particular and indispensable contribution of the Council to environmental policy would be twofold. The first would be, using S. 2805 for purposes of illustration, "** *to study and analyze environmental trends and the factors that effect these trends, relating each area of study and analysis to the conservation, social, economic, and health goals of this Nation." Most proposals call for a report on the state of the environment from the Council to the President and from the President to the Congress. S. 2805, for example, states that the Council shall provide advice and assistance to the President in the formulation of national policies, and that it shall also make information available to the public. The bill further provides that "*** The Council shall periodically review and appraise new and existing programs and activities carried out directly by Federal agencies or through financial assistance and make recommendations thereon to the President."

From this enumeration of the Council's functions several inferences may be drawn. First, the proposed environmental advisory councils are not science advisory bodies. They are instructed in pending legislative proposals to take specified factors, including the scientific, into account in the course of their analysis and recommendations on environmental policy issues. Second, the councils are not primarily research or investigating bodies even though they have important investigatory functions. They are essentially policy-facilitating bodies. Third, their functions are those of analysis, review, and reporting. Their nearest functional counterpart is probably the Council of Economic Advisers. Fourth and finally, councils on the environment, such as proposed by some of the measures listed in appendix B, must be located at the highest political levels if their advisory and coordinative roles are to be played effectively. For this reason the proposals have generally established the Council in the Executive Office of the President. However, the Technology Assessment Board proposed by Representative Emilio Q. Daddario, which would perform many functions similar to those of the environmental councils, would be an independent body responsible primarily to the Congress.

This brings the discussion to the role of the Congress in facilitating policy choice. Some have found the formal committee structure of the Congress to be poorly suited to the consideration of environmental policy questions. Senator Edmund Muskie has proposed a Select Committee of the Senate on Technology and the Human Environment to facilitate consideration of related environmental issues that would normally be divided among a number of Senate committees. Others have proposed that a Joint Committee on the Environment, representative of the principal committees of the House and the Senate concerned with environmental policy issues, should be established to review a proposed annual or biennial report of the President on the state of the environment. Many Congressmen, however, feel that the policy of establishing new committees to deal with each new problem area should be resisted and that the present committees should assume their legislative and oversight responsibilities in this area. Meanwhile the informal and practical operations of legislative business permits the present standing committees to function with remarkable speed and dexterity where the will to legislate exists.

In summary, policy effectiveness on environmental issues will require some form of high-level agency in the executive branch for reviewing and reporting on the state of the environment. No existing

body seems appropriate for this function. To meet this need, and under various names, a council for the environment has been suggested and has been incorporated in numerous legislative proposals. Provision for a policy assisting body in the executive branch suggests to some the desirability of a comparable committee in the Congress.

5. NATIONAL POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

In his address to the graduating class at Glassboro State College on June 4, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson called for the formation of a permanent "international council on the human environment." The ecological research and surveys bill first offered in 1965 by Senator Gaylord Nelson authorized participation by the United States with "other governments and international bodies in environmental research." Similarly, S. 2805 and other pending measures authorize "*** environmental research in surrounding oceans and in other countries in cooperation with appropriate departments or agencies of such countries or with coordinating international organizations * **")

These and other expressions of the willingness and intent of the United States to cooperate with other nations and with international organizations on matters of environmental research and policy reinforce the argument for a national environmental policy. Although the United States could cooperate internationally on many specific issues without a national policy, it could do so more effectively and comprehensively if its own general position on environmental policy were formally and publicly enunciated.

The United States, as the greatest user of natural resources and manipulator of nature in all history, has a large and obvious stake in the protection and wise management of man-environment relationships everywhere. Its international interests in the oceanic, polar, and outer space environments are clear. Effective international environmental control would, under most foreseeable contingencies, be in the interest of the United States, and could hardly be prejudicial to the legitimate interests of any nation. American interests and American leadership would, however, be greatly strengthened if the Nation's commitment to a sound environmental policy at home were clear.

PART II

Questions of Implementation

What significance would adoption of a national policy for the environment hold for the future of government in the United States? At the least, it would signify a determination by the American people to assume responsibility for the future management of their environment. It would not imply an all-inclusive Federal or even governmental environmental administration. The task to too widespread, multitudinous, and diverse to be wholly performed by any single agency or instrumentality. There are important roles to be played at every level of government and in many sectors of the nongovernmental economy. Nevertheless a new policy, and particularly a major one, is certain to arouse some apprehensions.

In the Federal agencies, among the committees of the Congress, in State governments, and among businesses whose activities impinge directly upon the environment and natural resources, there would be understandable concern as to what changes for them might be implicit in a national policy for the environment. The objection is certain to be raised that Government is already too large and that there are already too many agencies trying to manage the environment. "Please not one more," will be an oft-repeated plea. These fears, however, are largely those that always accompany a new public effort regardless of its purpose, direction, or ultimate benefit. Very few people oppose, in principle, public action on behalf of quality in the environment. It is implementation that raises questions and arouses apprehension.

It would be unconvincing to assert that no interest, enterprise, or activity will be adversely affected by a national environmental quality effort. There is no area of public policy that does not impose obligations upon, nor limit the latitude for action of important sectors of society. But while activities harmful to man's needs and enjoyments in the environment must necessarily be curbed, it is also true that all Americans, without exception, would benefit from an effective national environmental policy. In brief, although all would benefit, a relative few might be required to make adjustments in business procedures or in technological applications.

For the foregoing reasons, a report on the need for a national policy for the environment would be incomplete if it did not raise, at least for purposes of discussion, some major questions that the establishment as such a policy would imply. These are mainly questions of how a decision to establish a national policy would be implemented in practice. They are questions to be answered by the Congress and by the President. But in their answers, the policy-determining branches of Government will need to consider a number of issues subsidiary to those major questions.

To better illustrate the issues involved in these questions, reference will be made to S. 2805. No claim of special priority is implied by these references. Many of the bills now pending on this issue have similar provisions. Any one bill might serve as well as any other.

1. WHAT ARE THE DIMENSIONS OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND HOW ARE THEY DISTINGUISHABLE FROM OTHER AREAS OF NATIONAL CONCERN?

This is the fundamental question. It would be unreasonable to expect that its metes and bounds could be defined more clearly than those of the more familiar policy areas of national defense, foreign relations, civil rights, public health, or employment security. The field of definition can be narrowed, however, by identifying those concepts with which it might be confused but from which it should be clearly distinguished.

Environmental policy, broadly construed, is concerned with the maintenance and management of those life-support systems-natural and man made upon which the health, happiness, economic welfare, and physical survival of human beings depend. (See app. D.) The quality of the environment, in the full and complex meaning of this term, is therefore the subject matter of environmental policy. The term embraces aspects of other areas of related policy or civic action, and it is important that environmental policy and environmental quality, in the broad sense, be distinguished from these related but sometimes dissimilar policies or movements.

Environmental policy should not be confused with efforts to preserve natural or historical aspects of the environment in a perpetually unaltered state. Environmental quality does not mean indiscriminate preservationism, but it does imply a careful examination of alternative means of meeting human needs before sacrificing natural species or environments to other competing demands.

Environmental quality is not identical with any of the several schools of natural resources conservation. A national environmental policy would however, necessarily be concerned with natural resource issues. But the total environmental needs of man-ethical, esthetic, physical, and intellectual, as well as economic-must also be taken into account.

Environmental policy is not merely the application of science and technology to problems of the environment. It includes a broader range of considerations. For this reason S. 2805, in proposing a Council on Environmental Quality, does not stipulate that its five members be scientists, although it obviously would not preclude scientists among them.

One of the few differences in emphasis among the environmental policy bills now before the Congress has to do with the role of ecologists and of the science of ecology in the shaping of national policy. The need for a greatly expanded program of national assistance for ecological research and education cannot be doubted by anyone familiar with present trends in the environment. The science of ecology can provide many of the principal ingredients for the foundation of a national policy for the environment. But national policy for the environment involves more than applied ecology, it embraces more than any one science and more than science in the general sense.

The dimensions of environmental policy are broader than any but the most comprehensive of policy areas. The scope and complexities of environmental policy greatly exceed the range and character of issues considered, for example, by the Council of Economic Advisors. One may therefore conjecture, without derogation to the unquestionable importance of the economic advisory function, that a council

on the environment would, in time, perhaps equal and even exceed in influence and importance any of the specialized conciliar bodies now in existence. For this reason its membership should be broadly representative of the breadth and depth of national interests in man-environment relationships. The ultimate scope of environmental policy, and the relationship of a high-level implementing council to existing councils, commissions, and advisory agencies, are not questions that can be, or need to be, decided now, nor even at the time that a national policy may be adopted. The important consideration is to develop a policy and to provide a means that will permit its objectives to be considered and acted upon by the Congress, the President, and the executive agencies. If we wait until we are certain of the dimensions of environmental policy and of how it will relate to other responsibilities and functions of Government, our assurance will be of no practical value. It will have come too late to be of much help.

2. UPON WHAT CONSIDERATIONS AND VALUES SHOULD A
NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY BE BASED?

If it is ethical for man to value his chances for survival, to hope for a decent life for his descendants, to respect the value that other men place upon their lives, and to want to obtain the best that life has to offer without prejudicing equal opportunities for others, then the cornerstone of environmental policy is ethical. That cornerstone is the maintenance of an environment in which human life is not only possible, but may be lived with the fullest possible measures of personal freedom, health, and esthetic satisfaction that can be found. No government is able to guarantee that these values can be realized, but government is able to assist greatly in the maintenance of an environment where such values are at least realizable.

Ethics, like justice, is not easily quantifiable, yet few would argue that society should not seek to establish justice because justice cannot be adequately defined or quantified. Environmental policy is a point at which scientific, humanistic, political, and economic considerations must be weighed, evaluated, and hopefully reconciled. Hard choices are inherent in many policy issues. The sacrifice of a plant or animal species, for example, or of a unique ecosystem ought not to be permitted for reasons of short-run economy, convenience, or expediency. The philosopy of reverence for life would be an appropriate guiding ethic for a policy that must at times lead to a decision as to which of two forms of life must give way to a larger purpose.

The natural environment has been basically "friendly" toward man. Man's survival is dependent on the maintenance of this environment, but not upon the unaltered operation of all of its myriad components. Pathogenic micro-organisms, for example, are not reverenced by man. Protection against them is a major task of environmental health and medicine. But even here, respect for the incredible variety, resilience, and complexity of nature is a value that environmental policy would be wise to conserve. Frontal attacks upon man's environmental enemies or competitors, identified as pathogens or as "pests," have miscarried too often to encourage the thought that direct action on threats in the environment are always wise, economical, or effective.

98-999-68-8