If the latter effect predominated a job-sharing reduction in the work week might be needed, or increased reliance on unearned income, such as a social dividend financed out of receipts from the auction of resource quotas, or capital income to the worker resulting from wider distribution of capital ownership. But we have a distributist institution.

The acutual mechanics of quota auction markets for three or four hundred basic resources would present no great problems. The whole process could be computerized since the function of an auctioneer is purely mechanical. It could be vastly simpler, faster, more decentralized, and less subject to fraud and manipulation than today's stock market. Also, qualitative and locational variation among resources within each category, though ignored at the auction level, will be taken into account in price differentials paid to

resource owners.

The scheme could and probably must be designed to include imported resources. The same depletion quota right could be required for importation of resources, and thus the market would determine the proportions in which our standard of living is sustained by depletion of national and foreign resources. Imported final goods would now be cheaper relative to national goods, assuming foreigners do not limit their depletion. Our export goods would now be more expensive relative to the domestic goods of foreign countries. We would tend to a balance of payments deficit. But with a freely fluctuating exchange rate a rise in the price of foreign currencies relative to the dollar would restore equilibrium. It might be objected that limiting our imports of resources will work a hardship on the many underdeveloped countries who export raw materials. This is not clear,

:

because such a policy will also force them to transform their own resources

domestically rather than through international trade.

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Finished goods would

"not be subject to quotas. Also foreign suppliers of raw materials are treated no differently from domestic suppliers. In any case it is clear that in the long run we are not doing the underdeveloped countries any favor by using up their resource endowment. Sooner or later they will begin to drive a hard

bargain for their nonrenewable resources, and we had best not be too dependent on them.

THE IMPACT OF GROWTH ON THE ENVIRONMENT

TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 1973

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WORKS,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AIR AND WATER POLLUTION,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to notice, in room 4200, Dirksen Office Building, Hon. Edmund S. Muskie (chairman of the subcommittee), presiding.

Present: Senators Muskie, Clark, and Buckley.

Senator MUSKIE. The subcommittee will be in order.

Today the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution begins its second day of hearings on the impact of growth on the environment. When I announced these hearings I noted that uncontrolled and unplanned growth is having a dynamic impact on the environment in which we live. These hearings are designed to quantify the impact of growth and the potential regulatory measures available to reduce that impact.

Yesterday the subcommittee heard Dr. Herman Daly from Louisiana State University discuss the economic implications of growth. Today's witnesses will address the biological and technological implications of growth and the impact of growth on energy and mineral

resources.

These hearings should be a useful basis for consideration of pending land use regulatory legislation and new solid waste legislation.

We have a distinguished list of witnesses this morning. The first of them is Dr. George Woodwell of Brookhaven National Laboratory. Doctor, I would like to express my appreciation for the integrity standard which was put into the water safety regulations of last year's legislation.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE M. WOODWELL, BROOKHAVEN

NATIONAL LABORATORY

Dr. WOODWELL. Thank you, Senator Muskie. I am pleased to be here.

Many of the ramifications of growth have been explored recently in documents familiar to you such as "The Limits to Growth" (Meadows et al., 1972), "Blueprint for Survival" (Goldsmith et al., 1972), and Mishan's "The Cost of Economic Growth" (Mishan, 1967). These

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documents establish that many facets of growth as we have known it through the past century will slow or stop within the next decades. The principal question is whether we will have any control over the transition, avoiding the discomforts of Malthusian limits or analogous chaos. I applaud your attempt to address the question directly.

I want to examine an aspect of the cost of growth that has not been explored adequately in these documents or elsewhere. This is the dependence of man on the Earth's living resources. I believe that the data I shall summarize indicate that this dependence is far greater than the world's intellectual, political or economic leaders have commonly acknowledged, that irreversible changes are occurring at the moment that have great importance for all, and that, while significant steps have been taken recently in our own air and water pollution bills, much more powerful steps are needed to prevent major, irreversible changes in the capacity of the Earth for support of man.

First, the problem is urgent, perhaps the very most urgent of the plethora of urgencies of our time. There is a common tendency to think of pressures on environment as directly correlated with the growth of population; and so they are. The population of the Earth is expected to double in the next 30 to 35 years. But pressures on environment are also a product of human activities. People who have cheap energy, for instance, can command more of the Earth's resources than those who do not. Indeed, one of the advantages of having an abundance of energy is precisely this control over other resources. The aggregate demand on resources is the product of the number of people times their average impact per person. Various indices suggest that aggregate impact is increasing very much more rapidly than the population alone. A review of the "Gross Domestic Product," which does not include services, taken from the U.N. Statistical Yearbook (1968), shows an annual increase since 1950 of 5 percent to 6 percent or a doubling time of 12 to 14 years (SCEP, p. 119). The Gross Domestic Product might be taken as one index of the aggregate effect of man on environment.

Similarly, the amount of energy used in support of the technological segment of society is another index of aggregate demand on resources. World use of fossil fuel energy has increased for the last century at about 4 percent per year, giving a doubling time of about 18 years (Hubbert, 1969).

Such considerations suggest that the aggregate effects of man on environment are doubling in between one and two decades, perhaps less. This is a very short time when we consider the time required for major changes in social systems.

Certain effects increase at much greater rates. In the 15 years between 1951 and 1966, a. 34-percent increase in food production was accompanied by a 146-percent increase in use of nitrates and a 300-percent increase in use of pesticides. These relationships are shown in table 1 of the printed statement I have prepared. There appears to be every reason to believe that the further intensification of agriculture will

require similarly disproportionate efforts, perhaps more so, as less fertile lands are put into production.

Table 1. World average rates of increase for the period 1951–66 for selected aspects of human activity related to food production. (SCEP 1970)

Dr. WOODWELL. There is reason, moreover, to fear that toxification of the environment over large areas will aggravate this problem significantly. It is difficult to exaggerate the speed with which these problems are developing or their potential for disruption.

Second, contrary to the arguments of many economists and others, the Earth's biota is our single most important resource. While protecting it will not assure wealth and grace for man, its decimation will assure increasing hardship for all.

The problems of environment are bewildering. I shall simplify by considering two forms of energy: the nonbiotic energy that we use to run our society and the energy that flows from the Sun into living systems, including all of us.

I use energy for my simplification because energy is the basis of the wealth of the Western nations and, as we have seen, it can be used as an index of total human activity. I use it also because those who advocate reliance on growth as a solution for all problems rely on an abundance of cheap energy which can be used to substitute resources for one another as need arises.

Energy can also be used to measure the intensity of biotic activity on a regional or global basis. A brief discussion and comparison of these two flows of energy, that through man-dominated systems and that through the Earth's biota, provides an indication of the scale of human activities and offers one index of the limits of the Earth for support of man.

First, world consumption of nonbiotic energy is summarized for 1967 in table 2. Total energy use worldwide, including all nonbiotic sources, was estimated as about 45 × 1012 kWh. Virtually all of it was from fossil fuels. About 35 percent of the total energy was used by the United States and about 86 percent by the "developed" countries. If all the people of the world used energy at the U.S. rate in 1967, total energy use would have been 6.6 times higher than it was then. [Table 2 follows:]