Council on Environmental Quality

“ The concept that population pressures are a threat to the Nation's well-being and to its environment is difficult to grasp in a country which, during its formative decades, had an ever receding western frontier. That frontier ended at the Pacific many years ago. And it is at the western end of the frontier that some of the most serious problems of population growth emerge most clearly.
California continues to lure large numbers of Americans from all over the country, in large part because of its climate and its beauty. But as the people come, the pressures of population mount. ”

“ Many individuals cite selfish profit seekers for environmental degradation, rather than laying much of the blame - where it belongs - to misplaced incentives in the economic system. Progress in environmental problems is impossible without a clearer understanding of how the economic system works in the environment and what alternatives are available to take away the many roadblocks to environmental quality.
Our price system fails to take into account the environmental damage that the polluter inflicts on others. Economists call these damages - which are very real - "external social costs." ”

“ A deteriorating environment has awakened a lively curiosity in Americans about exactly what is meant by an ecosystem, biome, or the biosphere. Citizens who are now aware of environmental problems want to know the full extent of the environmental crisis and the nature of the factors that have contributed to it. They are anxious to learn what can be done to correct the mistakes that have led to the current conditions of the environment. ”

“ Today choices based on values must be made at every turn. Values can be gauged to some degree by the costs that the Nation is collectively willing to incur to protect them. Some of the costs of environmental improvements can be paid with local, State, and Federal tax money. But paying taxes and falling back on government programs is not enough. People may ultimately have to forgo some conveniences and pay higher prices for some goods and services.
Americans are just beginning to measure the magnitude of the impact of population and its distribution on their environment. ”

“ The extraordinary, growing mobility of the American people constitutes another profound threat to the environment - in at least three major ways. The physical movement of people crowds in on metropolitan centers and into recreation areas, parks and wild areas. Mobility permits people to live long distances from their places of employment stimulating ever greater urban and suburban sprawl. The machines of this mobility - particularly automobiles and aircraft - themselves generate noise, air pollution, highways, and airports - all in their way affecting the environment. ”

“ The growth of the economy has been marked not just by greater production but also by an accelerating pace of technological innovation. This innovation, although it has provided new solutions to environmental problems, has also created a vast range of new problems. New chemicals, new uses for metals, new means of transportation, novel consumer goods, new medical techniques, and new industrial processes all represent potential hazards to man and his surroundings. The pace of technological innovation has exceeded our scientific and regulatory ability to control its injurious side effects. ”

“ The pressures that cause environmental problems that the Nation now confronts - water and air pollution and inefficient land use - will only increase.
Population growth threatens the Nation's store of natural resources. Currently the United States, with about 6 percent of the world's population, uses more than 40 percent of the world's scarce or nonreplaceable resources and a like ratio of its energy output. Assuming a fixed or nearly fixed resource base, continued population growth embodies profound implications for the United States and for the world. ”

“ Although pollution may be the most prominent and immediately pressing environmental concern, it is only one facet of the many-sided environmental problem. It is a highly visible, sometimes dangerous sign of environmental deterioration. Pollution occurs when materials accumulate where they are not wanted. Overburdened natural processes cannot quickly adjust to the heavy load of materials which man, or sometimes nature, adds to them. Pollution threatens natural systems, human health, and aesthetic sensibilities; it often represents valuable resources out of place. ”

“ When the Governor's Conference on California's Changing Environment met last fall, it agreed that there was now a need "to deemphasize growth as a social goal and, rather, to encourage development within an ideal and quality environment."
The magnitude of the press of population, although significant, must be put in perspective. This is a vast country, and its potential for assimilating population is impressive, although there is disagreement over what level of population would be optimum. ”

“ In its early days, the conservation movement aimed primarily at stemming the exploitation of natural resources and preserving wildlife and important natural areas. By the 1950's, Federal air and water pollution laws had been enacted, and the pace of environmental legislation quickened dramatically in the decade of the 1960's. Now the conservation movement has broadened to embrace concern for the totality of man's environment, focusing on pollution, population, ecology, and the urban environment. ”

“ The earth, its surrounding enveloe of life-giving water and air, and all its living things comprise the biosphere. Finally, man's total environmental system includes not only the biosphere but also his interactions with his natural and manmade surroundings. ”

“ To attack water pollution effectively may require establishing new river basin authorities or state-wide basin agencies with the power to construct, operate, and assess for treatment facilities.
Public decisions, like private decisions, suffer from the inadequate balancing of short-run economic choices against long-term environmental protection. There is a nearly irresistible pressure on local government to develop land in order to increase jobs and extend the tax base - even if the land is valuable open space or an irreplaceable marsh. ”

“ The major environmental problems of today began with the Industrial Revolution. Belching smoke from factory stacks and the dumping of raw industrial wastes into rivers became the readily identified, but generally ignored hallmarks of "progress" and production. They are no longer ignored, but the extraordinary growth of the American economy continues to outpace the efforts to deal with its unwanted by-products. ”

“ This same problem, which seemed unique to Los Angeles in teh 1950s is today common to major cities in the United States and abroad. Smog is but one of the many types of air pollution that plague the United States, especially its cities.
Urban land misuse is one of today's most severe environmental problems. The character of our urban areas changes rapidly. Old buildings and neighborhoods are razed and replaced by structures designed with little or not eye for their fitness to the community's needs. A jumble of suburban developments sprawls over the landscape. ”

“ Historically, man has assumed that the land, water, and air around him would absorb his waste products. The ocean, the atmosphere, and even the earth were viewed as receptacles of infinite capacity. It is clear now that man may be exceeding nature's capacity to assimilate his wastes.
Most pollutants eventually decompose and diffuse throughout the environment. When organic substances are discarded, they are attacked by bacteria and decompose through oxidation. They simply rot. ”

“ They reflect the ability of one entity, e.g., a company, to use water or air as a free resource for waste disposal, while others pay the cost in contaminated air or water. If there were a way to make the price structure shoulder these external costs - taxing the firm for the amount of discharge, for instance - then the price for the goods and services produced would reflect these costs. Failing this, goods whose production spawn pollution are greatly underpriced because the purchaser does not pay for pollution abatement that would prevent environment damage. ”

“ The development that generates economic benefits in a town upstream may create pollution and loss of recreation in a town downstream.
Sometimes people persist in actions which cause environmental damage because they do not know that they are causing it. Construction of dams, extensive paving of land surfaces, and filling of estuaries for industrial development have in many cases been carried out with incomplete or wrong information about the extent of the impact on the environment. ”

“ Changes in ecosystems occur continuously. Myriad interactions take place at every moment of the day as plants and animals respond to variations in their surroundings and to each other. Evolution has produced for each species, including man, a genetic composition that limits how far that species can go in adjusting to sudden changes in its surroundings. But within these limits the several thousand species in an ecosystem, or for that matter, the millions in the biosphere, continuously adjust to outside stimuli. Since interactions are so numerous, they form long chains of reactions. ”

“ The speed of change in a rapidly altering technological society and the complex causes of many environmental health problems produce major uncertainty about what environmental changes can do to human well-being. Nevertheless, it is clear that today's environment has a large and adverse impact on the physical and emotional health of an increasing number of Americans.
Air pollution has been studied closely for the past 10 years, and its tie to emphysema and chronic bronchitis is becoming more evident. ”

“ Unlimited access to wilderness areas may transform such areas into simply another extension of our urban, industrialized civilization. The unending summer flow of automobiles into Yosemite National Park has changed one of nature's great wilderness areas into a crowded gathering place of lessened value to its visitors. ”

“ Planners and managers must begin to appreciate the enormous interrelated complexity of environmental systems, weigh the tradeoffs of potential environmental harm against the benefits of construction, look at alternatives, and incorporate environmental safeguards into the basic design of new developments.
The stability of a particular ecosystem depends on its diversity. The more inter-dependencies in an ecosystem, the greater the chances that it will be able to compensate for changes imposed upon it. ”

“ Natural resource depletion is a particular environmental concern to a highly technological society which depends upon resources for energy, building materials, and recreation. And the methods of exploiting resources often create problems that are greater than the value of the resources themselves. ”

“ In the short run, much can be done to reverse the deadly downward spiral in environmental quality. Citizens, industries, and all levels of government have already begun to act in ways which will improve environmental quality. ”

“ The economic costs of pollution are massive - billions of dollars annually. Paint deteriorates faster, cleaning bills are higher, and air filtering systems become necessary. Direct costs to city dwellers can be measured in additional household maintenance, cleaning, and medical bills. Air pollution causes the housewife to do her laundry more often. The farmer's crop yield is reduced or destroyed. Water pollution prevents swimming, boating, fishing, and other recreational and commercial activities, highly valued in today's world. ”

“ Most government agencies charged with solving environmental problems were not originally designed to deal with the severe tasks they now face. And their focus is often too narrow to cope with the broad environmental problems that cut across many jurisdictions. Agencies dealing with water pollution, for example, typically do not have jurisdiction over the geographic problem area - the watersheds. ”

“ The least stable systems are the single crops - called monocultures - created by man. A cornfield or lawn has little natural stability. If they are not constantly and carefully cultivated, they will not remain cornfields or lawns but will soon be overgrown with a wide variety of hardier plants constituting a more stable ecosystem.
The chemical elements that make up living systems also depend on complex, diverse sources to prevent cyclic shortages or oversupply. The oxygen cycle, which is crucial to survival, depends upon a vast variety of green plants notably plankton in the ocean. ”

“ Vast natural systems may be severely damaged by the improvident intervention of man. The great Dust Bowl of the 1930's was born in the overuse of land resources. Many estuarine areas have been altered and their ecology permanently changed. On a global scale, air pollution could trigger large-scale climatic changes. Man may also be changing the forces in the atmosphere through deforestation, urban construction, and the spilling of oil on ocean waters. ”

“ The public has begun to realize the interrelationship of all living things - including man - with the environment. The Santa Barbara oil spill in early 1969 showed an entire nation how one accident could temporarily blight a large area. ”