BOOKSHELF Balancing environmental quality against cost Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy. Edited by Henry Jarrett. xv 173 pages. The Johns Hopkins Press. Baltimore, Md. 21218. 1966. $5.00, hard cover. Lloyd M . Cooke i.5 assi.stmt director o f Union Carbide Corp.’.~Food Products division, ChiC L ~ ~ OI l,l . Dr. Cooke also serves as Cliairinan of the Sirbcommittee on Enixironmental Irnpro\~emertt of the ACS Committee 011 Chrrnistry and Pith/;(, A,Fairs.
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B y Lloyd M . Cooke Many chemists and engineers concerned with problems related to pollution and its abatement are either so deeply committed to highly specialized problems or so polarized by defensive bias or by zealous conservationism that they seldom delve into other vitally important aspects of environmental quality. Consequently, they should welcome this series of 12 essays by economists. geographers, lawyers, and medical scientists who probe the fundamental question, “What quality of environment do Americans want and how much are they willing to pay for higher quality in dollars and effort.” The essays evolved from the 1966 Annual Forum sponsored by Resources for the Future (RFF), a nonprofit corporation for research and education in the development, conservation, and use of natural resources. The authors, all of whom bear excellent credentials, are used in an interesting manner. They are paired so that one expert presents a thesis and a second expert speaks to, about, or in addition to the first expert’s thesis. The technique provides a built-in critique that engenders a reassuring feeling for comprehensiveness. Henry Jarrett, editor of the compilation of essays and Director of Publications for RFF. provides broadstroke summaries of each of the essays in the introduction. His summa-
ries capture the spirit and the sense of each of the essays so realistically that they are excerpted freely in the following description of the contents. Resources Development and the Environment is the heading for e.ssays by Kenneth E. Boulding. economist (University of Michigan. Ann Arbor) and Harold J . Barnett, economist (Washington University, St. Louis) entitled The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth and Pressures of Growth upon Environment, respectively. These two essays open the inquiry with a broad look at how development of natural resources has affected the environment and may be expected to affect it in the future. Mr. Boulding sees the advance of technology and the growth of population as forces that are making it increasingly plain that the planet Earth is a selfcontained spaceship with diminishing new sources of materials and less and less room for disposal of wastes. .4nd he questions the familiar idea that continuingly increasing production and consumption of goods are in themselves desirable. Dr. Barnett explores the effects of economic growth upon the natural environment, and asks Ivhether the ideal of a competitive self-regulating market will be as useful in the decades ahead as it was in the nineteenth century and the first part of the taentieth. Health and adaptability
Under the heading En\ ironment and Human Health, Rene Dubos. microbiologist (Rockefeller Institute) discusses Promises and Hazards of Man’s Adaptability and Leonard DUM. psychiatrist (consultant to Department of Housing and Urban Development). Mental Health in an Urban Society. RenC Dubos sees a crucial problem in the contrast between man’s biological stability and his formidable capacity to form new social and cultural patterns and to survive, at least for many years,
under new conditions. Because of man’s adaptability some apparently harmless effects of urban living may begin to take their toll decades later and in indirect ways. Furthermore, who can say whether man’s remarkable capacity to adapt will always carry him in what by present values appear to be desirable directions? Leonard J. Duhl, interested mainly in mental health, sees, along with Dr. Dubos, the spread of urbanization as the central issue. Fragmentation, he bdieves, causes much of the difficulty-a tendency to take a piecemeal dpproach instead of viewing the complex problem of city living as a whole. - 1 s things stand, municipal agencies are intent on only their particular programs and individuals are subject to Zonflicting pressures from many quarters. He sees need for new institutions to put the bewildering pieces of the picture together. Economic problems
The fact that many of the economic problems of environmental quality ‘ire caused or aggravated by lying outside the market economy raises many problems and possibilities that have not been well explored, according to Ralph Turvey, economist (Britain’s Electricity Council) and Roland N . SlcKean. economist (U.C.L.A.) in essays entitled Side E#ects of Resource Use and Some Problems of Criteria and Acquiring Information under the main heading Beyond the Market Mechanism. Mr. Turvey employs a series of examples wherein realistic measurements of gains and losses are insufficient (even when measurable) to pinpoint the right course of action. He concludes that each case must be considered on its merits and that these jhould be set out in economic terms as far as possible. Administrators should consider alternatives to direct regulation, economists should not exaggerate the applicability of tax de\ices. and both should remember that
Volume 1, Number 8, August 1967 669
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670 Environmental Science and Technology
questions of fairness require legal or political decision. Dr. McKean probes more deeply into external costs, especially with regard to acquiring data needed to resolve problems created by the side effects of resource use. Econornic Research in P r o b l e m of Eni ironmenr is discussed by Allen V. Kneese, economist (director of research on environmental quality for RFF) and M. Mason Gaffney, economist (Wisconsin). Dr. Kneese in Research Goals nnd Progress Toward Them cites a number of examples of economic research projects now under way by public and private agencies. This essay provides valuable perspective to the noneconomist on evaluation studies concerned with the following: The willingness of individual decision units (municipalities. industries, and individuals) to pay for the avoidance of damages. What the cost would be to those decision units that found it necessary to take mitigating action to reduce external corn. Dr. Gaffney's essay both reinforces and extends Dr. Kneese's thesis. H e explores some of the general problems of environmental research in the light of welfare economics and supplements Dr. Kneese's findings in research gaps with further suggestions of urgently needed lines of inquiry. Public attitude
An essay by Gilbert F. White, geographer (Chicago) on Formation ontl Role of Public Attitudes is paired with one by David Lowenthal, geographer and historian (American Geographical Society). on Assmptions Behind the Public Arrititdes. These essays speak to the point that modern man has a wide range of choices which must be made without the aid of the semi-automatic functioning of a market and this heightens the importance of public attitudes that affect political and private action. How such attitudes are formed, how they may be measured, and how they convert into action are discussed in interesting detail by Dr. White. Here a geographer draws upon the counsel of social psychologists to describe a broad field which is in the process of changing from an art to a science, noting the progress made and defining the large amount of work to be done. Dr. Low-
enthal, as might be expected from a historian, comments mainly on the nature and significance of assumptions that underlie attitudes toward the environment and thereby focuses on an aspect of the problem antecedent to those discussed by Dr. White. Strategy proposed
The collection of essays ends logically with Some N e w Machinery to Help Do the Job by Jacob H. Beuscher, lawyer (Wisconsin), following a paper by Norton E. Long, professor of government (Brandeis) entitled N e w Tusks for All Levels of Gorernrnent. The two writers refer to the fact that many oi the nation's current policies and institutions date from times of simple technology and a small rural population. Thus many new tasks confront national, state, and local governments that are unprepared to handle them apart from their interaction under a federal system. The leadership of the Federal Government in improvement in the quality of environment is documented, and, in a sense, justified by Dr. Long. Dr. Beuscher concurs that the dominant role must be played by the Federal Government, but also assigns important secondary roles to the states. To achieve this objective he suggests some new kinds of government machinery that might be used, including joint boards and compacts for interstate action, methods of operation in metropolitan regions, and the role of the state courts. Scientists will doubtlessly be best served, and perhaps most impressed, by the information provided by the Kneese-Gaffney essays on economic research and the White-Lowenthal essays on public attitudes. All four essays refer to numerous excellent primary sources (as evidenced by a few randomly selected by the reviewer). The editor concludes his introduction by remarking at one point that '.this book leaves out more than it puts in.'. However, for the chemist and sanitary engineer directly or indirectly concerned with problems of environmental quality, this book fortuitously omits most of that with which they are familiar and provides a broad collection of analysis and research findings on other salient pieces of the problem by scholars who speak from many years of experience.
