Issue 66: Seeing both forests and trees

There is a propensity in the American character to see problems in terms of crises. The energy crisis, the environmental crisis, the urban crisis, and others have paraded across the national stage and dominated public interest only to fade from consciousness when relative calm returns.

Fanned to flame by the news media and other interests, public attention quickly burns out without fresh fuel. Interest cannot be sustained at fever pitch, and new crises overwhelm old ones. Novelty seems the equal of substance. Long-running problems risk inducing collective boredom.

The crisis syndrome performs a profound disservice to the nation. In the fields of natural resources and the environment, for example, the problems mostly are long term and require sustained effort even to understand what is involved, let alone to forge solutions. A roller coaster of public interest (and government and foundation support) does not provide a context congenial to the kind of long-range research, analysis, and social institution building required. Crises occur, to be sure, but they usually represent a trend or deep-seated problem, and the prominence of the one must not obscure the greater importance of the other.

Long lines at gas stations do constitute a crisis of sorts, for example, but they by no means comprise the whole of the complex range of energy problems confronting the nation and the world. Yet it often seems that gas lines or some other single incident are taken in the public mind not as symptoms, but as diseases. The part is confused with the whole.

The view at Resources for the Future always has been long range and focused on whole problems as well as on representative parts of larger issues. This annual "Highlights" issue of Resources is in that tradition. In the pages to follow we explore a few timely issues, but more often we take a broad look at the trends behind the crises and establish a framework for thinking about national and global resource issues.

A crisis is a brief episode: it crescendos to climax and is resolved, for good or ill. The problems afflicting energy supplies, environmental quality, food production, Third World development, and the other issues addressed within will be with us for as far ahead as anyone can see.