practiced in all major urban areas, an estimated quadrillion, 1015, Btu's of energy would be acquired annually.

This quantity of energy is equivalent to:

(1) about 1.5 percent of the Nation's total energy consumption, (2) the Nation's entire energy consumption for residential and commercial lighting, or (3) for 1972, more than half of the direct oil imports from the Middle East, or (4) almost one-third of the energy that will be delivered by the Alaskan pipeline.

(C) MATERIALS SHORTAGES AND RELIANCE ON IMPORTS

1. National Academy of Sciences-National Academy of Engineers, "Man, Materials, and Environment-Conclusions and Recommendations," a Report for the National Commission on Materials Policy (March 1973), pp. 2–10:

The mandate of the National Commission on Materials Policy (under Title II of the Resource Recovery Act of 1970) is "to enhance environmental quality and conserve materials by developing a national materials policy to utilize present resources and technology more efficiently, to anticipate the future materials requirements of the nation and the world, and to make recommendations on the supply use recovery and disposal of materials."

A national materials policy must start with recognition that materials, energy, land and water, population, environmental degradation, and pollution constitute a web of intersecting elements, none of which can be viewed in isolation. Moreover, the web ignores national boundaries as materials move over the land, through the atmosphere, and in the waters of land and sea. A national materials policy is, therefore, a single element of the larger task of conserving the earth for the sustenance of man's physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being. A national materials policy must furthermore take into account that governments everywhere begin to accept the concept of "Only One Earth" as a new determinant in the making of national policy. At the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held at Stockholm in 1972 they declared that:

"A point has been reached in history when we must shape our actions throughout the world with a more prudent care for their environmental consequences."

They charged the nations assembled there: to safeguard the natural resources of the earth, and, to that end, to maintain, restore or improve the capacity of the earth to produce renewable materials, and in employing the nonrenewable resources of the earth to guard against the danger of future exhaustion. It is within this complex of changing international attitudes and values that domestic materials policy should be fashioned.

The study committee believes that the charge to the National Commission on Materials Policy can and must be met. The committee believes that in meeting this charge the United States will be confronted by a decision of utmost gravity, a decision that certain other countries must face as well.

If we extrapolate over the next thirty or forty years, the view commonly held in the United States that two cars in the garage mean a

better level of living than one will increasingly collide with our interest in protecting the health and well-being of our fellow citizens.

Given the present level of technology and what may reasonably be expected to evolve over the next decades, and given the prevailing view that materials consumption is the way to a better life, the facts indicate (1) materials throughput will double, and then double again. over the next thirty or forty years, (2) the quality of ores and other natural resources will decine and readily available sources be exhausted, (3) only by increased use of energy per unit of output and per capita will the intensity of materials throughput be maintained, and (4) the environmental stress per unit of production will increase correspondingly.

Given the growth in population, the growth in per capita product, and the growth in environmental stress per unit of product implied by sustained movement on our present track, the environmental ills presaged for the United States cannot be completely avoided by available technology.

The study committee believes that the threat to environmental quality and resource availability, caused and compounded by our treatment and use of materials, poses a real problem and a vital national issue which calls urgently for an open-minded reexamination of certain commonly held beliefs. These beliefs are: (1) that natural resources can be used in whatever amount is evoked by public demand for goods and services as stimulated and guided by producers' efforts to enlarge their markets; (2) that improved well-being of society is adequately measured by aggregate volume of the production of goods, increased per capita use of goods, and aggregate consumption of materials and energy; and (3) that technological development should and will continue to contribute to and accelerate the increased throughput of materials per person as it has in the past.

The committee recognizes that dissents to these commonly held beliefs can be found, but they constitute a relatively small voice within the prevailing views of consumers, business, labor, and governments. First corrective steps have been taken by the Congress and other legislative bodies, but without full recognition of the profound change in values that is called for. That is a clear assertion of each person's right to an environment that is not only healthful but possess a beauty that reflects regard for, and insistent action to cherish and preserve its natural qualities.

The promotion of economic growth in sectors selected because of low risk of environmental disruption, will safeguard the economic substance of the nation and, in the long run, enhance the quality of life. Discrimination and restraint in the use of critical materials coupled with intensified efforts to recycle or to substitute materials in short supply, will in the long run diminish our dependence on foreign. resources, reduce the volume of imports and prevent escalation of economic competition with other nations for scarce materials.

The study committee assumed that a materials policy designed to protect the environment will be accompanied by a compatible population policy. Population pressures being a factor contributing significantly to our environmental problems, a population policy would seem

to be essential, if indeed not an indispensable complement of policies, such as a materials policy, dealing with other urgent environmental problems. The fact that the committee does not address itself to popuĺation thus is not an indication that the topic is of less importance but only that it falls beyond the committee's mission.

Consistent with and supporting the first conclusion the committee reached nine additional conclusions of immediate concern to the national leadership:

1. A revised policy on materials will require the use of all available instruments and innovations in government administration: taxes; environmental standards; standards of behavior and design; pricing and output regulations; licenses and permits; leasing conditions on public lands; and education and persuasion. The application of these instruments of policy, alternatively or cumulatively, should be decided solely on grounds of the merits and effectiveness of each.

2. Economic growth should be guided along a path consistent with policies designed to improve the environment. Sectors that impose minimum stress on the environment should be encouraged, those that impose severe stress should be discouraged. This guidance is achieved in part by the practices described in paragraphs #3 and #4, below, but additional steps are needed as well. Such steps will have to include a deliberate redirection, using and augmenting the market system, of the nation's productive capacity as well as a prudent, selective redirection of certain categories of demand. The net effect of such guidance will be to give durability preference over planned obsolescence, to stimulate use of materials and production methods that facilitate recycling, and to stimulate interest in sources of satisfaction that reduce environmental stress. Educational and public information programs should be used much more generously that at present.

3. A national materials policy must incorporate the principle that environmental costs, measured as the aggregate of social losses suffered as a consequence of impairment of the environment, are taken into account in the computation of benefits and costs of any action to extract, transport, process, use, or dispose of any material. In order to evaluate all environmental costs, especially those that are inadequately reflected in market prices, a practice of full disclosure of the environmental effects of private as well as public activity should be mandatory. The approach taken by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and the Technology Assessment Act of 1972 should be broadened, strengthened, and applied to all stages in the flow of materials through the economy.

4. Although some exceptions might occasionally be justified, efficiency in the use of materials is most likely to be achieved when the costs of environmental damage are borne by those who are responsible for the impairment. Costs are to be charged to those who contribute to environmental damage by the levying of taxes, fines or other penalties, or by otherwise enforcing compliance with an environmental or design standard.

5. When environmental effects are taken fully into account certain uses of materials will be perceived as yielding benefits that are trivial in comparison with their costs. This realization will be amplified by recognition of the finite dimension of a high quality environment and anticipation of the growth in its value relative to other things.

6. Land use planning and the imaginative and discriminating use of a variety of devices, including appropriate incentives, are essential instruments for a policy designed to protect the quality of the atmosphere, rivers, lakes, coastal zones and oceans, as well as the land and are also essential in the formulation of an energy policy which, in turn, is a major component of a national policy. Such land use planning must also take account of the need to relieve congestion in megalopoles, and to foster the spread of community development adapted to sound environmental standards.

7. In fulfilling the international and global obligations that go with a national materials policy the United States should take the initiative in adopting the best available practices, in stimulating the attention of others to environmental problems, in providing technological assistance to the best of its ability, and in joining with other nations in agreements to protect the air, the seas, the world's pool of genetic materials, and important landmarks and treasures of civilization that are threatened by environmental decay. In adjusting to the measures taken in this and other countries to protect the environment, the United States should not tolerate a growth in protectionist trade policies, to the detriment of its own and the world's efficient use of scarce

resources.

8. As far as compatible with the national interest, the United States should embark without delay on a course that will steer clear of collision with other industrial powers bidding for environmentally attractive resources in short supply, such as low sulfur petroleum and liquid natural gas. It should seek jointly with major producers and consumers corrective multilateral solutions providing for orderly and equitable marketing arrangements and, at the same time, intensify the development of new technologies to ensure availability of needed

resources.

9. The present state of knowledge about the origins and effects of environmental deterioration is so incomplete that it is impossible to assert with certainty how close or remote a crisis may be. In recognition of the complex forces that drive the ecosystems of the world, the committee urges the allocation of funds for expansion of research with all deliberate speed, immediate adoption of a broad program for the acquisition of base-line data, and creation of national and international machinery for adequate monitoring of environmental parameters, including effects on the ecosystem.

The committee recognizes that the environments of open spaces as well as those of cities are endangered. In the countryside, the effects of material flows on human health are likely to be less than on the deterioration of natural habitat, degradation of the landscape, clouding of the atmosphere, and litter. As cities sprawl outward, linked by an increasingly complex network of interstate highways, prime agricultural land is preempted, reducing agricultural productivity in greater proportion than is indicated by the relative shift in land use. As a consequence of the shift in land use, use of fertilizer and other on-thefarm materials is increased without a corresponding increase in output. Within the cities, especially the megalopoles, the cumulative, often synergistic environmental impacts of materials use from automobiles, trucks, buses, power plants, factories, and heavy construction threaten human life, obliterate vegetation, and destroy many of

the amenities of urban living. The aggregation of effects in concentrated areas provoke the environmental question asked by President Nixon in his State of the Union message of 1970:

"In the next 10 years we shall increase our wealth by 50 percent. The profound question is-does this mean we will be 50 percent richer in a real sense, 50 percent better off, 50 percent happier? Or does it mean that in the year 1980 the President standing in this place will look back on a decade in which 70 percent of our people lived in metropolitan areas choked by traffic, suffocated by smog, poisoned by water, deafened by noise and terrorized by crime?"

Environmental damage not only affects the physical-biological realm but creates serious socio-economic problems as well. There is evidence that those who are poor suffer more from environmental degradation than those who are rich. Loss of environmental quality. therefore, accentuates the inequality of income distribution and aggravates the problems of poverty in the countryside as well as in the urban ghetto.

The conclusion that a materials policy can give due regard to the environment is based upon findings taken from succeeding chapters. supplemented by appreciation of the tradition of adaptability revealed by our nation's history.

While we have not yet explored the full range of adjustments of which we are capable, we know that our economic system possesses flexibility and unused capacity:

For many materials there are substitutes in each of their uses; Certain major materials such as lumber, coal, and petroleum, are available from various sources, exploitation of which imposes a range of stresses from relatively little to relatively great;

The assortment of goods and services for consumption can be changed by prudent cuts in, or shifts from, consumption of environmentally degrading goods and services to others that are less damaging:

Domestic as well as international economic impacts of environmental protective policies can be borne by adjustments in exchange rates, fiscal policies, monetary policies, trade patterns, and consumer preferences.

Present and new technologies, if properly applied and fully exploited, will go far toward relieving present environmental stress. Institutions and instruments of social control, such as taxes, prohibitions, licenses, etc., are available to implement remedial actions.

These factors permit the hope that given the attention and priority urged by the committee there is time to adopt suitable practices that are now available, and to develop others not now known before further serious shortages of materials and irreversible degradation of the

environment occur.

The presence of favorable factors does not diminish but enhances the urgency for timely action. Yet, unfortunately there are reasons to believe that we have underestimated the need for prompt action.

Mary environmental hazards are only dimly visible at this time. There is still a great deal we do not know about the interaction among materiais uses, the environment, the ecosystem, and man.

Biologically and geologicaly, as measured against the yardstick of natural processes, man has become a force to be reckoned with, not