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Government's first priority is to enact environmental standards—and then enforce the law. Regulatory agencies should do far more to assess new products and policies before they harm man and nature. At all levels, governments must join in regional attacks on air and river pollution that cross political boundaries. At the federal level, the maze of agencies with conflicting environmental responsibilities must be reordered. While the Agriculture Department pays farmers to drain wetlands, for example, the Interior Department pays to preserve them. Worse, the farm-subsidy program encourages the misuse of toxic chemicals, one-crop farming that destroys ecological diversity, and mechanization that drives jobless rural laborers into packed cities. Federal highway builders, the Army Corps of Engineers—all such official land abusers—need retraining in ecological values.
To relieve city congestion, Washington should subsidize more new towns and rural redevelopment. Especially in a technological society that so burdens nature, it should do more to limit population. It is obvious that few Americans will imitate Paul R. Ehrlich and some of his young disciples, who have tried to set a dramatic example by having vasectomies. Instead, the Government might well offer new incentives: bigger tax deductions for small families and even singles, for example, or higher old-age benefits for couples who have no more than two children. If all parents had two children, the U.S. population would remain stable.
Industry has a vital role: first to minimize pollution, and then to work toward recycling all wastes (see box, page 60). There is profit in the process. Paper, glass, and scrap copper have long been reused. Fly ash can be recaptured and pressed into building blocks; reclaimed sulfur dioxide could ease the global sulfur shortage. The oil industry could do a profound service for smoggy cities by removing the lead from gasoline (motorists would pay 20 more per gallon). The packaging industry would benefit all America by switching to materials that rot—fast. By one es timate, burning scrap paper and garbage in efficient incinerators could generate 10% of the nation's electricity. Such incinerators already provide central steam heating for Paris. To be sure, big changes might raise consumer prices and cut profits. But businessmen should also consider a greater profit: rescuing the environment.
Basic to all solutions is the need for a new way of thinking. So far, the key to so-called progress has been man's ability to focus his energies on a single problem, whether fighting a war or going to the moon. But thinking in compartments is the road to environmental disaster. Americans must view the world in terms of unities rather than units. To recognize the interdependence of all creatures is to see all kinds of follies—from the one-occupant cars that choke highways to the tax policies that discourage mass transit and land preservation.