CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS// 857
,
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.
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.