (roughly half the number of
ristians), more than 95 percent of whom live in Africa
and Asia, with high concentrations in such problem
regions as Indonesia and the Indian subcontinent. Paki-
stan, by establishing a government-supported family-
planning program as early as 1960, made it clear that
Moslem countries can attempt to solve their population
problems without religious conflict.9 Several other Mos-
lem countries have since established family-planning
programs and/or changed their laws to permit broader
access to birth control. In the foreseeable future, how-
ever, it^ seems unlikely that Islam itself will bfrf)rr"' a-
positive force for population control.
M. Viorst, Population control: Pakistan tries a major new experiment.

Much the same can be said of Buddhism, which—if
those who also subscribe to Shinto, Taoism, and Confu-
cianism are also counted as Buddhists—has perhaps 700
million adherents, most of them in Asia. The barriers to
population control in Asia and the potential for accepting
it both seem to be connected much more with social
conditions than with religion. Therefore, it seems un-
likely that changes in the religion would have any
substantial effect on establishment of population policy,
although religious support for small families might
encourage acceptance of family planning.
Similarly, it is hard to picture Hinduism, as an entity,
becoming a force in population control. More than 99
percent of the 450 million or so Hindus live in Asia,
mostly in India, Like Buddhism, it is a rather heterogen-
eous, relatively noninstitutionalized religion. There is
still considerable opposition to population control
among Hindus, perhaps based more on medical beliefs,
local superstitutions, and a sense of fatalism than on
anything inherent in the religious structure.
For Westerners who favor population control, nnp n£
the best courses of action seems to lie in working with the
already establisheoyreligious groupspto change people's^,
attitudes toward population growth.. In the rest of the
world, the relative fragmentation of religious groups,
their lack of hierarchic organization, and their psychoso-
cial traditions would seem to limit their capacity to
influence population control efforts.
Religious Attitudes and the Environment
In the United States, the unorthodox but constructive
and quasi-religious attitudes first expressed widely in the
1960s by members of the whole-Earth, hippie movement
may well help save the environment. The initial phase of
the hippie movement was characterized by a groping and
testing that produced, among other things, the dangerous
macrobiotic diet and the horror of the Manson family.
Aside from such excesses, however, the hippies borrowed
many religious ideas from the East, particularly Zen
Buddhism, combined them with the collectivist, passivist
element from Christian tradition, and attempted to forge
a code based on close personal relationships, spiritual
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 809
values, a reverence for life, group self-reliance, and an
abhorrence of violence. By the mid-1970s this code had
become well established in a more mature and praise-
worthy form that might be called the independence
movement. People in that movement are attempting to
find simpler, more ecologically sound modes of exis-
tence, and to reduce their dependence on fancy, nones-
sential, and vulnerable technological gimmickry. Their
unofficial publications such as Mother Earth News and
CoEvolution Quarterly abound with suggestions for
disconnecting oneself from the "effluent society." If any
one idea binds members of the movement together, it is
the belief—essentially religious—that human beings
must cooperate with nature and not attempt to subdue
nature with brute force.
Many people in our society are unhappy with these
attitudes, which go against long-cherished and reli-
giously sanctioned political and economic beliefs. They
feel that turning away from a consumer orientation has
grave implications for the future of the economy. Others
see in the independence movement the vanguard of a new
social revolution that could lead to a very different, far
better society.
C*Lynn White, Jr., professor emeritus of history at t h e ]
CUni versify of California, Los Angeles^nd past president
of the American Historical Association^ has suggested
that the basic cause of Western society's destructive
jttitude toward nature lies in the Judeo-Christian tradi-
tion. He pointed out, for instance, that before the
Christian era, people believed trees, springs. hills2
streams, and other objects of nature had guardian spirits.
Those spirits had to be approached and placated before__
one could safely invade their territories: fBy destroying
fgagan animisrnyhristianitv made it possible to exploit
nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural .
objects."1,0 Christianity fostered the basic ideas of
"progress'^nd of time as something linear, nonseparat- __
ing, and absolute, flowing from a fixed point in the past to.
an end point in the future. Such ideas were foreign to the
Greeks and Romans, who had a cyclical
and did not envision the world as having a beginning.
Although a modern physicist's concept of time might be
somewhat closer to that of the Greeks than to that of the
'"The historical roots of our ecological crisis.
810 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
Christians, the Christian view is nevertheless the preva-
lent one in the Western world: God designed and started
the universe for the benefit of mankind; the world is our .
oyster;, made for human society to dominate and exploit..
Western science and technology thns can he seen to have
their historical roots in the Christian dogma of human-_
ity's separation from and rightful mastery over nature^
Europeans held and developed those attitudes long
before thp opportunity ^n exploit the Western hemi-
sphere arrived.JThe frontier or cowboy economy that has
characterized the United States seems to be a natural _
extension of that Christian world view/Therefore, White
claimed, it may be in vain that so many look to science
and technology to solve our present ecological crisis:
Both our present science and our present technology
are so tinctured with orthodox Christian arrogance
toward nature that no solution for our ecologic crises
can be expected from them alone. Since the roots of
our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must
also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or
not.
A number of anthropologists and others have taken,
issue with White's thesis, pointing out that environmen-
tal abuse is by no means unique to Western culture, and
that animism had disappeared, at least in western
Europe, before Christianity was introduced. As examples
they cite evidence of ancient and prehistoric environ-
mental destruction, such as the human-induced extinc-
tion of Pleistocene mammals and the destruction of the
fertility of the Near East by early agricultural activity, as
well as the behavior of non-Western cultures today.
Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan of the University of Minne-
sota observed that there is often a large gap between
attitudes toward the environment expressed in a religion
or philosophy and the actual practices of the people who
profess those attitudes." While Chinese religions, for
example, stressed the view that man was a part of nature
(rather than lord of it) and should live in harmony with it,
the Chinese did not always live by that belief. Concern
for the environment, especially preserving forests and
protecting soils, were expressed throughout Chinese
history, but Yi-Fu Tuan suggests that this may often
'Our treatment of the environment in ideal and actuality.
have been in response to destruction that had already
taken place. The fact that China was a complex civiliza-
tion complete with a bureaucracy and a large population
doubtless militated against fulfillment of those ideals. By
the twentieth century, China's once-plentiful forests had
been nearly destroyed to build cities and clear land for
agriculture. All that remained in most areas were small
patches preserved around temples. Ironically, the present
government, which explicitly rejects the traditional reli-
gions, has attempted to restore the forests on a large
scale.12
Lewis W. Moncrief of North Carolina State Univer-
sityj^who might be described as an environmental
anthropologist, feels that the religious tradition of the
West is only one of several factors that have contributed,,
to the environmental crisis.13 Along with some other
anthropologists, he has suggested that an urge to improve
one's status in society is probably a universal human
characteristic and that expressing this urge through
material acquisitiveness and consumption of resources is.
if not universal, at least common to a great variety of
cultures. Perhaps what is unique about Western culture
in this regard is the degree of its success.
Moncrief postulated several factors that he felt were
just as influential as the Judeo-Christian outlook in
determining European and North American behavior
toward the environment. The first were the development
of democracy and the Industrial Revolution, which
together provided individual control over resources (if
only a family farm) for a far greater proportion of the
population than before and simultaneously provided the
means to exploit those resources more efficiently. The
existence of a vast frontier fostered the belief in North
America that resources were infinite; all of our wasteful
habits derive from that. Moncrief thinks it is no accident
that the first conservation movement appeared just as the
frontier was closing; Americans suddenly and for the
first time began to realize that their resources were, after
all, finite.
In 1893, moved by a remark from the 1890 census
J3
For an overview of present Chinese attitudes, see L. A. Orleans ana
R. P. Suttmeier, the mass ethic and environmental quality, Science, vol.
170, pp. 1173-1176 (December 11, 1970); a related account of Japanese
attitudes toward the environment is Masao Watanabe, The conception of
nature in Japanese culture.
13
The cultural basis for our environmental crisis.

about the disappearance of public land and the con-
sequent disappearance of the frontier, Frederick Jackson
Turner, then at the University of Wisconsin and sub-
sequently at Harvard, observed:
American social development has been continually
beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial
rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion
westward with its new opportunities . . . furnish the
forces dominating American character.14
A generation earlier, E. L. Godkin, editor of the
Nation, had written that the American frontier popula-
tion had "spread itself thinly over a vast area of soil, of
such extraordinary fertility that a very slight amount of
toil expended on it affords returns that might have
satisfied even the dreams of Spanish avarice."15
Traditional North American (and, to some extent,
European) attitudes toward the environment thus are not
exclusively products of our religious heritage, although
that doubtless played an important part. These attitudes
may just spring from ordinary human nature, which in
Western culture was provided with extraordinary social,
political, technical, and physical opportunities, particu-
larly connected with the nineteenth-century American
frontier. Such opportunities were bound to engender
optimism, confidence in the future, and faith in the
abundance of resources and the bounty of nature. That
they also produced habits of wastefulness and profligacy
was not noticed. Past institutions in the United States_
rarely dealt with environmental problems; if they were
recognized at all, they were usually considered to be
someone else's responsibility.
In the twentieth century, as the growing population
became increasingly urban and industrialized, the en-_
vironmental effects multiplied, and the nation was rather
suddenly confronted with a crisis. How today's Ameri-
cans ultimately resolve the environmental crisis will
depend on much more than changes in philosophical
outlook, but such changes unquestionably must precede
or at least accompany whatever measures are taken.
Individual conduct is clearly capable of being modified
and directed by an appropriate social environment—the
'"The significance of the frontier in American history, in The early
writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, ed. f , J. Turner.
"Aristocratic opinions of democracy.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 811
change in reproductive habits in the United States
testifies to that, as does the great increase in environ-
mental consciousness. Unfortunately, the environmental
problem may prove more difficult because it requires
changing more than the altitudes and behavior of indi-
viduals: those of firmly established, powerful institu-
tions—primarily business and governmental Organiza-
tions—must alSQhp i-hangerj
How large a role organized religion may play in
guiding the needed changes in individual attitudes
toward the environment or in influencing the behavior of _
other institutions is still uncertain. Many religious
groups have already shown leadership, including some
already mentioned in connection with population-
related issues. A particularly hopeful sign was the^
concern expressed in January 1976 by the National^
Council of Churches about the ethics of using and _
spreading the technology of nuclear power, and the
discussion promoted by the World Council of Churches^
onjhe nuclcar jssue_an,d_on. the relation of energy policy
to the prospects for adjust and sustainable^ world.16
Ecological Ethics
Many persons believe that an entirely new philosophy
must now be developed—one based on ecological reali-
ties. Such a philosophy—and the ethics based upon
it—would be antihumanist and against Judeo-Christian
tradition in the sense that it would not focus on an
anthropocentric universe.17 Instead, it would focus on
human beings as an integral part of nature, as just one
part of a much more comprehensive system.
This is not really a new perspective. In one sense,
Western philosophy has been a continuous attempt to
establish the position of Homo sapiens in the universe,
and the extreme anthropocentrism of thinkers like Karl
Marx and John Dewey has been strongly attacked by,
among others, Bertrand Russell.18 Russell, for example,
'6See The plutonium economy: A statement of concern, Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, January 1976, pp. 48-49; P. M. Boffey, Plutonium: its
morality questioned by National Council of Churches, Science, vol. 192,
pp. 356-359 (April 23, 1976); Paul Abrecht, ed., Facing up to nuclear
power, Anticipation, no. 21, October 1975, pp. 1-47.
1
'See Frank E. Egler, The way of science: A philosophy of ecology for the
layman; and George S. Sessions, Anthropocentrism and the environmen-
tal crisis. The latter is a good, brief summary with a useful bibliography.
"A history of Western philosophy; die debate is summarized in Sessions,
Anthropocentrism.
812 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
jointed out Marx's .philosophical closeness to classical
Judeo-Christian thought:
His purview is confined to this planet, and, within this
planet, to Man. Since Copernicus, it has been evident
that Man has not the cosmic importance which he
formerly arrogated to himself . . . There goes with
this limitation to terrestrial affairs a readiness to
believe in progress as a universal law . . . Marx
professed himself an atheist, but retained a
optimism which only theism could justify.19
is nnf primarily that
of considering the human pngi'ti™ ir. thp ff^rnnc but
rather of considering the roles played by human beings in
the ecosphere. It takes a view diametrically opposed to_
the position expressed by Aristotle 2300 years ago^'Now,
if Nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain^
the inference must HP that e has made all animals for
the sake of man."20
From the standpoint of ecological ethics., the world is,
thus seen to be not humanity's oyster but a
system that supports us, of which we are a part, and
toward which we have moral responsibilities^ Ethical
theorist Joseph Margolis has written:
But it may well be that the ethical visions of the
future—assuming the earth has a future—will be
discarded as beneath debate if they do not include,
centrally, an account of the ethics of the human use of
the inanimate and non-human world. Such a dis-
cipline . . . might be called moral ecology. . . .21
Whether or not such a philosophy is incorporated into
religious dogma is immaterial. What counts is that
something like it has influenced many Americans and
Europeans already, and may come to be accepted in other
places as well. (In some cultures, of course—some native
American world views and some aspects of Hinduism
come to mind—the idea of humanity as a part of nature
has always predominated.) The sooner an ethic based on
respect for the natural world can be adopted, the better.
The beneficiaries will be not only ourselves but our
children and grandchildren.
"Quoted in Sessions (ibid).
^Politics 1,88.
2
'Joseph Margolis, Values and conduct, p. 212.
The Conservation Movement
The fascination and profound emotions —
religious feelings— aroused in many people by wilder-
ness areas, wildlife, and beautiful natural scenery are not
easily explained to those who do not share them._
Disparate beliefs and attitudes are obvious every time
conservationists find themselves defending aesthetic val-
ues against people who are equally dedicated to "prog-
ress." This divergence of views was elegantly sum-
marized by the brilliant French anthropologist Claude _
Levi-StrausSj who noted that any secies of bug that
people spray with pesticides is "an irreplaceable marvel,
equal to the works of art which we religiously preserve in.
museums."22
For many years now, people in the conservation
movement have fought individually and in groups to halt,
the extinction of animal species and the destruction of the
last vestiges of the primitive areas of Earth. Some of the
campaigns conducted by such organizations as the Sierra
Club, the Audubon Society, the Defenders of Wildlife,
the Wilderness Society, and the Nature Conservancy in
the United States, and by the World Wildlife Fund and
similar organizations in other countries,22" have been
successful. It is becoming clear, however, that in the long_
run the conservation movement as a whole has been
fighting a losing battle.
Perhaps the most obvious reason the battle is being lost
is that conservation is a one-way street: each organism or
place conserved essentially remains in perpetual jeo-
pardy. Each gain is temporary, but every loss is perma-
nent. Species cannot be resurrected; places cannot be
restored to their primitive state. Consequently, even if
the conservationists were evenly matched against the
destroyers, the battle would probably remain a losing
one. But, of course, the battle has been far from even.
Powerful economic interests and government agencies,
pushed by population pressures, have promoted the
development of every possible inch of the United States
by building dams in desert canyons, driving roads
through the remaining wilderness areas, cutting the last
"Discussion of the Special Commission on Internal Pollution, Lon-
don, October 1975.
22a
For an interesting history of the parallel (but quite different) growth
of the conservation movement in the U.K., see Max Nicholson. The
ecological breakthrough.

of the.primeval forests, grilling for oil on the northern)
C slope of Alaska} and so on. It is a tribute to the
conservationists, past and present, that any of our primi-
tive areas remain relatively unspoiled.^ Political and
financial power tend to be arrayed against conservation,
and, as people increase and resources dwindle, the
situation seems bound to deteriorate further. In many
parts of the world the situation is worse than in the
United States; in a few it is better.
There are encouraging signs that a new thrust is_
appearing in the conservation movement. Growing
numbers of people have realized that conservation is a
global problem, that in the long run it is not enough to
such icnistpri trppc^p-c as a grove of redwood
trees. If global pollution causes a rapid climatic change,
the grove cannot long survive. Many conservationists
now recognize that if the growth of the human popula-
tion is not stopped, and the deterioration of the planetary
environment is not arrested, nothing of value will HP
conserved.
This understanding and the growing general public
awareness of the problems of the environment have given
rise to a number of new organizations. Some of them, like
Friends of the Earrh f FOF.1. are more militant offshoots
of older conservation groups. Others, including^ En-
vironmental Action (which grew from the organization
that sponsored the first Earth Day in 1 970) ano* Kcology
Action, are new. Zero Population Growth (ZPG1 is
primarily concerned with the population problem but is
also interested in the environmental consequences of it.
ZPG, one branch of the Sierra Club. Environmental
Action, and FOE have foregone the tax advantages of an
apolitical posture in order to campaign and lobby for
their goals, frequently combining their efforts on issues
of common concern.VThey also cooperate in environ-/
Cmentalist lawsuits! (see "The Legal System," below)
through organizations such as The Environmental Pe-_
fense Fund (EDFJ and the Natural Resources Defense _
Council (NRDC). Such organizations generally diifer
from many of the older conservation groups in being
more oriented to humanity as an endangered species than
to preserving wilderness and wildlife only for their
aesthetic and recreational values^ Sister organizations of
FOE, as well as ZPG, have been established in other
countries.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 813
In Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, the environ-
mental movement has established its own political par-
ties, known in Britain as the Ecology Party, in France as
Ecologie et Survie, in New Zealand as the Values Party,
etc. These parties have succeeded in winning seats in
Britain's Parliament and gaining significant percentages
of the vote in several countries.2211 In March 1977, the
ecology party in France won a nationwide average of 10
percent of the vote in municipal elections. In some towns
in Alsace (where the party originated) they won 60
percent.220
It seems likely that conservationist and environmentaL
organizations will become still more militant and morg
united—especially in their global concerns. While im-
portant local battles must continue to be fought, more
general programs of public education and political action
should become predominant. Obviously, it is no longer
necessary to plead for conservation only on aesthetic or
compassionate grounds, since the preservation of the
diversity of life and the integrity of the ecological
systems of Earth is absolutely essential for the survival
of civilization.
SCIENCE
For many people, science and technology have taken on
the aspect o^a religion) How often one hears statements
beginning, "any society that can send a man to the moon
can. . . ." and ending with some problem—usually
immensely more complex and difficult than space
travel—that science and technology are expected to
solve!23 The population-food imbalance is a common
candidate; others are various types of pollution or other,
ecological problems.
Three things are generally wrong with these state-
ments of faith. First, science and technology have not yet
reached the point relative to those problems that they had
reached relative to the man-on-the-moon project by
22t)
Edward Goldsmith, Ecology—the new political force.
—''Ecologists emerge as a potent force in French election, New York
Times, March 20, 1977.
- JOne book on the human predicament written from this point of view
(but in which the science is often very weak) is John Maddox's The
doomsday syndrome. See the retrospective review written three years later
by John Woodcock. Doomsday revisited.
814 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
1955. The general outlines of a solution are not clear to
all competent scientists in the pertinent disciplines.
Second, and equally important, there is no sign of a
societal commitment to a crash program to solve those
,1 nonspace problems.fThjrd, any solutions to those prob-
lems would spell significant changes in the ways of * jff pf—
millions of people, which the space program did not.
The public, indeed, has developed a touching but
misplaced faith in the ability of science and technology to
pull humanity's chestnuts out of the fire. There is not the
slightest question that with clever and cautious use of
scientific and technological resources, a great deal of
good could be accomplished. But can the required
amount of cleverness and caution be found? Despite
enormous scientific advances during the past thirty years,
it is perfectly clear that the absolute amount of human
misery has increased (because of the enormous growth in
the numbers of poverty-stricken human beings), while
the chances that civilization will persist have decreased.
There has been an abundance of science and technology,
but they have been unbalanced and out of control.
Priorities and Planning
Tt has been estimated that more than 400.000 scientists
and engineers^-about half the technical community of
the world—are working on weapons of war. Each year,
military research and development worldwide cost about
$25 billion, some 4 times what is spent on medicaL
research (and perhaps 1000 times that spent on ecological
research).24 Medicine and public-health measures have
attacked the death rate with vigor but for a long time
ignored the birth rate, in the process threatening human-
ity with unprecedented catastrophe. Physics has pro-
duced nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, a legacy so
weighty on the minus side of the balance that it is
difficult to think of any serious pluses with which to
counter it. Biology has provided weapons for biological
warfare and has seen many millions of dollars poured
into molecular genetics, a field offering little immediate
J4
See Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Why arms
control fails. Of course, the causes of the lack of balance and control are
complex, and we do not have space to discuss them here. For an
introduction to the subject, see Robin Roy, Myths about technological
change, New Scientist, May 6, 1976, pp. 281-282.
improvement in human welfare but possessing great
potential for curing or preventing inborn defects or for
curing cancer, and the like. The greatest contribution of
molecular genetics to human welfare has been the Ames
test (Chapter 10), which, ironically, will help protect
humanity from the "triumphs" of organic chemistry!
Meanwhile, support for environmental studies has been
relatively insignificant, despite repeated warnings by
ecologists for more than a quarter of a century that
human action was threatening to destroy the life-support
systems of the planet. The behavioral sciences -still in
their infancy—have also languished despite their poten-
tial value in helping to solve human problems.
Most of the fireat "advances" in technology, from
DDT and X-rays to automobiles and jet aircraft, have
caused serious problems for humanity. Some of those
problems would have been difficult to anticipate (Box
14-1), but most were foreseen, were warned against, and
could have been avoided or ameliorated with sensible
societal planning. The question now is, how can such
planning be done in the future so as to minimize the
unfortunate consequences of technological "advances"
made thus far—to say nothing of those yet to come?
It is clear from the records of organizations such as the
American Medical Association and the_AECJnow the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC), and from
statements by technological optimists and scientific
politicians that scientists (like other groups in our
population) cannot be relied upon to police themselves.
Some way must be found to foster greater participation
by other segments of society in the major decison-making
processes affecting science and technology. This is
essential, of course, to the survival of society, but it is also
important as protection for scientists themselves. Bur-
dens of guilt, like those borne by the physicists involved
in developing atomic weapons, must be avoided wher-
ever possible, or at least more broadly shared.
We are not in a position here to propose a detailed
structure for controlling science and technology, but we
can suggest some general directions. Gover lent agen-
cies such as the Optional Science Foundation} and
•MM
 BOX 14-1 Risks, Benefits, and New Technologies
As previously indicated, it is common for un-
foreseen difficulties to arise with new technolo-
gies, and the more grandiose the technological
enterprise, the greater the problems seem to be.
Supertankers provide a classic example of the
difficulties encountered in scaling up an already
hazardous technology.* Oil tankers have always
been prone to accident, but the frequency (and
environmental consequences) of accidents have
escalated dramatically as their size has increased.
In 1945 the largest oil tankers were 18,000
deadweight tons (dwt). In the early 1960s the
maximum size had risen to 100,000 dwt and by
the end of that decade had exceeded 300,000 dwt.
In the 1970s planners were looking forward to
constructing tankers in the megaton range.
Both the stresses imposed upon the structures
of the larger ships and their different handling
characteristics were unanticipated. Supertankers
sometimes crack when being loaded and show a
distressing tendency to disintegrate spontane-
ously at sea. The huge cleaning machines used to
wash out their tanks after unloading apparently
create minithunderstorms in the cavernous
spaces. These thunderstorms even produce
lightning, which can detonate oil fumes if the
fume-air mixture is neither too rich nor too lean,
blowing the tank or the ship apart.
The hydrodynamic properties of the huge
ships are such that they must begin "putting on
the brakes" three miles before reaching a full
stop. They are difficult to maneuver and their
captains require special training. Yet because of
their great draft they are often operated in waters
where their keels extend to within two feet of the
charted bottom. This is a dangerous practice
both because hydrodynamic factors reduce man-
euverability in shallow water and because in
some areas the depth of the bottom is contin-
uously changing. These factors, among others,
have led to a rash of collisions and groundings,
often with disastrous results. For example, in
1970 the relatively small supertanker Polycom-
mander ran aground near the Spanish coast and
ignited. Some 16,000 tons of oil burned, gen-
erating a fire storm whose updrafts carried oil
high into the atmosphere and created a black rain
along the coast, doing extensive damage to crops,
livestock, homes, and gardens.
Some of the difficulties with supertankers can
"The discussion of tankers is based on N. Mostert's fascinating
Supership and D_ F- Boesch et al.? Oil spills and the manna
environment, Ballinger. Cambridge, Mass., 1974.
be blamed on dangerous economies undertaken
by the owners. Ships can be designed that are
stronger, more maneuverable, and more resistant
to explosion than most of those now in service.
And personnel on many ships could be much
better trained; many officers running ships reg-
istered under flags of convenience such as Pan-
ama and Liberia are not properly certified, and
some have proven hopelessly incompetent.
There is little doubt, either, that the Intergov-
ernmental Maritime Consultative Organization
(IMCO), a specialized United Nations agency,
has proven ineffective as a regulatory body.
But the familiar saga of profits-before-safety-
or-environment, so characteristic of the energy
industry, is not the whole story. The unantici-
pated characteristics of the big ships threaten
both safety and profits, since the disaster rate has
pushed insurance premiums toward uneconomic
levels. What will happen as these ships age (they
were designed to be written off after ten years)
remains to be seen. The prospects are not
cheering.
One does not, however, have to turn to such
exotica as the supertankers to see the impact of
the unexpected in new technologies. The heavily
regulated safety-oriented aviation industry pro-
vides more than enough examples. A classic was
the series of fatal crashes of De Havilland Comet
jets, caused by unanticipated fatigue failures of
the cabin under pressurization, that lost the
United Kingdom its lead in the race to develop
passenger jet aircraft. The success of the United
States industry (and its fine safety record) was
due in no small degree to the Boeing 707, which,
unlike the Comet, was not a novel design but had
behind it a long operating history with military
jet tankers of similar size and configuration.
Design flaws have often led to one or more
fatal crashes of new transport aircraft. Gas
leaking into heating systems during transfer
from one tank to another destroyed a Douglas
DC-6 with the loss of fifty-two people, and it
nearly destroyed another before the problem was
identified and corrected. Unexpected stresses
transmitted from propeller to wing caused the
disintegration in midair of two Lockheed Electra
propjets.** After correction of the problem, the
aircraft had a fine safety record in civil and
"Stephen Barlay, The search for air safety. The following
material on T-tail jets is largely from this source also. For a
balanced, rcadahlf account of aviation accidents in the prejet
age, see Robert J. Serling, The probable cause.
(Continued)

by ecological systems. On the other hand,
strip mining often permanently destroys
the land, many pollutants are extremely
slow to degrade, and the toxic effects of a
nuclear power plant accident could persist
for half a million years.
5. Uncertainty. How does one evaluate the
unknowns?
We do not pretend to have answers to these
complex questions, of course, especially when
both benefits and risks tend to be hard to
identify, let alone quantify early in the develop-
ment of a technology. We do suggest, however,
that the tendency to develop and deploy tech-
nologies helter-skelter with little or no public
airing—at least until capital and other commit-
ments are such that the economics of an industry
become a part of the issue—should be controlled
somehow. In particular, the benefits should be
(J^ationai Institutes of Health] regularly employ ad hoc
committees and panels of scientists to evaluate research
programs and individual research projects. Universities
also on occasion use such groups to evaluate programs or
departments. Ad hoc panels of nonscientists might be
integrated into these systems, drawn perhaps from citi-
zens serving their sabbaticals (see "Education" below).
Such panels could both advise agencies directly and
report to a paragovernmental central body (perhaps
elected), empowered to intervene whenever it was felt
that the public interest was endangered. This power
would extend to research under any auspices—govern-
ment, military, university, or industry. The central body
could also be charged with continually informing both
government and the public of pertinent trends in science
and technology.
Increased awareness and scrutiny of science and
technology will not, in themselves, suffice. Although
laymen can become very knowledgeable about science
and technology, as the performances of several congress-
men involved in appropriations for scientific and techni-
cal projects have demonstrated, it is often very difficult or
impossible for individuals, whether scientists or not, to
foresee the consequences of certain trends. A second
element is therefore required in the control system: an
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 81 7
most carefully considered, since in certain situa-
tions the maximum benefits may be rather clear
while the maximum risks may be utterly unan-
ticipated. A good example is the use of aerosol
cans with fluorocarbon propellants to spray un-
derarm deodorants. The risks of inhaling a fine
mist of deodorant are not clear (but in our
opinion it is not a good idea to inhale regularly a
fine mist of anything except, perhaps, water), and
the risks to the ozone layer are, at this writing, in
some dispute. But it seems unlikely that the
benefits of this sort of deodorant application (in
comparison to many others) would be considered
by a normal person to be worth any risk to life or
health or to the integrity of Earth's ecological
systems.ft
"The whole question of the evaluation of hazards is considered
in an important book by W. W. Lowrance, Of acceptable risk:
Science and the determination of safety (Kaufmann, Los Altos,
Calif., 1976.)
apparatus—possibly in the form of research institutes—
concerned solely with such assessment and reporting to
the central body suggested above, as well as to the general
public. Perhaps a set percentage of all funds used in
government, university, and industrial research should
be assessed for the support of those organizations, which
should be kept strictly independent of each of those three
interests.
Some of the work that might be done by such institutes
would be an extension of the sort of programs now being
run by systems ecologist fL E. F. Watt's group at the,
University of California at Davis, by systems analysts Jay
W. Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Tp^[innl-_
ogy, and Dennis and Donella Meadows of pan-month —
Watt has forecast the dismal consequences of continuing
various prevailing strategies of resource management and
social policigs. The Meadows, Forrester, and their col-
leagues have shown most convincingly that many of the
various proposed courses of action may have unex-
pected—and often very undesirable—results. The studies
of this group were made familiar to the world by the
publication of Limits to Growth2,5 (see Box 12-2).
In addition to such broad-scope evaluations as those,
"Potomac Associates, Washington, D.C., 1972.
818 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
some research institutes need to be investigating and
reporting on much more detailed questions. For exam-
ple, is medical research being done with adequate
attention to the needs of all segments of the population
and to birth control as well as death control? Are the
benefits and risks of the breeder reactor being studied in
proper depth? What are the possible dangerous con-
sequences of further investigating the properties of a
given virus or biocidal compound?
These questions have been settled largely by the
scientific community in the past, with results that can
most charitably be described as mixed.26 For a long time
the thrust in research was that whatever could be tried
should be tried. Physicists exploded the first atomic
bomb after Germany had been defeated and Japan's
defeat was a certainty, although some of them apparently
thought at the time there was a nonzero chance that the
explosion would destroy all life on Earth.27 It is difficult to
find parallels, outside nuclear weaponry, displaying quite
this degree of willingness to risk total environmental
disaster, but traces of it arguably are present in proposals
to "wait and see" what the consequences of assaulting the
ozone layer withfluorocarbonsor SST fleets will be. -
On the bright side, microbiolo^ists Paul Berg
Stanley Cohen of Stanford and Herbert Boyer of the
University of_ California in mid-1974 called on their
colleagues to bring to a halt research on recombinant
DNA, studies involving transfers of genetic material
from one species to another.28 They recognized that
hybrid microorganisms could cause extraordinarily vir-
ulent infectious disease and that the experimental work
Ccould conceivably lead to the spread of r^sjsTanre
rantibioticsjpr to the escape of bacterial strains carrying
oncogenic (cancer-inducing) viruses. A distinguished
molecular biologist^Robert Sinsheimerjhas written:
~6See, for example, the contrasiing views of F. J. Dyson, The hidden
cost of saying "no!"; and P. R. Ehrlich, The benefits of saying "yes."
J7
N. P. Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer. There is no doubt, in light
of present knowledge of nuclear reactions, that the chance of igniting the
atmosphere with a nuclear bomb and thereby extinguishing ail life on
Earth is truly zero. A completely persuasive case on the point is made by
H. A. Bethe, Ultimate catastrophe? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, June
1976, pp. 36-37. Bethe's further contention, however, that the scientists
on the nuclear bomb project were completely sure of this in 1945, is not
persuasive.
38
P. Berg, et al., Potential biohazards of recombinant DNA molecules.
Could an Escherichia coli strain [a variety of a ubiqui-
tous bacterial resident on the human digestive tract]
carrying all or part of an oncogenic virus become
resistant in the human intestine? Could it thereby
become a possible source of malignancy?yfmild such a_
strain spread throughout a human population? What
would be the consequence if even an insulin-secreting
strain became an intestinal resident? Not to mention
the more malign or just plain stupid scenarios such as
those which depict the insertion of the gene for
botulinus toxin into Escherichia coh">M
In early 1975 an international scientific meeting es-
tablished a set of safety principles under which such
research could be continued. The scientists at the meet-
ing concluded that the more dangerous experiments
should be deferred until special "crippled" strains of
organisms could be developed—that is, strains with a
very low probability of surviving outside the laboratory
(experience has shown that there is no such thing as an
"escape-proof" microbiological laboratory). Some of the
scientists, however, argued against social control of the
experiments, claiming an absolute right to free inquiry.
Since that meeting, various attempts have been made to
draft rules that would permit doing this dangerous
research, and there has been continuing controversy.30
In these cases, scientists themselves have assessed the
risks and then "voted" for all of humanity. With regard
to the atomic bomb, the possible savings in American
(and Japanese) lives by shortening World War II may
have come into the calculus, and perhaps also the thought
that sooner or later someone else would blow up an
A-bomb without knowing for sure that it would not
destroy the planet. But would the people of the planet (to
say nothing of the other living organisms) have voted yes
to taking, say, a one-in-a-million chance on oblivion in
order to speed victory for the United States in World
War II? (That the chances of killing all life on the planet
turned out to be zero is beside the point—the scientists
involved were not sure of that at the time.)
"Troubled dawn for genetic engineering. The article also contains a
good, brief, layperson's introduction to the technology of DNA
manipulation.
30
Sinsheimer, Troubled dawn; Nicholas Wade, Recombinant DNA:
NIH Group Stirs storm by drafting laser rules; Bernard Dixon, Recom-
binant DNA: Rules without enforcement?

Similarly, in the case of recombinant DNA, although
scientists seem to be acting much more responsibly, we
must still ask whether they are the appropriate ones to
make the decision. No laboratory safeguards can g^uaran^.
tee that an accidental escape will never occur. Are the
possible benefits to medicine and agriculture of this
research worth any risk of releasing a serious plague or
cancer-inducing organism? We do not know the answer,
but we think the franchise on the decision should be
extended to include at least representatives of those who
will be taking the risks and (perhaps) receiving the
benefits.
( The Science Court ^
One danger in allowing scientists to decide an issue for
society is that often the specialists in a field disagree
violently on the proper course of action for society tn
take, even though they may have no serious disagreement
on the known salient facts. For example, qualified
scientists have been assembled on both sides of issues.
such as whether to develop the SST, ban the use of
pesticides and aerosols, or develop nuclear power, to
name a few. As Stephen Schneider and Lynne Mesirow
observed regarding the SST battle:
An interesting point here is that most of the bitter
scientific antagonists in the SST debatejwere probably
in far greater agreement on what was known and
unknown scientifically, and on the odds that state-of-
the-art estimates would be correct, than they were over
whether the evidence justified opposition to the planes.
That is, the interpretation of the weight of the
evidence that guided their opposition or support was
based not only on the scientists' technical knowledge
of the issues, but also on their personal philosophies—
on whether or not they wanted the SSTs and on
whether they thought the benefits of the project were
worth the risks of ignoring the worst possibilities. This
is not to suggest that most testimony was deliberately
misleading, but rather that scientists, like most people,
shade to some extent their perception of the merits of
conflicting evidence with the shadow of their personal
philosophy . . . . The issues facing future generations
are too critical to permit the technical components to
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 81 9
be obscured in attacks on the personal philosophies of
experts. . . ."
As they pointed out, some mechanism is needed so the
public and decision-makers can separate the technical
opinions of scientists from their political opinions.
One suggestion for opening up the process of ethical
decision-making in science has been put forward by
physicist Arthur Kantrowitz.32 He proposed that in
science policy disputes (such as those over SSTs and
ozone, DDT and ecosystems, the risks and benefits of
recombinant DNA research) the technical aspects of the
cases be, in essence, tried in a scientific court. The first
step would be to separate the scientific from the moral
and political questions. What might be done with genetic
engineering technology is a disputable scientific ques-
tion, in principle soluble by experiment; what should be
done is a political-moral question not in principle
amenable to experimental solution.
Once the separation had been accomplished, then
advocates of the different scientific points of view would
"try" them before scientific judges. Thus, scientists
convinced that DDT posed a serious threat to ecosystems
could present their case, and the scientific advocates of
the ecosystemic safety of DDT could present theirs. Each
side could cross-examine the other. The judges would be
selected for their neutrality on the issue, but would have
the benefit of scientific training to help them evaluate the
opposing views. The final step would be publication
(within the limits of national security) of the opinions of
the scientific judges.
It is easy for anyone familiar with scientific disputes to
attack these proposals. In some cases the separation of
scientific from moral and political questions is difficult.
Is the question "Are blacks genetically less intelligent
than whites?" scientific or moral? We would claim that
the very posing of the question is a political act about
which a moral judgment can be made—but in theory it is
a question amenable to experimental investigation.
A thornier problem would be selection of judges. In
many cases today, disputes concern the negative direct or
indirect effects of technology on humanity or on the
i!
77iegenesis strategy, pp. 188—189.
2
See? for example. Controlling technology democratically.
820 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
ecosphere. The split within the scientific community on
this is deep and bitter, and finding judges satisfactory to
both technologists and environmentalists (for want of
better terms) might often prove exceedingly difficult.
In spite of the difficulties, we support Kantrowitz's
proposal for the test establishment of an institution for_
making scientific judgments as described above.. The
present methods of making such judgments are so bad
that any promising alternative or modification deserves a
chance. Installation of such a system will, as Kantrowitz
points out, take place only over strong objections. It
would threaten the vested interests of the politicians who
wish to make politically expedient decisions supported
by "facts" provided by their pet science advisers. And
those scientists who have made lucrative careers and
gained much personal power by telling politicians what
they want to hear would not be pleased by the prospec-
tive dilution of their influence.33
Of course, even the most sophisticated scientific
assessment apparatus could not avert all mistakes, but if
it were backed by a growing feeling of social responsi-
bility among scientists, it should be possible to improve
the record greatly. In addition, ways must be found to
increase public participation in technological decision-
making—a need that is being increasingly recognized.34
The remainder of the solution of learning to live with
science and technology is to leave plenty of margin for
error. For safety, we must learn to operate somewhat
below our capability: not to push ourselves and Earth's
ecosystems to the absolute limit, and not to do research in
areas where a single slip can produce catastrophe.
Scientific Societies
Is there any way that scientific societies can improve
the process of technology assessment? Unfortunately,
scientists, like other professionals, have been slow to
approach their social responsibilities corporately. For
instance, the paramount scientific organization
•gar in the
United States is the quasigovernmenta^National
35 Acacft
"Ibid., p. 508.
M
For example, see John P. Holdren, The nuclear controversy and the
limitations of decision-making by experts.
of Sciences (NAS). Being elected to that organiza-
tion is a high honor for a research scientist, and commit-
tees operating under its aegis often perform excellent
studies on topics of broad interest to both scientists and
society as a whole. Unfortunately, however, the NAS
suffers from a number of difficulties that make some of its
work suspect and often ^ive the public an erroneous
impression of its conclusions.35
First of all, the NAS, under its charter, is advisory to .
the government, and as a result its studies are often
funded by government agencies. This has at times led to
results being colored or suppressed. Similarly, the NAS
also accepts funds from industry, another questionable
procedure if results are to be unbiased. Since, however,
the NAS must have funds if studies are to be done, its
choices appear to be limited, and in fairness we might say
that the objectivity of NAS studies has been fairly
respectable, considering the constraints under which it
operates. But, as Ralph Nader has stated, its "prestigious
talents are all too often subverted from working in
pursuit of the public interest."36
Perhaps a more fundamental problem is that, admit-
tance being honorary, the NAS membership is generally
elderly (the median age of its 866 members in 1970 was
62) and therefore likely to contain a rather conservative,
status-quo-oriented sample of the universe of scientists.
Worse yet, many of the most talented scientists among
NAS members remain immersed in their own research,
leaving those with a talent for politics to exercise the
academy's influence, sometimes against the public good.
Although periodically some interest is shown in "re-
formipg" rhp NA S it tp^mc h'flhly unlikely that any real
will HP marip jn ffrst direction. Instead, other
gfj^ptifir nrgam'yqrjons are gaining prominence that have
open memberships, are member-supported, and are
independent of government and big business; and they
are beginning to give science a respected voice on social
issues. Prominent among them is the(Federatioriof)
"For a detailed critique, see P. Boffey. The brain bank of America. This
commentary has been described as harsh by some academy members, but
its fundamental validity seems indisputable to anyone who has observed
the functioning of the NAS for any period.
"Introduction to Boffey, The brain bank, p. xxiii. See also Harold
Green's analysis of NAS president Philip Handler's defense of DDT, The
risk-benefit calculus in safety determination; and Handler's reply, A
rebuttal: The need for a sufficient scientific base for government
regulation.

CArnerican Scientists (FASX which has about 7000 mem-,
bgrs (compared to the NAS 1000), including half of
America's Nobel laureates. The FAS declines, rather
than relies upon, government contracts, which may
explain why its budget is only one five-hundredth as
large as that of the NAS. But its voice is already more
persuasive to many because of its independence.
Outer Space and the Environmental Crisis
Repeatedly, since it has become clear that population
growth was moving humanity into an ever-worsening _
crisis, the suggestion has been made that Han'" ^pif^^
seek relief from the pressures it was generating by
(. migrating away irornTEartfi) That this is an unsatisfactory
long-term solution follows immediately from arithmetic.
Under any scenario of exponential growth at rates close
to those on Earth today, everything in the visible,
universe would have to be converted into human flesh in _
a few thousand years, and a cosmic ball would
soon thereafter be expanding with the speed of light. At a
more mundane level, biologist Garrett Hardin in 1959
published some simple calculations demonstrating the
utter impracticality of launching spaceships from Earth
on a large enough scale to solve human population
problems by interstellar migration.37 Soon thereafter,
physicist John Fremlin pointed out that, at then current,
growth rates, any time humanity wished to "solve" the
population problem by extraterrestrial migration, it
would take only about a half -century to populate Venus,
Mercury, Mars, the moon, and the moons of Jupiter and.
Saturn to rhp same population density as Earth — since
the surface areas of these planets and moons are not 3
times that of Earth, they would reach the Earth popula-
tion density in less than two doubling times.38
Recently a new and rather different approach to
solving human problems in outer space has been pro-
posed, not by science fiction writers but by a respected
professor of physics, Gerard K. O'Neill of Princeton
University. The basic idea is to colonize not planetary
"Interstellar migration and the population problem, Heredity, vol. 50
(1959), pp. 68-70.
J8
How many people can the world support? New Scientist, October 29,
1964.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 821
surfaces but space itself, drawing energy from the sun,
and materials first from the moon and then from the
asteroid belt. O'Neill and his colleagues have done
extensive preliminary calculations and conclude that,
without the development of radically new technologies:
1. We can cojonize space1 and do so without robbing
or harming anyone and without polluting anything.
2. If work is begun soon, nearly all our industrial
activity could be moved away from Earth's fragile
hinspVipre within ]cfjfi than a century from now.
3. The technical imperatives of this kind of migration
int
of people anrMrj^ffl-y " sparg. are likely to
encourage self-sufficiency, small-scale governmen-_
talunits, cultural diversity and a high degree of
independence/
4. The ultimate size limit for the human race on the
newly available frontier is at least 20,000 times its
present value [about 500 years of growth at present
rates].39
The general plans for O'Neill Colonies have been
widely discussed and need not concern us in detail
here.40 An ingenious plan has been devised for propel-
ling materials excavated from the moon's surface to the
assembly sites of the first colonies where the materials
would be processed on the spot. The processing would
take advantage of the abundant solar energy, convenient
heat sink, and zero gravity of space. The colonies would
be both self-replicating and virtually entirely self-
sustaining. Oxygen, for instance, would be recovered
from the lunar soil—although hydrogen to be combined
into water would be one of the few imports from Earth.
The first colony might well be a space manufacturing
facility (SMF) established at Lagrange 5 (L5), a point in
space that follows the Earth and the moon, has zero
gravity, and about which thousands of colonies could
move in quasielliptical orbits.
The first products of the SMF could be huge solar
power plants (Satellite Solar Powered Stations, SSPS)
"O'Neill. The colonization of space.
40
For example, O'Neill, The colonization of space; Colonies in orbit,
AVrc York Times Magazine, January 18, 1976; and The high frontier;
Colonizing space. Time, May 26, 1975; Issac Asimov, Colonizing the
heavens, Saturday Review, June 28,1975; Gwyneth Cravens, The garden
of feasibility, Harpers, August 1975; Graham Chedd, Culonizaiiun ai
Lagrangea, New Scientist, October 24, 1974, pp. 247-249.
822 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
which would beam low-density microwaves to Earth
where they would be received by antenna arrays, con-
verted to electricity, and fed into power lines.41 Sub-
sequently, colonies could be built as space habitats of
what at first seem to be daunting dimensions—for
instance, cylinders of up to 16 miles in length and 4 miles
in diameter, as in O'Neill's earlier plans, or perhaps
spheres of similar volume, which he now thinks supe-
rior.42 The colonies would be shielded from cosmic
radiation, would receive day-length sunlight with a
system of mirrors, and would rotate to produce normal
gravity on their inner surfaces. Within the colony,
O'Neill envisions a very pleasant environment for up to
10,000 people, including large areas of "natural" envi-
ronment with trees, grass, birds, bees, butterflies, and
bodies of water. A wide variety of sports and diversions
would be available, enhanced by the options of pursuing
them at normal gravity on the inner surface of the station
or at zero gravity at the rotational axis. Industry would be
carried on largely at zero gravity, which provides great
benefits;43 agriculture would be assigned to separate
chambers where it could take advantage of an infinite
variety of light regimes, gravities, atmospheres (includ-
ing high CO2), and so on.
The prospect of colonizing space presented by O'Neill
and his associates has had wide appeal, especially to
young people who see it opening a new horizon for
humanity. The possible advantages of the venture are
many and not to be taken lightly. In theory, many of
humanity's most environmentally destructive activities
could be removed from the ecosphere entirely; the
population density of the Earth could be reduced; and a
high quality of life could be provided to all Homo sapiens.
It might even make war obsolete.
What can one say on the negative side about this
seeming panacea? At the moment the physical technol-
ogy exists largely on paper, and cost estimates depend in
part on numbers from the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA)—not necessarily a de-
pendable source.44 There appear to us, however, to be no
more technical barriers inherent in the further develop-
4
'O'Neill, Space colonies and energy supply to the Earth.
"O'Neill, personal communication, February 1, 1976.
"See, for example, Harry C. Gates, Materials processing in space.
"For example, Les Aspin, The space shuttle: Who needs it?
ment of the O'Neill technology than in others in which
society has committed itself to large, open-ended and
highly speculative investments—fusion power technol-
ogy being a prime current example, the atomic bomb one
from the relatively recent past.
On the biological side, things are not so rosy. The
question of atmospheric composition may prove more
vexing than O'Neill imagines, and the problems of
maintaining complex artificial ecosystems within the
capsule—or anywhere—are far from solved. The micro-
organisms necessary for the nitrogen cycle and the
diverse organisms involved in decay food chains would
have to be established, as would a variety of other
microorganisms necessary to the flourishing of some
plants. "Unwanted" microorganisms would inevitably
be included or would evolve from "desirable" ones
purposely introduced. Furthermore, in many cases the
appropriate desirable organisms for introduction are not
even known. Whatever type of system were introduced,
there would almost certainly be serious problems with its
stability. Biologists simply have no idea how to create a
large, stable artificial ecosystem. For a long time it is
likely that the aesthetic senses of space colonists would
have to be satisfied by artificial plants, perhaps supple-
mented with specimen trees and flower beds.
The problems in the agricultural modules might be
easier to solve but are far from trivial. Since, according to
O'Neill, agricultural surface is relatively cheap to con-
struct, it seems likely that early stations should have
perhaps 4 times as much as is required to sustain the
colony, and that it should be rather highly compart-
mented and diverse to minimize the chances for a disaster
to propagate. A great deal of research will have to go into
developing appropriate stable agricultural systems for
space. The challenge is fascinating—especially because
of the variety of climatic regimes possible, the potential
for excluding many pests, and the availability of abun-
dant energy.
We can say, then, that although there appear to be no
absolute physical barriers to the implementation of the
O'Neill program, potentially serious biological barriers
remain to be investigated. What about psychological,
social, and political barriers? The question of whether
Homo sapiens can adapt to the proposed space station
environment seems virtually answered. Six thousand

men live for long periods on a navy supercarrier orders of
magnitude smaller than a proposed space habitat, with-
out women and without numerous amenities of life
envisioned by O'Neill. Many city dwellers pass their
lives in similarly circumscribed areas and in much less
interesting surroundings (travel among stations and
occasionally back to Earth is envisioned). There is little
reason to doubt that most people would adapt to the
strange situation of access to different levels of gravity.
Whether or not society will support the venture is
another matter. Much may depend on whether O'Neill's
calculations45 on the profitability of the solar-power
generating enterprise stand up under closer scrutiny and
limited experiment.
The strongest objections that will be raised against
space colonization are that it cannot help humanity with
the problems of the next crucial decades; that it will
divert attention, funds, and expertise from needed proj-
ects on Earth; and that it is basically just one more
technological circus like nuclear power or the SST. That
space colonies will have no immediate impact is recog-
nized by O'Neill, but he argues that society should look
to medium-range as well as short-range solutions. Di-
version of funds and expertise also do not seem to be
extremely serious objections. There is, for instance, no
sign that capital diverted from, say, a boondoggle like the
B-l bomber would necessarily be put to "good" use.
Equally, it does not follow that money for space colonies
must be diverted from desirable programs. The expertise
needed is superabundant—many trained aerospace engi-
neers, for example, were unable to find appropriate
employment in the mid-1970s.
The possibility of diverting attention from immediate
problems like population control is much more serious
and can only be avoided by assiduous care on the part of
O'Neill and other promoters of the project. Some of
O'Neill's associates have done his cause grave harm by
not realizing this. At every stage people must be re-
minded that, for the potential of space even to be
explored, a functioning society and economy must be
maintained for the next three decades.
Environmentalists, including us, had a strong negative
reaction to O'Neill's proposals when first presented with
"Space colonies and energy supply.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 823
them.46 The proposals smack of a vision of human beings
continually striving to solve problems with more and
bigger technology, always turning away from learning to
live in harmony with nature and each other and forever
dodging the question of What is a human being for? But,
again, O'Neill's vision shares many elements with that of
most environmentalists: a high-quality environment for
all peoples, a relatively less populated Earth on which a
vast diversity of other organisms can thrive in an
unpolluted environment with much wilderness, a wide
range of options for individuals, and perhaps time to
consider those philosophical questions. The price of this
would, of course, be a decision that a substantial portion
of humanity would no longer dwell on Earth.
Environmentalists often accuse politicians of taking
too short-term a view of the human predicament. By
prematurely rejecting the idea of space colonies, they
could be making the same mistake.
MEDICINE
By the 1970s members of the medical profession in the
United States and elsewhere were becoming aware of the
seriousness of the population problem and the role that
medicine has played in creating it, as well as the role that
profession must play if the problem is to be solved. More
and more physicians now realize that medical interven-
tion in lowering death rates must be balanced by
intervention in lowering birth rates. In the United States,
courageous doctors openly defied antique abortion laws
and risked grave financial loss by performing vasec-
tomies before the legal climate became favorable to those
procedures. Interest in the problems of environmental
medicine has been rising also, and medical doctors have
been at the forefront in sounding warnings (often ig-
nored) about the hazards of air pollution, water pollu-
tion, and other environmental threats to public health.
On the debit side, the medical profession as a whole
was tardy in backing even such elementary programs as
the repeal of laws limiting sex education, the distribution
of contraceptive information, and the establishment of
*GSee, for example, Coevolution Quarterly, Spring 1976.
J
824 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
family-planning services for the poor. Furthermore,
medical training has militated against abortion except
under extremely limited circumstances, and the record of
the profession (in contrast to those of some courageous
individual physicians) in the area of abortion reform was
atrocious. For some time after a so-called liberal abortion
law was enacted in California, a substantial portion of the
abortions in that state continued to be performed by a
single group of doctors. Even two years after abortion
was legalized nationwide in 1973, only 17 percent of
public hospitals and a pitifully small number of private
clinics offered abortion services.47 The medical profes-
sion should have taken the lead in abolishing not only the
abortion laws but all of the pseudolegal hospital rituals
attendant to performing abortions.
The history of the medical profession's attitude toward
voluntary sterilization in the past also has generally been
reactionary and moralistic. For example, "quotas" based
on a woman's age and the number of living children she
had were commonly used to determine whether that
woman could obtain voluntary sterilization in many
United States hospitals during the 1960s.48 The doctor
has the responsibility of establishing that a patient fully
understands the consequences of sterilization and any
possible temporary side eifects, and that he or she would
not be physically harmed by the operation. But the
doctor should have no right to make the ultimate decision
whether an adult should be voluntarily sterilized.
The American Medical Association is an extremely
powerful organization and an enormous potential force
for good. But, as in many other areas of social reform,
such as in providing decent health care to all Americans,
the AMA has conspicuously dragged its feet on the
population controversy. Rather than leading the crusade
for population-control measures, particularly those that
pertain to medical practice, the AMA finally went on
record as supporting these policies only after pressure
was applied from outside by the public and from within
by the younger members.
Whether the medical profession in the United States
will become a strong force for population control re-
47
Gutlmacher Institute, Provisional estimates of abortion need and
services in the year following the Supreme Court decision, New York, 1975.
"Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Population, resources, envi-
ronment, 2 ed., W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1972,
chapter 9.
mains to be seen. It has a great potential for helping to
solve the population problem, both at home and through
technical aid to other countries. Many medical profes-
sionals in the United States, for instance, have actively
assisted in training programs for understaffed family-
planning and general public-health services in less
developed countries. Such activities could be expanded
and encouraged within the profession.
In addition, the medical profession can be taken to task
for concentrating far too little effort on "health care" and
far too much on "disease care." Again with outstanding
exceptions among individual physicians, organized
medicine has, for example, failed to take any lead in
questioning the public-health consequences of the large-
scale technologies used in agriculture, power generation,
transportation, and other sectors of modern life. While
medical and biological scientists have wasted billions of
dollars in ill-conceived searches for cancer cures, the
AMA has been largely silent about the environmental
causes of the vast majority of cancers (see Chapter 10). It
is high time that the medical profession as a whole threw
its enormous prestige into the battle against environ-
mental deterioration, particularly those aspects that
threaten public health.
Finally, we must note that the entire pattern of modern
health care has been strongly attacked by that prince of
intellectual iconoclasts, Ivan Illich. Illich claimed that
modern medicine is destroying our health, turning us
into "slaves of a monopolist international medical in-
dustry"—consumers of a product called health.49 As with
Illich's devastating critique of education (see "Educa-
tion"), his opinions deserve careful attention even if they
are extremely heterodox, and even if his suggestions for
change seem impractically individualistic.50
EDUCATION
In the United States and around the world there clearly
has been an almost total failure to prepare people to un-
derstand and make decisions relating to the population-
resource-environment crisis. The universities, which
49
Medical nemesis: The expropriation of health.
'"Other critiques of the medical system include Rene Dubos, The
mirage of health; and Rick Carlson, The end of medicine.

should be leading the way in education, have been too
conservative and too compartmentalized. Unfortunately,
most human problems do not fall neatly into such
academic categories as sociology, history, economics,
demography, psychology, or biology. The solutions to
these problems require the simultaneous application of
the best ideas from many academic disciplines. The
failure to provide a multidisciplinary education partially
explains the optimism of many physical scientists, econ-
omists, technologists, and others relative to the environ-
mental crisis. Their kind of optimism is exemplified by a
statement by physicist Gerald Feinberg, who wrote in
1968, "Most of our immediate problems will be solved in
a relatively short time by the march of technology and the
worldwide spread of those aspects of Western culture
that are responsible for our high living standards.""
Consequences of Overspecialization
There are many examples of such naive optimism
mixed with cultural chauvinism that testify to the failure
of schools to provide a broad appreciation of science and
technology and to place them in a sociopolitical context.
The illusion that the Green Revolution would save
humanity from starvation, common in the early 1970s,
illustrated a faith in science and technology characteristic
of the "well-informed" layman. That faith is all too often
shared by academicians who have acquired little insight
into biology and into what is involved in raising crop
yields or in establishing agricultural development in poor
countries. Ignorance of the environmental consequences
of population expansion leads many social scientists to
underrate the significance of population growth in the
DCs and the immediacy of the environmental threat.
Such narrowness of outlook is not exclusive to any
particular group of scientists. For example, an oceanog-
rapher, ridiculing some of the ecological problems asso-
ciated with agriculture, once told an audience at the
University of California at Berkeley that, with modern
fertilizing techniques, soil only serves to prop plants up.
The president of the United States National Academy of
5
'Quoted in Hhrlich and Ehrlich, Population, reso
p. 357.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 825
Sciences, writing in the journal Science, at various times
has attacked scientists who were trying to have DDT
banned and has downplayed the health effects of air
pollution and the probable overall impact of nuclear war.
Many of the solutions put forth by technological op-
timists are based on ignorance of ecology, demography,
anthropology, sociology, and other nontechnological
fields. Those who see a panacea in nuclear agroindustrial
complexes, for instance, are simultaneously required to
ignore (among other things) economics, the scale of the
food problem, the state of reactor technology, the poten-
tial ecological damage, and an entire spectrum of politi-
cal and social complexities. Those few technologists who
still propose migration (to Australia or to other planets)
as a solution to the population problem, or who would
accommodate surplus people in concrete cities floated on
the sea, simply need remedial work in arithmetic. Even
projects that might be technically feasible can provide no
amelioration of the dilemmas of the near future, because
rate problems guarantee too great a lag-time.
\X7hen highly trained and presumably knowledgeable
people are so uninformed, it is hardly surprising that the
average person has difficulty evaluating the situation.
Not only do most citizens of the United States and other
developed countries lack even a skeleton of the necessary
technical background, but many do not feel confident
enough of their analytic abilities to do even the elemen-
tary "back-of-the-envelope" calculations that might per-
mit them to decide which of two "experts" is correct on a
given question. For instance, exposing as fraudulent the
notion that the Alaskan oil field would be a panacea for
American energy needs would require only dividing U.S.
annual consumption of oil (6 billion bbl~l into known and _
estimated Alaskan reserves (9 billion and 45 billion bbl,
respectively). Unfortunately., few people think nf rriflfcing
such checks for themselves. Those who might, often
would not know where to find the information on
comsumption and reserves—high schools and universi-
ties turn out few students well versed in the use of
libraries.
The fast-aporoachinp problems of the future will-
require a citizenry equipped to make difficult choices and
to_evaluate the qualities of leaders, whether in politics or_
business. Too few graduates of any educational level
(high school to Ph.D.) today have the broad backgrounds
826 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
necessary to make such choices intelligently. Too few
citizens understand the workings of the political and
economic systems well enough in begin making apprn^
priate changes in those systems—such lessons are not
taught in school.
New Priorities for Education
The of the educational system in
States need to be reexamined. and new prioritjpff nppH tn
be set. At present, the system is largely failinp to meet
even the old stated goals. But such an overhaul of the
educational system will require the cooperation of some
elements of society who may see in it a threat to their own
interests— from the small group of the ultra-rich, who
control much of the power in the United States and who
want no changes in the system, to entrenched university
professors whose doctrinaire defense of rigid boundaries
between their separate disciplines is one more obstacle to
solving the world's problems.
One would think that many of the needed educational
reforms could be introduced relatively easily at the
university level. Unfortunately, like all other mature,
institutions, universities ^rp qnitp rreistant to rhnrcp<: '"
their antiquated structures. Nevertheless, the possibility
does exist of loosening the rigid departmental organiza-
tion in order to provide some exchange of information
and ideas among disciplines, even though the rate of
movement is still very slow.ffianford University^ with,
the help of th^Ford Foundation in 1970. developed an.
jJ1TfintiSCiP*'narY ""dergraduate curriculum in (jlumaifr
j" with the express purposes of avoiding the trap_
of disciplinary myopia and of preparing students to .
engage pressing human problems. By 1975 the program
included 350 undergraduate students and was the third
most popular major on campus. In 1973,
v^of California at Berkeley instituted a campuswide inter-
disciplinary graduate program it/Energy and Resources^
which now has tenured facultv^not assigned to anv^
department— a significant break with tradition.
Many other colleges and universities have also insti-
tuted interdisciplinary programs of various sorts, while
courses dealing with the problems of the survival of
civilization are proliferating on lower educational levels
as well. Such reforms, however, must continue to accel-
erate if the educational system is to contribute in any
significant degree to improving civilization's chances.
Without a growing cadre of well-educated people, the
kinds of citizen-participation programs we suggest later
in this chapter will not constitute much of an improve-
ment over the present political system.
The Role of Students
Perhaps the greatest hope for action in our universities
and colleges lies with the students. Although the activism
of the late 1960s has faded, students in the mid-1970s as a
group are still much more socially aware than were the
students of the 1950s and early 1960s. Many seem
determined to change our society for the better and are
actively working for political and social change. In our
opinion and that of many colleagues, the majority of the
most exciting and progressive changes in higher educa-
tion during the 1960s had their roots in student activism.
We hope that those former students, who are now
beginning to take responsible roles in business and the
professions, may in the 1970s and 1980s produce equally
salutary changes in other institutions as well.
To a large extent, recent college graduates and stu-
dents today have more realistic views of the world than
their parents because they do not see it through the
rose-colored glasses that were constructed for earlier
generations by society and its educational system. Those
who matured just before World War II were young
during a time when personal financial insecurity was an
overriding consideration for much of the population.
Since World War II, students have grown up in an era
when, for most, financial security could be taken for
granted, so other social issues could claim their attention.
The period was also one of unprecedented change. The
world was brougnt into students' homes through the
medium of television, and they were forced into a global
outlook by global threats to their personal safety. Many
of these young people are change-oriented and concerned
about other people, and they think about subtle problems
that involve all of humanity. That they show such
concern should not be viewed as anything but a hopeful
sign.

Although the educational system below the college
level is in some ways less resistant to change than colleges
and universities, it is similarly inadequate in preparing
people for the realities of the world crisis. In some of the
better school systems, however, there have been
changes—sometimes at the initiative of students. Ele-
mentary and junior high school students in many areas
have in various ways demonstrated their concern about
environmental deterioration. Many teachers have en-
couraged interest in population growth and the environ-
ment, with or without administrative support. Since
Earth Day 1970, in particular, there has been a wide-
spread effort to introduce environmental concern into
schools at virtually every level. Programs to encourage
environmental and population education in schools have
also been established at the federal level in the Depart-
ment of Health, Education and Welfare.
Sex Education
A lack of adequate sex education is still a serious
problem in the United States and many other countries.
We face both a population problem and a venereal
disease epidemic in the United States, and yet powerful
groups are determined to keep the "facts of life" from our
young people. No subject is more likely to bring out a
mob of angry parents than the thought of introducing the
most innocuous sex-education curriculum into a school,
even if the program is endorsed by educators, psychia-
trists, and clerics of many faiths. Some parents in our
sex-saturated society even claim that a straight-foward
description of sexual intercourse, of the sort that should
be perfectly acceptable reading for any child, is part of a
communist plot to destroy our youth! This is a vicious
cycle, with a minority of ignorant or disturbed parents
fighting to guarantee that their children grow up equally
ignorant or disturbed.
There are, of course, formidable barriers to reasonable
sex education in schools, churches, and in the home. One
is a lack of training for potential teachers, who must have
a thorough understanding of the subject. The second is
the nearly ubiquitous feeling that sex education must be
tied up with moral judgments. In the face of massive
ignorance and our current population crisis, however, it
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 827
is difficult to construct an argument against teaching
about three basic aspects of sex in the schools. First,
children must be thoroughly informed about the anat-
omy of sex organs and the physiology of sex and
reproduction. Second, they must be taught the difference
between "sex" and reproduction and about the methods
of contraception. Third, they should be informed of the
dangers of venereal disease.
These straightforward factual matters are easy. In-
troducing the student to the role sex plays in society, the
attitudes toward it in different religious and social
groups, attitudes toward contraception, illegitimacy,
marriage, divorce, virginity, and sex-as-just-plain-fun
must be handled with great care and by specially trained
teachers. But the cycle of the blind leading the blind, that
of embarrassed and uninformed parents "educating"
their children, must be broken somehow. The experience
of Planned Parenthood and other organizations that help
teenagers with sexual problems (often unwanted preg-
nancies) is that keeping youngsters ignorant does not
prevent early experimentation with sex, as is usually the
intention. On the contrary, informed youngsters seem
much less likely to engage in sexual adventures before
they are emotionally ready and are even less likely to find
themselves incipient parents.
One way in which school systems have successfully
introduced sex-education programs is by giving parents a
preview of the material. The parents are invited to
evaluate the program—in fact, one purpose is to educate
them. Such preparation of the adult population would
seem essential to avoid perpetuating ignorance. A sex-
education program has even been initiated in West
Germany for grandparents, who often care for children
while parents work. Perhaps sex education should be
promoted for all parents of preschool children in the
United States.
In recent years, at least, several frank and competent
books have become available for those interested enough
to educate themselves. For preadolescents, the book
Wliere did I come from? by Peter Mayle is excellent, and
for young women, Our bodies, ourselves by the Boston
Women's Health Book Collective has produced a revo-
lution of understanding. At a more comprehensive and
intellectual level, we can recommend Fundamentals of
human sexuality by psychiatrists Hcrant Katchadourian
828 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
and Donald Lunde, which has enjoyed great success as a
college text and is highly recommended for any adoles-
cent or adult who wants to understand his or her
sexuality.
The Brain Drain
Our educational system is failing to produce not only
those competent to teach sex education, but also the
ecologists, agricultural scientists and technicians, social
scientists, paramedical personnel, and various other
specialists needed to help solve the pressing problems of
the world—especially in the less developed countries.
Indeed, for decades there has been a brain drain. Trained
personnel from the LDCs, especially medical doctors,
are understandably attracted to the United States and
other DCs, where they can earn a good living. Ironically,
this often happens because, despite their great needs for
trained people, LDCs may have no jobs for them. That
many individuals from the LDCs who are educated in
the DCs do not wish to return to their homelands is even
sadder. Although some DCs, notably the Soviet Union,
virtually force a return to the homeland, most do not.
One relatively simple and humane solution would be for
the DCs to establish and help staff more training centers
within the LDCs. This should have the additional ben-
efits of training local people to work on problems of local
significance and of familiarizing visiting faculty mem-
bers from the DCs with those problems.
Changing the Educational Structure
While a great deal can be done to improve the
educational system within the general framework now
recognized, more fundamental changes will probably be
required if large technological societies are to discover
ways to govern themselves satisfactorily while solving or
preventing the social and environmental problems that
now threaten to destroy them. Ivan Illich has suggested
the abolition of formal education and the making of
educational materials and institutions available to all on a
cafeteria basis.32 To those struggling in the present
system, the idea has considerable appeal; but even Illich
j2
Deschooling society.
recognizes the enormous drawbacks inherent in such an
unstructured approach.
We would suggest another strategy, one that expands
on ideas already current in education. First of all, we
think that a major effort should be made to extend
education throughout the life span, rather than attempt-
ing to cram all education into the first fifteen to twenty-
five years. It is becoming widely recognized that maturity
and experience are often a benefit in learning. Students
who have dropped out, worked, and then returned to
school generally do so with renewed vigor and increased
performance. Experience in the real world can lead
students to avoid much wasted effort in the educational
world. A program of encouraging interruption of educa-
tion, perhaps for one or two years during or directly after
high school and another two years after receiving an
undergraduate degree might be a good start. For exam-
ple, a student interested in becoming a physician might
spend two years after high school doing clerical work in a
hospital or doctor's office or serving as an orderly. When
his or her undergraduate education was completed, two
additional years could be spent working with a doctor as
a paramedic. Similarly, individuals going into business,
government, science, bricklaying, plumbing, or what-
have-you should have a chance to try out their chosen
professions and trades at the bottom before completing
their educations.53
The benefits of the program would be many, including
better understanding of the problems faced by associates
(a doctor who has been an orderly should have more
insight into the situation of the orderlies), and fewer cases
of people committing themselves to careers too early,
with too little knowledge of what the commitment
involves, and discovering the error too late to make
another choice. Students who, on completing high
school, were unsure of what their futures should be,
could try out several possibilities.
What about youngsters who have no desire to go
beyond high school or vocational school? Should their
educations end at that point? In the United States, for
instance, nearly 1 adult in 5 reportedly lacks "those skills
and knowledges which are requisite to adult compe-
"For a more detailed discussion of restructuring our educational
system, see Dennis C. Pirages and Paul R. Ehrlich, Ark II: Social response
to environmental imperatives, chapter 6.

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.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 829
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-

doggie, convinced Congress that the SST's disadvantages
outweighed its very questionable advantages, and the
U.S. program was killed in 1971.
In 1975 the debate began anew when rights to land in
the United States were requested for the Anglo-
French SST, Concorde. The issue is still in doubt, but
several things are apparent— the Concorde is extremely
noisy, fuel-inefficient, and probably uneconomical. If it
remains in service, it will be as a monument to govern-
ment stupidity and the momentum of technological
circuses.
Government Planning
The fragmentation of responsibility among govern-
ment agencies in the United States makes a reasonable
response to problems extremely difficult and planning to
avert them virtually impossible. The lack of overall
control of environmental matters and the virtual
sibility of dealing with problems in any coordinated way
are illustrated by the area of urban affairs, aspects of
whirh now crime nnder rhp pirisdirtions of the Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Development, the Depart-
ment of Health, Education and Welfare, as well as the
Departments of Labor, Commerce, Interior, Justice, and
Transportation, to name just the major ones. It is clear
that the executive branch of me federal government
badly needs reorganizing.
Such coordinated planning as takes place in die federal
government is largely confined to the preparation and
review of the annual federal budget. It is fair to say diat
the time horizons considered in this process are typically
short and the emphasis on conventional economic indi-
cators heavy. Resource and environmental matters ac-
cordingly receive less attention than they deserve.1 "a
Some detailed suggestions on reforming the political
structure of the United States to make it more responsive
to the requirements of die population-resource-environ-
ment situation may be found in the bookHr^T/F12 We
'' '"A sense of the planning inputs to and implications of the federal
budgeting process is conveyed in the series of volumes, Setting national
priorities, published annually by the Brookings Institution since 1970.
The 1976 volume, edited by Henry Owen and Charles L. Schultze, takes a
longer-range perspective (10 years) on issues raised by the budget, and
examines the problems of coordinated long-range planning in a govern-
ment of divided powers.
2 5
" PiragcsandEhrlich.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS// 857
,
discuss only one such reform here: die institutionaliza-
tion of government planning.
pie Center for the Study of Dpmnf-raric Institutions^
has an Ongoing prnjprf under the rfirertion nf ^ G
Tugwell, designed to produce a modern constitution for __
the United States. The proposed constitution, now in its
tfairty-diird draft^. deserves wide circulation and study.
One of the features of the Tugwell constitution is a
planning branch of die government, with the mission of •
doing long-range planning. As should be apparent from Ct ft/T''M "
the preceding discussion, without planning we believe
diere is little chance of saving civilization from a down-
ward spiral of deepening social and environmental dis-
ruptions and political conflicts. Human societies have
shown little aptitude for planning so far, but it is a skill
mat must soon be developed. "2a
A private organization, California Tomorrow, spon-
sored a group of planners who produced a document that
might serve as a preliminary model for the kind of
planning that can be done. The California tomorrow plan:
A first sketch presents a skeletal plan for the future of the^
state of California.''3 It describes "California zero," the
California of today, and two alternative futures: Califor-
nia I is a "current-trends-continue" projection; Califor-
nia II is a projection in which various alternative courses
of action are followed.
The plan considers twenty-two major problem areas,
including population growtii and various kinds of en-
vironmental deterioration, and looks at both the causes of
the problems and policies to ameliorate them. California
I is compared with California II, and suggestions for
phasing into the California II projection are given.
The details of the plan need not concern us here, but
the subjects of concern in the plan are roughly those
of this book. What is encouraging is that a private
organization could put together a comprehensive vision
of the future of one of the largest political entities in the
world, proving that intelligent, broad-spectrum planning
can be done.
"J"A series of important books on the tools and prospects for
comprehensive governmental planning appeared in 1976 and 1977 under
the authorship of social scientist and modeler Peter W. House and
colleagues: House, The quest far completeness; House and Williams, The
carrying capacity of a nation; House and McLeod, Large scale models for
poltcv evaluation; House, Trading-off environment, economics, and energy.
''Alfred Heller, ed., The California tomorrow plan.
858 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
The next question is, how can "USA Zero" be started.
toward "USA II"? It may well be necessary to form a
new political party founded on the principles of popula-
tion control, environmental quality, a stabilized econ-
omv, and dedication f<? careful Inng-rangp planning
ajjartv should be national and intf matronal in k
orientation, rather than basing its power on parochial
issues as the current parties do. In 1854 the Republican
party was created de novo, founded on the platform of
opposition to the extension of slavery. It seems probable
that in the 1980s and 1990s the environmental issue will
become even more prominent than the slavery issue was
in the 1850s, and a powerful new ecology party might be
established, as has occurred in several other countries.
It could, indeed, grow out of such political organizations
as Zero Population Growth and Friends of the Earth.
Obviously, such changes as those briefly proposed
above will threaten not only numerous politicians of both
major parties, but many economic institutions and prac-
tices. They are likely to be opposed by vast segments of
the industrial state: by much of the oil and petrochemical
industry, the steel industry, the automobile industry, the
nuclear power industry, the construction industry, and
by some labor unions, land developers, the Army Corps
of Engineers, the USDA, the Nuclear Regulatory Com-
mission, and the chambers of commerce, to name only a
few.
Even a cursory knowledge of the pervasiveness of and
the degree of political control by these interests leads to
the conclusion that the necessary changes in attitudes and
behavior are extremely unlikely to occur among the
individuals and organizations where it would be most
helpful. But what is at stake is survival of a society and a—
way of life_If these are to be preserved in recognizable
form, cooperation of all elements of society, regardless of
personal interests, will be required. Some social scientists
believe such cooperation can be obtained by the system-
atic application of social and political sanctions.U3a We
tend to agree, but doubt that even sanctions will work
unless there is also a common goal—a realistic view of a
desirable and attainable future—that all can strive
toward.
"**L. D. Nelson and ]. A. Honnold, Planning for resource scarcity.
SOME TARGETS FOR EARLY CHANGE
Institutions are shaped by issues, and issues in turn are
shaped and evolve in response to the character of the
institutions that identify and grapple with them. Ac-
cordingly, our discussion of American institutions so far
has been framed in the context of the broad issues in
population and environment that we believe are central
to the human predicament. It is useful now to arlrl tp the
_discussion some rather more specific problem areas—
pnergv policy, transportation and communications. and
land use,—which need early attention, which will test tfae_
ability of institutional change to redirect technology and_
social energies in pursuit of saner ends, and which, in _
being grappled with, may serve to reshape further the
institutions themselves. Along with population policy
and pollution control, which have already received
detailed attention in this and the preceding chapters, we
view these problems as high-priority targets for early
change.
Energy Policy I
Who should make energy policy? _How should it be
carried out? What should be its goals? These are the
principal questions on the policy side of energy, and they
are interdependent. As unfortunately sometimes is for-
gotten, it is fruitless to try to answer the first two
questions without already having some semblance of an
answer for the third.
The United States had an energy policy during the
first two-thirds of the twentieth century, but it was rarely
articulated in public. In any event, the public was not
paying much attention. The policy was the result of the
goals of two groups—a few interested politicians and
their appointees, whose goal was to see that energy was
made available as cheaply as possible to meet whatever
demand might materialize, and the owners and operators
of energy companies (oil companies, coal companies,
energy-equipment manufacturers, electric utilities, and
so on), whose goal was to expand their businesses and
their profits as rapidly as possible. The goals of the two
groups coincided nicely.
That the interests of private enterprise and of public
 TABLE 14-1
Diversification in the Oil Industry
(involvement of oil companies with other fuels)
Rank in Oil Tar
policy coincide is not necessarily a bad thing. As Adam Petroleum company assets Gas shale Coal Uranium sands
Smith expounded the idea in his famous metaphor of the
Standard Oil of 1 X X X X X
invisible hand, this is the way a free-market economy full New Jersey (Exxon)
of entrepreneurs is supposed to work. Unfortunately, the Texaco 2 X X X X —
history of U.S. energy policy is one of the most telling Gulf 3 X X X X X
Mobil 4 X X _ X _
available examples of what can go wrong with this ideal Standard Oil of California 5 X X — —
situation: the consolidation of economic interests into Standard Oil of Indiana 6 X X — X x—
oligopoly and monopoly; the tightening influence of the Shell 7 X X X X x
Atlantic Richfield 8 X X X X X
economic interests over the policy-makers and regula- Phillips Petroleum 9 X X X X
tors, and indeed the infiltration of the latter by the Continental Oil 10 X X —
X X
former; the resulting vigorous pursuit of policies that still Source: N. Medvin, The energy cartel
serve private interests but have long since lost their
relevance to the public interest.
This complicated set of issues has been the focus of computed this way was around 10 percent of the gross
many analyses much more extensive than we can provide national product at pre-embargo (1973) energy prices.
here.114 What follows is a brief overview of some of the The greatest concentration of economic and pnHt
most important topics: the character of the U.S. energy power in the energy industry is found in the large oiL
industry, government activity in energy, and energy companies. Ten of the top twenty companies on Fortune
prices and the poor. International aspects of energy magazine's 1975 list of the largest industrial corporations
policy are considered in Chapter 15. in the United States were oil companies, and the assets of
those ten alone topped $154 billion. Their 1974 sales
U.S. energy industry. The energy industry is an were $116 billion."6 Those companies have become
important sector of the U.S. economy by any measure: large both by vertical integration and by diversification.
according to one tabulation, it accounts for 3 percent of The first term means that a single company is involved in
the total employment, 4 percent of the national income, many stages of processing an energy source—for exam-
and 27 percent of the annual business investment in new ple, exploration, production, refining, marketing. Diver-
plants and equipment.115 A different way of counting, sification refers to involvement of a single company with
which includes taxes and other items missed in the several different resources—for example, oil, coal, ura-
figures just given, is to add up all the money spent on nium, oil shale. (Naturally, diversification can go beyond
energy by consumers. Such a tabulation must include energy resources—some oil companies own movie the-
both direct purchases (gasoline, electricity, natural gas, aters, for example.) A glance at Table 14-1 reveals tfaat_
heating oil) and indirect purchases of energy (for example, the major oil companies are really energy companies, as
the fraction of an airline ticket's price that pays for jet aTl of them are involved with three or more different
fuel, the part of the price of an automobile that pays for resources.
the energy needed to build it, the energy to run the hair As big as the major energy companies are, me concen-
drier at the beauty parlor, and so forth). The total tration of the energy business in the few largest organi-
zations does not quite qualify for the label anticompeti-
"^Especially recommended as introductions to the subject are: David tive under the usual rule of thumb, which is that 70
Freeman et al, A time to choose: The report of the Energy Policy Project of
the Ford Foundation, chapters 5-7, 9-11; J. Steinhart and C. Steinhart, percent of the business be concentrated in the largest
Energy, chapters 13 and 14; N. Medvin, The energy cartel; Resources for eight firms.117 The degree of concentration in various
the Future, U.S. energy policies: An agenda for research.
"'David Freeman et al., A time to choose, p. 142. Included are sectors of the U.S. energy industry is shown in Table
production and processing of coal, oil, and natural gas, gas and electric
utilities, pipeline transport, and wholesale and retail trade. Not included ' "Fortune directory of the 500 largest industrial corporations, For-
are manufacturers of energy-handling equipment, such as electricity tune, vol. 91, no. 5 (May 1975), pp. 210-211.
11
generators and nuclear reactors. 'Freeman et al., A time to choose, p. 231.
TABLE 14-2
Concentration in the United States
Energy Industries (around 1970)
Percentage of total activity
Industry in 8 largest firms
Crude-oil production 50
5y
Petroleum refining
Gasoline sales 52
Interstate natural gas sales 43
Coal production 40
79
Uranium mining and milling
Electric generating equipment 100
Source: David Freeman et al.,A time to choose, p. 231.
14-2. The effective degree of concentration is probably
higher than the figures reflect, however, because of the
large number of joint ventures linking the major compa-
nies in collaborative enterprises. These include jointly
owned or operated oil fields, pipelines, refineries, and a
bewildering variety of other arrangements. Among the
ten or fifteen largest oil companies, almost all of the
possible two-company combinations in joint ventures are
actually in existence.118
The political power of the major energy companies in
practice is reflected in the special treatment by the
government they have gained and largely preserved for
themselves in the forms of the depletion allowance,
foreign tax credits, and other tax dodges.1183 (The
depletion allowance for all but the smallest producers
was at last repealed in 1975.) Between 1962 and 1971 the
five largest U.S. oil companies paid an average of 5.2
percent income tax on their profits, compared to an
average corporate income tax for all industries of about
42 percent. The diiference could be regarded as a raid on
the U.S. Treasury by those five companies in the amount
of about $17 billion.119 (These five companies were all in
the top ten U.S. corporations in profitability in 1976.
Their after-tax profits totalled $6.2 billion.'19a)
It may be argued, of course, that developing and
marketing energy resources is an increasingly compli-
cated and expensive business that only very large and
financially vigorous corporations can handle. Indeed,
this is precisely what the energy companies do argue. Yet
it is not entirely clear what the American people as a
whole gain by leaving those very profitable and also very
1 8
' Sec Medvin, The energy cartel, chapter 5 and Appendix 1.
"'"See, for example, A. ]. Lichtenberg and R. D. Norgaard, Energy
policy' and the taxation of oil and gas income.
"'The figures are from Steinhart and Steinhart, Energy, p, 282.
i isaMiit Moskowitz, The top ten money earners, San Francisco Chrani-
cJe, April 2, 1977, p. 31.
860
crucial activities in the hands of private enterprise.
Increasingly, the same corporations that swear by the
free-market system in some respects have shown them-
selves more than willing to abandon it selectively,
campaigning for all manner of special subsidies, tax
incentives, and privileges, while expecting the govern-
ment to undertake the riskiest and most difficult parts of
the energy enterprise. Thus the federal government finds
itself providing most of the liability insurance for nuclear
reactors, trying (without much success as of 1976) to
persuade private industry to get into the uranium-
enrichment business, underwriting most of the cost of a
demonstration breeder reactor for the utilities, paying to
bring the technology of sulfur control for coal and oil to a
state of development deemed economically viable by the
utilities, and so on.
On the other hand, the idea of letting the government
take over the energy business entirely is not particularly
appetizing. The experiences of other nations where the
energy industry has been nationalized shows that this is
no guarantee against bungling and exploitation, as does
the U.S. experience with government enterprises in other
fields. At the same time, it seems clear that the goals of
the energy companies have become increasingly removed
from the public interest in the 1970s. More energy for its
own sake (or for profit's sake) can no longer serve as the
goal of national energy policy, and it is apparent that
much tighter control over the energy industry by gov-
ernment is the minimum prescription for steering away
from this outmoded view.
Government's role. The response of government to
the growing complexity of energy issues over the past
few decades has been piecemeal and uncoordinated. Each
emerging set of problems, it seems, has led to creation of
a new agency or assignment of responsibility to an
existing one, without regard for the way pieces of the
energy problem interaa with each other. The result is
overlapping jurisdiction in some cases—in which con-
flicts arise among federal, state and local governmental
entities—and no jurisdiction at all in others^ Some of the
principal federal agencies involved in energy are listed in
Box 14-4, along with synopses of their responsibilities
that suggest some of the potential conflicts and ambi-
guities. Operating sometimes in collaboration with,
 , Some Federal Agencies Involved in Energy
Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)
• Consults with other federal agencies on
environmental impacts of their actions
• Receives and evaluates environmental im-
pact statements on energy facilities
Energy Research and Development Administra-
tion (ERDA)
• Develops and demonstrates new sources of
energy supply
• Analyzes and encourages eneigy conser-
vation
• Makes forecasts of energy needs and pro-
poses strategies to meet them
• Operates certain energy facilities (such as
uranium-enrichment plants)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• Devises and enforces standards for air and
water quality, bearing on operation of
power plants and automobiles
Department of Commerce (DOC)
• Devises and implements programs and
standards for industrial energy conser-
vation
Department of Housing and Urban Develop-
ment (HUD)
• Devises and implements standards for en-
ergy conservation in buildings
Department of the Interior (DOT)
• Controls energy development (for example,
sometimes at odds with these agencies is a host of con-
gressional committees, themselves engaged in almost
continuous jockeying with each other for jurisdiction
and influence.
In early 1977 President Carter proposed a sweeping
reorganization of energy-related functions in the Execu-
tive Branch, centered around a new Department of
Energy equal in status to Commerce, Interior, Treasury,
and so on^Upon approval by Congress, the Department
of Energy will replace the Energy Research and Devel-
opment Administration, the Federal Power Commission,
as well as assuming most of the energy-related respon-
sibilities of the Department of Interior, the Department
of Commerce, the Department of Housing and Urban
Development, the Interstate Commerce Commission,
861
oil drilling, coal mining) on federal lands,
including offshore
• Maintains statistics on reserves and pro-
duction of mineral energy resources
• Produces and markets electric power
through four regional administrations
(Bonneville, Alaska, Southwest, Southeast)
Federal Energy Administration (FEA)
• Collects and verifies information about
availability of energy to consumers
• Regulates the mix of products from
refineries
• Allocates energy supplies in times of
shortage
• Makes forecasts and devises strategies
Federal Power Commission (FPC)
• Controls prices and standards of service for
sales of electricity and natural gas across
state lines
• Licenses hydropower facilities on navigable
waterways
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
• Regulates interstate oil and coal-slurry
pipelines
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
• Devises and enforces standards for safety of
nuclear-energy facilities
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
• Regulates management practices of electric
utilities
and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Two new
administrations would bp created wjthin th
ment: the Energy Information Administration n
and distributing information about energy suppljes and
uses, and the Energy Regulatory Commission, covering
economic regulation only. The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency,
and the Council on Environmental Quality would retain
their powers as listed in Box 14-4.
The confusion in Washington /which one may hope
the Carter reorganization will reduce) is compounded, of
course, by the existence of public utilities commissions in
forty-six of the fifty states, with widely varying respon-
sibilities in the energy field. About half of them control
both public and investor-owned utilities (electricity and
862 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
natural gas, plus nonenergy activities); the other half
control only the investor-owned utilities. Most set the
rates charged for electricity and gas, to protect the
consumer from the monopoly that the nature of dis-
tribution systems for gas and electricity makes almost
inevitable. They are also generally responsible for assur-
ing the safety of systems under their jurisdiction, one of
several overlaps with other agencies.
Jjovernment action in the energy field is not only
encumbered by this enormous organizational cnmp|ex-_
ity, but it has often been enfeebled as well by internal
conflicts of interest. These have arisen from the standard
problem of infiltration of regulatory agencies by com-
mitted representatives of the regulated organizations,
and also sometimes from the incorporation of promo-
tional and regulatory functions within the same agencies.
Perhaps the most visible example of the pitfalls of the
latter situation was the Atomic Energy Commission,,
which from its creation in 1946 was empowered both to_
regulate and to promote the peaceful and military^
applications of nuclear energy. Some of the difficulties
that nuclear fission as an energy source faces in the late
1970s can be attributed to mistakes that arose from this
inherent conflict and from the cozy relationship that
evolved between the AEG and its supposed congressional
watchdog, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy,
(JCAE).120
The AEC-JCAE combination for many years was the
most active and visible agency connected with energy in
Washington, and its vigorous promotion of nuclear
fission to the near-exclusion of research on other energy
sources left the United States in the 1970s with far fewer
energy options than it could and should have had. The
AEG was split in late 1974 into the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, on the one hand, and several divisions of
the Energy Research and Development Administration
on the other (see Box 14-4). The JCAE was stripped of its
power in a Congressional committee reorganization in
early 1977.
Energy prices and the poor.. If it is obvious that
energy in the United States has been underpriced,
120
Good critical histories are R. Lewis, The nuclear power rebellion:
Citizens versus the atomic industrial establishment; P. Metzger, The atomic
establishment.
encouraging overexploitation and waste, it is equally
apparent that sharp price increases cause a dispropor-
tionate burden on the poor. The poor spend a larger
fraction of their incomes on direct energy purchases than
do higher-income groups, they are less able to cut back
on energy consumption because a larger part of their
consumption is for essential rather than discretionary
uses, and they are less able to im'est money in insulation
and other improvements that will reduce energy expen-
ditures in the long run. 121
Increases in energy prices are not quite as regressive as
they seem at first glance, however, because total energy
expenditures (for direct purchases plus the "indirect"
energy embodied in other goods and services) increase
almost in direct proportion to income.122 Even so, the
plight of the poor requires that special measures be taken
to reduce the impact of higher energy prices on them.
Such measures should include changing the rate struc-
ture for purchases of electricity and natural gas, so that
small users pay less per unit of energy rather than more
(compared with large users), as is now generally the case.
Subsidies for the purchase of insulation and similar
improvements could easily be paid for out of increased
taxes on the profits of energy companies. It would not be
difficult to design an energy tax and rebate system that
actually served as an income redistribution device favor-
ing the poor while discouraging heavy energy consump-
tion in higher-income groups.
In short, the special problems of the poor must be
taken into account as energy prices rise, and they can be.
Indeed, the nation would have to face up to the problems
of the poor whether energy prices were rising or not. It
would be doubly absurd if the government were to take
the position, having failed to deal adequately with the
problem of poverty directly, that its energy policy must
revolve around holding energy prices low for everyone in
order to deal with poverty indirectly. At the same time,
there is no reason whatever that higher prices for energy,
which are needed to help promote conservation and to
pay for ameliorating energy's environmental damages,
m
According to Freeman et al., chapter 5, poor Americans spent 15
percent of their income on natural gas, electricity, and gasoline in the
early 1970s, compared to 7 percent, 6 percent, and 4 percent for the lower
middle class, upper middle class, and the well-off segments of the
population.
I32
R. Herendeen, Energy and affluence.

must mean higher profits for the energy companies.
Preventing this is a straightforward matter of tax policy.
Directions for a rational energy policy. The main
questions that energy policy must confront can be
summarized: (1) How much energy should be supplied?
(2) With what technologies should it be supplied? (3)
Who should pay the associated costs? At issue under the
first question are the costs and benefits to society of
various levels of energy consumption and various rates of
change in those levels (growth or decline). The second
question—which should be viewed not as a search for the
ideal energy source but as a search for the least undesir-
able mixture of sources—is important regardless of the
answer to the first; a stabilized or even a reduced level of
energy use would not absolve society from making
difficult choices about how best to supply that level.
Similarly, the third question-involving how prices,
taxes, and regulation are employed to distribute the
direct and indirect costs of energy use—is crucial no
matter how the first two questions are answered.
Still, the three questions are far from independent. If
the answer to the question "How much?" is a great deal,
the range of choice under "What technology?" dimin-
ishes; society may have to choose all the options at once,
at great expense. And the greater the costs, the trickier is
the question "Who pays?"
On the question of how much should be supplied^ pur -
view is that the United States is threatened far more bv^
foe-hazards of too much energy, too soon, than by the.
hazards of too little, too late. That the contrary view is so
widely held seems to be the result of two factors: (1) The
economic, environmental, and social costs of today's
level of energy use, and of rapid growth in this level, have
been seriously underestimated by most observers. (2)
The economic and social costs of slower growth have
been just as seriously overestimated. The underpinnings
for these assertions are found in Chapters 8, 10, and
11. i "a T$e reiterate here in capsule form the relevant
conclusions that we draw from that material.122b
122a
A particularly cogent and eloquent formulation of the arguments
for both points was recently published by Amory Lovins, Energy
Strategy: The road not taken.
I22b
These arguments were first published in slightly abbreviated form
in John P. Holdren, Too much energy, too soon, New York Times, Op-Ed
page, July 23, 1975.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 863
Rapid growth in energy use fosters expensive mistakes.
Especially where the existing level of energy use is
already high, rapid growth forces exploitation of high-
cost energy sources as well as low-cost ones, it strains
available supplies of investment capital, and it encour-
ages gambles on inadequately tested technologies. The
pressure of growth favors streamlining of assessment and
licensing processes, further enlarging the probability that
some of the gambles will fail—at great economic, en-
vironmental, or social cost.
Even at slower growth rates, increases in energy use may
do more harm than good. While the productive application
of energy fosters prosperity through the operation of the
economic system, the environmental and social effects of
the same energy flows undermine prosperity by means of
direct damage to health, property, and human values, and
by disrupting "public-service" functions of natural sys-
tems. Clearly, the benefits to well-being obtained
through the economic side of the relationship by means
of increased energy use could in some circumstances be
completely cancelled by the associated damage to well-
being through the environmental side. Not only has this
outcome probably already occurred for some energy
sources in some locations, but under continued growth it
is eventually inevitable overall, irrespective of the energy
sources chosen.
Conservation of energy means doing better, not doing
without. Fortunately, the slowing of energy growth, and
even the eventual reduction of the total level of energy
use, need not mean a life of economic privation for the
public. The essence of conservation is the art of extract-
ing more well-being out of each gallon of fuel and each
kilowatt hour of electricity. Much progress in this
direction can be made through changes that increase
efficiency in industrial processes and electricity genera-
tion, and in energy-consuming devices in homes, com-
merce, and transportation. Of course, some kinds of
energy conservation will require changes in individual
behavior, and critics of conservation are quick to suggest
that this implies a return to primitive existence. In a
society whose members use 5000-pound automobiles for
half-mile round trips to the market to fetch six-packs of
beer, consume the beer in underinsulated buildings that
are overcooled in summer and overheated in winter, and
then throw the aluminum cans away at an energy loss
864 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
equivalent to one-third of a gallon of gasoline per
six-pack, the primitive-existence argument strikes us as
the most offensive kind of nonsense.
Saving a barrel of oil is generally cheaper than produc-
ing a barrel. Slowing the growth of energy consumption
by means of rational conservation measures can actually
save a great deal of money. For, although technological
improvements to increase energy efficiency often require
some additional capital investment over conventional
practice, this investment is usually less than the invest-
ment that would be needed to produce from new sources
(offshore oil, nuclear fission, geothermal development)
an amount of energy equal to that saved. In this sense,
conservation is the cheapest new energy source. The
money saved by conservation, of course, would in
principle be available for some of this country's many
other pressing needs.
Less energy can mean more employment. The energy-
producing industries comprise the most capital-intensive
and least labor-intensive major sector of the U.S. econ-
omy. Accordingly, each dollar of investment capital
taken out of energy production and invested in another
activity, and each dollar saved by an individual by
reduced energy use and spent elsewhere in the economy,
is likely to benefit employment.
We conclude therefore that the high rates of growth of
energy use and electricity generation traditionally an-
ticipated for the period between 1975 and 2000 are
neither desirable nor necessary. They are not desirable
because the economic, environmental, and social costs of
such growth are likely to be severe; they are not necessary
because the application of a modicum of technological
and economic ingenuity can produce continued—indeed,
growing—prosperity without them.
Both in the short term and thereafter, then, the
mainstay of a rational energy policy for this country
should be learning to do more with less. Some efforts at
more efficient use of energy will come about automati-
cally through the impact of higher energy prices. Even
without industry price-gouging, these are inevitable
because of the technical intractability, in various re-
spects, of the energy sources that remain. Price is likely
not to be a sufficient incentive to wring from the
socioeconomic system all the increased efficiency that is
possible and desirable, however, primarily because of
certain differences in perceived interests of industries
and consumers; regulations such as efficiency standards
for appliances, automobiles, and buildings should there-
fore be used to supplement the price mechanism. And
"lifeline" rates and other subsidies to the poor should be
instituted to alleviate the impact of higher prices on those
least able to make energy-saving adjustments.
Knvirnnmentally1 the first step is to clean up the
_ mainstays of the present energy budget, the fo°«j|
Special attention must be given to finding environmen-
tally tolerable ways to exploit the abundant resources of
coal and possibly of oil shale. The environmental and
social risks of fission, including the threat of terrorism
and sabotage, either at the facilities or elsewhere by using
stolen nuclear materials, deserve the most searching
reevaluation before a national commitment is made to
expand reliance on this source. In our own view, the
threat posed by fission power to the fabric of the social
and political system through the spread of radiological
and explosive nuclear weapons— a threat that is a virtu-
ally inevitable concomitant of this energy technology— is
qualitatively different from the risks of other energy
technologies, and indeed a price not worth paying for the
benefits of fission power. But the choice is more a social
and political one than a technical one, and it should be
made not by scientists but by the broader public.
The many forms of solar energy deserve vigorous
investigation to find the ones most benign environment-
ally and most practical technically. Attention should be
focused not merely on centralized electric power stations
but on the myriad possibilities for dispersed applications.
Fusion and geothermal power also deserve further in-
vestigation to learn whether they can meet, in a practical
way and at an affordable price, the conditions of low
environmental impact so essential in any long-term
energy source.
It should be recognized by now that there is value in
diversity in technological systems as well as in biological
ones. Diversity is insurance against uncertainty, and for
insurance one should be prepared to pay something.
Society should not build only the cheapest energy
technologies, nor even only the ones that seem on today's
analysis most benign environmentally. If threats over-

looked or underrated today turn out to be important,
altering a mix of energy technologies will be easier and
less disruptive than abandoning a monoculture. At the
same time, one should not conclude from an exaggerated
preoccupation with diversity that society must develop
all possibilities; the very value of diversity is to secure the
flexibility to say no to those possibilities that clearly are
unsuitable.
Transportation
Fuel burned for transportation in industrial nations
accounts for 15 to 25 percent of all energy used by such
countries. Including the energy used to manufacture and
maintain the transportation systems would raise that
figure to 25 to 40 percent of the total energy use (refer to
Chapter 8 for details). Transportation's contribution to
pollution may be taken at a first approximation to be
proportional to its share of energy use; its impact on
nonfuel resources is also large. Perhaps most important,
transportation systems are major forces in determining
the use of land and shaping the human environment.
What have been the forces that have influenced this
system, and how might they be changed for the better?
The automobile. The introduction of annual auto-
mobile model changes by General Motors in 1923
quickly pushed most competitors out of business, reduc-
ing the number of automobile manufacturers in the
United States from eighty-eight in 1921 to ten in 1935.
Only four of any economic significance remain today. A
few companies therefore have been able to manipulate
both demand and quality in a way that has resulted in a
continual high output of overpowered, overstyled, un-
derengineered, quickly obsolescent, and relatively fragile
automobiles. These characteristics of the automobile,
together with the dominance of this form of personal
mobility over many more sensible alternatives, are re-
sponsible for a remarkable array of demands on resources
and environmental problems. For example, immediate
relief from a major portion of our air-pollution problems
and a substantial reduction in the demand for steel, lead,
glass, rubber, and other materials would result from the
replacement of existing automobiles with small, low-
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 865
horsepower, long-lasting cars designed for recycling.
And, of course, the savings in petroleum would be
spectacular. If the average size of the American cars on
the road in 1970 were reduced to that of European cars,
the gasoline saved would have run the cars of Europe for
that year!
To facilitate a shift to smaller cars, the U.S. govern-
ment might remove tariffs and import restrictions on
automobiles that meet strict exhaust-emission standards,
so that small foreign cars would become even more
attractive to American buyers. Heavy excise taxes on
large Detroit products and reduced taxes on small,
gas-economical ones would help shift buying habits in
the domestic market. Gasoline consumption, exhaust
emissions, and the components of air pollution produced
by the wear of tires on asphalt and from the asbestos of
brake linings would all be reduced by the use of smaller,
lighter cars. Recycling old automobiles and building
longer-lasting ones would reduce both the consumption
and the environmental impact of obtaining resources, as
well as reducing the pollution directly associated with
automobile production. The rewards of such a program
would not be limited to pollution abatement and the
saving of petroleum and other resources. Because small
cars need less room on the highway and in parking lots,
transportation would through that change alone become
pleasanter, safer, and more efficient.
Of course, there would be several adverse conse-
quences of even such a mild program of "automobile
control." Between 10 and 20 percent of the American
population derives its living directly or indirectly from
the automobile: its construction, fueling, servicing, sell-
ing, and the provision of roads and other facilities for it.
Not all of these jobs would be affected by conversion to
smaller, more durable automobiles and to other forms of
transportation, but many would be. In the long run,
workers displaced from auto production could be em-
ployed in ways that would reduce reliance on environ-
mentally destructive technological processes in other
industries.
Unless there were careful planning to ameliorate the
consequences, such a conversion could have extremely
disruptive effects on the national economy. The econ-
omy, however, is demonstrably capable of accommodat-
868 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
systems may make it simpler for the wealthy to live
outside decaying cities; Amtrak makes it less desirable to
live and work in small towns and rural areas. Such
patchwork solutions will not work; the planning of our
national transportation system must be comprehensive
because of the massive social impact of that system.
Stimuli for change. Despite the obviously growing
need for an overhaul of the transport system in the
United States, it seems unlikely it will be changed
significantly for the better until the public becomes
sufficiently fed up with smog, noise, delays, and danger
that it is willing to forego further growth in both the
automobile population and the gross national product.
Emissions from automobiles have been lowered and
certainly will be reduced even further, but until the
public rebels against cars, their numbers will probably
increase rapidly enough to keep the overall smog level
dangerously high and gas consumption rising, as more
and more land disappears under freeways. The problem
is worst in the United States, but a similar trend exists in
other DCs.
(growing energy problems may eventually provide the
needed catalyst for a rebellion against cars. One cheering
sign by the mid-1970s was a dramatic increase in
bicyling, leading even to the designation of bike lanes in
the streets of some municipalities. Whatever can be done
to stimulate a bicycle cult to rival die big-car cult should
be done. If and when a transition can be made to a
nongrowing population and economy, both the need for
business travel and the pressure to build more vehicles
and more goods should be reduced; perhaps then a
rational and comprehensive land, air, and water trans-
port129 system for the nation can be developed.
The kinds of transport problems that now plague the
DCs (the United States in particular) can (and we hope
will) be totally avoided in most LDCs, where there is still
an opportunity to build systems based primarily on a mix
of low-cost mass transit and bicycles.130
1M
In some areas, canals and other inland waterways can be very
efficient in moving freight. See M. G. Miller, The case for water transport.
""See Ivan Illich, Energy and equity; and Allan K. Meier, Becafcs,
bemos, lambros, and productive pandemonium, Technology Review, Jan.
1977, pp. 56-63.
Communications
Unlike most other institutions, the communications
system may have great potential for instituting positive
change in individual attitudes and the direction of
society.131 Television and radio seem to have universal
appeal and with relatively little expenditure could have
virtually universal coverage. If human problems are to be
solved on a worldwide basis, some means of intercom-
munication among the peoples of the world must be
employed. One possibility is for the DCs to supply
LDCs with large numbers of small, transistorized TV
sets for communal viewing in villages. Such sets could
provide the information channels for reaching the largely
rural populations of the less developed world. These
channels could provide both a route for supplying
technical aid and a means of reinforcing the idea that the
people are members of a global community. Such a pro-
ject is already underway in Indonesia,132 and a satellite-
beamed program was used experimentally with great
success in India until the satellite service was terminated
in 1977.132a
Isaac Asimov has described the potentialities of elec-
tronic communications as a "fourth revolution" on a par_
with rtje developments of speech, writing, and print-^
ing.133 Considering the enormous influence of radio and
television in Western countries, their future impact in
largely illiterate societies can hardly fail to be even
greater. But that revolution will not realize its full
potential nrrpl plpqfnnir communications are as wide-
viewing public into the communications network.
Communications satellites. The first small com-
mercial communications satellite station was launched in
1965, with one channel for television and 240 relays for
voice transmissions. A much more sophisticated system,
INTELSAT IV, was initiated in 1971 with the launch-
131
Scientific American, September 1973, was a special issue on commu-
nications that included several articles pertinent to this discussion.
2
" Cynthia Parsons, Indonesia studies best use of TV, Honolulu
Advertiser, March 11, 1975.
1J2a
India, however, planned to continue much of the rural program
using ground stations (Yash Pal, A visitor to the village, Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, January 1977, pp. 55—56).
'"The fourth revolution.

ing of two satellites. By 1975 the INTELSAT IV system
was complete with seven satellites in place, three over the
Atlantic Ocean and two each over the Pacific and Indian
oceans. Eighty-six member nations were being served by
80 Earth stations with 103 antennas in 58 countries.134
The system has permitted a number of countries that
previously had had virtually no contact to communicate
with each other by satellite. An interesting example is
Chile and Argentina; the Andes were once too great a
barrier. INTELSAT transmits data, transoceanic tele-
phone and teletype messages, television broadcasts, and
facsimilies of letters, newspapers, or photographs. Dis-
tributional satellites are also being established to relay
messages within countries as a supplement to the inter-
national INTELSATs. Eventually, the hope is to de-
velop a system for broadcasting directly to each home.
This is not expected to become a reality before the 1980s,
however, and even then many think it will be limited to
the sort of service described above—programs beamed to
schools, community centers, and villages, especially in
LDCs.
The potential for creating a true rglobal village"
through such a communications network should not be
ignored. Even apart from the opportunity to bring
diverse peoples together for exchange of ideas and
information, there is a great opportunity for a general
lowering of hostilities. Familiarity breeds friendship far
more often than contempt.
( Programming and propaganda. There remains, of^
course, the substantial ganger that a worldwide commu-
nications network will not be used for the
humanity or will further erode cultural diversity. If, like
the television system in the United States, it is employed
to promote the ideas and interests of a controlling^,
minority, the world would be better off without it.135 If it
is used to create a global desire for plastic junk and thg
Los Angelization of Earth, it would be a catastrophe.
Concerns over this and related programming problems,
have already been raised at the United Nations. One
"'Information on INTELSAT is from Hughes Aircraft Company,
Intelsat IV case history: vol. 2, The international satellite communications
system: Intelsat IV, Hughes Aircraft Company, El Segundo, Calif.,
December 1974. A more recent source is Burton I. Edelson, Global
satellite communications. Scientific American, February 1977, pp.
58-73.
'"Pirages and Ehrlich, Ark H, pp. 200ff.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 869
delegate, for instance, correctly pointed out that "Films
considered the acme of art in one country [might be]
judged pornographic in another."136 The problems of
supplying channels for information are thus easily solved
in comparison with the problems of determining what
information should flow along those channels and in
what format.
Much programming ought to be informational, even if
presented as entertainment. People in the LDCs need
help in increasing agricultural production and improving
public health, as well as information on the need for
population control and the ways it may be achieved.
Programming should be carefully designed by social
scientists and communications experts thoroughly fa-
miliar with the needs and attitudes of the audiences in
each country or locality. This is particularly important in
the LDCs, where it will be especially difficult because of
the lack of trained people and the radical change in
attitudes that is required. Control of the communications
media obviously should be public, with maximum safe-
guard against abuses and against the problems of "cul-
tural homogenization." The problem of controlling "Big
Brother" will be ever present in all societies.
Educating people in the developed nations to the
problems of population and environment is not too
difficult, assuming time and space can be obtained in the
media. Material can be more straightforward, since in
most DCs there is already rather widespread awareness
of many environmental problems. In the United States a
great step could be taken merely by requiring that both
radio and television assign some of their commercial time
to short public-service "spots" calling attention to the
problems of population, resources, and environment.
This could be justified under the equal-time doctrine that
put the antismoking message sponsored by the American
Heart Association and the American Cancer Society on
TV (see "Advertising" section). The FCC might be
empowered to require that networks donate time for ads
to awaken people to the population-resource-environ-
ment crisis. Such spots, sponsored by voluntary organi-
zations like Planned Parenthood, ZPG, and the Sierra
Club, have been moderately eifective in drawing public
"'Paul Hofmann, Curb on world TV is debated at UN, New York
Times, November 3, 1974.
870 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
attention to the problems. Unfortunately, the advertising
budgets available to these groups are puny compared to
those of General Motors or Exxon. Long documentary
specials, whether prepared by the networks or by educa-
tional stations, seem relatively ineffective in initiating
awareness of a problem, although they are useful in
providing detailed information. For the most part, they
reach only those who are already aware that a particular
problem exists. Most people want to be entertained; they
do not want to hear bad news.
Moving information instead of people. In the
longer term, more ambitious exploitation of the potential-
of communications systems may help to relieve pressure
on energy supplies and other resources,. Specifically, it is
far less costly in terms of energy to move information
than to move people and things. Computer terminals
coupled to television sets (for graphic display and
face-to-face conversations) and to telephone lines (for
data transmission) could eliminate the need for commut-
ing to and from work in many kinds of jobs. Newspapers,
which today are responsible for the consumption of great
quantities of wood pulp, could be displayed a page at a
time, under the control of the reader, on the computer-
television hookup. Scientific and business meetings, each
of which now entails hundreds of thousands of passenger
miles of fuel-gobbling jet travel, could be managed on
closed-circuit television for a tiny fraction of the impact
on resources.
Of course, there are problems to be surmounted before
such schemes can be implemented, not the least of which
is the protection of privacy and confidential communica-
tions. Such difficulties can, in principle, be solved, and
it seems clear that the communication-information-
processing area is one field in which technological
innovation can make important contributions to alleviat-
ing the resource-environment crunch.
Land Use
Land use has become a catch phrase in the contempo-
rary environmental debate, but the term calls forth very
different images and priorities in the minds of different
groups of people. This is so because so many of the
compelling social and environmental issues of the day are
tied rather directly to how the land is used. Urban decay,
the existence of ghettos, lack of access to decent low-cost
housing, and the problem of busing of schoolchildren
can all be viewed as interrelated consequences of pre-
vailing patterns of urban land use. Another aspect of the
pattern is suburbanization and the energy-intensive long
commutes to work that go with it. The loss of prime
agricultural land and recreational open space under
settlements, industrial parks, transportation systems, and
energy facilities is yet another dimension. And certainly
the conflict of development of land versus continued
provision of essential services by natural and lightly
exploited ecosystems (perhaps most strikingly apparent
today in the destruction of estuaries and wetlands) is a
central ingredient of the human predicament in the long
term.
Increasingly, the opinions of thoughtful policy-
makers and observers are converging on the view that the
resolution of the problems just enumerated will require a
degree of comprehensiveness in land-use planning that
exceeds anything contemplated previously in the United
States. (Some other Western countries—the United
Kingdom and Sweden, for example—have been flirting
with comprehensive planning for longer.'37) Here com-
prehensive means integrating systematically society's so-
cial and environmental goals with the pattern of land use
on regional and national scales. It is clear, of course, that
such comprehensive planning, even if successful, is not a
sufficient condition for the solution of social and en-
vironmental problems, but a strong case can be made that
it is a necessary one. In the remainder of this section of
text, we first discuss some goals of land-use planning and
policy and, second, the tools for pursuing those goals and
the obstacles that make the task a difficult one.
CjGoalsTjThe planner's easiest task is setting down
desirable goals (easy, at least as long as one does not
inquire too closely about making them all compatible
with each other). Here is our own partial list.
137
Peter Heimburger, Land policy in Sweden, Ministry of Housing and
Physical Planning, Stockholm, 1976. On this and many other points
raised here, see also the excellent book by William H. Whyte, The last
landscape, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1970.

1. Central cities should be restored to attractiveness
and economic viability. In respect to location, absence of
competing uses, value of existing structures, and poten-
tial for cultural and racial integration, they are much too
valuable to waste.
2. Housing developments should be planned in ways
that integrate low-cost and higher-cost units and
that provide for community open space and resource-
conserving community recreational facilities (instead of
private)—swimming pools, workshops, darkrooms, and
so on.
3. Settlement patterns and transportation systems
should be integrated in ways that minimize commuting
distances and reliance on the private automobile.
4. Construction of settlements should avoid areas
especially prone to flood, fire, landslide, and earthquake.
5. Prime agricultural land should be defended abso-
lutely against encroachment by all other potential uses.
The world food situation and the high environmental
impact of bringing marginal land under cultivation
dictate this highest priority for good land already under
agricultural use.
6. Land areas that have remained in wilderness or
near-wilderness condition until now should be preserved
as such, permitting them to serve aesthetic and ecological
functions inconsistent with exploitation or development.
More intelligent and efficient use of land already being
exploited is preferable to further encroachments on
wilderness.
7. Nonwilderness areas where ecological processes
perform particularly crucial services in support of civili-
zation should be identified, the extent and value of their
services clarified, and the land withdrawn from uses of
lesser value that are incompatible with the continued
provision of the natural services. Filling of wetlands and
estuaries for residential development is an example
where even on present knowledge a complete prohibition
clearly is justified.
Tools and obstacles. On the assumption that the
foregoing or some other set of goals were agreed upon by
policy-makers, the question would remain what tools are
available with which the goals might effectively be
pursued. Among those that have been used or con-
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 871
templated for land-use management in the United States
are: zoning ordinances; preferential tax assessment of
different types of land; government purchases of open
space; selective siting of facilities owned or substantially
supported by government; control of building permits to
establish local growth ceilings, moratoria, or timed
development contingent on meeting specified conditions;
use of the environmental impact statement to force
consideration of adverse impacts and alternatives; and
government-funded urban renewal projects.138
The use of zoning as a tool for land-use planning and
management has suffered from three difficulties. The
ffirs^ is fragmentation among the decision-making en-
tities, rendering comprehensive planning or results
impossible. In California alone, more than 1400 govern-
ment entities are involved in zoning.139 Special-purpose
agencies dealing with housing, air pollution, water
pollution, energy development, and fish and game (to
continue with the California example) separately pursue
interests that should influence zoning decisions, but there
is no general mechanism for exerting such influence and
no effective machinery for coordinating the goals of the
agencies. The result of this partial vacuum is fragmented
control of zoning by local communities, most of which
do so in pursuit of a perceived interest in local growth.140
Afseconcfrdifficulty with the zoning tool is the ques-
tionable constitutionality of zoning ordinances that are
discriminatory in practice? even if not in intent. Keeping
density down by zoning the land remaining in a commu-
nity for single-family dwellings on two-acre lots may
succeed in preserving a status quo that the current
inhabitants cherish, but it excludes low-income people
and thus preserves a residential stratification that is
undesirable for society as a whole. The likelihood that
zoning ordinances having this effect will eventually be
found unconstitutional places in jeopardy other, more
118
A more extensive discussion of these tools than space permits here
can he found in CEQ. Enrinmmental quality-1974. See also Elaine Moss,
ed., Land use controls in the United States.
139
On this and other aspects of land-use planning in California, see the
very useful study by the Planning and Conservation Foundation, The
California land: Planning for people, Kaufmann, Los Altos, Calif., 1975.
u
°The dynamics of this process and the fallacies underlying the belief
that such growth necessarily will be beneficial are examined perceptively
by Harvey L. Molotch, The urban growth machine, in Environment,
William Murdoch, ed., Sinauer, Sunderland, Mass., 1975.
872 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
enlightened uses of the zoning tool, as well perhaps as
other land-use controls.14'
C A third difficultjhvith zoning that also carries over into
the other forms of control is the question of what forms
of regulation really are legally a "taking," requiring
compensation of the landowner. Involved here is the
basic conflict between the rights of a holder of private
property—one of the most cherished American tradi-
tions—and the public's interest in sound and coordinated
management of land.142
Close to zoning in influence on land use is taxation,
although the influence of taxes on use may be inadvertent
more often than it is used as a tool. Certainly one of the
major driving forces behind the development of prime
agricultural land in the United States has been the almost
universal practice of assessing land for taxation on the
basis of the land's most valuable potential use. Unfortu-
nately, agricultural land has lower market value than
developed land. Thus the spread of suburbs has led to
assessment of adjacent agricultural land at the value it
would have if subdivided for residential or commercial
development. This leads of course to taxes that the
agricultural revenues from the land cannot support and
forces the farmer to sell out. In this way, assessment of
the land as a potential subdivision leads inevitably to
realization of the potential. Some states have begun to
experiment with legislation permitting agricultural lands
to escape such discriminatory and crippling taxation.
California's Williamson Act, one of the more widely
publicized examples, has proven too narrow and restric-
tive to be of great value, however, and more comprehen-
sive measures are needed.143
The imposition of ceilings or moratoria on local
growth by a few communities around the United
States—Petaluma and Pleasanton, California, and Mount
Laurel, New Jersey, for example—has attracted much
attention. These decisions have been implemented
through control of building permits, made contingent in
u!
Some recent court decisions are described in CEQ, Environmental
Quality, 1975, pp. 186-187.
i42
An extended discussion of this point is found in Planning and
Conservation Foundation, The California land.
'"Planning and Conservation Foundation, The California land, p. 49.
For a more general discussion, see CEQ, The impact of differential
assessment of farm and open land, Government Printing Office. Washing-
ton, D.C., 1976.
some cases upon achieving in the community some
specified level of adequacy of sewage systems, schools,
water supply, or other factors. Like zoning practices, this
approach has come under sharp legal scrutiny to deter-
mine its constitutionality.144
Possibly as important as all the tools that have been
used by policy-makers to influence patterns of land use
intentionally have been the inadvertent effects of gov-
ernment investments in certain kinds of growth-shaping
facilities. Transportation systems—most notably the
interstate highway system, but also airports, ports,
and mass-transit systems—have been especially influen-
tial. So have water projects, sewage lines, and water-
treatment plants, and centers of government research and
bureaucracies.145 Unless these influences are thoroughly
understood and taken into account deliberately and
comprehensively, other approaches to land-use planning
have little chance to succeed.
All of the foregoing difficulties underline the necessity
for a more coordinated approach to land use in the
United States than any that has been implemented up
until now. Balancing priorities among competing uses is
at the core of the problem, and this can only be done in a
sensible way on a regional (collections of counties or a
state or states) or national level. An example of what
might be accomplished if the political obstacles were
overcome is offered by the remarkable California to-
morrow plan, already discussed.146 The plan describes
how trends now underway in California would lead, if
unchecked, to significant disruptions in the well-being of
the people of the state before the year 2000, and it
describes a more sensible alternative future based upon a
state zoning plan. The goals of the land-use plan are very
similar to those listed above.
Perhaps the most comprehensive approach to planning
that has a reasonable chance of being enacted in the near
future is the California Coastal Plan, produced on the
mandate of a statewide ballot initiative in 1972 and
delivered to the legislature in December 1975. The plan
covers the 1600-kilometer California coastline in a strip
extending inland to the coastal mountains, an average
'"See, for example, CEQ, Environmental quality, 1975, and Molotch.
The urban growth machine.
M5
CEQ, The growth shapers: Land-use impacts of infrastructure invest-
ments. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C.. 1976.
'•"Alfred Heller, ed., The California tomorrow plan.

width of perhaps 8 kilometers. It takes account of the
competing pressures of energy development, residential
use, transportation, recreation, and ecological values, and
offers guidelines and machinery for resolving the con-
flicts in a systematic way.
As with all ambitious undertakings, it is no doubt
possible to find flaws in the California tomorrow plan
and in the much more detailed California Coastal Plan.
The question, however, is not whether they are flawed
but whether they represent a substantial improvement
over the status quo. We believe that they do, and indeed
that they are illustrative of the sort of thoughtful and
systematic approach that must find application around
the country if planning for the rational use of land is to
emerge from the disarray that has characterized land use
in the United States until now.
A QUESTION OF GOALS
It is fitting to close this chapter with some reflections on
the long-range goals of Western society. Can they be, as
English economist Wilfred Beckerman apparently
thinks, economic growth for the next 2500 years?147
Beckerman reasons that since growth has occurred since
"the days of Pericles," there is "no reason to suppose that
it cannot continue for another 2500 years." It turns out
that he is wrong on both counts. Careful studies of
economic conditions in England for the past 600 years or
so, for example, show average growth rates on the order
of 0.5 percent per year—one-tenth of the 5 percent
envisioned by most growthmen for "healthy" economies.
Social scientist Jack Parsons has done some interesting
extrapolations that put long-continued economic growth
in perspective. He extrapolated economic growth in
England backward at the conservative rate of 1 percent
per year. At the time of Pericles (490-424 B.C.), at that
rate the annual income of the average household would
have been 1.5 ten-millionths of a penny. Hence, even
Beckerman's history is bad—growth cannot have gone on
since the time of Pericles at even the "low" rate of 1
percent per annum. Careful historical analysis indicates
14
'Beckerman's views are cited by Jack Parsons in The economic
transition, from which most of our figures on growth, past and future, are
taken.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 873
that fluctuation rather than constant growth has been the
fundamental characteristic of Western culture's eco-
nomic history. The purchasing power of builders' wages
in southern England reached a peak between 1450 and
1500 that was not attained again until the late years of the
nineteenth century.148
Economic boom clearly is not and cannot be a
long-term phenomenon. Until about 1950, economic
growth rates of more than 2 percent per annum were very
unusual. The 4, 5, or even 6 percent growth rates that
economists now seem to regard as the norm are in fact a
phenomenon in which a few countries are exploiting
much more than could conceivably be considered their
fair share of the planet's resources over a time span of a
quarter of a century. Assuming conservatively that
human beings have had a 1-million-year tenure on Earth,
it is clear that human societies have existed in what
Beckerman would undoubtedly consider economic stag-
nation for 99.99 percent of that tenure.
Economic growth—that is, per-capita increases in the
availability of goods and services—throughout recorded
history has been engendered by two sets of circumstances
and/or a combination of them. The first such set is the
development of widescale economic integration, which
allows for the development of more efficient organization
of resources, human and natural. The Hellenistic world,
from Alexander the Great until the birth of Christ, was
an example of such a set.149 So were the uniting of former
British colonies into the United States and, later, the
European Economic Community.
The second and more common set of circumstances
has been one in which some group on the periphery of a
central cultural zone has managed to gain control over
the exploitation of some vast hinterland and then serve as
the broker between that resource-rich frontier and the
high-consuming metropolis. For example, the rich and
attractive Minoan culture on the island of Crete con-
trolled the trade from Egypt and western Asia to the
Greek lands to the north in the middle of the second
millennium B.C. The Hanseatic League of the high
Middle Ages had outposts from London to Novgorod
148
Phelps Brown and J. Hopkins, Seven centuries of the prices of
consumables, compared with builders' wage rates, Ecanomica, NS vol. 23
(1956). November, pp. 296-314.
I49
See Mikhail Rostovtzeff, Social and economic history of the Hellenis-
tic world.
874 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
that plucked herring, furs, lumber, and all manner of
resources from the North Sea and Baltic basins and sold
them to medieval Europeans, while ornamenting the
cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Liibeck with an elegance
and prestige still visible. The Dutch monopoly on the
spice trade in the seventeenth century supported the
artistic flowering that is best known to us in the work of
Rembrandt van Rijn. Finally, the race for empire of
recent centuries, characterized above all by British
majesty and wealth before 1945, sponsored the most
recent expansion, which allowed the citizens of the DCs
to enjoy a now-declining affluence.150
Systems of economic integration are always very
fragile, and the pattern of economic growth based on the
hegemony of exploiters over the resource-rich frontier
seems to carry the seeds of its own destruction. In order
to exploit an area, it is necessary to organize it, either by
organizing the indigenous population or by sending forth
emigrants from the metropolis. What starts out as an
organization for economic exploitation consistently
tends to become an organization for political resistance to
the metropolis and finally a cadre for political and
economic independence. The Ariadne legend in Greek
literature, retold in a sagacious reconstruction of its
historical context by Mary Renault in The King Must
Die, tells a story of the Greeks breaking the economic
hold of the Minoans on their culture. The Iliad was
probably the story of a postdecolonization war fought
over control of the pottery trade, rather than over the
beautiful Helen. The disintegration of the British Em-
pire and the other European overseas empires of the
recent past began even before the empires were fully
formed.
The loss of mastery over an erstwhile dependency does
not necessarily mean that the resources of that area are
lost to the metropolis as a whole. But it usually does mean
comparatively hard times for the previous proprietors of
the resources and a better deal for the new owners.
Minoan culture was completely obscured until its redis-
covery in the early years of this century. The develop-
ment of Baltic powers reduced Hamburg, Bremen, and
Liibeck to places of only local significance as Europe
""For a masterful account of the impact of the West's most recent
resource capture, see Walter Prescott Webb, The great frontier. The
historical discussion in this section owes much to historian D. L.
Bilderback.
moved into the modern period. Casual perusal of current
daily newspapers will illustrate the cost to Britain of
inflexibility in the face of change.
Economic growth since the days of Pericles has been
spastic and dependent rather than inexorable and self-
generating as Beckerman would have it. When a society
has achieved a transient economic integration or gained
control over some neglected bonanza, its economy has
grown. The bonanzas of our planet have pretty well been
found by now, and those remaining are slipping ever
more surely into the hands of proprietors resident in the
lands where they occur—the OPEC nations, for example.
Americans and Europeans will have to settle down to a
lifestyle set against the background of a declining
resource base. While today's technological sophistication
may put us in a better position to ameliorate the effects of
the end of the boom than were, say, the Minoans, it also
gives us the means to destroy civilization in the process of
squabbling over the tail end of the resources. Further-
more, those past booms did not end with the entire planet
overpopulated and severe ecological constraints limiting
what new technologies could be adopted—something
invariably ignored by economic Pollyannas whose "his-
torical perspective" rarely extends beyond the begin-
nings of the most recent boom.151
What are the prospects for the future? Setting aside the
physical and biological constraints that were already
beginning to limit growth by the mid-1970s, could
sustained growth reasonably be expected for the next
2500 years? A simple calculation by Parsons shows
Beckerman's view of the future to be as preposterous as
his view of the past is fallacious. Again Parsons uses a
modest 1 percent per annum growth rate. This gives a
doubling time of 70 years—a lifespan—so that on the
average each person is about twice as well off at death as
at birth. At this rate a person's wages for an hour of work
reach 1 million pounds (about $2 million) an hour in a
little more than 1500 years, and at the end of Becker-
man's 2500 years of growth, "a small child's pocket
money, at say, 0.5 percent of the GNP per capita per
week (one shilling and sixpence a week in 1970) would be
five thousand million pounds."
'"For example, see Glenn Hueckel, A historical approach to future
economic growth. Hueckel's "historical" perspective extends about 200
years, not even to the beginning of the Western boom. Needless to say, the
article shows a characteristically blissful ignorance of ecology.

To emphasize the absurdity of there being 2500 more
years of economic growth in England, Parsons describes
what he calls the "millionaire barrier." At the 1 percent
growth rate, the average person would have the living
standard of a millionaire (income of £100,000 per year)
just before 2400 A.D. At a "normal" growth rate of 5
percent per year, the millionaire barrier would be
reached in 85 years. Parsons then asks the logical
question: once everyone is a millionaire, who will
generate the goods and services that everybody wants to
consume?
Our long-range goal, then, cannot be continued eco-
nomic growth. Indeed, the main justifications for growth
given by economists—that it will generate the economic
power needed to "clean up the environment" and im-
prove the lot of the poor—imply that the consequences of
growth in the future will be precisely the opposite of
what they have been in the past.
We have already described the devastating effects of
economic growth on the environment and the continuing
efforts of growthmanic politicians and industrialists to
destroy it with ever more energy use and ever more
"development." The case for improving the lot of the
poor through growth is equally preposterous. Although
there has been considerable material improvement in the
lot of the poor in industrial nations during the last
century, the gap between poor and rich has not closed
appreciably; indeed, in most countries (including the
United States) it has widened over the past two de-
cades.152 And, since poverty is a relative concept and
there has been a revolution of rising expectations, "in the
minds of persons with low incomes . . . a $4000 in-
come for a family of four might be less tolerable in
today's society than the pittance received by the poor in
sixteenth-century England."153
Furthermore, the gap between rich and poor nations
has grown during the recent period of rapid economic
growth in the DCs. This gap is even greater than that
indicated by national per-capita GNP statistics because
the gap between the rich and the poor within LDCs has
been growing very rapidly in many of those nations
showing the most "development." Thus between 1950
and 1970 the ratio between the average income of the
'"Pirages and Ehriich, Ark II, pp. 270-274.
'"Ibid, p. 272.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 875
richest 20 percent of the Brazilian population and that of
the poorest 20 percent increased from 15/1 to 25/1.154
Similar increases in inequity of income distribution have
occurred alongside economic growth in Mexico, Paki-
stan, the Philippines, and Ghana, to name a few.
What, then, if not growth, should the long-range goals
of society be? Haven't the economists explained that the
opposite of growth is stagnation? The answer, of course,
is that in noncancerous biological systems the opposite of
growth is maturity. What a mature society should be like
ought to be (but is not) a matter of wide discussion, and
we are willing to make some suggestions. It will have a
"dynamic equilibrium economy"155 in which pressures
on nonrenewable resources will be very nearly nonexis-
tent, and, of course, the population will be essentially
stationary. Some mechanism will have been found to
escape from bigness—perhaps through decentralization
of government and industry or political fragmentation or
reduction in population size or some combination of
these.
There seems to be a growing consensus that bigness is
basic to our problems—that Americans may have gone to
the point of social diseconomies of scale as well as
material ones.156 According to some observers, hunting
and gathering societies could be counted as truly affluent
because individuals could fully supply their simple needs
with a few hours of work each day.15? But, perhaps more
important, groups were small enough that each member
of a hunting-and-gathering society was a repository for
virtually all the nongenetic information—the culture—of
that society. Each person knew who he or she was and
where he or she fit in society. Alienation was not a
problem. Work was not an onerous diversion from
pleasure, but a fulfilling part of life itself.
In our conception of a mature society, there would be a
considerably more equitable distribution of wealth and
income than is found in most contemporary societies.
Possibly this would be achieved by some formal mecha-
nism.15S On the other hand, perhaps it could be achieved
154
James P. Grant, Development: The end of trickle down? Foreign
Policy, fall 1973.
155
The term (though not the idea) was invented by Emile Benoit.
'"Pirages and Ehriich, Ark II, p. 59.
157
For example, Marshall Sahlins, Stone age economics.
15s
Such as the national council for the regulation of differential wages
proposed by Wilfred Brown in The earnings conflict, Halsted Press, New
York, 1973.
876 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT

automatically as the society shifted away from the pursuit
of bigness and the maximization of various indices
developed by economists suffering from "physics envy,"
and moved toward maximizing things not amenable to
statistical treatment, such as individual satisfaction and
the quality of life. In a mature society the economic
problem would in essence be solved.
Can a transition to a mature society be achieved in the
United States? The question is obviously open. But we
reiterate that a central question is that of scak. Can
society escape the modern massiveness that threatens
both the human environment and the human psyche
today? It is probably no coincidence that the most
intellectually stimulating book written by an economist
in the 1970s was entitled Small is beautiful.1™
'''Schumacher.

Recommended for Further Reading

BofTey, P. 1975. The brain bank of America. McGraw-Hill, New York. Critique of the
National Academy of Sciences. Slightly too negative, but generally accurate.
Bonjean, Charles M., ed. 1976. Scarcity and society, Social science quarterly, vol. 57, no. 2,
September. This collection of essays by social scientists contains many articles
pertinent to the issues raised in this chapter.
Boulding, Kenneth E. 1966. The economics of the coming Spaceship Earth. In Environ-
mental quality in a growing economy, H. Jarrett, ed. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore.
A superb article about making the transition from a cowboy economy to a spaceman
economy.
Daly, Herman, ed. 1973. Toward a steady-state economy. W. H. Freeman and Company, San
Francisco. A fine collection—see especially Daly's contributions.
Ehrlich, Paul R., and Anne H. Ehrlich. 1974. The end of affluence. Ballantine, New York.
Discusses many facets of the ending of economic growth.
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science, vol. 162 (December 13), pp.
1243-1248. A classic article.
Heilbroner, R. L. 1974. An inquiry into the human prospect. Norton, New York. A
distinguished economist looks at the human predicament, with special emphasis on
political implications. Brief and highly recommended.
Hirsch, Fred. 1976. Social limits to growth. Harvard Press, Cambridge, Mass. Argues that
affluence breeds social dissatisfaction, generating socio-political limits on economic
growth. Note especially the treatment of positional goals. Thought provoking.
Holdren, John P. 1976. The nuclear controversy and the limitations of decision-making by
experts. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March, pp. 20-22. What to do when expert
consensus is impossible.
Illich, Ivan. 1971. Deschooling society, Harper and Row, New York. A provocative book of
interest to all those concerned with the future of the educational system.
ECOSCIENCE:
POPULATION,
RESOURCES,
ENVIRONMENT

PAUL R. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

ANNE H. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

JOHN P. HOLDREN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANY

San Francisco
606 / UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL DISRUPTION
amid pleasant surroundings to life in such a horrible
place. The aesthetic poverty of U.S. cities and suburbs
has reached such a degree that most citizens are aware of
it. Newspapers are replete with stories describing slums,
ghettos, rats, trash, and garbage. This is one of the
reasons why weekends and holidays invariably bring on a
mass exodus from the cities. Unfortunately, frontier
habits of thoughtless littering and defacement seem
likely to reduce attractive rural areas and state and
national parks to similar levels of ugliness.
Studies with young animals and indirect evidence
from young children indicate that the richness of the
sensory environment early in life influences the extent of
later mental development. Sensory stimulation in young
rats resulted in measurably larger brain sizes in adult-
hood than in their sensorily deprived litter-mates, and it
affected their learning and problem-solving abilities as
well. Children who have been exposed to a variety of
sights, sounds, and experiences when they are very young
may learn faster and later on be more likely to develop
attitudes of inquiry and exploration.
Yet cities, once a rich source of varied sensory
experiences, are becoming more monotonous and dismal.
Modern urban development programs flatten blocks at a
time—blocks that once included a mixture of buildings
of different ages and styles—and then replace them with
concrete monoliths that lack aesthetic quality. The
variety of sounds, at least some of which were pleasing to
hear, in smaller towns and on farms, is also coming to be
replaced by an incessant din of traffic and construction.
A zoologist with an interest in environmental psy-
chology, A. E. Parr of the American Museum of Natural
History, has written that city children of a generation or
two ago spent much of their time exploring and partici-
pating in the activities of the city, while today children
are confined to dreary schoolrooms, their homes, and the
local park. Poorer ones may play in the streets, and in this
respect perhaps they are luckier. But many of today's city
children are being deprived of firsthand knowledge about
the city they live in and how the social organizations
within it function, which creates a sort of alienation
from their surroundings. At the same time their sur-
roundings are becoming more and more monotonous and
less attractive. Children's urges toward inquisitiveness,
exploration, and ingenuity (qualities that will be desper-
ately needed in the next generation) may thus be stifled
outside the schools as well as in them.223
Suburbs are often better than the cities in aesthetic
qualities and sensory stimulation, but not invariably so.
Although the environment is usually more natural and
includes trees and gardens, many suburbs tend to reduce
everything to a common denominator. All the houses in a
given area are similar, if not identical, and so are the
gardens, parks, and shopping centers. Each modern
real-estate development is generally inhabited by people
of about the same age, educational level, type of employ-
ment, and economic status. There is not much opporrc-
nity for children to meet people whose points of vie—
differ from their own or those of their parents. Although
the children may be freer to explore in the suburbs than
in the city, there is sometimes even less of interest to find
there. The absence of men most of the time may result m
an even greater alienation of youngsters (and wives a;
well) from the functioning society. Of course, television
may compensate somewhat for the lack of sensory ar.c
social variety in children's lives, but it does not encour-
age inquisitiveness or offer opportunities for exploration.
ingenuity, or direct experience. On the contrary, it may
foster passiveness and a tendency to regard life a? =
spectator sport.
THE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT
Today the population of Homo sapiens is the largest in the
history of the species, it has the highest average density.
and it contains a record number of undernourished and
malnourished people. The population, or rather a small
but important segment of it, is also unprecedented! v
mobile. People are in continual motion around the globe.
and they are able to move from continent to continent in
hours. The potential for a worldwide epidemic (pan-
demic) has never been greater, but people's awareness of
this threat has probably never been smaller. Contrary :c
popular belief, "medical science" has definitely no;
conquered epidemic disease, as recent experience with
22i
A. E. Parr, The five ages of urbanity.

influenza, cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, and Lassa fever
have shown.224
The behavior of viruses is not completely understood,
but it is known that the spontaneous development of
highly lethal strains of human viruses and the invasion of
humanity by extremely dangerous animal viruses are
possible. It is also known that crowding increases the
chances for development of a virus epidemic. Should,
say, an especially virulent strain of flu appear, it is
doubtful that the United States and other developed
countries could produce enough vaccine fast enough to
save most of their populations. Needless to say, the
problem would be even more severe in the LDCs.
Certainly, little effort could be made to save most of
humanity. Consider, for example, the difficulty the
United States had in coping with the mild Asian flu
epidemic of 1968. It was not possible to manufacture
enough vaccine to protect most of the population, and the
influenza death rate in 1968 was more than 4 times as
high as that of 1967. Only 613 deaths were attributed to
flu, but society paid a high price for the disease in extra
medical care and loss of working hours. That the number
of deaths was not higher was due primarily to the
relatively mild character of the virus, rather than to
modern medicine. More recently, the swine flu fiasco of
1976-1977 certainly did not build confidence that public
health machinery will be able to cope competently with
future epidemic threats.
In 1967 an outbreak of a previously unknown disease
occurred among a shipment of vervet monkeys that had
been imported into laboratories in Marburg, Germany,
and in Yugoslavia. This severe, hemorrhagic disease
infected 25 laboratory workers who came into contact
with the monkeys and their tissues. Seven of those people
died. Five secondary infections occurred in individuals
who came into contact with the blood of the original
patients; all of those individuals survived. Humanity was
extremely fortunate that the first infections of Homo
224
L. K. Altman, Hong Kong flu is affecting millions in wide areas
around world, New York Times, January IS, 1970; H. Schwartz,
Influenza: Yes you really had it; and H. Schwartz, Cholera now spreading
to remote regions: Eruption is the most widespread since 1899 pandemic,
New York Times, September 26,1971; B. Dixon, Typhoid bacilli learn a
new trick; J. Lederberg, Yellow fever still is a menace, J. G. Fuller, Fever:
The huntfor a nev) killer virus; T. Monath et al., Lassa virus isolation from
Mastomys natalensis rodents during an epidemic in Sierra Leone.
DIRECT ASSAULTS ON WELL-BEING / 607
sapiens by Marburg virus occurred around laboratories
where the nature of the threat was quickly recognized,
and the disease contained (it was not susceptible to
antibiotics). If it had escapedinto the human population
at large, and if the disease had retained its virulencejasjL-
frnm person to an ppiHprpic resulting in
r>f r,r ^,fr\ frji1i"ns of deaths might
hay£_accurred. Among well-fed laboratory workers with
expert medical care, 7 out of 30 patients died.225 Among
hungry people with little or no medical care, mortality
would be much higher. The infected monkeys passed
dirough London airport in transit to the laboratories. If
the virus had infected airport personnel, it could have
spread around the world before anyone realized what was
happening. In addition, it is hardly reassuring that
infection of laboratory workers with viruses is a rather
common occurrence, and the potential virulence of
possible "escapees" from labs is increasing.226
The highly mechanized society of the United States is
also extremely vulnerable to disruption by such events as
power failures, floods, and snowstorms. What would
happen if the nation were confronted with an epidemic
that kept masses of sick people from work and caused the
uninfected to stay home or flee the cities because of their
fear of infection? This might slow or even stop the spread
of the disease, but hunger, cold (in the winter), and many
other problems would soon develop as the services of
society ceased to operate. Almost total breakdown has
been known to occur in much less complex societies than
the U.S. in the face of the black death— breakdown that
occurred among people far more accustomed to a short
life, hardship, disease, and death than the population of
the Western world today.227 The panic may well be
imagined if Americans were to discover that "modern
medical science" either had no cure for a disease of
epidemic proportions, or had insufficient doses of the
cure for everyone. The disease itself would almost
certainly impede the application of any ameliorating
-'-5R. E. Kissling et al. Agent of disease contracted from green monkeys.
More recent cases contracted in parts of Africa (outside laboratories) have
been reported, including several hundred deaths. (New outbreak of
Marburg disease, New Scientist, October 28, 1976, p. 199.)
226
For example, R. P. Hanson, et al., Arbovirus infections of laboratory
workers; N. Wade, Microbiology: Hazardous profession faces new
uncertainties.
2
«W. L. Langer, The black death.
608 / UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL DISRUPTION
measures. Distribution of vaccines, for instance, would
be difficult if airlines, trains, and trucks were not
running.
In many parts of the world, public-health conditions
are developing that have a high potential for disaster.
The rats that live on stored grain in India have renewed
the specter of a major outbreak of bubonic plague.
Nitrate pollution of water is creating conditions in which
dangerous soil organisms are brought into contact with
human beings for the first time. The organism that has
recently caused cases of a fatal meningitis has been
identified as a soil-dwelling amoeba.228 It may be just the
first of many such agents to appear seemingly from
nowhere.
Irrigation projects in the tropics and subtropics around
the world are spreatjipft the conditions that promote the
i parasitic diseas^schistosomiosis (bilharzia)} which, to-
gether withTmalarufe is one of the two most prevalent
spfinm diseases on Earth.229 The broadcast use of
chemotherajjy, and antibiotics has created a serious
medical problem through tbf introduction of resistance
I in_ bacteria juid other parasitesjjvlodification of the
^ ^climate wouid~alsp inevitably influence disease patterns^
\ for example, the length of time viruses remain infectious
f is in part a function of humidity. A trend toward drying
would encourage some, whereas others would thrive in
increased rn";smrp .It is s*'l*r*prr(*dt_in addition, that
Weather changes can trigger epidemics^30';
As if the threat of a natural pandemic were not
gruesome enough, mere is always the threat of biological
warfare or of an accidental escape of lethal agents from a
biological warfare laboratory or, conceivably, from a
laboratory engaged in genetic engineering experiments ~~x
r
(see inaterial on recombinant DNA research in Chapter^ I
i4}j Although most laypeople have long been afraid of J
thermonuclear war, they are just beginning to grasp the
colossal hazard posed by chemical and biological warfare
(CBW). Any country with one or two well-trained
microbiologists and even a modest budget can build its
own biological doomsday weapons. Constructing lethal
228
J. H. Callicott, Amebic meningo encephalitis.
229
K. S. Warren, Precarious odyssey of an unconquered parasite; N.
Ansari, Epidemiology and control of schistosomiasis.
250
K. E. F. Watt, Ecology and resource management, McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1968, p. 162 ff.
viruses against which there is little or no resistance in
human populations can easily be done in theory; it may
already have been done in practice. There were at one
time rumors of the development by the American CBW
establishment of a pneumonic rabies, one that, instead of
being transmitted by bite, is transmitted in the same way
as the common cold: from person to person via exhaled
droplets. This is certainly possible, since under special
conditions (such as those that sometimes occur in caves
full of rabid rats) rabies appears to have been transmitted
through the air. Such a disease would be a disastrously
effective weapon if it were transmitted by infected
individuals before symptoms appear, since once they do
appear, rabies is (with one notable recent exception) 100
percent fatal. Other possibilities for lethal agents are
many —for example, anthrax, which even in its "natural"
state can be transmitted by contaminated aerosols?
plague, tularemia, Q-fever, and encephalitis, to name a
few 231 — disseminated in their natural forms or in the
form of special "hot" strains that are drug-resistant or
superlethal. Besides direct assaults on human beings-
overt or covert attacks on a nation's food supply might b;
made by introducing plant diseases. The more crowded i
population is, and the smaller its per-capita food sup-
plies, the better a target it would be for a biological
warfare attack.
Why would nations develop such weapons? For tii-e
same reason they develop others. They hope to immur.:z ;
or otherwise protect their own populations and tfcs
avoid a biological backlash. These weapons have s
special appeal for small and poor powers, which x=
themselves threatened by larger, richer ones and wnica
lack the funds or the expertise to develop nuclear
weapons.232
Chemical-biological weapons may never be used, but
that does not rule out the possibility of an accident. Viru>:
laboratories, especially, are notoriously unsafe. By 196".
some 2700 laboratory workers had become accidentally
infected with viruses transmitted by insects, and 107 had
died.233 Their deaths were caused by just one group
2JI
F. M. LaForce et al, Epidemiologic study of a fatal case of in
anthrax; J. Lederberg, Swift biological advance can be bent to gsacciit
2i2
M. Meselson, Behind the Nixon policy for chemical and biologiai
warfare.
233
Hanson, et al, Arbovirus infections.
 DIRECT ASSAULTS ON WELL-BEING / 609

of viruses. Fatal accidents occur in laboratories where
work is done on other kinds of viruses, as well as other
microorganisms. The inability of government CBW
agencies to avoid accidents was made clear by the Skull
Valley, Utah, CBW disaster of 1968, in which many
thousands of sheep were poisoned when a chemical agent
"escaped,"234 and by the possible escape of Venezuelan
Equine Encephalitis from the Dugway, Utah, proving
ground in 1967. Congressman Richard D. McCarthy of
New York announced in 1969 that CBW agents were
being transported around the country in small containers
on commercial airliners!
In 1969, President Nixon announced the unilateral
renunciation by the United States of the use of biological
warfare, even in retaliation.235 He directed that the stocks
of biological agents be destroyed and that further work
on. defenses against biological weapons be transferred
from the Department of Defense to the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare. Destruction of U.S.
biological warfare materials was systematically carried
out in 1970 and 1971, although in 1975 it was discovered
that the Central Intelligence Agency had not destroyed
some toxins in its possession.
234
P. M. Boffey, 6000 sheep stricken near CBW center.
2S5
M. Meselson, Chemical and biological weapons, Scientific American,
May 1970.
Some level of research might be continuing clandes-
tinely in the United States (although the possibility
seems remote), and it would be a simple matter for a
future administration quickly to reestablish biological
warfare capability. Indeed, with the rapidly increasing
ability of biologists to manipulate the genetics of micro-
organisms, the possibilities for creating deadly agents
seem endless.235 Furthermore, there is little sign that the
U.S. action has led to the end of work on biological
weapons elsewhere. Biological warfare laboratories are
potential sources of a man-made "solution" to the
population explosion. It is essential that some way be
found to block all further work on biological weapons—
the risk for humanity is simply too great.
It should be clear now that humanity is creating an
enormous array of hazards that directly threaten the
health and welfare of all people. Unfortunately many of
these hazards are poorly understood, and many un-
doubtedly remain unrecognized at present. The next
chapter shows that the level of indirect threats to human
welfare is just as high and the level of understanding
just as low.
2S6
P. Berg et al., Potential biohazards of recombining DNA molecules.

Recommended for Further Reading

Cairns, John. 1975. The cancer problem. Scientific American, November. A superb
semi-popular review of environmental carcinogenesis.
Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Annual. Environmental quality. Government
Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Extensive data and discussion on recent measured
levels of air and water pollution across the United States, as well as special topics in
energy, land use, transportation, radiation, and environmental legislation and
regulation.
Huddle, N.; M. Reich; and N. Stiskin. 1975. Island of dreams: Environmental crisis in Japan.
Autumn Press, New York. Well-documented and illustrated survey of the serious
environmental problems of one of the world's most intensely industrial nations.

Much the same can be said of Buddhism, which—if
those who also subscribe to Shinto, Taoism, and Confu-
cianism are also counted as Buddhists—has perhaps 700
million adherents, most of them in Asia. The barriers to
population control in Asia and the potential for accepting
it both seem to be connected much more with social
conditions than with religion. Therefore, it seems un-
likely that changes in the religion would have any
substantial effect on establishment of population policy,
although religious support for small families might
encourage acceptance of family planning.
Similarly, it is hard to picture Hinduism, as an entity,
becoming a force in population control. More than 99
percent of the 450 million or so Hindus live in Asia,
mostly in India. Like Buddhism, it is a rather heterogen-
eous, relatively noninstitutionalized religion. There is
still considerable opposition to population control
among Hindus, perhaps based more on medical beliefs,
local superstitutions, and a sense of fatalism than on
anything inherent in the religious structure.
For Westerners who favor population control, one a£
the best courses of action seems to lie in working with the
already establishedQ'eligious group3)to change people's^
attitudes toward population growth.. In the rest of the
world, the relative fragmentation of religious groups,
their lack of hierarchic organization, and their psychoso-
cial traditions would seem to limit their capacity to
influence population control efforts.
Religious Attitudes and the Environment
In the United States, the unorthodox but constructive
and quasi-religious attitudes first expressed widely in the
1960s by members of the whole-Earth, hippie movement
may well help save the environment. The initial phase of
the hippie movement was characterized by a groping and
testing that produced, among other things, the dangerous
macrobiotic diet and the horror of the Manson family.
Aside from such excesses, however, the hippies borrowed
many religious ideas from the East, particularly Zen
Buddhism, combined them with the collectivist, passivist
element from Christian tradition, and attempted ro fnrge
a code based on close personal relationships, spiritual
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 809
values, a reverence for life, group self-reliance, and an
abhorrence of violence. By the mid-1970s this code had
become well established in a more mature and praise-
worthy form that might be called the independence
movement. People in that movement are attempting to
find simpler, more ecologically sound modes of exis-
tence, and to reduce their dependence on fancy, nones-
sential, and vulnerable technological gimmickry. Their
unofficial publications such as Mother Earth News and
CoEvolution Quarterly abound with suggestions for
disconnecting oneself from the "effluent society." If any
one idea binds members of the movement together, it is
the belief—essentially religious—that human beings
must cooperate with nature and not attempt to subdue
nature with brute force.
Many people in our society are unhappy with these
attitudes, which go against long-cherished and reli-
giously sanctioned political and economic beliefs. They
feel that turning away from a consumer orientation has
grave implications for the future of the economy. Others
see in the independence movement the vanguard of a new
social revolution that
_ could lead to a very different, far
better society.^
White, Jr., professor emeritus of history at t h e |
^University of California, Los Angeles^nd past president ~"
of the American Historical Association, has suggested
that the basic cause of Western society's destructive
attitude toward nature lies in the Judeo-Christian tradi-
tion. He pointed out, for instance, that before the
Christian era, people believed trees, springs, hills^
streams, and other objects of nature had guardian spirits.
Those spirits had to be approached and placated before__
one could safely invade their territories: ^By destroying^)
fpagan animismyhristianitv made it possible rn
nature in a mood of indifference to the feelins of natural
objects."10 Christianity fostered the basic ideas of
""progress"^and of time as something linear, nonseparat-
ing, and absolute, flowing from a fixed point in the past to.
an end point in the future. Such ideas were foreign to the
Greeks and Romans, who had a cyclical Tftprpp1' 0<r TJrr"'
and did not envision the world as having a beginning.
Although a modern physicist's concept of time might be
somewhat closer to that of the Greeks than to that of the
'"The historical roots of our ecological crisis.
 810 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
Christians, the Christian view is nevertheless the preva-
lent one in the Western world: God designed and started
the universe for the benefit of mankind; the world is our_
oyster, made for human society to dominate and exploit.
Western science and technology thus can be seen to have
their historical roots in the Christian dogma of human-_
ity's separation from and rightful mastery over nature^
Europeans held and developed those attitudes long
before the nppominirv to exploit the Western hemi-
sphere arrived. The frontier or cowboy economy that has
characterized the United States seems to be a naturaL
extension of that Christian world view/Therefore, White
claimed, it may be in vain that so many look to science
and technology to solve our present ecological crisis:
Both our present science and our present technology
are so tinctured with orthodox Christian arrogance
toward nature that no solution for our ecologic crises
can be expected from them alone. Since the roots of
our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must
also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or
not.
A number of anthropologists and others have taken_
issue with White's thesis, pointing out that environmen-
tal abuse is by no means unique to Western culture, and
that animism had disappeared, at least in western
Europe, before Christianity was introduced. As examples
they cite evidence of ancient and prehistoric environ-
mental destruction, such as the human-induced extinc-
tion of Pleistocene mammals and the destruction of the
fertility of the Near East by early agricultural activity, as
well as the behavior of non-Western cultures today.
Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan of the University of Minne-
sota observed that there is often a large gap between
attitudes toward the environment expressed in a religion
or philosophy and the actual practices of the people who
profess those attitudes.11 While Chinese religions, for
example, stressed the view that man was a part of nature
(rather than lord of it) and should live in harmony with it,
the Chinese did not always live by that belief. Concern
for the environment, especially preserving forests and
protecting soils, were expressed throughout Chinese
history, but Yi-Fu Tuan suggests that this may often
'Our treatment of the environment in ideal and actuality.
^
have been in response to destruction that had already
taken place. The fact that China was a complex civiliza-
tion complete with a bureaucracy and a large population
doubtless militated against fulfillment of those ideals. By
the twentieth century, China's once-plentiful forests had
been nearly destroyed to build cities and clear land for
agriculture. All that remained in most areas were small
patches preserved around temples. Ironically, the present
government, which explicitly rejects the traditional reli-
gions, has attempted to restore the forests on a large
scale.12
Lewis W. Moncrief of North Carolina State Univer-
sitv^who might be described as an environmental
anthropologist, feels that the religious tradition of the.
West is only one of several factors that have contributed,,
to the environmental crisis.13 Along with some other
anthropologists, he has suggested that an urge to improve
one's status in society is probably a universal human
characteristic and that expressing this urge through
material acquisitiveness and consumption of resources is,
if not universal, at least common to a great variety of
cultures. Perhaps what is unique about Western culture
in this regard is the degree of its success.
Moncrief postulated several factors that he felt were
just as influential as the Judeo-Christian outlook in
determining European and North American behavior
toward the environment. The first were the development
of democracy and the Industrial Revolution, which
together provided individual control over resources (if
only a family farm) for a far greater proportion of the
population than before and simultaneously provided the
means to exploit those resources more efficiently. The
existence of a vast frontier fostered the belief in North
America that resources were infinite; all of our wasteful
habits derive from that. Moncrief thinks it is no accident
that the first conservation movement appeared just as the
frontier was closing; Americans suddenly and for the
first time began to realize that their resources were, after
all, finite.
In 1893, moved by a remark from the 1890 census
12
For an overview of present Chinese attitudes, see L. A. Orleans and
R. P. Suttmeier, the mass ethic and environmental quality, Science, vol.
170, pp. 1173-1176 (December 11,1970); a related account of Japanese
attitudes toward the environment is Masao Watanabe, The conception of
nature in Japanese culture.
I3
The cultural basis for our environmental crisis.

about the disappearance of public land and the con-
sequent disappearance of the frontier, Frederick Jackson
Turner, then at the University of Wisconsin and sub-
sequently at Harvard, observed:
American social development has been continually
beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial
rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion
westward with its new opportunities . . . furnish the
forces dominating American character.14
A generation earlier, E. L. Godkin, editor of the
Nation, had written that the American frontier popula-
tion had "spread itself thinly over a vast area of soil, of
such extraordinary fertility that a very slight amount of
toil expended on it affords returns that might have
''tisfied even the dreams of Spanish avarice."I5
Traditional North American (and, to some extent,
OCouncil of Churches) about the ethics of using
European) attitudes toward the environment thus are not
exclusively products of our religious heritage, although
that doubtless played an important part. These attitudes
may just spring from ordinary human nature, which in
Western culture was provided with extraordinary social,
political, technical, and physical opportunities, particu-
larly connected with the nineteenth-century American
frontier. Such opportunities were bound to engender
optimism, confidence in the future, and faith in the
abundance of resources and the bounty of nature. That
they also produced habits of wastefulness and profligacy
was not noticed. Past^ institutions in the United States,
rarely dealt with environmental problems; if they were
recognized at all, they were usually considered to be
someone else's responsibility.
In the twentieth century, as the growing population
became increasingly urban and industrialized, the en-_
virqnmental effects multiplied, and the nation was rather
suddenly confronted with a crisis. How today's Ameri-
cans ultimately resolve the environmental crisis will
depend on much more than changes in philosophical
outlook, but such changes unquestionably must precede
or at least accompany whatever measures are taken.
^Individual conduct is clearly capable of being modified
id directed by an appropriate social environment—the
u
The significance of the frontier in American history, in The early
writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, ed. F. J. Turner.
15
Aristocratic opinions of democracy.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS
change in reproductive habits in the United States
testifies to that, as does the great increase in environ-
mental consciousness. Unfortunately, the ppvirnnmpntal
problem may prove more difficult because it requires
changing more than the altitudes and behavior of indi-
viduals: those of firmly established, powerful institu-
tions—primaril business and governmental organiza-
tionS—
How large a role organized religion may play in
guiding the needed changes in individual attitudes
toward the environment or in influencing the behavior of._
other institutions is still uncertain. Many religious
groups have already shown leadership, including some
already mentioned in connection with population-
related issues. A particularly hopeful sign was [the
concern expressed in dfjnuarv 19f6^jby the
sprparHnp; rhp tprhnnlngv of nuclear power, and the
discussion promoted by thai World Council of Churches,
nrrthe mic]ea.r issue and on foe relation of energy policy
to the prospects for adjust and sustainablej,world.16
Ecological Ethics
Many persons believe that an entirely new philosophy
must now be developed—one based on ecological reali-
ties. Such a philosophy—and the ethics based upon
it—would be antihumanist and against Judeo-Christian
tradition in the sense that it would not focus on an
anthropocentric universe.17 Instead, it would focus on
human beings as an integral part of nature, as just one
part of a much more comprehensive system.
This is not really a new perspective. In one sense,
Western philosophy has been a continuous attempt to
establish the position of Homo sapiens in the universe,
and the extreme anthropocentrism of thinkers like Karl
Marx and John Dewey has been strongly attacked by,
among others, Bertrand Russell.18 Russell, for example.
i6
See The plutonium economy: A statement of concern, Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, January 1976, pp. 48-49; P. M. Boffey, Plutonium: its
morality questioned by National Council of Churches, Science, vol. 192,
pp. 356-359 (April 23, 1976); Paul Abrecht, ed., Facing up to nuclear
power, Anticipation, no. 21, October 1975, pp. 1—47.
1
'See Frank E. Egler, The icay of science: A philosophy of ecology for the
layman; and George S. Sessions, Anthropocentrism and the environmen-
tal crisis. The latter is a good, brief summary with a useful bibliography.
tB
A history of Western philosophy; the debate is summarized in Sessions,
Anthropocentrism.

of theprimeval forests,yrilling for oil on the northern)
C slope of Alaska} and so on. It is a tribute to the
conservationists, past and present, that any of our primi-
tive areas remain relatively unspoiled.^ Political and
financial power tend to be arrayed against conservation,
and, as people increase and resources dwindle, the
situation seems bound to deteriorate further. In many
parts of the world the situation is worse than in the
United States; in a few it is better.
There are encouraging signs that a new thrust is
appearing in the conservation movement. Growing
numbers of people have realized that conservation is a
global problem, that in the lon^ run it is not enough to
surh isnlarpH treasures as a Prove of redwood
trees. If global pollution causes a rapid climatic change,
the grove cannot long survive. Many conservationists
now recognize thaiLif the growth of the human popula^
tion is not stopped, and the deterioration of the planetary
environment is not arrested, nothing of value will he
conserved.
This understanding and the growing general public
awareness of the problems of the environment have given
rise to a number of new organizations. Some of them, like
Friends of the Earth (FOE1. are more militant offshoots
of older conservation groups. Others, including. En-
vironmental Action (which grew from the organization
that sponsored the first Earth Day in 1970) and F.coiogy;
Action, are new. Zero Population Growth (ZPG) is
primarily concerned with the population problem but is
also interested in the environmental consequences of it.
ZPG, one branch of the Sierra Club. Environmental,
Action, and FOE have foregone the tax advantages of an
apolitical posture in order to campaign and lobby for
their goals, frequently combining their efforts on issues
of common concern.y'hev also cooperate in environ-)
Cmentalist lawsuits) (see "The Legal System," below)
through organizations such as The Environmental De-^
fense Fund (EDF) and the Natural Resources Defense__
Council (NRDC). Such organizations generally differ
from many of the older conservation groups in being
more oriented to humanity as an endangered species than
to preserving wilderness and wildlife only for their
aesthetic and recreational values^ Sister organizations of
FOE, as well as ZPG, have been established in other
countries.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 813
In Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, the environ-
mental movement has established its own political par-
ties, known in Britain as the Ecology Party, in France as
Ecologie et Survie, in New Zealand as the Values Party,
etc. These parties have succeeded in winning seats in
Britain's Parliament and gaining significant percentages
of the vote in several countries.22b In March 1977, the
ecology party in France won a nationwide average of 10
percent of the vote in municipal elections. In some towns
in Alsace (where the party originated) they won 60
percent.221'
It seems likely that conservationist and environmentaL
organizations will become still more militant and more
united—especially in their global concerns. While im-
portant local battles must continue to be fought, more
general programs of public education and political action
should become predominant. Obviously, it is no longer
necessary to plead for conservation only on aesthetic or
compassionate grounds, since the preservation of the
diversity of life and the integrity of the ecological
systems of Earth is absolutely essential for the survival
of civilization.
(SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY;
For many people, science and technology have taken on ___
the aspect of{a religidfl) How often one hears statements
beginning, "any society that can send a man to the moon_
can^. . ." and ending with some problem—usually
immensely more complex and difficult than space
travel—that science and technology are expected to
solve!23 The population-food imbalance is a common
candidate; others are various types of pollution or other.
ecological problems.
Three things are generally wrong with these state-
ments of faith. First, science and technology have not yet
reached the point relative to those problems that they had
reached relative to the man-on-the-moon project by
"''Edward Goldsmith, Ecology—the new political force.
"''Ecologists emerge as a potent force in French election, New York
Times, March 20, 1977.
23
0ne book on the human predicament written from this point of view
(but in which the science is often very weak) is John Maddox's The
doomsday syndrome. See the retrospective review written three years later
by John Woodcock, Doomsday revisited.
608 / UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL DISRUPTION

measures. Distribution ofNyaccines) for instance, would viruses against which there is little or no resistance in
be difficult if airlines, trains, and trucks were not_ human populations can easily be done in theory; it may
^running. already have been done in practice. There were at one
In many parts of the world, public-health conditions time rumors of the development by the American CBW
are developing that have a high potential for disaster. establishment of a pneumonic rabies, one that, instead of
The rats that live on stored grain in India have renewed being transmitted by bite, is transmitted in the same way
the specter of a major outbreak of (bubonic plague/ as the common cold: from person to person via exhaled
Nitrate pollution of water is creating conditions in which droplets. This is certainly possible, since under special
dangerous soil organisms are brought into contact with conditions (such as those that sometimes occur in caves
human beings for the first time. The organism that has full of rabid rats) rabies appears to have been transmitted
recently caused cases of a fatal meningitis has been through the air. Such a disease would be a disastrously
identified as a soil-dwelling amoeba.228 It may be just the effective weapon if it were transmitted by infected
first of many such agents to appear seemingly from individuals before symptoms appear, since once they do
,fr nowhere. appear, rabies is (with one notable recent exception) 100
Trrigarinri project8 in the tropics and subtropics aroundpercent fatal. Other possibilities for lethal agents are/lO'
V the world are spreading the Conditions that promote the many—for example^nthrax) which even in its "naturalvCI
/.garasitic diseas^fchistosomiastTTbilharzia]^ which, to- state can be transmitted by contaminated aerosols.
/ gether witHJlnalaris!^ is one of the two most prevalent plague, tularemia, Q-fever, and encephalitis, to name a _
serious diseases on Earth.229 The broadcast use of jew231—disseminated in their natural forms or in the
chemotheragy_and antibiotics has created a serious, form of special "hot" strains that are drug-resistant or
medical problem through the inTrnffyfrinn r>f resistance^ superlethal. Besides direct assaults on human beingj,.
JTL bacteria and other parasitesjModification of the overt or covert attacks on aSarion's food supplt mjgbLbe-
^climate would~also inevitablyjnjuencejdisease patterns^ rnade byintroducing plant diseases. The more crowded i
for example, the length of time viruses remain infectious population is, and me smaller its per-capita food sup-
is in part a function of humidity. A trend toward drying plies, the better a target it would be fos-a biolo;ges!
would encourage some, whereas others would thrive in warfare attack. ATTVocfe. °f\. J off
increased moisture. , Tt is smpfwi^ in addition, that Why would nations develop such weapons? For tfce
feather changes can trigger epidemics.23^ same reason they develop others. They hope to immur.;ii
As if the threat of a natural pandemic were not or otherwise protect their own populations and fc;
gruesome enough, there is always the threat of biological avoid a biological backlash. These weapons have ;
warfare or of an accidental escape of lethal agents from a special appeal for small and poor powers, which see
biological warfare laboratory or, conceivably, from a themselves threatened by larger, richer ones and which
laboratory engaged in genetic engineering experiments ~~x lack the funds or the expertise to develop nuclear
r
(seejnaterial on recombinant DNA research in Chapter") / weapons.252
J4]J Although most laypeople have long been afraid of J Chemical-biological weapons may never be used, but
thermonuclear war, they are just beginning to grasp the that does not rule out the possibility of an accident. Virus
colossal hazard posed by chemical and biological warfare laboratories, especially, are notoriously unsafe. By 196",
(CBW). Any country with one or two well-trained some 2700 laboratory workers had become accidentally
microbiologists and even a modest budget can build its infected with viruses transmitted by insects, and 107 had
own biological doomsday weapons. Constructing lethal died.233 Their deaths were caused by just one group
228 231
J. H. Callicott, Amcbic meningo encephalitis. F. M. LaForce et al, Epidemiologic study of a fatal case of inhalaLi; -
229
K. S. Warren, Precarious odyssey of an unconquered parasite; N. anthrax; J. Lederberg, Swift biological advance can be bent to gescc-.^.
232
Ansari, Epidemiology and control of schistosomiasis. M. Meselson, Behind the Nixon policy for chemical and biolofjiaj
230
K. E. F. Watt, Ecology and resource management, McGraw-Hill, warfare.
2
New York, 1968, p. 162 ff. "Hanson, et al., Arbovirus infections.
 DIRECT ASSAULTS ON WELL-BEING / 1609

of viruses. Fatal accidents occur in laboratories where
work is done on other kinds of viruses, as well as other
microorganisms. The inability of government CBW
agencies to avoid accidents was made clear by the Skull
Valley, Utah, CBW disaster of 1968, in which many
thousands of sheep were poisoned when a chemical agent
"escaped,"254 and by the possible escape of Venezuelan
Equine Encephalitis from the Dugway, Utah, proving
ground in 1967. Congressman Richard D. McCarthy of
New York announced in 1969 that CBW agents were
being transported around the country in small containers
on commezaal airliners!
In J969,^President Nixon announced the unilateral
renunciation by the United States of the use of biological
warfare, even in retaliation.235 He directed that the stocks
of biological agents be destroyed and that further work
onjiefenses _agajnst_ biologica^weapons be transferred
from the Department of Defensgjp the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare._Destruction of U.S._
biological warfare materials was systematically carried^
out in 1970 and 1971,^feougjC5(l9753it was discovered
that the (Central intelligence Agency\had not destroyed
some toxins in its possession.
234
P. M. Boffey, 6000 sheep stricken near CBW center.
J!5
M. Meselson, Chemical and biologicalv 'ific American,
Mav 1970.
Some level of research might bejgntinuing clandes-
tinely in the United jtates ^although the possibility
seems remote), and_it would be a simple matter for a
future administration quickly to reestablish biological
warfare-xapability. Indeed, with the rapidly increasing
ability of biologists to manipulate the genetics of micro-
organisms, dtegossibilities for creating deadly agents
jieem endless^* FurthermoreTthere^ is littksign that the
U.S. action has led to the end of work on biological
weapons elsewhere. Biological warfare laboratories are
potential sources of a man-made "solution" to the
population explosion^It is essential that some way be
found to block all further work on biological weapons—
the risk for humanity is simply too great.
It should be clear now that humanity is creating an
enormous array of hazards that directly threaten the
health and welfare of all people. Unfortunately many of
these hazards are poorly understood, and many un-
doubtedly remain unrecognized at present. The next
chapter shows that the level ofTindirect threats to human/
welfare Is just as high and the level of understanding
just as low.
;3
*P. Berg ct al., Potential biohazards of recombining DNA molecules.

Recommended for Further Reading

Cairns, John. 1975. The cancer problem. Scientific American, November. A superb
semi-popular review of environmental carcinogenesis.
Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Annual. Environmental quality. Government
Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Extensive data and discussion on recent measured
levels of air and water pollution across the United States, as well as special topics in
energy, land use, transportation, radiation, and environmental legislation and
regulation.
Huddle, N.; M. Reich; and N. Stiskin. 1975. Island of dreams: Environmental crisis in Japan.
Autumn Press, New York. Well-documented and illustrated survey of the serious
environmental problems of one of the world's most intensely industrial nations.
 HE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
some research institutes need to be investigating and
reporting on much more detailed questions. For exam-
ple, is medical research being done with adequate
attention to the needs of all segments of the population
and to birth control as well as death control? Are the
benefits and risks of the breeder reactor being studied in
proper depth? What are the possible dangerous con-
sequences of further investigating the properties of a
given virus or biocidal compound?
These questions have been settled largely by the
scientific community in the past, with results that can
most charitably be described as mixed.26 For a long time
the thrust in research was that whatever could be tried
should be tried. Physicists exploded the first atomic
bomb after Germany had been defeated and Japan's
defeat was a certainty, although some of them apparently
thought at the time there was a nonzero chance that the
explosion would destroy all life on Earth.21 It is difficult to
find parallels, outside nuclear weaponry, displaying quite
this degree of willingness to risk total environmental
disaster, but traces of it arguably are present in proposals
to "wait and see" what the consequences of assaulting the
ozone layer with fluorocarbons or SST fleets will be. .
On the bright side, microbiologists Paul Bers; and
Stanley Cohen of Stanford and Herbert Boyer of the
University of California in mid-1974 called_oji_ their
"""""""""•>^™—————•—_«••-—-—^*S53
to bring to a halt research orfcecombinanj
B^BBMBW*""
^studies involving transfers of genetic material
from one species to another.28 They recognized that
hybrid microorganisms could cause extraordinarily vir-
ulent infectious disease and that die experimental work
(could conceivably lead to the spread ot
antibioticsior to the escape of bacterial strains carrying.
oncogenic (cancer-inducing) viruses. A distinguished
molecular biologist L Robert Sinsheimerjhas written:
> ~6See, for example, the contrasting views of F. J. Dyson, The hidden
cost of saying "no!"; and P. R. Ehrlich, The benefits of saying "yes."
->7N. P. Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer. There is no doubt, in light
of present knowledge of nuclear reactions, that the chance of igniting the
atmosphere with a nuclear bomb and thereby extinguishing all life on
Earth is truly zero. A completely persuasive case on the point is made by
H. A. Bethe, Ultimate catastrophe? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, June
1976, pp. 36-37. Bethe's further contention, however, that the scientists
on the nuclear bomb project were completely sure of this in 1945, is not
persuasive.
28
P. Berg, et al., Potential biohazards of recombinant DNA molecules.
Could an Escherichia coli strain [a variety of a ubiqui-
tous bacterial resident on the human digestive tract]
carrying all or part of an oncogenic virus become
resistant in the human intestine? Could it thereby
become a possible source of maUgmancv? j^p^ld such a_
strain spread rhrnuphnnf a human population? What
would be the consequence if even an insulin-secreting,
strain became an intestinal resident? Not to mention
the more malign or just plain stupid scenarios such as
those which depict the insertion of the gene for
botulinus toxin into Escherichia coli>M
In early 1975 an international scientific meeting es-
tablished a set of safety principles under which such
research could be continued. The scientists at the meet-
ing concluded that the more dangerous experiments
should be deferred until special "crippled" strains of
organisms could be developed— that is, strains with a
very low probability of surviving outside the laboratory
(experience has shown that there is no such thing as an^
"escape-proof' microbiological laboratory^. Some of the
scientists, however, argued against social control of the
experiments, claiming an absolute right to free inquiry.
Since that meeting, various attempts have been made to
draft rules that would permit doing this dangerous
research, and there has been continuing controversy.30
In these cases, scientists themselves have assessed the
risks and then "voted" for all of humanity. With regard
to the atomic bomb, the possible savings in American
(and Japanese) lives by shortening World War II may-
have come into the calculus, and perhaps also the thought
that sooner or later someone else would blow up an
A-bomb without knowing for sure that it would not
destroy the planet. But would the people of the planet (to
say nothing of the other living organisms) have voted yes
to taking, say, a one-in-a-million chance on oblivion in
order to speed victory for the United States in World
War II? (That the chances of killing all life on the planet
turned out to be zero is beside the point— the scientists
involved were not sure of that at the time.)
''Troubled dawn for genetic engineering. The article also contains 2
good, brief, layperson's introduction to the technology of DNA
manipulation.
30
Sinsheimer, Troubled dawn; Nicholas Wade, Recombinant DNA:
NIH Group Stirs storm by drafting laxer rules; Bernard Dixon, Recom-
binant DNA: Rules without enforcement? ,

Similarly, in the case of recombinant DNA, although
scientists seem to be acting much more responsibly, we
must still ask whether they are the appropriate ones to
make the decision. J4o laboratory safeguards can guaran^
tee that an accidental escape will never occur. Are the
possible benefits to medicine and agriculture of this _
research worth any risk of releasing a serious plague or
cancer-inducing organism? We do not know the answer,
but we think the franchise on the decision should be
extended to include at least representatives of those who
will be taking the risks and (perhaps) receiving the
benefits.
f The Science Court J
One danger in allowing scientists to decide an issue for
society is that often the specialists in a field disagree^
violently on the proper course of action for society to,
take, even though they may have no serious disagreement
on the known salient facts. For example, qualified
scientists have been assembled on both sides of issues
such as whether to develop the .SST, ban the use of
pesticides and aerosols, or develop nuclear power, to
name a few. As Stephen Schneider and Lynne Mesirow
observed regarding the SST battle:
An interesting point here is that most of the bitter
scientific antagonists in the SST debate were probably
in far greater agreement on what was known and
unknown scientifically, and on the odds that state-of-
the-art estimates would be correct, than they were over
whether the evidence justified opposition to the planes.
That is, the interpretation of the weight of the
evidence that guided their opposition or support was
based not only on the scientists' technical knowledge
of the issues, but also on their personal philosophies —
on whether or not they wanted the SSTs and on
whether they thought the benefits of the project were
worth the risks of ignoring the worst possibilities. This
is not to suggest that most testimony was deliberately
misleading, but rather that scientists, like most people,
shade to some extent their perception of the merits of
conflicting evidence with the shadow of their personal
philosophy . . . . The issues facing future generations
arc too critical to permit the technical components to
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 819
be obscured in attacks on the personal philosophies of
experts. . . .31
As they pointed out, some mechanism is needed so the
public and decision-makers can separate the technical
opinions of scientists from their political opinions.
One suggestion for opening up the process of ethical
decision-making in science has been put forward by
physicist Arthur Kantrowitz.32 He proposed that in
science policy disputes (such as those over SSTs and
ozone, DDT and ecosystems, the risks and benefits of
recombinant DNA research) the technical aspects of the
cases be, in essence, tried in a scientific court. The first
step would be to separate the scientific from the moral
and political questions. What might be done with genetic
engineering technology is a disputable scientific ques-
tion, in principle soluble by experiment; what should be
done is a political-moral question not in principle
amenable to experimental solution.
Once the separation had been accomplished, then
advocates of the different scientific points of view would
"try" them before scientific judges. Thus, scientists
convinced that DDT posed a serious threat to ecosystems
could present their case, and the scientific advocates of
the ecosystemic safety of DDT could present theirs. Each
side could cross-examine the other. The judges would be
selected for their neutrality on the issue, but would have
the benefit of scientific training to help them evaluate the
opposing views. The final step would be publication
(within the limits of national security) of the opinions of
the scientific judges.
It is easy for anyone familiar with scientific disputes to
attack these proposals. In some cases the separation of
scientific from moral and political questions is difficult.
Is the question "Are blacks genetically less intelligent
than whites?" scientific or moral? We would claim that
the very posing of the question is a political act about
which a moral judgment can be made—but in theory it is
a question amenable to experimental investigation.
A thornier problem would be selection of judges. In
many cases today, disputes concern the negative direct or
indirect effects of technology on humanity or on the
T/Kgenesis strategy, pp. 188-189.
'ScCj for example. Controlling technology democratically.
760 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
abortion on the grounds that it will encourage promiscu-
ity— exactly the same reason given in Japan for banning
the pill and the IUD. There is no evidence to support
either point of view on promiscuity, but, even if there
were an increase, it would seem a small price to pay for a
chance to ameliorate the mass misery of unwanted
pregnancies—especially since the main ostensible reason
for social disapproval of promiscuity is the production of
unwanted children.
Many Protestant theologians hold that the time when a
child acquires a soul is unknown and perhaps unimpor-
tant. They see no difficulty in establishing it at the time of
"quickening," when movements of the fetus first become
discernible to the mother; or at the time, around 28
weeks, when the infant, if prematurely born, might
survive outside its mother's body. To them, the evil of
abortion is far outweighed by the evil of bringing into the
world an unwanted child under less than ideal
circumstances.
To a biologist the question of when life begins for a
human child is almost meaningless, since life is continu-
ous and has been since it first began on Earth several
billion years ago. The precursors of the egg and sperm
cells that create the next generation have been present in
the parents since they were embryos themselves. To most
biplogistSj an embryo or a fetus is no more a complete
human being than a blueprint is a complete building.553
The_fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly
before birth, and given the essential early socializing,,
experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the
crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop __
into a human being. Where any of these is lacking, the_
resultant individual will be deficient in some respect.
From this point of view, a fetus is only a potential human
being, with no particular rights. Historically, the law has
dated most rights and privileges from the moment of
birth, and legal scholars generally agree that a fetus is not
a^'person^within the meaning of thj[u.S. Constitution)
until it is born and living independent of its mother.
From the standpoint of a terminated fetus, it makes no
difference whether the mother had an induced or a
spontaneous abortion. On the other hand, it subsequently
makes a great deal of difference to the child if an abortion
giieuuc v r
is denied and the mother, contrary to her wishes, is forced
to devote her body and life to the production and care of
the child. In Sweden, a study was made to determine
what eventually happened to children born to mothers
whose requests for abortions had been turned down.
When compared to a group of children from similar
backgrounds who had been wanted, more than twice as
many of the unwanted youngsters grew up in undesirable
circumstances (illegitimate, in broken homes, or in
institutions); more than twice as many had records of
delinquency, or were deemed unfit for military service;
almost twice as many had needed psychiatric care; and
nearly five times as many had been on public assistance
during their teens.*6
In a 1975 study in Czechoslovakia, nine-year old
children whose mothers had been denied abortions were
compared with carefully matched "controls."57 The
unwanted children tended to have more problems of
health and social adjustment and to perform less well in
school than did their peers who had been wanted.
Further, it appeared that the disadvantages of being
unwanted—initially, at least—affected boys more
strongly than girls.
There seems little doubt that the forced bearing of
unwanted children has undesirable consequences not
only for the children and their families, but for society as
well, apart from the problems of overpopulation. The
latter factor, however, adds further urgency to the need
for alleviating the other situations. An abortion is clearly
preferable to adding one more child to an overburdened
family or an overburdened society, where the chances
that it will realize its full potential are slight. The
argument that a decision is being made for an unborn
person who "has no say" is often raised by those
opposing abortion. But unthinking actions of the very
same people help to commit future unheard generations
to misery and early death on an overcrowded planet. One
can also challenge the notion that older men, be they
medical doctors, legislators, or celibate clergymen, have
the right to make decisions whose consequences are
borne largely by young women and their families.
There are those who claim that free access to abortion
56
Lars Huldt, Outcome of pregnancy when legal abortion is readily
available.
57
Z. Dytrych, et al.; Children born to women denied abortion.

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
p , 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 stria 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
• impact of laws and policies on population size and
growth has, until very recently, largely been ignored by
the legal profession. The^jjrst comprehensive treatment
of population law was that of the late Johnson C.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 837
/ 4 an arrnrnev 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 StatesCConstitutionJ effective^
population-control programs could be enacted U n df the
clauses that empower Congress to appropriate funds to
provide for the(general welfare and to regulate com-
or under the equal-protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment.^5 Such laws constitutionally
could be very broad. Indeed, it has been concluded thaL
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 systems 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.
""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-
sequence; 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,
income oxKex ticvvn^s \ae\rvg, ec^ua\. TYve \av* co\iYd
properly savjo 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.
would 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 .
ripht to have children as a fundamental and inalienable
right. Yet neither the Declaration of Independence nor_
rnJtConstimtioijmentions a right to reproduce. Nor does
the UN Charier describe such a right, although a
resolution of the United Nations affirms the "right
responsibly to choose" the number and spacing of chil-n
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 tine ti^cvt to Vvave <3n.VXdTe.ti \s 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 denned 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.
le fact that a fetus is probably not a "person" with
(Constitutional right^ does not, however, mean that _
society has no interest in the fetus. Society does have an .
interest in pnsnring 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, constitution^)- and
desirable legal cha"g^ '" the- Unit-pf] fif^t-ps tn f
age population growth;
1. A federal statute could be enacted that would
prohibit any restrictions on safe, voluntary
tion, sterilization, and abortion, and the dissemination of
information about them._
2. State and federal governments could subsidize
voluntary contraception, sterilization, and abortion,
Laws cnuld require that birth-control clinics be opened
at public expense in all suitable locations. They could
also require that group and individual health insurance
policies cover the costs of abortion and sterilization.
. Tax laws could be revised, and new laws could be
passed that would provide incentives for late marriage,

doggie, convinced Congress that the SST's disadvantages
outweighed its very questionable advantages, and the
U.S. program was killed in 1971.
In 1975 the debate began anew when rights to land in
the United States were requested for the Anglo-
French SST, Concorde. The issue is still in doubt, but
several things are apparent— the Concorde is extremely
noisy, fuel-inefficient, and probably uneconomical. If it
remains in service, it will be as a monument to govern-
ment stupidity and the momentum of technological
circuses.
Government Planning
The fragmentation of responsibility amonfi fiovern-
iqent agencies in the United States makes a reasonable
response to problems extremely difficult and planning to
avert them virtually impossible. The lack of overall
control of environmental matters and the virtual
sibilitv of dealing with problems in any coordinated way
are illustrated by the area of urban affairs., aspects of
which now rnmp tinder the iurisHicrinns of the Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Development, the Depart-
ment of Health, Education and Welfare, as well as the
Departments of Labor, Commerce, Interior, Tustice, and
Transportation, to name just the major ones. It is clear
that the executive branch of the federal government
badly needs reorganizing.
Such coordinated planning as takes place in the federal
government is largely confined to the preparation and
review of the annual federal budget. It is fair to say that
the time horizons considered in this process are typically
short and the emphasis on conventional economic indi-
cators heavy. Resource and environmental matters ac-
cordingly receive less attention than they deserve.111"
Some detailed suggestions on reforming the political
structure of the United States to make it more responsive
to the requirements of the population-resource-environ-
ment situation may be found in the booklArk 7/|"2 We
'""A sense of the planning inputs to and implications of the federal
budgeting process is conveyed in the series of volumes, Selling national
priorities, published annually by the Brookings Institution since 1970.
^ The 1976 volume, edited by Henry Owen and Charles L. Schultze, takes a
longer-range perspective (10 years) on issues raised by the budget, and
examines tie problems of coordinated long-range planning in a govern-
ment of divided powers.
1I2
Pirages and Ehrlich.
CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS// 857
/-•*\
}
discuss only one such reform here: the institutionaliza-
tion of government planning.
Thej^enter ibr the Study of Democratic Institutions^
has an ongoing project under the direction of R. G.
Tugwell, designed to produce a modern constitution for
the United States.^ The proposed constitution, now in its,
thirty-third draft^ deserves wide circulation and study.
One of the features of the Tugwell constitution is a
planning branch of the governmejit, with the mission of
doing long-range planning. As should be apparent from
the preceding discussion, without planning we believe
there is little chance of saving civilization from a down-
ward spiral of deepening social and environmental dis-
ruptions and political conflicts. Human societies have
shown little aptitude for planning so far, but it is a skill
that must soon be developed.112"
A private organization, California Tomorrow, spon-
sored a group of planners who produced a document that
might serve as a preliminary model for the kind of
planning that can be done. The California tomorrow plan:
A first sketch presents a skeletal plan for The future nfthe^
state of California.113 It describes "California zero," the
California of today, and two alternative futures: Califor-
nia I is a "current-trends-continue" projection; Califor-
nia II is a projection in which various alternative courses
of action are followed.
The plan considers twenty-two major problem areas,
including population growth and various kinds of en-
vironmental deterioration, and looks at both the causes of
the problems and policies to ameliorate them. California
I is compared with California II, and suggestions for
phasing into the California II projection are given.
The details of the plan need not concern us here, but
the subjects of concern in the plan are roughly those
of this book. What is encouraging is that a private
organization could put together a comprehensive vision
of the future of one of the largest political entities in the
world, proving that intelligent, broad-spectrum planning
can be done.
"2;1A series of important books on the tools and prospects for
comprehensive governmental planning appeared in 1976 and 1977 under
the authorship of social scientist and modeler Peter W. House and
colleagues: House, The quest for completeness; House and Williams, The
carrying capacity of a nation; House and McLeod, Large scale models for
policy evaluation; House, Trading-off environment, economics, and energy.
'"Alfred Heller, ed, The California tomorrow plan.
ECOSCIENCE:
POPULATION,
RESOURCES,
ENVIRONMENT

PAUL R. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

ANNE H. EHRLICH
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

JOHN P. HOLDREN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANY

San Francisco
 RICH NATIONS, POOR NATIONS, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT /
uses of outer space and Antarctica. More recently, there
have been extensive negotiations on a treaty to control
the use of oceans.
( JLaw of the Sea.) What has been described as "the
greatest international conference ever held"126 met in
Caracas in summer 1974 to begin work on a treaty
dealing with the control of the oceans. The second
session of the third United Nations Conference on the
Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)127 reached no final agree-
ments, but in its tortuous proceedings several trends
could be discerned. The emphasis was on dividing up the
pie—on how to allocate rights to exploit the oceans rather
than how to protect their vital functioning in the
ecosystems of Earth. The less developed nations were
anxious to "augment their meager natural resources with
none of the unpleasant connotations of economic aid."128
The overdeveloped countries, on the other hand, were
primarily trying to retain as much as possible of their
hegemony over the seas (which they, far more than the
LDCs, have the ability to exploit).
A dominant trend has been toward establishing a
200-mile economic zone, which would effectively bal-
kanize most of the oceans' known wealth. One view is
that this would lead to having humanity's common
heritage decimated piecemeal as individual nations exer-
cised dominion over all living and nonliving resources
within their zones. About the only good thing that can be
said about the 200-mile zone is that its establishment
might lead eventually to more rational use of those
resources since their individual ownership by nations
would at least tend to avoid the problems involved in
multilateral exploitation of a commons.
Other topics discussed in detail at the ongoing confer-
ence have been rights of passage through straits, the
rights of landlocked nations to a share of oceanic
resources, the establishment of an international authority
'"Elizabeth Mann Borgese, Report from Caracas, the law of the sea,
Center Magazine, November/December, 1974.
'"The first session in New York in 1973 dealt only with procedures;
the first and second conferences in 1958 and 1960 had accomplished little
but reveal the complexities of the problems and the diverse positions of
states and blocs (see Edward Weak, Jr., The politics of the ocean, chapter
6).
»«C. R. Pinto of Sri Lanka, quoted in Time, July 29,1974. It has been
suggested that "The uses of international commons should be taxed for
the benefit of the poorest strata of the poor countries" (Barbara Ward. The
Cocoyoc Declaration), but there is thus far little sign that this will occur.
for the mining of seabed minerals outside the economic
zones, the responsibility of nations to control pollution
originating from their shores and to protect the marine
environment, and the establishment of means of settling
disputes and enforcing agreements.
A third eight-week session of UNCLOS in Geneva in
May 1975 produced a draft treaty, which was not voted
on by the participating nations but was instead consid-
ered the basis for further negotiation.12' The draft
extended the territorial waters of all nations to 12 miles
from shore, provided for a 200-mile economic zone,
specified means to control polluting activities, and en-
couraged the transfer of technology from rich to poor
nations. The most controversial provision was for an
International Seabed Authority, controlled de facto by
the LDCs (who would be a majority in the agency), that
would regulate deep-sea mining. The United States has
held out for "private initiative" to share in managing the
seabed resource.
Further negotiations are scheduled for 1977. In part,
their success will depend on what unilateral actions are
taken by nations in the meantime. The United States, for
example, has extended its jurisdiction over fisheries up to
200 miles from shore, which conforms with the draft
treaty. Several other countries, including Mexico and
Canada, have followed suit. But legislation being con-
sidered by Congress on deep-sea mining does not
conform to the draft treaty. This places U.S. negotiators,
who have tried to dissuade other nations from taking
unilateral action, in an awkward position. If Congress
passes such legislation, it could have a less than salu-
brious effect on future negotiations—especially if Amer-
ican firms are permitted to begin deep-sea mining before
the treaty is finally passed and ratified. On the other hand,
these unilateral actions may be pushing negotiators to
examine other alternatives. By 1977, Elizabeth Mann-
Borgese was envisioning a third possibility for the
Seabed Authority as "a comprehensive and flexible
system of joint ventures, acceptable to states and compa-
nies under the control of the [Authority and for the
benefit of all countries, especially the poorer
ones. . . ,"> 2 > a
'"Material in this paragraph is based primarily on Deborah Shapley,
Now, a draft sea law treaty: But what comes after?
1
^"Quoted its Claiborue Pell, The most complex treaty ever negotiated
in history, World Issues, vol II, no. 1 (February/March), 1977.
942 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT
The complexity and comprehensiveness of the treaty
account for the lengthiness of the negotiations. But,
unfortunately, even a definitive treaty may fail to pro-
vide the kind of apparatus required to administer,
conserve, and distribute the resources of the seas in a way
that is equitable and that fully protects the vitally
important ecosystems of the oceans, just because an
exploitative view of the environment continues to domi-
nate all such discussions.
U.N. Environment Program, The exploitative view
of the environment first surfaced explicitly at the inter-
national level at the United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment at Stockholm in 1972. That gath-
ering featured platitudes from the ODCs, who are busily
engaged in looting the planet and destroying its ecologi-
cal systems, and demands from the LDCs that they get a
piece of the action. One could only take heart that the
world's nations even took the condition of the environ-
ment seriously enough to attend such a conference. That
they did was a tribute to the brilliance, persuasiveness,
and persistance of one man, Canadian businessman.
Maurice Strong, secretary general of the conference^
Strong became the first executive director of the
United Nations Environment Program (ITNF.P)1 rhp
major positive result of the Stockholm conference.
UNEP was given only a small budget, and its head-
quarters was tucked away in Nairobi, perhaps in the hope
that it would not make waves. Under Strong's leadership,
it nevertheless began to serve several vital functions. For
instance, it has established the Earth Watch monitoring
system to serve as an international clearinghouse for
environmental information. Earth Watch is explicitly
designed also to help bridge the gap between scientists
and technologists on one hand and political decision-
makers on the other.130 The kinds of information to be
collected include an international register of toxic chem-
icals, which list properties of those chemicals, their uses,
their effects, and their known or inferred pathways in the
environment.
UNEP's very location in Nairobi (the first such United
Nations agency headquartered in an LDC) has resulted
in its first major contribution—an enormous and growing
""Maurice Strong, A global imperative for the environment.
interest and concern in poor nations about environmental
problems.131 This concern was already well established
in some areas among the people132 but had been notably
absent in most LDC governments.
Under Strong's leadership a list of high-priority areas
was established at UNEP: (1) human settlement, health,
habitat, and well-being; (2) land, water, and desertifica-
tion; (3) trade, economics, technology, and the transfer of
technology; (4) oceans; (5) conservation of nature, wild-
life, and genetic resources; (6) energy.
A program has been started in each area, and by early
1975 more than 200 projects had been initiated^ projects
that according to Strong were designed "to create a
leverage to move the programme towards our pr;or-_
ities."133 Unfortunately for UNEP. Maurice Strong left^
the agency in 1975; whether the<icorn)of UNEP will ever
grow into thejjgreatoakfcf ari^ternationaXenvironrnentaD
^protection organization^ so desppratply nppHfdj will -
depend on many things—not least of which will be the
quality of its leadership.
Toward a Planetary Regime
International attempts to tackle global problems—or at
least to start a dialogue among nations—have proliferated
in recent years. Besidesmie UNCTAjD^Law of the SeaT)
andfEnvironmental conference^, the United Nations has_
sponsored World Population and World Food confer-
ences (discussed earlier) in 1974, a conference on the
Status of Women in 1975. the Pabitar Cnnfen-nrc nf
1976 (dealing with the problems of cities), and^a confer-
ence on Water Resources in 1971. A Conference on
Science and Technology is scheduled for 1978, and it is
expected to create a new agency for World Science and _
Technology Development. The agency's mission will be
to facilitate the transfer of needed technologies to LDCs
and to foster development of indigenous scientific and
technological education and research in those
"countries.134
'"Roger Lewin, Environment in a developing world; Jon Sigurdson,
Resources and environment in China; Conor Reilly, Environmental
action in Zambia.
132
For example, see Amil Agarwal, Ghandi's ghost saves the Himala-
yan trees.
'"Lewin, Environment in a developing world, p. 632.
134
Salam, Ideals and realities.
 RICH NATIONS, POOR NATIONS, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT /
Superficially, it usually appears that such conferences
do little more than highlight the political differences
between rich and poor countries, but in fact they can lead
to constructive action on the problems discussed. Be-
cause of the diversity of interests and viewpoints of
individual nations, and because of the inequities of the
world economy, it seems to take an unconscionably long
time to reach a consensus on dealing with each problem.
But an important Step often is tn nht{^r| agrpf mpnr That a
Problem exists, first of all, and, second, that international
action is appropriate and necessary. Each of the confer-
ences named has been the culmination of this process;
but what counts for the future is whether agreement can
be reached on solutions to the problems and whether
controls can be established before it is too late.
[Regulation of one vital global common^ has not yet
been seriously discussed—that commons is the atmo-
sphere. Even more than the resources of the oceans, the_
atmosphere is shared by all human beings—and other
organisms as well. It is crucial to preserve the atmo-
sphere's quality and the stability of global climate.135 But
that these are now threatened and should be protected by
international agreement is only beginning to be recog-
nized in a few quarters.
Should jiLaw of the^e&be successfully established, it
could serve as a model for a future(Law of the Atmc
Csphere)to regulate the use of airspace, to monitor climate
change, and to control atmospheric pollution.! Perhaps_
those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United_
Nations population agencies, might eventually be devel-
oped into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international
superagency for population, resources, and environment. _
"Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control
the development, administration, conservation, and dis-
tribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonre-
newable, at least insofar as international implications
exist. Thus, the Regime could have the power to control
pollution not only in the atmosphere and the oceans, but
also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that
cross international boundaries or that discharge into the
oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central
agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps
including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including
"*S. H. Schneider and L. E. Mesirow, The genesis strategy.
943
all food on the international market. . '^
The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility
for determining the optimum population for the world
and for each region and for arbitrating various countries'
shares within their regional limits. Control of population
size might remain the responsibility of each govern-
ment, but the Regime should have some power to enforce
the agreed limits. As with the Law of the Sea and other
international agreements, all agreements for regulating
population sizes, resource development, and pollution
should be subject to revision and modification in accord-
ance with changing conditions.
The Planetary Regime might have the advantage over
earlier proposed world government schemes in not being
primarily political in its emphasis—even though politics
would inevitably be a part of all discussions, implicitly or
explicitly. Since most of the areas the Regime would
control are not now being regulated or controlled by
nations or anyone else, establishment of the Regime
would involve far less surrendering of national power.
Nevertheless, it might function powerfully to suppress
international conflict simply because the interrelated
global resource-environment structure would not permit
such an outdated luxury.
What the Human Community Can Do
Humanity has reached a critical point in its history.
Either the fissioning of societies into two distinct
groups—rich and poor—will proceed, leading inevitably
to conflict and possibly to economic collapse of some
regions, at least; or serious efforts will be made to bring
the two groups closer together. With regard to the latter
course, as we have discussed at some length, there are
plenty of ideas on how to go about it. The main obstacles
are, as usual, social, political, and economic. Too few
people in ODCs are convinced of the absolute necessity
of reducing their consumption of material and environ-
mental resources—of de-development. Too few people
in all countries appreciate the environmental and re-
source constraints within which society must operate.
And too many people with power oppose changing the
present course because, for the time being, they are
profiting from the status quo. And it may not be possible