Eco Science - Two - Involuntary Infertility & Sterilants in Water

786 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT

large, relatively untapped pool of intellectual and tech-nical talent; tapping that pool effectively could helpreduce population growth and also would provide manyother direct benefits to any society.

Social pressures on both men and women to marry anoLhave children must be removed. As former Secretary of_Tptprjnr Stewart Udall observed, "All lives are notenhanced by marital union; parenthood is not necessarilya fulfillment for every married couple."98 If society wereconvinced of the need for low birth rates, no doubt thestigma that has customarily been assigned to bachelors,spinsters, and childless couples would soon disappear.But alternative lifestyles should be open to single people,and perhaps the institution of an informal, easily dis-solved "marriage" for the childless is one possibility.Indeed, many DC societies now seem to be evolving inthis direction as women's liberation gains momentum."It is possible that fully developed societies may producesuch arrangements naturally, and their association withlower fertility is becoming increasingly clear. In LDCs achildless or single lifestyle might be encouraged deliber-ately as the status of women approaches parity with thatof men.

Although free and easy association of the sexes mightbe tolerated in such a society, responsible parenthoodought to be encouraged and illegitimate childbearingcould be strongly discouraged. One way to carry out thisdisapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babiesbe put up for adoption—especially those born to minors,who generally are not capable of caring properly for achild alone.100 If a single mother really wished to keepher baby, she might be obliged to go through adoptionproceedings and demonstrate her ability to support andcare for it. Adoption proceedings probably should re-main more difficult for single people than for marriedcouples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raisingchildren alone. It would even be possible to require

**&1976: Agenda for tomorrow.99 Judith Blake, The changing status of women in developed countries;

E. Peck and J. Senderowitz (eds.), Pronatalism, tlie niyth of mom and applepie; Ellen Peck, The baby trap.

100The tragedy of teenage single mothers in the U.S. is described byLeslie Aldridge Westoff in Kids with kids. The adverse health and socialeffects of teenage child-bearing in an affluent society have recently beendocumented by several studies. One good sample can be found in a specialissue of Family planning perspectives, Teenagers, USA.

pregnant single women to marry or have abortperhaps as an alternative to placement for adopticr..depending on the society.

Somewhat more repressive measures for discouraginglarge families have also been proposed, such as assigningpublic housing without regard for family size andremoving dependency allowances from student grants atmilitary pay. Some of these have been implemented u:crowded Singapore, whose population program has beencounted as one of the most successful.

All socioeconomic measures are derived from knowl-edge of social conditions that have been associated withlow birth rates in the past. The more repressive sugges-tions are based on observations that people have volun-tarily controlled their reproduction most stringentlyduring periods of great social and economic stress andinsecurity, such as the Depression of the 1930s.101 In asense, all such proposals are shots in the dark. Notenough is known about fertility motivation to predict theeffectiveness of such policies. Studies by demographerJudith Blake102 and by economist Alan Sweezy103 forinstance, have cast serious doubt on the belief thateconomic considerations are of the greatest importance indetermining fertility trends. Sweezy has shown that thedecline of fertility in the 1930s in the United States wasmerely a continuation of an earlier trend. If their viewsare correct, then severely repressive economic measuresmight prove to be both ineffective and unnecessary as avehicle for population control, as well as sociallyundesirable. At the very least, they should be consideredonly if milder measures fail completely.

Involuntary Fertility Control

The third approach to population limitation is that ofinvoluntary fertility control. Several coercive proposalsdeserve discussion, mainly because some countries mayultimately have to resort to them unless current trends inbirth rates are rapidly reversed by other means.104 Some

""Richard A. Easterlin, Population, labor force, and long swings ineconomic growth. Further discussion of Easterlin's ideas can be found inDeborah Freedman, ed., Fertility, aspirations and resources: A sympo-sium on the Easterlin hypothesis.

102Are babies consumer durables? and Reproductive motivation.""The economic explanation of fertility changes in the U.S.104Edgar R. Chasteen, The case for compulsory birth control.

I

involuntary measures could be less repressive or dis-criminatory, in fact, than some of the socioeconomicmeasures suggested.

In the 1960s it was proposed to vasectomize all fathersof three or more children in India. The proposal wasdefeated then not only on moral grounds but on practicalones as well; there simply were not enough medicalpersonnel available even to start on the eligible candi-dates, let alone to deal with the new recruits added eachday! Massive assistance from the developed world in theform of medical and paramedical personnel and/or atraining program for local people nevertheless mighthave put the policy within the realm of possibility. Indiain the mid-1970s not only entertained the idea of com-pulsory sterilization, but moved toward implementingit, perhaps fearing that famine, war, or disease mightotherwise take the problem out of its hands. This deci-sion was greeted with dismay abroad, but Indira Gandhi'sgovernment felt it had little other choice. There is toolittle time left to experiment further with educationalprograms and hope that social change will generate aspontaneous fertility decline, and most of the Indianpopulation is too poor for direct economic pressures(especially penalties) to be effective.

A program of sterilizing women after their second orthird child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of theoperation than vasectomy, might be easier to implementthan trying to sterilize men. This of course would befeasible only in countries where the majority of births aremedically assisted. Unfortunately, such a programtherefore is not practical for most less developed coun-tries (although in China mothers of three children arecommonly "expected" to undergo sterilization).

The development of a long-term sterilizing capsulethat could be implanted under the skin and removedwhen pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilitiesfor coercive fertility control. The capsule could beimplanted at puberty and might be removable, withofficial permission, for a limited number of births. Nocapsule that would last that long (30 years or more) hasyet been developed, but it is technically within the realmof possibility.

Various approaches to administering such a systemhave been offered, including one by economist Kenneth

POPULATION POLICIES / 787

Boulding.105 His proposal was to issue to each woman atmaturity a marketable license that would entitle her to agiven number of children—say, 2.2 in order to have anNRR = 1. Under such a system the number could be twoif the society desired to reduce the population size slowly.To maintain a steady size, some couples might beallowed to have a third child if they purchased "deci-child" units from the government or from other womenwho had decided not to have their full allotments ofchildren or who found they had a greater need for themoney. Others have elaborated on Boulding's idea,discussing possible ways of regulating the license schemeand alternative ways of alloting the third children.106

One such idea is that permission to have a third childmight be granted to a limited number of couples bylottery. This system would allow governments to regu-late more or less exactly the number of births over a givenperiod of time.

Social scientist David Heer has compared the socialeffects of marketable license schemes with some of themore repressive economic incentives that have beenproposed and with straightforward quota systems.107 Hisconclusions are shown in Table 13-5.

Of course, a government might require only implan- \tation of the contraceptive capsule, leaving its removal tothe individual's discretion but requiring reimplantationafter childbirth^ Since having a child would requirepositive action (removal of the capsule), many morebirths would be prevented than in the reverse situation.Certainly unwanted births and the problem of abortionwould both be entirely avoided. The disadvantages(apart from the obvious moral objections) include thequestionable desirability of keeping the entire femalepopulation on a continuous steroid dosage with thecontingent health risks, and the logistics of implantingcapsules in 50 percent of the population between the agesof 15 and 50.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is asuggestion that seems to horrify people more than mostproposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this

I057°fe meaning of the 20lh century, pp. 135-136.""Bruce M. Russert. Licensing: for cars and babies; David M. Heer,

Marketing licenses for babies; Boulding's proposal revisited.107Ibid.

J

TABLE 13-5Evaluation of Some Relatively Coercive Measures for Fertility Reduction

Effect

Restriction onindividualliberty

Effect on qualityof children'sfinancialsupport

Effectiveness andacceptability ofenforcementmechanisms

Effectiveness forpreciseregulation ofthe birth rate

Marketable license systems

Boulding proposalfor baby licenses

Moderately severe

Probablybeneficial

Effectiveenforcement atpossible priceof deprivingsome childrenof a familyenvironment

Moderate

CBqby licenses^that may be sold \or lent at interestto the government

Moderately severe

Probablybeneficial


High

___ __ Financialjtueutwe^ystems

./Monthly subsidy\to persons jj

V vi ith no more than I\^ two children _x

Moderately severe

Unknown

Fairly effectiveenforcement

Low

C Monthly tex\on persons \

with more than Itwo children^/

Moderately severe

Unknown

Fairly effectiveenforcement

Low

/" ~\f One-time tax \1 for excess babies J\_ over two /

Moderately severe

Probablybeneficial


Low

Quota systems

Identical quotafor all couples

Very severe

Slightly beneficial


Moderate

Source: Adapted from David Heer, Marketing licenses.

would pose some very difficult political, legal, and socialquestions, to say nothing of the technical problems. Nosuch sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to beunder development. To be acceptable, such a substancewould have to meet some rather stiff requirements: itmust be uniformly effective, despite \videly varyingdoses received by individuals, and despite varying de-grees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; itmust be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; andit must have no effect on members of the opposite sex,children, old people, pets, or livestock.

Physiologist Melvin Ketchel, of the Tufts UniversitySchool of Medicine, suggested that a sterilant could bedeveloped that would have a very specific action—forexample, preventing implantation of the fertilizedovum.108 He proposed that it be used to reduce fertilitylevels by adjustable amounts, anywhere from 5 to 75percent, rather than to sterilize the whole populationcompletely. In this way, fertility could be adjusted fromtime to time to meet a society's changing needs, and therewould be no need to provide an antidote. Contraceptiveswould still be needed for couples who were highly

""Fertility control agents as a possible solution to the world popula-tion problem, pp. 687-703.

motivated to have small families. Subfertile and func-tionally sterile couples who strongly desired childrenwould be medically assisted, as they are now, or en-couraged to adopt. Again, there is no sign of such anagent on the horizon. And the risk of serious, unforeseenside effects would, in our opinion, militate against the useof any such agent, even though this plan has theadvantage of avoiding the need for socioeconomic pres-sures that might tend to discriminate against particulargroups or penalize children.

Most of the population control measures beyondfamily planning discussed above have never been tried.Some are as yet technically impossible and others are andprobably will remain unacceptable to most societies(although, of course, the potential effectiveness of thoseleast acceptable measures may be great).

Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatableidea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying.As those alternatives become clearer to an increasingnumber of people in the 1980s, they may begin demand-ing such control. A far better choice, in our view, is toexpand the use of milder methods of influencing familysize preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure thatthe means of birth control, including abortion and


existing institutions; there is neither the time nor theleadership to dismantle them completely and replacethem with others. Today's institutions must be bent andreshaped but not destroyed.

No one is more acutely aware than we are of thedifficulties and hazards of trying to criticize and com-ment constructively on such broad areas as religion,education, economics, legal and political systems, and thepsychology of individuals and societies. We believe,

however, that in order for people to translate intoeffective and constructive political action what is nowknown about the roots of the crisis, new, far-reaching andpositive programs must be undertaken immediately.

In this chapter and the next, we therefore depart fromthe realm of relatively hard data in the physical, biologi-cal, and social sciences to embark on an exploration of themany other areas of human endeavor that are criticallyimportant to a solution of our problems.' In doing so weare making the assumption that many reforms areessential. The dangers of making the opposite assump-tion are beautifully set forth in the following quotationfrom biologist Garrett Hardin's article, "The Tragedy ofthe Commons":

It is one of the peculiarities of the warfare betweenreform and the status quo that it is thoughtlesslygoverned by a double standard. Whenever a reformmeasure is proposed it is often defeated when itsopponents triumphantly discover a flaw in it. AsKingsley Davis has pointed out, worshippers of thestatus quo sometimes imply that no reform is possiblewithout unanimous agreement, an implication con-trary to historical fact. As nearly as I can make out,automatic rejection of proposed reforms is based onone of two unconscious assumptions: (i) that the statusquo is perfect; or (ii) that the choice we face is betweenreform and no action; if the proposed reform isimperfect, we presumably should take no action at all,while we wait for a perfect proposal.

But we can never do nothing. That which we havedone for thousands of }'ears is also action. It alsoproduces evils. Once we are aware that the status quo isaction, we can then compare its discoverable advan-

tages and disadvantages with the predicted advantagesand disadvantages of the proposed reform, discountingas best we can for our lack of experience. On the basisof such a comparison, we can make a rational decisionwhich will not involve the unworkable assumptionthat only perfect systems are tolerable.

RELIGION

Religion, broadly denned, would include all the beliefsystems that allow Homo sapiens to achieve a sense oftranscendence of self and a sense of the possession of aright and proper place in the universe and a right andproper way of life. In short, everyone wants to feelimportant and in tune with a right-ordered world. Theattempt to achieve a sense of well-being in these terms isso pervasive among human cultures that it may becounted as a necessity of human life. With religion sobroadly denned, political parties, labor unions, nationstates, academic disciplines, and the organized structureof the environment-ecology movement would have to becounted among our religious institutions. Certainly, trepresentatives of all those groups have struggled toprotect and propagate their views as assiduously (andsometimes as fiercely) in our time as Genghis Khan, theChristian Crusaders, or the Protestant Christian mis-sionaries did in theirs. In this discussion, however, welimit our attention to those groups customarily called theworld's_great religions, the traditions of belief andpractice belonging to members of the Tudeo-Christian.Moslem, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions.

Religion must always be viewed in its two parts: thefirst and more readily evident element being the formalstructure of authority and administration that in ourWestern tradition is called "the church;" and the second,more elusive, and in the long run more importantelement, the system of attitudes called, in the Western.manner, "die faith," In our treatment of the two parts, weconcentrate upon the relationship between organi/.pH

'Many of these topics are treated in greater depth in Dennis C. Piragesand Paul R. Ehrlich. Ark II:.SodaI response to environmental imperatives;its footnotes and bibliographies provide further access to the pertinentliterature, especially in political science.

religion and population control because that is the areawhere contemporary social needs and imperatives havemost clearly come into conflict with cherished traditionalvalues usually promulgated and supported by religions.Moreover, humane population control calls for the

CHANGING AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS / 807

integration of contraceptive techniques into culturallyaccepted sexual practices, and sexual practice is the areaof human activity that is typically most extensivelyregulated by taboo. Thus, the acceptance or rejection ofbirth control and various methods of carrying it out havebeen important issues in organized Western religion forseveral decades.

Our treatment of religious attitudes also focuses uponperceptions of the environment, because how an indi-vidual perceives and treats the world is determined by hisor her overall view of his or her place in that world. TheChristian concept of life in this world, as voiced by SaintPaul, that "here we have no abiding city," for example,conceivably could help explain why some people showrather little concern for the long-term future of the globalenvironment or for the well-being of future generations.

Most of our attention is on the Western. Judeo-..Christian religious tradition because it is primarilywithin that tradition that the population-resource-environment crisis has been engendered.

Organized Religious Groupsand Population Control

Within the theological community in the Westernworld, there has recently been a heartening revolution inthought and action on such varied social concerns as thequality of life in urban areas, civil rights for minoritygroups, and the war in Vietnam. Since the late 1960s,environmental deterioration and the population explo-sion have become important concerns. Protestant, Cath-olic, and Jewish clergy have come more and more to the_^forefront of public activities in these areas, often atconsiderable personal sacrifice and risk.

Conspicuous among clergy who have risked theircareers have been Catholic theologians who opposed theofficial pronatalist position of the Vatican. For example,Father John A. O'Brien, a distinguished professor oftheology at Notre Dame University in Indiana, edited theexcellent book Family planning in an exploding popula-tion in 1968,. He also was a leader in criticizing Pope PaulVFs 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which reiteratedthe church's condemnation of contraceptives. Com-menting on the encyclical, Father O'Brien wrote, "Since

the decision is bound to be reversed by his [Pope Paul's]successor, it would be far more honorable, proper andjust for the Pope to rescind it himself."2 Ivan Illich, who_renounced his priesthood after a contrnversy nv^r birth-control in Puerto Rico^ wrote that the encyclical "lackscourage, is in bad taste, and takes the initiative away fromRome in the attempt to lead modern man in Christianhumanism."3 Thousands of others, from cardinals to laypeople, have also spoken out. Since its publication, theencyclical has caused immense anguish among Catholics,millions of whom have followed their consciences andused contraceptives, often after a period of intensesoul-searching.4 Indeed, clergyman sociologist FatherAndrew7 Greeley attributes the recent substantial erosionin religious practices and church support among Ameri-can Catholics almost entirely to Humanae Vitae. 5

Adamant opposition to birth control by the RomanCatholic Church and other conservative religious groupsfor many years helped delay the reversal in developedcountries (including the United States) of laws restrictingaccess to contraceptives and the extension of family-planning assistance to LDCs. Support of outdated dogmaamong Catholic spokespeople still sometimes hinderseffective attacks on the population problem in Catholiccountries and in international agencies that supportfamily-planning programs. Thus, as late as 1969, elderlyCatholic economist Colin Clark claimed on a televisionprogram that India would, in a decade, be the mostpowerful country in the world because of its growingpopulation! He also wrote, "Population growth, howeverstrange and unwelcome some of its consequences mayappear at the time, must be regarded, I think, as one ofthe instruments of Divine Providence, which we shouldwelcome, not oppose."6

By the mid-1970s, however, the influence of suchpersons was on the wane— so much so that a reaffirma-tion by Pope Paul of his anti-population-contrn], dngrna,at the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome vyas greetedby almost universal ridicule. Within the church, Pope

-Reader's Digest, January 1969.'Celebration oj aizartness.*F. X. Murphy and J. F. Erhart, Catholic perspectives on population

issues.. Population Bulletin, vol. 30 (1975), no. 6.^Catholic schools in a declining church, Sheed & Ward, Mission,

Kans., 1976.6'Los Angelas Times, November 9, 1969.

about the disappearance of public land and the con-sequent disappearance of the frontier, Frederick JacksonTurner, then at the University of Wisconsin and sub-sequently at Harvard, observed:

American social development has been continuallybeginning over again on the frontier. This perennialrebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansionwestward with its new opportunities . . . furnish theforces dominating American character.14

A generation earlier, E. L. Godkin, editor of theNation, had written that the American frontier popula-tion had "spread itself thinly over a vast area of soil, ofsuch extraordinary fertility that a very slight amount oftoil expended on it affords returns that might havesatisfied even the dreams of Spanish avarice."15

Traditional North American (and, to some extent,European) attitudes toward the environment thus are notexclusively products of our religious heritage, althoughthat doubtless played an important part. These attitudesmay just spring from ordinary human nature, which inWestern culture was provided with extraordinary social,political, technical, and physical opportunities, particu-larly connected with the nineteenth-century Americanfrontier. Such opportunities were bound to engenderoptimism, confidence in the future, and faith in theabundance of resources and the bounty of nature. Thatthey also produced habits of wastefulness and profligacywas not noticed. Past institutions in the United States,rarely dealt with environmental problems; if they wererecognized at all, they were usually considered to besomeone else's responsibility.

In the twentieth century, as the growing populationbecame increasingly urban and industrialized, the en-^vironmental effects multiplied, and the nation was rathersuddenly confronted with a crisis. How today's Ameri-cans ultimately resolve the environmental crisis willdepend on much more than changes in philosophicaloutlook, but such changes unquestionably must precedeor at least accompany whatever measures are taken.Individual conduct is clearly capable of being modifiedand directed by an appropriate social environment—the


change in reproductive habits in the United Statestestifies to that, as does the great increase in environ-mental consciousness, t Tnfnrrunately. the e,pvirrmmentalproblem may prove more difficult because it requireschanging more than the attitudes and behavior of indi-viduals: those of firmly established, powerful institu-tions— primaril business and governmental organiza-tions— must hp

How large a role organized religion may play inguiding the needed changes in individual attitudestoward the environment or in influencing the behavior of _other institutions is still uncertain. Many religiousgroups have already shown leadership, including somealready mentioned in connection with population-related issues. A particularly hopeful sign was the_concern expressed in January 1976 by the National-Council of Churches about the ethics of using and .spreading the technology of nuclear power, and thediscussion promoted by the World Council of Churchesôn_the mirier ijjgiigjn,^Lnrlrhp relation of energy policy _to the prospects for adjust and sustainable^ world.16

Ecological Ethics

Many persons believe that an entirely new philosophymust now be developed—one based on ecological reali-ties. Such a philosophy—and the ethics based uponit—would be antihumanist and against Judeo-Christiantradition in the sense that it would not focus on ananthropocentric universe.17 Instead, it would focus onhuman beings as an integral part of nature, as just onepart of a much more comprehensive system.

This is not really a new perspective. In one sense,Western philosophy has been a continuous attempt toestablish the position of Homo sapiens in the universe,and the extreme anthropocentrism of thinkers like KarlMarx and John Dewey has been strongly attacked by,among others, Bertrand Russell.18 Russell, for example,

14The significance of the frontier in American history, in The earlywritings of Frederick Jackson Turner, ed- F. J. Turner.

1'Aristocratic opinions of democracy.

1 'See The plutonium economy: A statement of concern, Bulletin of theAtomic Scientists, January 1976, pp. 48—49; P. M. Boffey, Plutonium: itsmorality questioned by National Council of Churches, Science, vol. 192,pp. 356—359 (April 23, 1976); Paul Abrecht, ed., Facing up to nuclearpower. Anticipation, no. 21, October 1975, pp. 1-47.

17See Frank E. Egler, The zcay of science: A philosophy of ecology for thelayman; and George S. Sessions, Anthropocentrism and the environmen-tal crisis. The latter is a good, brief summary with a useful bibliography.

1BA hiswry of Wesiem philosophyj the debate is summarized in Sessions,Anthropocentrism.


and Donald Lunde, which has enjoyed great success as acollege text and is highly recommended for any adoles-cent or adult who wants to understand his or hersexuality.

The Brain Drain

Our educational system is failing to produce not onlythose competent to teach sex education, but also theecologists, agricultural scientists and technicians, socialscientists, paramedical personnel, and various otherspecialists needed to help solve the pressing problems ofthe world—especially in the less developed countries.Indeed, for decades there has been a brain drain. Trainedpersonnel from the LDCs, especially medical doctors,are understandably attracted to the United States andother DCs, where they can earn a good living. Ironically,this often happens because, despite their great needs fortrained people, LDCs may have no jobs for them. Thatmany individuals from the LDCs who are educated inthe DCs do not wish to return to their homelands is evensadder. Although some DCs, notably the Soviet Union,virtually force a return to the homeland, most do not.One relatively simple and humane solution would be forthe DCs to establish and help staff more training centers•within the LDCs. This should have the additional ben-efits of training local people to work on problems of localsignificance and of familiarizing visiting faculty mem-bers from the DCs with those problems.

Changing the Educational Structure

While a great deal can be done to improve theeducational system within the general framework nowrecognized, more fundamental changes will probably berequired if large technological societies are to discoverways to govern themselves satisfactorily while solving orpreventing the social and environmental problems thatnow threaten to destroy them. Ivan Illich has suggestedthe abolition of formal education and the making ofeducational materials and institutions available to all on acafeteria basis.52 To those struggling in the presentsystem, the idea has considerable appeal; but even Illich

recognizes the enormous drawbacks inherent in such anunstructured approach.

We would suggest another strategy, one that expandson ideas already current in education. First of all, wethink that a major effort should be made to extendeducation throughout the life span, rather than attempt-ing to cram all education into the first fifteen to twenty-five years. It is becoming widely recognized that maturityand experience are often a benefit in learning. Studentswho have dropped out, worked, and then returned toschool generally do so with renewed vigor and increasedperformance. Experience in the real world can leadstudents to avoid much wasted effort in the educationalworld. A program of encouraging interruption of educa-tion, perhaps for one or two years during or directly afterhigh school and another two years after receiving anundergraduate degree might be a good start. For exam-ple, a student interested in becoming a physician mightspend two years after high school doing clerical work in ahospital or doctor's office or serving as an orderly. Whenhis or her undergraduate education was completed, twoadditional years could be spent working with a doctor asa paramedic. Similarly, individuals going into business,government, science, bricklaying, plumbing, or what-have-you should have a chance to try out their chosenprofessions and trades at the bottom before completingtheir educations."

The benefits of the program would be many, includingbetter understanding of the problems faced by associates(a doctor who has been an orderly should have moreinsight into the situation of the orderlies), and fewer casesof people committing themselves to careers too early,with too little knowledge of what the commitmentinvolves, and discovering the error too late to makeanother choice. Students who, on completing highschool, were unsure of what their futures should be,could try out several possibilities.

What about youngsters who have no desire to gobeyond high school or vocational school? Should theireducations end at that point? In the United States, forinstance, nearly 1 adult in 5 reportedly lacks "those skillsand knowledges which are requisite to adult compe-

''-Deschooling society.

"For a more detailed discussion of restructuring our educationalsystem, see Dennis C. Pirages and Paul R. Ehrlich, Ark II: Social responseto environmental imperatives, chapter 6.


tence."54 We believe that a technological society, espe-cially a democracy, cannot afford such a large proportionof poorly educated citizens.

Every citizen should be drawn into the problems ofsocietal decision-making. We would suggest that allpeople be required to take sabbatical leaves every seventhyear, which could be financed in various ways dependingon the choice of activity (this and the employment"problems" created by such a program are consideredunder "Economic and Political Change"). Each personwould be required to spend the year bettering society andhimself or herself in a way approved by the individual'simmediate colleagues, A physician might petition his orher county medical society for permission to study newsurgical techniques or anthropology. A garbage collectormight petition coworkers to permit him or her to take ayear's course in sanitary engineering or recycling tech-niques at a university. A secretary might apply to thegovernment for a grant to spend a sabbatical serving onan ad hoc citizens' committee to evaluate the direction ofresearch in high-energy physics. A business executivemight apply for one of the open sabbatical chairs thatcould be established on the city council (as well as in allother legislative bodies). A flight instructor might per-suade the local pilot's association to appoint him or her toone of the exchange positions in the local FederalAviation Administration office, with an FAA counterpartbeing required (if qualified) to take over the instructor'sjob for a year. All bureaucrats should be required to takesome of their sabbaticals as nongovernmental workers inthe areas they administer and all professors to take someof theirs outside the groves of academe —or at leastoutside their own fields.

The details of such a program would be complicated,but its benefits, we believe, would far outweigh its costs.A growing rigidity of roles in our society must be broken,and virtually everyone must be brought into its deci-sion-making processes. Indeed, the discontent expressedtoday by many groups is based on their feeling of beingcut off from participation in important decisions thataffect their lives.

Some moves in dus general direction have been madein the People's Republic of China, where city people and

54Based on a U.S. Office of Education study, reported in Time,November 10, 1975, p. 6.

academics have been forced to join rural communes andparticipate in completely different work from what theyhad done before. It would be interesting to know whatsuccess the Chinese have had. We would certainly notadvocate forcing people to change their occupationsagainst their wishes, any more than we would advocateadopting the Chinese communist system of government.But the basic idea behind this policy seems valuable, andan adaptation of it that fit our political system might wellbe worth exploring.

As an example of how citizen participation in politicaldecision-making can work, a group of scientists led byecologist C. S. Holling at the University of BritishColumbia have involved local businessmen, politicians,and private citizens in a computer simulation of aprospective development project, as an experiment in theresults of citizen decision-making.55 Everyone contrib-uted to the assumptions of the model, and all weresatisfied with the model created. Then various peoplewere allowed to try out their pet development plans onthe model. When a politician found that his or her planled to environmental disaster, the politician had toacknowledge the error. The politician could not blamethe model because he or she had been involved inbuilding what was believed to be a realistic one.

We believe that it is possible, at least in theory, to getaway from a we-they system of running the country, togive everyone a chance to participate. Grave problemswould unquestionably accompany the attempt, but sincewe are both morally committed to some form of democ-racy and intellectually convinced that the present systemis both undemocratic and lethally ineffectual, we see nochoice but to trv a change.

THE LEGAL SYSTEM

Perhaps the greatest potential for reversing environmen-tal deterioration in the United States and for bringing ourpopulation growth under control lies in the effectiveutilization of our legal system.56 A law may be defined as

'^Personal communication.56Much of this section is based on discussions with attorney Johnson C.

Montgomery, whose death in December 1974 was a loss deeply felt bvpeople in the ZPG movement.


framework of existing laws and the agencies that admin-ister them. In some sense the easiest route to improve-ments in environmental protection would seem to bethe passage of more comprehensive controls and theestablishment of streamlined procedures for administer-ing them. Almost certainly, the courts would have noconstitutional objections to any reasonable legislativelimitations on the activities of polluting industries—forexample, requirements that effluents be purified, re-duced, or eliminated. The courts could even sustainstatutes that would put certain corporations out ofbusiness.

There are two major difficulties in getting effectivelegislative action. First is the notion that if a highergovernment authority (for example, the United StatesCongress) enacts a law regulating a certain activity, itmay have preempted the field so that a lesser governmentauthority (for example, a state) cannot enact legislationdealing with the same subject. This has led the tobaccoand automobile industries to push for federal regula-tion in order to avoid the enactment of possibly more-restrictive state laws. Inconsistencies in laws of differentjurisdictions create a problem for industry, and there isno easy answer. A national economy does require na-tional standards; it would be extremely difficult for theautomobile manufacturers to satisfy fifty different statu-tory schemes to regulate automobile pollution. Yet somelocal problems are so severe that they require moredrastic solutions than need be applied to the country atlarge. Thus California (and only California) is permittedtougher automobile emission standards than those es-tablished by the Environmental Protection Agency forthe rest of the nation.

The second difficulty with legislative action is thatlegislators are often not cognizant of new problems, andsome are notoriously at the beck and call of establishedpressure groups, such as the automobile manufacturersand the oil industry. Furthermore, in those situationswhere a legislature has taken action, the action hasgenerally consisted of setting up regulatory agencies likethe Food and Drug Administration, the Federal TradeCommission, or the Federal Communications Commis-sion. Such agencies in time have tended to becomedominated by the industries they are intended to regu-late—ultimately the foxes wind up minding the

chickens.61 Nevertheless, as public pressure has grown,the public has already seen and can expect to see moreresults from legislation and from regulatory agenciesthan it has in the past.

In the early 1970s steps were taken in the United Statestoward placing stricter controls on the release of pollut-ants into air and water. The Clean Air Act (as amended in1970) and the Federal Water Pollution Control Actamendments (1972) set national pollution standards forair and water.62 As we discussed in Chapter 11, however,it was clear by the mid-1970s that the high expectationsof environmentalists were not to be realized—at least notas rapidly as they had hoped. There remains a need forestablishing and implementing a nationwide (to saynothing of worldwide) program drastically limitingemissions of harmful materials from industry, automo-biles, homes, and other sources.

National Environmental Policy Act. A majorlandmark in the fight for environmental quality in theUnited States was the passage of the National Environ-mental Policy Act (familiarly known as NEPA)63, whichbecame law on January 1,1970. The bill was modeled inlarge part after the Employment Act of 1946, which"declared a responsibility in the Federal Government tomaintain a prosperous and stable national economy."64

In a similar vein, NEPA declared a responsibility in thefederal government to restore and maintain environ-mental quality.

NEPA created in the Executive Office of the Presidenta three-member Council on Environmental Quality(CEQ), which was charged with assisting and advisingthe president in the preparation of the annual Environ-mental Quality Report and with carrying out a number ofother survey and advisory capacities for monitoring thequality of the environment and the influence of govern-ment agencies and actions on it.

6!For a fascinating description of industry-government "cooperation"on air pollution, see J. C. Esposito, Vanishing air, which, althoughsomewhat out of date, gives the flavor of interactions among politicians,agencies, and businessmen.

"For a useful citizen's guide to these acts, see J. Cannon, A clear view."The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, public law 91-190,

January 1, 1970 (42 U.S.C. 4321-4347)."Council on Environmental Quality, Environmental Quality,

1972, p.222.


The key provision of NEPA, however, is its famousSection 102(C):

The Congress authorizes and directs that, to thefullest extent possible: (1) the policies, regulations, andpublic laws of the United States shall be interpretedand administered in accordance with the policies setforth in this act and (2) all agencies of the FederalGovernment shall—

(C) Include in every recommendation or report onproposals for legislation and other major Federalactions significantly affecting the quality of thehuman environment, a detailed statement by theresponsible official on—

(i) The environmental impact of the proposedaction,

(ii) Any adverse environmental effects whichcannot be avoided should the proposal beimplemented,

(iii) Alternatives to the proposed action,(iv) The relationship between local short-term

uses of man's environment and on the maintenanceand enhancement of long-term productivity, and

(v) Any irreversible and irretrievable commit-ments of resources which would be involved in theproposed action should it be implemented. Prior tomaking any detailed statement, the responsibleFederal official shall consult with and obtain com-ments of any Federal agency which has jurisdictionby law or special expertise with respect to anyenvironmental impact involved. Copies of suchstatement and the comments and views of theappropriate Federal, State, and local agencies,which are authorized to develop and enforce en-vironmental standards, shall be made available tothe President, the Council on Environmental Qual-ity and to the public as provided by section 552 oftitle 5, United States Code, and shall accompany theproposal through the existing agency reviewprocesses.

This is the section of NEPA that established theEnvironmental Impact Statement (EIS), which provideda crucial legal lever for public intervention on the side ofthe environment. The vast majority of environmentalsuits have been in the area of public law (concerning therelationship of citizens to the government) in contrast toprivate law (which deals with the relationship of citizens

with one another). An early instance was the famousStorm King case,65 a lawsuit brought by an environmen-tal group against the Federal Power Commission, whichhad granted Consolidated Edison of New York a permitto build a pumped-storage hydroelectric plant belowscenic Storm King Mountain on the Hudson River. The1965 decision in the Storm King case helped establish thestanding (a position from which to assert legal rights orduties) of individuals or groups with records of concernfor the environment—in other words, it established thatenvironmentalists could sue to protect environmentalvalues from the adverse effects of administrativedecisions.

That legal step forward was followed by a half-stepback in another public law case (the Mineral King case),in which the Sierra Club sued to prevent Walt DisneyProductions from turning a lovely part of the SierraNevada into a plastic wonderland.66 In the Mineral Kingcase, the United States Supreme Court held that mem-bers of the Sierra Club had to use the area in question inorder to gain standing; the interest of the club membersin preserving the wilderness was not sufficient cause tostop the Disney project. (For a novel approach to thequestion of standing—an approach that would haveserved the environment well in the Mineral King case—see Box 14-2.)

In the context of concerned groups having standing inenvironmental cases, NEPA's requirement of environ-mental impact statements (and the required public airingof the EIS) has proven to be a godsend. A series of casesbrought by groups such as the Committee for NuclearResponsibility, the Environmental Defense Fund, theSierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Councilhave determined that an EIS is to provide "full disclo-sure" of the environmental implications of any impend-ing decision, that it must set forth opposing views onsignificant environmental issues raised by the proposal,that it must contain a full analysis of costs and impacts ofalternatives, and that it must balance adverse environ-

"Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference versus Federal PowerCommission, 1965.354 F 2d 608. For a brief discussion of the case, see J.Holdren and P. Herrera, Energy, pp. 181-183.

"Sierra Club versus Morton, 1972, U.S.L.W. 4397. For good discus-sions of the question of standing and environmental law in general, see ].E. Krier, Environmental law and its administration; and C. D. Stone,Should trees have standing? Toward legal rights for natural objects.

BOX 14-2 A Note on Standing

The legal machinery and the basic legal notionsneeded to control pollution are already in exis-tence. Slight changes in the legal notions anddiligent application of the legal machinery are allthat are necessary to induce a great reduction inpollution in the United States. One change inthose notions that would have a most salubriouseffect on the quality of the environment has beenproposed by law professor Christopher D. Stonein his celebrated monograph, Should trees haveStanding?* In that tightly reasoned essay, Stone

*Originaliy published in 1972 in the Southern California LawReview; available as a book, which also reprints the U.S.

points out the obvious advantages of givingnatural objects standing, just as such inanimateobjects as corporations, trusts, and ships are nowheld to have legal rights and duties. If this weredone, questions such as that of the standing ofthe Sierra Club in the Mineral King case,mentioned earlier, would disappear—for, as Jus-tice William O. Douglas pointed out in hisdissenting opinion in that case, Sierra Clubversus Morton would "be more properly labeledas Mineral King v. Morton."

Supreme Court's opinions in Sierra Club versus Morton (theMineral King controversy).

mental effects against the benefits of the proposal.67

Failure to conform fully to the requirements has been thebasis of numerous successful lawsuits in which projectshave been stopped until proper environmental impactstatements were prepared.

The strength of NEPA lies in the formal commitmentof the government to environmental quality and therequired public airing of potential impacts by the EISprocedures. In the five years 1970 through 1974, morethan 6000 impact statements were filed. In the opinion ofthe CEQ, by 1974 NEPA had "succeeded in its objectiveof incorporating an environmental perspective into thedecision-making process of Federal agencies."68 Thisstatement seems accurate to us, both because it agreeswith our impressions and because, when it was made,Russell W. Peterson, one of the brightest and moststraightforward of Washington bureaucrats, was chair-man of the CEQ.68a In addition, the general approach ofNEPA has been adopted by local and state governments.By 1974 twenty-one states and Puerto Rico had adoptedthe EIS process, as had governments in such nations asAustralia, Canada, and Israel.69 One of the most impres-sive of the state acts is California's 1970 EnvironmentalQuality Act (amended), which requires impact state-

67CEQ Environmental Quality, 1972, pp. 242-246.'"CEQ, Environmental Quality, 1974, p. 372. This report has a good

brief historical account of the evolution of NEPA (pp. 372—413).68aln 1976 he resigned and in 1977 was succeeded by Charles Warren, a

California State legislator with a thorough understanding of environ-mental issues. President Carter's appointment of Warren continues thetradition of excellence in this position.

6'Ibid., pp. 399-413.

ments on all projects, private or government, that willsignificantly affect the environment. In the mid-1970ssome 6000 statements were being filed annually.70

As far-reaching and successful as NEPA has been inthis context, some weaknesses are also evident. While ithas raised consciousness of the environment in govern-ment agencies and in the business community, concreteresults in terms of prevention and repair of environmen-tal deterioration have been less apparent. Thus far,NEPA has been mainly an instrument for disseminatinginformation rather than one for guiding policy. It cannot,in itself, lead to the cancellation of a project—eventhough citizens groups have repeatedly employed it todelay projects where EIS provisions have not beenmeticulously followed. Indeed, a key flaw in the act asfirst applied was that its enforcement depended entirelyupon the public, and the public could use it only to delay,not to halt, projects that would have massive negativeimpacts on the environment.71 As far as NEPA wasconcerned, the Army Corps of Engineers legally couldplow the United States under, or the Nuclear RegulatoryCommission could permit the country to be totallycontaminated with lethal amounts of radioactive wastes,as long as the EIS requirements of the law were followedscrupulously. In applying NEPA, the courts seem to bemoving toward substantive rather than procedural re-

70In California they are technically known as environmental impactreports (EIR).

"D. W. Fischer, Environmental impact assessment as an instrumentof public policy for controlling economic growth. The appendix to thearticle contains an informative critique of NEPA.


view, however. This means that projects may be haltedfor reasons other than failure to follow the EIS provisionmeticulously.72

Several landmark court cases have clarified the obliga-tions of government agencies under NEPA. In CalvertCliff's coordinating committee versus AEC (1971), theUnited States Court of Appeals for the District ofColumbia held that the Atomic Energy Commissioncould not exclude water quality considerations from itsenvironmental impact statement merely because thepower plant in question had already received a certificateof compliance with federal water quality regulationsfrom the state. The court found that the "crabbedinterpretation" of NEPA by the AEC would prevent theAEC from making a balanced determination of the bestcourse of action. In Scientists' Institute for Public Infor-mation versus AEC (1973), the District of ColumbiaCourt of Appeals ruled in connection with the liquidmetal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR) that comprehensiveenvironmental impact statements must be prepared foracknowledged programs, not merely for individual facil-ities; that is, the combined impact of many LMFBRs andthe associated facilities had to be examined in advancesince the AEC had acknowledged that it had a programand not a single facility in mind. In Sierra Club versusMorton (1974), involving fossil-fuel development on theGreat Plains, the District of Columbia Court of Appealsdefined requirements for a programmatic environmentalimpact statement in certain circumstances even where anagency had not recognized its actions as a program.

NEPA was one important step in the right direction,and it may become a prime weapon in the fight forenvironmental quality. But it will prove inadequateunless ways are found to introduce comprehensiveenvironmental planning throughout the nation, in whichlegal standards for balancing environmental valuesagainst other values are applied to all projects withsignificant impact, government or private. How thismight be accomplished—and some existing legislation isleading in this direction—is discussed further in "Eco-nomics and Political Change." That section also dis-cusses the possibility that relatively simple legislationdealing with the consumption of resources might even-

tually replace much of the cumbersome ad hoc systemthat is now evolving for the control of environmentalimpact.

Environmental Protection Agency. Contrary to arather widespread misimpression, the EnvironmentalProtection Agency was not created by NEPA but ratherby an administrative reorganization that took place inDecember 1970. It consolidated the Federal WaterQuality Administration (formerly in the Department ofInterior); the National Air Pollution Control Adminis-tration (formerly in the Department of Health, Educa-tion and Welfare, HEW); the pesticide registration,research, and standard-setting programs of the Depart-ment of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Adminis-tration; the solid-waste management programs of HEW;and some of the functions of the Federal RadiationCouncil and the Atomic Energy Commission for settingstandards for radiation exposure. The EPA was given allthe functions and responsibilities necessary to carry outthe Clean Air Act and the Federal Water PollutionControl Act; and under its first administrator, William D.Ruckelshaus, it made a reasonably rapid start at doingso.73 His successor, Russell E. Train, continued to buildan increasingly effective organization in an often difficultpolitical environment.

Unlike CEQ, which is a small advisory group in theExecutive Office of the President, the EPA is a largeoperating agency with a staff in 1976 of 8800 people andestimated budget outlays in that year of $3 billion. I:maintains research laboratories in several parts of thecountry. The best concise record of the accomplishmentsas well as the shortcomings of the EPA are the CEQ'sannual reports on the state of the nation's environment-

Occupational Safety and Health Act. As noted inChapter 10, workers are often exposed to much higherconcentrations of dangerous substances than are consid-ered acceptable for the population at large. The m&:.~legal protection for workers is provided under :h;Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, whichauthorized the Labor Department to establish standard:for exposure of workers to hazardous pollutants, to

72J. E. Krier, personal communication. ; See CEQ, Environmental quality, 1970 and 1971.

provide training programs, and to set up a system forreporting occupational illness and injury. These dutiesare carried out by the Occupational Safety and HealthAdministration (OSHA). The National Institute of Oc-cupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) does research forand recommends standards to OSHA.

Three types of standards for exposure to pollutants canbe set by OSHA: consensus standards adopted from a listprovided by a group of government and industrialscientists, permanent standards, and temporary emer-gency standards. Permanent standards generally include,in addition to the eight-hour limits for worker exposureprovided by consensus standards, regulations coveringwork practices, monitoring, and medical surveillance.Temporary standards are effective only for a six-monthperiod, an interim during which permanent standards aredeveloped.

By_1975, consensus standards had been set for about,400 chemicals, and OSHA and NIOSH were moving tochange them to permanent standards. Permanent stan-dards had already been established for asbestos, vinylchloride, and a group of fourteen carcinogens; andpermanent standards have been proposed for arsenic,coke-oven emissions, and noise. Some groups feel thatthose standards are not strict enough; for example, achemical workers union unsuccessfully challenged incourt those established for the fourteen carcinogens.

It seems certain that a constant tug-of-war will ensuebetween consideration of the costs (real or imagined) toindustry of lowering workers' exposure to hazards andconsideration of the legitimate desires of workers toprotect their health. In view of the large numbers ofpeople directly or indirectly involved (remember, haz-ardous materials like asbestos and plutonium can betaken home inadvertently by workers, placing theirfamilies and friends at risk), it seems clear that OSHA'sactivities are a long-overdue step in the right direction.

Population Law

The impact of laws and policies on population size andgrowth has, until very recently, largely been ignored bythe legal profession. Thejirst cojnprehensive treatmentof population law was that of the late Johnson C.

Montgomery.,74 "" arrnrnpy who was president of ZeroPopulation Growth, and whose ideas are the basis ofmuch of the following discussion.

To date, there has been no serious attempt in Westerncountries to use laws to control excessive populationjrowthâlthough there exists ample authority underwhich population growth could be regulated. For exam-ple, under the United States Constitution, effective,population-control programs could be enacted under theclauses that empower Congress to appropriate funds toprovide for tlie(general welfare and to regulate com-

or under the equal-protection clause of theFourteenth Amendment.^5 Such laws constitutionallycould be very broad. Indeed, it has been concluded thaLcompulsory population-control laws, even includinglaws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustainedunder the existing Constitution if the population crisis,became sufficiently severe to endanger the society. Fewtoday consider the situation in the United States seriousenough to justify compulsion, however.

The most compelling arguments that might be used tojustify government regulation of reproduction are basedupon the rapid population growth relative to the capacityof environmental and social systems to absorb the

"Population explosion and United States law.7!"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the

privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall anyState deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due processof law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protectionof the laws."

;6Joe D. Wtay, Population pressure on families: Family size andchild-spacing, in Roger Revelle, ed.. Rapid population growth: Con-sequences and policy- implications, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1971;R. B. Zajonc. Family configuration and intelligence. Science, vol. 192, pp.227-236 (April 16/1976).

associated impacts. To provide a high quality of life forall, there must be fewer people. But there are other soundreasons that support the use of law to regulate repro-duction.

It is accepted that the law has as its proper function theprotection of each person and each group of people. Alegal restriction on the right to have more than a givennumber of children could easily be based on the needs ofthe first children. Studies have indicated that the largerthe family, the less healthy the children are likely to beand the less likely they are to realize their potential levelsof achievement.76 Certainly there is no question thatchildren of a small family can be cared for better and can


be educated better than children of a large family,income axul oti er tV\\Yvg,s \3*im , ec\ua\, TVve VaNv CQM\d

properly say to a mother that, in order to protect thechildren she already has, she could have no more.(Presumably, regulations on the sizes of adopted families _would have to be the same.1

A legal restriction on the right to have children couldâlso be based on a right not to be disadvantaged byexcessive numbers of children produced by others.,Differing rates of reproduction among groups can giverise to serious social problems. For example, differentialrates of reproduction between ethnic, racial, religious, oreconomic groups might result in increased competitionfor resources and political power and thereby underminesocial order. If some individuals contribute to generalsocial deterioration by overproducing children, and if theneed is compelling, they can be required by law toexercise reproductive responsibility— just as they can berequired to excercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns— providing they are not deniedequal protection.

Individual rights. Individual rights must be bal-anced against the power of the government to controlhuman reproduction. Some people— respected legisla-tors, judges, and lawyers included— have viewed the_right to have children as a fundamental and inalienable _right. Yet neither the Declaration of Independence northe Constitution mentions a right to reproduce. Nor doesthe UN Charter describe such a right, although aresolution of the United Nations affirms the "rightresponsibly to choose" the number and spacing of chil-dren (our emphasis). In the United States, individualshave a constitutional right to privacy and it has been heldthat the right to privacy includes the right to choosewhether or not to have children, at least to the extent thata woman has a right to choose not to have children. Butthe right is not unlimited. Where the society has a"compelling, subordinating interest" in regulating pop-ulation size, the right of the individual may be curtailed.If society's survival depended on having more children,women could be required to bear children, just as mencan constitutionally be required to serve in the armedforces. Similarly, given a crisis caused by overpopula-

tion, reasonably necessary laws to control excessivereproduction could be enacted.

It is often argued that uie T\g\vx to Yvave ctuldtetv v& sopersonal that the government should not regulate it. In anideal society, no doubt the state should leave family sizeand composition solely to the desires of the parents. Intoday's world, however, the number of children in afamily is a matter of profound public concern. The lawregulates other highly personal matters. For example, noone may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time.Why should the law not be able to prevent a person fromhaving more than two children?

The legal argument has been made that the FirstAmendment provision for separation of church and stateprevents the United States government from regulatingfamily size. The notion is that family size is God's affairand no business of the state. But the same argument hasbeen made against the taxation of church property,prohibition of polygamy, compulsory education of andmedical treatment for children, and many similar mea-sures that have been enacted. From a legal standpoint,the First Amendment argument against family-size reg-ulation is devoid of merit.

There are two valid constitutional limitations on thekinds of population-control policies that could be en-acted. First, any enactments must satisfy the require-ments of due process of law; they must be reasonablydesigned to meet real problems, and they must not bearbitrary. Second, any enactments must ensure that equalprotection under the law is afforded to every person; theymust not be permitted to discriminate against any-particular group or person. This should be as true of lawsgiving economic encouragement to small families as itwould be of laws directly regulating the number ofchildren a person may have. This does not mean that theimpact of the laws must be exactly the same on everyone.A law limiting each couple to two children obviouslywould have a greater impact on persons who desire largefamilies than it would on persons who do not. Thus,while the due-process and equal-protection limitationspreclude the passage of capricious or discriminatorylaws, neither guarantees anyone the right to have morethan his or her fair share of children, if such a right isshown to conflict with other rights and freedoms.


the programs were selfless); American resources havebeen devoted mainly to providing additional materialgoods for ourselves and to an expensive and dangerousarms race, rather than to improving the lot of our fellowhuman beings.

Latin America and the United States:Problems of Paternalism

The pattern of relationships among DCs and LDCsprevailing until recently is exemplified by the behavior ofthe United States toward Latin America in this century.The United States has long claimed a special relf ti^n^'p-with its neighbors to the south, but this more often thannot has meant a desire for exclusive exploitation rights._The one-sidedness of the agreement has not gone unno-_ticed by Latin Americans.

When Sol Linowitz resigned in 1969 as U.S. ambassa-dor to the Organization of Ampric-iffl Staffis, he warned ofthe possibility of "a series of Vietnams" in LatinAmerica. The same year Nelson A. Rockefeller,,thengovernor of New York, was sent on a fact-finding toursouth of the border for President Nixon. He was greetedwith a violence that underlined the Linowitz warning.Rockefeller was, of course, an especially ironic choicesince his family's association with Standard Oil is somuch a jymbol of U.S. economic imperialism. But onedoes not have to look far for more fundamental reasonsfor his hostile reception.

Population growth in Latin America was proceedingat an average of 2.9 percent per year during the first eightyears of the Alliance for Progress, while per-capitaeconomic growth only averaged about 1.5 percent peryear, a full percentage point below the Alliance target. Alarge portion of the Latin American population wasthen—and still is—for the most part living in appallingpoverty. For millions, diets were inadequate, infant andchild mortality sky-high, and decent housing oftennonexistent. If 10,000 houses had been built per day inLatin America between 1969 and 1979, something on theorder of 100 million of our southern neighbors (morethan one-fourth of the expected population there) wouldstill not be adequately housed. Although land reform hasbegun in some countries—most recently in Peru—10

percent of the people in Latin America still owned 90percent of the land in 1976. And in most Latin Americancountries, progress toward an equitable distribution 01income has been slow, especially for the ruralpopulations.

Development in most of Latin America has scarcelytouched the poor. The rich-poor gap has widened inmany countries, especially the richer ones such as Braziland Mexico, and national economies have tended tobecome two-tiered. The upper tier consists of largelandholders and the urban upper and middle classes,especially in such industrial centers as Sao Paulo andMexico City. In the lower tier are The urban poor ancLpeasants, bypassed by modernization. In Mexico City,for example, a skilled worker in 1976 earned more than$500 a month, including benefits. But outside the city,minimum wages for farm workers were $5 a day, andbecause of underemployment many earned as little as$100 per year.12

In several countries, notably Brazil, Peru, and Para-guay, there is a third, even lower tier—primitive Indians,who are being systematically exterminated as roadblocks _in the path of progress. In Paraguay, which is heavik-under U.S. influence, there have been charges of UnitedStates Central Intelligence Agency (CIA1 complicity' inthose programs.'3 True or not, that such charges arewidely believed south of the border says something aboutU.S.-Latin American relations.

Latin America's political instability is legendary (Fig-ure 15-2). Between 1961 and mid-1976 political changeswere made by military force in Argentina, Bolivia.Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Sal-vador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Peru—insome countries more than once. This political turmoilcannot all be blamed on the United States, but Americanbehavior in Latin America has done little to fosterstability there. Although the days when United Statescorporations directly controlled small countries are over,a huge reservoir of ill will remains from those days, whenthose corporations openly took what they wanted of themineral and agricultural wealth of the continent. This

12A no-nonsense mood takes hold in Mexico, U.S. News and WorldReport, June 21, 1976, pp. 63-66. For a description of the situation inBrazil, see Robert Harvey, Brazil: The next nuclear power?

13John Hillaby, Genocide in Paraguay.

62.3UNITED STATES

S1710

110.2

TYPES OF GOVERNMENTS

Constitutional

Military regime

0m Civilian dictatorship

© Number of governmentchanges since 1944

Population 1976 est. (in millions)

Annual growth •

Per capita G.N.P.(in U.S. dollars) 1976

$1000

Private, direct long-term investments,value at end of 1973 (millions, U.S. dollars)

FIGURE 15-2

Latin American summary: population, per-capitagross national product, amounts of Americaninvestment, forms of government, and numbersof government changes since 1944 (excludingthose resulting from elections, unless they havebeen interspersed with coups).

widespread resentment was deepened by revelation ofCIA involvement in Chile before the 1974 coup thatoverthrew the Allende government in Chile. Moreover.North American economic exploitation of Latin Americais even now far from finished. While some United Statesmultinational companies are now so well-behaved thatthey can serve as examples of benevolence, having madesignificant contributions to their host nations, they still

drain vast amounts nf natural-resource capital from thosenations. And the actions of some other United Stalesmultinational firms have had dramatically undesirableeffects, especially on the poorest segments of thepopulations.14

"For example, see R. J. Earner and R. E. Mullet, Global reach: Thepiwurr of the multinational corporations, chapter 7; and Robert J. Ledogar,

Hungry for profits: U.S. food and drug multinationals in Latin America.

RICH NATIONS, POOR NATIONS, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT / 905

ties, the two most powerful DCs, the United States andUSSR, have approached aid differently. The UnitedStates, with a vast store of capital to draw on, has seen theproblems of the LDCs primarily in terms of a shortage ofcapital. The Soviets, on the other hand, because of theirrelatively recent history of revolution and the morerecent successful revolutions in two LDCs—China andCuba—tend to emphasize the export not of capital but ofpolitical change, of revolution.

Unhappily, many nations threw off the yoke of colo-nial exploiters after World War II only to have itreplaced by home-grown repressive governments. Polit-ical scientist Harlan Cleveland put it succinctly: "Nordid freedom for nations lead directly to freedom forindividuals. Colonial rule was often supplanted bymilitary rule, Czars were succeeded by commissars,white domination gave way to black dictatorships, extra-territoriality was pushed out by totalitarianism."55

The need for dramatic political change in manycountries is obvious—but most recent changes have beenin the wrong direction. Haiti (with a per-capita GNP of$70 in 1972) had no chance while it was under dictatorFrangois Duvalier, and its present prospects seem nobetter. The assumption of "emergency powers" by PrimeMinister Indira Gandhi of India in 1975, includingsuppression of dissent, did not encourage optimism forthe political future of that troubled country. The auto-cratic regimes, military or civilian, in many LatinAmerican and African nations, many of them beset byterrorism and revolutionary activity, seem barely able tokeep the peace and their seats in power, let alone do muchto improve the lives of their peoples. Tales of severerepression and torture of dissidents in Brazil andChile—both countries that ostensibly have a great dealgoing for them—horrify outsiders and frighten offtourists (if not foreign investors).

Democracy is a fragile form of government, especiallywhere it is not backed by appropriate traditions and somedegree of economic equity. Economic equity may beespecially important, and a fundamental aspect of equityis landholding. In many nominal democracies, landreform unquestionably is sorely needed to give thepeople incentive to improve their agricultural practices

"Our coming foreign policy crisis, p. 11.

and a chance to participate in the modernization process.Revolution is one potentially effective way to achieveland reform.

Both the capitalist and revolutionary points of view onaid have a certain validity, but both are also sadlydeficient. If real progress in helping LDCs is to be made,both superpowers will have to change their ways. TheUnited States must stop supporting assorted dictatorsaround the world merely because they claim to beanticommunist. It must accept that in many countriesmost of the people might well be better off under regimesthat the U.S. perceives as communist than under theirpresent regimes. In Latin America, in particular, theneed for social justice as a first step toward economicdevelopment has been widely recognized (but rarelyimplemented). If badly needed reforms do not take placepeacefully, they will sooner or later be attempted byrevolution. It is imperative that U.S. officials in LDCsrealize that their contacts within those countries are alltoo often unrepresentative of the people as a whole. Theattitudes of the governing classes in the capitol cities areunlikely to resemble those of peasants or of the masses inurban slums.

There is, of course, no doubt that corporate interests,sensitive to the resource limits of the United States andmotivated by the desire for profits, play a substantial rolein shaping American foreign policy. The interlockingdirectorates of the government and various industrialgiants are well known. Executives move freely from bigbusiness into administrative positions in the government,while high-level bureaucrats and military leaders arewelcomed into executive positions with corporationsdoing business with the government. In 1969, for in-stance, each of the top twenty defense contractors in theUnited States employed an average of 65 retired militarymen of the rank of colonel, navy captain, or higher.56 Themilitary-industrial complex, among other things, wishesto assure the United States control over the resources it_deems essential—and in the process often has attempted,to control the destinies of LDCs.

It is evident that the LDCs can undertake and wouldprofit from having control over their own resources anddestinies. The contrary view has often been held in the

"Dennis C. Pirages and Paul R. Ehrlich, Ark II: Social response toenvironmental imperatives.

I


past as doctrine by the DCs. For example, there weredire(and erroneous) warnings that the Egyptians would be_unable to run the Suez Canal when they took it over fromthe British in 1956. The success of OPEC surely has putthat fairy tale to rest once and for all!

Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that there is much tn hegained in attempting to shatter the power of internationalcorporations, many of which, among other things, areheavily engagsjjjn the exploitation of LDC resources.Âprimary reason is that it probably would be impossible inthe absence of supporting changes in attitude in DCsocieties. As long as economic standards reign supreme,economic power will tend to become concentrated; onlymore fundamental changes will suffice. And thosechanges must be made with great care. Internationalcorporations supply planning, coordination, capital, andexpertise in their operations within LDCs; considerableeconomic hardship could result from a sudden dissolu-tion of those giants. But they could be quickly stoppedfrom draining capital away from the LDCs; after all, theextraction of capital goes against the West's conventionalwisdom of what is required to eliminate poverty in thosenations.

Russia should face the facts of life, too. The Sovietsblame most of the problems of the world on capitalistimperialism, but that just is not supported by theevidence. Revolution is at best a partial answer; it cannotremove the biological and physical constraints upondevelopment, although it may well remove some of thesocial and economic barriers. At worst, as noted above,revolution only replaces one despotism with another.Furthermore, the Soviet Union's intervention in othercountries in defense of what it perceives as its vitalinterests has been fully as blatant and brutal as that of thecapitalist imperialists, as the Soviet invasion of Czecho-slovakia in 1968 so clearly demonstrated. It is ironic thatthe USSR, in Angola and elsewhere, now seems to beemulating the grand imperialism pioneered in the nine-teenth century by western European powers and theUnited States.

But the differing approaches of the United States (aswell as other Western nations) and the USSR, whichdominated international politics in the first two decadesafter World War II, must now share the stage with thepolicies of the LDCs themselves, which are increasingly

determined to narrow the gap between the rich and thepoor. The OPEC revolution has shown that traditional

— international politicoeconomic relationships can be dra-matically and profoundly altered. And even if, as someclaim, the case of oil is unique, the self-interest of the rich*nations is clearly tied to the condition of the poor. AsHarlan Cleveland has written, "If two-thirds of theworld simply failed to cooperate in international ar-

^ rangements that require general consent—nuclear saife" guards, weather watch, crop forecasting, public health*

narcotics control, environmental monitoring, and mea^sures against hijacking and terrorism— everybody wouldlose, but the world powers would likely lose the most."j7

In short, for the world commons to operate forbenefit of all people requires it to be administeredcooperatively —and the poor can demand a price for theircooperation. More positively, there is general agreementamong the rich that poverty should be wiped out— andthat consensus would make selfishness a more difficultcourse (although one that certainly might yet be taken).

International politics in the near future will mostlikely he focused on the question of whether the rich and_the poor can strike a new planetary bargain, to us^HarlanCleveland's term. Can the developed countries show thenecessary self-restraint and the less developed countriesdie necessary changes in attitudes and organization torearrange the relationships among nations successfully?,There are some hopeful signs.

A group consisting of most Third World nations.calling themselves the Group of 77, in 1974 presented acase to the United Nations for a New InternationalOrder. In May 1974 the United Nations General As-^sembly adopted by consensus a Declaration on theÊstablishment of a New Economic Order, whose statedaims include: "to correct inequalities andredress existinginjustices and ensure steadily accelerating economic-development, peace and justice for present and future,generations."58

The Declaration called for stabilization of commodityprices and markets for them and for establishment of alink between those prices and prices paid for manufac-tured products imported from DCs. It also called for

"Our coming foreign policy crisis, p. 13.5"The new economic order. Nae Internationalist, October 1975 '•"-

special issue on this subject).


restraint of research into synthetic substitutes for com-modities, which have already damaged markets for someproducts, such as sisal, jute, and rubber. (Higher pricesand diminishing resources of petroleum will eventuallyundermine this activity, but that is little comfort toLDCs today.) Finally, the New Economic Order wouldencourage the development of producer associations andtrade unions among LDCs in order to negotiate favorabletrade terms more effectively. Such trade associations,while not having the clout of OPEC (where conditionswere uniquely suitable for setting up a cartel), havealready been established for several commodities, in-cluding bananas, cocoa, coffee, copper, phosphates, tea,and tin.59

The reaction to the New Economic Order among DCs,especially at first, was generally negative, and the UnitedStates was the most recalcitrant. But it soon becameobvious that the demands of the Group of 77 could not beignored. United Nations Secretary General Kurt Wald-heim told a later United Nations conference in Lima,Peru: "the New Economic Order is the price of peace."60

In September 1975, in an address before the UnitedNations, by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, theUnited States officially took a stand favoring new bar-gains, including a "fundamental structural improvementin the relationship of the developing countries to theworld trading system . . . such as preferences, favor-able concessions, and exceptions which reflect theireconomic status."61 Kissinger also urged the worldcommunity to address the basic problems of access ofLDCs to capital markets, the transfer of technology, and"the principles to guide the beneficial operation of_transnational enterprises." He pointed out the need forcontrolling population growth, for increasing food re-serves, and for reducing food wastage, and he pledged theUnited States to contribute to a program of action if allnations "met in a spirit of common endeavor/' Thespeech ended with some interesting rhetoric:

My government does not offer these propositions as

""New Internationalist" guide to UNCTADIV, New Internationalist,April 1976, pp. 6-7.

MThe New Economic Order, New Internationalist, 1975.'''Address by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinyer (delivered bv

Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan), seventh special session of the UnitedNations General Assembly, New York, September 1,1975. Reprinted inthe Nevi York Times, September 2, 1975, p. 20.

an act of charity, nor should they be received as if due.We know that the world economy nourishes us all, weknow that we live on a shrinking planet. Materially aswell as morally, our destinies are intertwined. . . .

There remain enormous things for us to do. We cansay once more to the new nations: We have heard yourvoices. We embrace your hopes. We will join yourefforts. We commit ourselves to our common success.

Although the speech did not indicate awareness ofmany of the concerns of this chapter, it did indicate agrowing power within the United States government ofpersons who realize the degree to which all nations are__interdependent and understand that the future of theUnited States depends on how well the entire world deals _with the population-resource-environment crisis.No

I doubt the success of the OPEC cartel's embargo andraising of oil prices also had much to do with the United,States change of heart toward trig aspirations of poorcountries. History makes it difficult to he)ieve that the.change in attitude could have been accomplished withoutthe bludgeon of OPEC oil or some similar weapon in the __control of the nonindustrial nations.

How much action will follow the rhetoric remains tobe seen. And how ready the LDCs are to put aside theirown rhetoric and join in common solutions to commonproblems also is in doubt. Unfortunately, less than three_months after the Kissinger speech, the use of the UnitedNations as a forum for divisive propaganda on the part ofthe Eastern and Third World blocks reached an extremewith the unfortunate 'Zionism is racism/62 declaration.That declaration strengthened, at a critical time, isola-tionist forces in the United States who alreadyered both the United Nations and foreign aid utterly _ .useless. The declaration was followed a few months later _jby a failure of Third World and communist nations tojoin the Western nations in a worldwide condemnationof international terrorism or to agree to oppose it andrefuse cooperation with extortionists.

Thereis £eal danger that the past colossal failures ofboth the\ United Nations] and foreign-assistance effortswill lead to a withdrawal of the United States fromefforts to help solve vital international problems. Itwould behoove all governments to remember that, with-

1

"Time, November 24, 1975.


out the wholehearted collaboration of the United States,western Europe, the USSR, and the People's Republic ofChina, any resolution of world problems is extremelyunlikely. And failure to resolve them will most likely leadto war.

POPULATION, RESOURCES, AND WAR_

Desmond Morris some years ago observed, " . . . thebest solution for ensuring world peace is the widespreadpromotion of contraception and abortion . . . moraliz-ing factions that oppose it must face the fact that they areengaged in dangerous war mongering."63 As he sug-gested, population-related problems may be increasingthe probability of a thermonuclear Armageddon. Avoid-ing such a denouement for civilization is the mostpressing political-economic problem of our time.

In 1969 the world saw in a microcosm what may be instore: Two grossly overpopulated Central Americancountries, El Salvador and Honduras, went to war againsteach other. El Salvador had an estimated population of3.3 million, a population density of 160 people per squarekilometer, with a doubling time of 21 years. Hondurashad a population of 2.5 million, a density of only 22 persquare kilometer, and the same doubling time as ElSalvador. More significant statistics have been providedby the Latin American Demographic Center; they showthat in El Salvador the population density per squarekilometer of arable land was 300 persons, while inHonduras it was only 60 persons.

Almost 300,000 Salvadorans had moved into Hon-duras in search of land and jobs because of overpopula-tion and resulting unemployment at home. Frictiondeveloped among the immigrants and the Hondurannatives; El Salvador accused Honduras of maltreating theSalvadorans; and the problem escalated into a brief butnasty war. The conflict was ended by the intervention ofthe Organization of American States (OASV In a prece-dent-shattering move, the OAS recognized demographicfactors in its formula for settling the dispute—an inter-national body acknowledged that population pressurewas a root cause of a war.64

Systematic analyses of the role of population pressuresin generating wars, carried out by political scientistRobert C. North and his colleagues at Stanford Univer-sity, have supported earlier conclusions based on anec-dotal evidence. Statistical studies of the involvement ofmajor European powers in wars in modern times haverevealed very high correlations among rates of popula-tion growth, rising GNP, expanding military budgets,and involvement in wars, although technical consider-ations make drawing conclusions about causes andeffects hazardous. In more detailed multivariate analyses.Professor North found a complex causal chain involvingpopulation growth in relation to static or slowly growingresources, technological development, a tendency toinvest energy beyond previous boundaries of society, andincreases in the presumed needs and demands of apopulace.

Writing about the root causes of World War I, Northand political scientist Nazli Choucri of the Massachu-setts Institute of Technology concluded:

Our most important finding is that domestic growth(as measured by population density and nationalincome per capita) is generally a strong determinant ofnational expansion. Our investigations have identifiedstrong linkages from domestic growth and nationalexpansion to military expenditures, to alliances, and tointernational interactions with a relatively high poten-tial for violence.65

In ancient times such tendencies were somewhatbuffered by oceans, mountain ranges, deserts, vast dis-tances, and slow means of travel. Rome could razeCarthage but not China or the cities of South Americanand Central American Indians. Today, however, withvast increases of population and unprecedented develop-ments in technology, transportation, and communica-tions, the peoples of the world are cheek by jowl, andthere is little geographical buffering left. North pointedout that states in nonaggressive phases, like modernSweden, tend to share certain characteristics: "A rela-tively small and stable population, a relatively high andsteadily developing technology, and good access to

'"'The naked ape, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967."Population Bulletin, December 1969, pp. 134-135. ^Nations in conflict: National growth and intertiational violence.

RICH NATIONS, POOR NATIONS, AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT / 91 7

In our view, the most serious risk associated withnuclear power is the attendant increase in the numberof countries that have access to technology, materials,and facilities leading to a nuclear weapons capabil-ity. . . . If widespread proliferation actually occurs,it will prove an extremely serious danger to U.S.security and to world peace and stability in general.860

The Ford group recommended that the U.S. defer therecycle of plutonium and the commercialization of thebreeder reactor and that it seek "common supplier actionto ban the export of such technology." It recommendedalso that the U.S. and other supplier nations provideassured supplies of slightly enriched uranium to othercountries at favorable prices, a plan whose drawbacks wehave already mentioned above. In April 1977, PresidentCarter announced a nuclear policy for his administrationessentially congruent with the Ford Study's recommen-dation.

While we applaud the progress represented by thepositions taken by the Flowers, Ranger, and Ford reportsand by the Carter administration's position, our ownpreference is for a stronger stance. We believe thereshould be an absolute embargo on the export of enrich-ment and reprocessing technology by any nation.86d TheUnited States should cajole and, if necessary, coerce itsallies into compliance, using every incentive and/orpeaceful sanction at its disposal. (The possibilities areconsiderable, not least of which is the fact that WestGermany and France will be dependent on U.S. enricheduranium for their own nuclear power programs into the1980s.) Since the Soviets are also intensely concernedabout proliferation, there is a chance that they wouldcooperate. Countries that have power reactors but noenrichment or reprocessing capability could be suppliedwith low-enriched uranium by the sort of consortiummentioned above, but there is reason to question whetherany additional power reactors should be exported byanyone. A universal embargo on reactor exports mayseem a drastic measure—certainly drastic enough torequire rewriting the NPT—but lowering the probabilityof a nuclear holocaust is a desperately important task.

The sort of pussyfooting that characterized attempts tostem proliferation before 1977 was not merely a scandalbut a threat to the survival of civilization.

Chemical, biological, and environmental weap-ons. Even if humanity does manage to stop the proli-feration of nuclear weapons, it still must deal with theever-increasing deadliness of conventional weapons andthe prospective horrors of chemical and biological war-fare (CBW) and environmental warfare. Biological andchemical weapons, which could be nearly as destructive_of lives as nuclear arms, seem to have some prospects ofbeing eventually considered "conventional."87 Environ-mental warfare is newer and potentially perhaps evenmore threatening.88

Achieving disarmament. The third element ofdifficulty in changing the rules of international relationsis uncertainty about the best way to achieve disarmamentand security in a world where in the past security has_usually been provided by brute forceêither threatenedor overtly exercised. Unfortunately, the effort going intothe study of peaceful means to world security has beeninfinitesimal compared with that going into militaryresearch, although almost no area needs greater immedi-ate attention. The basic requirement is evident: onceagain it is a change in human attitudes so that thein-group against which aggression is forbidden expandsto include all human beings.

If this could be accomplished, jjeciirity might HPprovided by an armed international organization, a

"""Spurgeon Kceny et al.. Nuclear power issues and choices.8sdSee also the chapter on proliferation in A. Lovins, Soft energy paths:

Toward a durable peace.

global analogue of a police force. Many people haverecognized this as a goal, but the way to reach it remainsobscure in a world where factionalism seems, if anything,to be increasing. The first step necessarily jnyn1'""'partiaj (surrender of sovereignty^ to an intematinpalorganization.JJut it seems probable that, as long as mostpeople fail to comprehend the magnitude of the danger,-that step will be impossible. At the very least, societies

87J. P. Perry Robinson, The special case of chemical and biologicalweapons; see also Bo Holmberg, Biological aspects of chemical andbiological weapons.

88For example, see Chapter 11 and Frank Barnaby, The spread of thecapability to do violence: An introduction to environmental warfare:Jozef Goldblat, The prohibition of environmental warfare; and Bhupen-Ctra M. Jasanij Environmental muUificauon; New weapons of war?

91 8 / THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING A WAY OUT

must learn to weigh the risks inherent in attempting toachieve controlled disarmament against the risks ofcontinuing the arms race. An attempt at disarmamentcould lead to a war, or to the destruction or domination ofthe United States through Chinese or Soviet "cheating."But, if disarmament were successfully carried out, and ifan international police force were established, the reward _would be a very much safer world in which resourceswould be freed for raising the standard of living for allpeople.81} No problem deserves more intensive study andinternational discussion.

The dynamics of disarmament appear to be even morecomplex than those of arms races. Nevertheless, in 1970the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA),the only United States agency charged with planning inthis area, had a budget of only a few million dollars(contrasted with $80 billion for "defense"). Representa-tive John F. Seiberling of Ohio put it succinctly: 'The ,Pentagon has 3000 people working on arms sales to othercountries while the Arms Control and DisarmamentAgency has 12 people monitoring arms sales. That givesyou an idea of where the executive branch prioritiesare."90 Moreover, the ACDA is heavily influenced by theDepartment of State bureaucracy, still a stronghold ofcold-war thinking.

It has been suggested that an important step towarddisarmament could be taken by the pstahHshmpnT nf aninternationaljiisarmament control organization, whichwould serve as a clearinghouse for informtinn nn thequantity and quality of weapons in various nations andwould thus help to detect cheating on international--agreements.91 As a semi-independent Unir*^ Nflfi""'agency, such an organization could play a vital role— buLso far there has been no significant effort to establish one.

Diverting the military to peaceful purposes. The-fourtfa element of difficulty involves economics and the

89See, for example, Ronald Huisken, The consumption of raw materialsfor military purposes; and Ruth L. Sivard, Let them eat bullets! Themilitary budgets of the United States and USSR in 1973 were greater thanthe combined annual income of more than 1 billion people in thirty-threeof the poorest nations and almost 20 times the value of all foreign aid fromall sources.

90Quoted in San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, November 9.1975.

"Alva Myrdal, The international control of disarmament.

military establishment. Although this will be discussedin terms of the United States, there is every reason tobelieve that an analogous situation exists in the SovietUnion, the other military superpower. Civilians shouldrealize that peace and freedom from tension are notviewed as an ideal situation by many members of the _military-industrial-government complex. By and large,professional military officers, especially field grade andhigher, hope for an end to international tensions about asfervently as farmers hope for drought. When there is anatmosphere of national security, military budgets areusually small, military power minimal, and militarypromotions slow. The founders of the United States,recognized that the military services were unlikely Jo,w_ork against their own interests, so they carefully,Established ultimate civilian control over the army andnavy^ It worked rather well for a long time.

But times have changed. Wars are no longer foughtwith simple, understandable weapons like axes, swords,and cannon. Now a nation needs weapons systems withcomplex and often arcane components, such as acquisi-tion radar, VTOL fighters, Doppler navigators, MIRVs,cruise missiles, and nuclear submarines. Such systemscannot be produced rapidly, on demand, by a fewgovernment contractors. Long-term planning is re-quired, involving not only the military services but also alarge number of industrial organizations that supplyvarious components.

Those organizations, not unnaturally, often hire re^tired military officers to help them in their negotiations,with the government; where decisions on appropriationsfor armaments are made. The necessary intimacy of themilitary and industry in development and procurement,of weapons led Dwight D. Eisenhower to "~"'" rhp ff m _military-industrial complex^ The term military-industrial-labor-government complex sometimes seemsmore accurate. In his heavily documented 1970 book.Pentagon capitalism, industrial engineer Seymour Mel-man of Columbia University showed that even that termis inadequate to describe the Frankenstein's monster thathas hppn created.92

This complex seems to have an aversion to peace, but it

'2See especially Melman's chapter 7.


uses of outer space and Antarctica. More recently, therehave been extensive negotiations on a treaty to controlthe use of oceans.

[ j.aw of the Seap What has been described as "thegreatest international conference ever held"126 met inCaracas in summer 1974 to begin work on a treatydealing with the control of the oceans. The secondsession of the third United Nations Conference on theLaw of the Sea (UNCLOS)127 reached no final agree-ments, but in its tortuous proceedings several trendscould be discerned. The emphasis was on dividing up thepie—on how to allocate rights to exploit the oceans ratherthan how to protect their vital functioning in theecosystems of Earth. The less developed nations wereanxious to "augment their meager natural resources withnone of the unpleasant connotations of economic aid."128

The overdeveloped countries, on the other hand, wereprimarily trying to retain as much as possible of theirhegemony over the seas (which they, far more than theLDCs, have the ability to exploit).

A dominant trend has been toward establishing a200-mile economic zone, which would effectively bal-kanize most of the oceans' known wealth. One view isthat this would lead to having humanity's commonheritage decimated piecemeal as individual nations exer-cised dominion over all living and nonliving resourceswithin their zones. About the only good thing that can besaid about the 200-mile zone is that its establishmentmight lead eventually to more rational use of thoseresources since their individual ownership by nationswould at least tend to avoid the problems involved inmultilateral exploitation of a commons.

Other topics discussed in detail at the ongoing confer-ence have been rights of passage through straits, therights of landlocked nations to a share of oceanicresources, the establishment of an international authority

'"Elizabeth Mann Borgese, Report from Caracas, the law of the sea,Center Magazine, November/December, 1974.

I27The first session in New York in 1973 dealt only with procedures:the first and second conferences in 1958 and 1960 had accomplished littlebut reveal the complexities of the problems and the diverse positions ofstates and blocs (see Edward Wenk, Jr., The politics of the ocean, chapter6).

13SC. R. Pinto of Sri Lanka, quoted in Time, July 29,1974. It has beensuggested that "The uses of international commons should be taxed forthe benefit of the poorest strata of the poor countries" (Barbara Ward, TheCocoyoc Declaration}, but there is thus far little sign that this will occur.

for the mining of seabed minerals outside the economiczones, the responsibility of nations to control pollutionoriginating from their shores and to protect the marineenvironment, and the establishment of means of settlingdisputes and enforcing agreements.

A third eight-week session of UNCLOS in Geneva inMay 1975 produced a draft treaty, which was not votedon by the participating nations but was instead consid-ered the basis for further negotiation.12'' The draftextended the territorial waters of all nations to 12 milesfrom shore, provided for a 200-mile economic zone,specified means to control polluting activities, and en-couraged the transfer of technology from rich to poornations. The most controversial provision was for anInternational Seabed Authority, controlled de facto bythe LDCs (who would be a majority in the agency), thatwould regulate deep-sea mining. The United States hasheld out for "private initiative" to share in managing theseabed resource.

Further negotiations are scheduled for 1977. In part,their success will depend on what unilateral actions aretaken by nations in the meantime. The United States, forexample, has extended its jurisdiction over fisheries up to200 miles from shore, which conforms with the drafttreaty. Several other countries, including Mexico andCanada, have followed suit. But legislation being con^sidered by Congress on deep-sea mining does notconform to the draft treaty. This places U.S. negotiators,who have tried to dissuade other nations from takingunilateral action, in an awkward position. If Congresspasses such legislation, it could have a less than salu-brious effect on future negotiations—especially if Amer-ican firms are permitted to begin deep-sea mining beforethe treaty is finally passed and ratified. On the other hand,these unilateral actions may be pushing negotiators toexamine other alternatives. By 1977, Elizabeth Mann-Borgese was envisioning a third possibility for theSeabed Authority as "a comprehensive and flexiblesystem of joint ventures, acceptable to states and compa-nies under the control of the [Ajuthority and for thebenefit of all countries, especially the poorer

"'.Material in this paragraph is based primarily on Deborah Shapley,Now, a draft sea law treaty: But what comes after?

'"•Quoted in Claiborae Pell, The most complex treaty ever negotiatedin history, World Issues, vol II, no. 1 (February/March), 1977.


The complexity and comprehensiveness of the treatyaccount for the lengthiness of the negotiations. But,unfortunately, even a definitive treaty may fail to pro-vide the kind of apparatus required to administer,conserve, and distribute the resources of the seas in a waythat is equitable and that fully protects the vitallyimportant ecosystems of the oceans, just because anexploitative view of the environment continues to domi-nate all such discussions.

U.N. Environment Program. The exploitative viewof the environment first surfaced explicitly at the inter-national level at the United Nations Conference on theHuman Environment at Stockholm in 1972. That gath-ering featured platitudes from the ODCs, who are busilyengaged in looting the planet and destroying its ecologi-cal systems, and demands from the LDCs that they get apiece of the action. One could only take heart that the__world's nations even took the condition of the environ-ment seriously enough to attend such a conference. Thatthey did was a tribute to the brilliance, persuasiveness,and persistence of one man, Canadian businessman,Maurice Strong, secretary general of the conference.

Strong became the first executive director of theUnited Nations Environment Program (UNF.P). the,major positive result of the Stockholm conference.UNEP was given only a small budget, and its head-quarters was tucked away in Nairobi, perhaps in the hopethat it would not make waves. Under Strong's leadership,it nevertheless began to serve several vital functions. Forinstance, it has established the Earth Watch monitoringsystem to serve as an international clearinghouse forenvironmental information. Earth Watch is explicitlydesigned also to help bridge the gap between scientistsand technologists on one hand and political decision-makers on the other.130 The kinds of information to becollected include an international register of toxic chem-icals, which list properties of those chemicals, their uses,their effects, and their known or inferred pathways in theenvironment.

UNEP's very location in Nairobi (the first such UnitedNations agency headquartered in an LDC) has resultedin its first major contribution—an enormous and growing

interest and concern in poor nations about environmentalproblems.131 This concern was already well establishedin some areas among the people132 but had been notablyabsent in most LDC governments.

Under Strong's leadership a list of high-priority areaswas established at UNEP: (1) human settlement, health,habitat, and well-being; (2) land, water, and desertifica-tion; (3) trade, economics, technology, and the transfer oftechnology; (4) oceans; (5) conservation of nature, wild-life, and genetic resources; (6) energy.

A program has been started in each area, and by early1975 more than 200 projects had been initiated, projectsthat according to Strong were designed "to create aleverage to move the programme towards our prjor--ities."U3 Unfortunately for UNEP. Maurice Strong lefttheagency in 1975; whether the<acorri)bf UNEP will evergrow into the^reat oakjpf ariîernationaTenvironmental)protection organization^ sodepend on many things—not least of which will be thequality of its leadership.

Toward a Planetary Regime

International attempts to tackle global problems— or atleast to start a dialogue among nations— have proliferatedin recentjear|. Besides(the UNCTAPLaw ofthe Sea,and(EnvIroninenTal conference^ the United Nations hassponsored World Population and World, Food confer-ences (discussed earlier) in 1974, a conference on theStatus of Women in 1975. the pahirat Crmferpnrp nf1976 (dealing with the problems of cities), andâ, confer-ence on Water Resources in 1977. A Conference on

''"Maurice Strong, A global imperative for the environment.

Science and Technology is scheduled for 1978, and it isexpected to create a new agency for World Science and.Technplogv Development. The agency's mission will beto facilitate the transfer of needed technologies to LDCsand to foster development of indigenous scientific andtechnological education and research in those \

~coun tries.134

n'Rogcr Lewin, Environment in a developing world; Jon Sigurdson,Resources and environment in China; Conor Reilly, Environmentalaction in Zambia.

132For example, see Amil Agarvval, Ghandi's ghost saves the Himala-yan trees.

'"Lewin, Environment in a developing world, p. 632.134Salam, Ideals and realities.


Superficially, it usually appears that such conferencesdo little more than highlight the political differencesbetween rich and poor countries, but in fact they can leadto constructive action on the problems discussed. Be-cause of the diversity of interests and viewpoints ofindividual nations, and because of the inequities of theworld economy, it seems to take an unconscionably longtime to reach a consensus on dealing with each problem.But an important Step often is tn nhtain agreement that attrpblem exists, first of all, and, second, that internationalaction is appropriate and necessary. Each of the confer-ences named has been the culmination of this process;but what counts for the future is whether agreement canbe reached on solutions to the problems and whethercontrols can be established before it is too late.

»^P (Regulation of one vital global common^ has not yetbeen seriously discussed—that commons is the atmo-sphere. Even more than the resources of the oceans, the_atmosphere is shared by all human beings—and otherorganisms as well. It is crucial to preserve the atmo-sphere's quality and the stability of global climate.135 Butthat these are now threatened and should be protected byinternational agreement is only beginning to be recog-nized in a few quarters.

Should ^Law of theSelftbe successfully established, itcould serve as a model for a future(Law of the Atmoj

(^sphere)to regulate the use of airspace, to monitor climatechange, and to control atmospheric pollution.} Perhaps^those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United,Rations population agencies, might eventually be develôped into a Planetary Regime—sort of an internationalsuperagency for population, resources, and environment.

"Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could controlthe development, administration, conservation, and dis-tribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonre-newable, at least insofar as international implicationsexist. Thus, the Regime could have the power to controlpollution not only in the atmosphere and the oceans, butalso in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes thatcross international boundaries or that discharge into theoceans. The Regime might also be a logical centralagency for regulating all international trade, perhapsincluding assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including

S. H. Schneider and L. E. Alesirow, The genesis strategy.

all food on the international market. ^^^~ ^rThe Planetary Regime might be given responsibility

for determining the optimum population for the worldand for each region and for arbitrating various countries'shares within their regional limits. Control of populationsize might remain the responsibility of each govern-ment, but the Regime should have some power to enforcethe agreed limits. As with the Law of the Sea and otherinternational agreements, all agreements for regulatingpopulation sizes, resource development, and pollutionshould be subject to revision and modification in accord-ance with changing conditions.

The Planetary Regime might have the advantage overearlier proposed world government schemes in not beingprimarily political in its emphasis—even though politicswould inevitably be a part of all discussions, implicitly orexplicitly. Since most of the areas the Regime wouldcontrol are not now being regulated or controlled bynations or anyone else, establishment of the Regimewould involve far less surrendering of national power.Nevertheless, it might function powerfully to suppressinternational conflict simply because the interrelatedglobal resource-environment structure would not permitsuch an outdated luxury.

What the Human Community Can Do

Humanity has reached a critical point in its history.Either the fissioning of societies into two distinctgroups—rich and poor—will proceed, leading inevitablyto conflict and possibly to economic collapse of someregions, at least; or serious efforts will be made to bringthe two groups closer together. With regard to the lattercourse, as we have discussed at some length, there areplenty of ideas on how to go about it. The main obstaclesare, as usual, social, political, and economic. Too fewpeople in ODCs are convinced of the absolute necessityof reducing their consumption of material and environ-mental resources—of de-development. Too few peoplein all countries appreciate the environmental and re-source constraints within which society must operate.And too many people with power oppose changing thepresent course because, for the time being, they areprofiting from the status quo. And it may not be possible


to change the course of human society until thosepowerful people are fully convinced that their benefitswill vanish unless they do.

Assuming that the formidable obstacles can neverthe-less be overcome and the two separate "worlds" startedon the appropriate paths—the rich world begins tode-develop, and the poor world undertakes grass-rootsdevelopment—full cooperation between the two groupswill be required to make it work. Biologist Charles Birch,paraphrasing Garrett Hardin, described such coopera-tion as "mutual concern mutually agreed upon."136 TheLDCs cannot succeed without substantial assistancefrom ODCs, and the ODCs will continue to needcommodities and resources from LDCs to maintain theirindustrial structures, even if those structures are madevastly more efficient and are partially transferred toLDCs. The most crucial decades are those just ahead, inwhich there must be a transition to a size-controlled(eventually declining) population, an internationallyregulated Planetary Regime for the global commons, andsomething resembling the "dynamic equilibrium econ-omy" espoused by Herman Daly and Emile Benoit.

Certain guiding principles for national behavior havebeen proposed by many individuals as being essential tothe establishment of a genuine world community inwhich such cooperative measures could be carried out.As outlined by United States Assistant Secretary of StateJohn Richardson, Jr., a consensus is emerging:

1. Governments ought to promote the general welfareof those they govern, not merely enlarge their own andthe nation's power;

2. Starvation anywhere is unacceptable;3. Torture by governments anywhere is unacceptable;

4. The use of nuclear and biological weapons isunacceptable; and

5. Political, cultural, and ideological diversity—within some limits—ought to be tolerated.138

Managing the ttansition-itL-what some people haê-called atystainable worlds9 without; a. major catastropheof some kind (war, mass famine, pandemic, ec-nlngicaldisaster, or economlccollapse), will require far more than,good luck. It will require careful planning and hedgingagainst such unpredictable eventualities: Schneider andMesirow's "Genesis strategy." (The Genesis strategy isbased on the biblical story in which Joseph warned thepharaoh of Egypt that seven fat years would be followedby seven lean years, and he advised the pharaoh to storeup grain during the fat years to tide the population overwhen famine came.) Thus, high priorities must bf given,by the international community to building up foodreserves,topreventing and repairing major environmenttal damage, tp^ protecting the ocean and atmosphericcommons, to preventing high casualties from naturaldisasters (earthquakes, volcanic explosions, hurricanes,and such), to protecting populations against disease, toavoiding conflict between nations, and to that essentialconcomitant of all of these {^population controjp There ismovement toward these precautionary measures, but sofar the movement is dishearteningly slow.

Humanity cannot afford to muddle through the rest ofthe twentieth century; the risks are too great, and thestakes are too high. This may be the last opportunity tochoose our own and our descendants' destiny. Failing tochoose or making the wrong choices may lead to catas-trophe. But it must never be forgotten that the rightchoices could lead to a much better world.

^'"Confronting the future, p. 348.

'"Preparing for a human community, Department of State NewsRelease, May 18, 1976.

'"Birch, Confronting the future; Dennis Pirages, A sustainable society:Social and political implications.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / 1003

have often slipped into the work uncredited. Their assis-tance has been extraordinary. The help of our good friendand attorney, Johnson C. Montgomery, was sorely missedafter his death in December 1974. Much of the materialon legal matters still bears the stamp of his thinking—especially his pioneering work on the legal aspects ofpopulation control.

Peggy Craig, Claire Shoens, and other staff membersof the Falconer Biology Library at Stanford have oncemore been of enormous assistance to us. Their highlycompetent and cheerfully given help has time and againpermitted us to solve difficult bibliographic problems.Reuben Pennant has patiently Xeroxed reference materi-als and several drafts of manuscript. Thanks for invalu-able reference work are also due Mari Wilson, librarianfor the Energy and Resources Information Center at theUniversity of California at Berkeley.

Typing chores for this edition have been handled ex-pertly by Darryl Wheye at Stanford and Sue Black, LindaElliott, Linda Marczak, George Moon, Becky New, Deb-bie Tyber, and Denise Wior at Berkeley. Seemingly end-less proofreading of galleys was accomplished with theable assistance of Robert Wise and Kim Binette (inHawaii), and Susan Mann, Glenn Lunde, Jennifer

Montgomery, and Julia Kennedy (all of Palo Alto andStanford). We are especially grateful to Julie, whodevoted many hours of spare time for six weeks to thejob. Julie, Jenny, and Glenn also helped in assemblingthe chapter bibliographies. Jane Lawson Bavelas atStanford once again helped us with myriad aspects ofthe work.

Judith Quinn, our project editor, has done a superb jobof polishing the manuscript, dealing cheerfully with thenumerous crises inevitable in the final stages of a projectof this scale. Her skill and patience have made our taskmuch easier. The reader doubtless will appreciate theskill and attention to detail that Jean Mclntosh devotedto the indices, as we appreciated her good humor in theface of preposterous time pressures.

Fina re would like to express our deep appreciationtcftheri Holdren^ who put up with many "social" even-ings that were long working sessions on the manuscript _of this book. She cheerfully gave us aid and comfort whilecontinuing to balance with great success the needs of herchildren and the initial stages of her own career as a re-search biologist. We hope now that the book is in handshe will think the effort worth it.

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