Toward a Better Life?

While population growth and perhaps economic growth ultimately must come to a halt on this finite planet, there is still considerable room to choose when, where, and how. If Americans choose to have fewer children per family, leading to a stable population within the next fifty to seventy-five years, they would be buying time and additional options for dealing with problems of resource supply and environmental quality.

Similar consequences could emerge from the choice between alternative rates of economic growth. Our study indicates that a reduction in economic growth would reduce resource consumption and pollution emissions more than a comparable reduction in population growth would. But while growth in the economy adds problems that need solution, it also adds to the capacity to solve problems. It is difficult to find similar offsetting advantages from additional population growth at this stage in U.S. history.

Population growth affects resource needs and the environment largely through the economy. Our starting point, therefore, was the development of alternative projections, based on different assumptions, of the levels population and economic growth might reach in the next thirty to fifty years.

We accepted the Census Bureau's high population projection of 321 million for the year 2000 and the low projection of 261 million.

Our highest estimate for economic growth is based on the assumption that man-hours per week will decline from about forty to thirty-seven by the year 2000. Our lowest estimate is based on a decline from forty man-hours per week to twenty-nine. These assumptions give us four estimates of gross national product. Using the high population and man-hour projection, we estimate a GNP of $2.6 trillion in 2000. Under the low population and man-hour projection, GNP could reach $1.9 trillion in that year. (In 1967 GNP was $0.76 trillion.)

In analyzing pollution problems in relation to population and economic growth, we divided pollutants into two classes. The first class includes major combustion products—carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, hydrocarbons, and particulates (plus several measures of water pollution). These pollutants all have relatively short half-lives—sufficiently short that cumulative effects are not a problem—and enough information exists about them to permit linking them to economic sectors or population.

The second set of pollutants includes those with longer half-lives—radiation, pesticides, and heavy metals—plus a wide variety of ever-changing chemicals emitted by high-technology industries. Most are emitted in small, though often highly toxic, amounts.

We know far too little about the potential damage from these pollutants, and how it is brought about. We know, for example, that there are likely to be more nuclear power plants if rapid population and economic growth occur; but all dimensions of nuclear management and technology are changing so rapidly that there is no stable launching pad from which to project the amounts of radioactive wastes likely to escape to the environment. We know that, once in the environment, they can travel long distances through space and food chains before coming to rest, and we know the kinds of damage they can cause. But we do not know where they will come to rest, the extent of the damages, or when in the future these dangers will occur.

In truth, the situation is similar for all pollutants, but because many of the pollutants in this second set depend more heavily on changes in technology than on changes in population and economic growth, emphasis in this article is on the first set of pollutants.

Our principle conclusions are most easily discussed in relation to the chart showing hydrocarbon emissions. (Hydrocarbons are present in the fumes of incompletely burned fuels. Combined with nitrous oxides and activated by sunlight, they are the principal ingredients of smog.) Bar A for 1970 represents the level of hydrocarbons generated by the production and use of economic goods and services. If there were no changes in the technology associated with the production of this pollutant, the amount of hydrocarbons generated would be at the levels indicated by one of the other bars labeled A in the year 2000. The difference between the bars would depend on whether population was growing at the high (three children per family) rate or at the low (two children) rate and whether GNP had achieved the highest or lowest projection.

For 1970, the bar labeled B shows the amount of hydrocarbons actually emitted into the atmosphere. The difference between A and B is accounted for by treatment. For 2000, B indicates projected emission levels on the basis of changes in production processes that are likely to occur even if there were no active public policy to reduce pollution emissions.

In principle, these changes could result in either a higher or lower level of emissions. Most of the changes that we have studied, however, tend on net to reduce residuals because, even without pressures to clean up the environment, entrepreneurs have an interest in conserving raw materials.

The heart of this story involves the bars labeled C that indicate the levels of emissions that would prevail if an active abatement policy were in force. These estimates are conservative in the sense that no technological breakthroughs were assumed. The chart and comparable data indicate that the choice to be made is between (1) no change with higher levels of emissions than exist today, and (2) an active abatement policy with lower than current levels of emissions—regardless of the rates of population and economic growth. As of 1972 the United States appears to be choosing in favor of the active policy.

How much would an active abatement policy cost? In 1970 annualized costs of pollution abatement were estimated to be $8.45 billion (1967 dollars), about 1 percent of GNP. Under the active abatement policy, we estimate that these costs would mount to over $47 billion for the high population-high economic growth case and $34 billion for low population-high economic growth in the year 2000. However large, these figures amount to less than percent of GNP in the year 2000. In terms of growth, they signify it would be necessary to give up less than one-tenth of a percentage point in annual growth of GNP to purchase this active abatement policy.

Direct attacks on pollution will not be easy to implement, and increasing the attacks after they are implemented will become very difficult and costly. It is at this point—especially beyond 2000 when such policies may prove inadequate—that reductions in population and economic growth come into their own as important means of containing pollution.

But even within the next 30 years, some regions of the country will face difficult problems despite improvement in overall emission rates. In 1970 two cities—Chicago and Philadelphia—had sulfur dioxide concentration levels that were above the Environmental Protection Agency's primary standard of 80 micrograms per cubic meter of air. If no change in abatement policy (after 1967-70) occurred, only these two would remain in violation in the year 2000, although many other cities would closely approach the standard. If there were an active abatement policy, all cities would fall significantly below the standard in 2000. A similar situation exists for particulates, except that thirty-six areas are initially above the standard and some improvement would occur even in the absence of the active abatement policy.

For nitrogen oxides, however, thirty-six metropolitan areas were above the standard of 100 micrograms per cubic meter in 1970 and forty-one areas would be above in 2000 with no change in policy, but two—Los Angeles and San Diego—would remain above the standard even with an active abatement policy.

Pollution concentrations are distributed unequally among urbanized regions, within the regions, and even from one hour to the next. Indeed, carbon monoxide levels along downtown streets during rush hours can be more than ten times those along suburban streets at the same time of day. Such problems will require special treatment regardless of the national abatement policy that is adopted.

Apart from adopting a more positive and encouraging posture toward basic research, perhaps the only way to cope with present causes and effects of pollution is to proceed cautiously and prudently, playing it safe with Nature. Given our affluence and the fact that many pollutants result from attempts to satisfy rather trivial preferences—for unblemished fruits, laborsaving detergents, fast-accelerating cars, brightly colored paper products—much could be done within our time frame without significant adverse effects on welfare or on growth rates. But a slowdown in population and economic growth would clearly help and in a longer time frame could possibly become a necessity.

Problems will arise under any of our projected growth rates—more rapidly under the high rates than under the low ones. But the United States has the physical and technological capability to resolve them without serious losses in material welfare. This country is amazingly rich. If pollution emissions cannot be tolerated, production processes can be changed, treatment improved, polluters separated from their victims, symptoms treated, or production of the commodity causing the pollution reduced. None of these adjustments raises specters of dramatic downfall and collapse.

But physical, technological, and even managerial capabilities of this sort are not enough. Beyond the economic costs of adjusting to growing resource and environmental problems, there are social and institutional prices to pay.

Embedded in the folklore of what constitutes the American way of life is freedom from regulation, but restrictions on pollutant emissions require public regulation. True enough, the more we can find means of relying on the price system, the easier the bureaucratic task will be. But even if effluent charges and user fees became universal, they would have to be set administratively. Emissions and use would have to be metered and fees collected.

It appears inevitable that a larger portion of our lives will be devoted to filling out forms, arguing with the computer or its representatives, appealing decisions, waiting for our case to be handled, finding ways to evade the queue or to move ahead in it. In many small ways, everyday life will become more contrived.

Merely to correct for the external costs of past growth, many such changes must occur regardless of whether the low or high population projection is realized. But qualitative differences, of small degree at first, would grow with time and might be much greater by the year 2020 if population should reach the highest projection.

Various exigencies have forced the introduction of solutions to problems before their side effects are known. It might, for example, be far better environmentally to postpone the introduction of nuclear power plants until the inherently cleaner fusion reactors are developed. When one pesticide is found to be dangerous to man, it is replaced with another about which we know less. Programs involving the expenditure of billions on water treatment are set in motion without knowing whether the benefits outweigh the costs of other opportunities forgone. Lower population growth will not automatically change the situation, but at least a bit of the urgency—the crash program character of much that is done—would be eliminated.

Continued population growth closes off options. In the case of the larger population, there is less choice, less room for diversity, less room for error. Technology must advance; lifestyles must change. Many may like this emerging world; but for those who do not there will be fewer alternatives.