Beyond the Energy Crisis: A Global View of Energy and the Environment, Part 2

we have to recognize that most of the difficulties we're experiencing really arise from abuses are excesses of the same processes which are produced so much benefit and so much wealth and so the very fact that we acknowledge the benefit in the world that has been produced by this surely does not i cannot itself and served as an excuse for continuing the same process is to the point where they become self destruct now the other thing that's happened to the environment issue is thanks to the leadership of people like russ train and he got it i was singled out because he's he's with fan stirred the pressure in a constructive way more than almost any other varmint a demonstrator i'm on the national level so this environment movement is alive and well in nations all around this earth and in virtually a hundred and fifty of them let me usually the other extreme i just came back from china and here is a poor country average income of roughly a hundred dollars apiece in which the environmental movement is alive and well in demonstrating that not only is it possible for a poor developing country to incorporate environmental considerations into its basic approach to growth and

development not only is it possible but it is the environmental considerations it's handling properly handled properly are an ally and assess the positive factor in their growth and development that is at the extreme i believe we have demonstrated that however difficult it is an environmental sunday is not only possible about necessarily let me just a note of advertising i've arrived course runs for you the international counterparts of the environment protection agency image on the council on environmental quality the united nations environment program because that's what we are you have to deal with and learn about every level right from that of the little hamlets and villages to the level of the nation and the global level i don't need to say at the conclusion of this kind of a seminar that so many of the issues are global and their ramifications and we are not hierarchical in the environmental seal we represent a series of echelons in which our activities in the un empowerment program drop on the national experiences of this country and

others and are designed to be supportive up to provide services to the national environmental organizations i can say that our environment around now from its headquarters in nairobi kenya as the only world organisation to operate from a developing country headquarters is also alive and well we've moved beyond the stage of talking and planning to the stage of action we have now over one hundred in at specific activities going on in every continent of the world or arranging everywhere from the creation of the world's first wristwatch network of global environmental monitoring information referral system designed to assure that decision makers in governments when they take the important decisions at that affects the environment have access to the basics i'm the best information the best experience in the best technology that signs that science can provide and as you've heard here this morning information in a very very key factor were also addressing ourselves to such problems as the march of the desert is the

preservation i have a seriously threatened reserves of genetic studies genetics stops of plant and animal life the very life stuff on which continued food production depends we're working out in that with the arab league on a program for restoring we caught the remaining of arabia restoring to cultivating cultivation of many of the rather formally green areas of that part of the world were working with the chinese are helping to where we had just a very interesting experience with that with reducing almost eliminating assets waterborne diseases as justice mia's is where they have learned very interesting to techniques of water and soil management that are relevant to the interests of many developing countries were working with them on how to translate that experience into the kind of language that other people use and believe me even some are industrialized countries can use some of the chinese exporters or often running and moving and i hope some of you will take enough interest in what we are doing to make it possible for congress month ago when he takes a careful

look at in his role looking at whether the united states is getting its money's worth we'll back him up and deciding that you are now the issue i think here the larger issue that this had that this some analysts or symposium faces a while you faced in the us context specifically is the issue of survival and is it something of a paradox is at this point when we man has reached unprecedented levels of knowledge of a car that he has in a sense it does drive man has lost his self confidence that industrialized man is wondering where he is going that survival should be even seriously talked about as an issue and yet survival clearly is the nation's survival in two senses won the individual survival every human being on earth in terms of his access so the basic resources the food energy

ingredients required to sustain his life on a minimally a decent human level and here you have heard the experts say and i agree with them that that today is clearly feasible there's no physical problem that prevents secondly the collective survival of the whole human family is clearly today threatened by race which like however not fully evaluated actually do exist and are being added more and more and better understood that is the risk that can come from impinging on the outer limits of the biosphere on which all human life defends damage to the ozone or contamination of the food chain a vast increases in radiation levels of inadvertent or climate change a variety of these larger it's less acute less immediate but very very important in the sense of their delaying action risks set a kinder reception only be avoided by recognizing them well enough in advance and understanding that human activities it impinge on these riffs and regulating and

controlling those human activities so here we have survival as an issue for literally millions of individuals in the developing world in that sense and survival is an issue for all of us in terms of staying within these outer limits on the to impinge on each other because our responses to the here and now problems of energy shortages and so george shortages i will in large measure determine determine whether or not we will in french the so called unger limits another aspect of this and i think we better lay it on the table to make it very clear we have been operating on the very comfortable assumption would surely the energy crisis is demolished once and for all let the rich can help the poor simply by getting richer themselves and the increase of the trickle down to the poor will assure the provision of the needs of the poor neighbors that doesn't work we now see a situation where the continued pursuit of wasteful and don'ts and patterns of consumption in and end production in the rich countries and you're not trying to lay that way none of us thought we were doing that's when we got into those habits

but we got there and the continued pursuit of these is frankly setting as clearly in conflict with the basic survival needs of the poor and there is a new escalation of the rich for conflict with in societies as well as internationally it's very easy to satisfy these pressures is very convenient it's permitted us to defer some of these rallies now where the growth is being reduced at least temporarily and i may even at some countries the experiences negative growth the distribution of problem can no longer be avoided and it's a couple now what do we do about i'd like to take the last few minutes just to give you a few ideas picking up in the air much of what i've learned i had a speech when i came here not giving the same one because i learned a lot this morning and i would like to crystallize a few ideas of what we might do well one thing first of all what we can't do and we can't

retreat into ghettos this is just not feasible inherently the technological civilization to which we owe our own president had levels of affluence and wealth and opportunity is inherently by its very nature of global interdependence of light vision those who sits at the pinnacle of that situation in that civilization you and i are among the most vulnerable to the increasing possibilities for disrupting and by those who feel alienated some believe me those who threw hand grenades are molotov cocktails and for five years ago on earth using mortars today will have nuclear bombs and biological weapons within five years so the outsiders do it we and worse showing in a position where it's in light and self interest reinforces our basic moral instincts when we understand and we were told by the experts and who has disputed that it is possible to bring unprecedented levels

of decent life to every human being on this planet and i certainly possible assure them as a fundamental human right are certain minimum of us and it's if we don't do it stopped it simply because of a collapse of our own moral and political will it's rubber b is right on us don't let us retreat into any escape was thinking but somehow the death of thousands or millions of people in the developing world is inevitable they can't be prevented we can't do anything about it we can do something about it let's be very clear if we don't it simply because we have we the ideas that we've us post the great ideas on which would have given our civilization its moral basis as simply when the french came weren't up to and we just weren't up to it was nice to talk about them but when the crunch came we just were prepared to do the necessary to live up to and that's the kind of issue this is now clearly in the larger

context the four five services i make i can't be more says india can loiter take too long i don't have the time that was read nor a lot of his wisdom though about what might be the yeah i would sadly my suggestions call for something that repeal and others have recognize and barber were certainly did yesterday the needy to sank of ourselves as part of the world society that sounds pretty simple but it's difficult to remember our whole history your man is one of coming through various echelons given his loyalty and organizing himself on successively a higher levels into successfully larger drippings from the family to the tribe to the village to the town to the city to the city state a nation state and at each one of these these points were he henri decided to get his loyalty to the larger argument or even this country including the thirteen three it was a difficult process of reconciling is interest but is like your self interest

compelled him to do that and are like yourself in tears now compels us to make that one last league not to a world government but to a world system a world system in which problems of no nation however great could handle itself can be handled with him by cooperation with our other nations specifically clearly we need new approaches to girls we need is barbara word i understand yesterday reminding do we need a new conservation ethic and the value system with that implies and very significant this as a very very significant roots in individual behavior or the behavior of the rich particularly as consumers and as voters says taxpayers in the industrialized countries we have to have more emphasis on non material aspects of growth more art we have to save conservation isn't really write us uses the equivalent of eight metric tons a year ago while its energy sweden uses four point two five france where i live in a part of my life uses three not much more

than one third and i don't notice of the quality of life in sweden or france is materially an hour at a less than desirable in here so clearly there's a lot of room for conservation lot of difficulties but a lot of room you know the other thing is at the it seems to me we need to adopt ecological practices are ecologically sound practices in terms of managing our growth process we need to have it we need to usher in a new era of what some have called eco economics and what this means is restructuring the system of incentives and penalties on under which the private enterprise system operates you can expect a private enterprise system to absorb itself at the expense of its profits the viet the social costs of doing a socially desirable things we've got governments and government authorities and people have got a restructure the mtv the system the penalties and second an incentive to make it more profitable and desirable to do the right things and more on profitable do the wrong things now if that doesn't happen i think of private enterprise systems on the way

out either we have that major re orientation that major reorientation of the private enterprise system to assure that it consciously and properties being used by society and accepted by society's as a means of accomplishing the larger social causes it we don't do that there will be no private enterprise system or in fifty years or more so that's the real test and all this contradiction between the private enterprise profit drive and the source of all this it has got to be records my own belief is that it is possible for ecologically sound growth to be economically very very attractive but that does require this restructuring of incentives and towns were developing countries most of the industrialized nation in the world a new investigation should be in the developing regions and the developing countries they clearly needed for all sorts of reasons including environment and there they must take ecologically sound approach to the development which do not destroy their basic resources of forestry and fisheries and i am

and wildlife while they are developing development without destruction development that can be sustained by the underlying resorts all based on which it depends development most of all it is dependent on indigenous human skills and resources in the best use of those we need clarity every orientation of science and technology we need you to emphasize and and it's very urgent that the development of close circuit industrial processes science itself and so much of it being in the hands of private industry and subject of disposal of society a public a public kept private enterprise subject of science itself must be part of this revealing of the other private eye cannot and private economic system because science must clearly be reoriented again to the meeting of man's principal social goals population stabilization clearly population is a complex problem but no country today can escape the need for population policies which

orient their population it's griffiths levels its growth and its distribution with the resource base three indigenous resource base on which the population depends on the speed and the patterns with which they develop those resources and the level of life to which people speier know it's very interesting it's very often thought is often simplistically said that the threat the main threat to the world in garment comes from the exploding populations of the workforce we know it doesn't the main global threats to the environment come from the proliferating appetites of the rich now that doesn't mean that the proper exploding populations of the poor is not a problem it's a clearly of a problem for them in terms of their access to the resources they need for survival but we need to consciously stabilize population by the first quarter of the next century and every country will have to select up for its particular level of population in relation to what again i want to support now we must also and this is i thought i'd i'm running out of time so up deep

history we must read directly urban revolution we must make in effect the great revolution in human life is really coming into cities of the world and when you look at the number of states that are exploding a real e in the developing world the way in which they're exploding we realize that we're moving in less than a hundred years something like seventy five years from a primarily rural society on a global basis primarily urban society and this is at the roofs of many of the very acute problems being experienced in the developing world where many of the cities i mentioned threatened with being literally overwhelmed by it almost impossible burdensome about providing even basic services to their populations and here i might say if there that i i think i can see the very real prospect prospect of eco catastrophes in the cities of the developing world in the next few years or some of the artworks and it looked at the best of the area's all right

now and we've got to making rural life and the benefits over a life more accessible to urban dwellers we don't make some of the benefits of urban life job opportunities opportunities for education advancement we gotta make them more available in the rural areas we got to realize the urban areas urban thai's the rural areas in effect set we got to the oceans man's last frontier it's an awesome thing that the whole of man's history has been related to his attempts to assert his management of the rule of law over thirty percent of the world no we got the other seventy percent to do in the next ten years and maybe even pressures are on us to do it quicker than that and this is gonna be an international here we can't permit and i my apologies to do well coming i was about oil coming guy without any president to before i got religion and i and i would say that unless this country can resist the pressures of very strong pressure is a beefed up as they are by the

energy prices to permit anarchy on the seas by allowing exploitation of the resources of the oceans before international agreement that are on the on the air on the yep methods of controlling at owning and licensing those parts of the oceans be on national jurisdictions i believe we're going to have energy on the seas which will be a foreboding and portents of growing anarchy on the lam services of the world on the other side of that my ocean's give us a great and unique and watson for ever opportunity to make this world society really work by not reproducing all the conflicts and divisions in the oceans that we know of three for land by using less of a testing ground a proving ground for new and more profitable forms of cooperation now we've heard a lot about information i would just like to say to one of the things that we clearly need is better societal decision making process the advantage you have perhaps most of all this close serious weaknesses in societal decision

they saw that the things we're deciding about the things are happening at all things that are happening and all things that were decided on this is clearly because there is a lie between the causes and effects which transcends the time to time and they horizons that we're normally dealing with transcends the institutional a boundaries that we are normally dealing with and we have to construct a much better societal decision making system and you know we have we're all in all countries i think have made at least some gestures in that direction but believe me they have been so far more very very little more than gestures is a very very tough process but it's one within a store and we got to be planning is clearly we need a commitment for planning and also we need we need the future represented at the table if you look at traditional cost benefit analysis it at the present rates of interest nine or ten percent anything beyond fourteen years or sore thirteen years has no present value in other words artists like the economic basis it doesn't pay to save time today if

you apply strict cost benefit our benefit else it just doesn't pay well people don't apply that kind of analysis to the important decisions of their life i'm a believer in cost benefit analysis but i believe too that because of the religion of cost benefit is driving us to disaster it's a very good to have the very bad religion set and lastly dark eels statement increased flow of resources from rich to poor now that just doesn't mean aid programs iran in a program and i know and i've believed very deeply that aid programs massive e n as they have been conceived and run up today are just the primitive beginnings the operation internationally of the same set of principles we have accepted as the basis for a viable life in our own societies and that is the equalizer asian of certain opportunity equity and justice and distribution at at least a certain minimum level not yes we do live in a global society and we

do what we're really faced with is simply the expansion into international life of these principles of equity an industry that of justice that we have accepted as the basis for relations within our own society however imperfectly the mechanisms have have work the principle is exactly the same aide programs in the long run will not work any better than charity programs work set at an animal charity i was the recipient of charity and didn't help me very much in fact you gave me a deeply ingrained feeling against direct gratuitous kind of charity and that's what it does in international relations nobody likes it it should be a fundamental human right that everybody should be able to have access at least to the basic resources and environmental conditions to support and only decent we cannot if the powerful nations of the world cannot commit themselves to that kind of a condition for the rest of humanity where our is our civilization at hand the basic

resources for survival should be a fundamental human right and that is clearly possible to do but politically extremely difficult and what happens yeah did you hear in this country are really largely gone determine what happens on a world this is let me put it very very startling i happen to believe that we need to do we need you in effect a country with some danger i use were cultural revolution that the west does need a cultural revolution there is no question about the use of the great paradoxes that we know what's happening to us we tried to escape responsibility by slipping in a simplistic explanations of our present condition that that would blame it on others the poor of the world the arab sector but we've really got to bring it back to us because wheeler rich and powerful in the world are going to have to change and frankly if we don't change the only hope for survival of humanity as a whole is if we got i was on a wrist everybody of a collapse but we either have to reform or cholesterol it

oversimplifying it but that's the way it is as i see it so we've got to accept not just aid programs as a basis for relationship between rich and poor not just charity but enlightened self interest in this initial survival and we've got to do it by more automatic sort of mechanisms told levees user charges charges on the use of renewal resources etc rather than simply annual goals that wouldn't work inside our society and it won't work very long internationally now all of this i can see them here it including i can see that many of the ideas and suggestions i had an advance seemed far removed from present political realities but let us be reminded that political realities are not immutable there are times when prep google needs must be shaped to match political realities but on occasion these leads are such as to compel existing political realities themselves to give way to a new larger realities such in my view is the case with conferences today we must believe that it is possible to build a new foundation of political

will based on combination of man's higher moral precepts and an enlightened awareness of his larger self interest if the task is monumental the stakes are even more so at risk is the human future i believe we still have the capacity to shape that future but i'm equally convinced that it will be determined largely by what we decide or fail to decide in the next decade and in large measures on the attitudes and actions of this great country and its people nowhere will this be more important or more decisive than in the united states response to the energy crisis and in a very real sense what you do in respect of energy will largely determine the future prospects of the entire world you've that's why i was so pleased to have the opportunity of a sharing his experience at today and that is why i go away from it with a sense that if the deacons are enlightened attitude revealed to some symposium prevail in this great country we can have real hope for the future

the pittsburgh that was more a strong executive director of the united nations environment program the remark should just heard were recorded during november nineteen seventy four the symposium entitled beyond today's energy crisis the future of the american environment mr strong the dress was the final event of that symposium which was held in austin tex isn't sponsored by the lyndon baines johnson presidential library and the university of texas at austin you've been listening to a university forum producer stewart this program is produced and distributed by communication center university of taxes at austin at ascot

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