1. 2. 3. The Fairbanks Museum St. Johnsburg, Vermont SUMMARY of Testimony by Frederick Mold, Director of the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, on S 3151, the proposed Environmental Quality Education Act, before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Education, Washington, May 19, 1970. The Fairbanks Museum, located in Northeastern Vermont, has since 1890 been engaged in environmental education programs for the young people and adults of three Vermont counties. There is today a sharply increasing recognition of the long-ignored need for educating young and old in the importance of protecting and preserving our environment and ecology. S 3151 would help meet that need by supporting new curriculum development, evaluation techniques, demonstration projects, teacher training, community education, and dissemination of environmental education materials. Community based natural history museums offer very important, and presently underutilized, resources for achieving the objectives of S 3151. Congressional recognition of the importance of community museums, along with authorization of Federal assistance directly to museums, would do much to achieve greater results in this area. 4. Under S 3151, the Commissioner of Education would have authority to assist in the development of stronger cooperative relationships between local museums and school districts. Under present arrangements the museum, because it can be funded only through the school system, becomes a stepchild of the school, under the control of school administrators and auditors who do not fully comprehend the differing procedures and requirements of community museums. 5. Although the bill would create a new categorical aid program, it is a demonstration and stimulation program in nature, and desperately needed at this time. Later, when it has resulted in widespread incorporation of environmental education programs into regular school curriculums at all levels, the act could be allowed to expire. 6. While the present language of S 3151 clearly permits direct funding of museums, it would be helpful if the Committee report on the legislation would make explicit the potential contribution of community museums, and encourage the Commissioner in administering the act to give special attention to realizing that contribution. Senator NELSON. The hearings will resume tomorrow on S. 3151 and the other measures before the subcommittee. They will be held in the committee room of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy at 10 a.m. (Whereupon, at 11:45 the subcommittee adjourned, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Wednesday, May 20, 1970.) ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY EDUCATION ACT WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 1970 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION OF THE Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room H-403, the Capitol, Senator Gaylord Nelson presiding pro tempore. Present: Senators Pell and Nelson. Senator NELSON (presiding pro tempore). Our first witness this morning will be Mr. John Marshall Briley, senior vice president, the Owen-Corning Fiberglas Corp. Mr. Briley, the committee is very pleased to have you here today and appreciates your taking time to testify. Your statement will be printed in full in the record. You may proceed as you wish. STATEMENT OF JOHN MARSHALL BRILEY, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, THE OWENS-CORNING FIBERGLAS CORP. Mr. BRILEY. Thank you. I do appreciate the opportunities to appear. I have prepared a statement for the record, but I would like to summarize the contents rather than read the statement and then respond to any questions you may have. I am here with really two hats on. As senior vice president of OwensCorning Fiberglas Corp. I represent industry. Our company has approximately $500 million of sales of Fiberglas and Fiberglas products which are used in a great variety of insulations and fabrics and for reinforcement of gypsum and other materials and Fiberglas-reinforced plastics which are used in boats and automobiles and appliance components, pipes, tanks, construction materials and a myriad of things, even spaceships. So that is my industry hat. Also I am chairman of the Ohio Board of Regents, which is the statutory body in Ohio which has been set up to advise the legislature and the Governor and to be the coordinating planning agency for all of the institutions of State-assisted higher education in the State. So that is my other hat. I appear in support of your bill which is concerned, of course, with the educational aspects of the subject of ecology. I want to make a disclaimer right at the outset that I am by no means an expert in ecology. Senator NELSON. I don't think there are any. It is too big a field. Mr. BRILEY. It may be a bit presumptuous because, as you say, it is terribly complex and there is very little public information. It seems to me that the subject of ecology is concerned with the interrelationships that exist between plant life and animal life, human life, and the environment that we all must share on this planet. Man has been the first and only animal in history who has been able to exercise positive control over his environment and because of his brain and the technology that he has developed over the recorded history of man, he has been able to adjust the environment to his own needs. But in recent years ecology has suggested that all life and environment on this planet has to be in a sort of a balance and this balance can either sustain life or, if it is disturbed seriously, can destroy life. The concern that is now expressed in the field of ecology seems to be that man's progress may be upsetting this kind of a balance and can threaten our population, our physical survival even and our prosperity. Now over the course of time man has had many technological achievements and I have outlined some of the more important ones in my statement, but the two outstanding ones, I think, are his conquest of disease and the expansion and diversification of food supply. But technological achievement, apparently, cannot be achieved without some impact on environment, sometimes adverse, very often adverse. For example, the technological achievement I have just referred to in the medical science and food supply has enabled an astounding increase in the world's population, but this increase has been so great that some people are now questioning whether this population growth, if it continues, may not soon exceed our environmental capacity to sustain human life in some sort of relative decency and with an adequate food supply. We are also learning that technology can often be developed at a price of environmental quality. The use of herbicides and pesticides to increase food supply has introduced dangerous chemicals into the land and the water and the air and that has upset the ecological balance in plantlife and animal life, wildlife. The development of industrial powerplants and the internal combustion engine have introduced gasses into the atmosphere which affect sunlight and which affect the atmosphere itself. Our water cycle is contaminated so much and in so many places by industrial and household and human waste and, without adequate treatment, is returned into the water that we drink. We have been consuming raw materials at an ever-increasing rate to the point where many authorities feel that the time will come when it will be impossible to find adequate replacements for these materials. All of these, I think, are ecology problems and they are compounded by the fact that man seems to have a disposition to huddle together into great urban complexes, which makes it even worse. So it seems to me that the problem of environmental quality is the challenge of whether or not man can continue with population expansion and affluence without destroying or seriously impairing the environmental resources which are essential to human life. Now there are two extremes in this argument. One is that the economic and technological development of man, if it continues, will so pollute the world with the excrement of his technology and the consequences of his neglect that the air will be unbreathable and the water will be undrinkable and therefore we ought to stop all of this stuff. The other extreme is that the economic and technological advance of man is the most important thing, far more important than landscapes or clear skies. Now I think that reasonably man could agree that somewhere between these two extremes; that is, between the extreme of the primeval forest or the dead world, someplace in between those two extremes we will have to find the answer to our ecological problems. Now already in this field twin characteristics of the American people are beginning to appear. One is the characteristic of being impatient to solve any problem that confronts us and the other is the tendency to go into action without finding out what the facts are and what the actual dimensions of the problem might be. Also there is a certain mysticism which seems to be beginning to emerge in ecological thinking, and that is the idea that nature's balance is so delicate that it can't be touched and that the values of economic growth are now outmoded because the technical advances of man are moving so fast that we are just hurtling down the road to our own destruction. Now I think it is an error to take the position that mankind has only two alternatives, to stop economic growth or else go down the road to destruction, because it seems to me that such a belief, if it should become widely accepted, could paralyze the serious action which is needed now. This bill is one step that should be taken. I, for one, don't concede that economic growth should be stopped or slowed. This country, I don't think, could stop it if it wanted to. We are going to need jobs and homes and transportation and education and recreation for a hundred million more people and technology is going to have to advance to meet these needs. So the problem is how do we do it without ruining ourselves in the process? This is why I feel that we must equip ourselves to make a real assessment of technology. By that I mean to be able to find the relationship between the environmental consequences of a technological development. Now one dramatic example of this is the need to assess this problem I referred to before and that is to take the belief that population growth has got to be stopped. This is a pretty widespread belief. Now even more widely believed is that the use of herbicides and pesticides has to be slowed down. Now what is the relationship between these two? If we thereby lessen agricultural production by eliminating or slowing down the use of pesticides and herbicides, wouldn't this threaten our existing population with a lessened food supply? So we are going to need some balance between the technology and the food production and the growing pressure of population, because science has removed it from the power of nature to control this balance through drought and pestilence and natural disasters. This is what I mean by assessment. Now I would like to comment briefly on these two characteristics of the American people that I mentioned a little bit before, that is, the impatience for results and the desire to move ahead despite ignorance of the facts. It is almost a trite expression now that the Nation that 46-880 0-70—11 |