An Exchange of Views

March 14, 1974

Editor:

Over a long period of time I have found Resources of assistance in gaining an objective overview of current resource problems and questions. Among its major strengths have been its accuracy and avoidance of judgmental terms, or at lease identifying clearly why those judgments have been made. The recent issue tends to follow that pattern except for the very last column of the very last article. Several aspects of that strike me as being overdrawn and possibly inaccurate. The following are specific points with which I would argue:

1. In the concluding portion of the sentence on the top of page 23, last column, the comment is made—"with a newfound sense of duty to the future." There has been a long-term concern for future populations among substantial segments of the American population. The same attitude of new discovery occurs in the first sentence of the last paragraph.
2. The suggestion that the developed nations are increasingly attempting to pull back from involvement in world affairs. "Those segments . . . are accelerating the rate at which they relinquish their relative participation in world affairs." I would like to know the substantiation for that statement. Recognizing one can find indicators of that (although hardly conclusive proof) it seems to me most of those indicators are not of the developed nation's own making. For example, lessened involvement and influence by the United States in the United Nations is surely due as much to the increasing desire of the developing countries to assume a more important role.

The final sentence in the article I feel is a gross generalization easily made and difficult to staunchly defend. Would the author argue that those people who preserved natural wonders through establishing the National Park System did not anticipate succeeding generations' needs or values? Would he suggest that those building a substantial national defense base failed to discern succeeding generations' needs and values; that the Constitution framers were wrong in forecasting that the citizens in this country would value freedom of press, speech, religion, etc.? That sentence is a gross oversimplification, highly argumentable, and I think caps off the weaknesses which strangely enough present themselves, in my view, primarily in the latter part of the article.

I would be interested in comments the author and editor might have on the above views.

Sincerely,

Bruce T. Wilkins

Associate Professor
Department of Natural Resources
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14850

March 27, 1974

Dear Dr. Wilkins:

Your letter addressed to the Editor of Resources has been referred to me for reply, since I was the author of the material with which you take issue.

I am constrained to concede most of the points you make, since, as you correctly point out, the statements in the section in question are in the nature of generalizations and expressions of judgment, for any of which contradictory as well as supporting evidence may be adduced. The section was deliberately impressionistic and was intended to counterbalance some of the prevailing assumptions which seemed to me without any firmer foundation to be permeating a good deal of current thinking about demographic and economic growth and about America's place in the world. It has actually not been the policy of Resources to exclude such judgmental generalizations, and the broader they are in scope the less practical it usually is to provide the supporting detail.

That there have been "substantial" segments of the American population long concerned both about the natural resource endowment and the environmental heritage left to future generations and about the limits of growth, I would readily admit. I would argue, however—and on no firmer a basis than general observation—that it is only in recent years that the concern has become so fashionable and widespread as to lead to popular adoption of the idea of family limitation and growth curtailment as a duty to others rather than for benefit of family and self. In the general sweep of recent history, in fact, it seems not very long ago that the elite of this country were more impressed with the duty to augment their contribution to society by having larger families instead of maintaining a convenience (to themselves) of a small number of children.

In referring to relinquishment of position in world affairs, I was alluding largely to this attitude of voluntary population limitation on the part of the more developed societies. Such an attitude, howsoever otherwise meritorious its rationale, does have the effect of insuring that a preponderance of the world's near-long-term population growth will take place among less developed societies. To me this signifies dilution of the world's ratio of intellectual, managerial, and material capital to the aggregate size of the demographic and welfare problem to be dealt with. Combined with a fading of the growth-exportation ethic, it also signifies further geographical and social disproportion between the loci of human and material capital and the points of greatest need for application of such factors. True, the immobility of such productive factors is due at least in part to the distrust, on the part of less advantaged groups and nations, of established elites, and a desire to rely more heavily on their own human resources. The pressure of the less developed nations, which you cite, to assume a more important role in the United Nations is but one manifestation of this not new, but more aggressively pursued, attitude. I would hardly argue that developed nations like the United States should resist such pressure for self-reliance, even if we should be convinced that it is not in the less developed societies' best interests. Nor would I argue that societies which are currently less advantaged do not have the potential for developing complements of human and physical capital comparable to those which exist in the more favored societies. At best, however, this process has to be long and probably painful, and I consider it a correct inference that in the meanwhile the world in the aggregate will have a diminished ability "to deal with its problems."

With regard to the remarks in the last part of your letter, I would certainly agree that the judgments you cite have all proven to be correct assessments of relatively lasting values. They happened also to be the values of the generation that sought to safeguard them for posterity. But would you give the same weight to the judgments of earlier generations regarding the value of superhighways, of a materials-abundant existence, of compulsions to succeed, of the "straight" life, of social insurance, of a liberal-arts education, of suburban living? Would earlier generations have been wise to conserve our stocks of coal, so that we should not run out of heat and gas light? Or to preserve the original acreage of our forests, lest we run out of fuel wood? Or to go easy on lead, lest we run out of plumbing? Or to go easy on copper, because ore grades were down to 1 percent? The point is not that in some of such judgments they would have been wrong; even with hindsight it is not always possible to say what would have been right, or might have been right for the wrong reasons (we might, for example, have been well advised to better conserve whales, even if we did not need a continuing supply of their oil for lamplight). The point is that any given generation should not give undue weight to needs which are perceived to exist only in so distant a future that tastes and technology may by then well have changed.

To summarize, it was my intent—and I still think not a misguided one—to stimulate greater depth of reflection and not to lead anyone astray.

Sincerely yours,

Leonard L. Fischman

Research Associate
Resources for the Future