into economic wealth-to people the empty spaces and to put to productive use the "unimproved" and "undeveloped" resources our land contained. The challenge of scarcity It is unfortunate, if understandable, that John Quincy Adams was not able to muster at least enough of a constituency to exert a restraining influence upon our pace and patterns of settlement as well as upon our exploitation of natural resources. He would, I suspect, have far greater success today when, after two centuries of relatively unrestrained growth, the nation is confronted with increasing physical constraints and relative scarcities and shortages of basic commodities and resources. The Arab oil embargo simply underscored what environmentalists and others had been saying for some time: that our physical and industrial growth has occurred in ways that have not only overloaded our environment with pollutants to the point where they often present very real hazards to human health, but have also placed increasingly insupportable strains upon our supply lines. We have had other, less dramatic warnings that our reservoir of resources is nowhere near as full as we have always assumed it to be. In May, 1973, a report of the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that it was by no means too early to become concerned about our future mineral supplies and to start making plans to deal with possible shortages. A month later, the final report of the National Commission on Materials Policy pointed out that, even if the United States decided to reduce to the Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park. barest minimum its reliance upon materials imports, it simply could not insulate itself against the repercussions of economic and political conflict that would inevitably accompany shortages elsewhere. At the end of last year, a Department of Agriculture study said the world was nearing the point at which countries will have to agree to limit fish catches to avoid destroying the ocean's basic food-producing stocks. More recently, in the spring of this year, the Government Accounting Office issued a report to the Congress on "U.S. Actions Needed to Cope with Commodity Shortages." The report found, among other things, that: • The United States has recently encountered shortage problems not only in energy but in such commodities as meat, lumber, plywood, zinc, soybeans, edible oils, scrap metal, cattle hides, cotton, wheat, corn, steel, wool, chemicals, fertilizer and aluminum. • The basic supply-and-demand data on commodities and other resources are, in many instances, unavailable, inadequate or disputed. (In this regard, Science magazine recently reported that the National Academy of Sciences is trying to mediate a serious dispute between the U.S. Geological Survey and several authoritative criticsincluding M. King Hubbert, a former president of the Geological Society of America and a research geophysicist with the Geological Survey-over the Survey's estimates of U.S. domestic oil and gas reserves. Hubbert and other researchers are convinced the estimates are far too high.) Commodity policy formulation involves "more than 20 government departments, agencies, offices, administrations, and policy councils, as well as additional international program agencies, energy agencies, advisory councils, and regulatory agencies." "The government's decision-making process for commodities that are in short supply is essentially ad hoc and crisis-oriented. There is no clear, coordinated decision-making mechanism for formulating policies to alleviate commodity shortages." In short, the report finds that we have become afflicted with shortages in a wide range of commodities, that we are simply not organized to make coherent and comprehensive decisions concerning supply and demand in these commodities, and that even if we were so organized, we do not have the information we need to make the decisions. It recommends, among other things, that the Congress "consider the need for legislation to establish a centralized mechanism for developing and co ordinating long-term policy planning." Early this year, I expressed my view that the nation had better start facing up to the almost overwhelming reality of the long-range problems of energy, of food and resource supply, of human numbers, and of uncontrolled growth. To begin to deal with these problems-indeed, even to begin to ask the right questions-we should Jdevelop an effective institution in the federal government for long-range analysis of the problemsnot just in economic terms, but in terms of their social and environmental impact and implications as well. We were, I pointed out, almost totally lacking such a capability-an appalling lack in a nation with as big a stake in the future as the United States. I was not alone in recommending national analysis of long-range problems. Several weeks earlier, the business and economic communitywhich, by then, had come to believe that nothing could surprise it any more-had received the rather unsettling news that such an ardent advocate of the unmanaged market as Herbert Stein, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, not only felt there was not enough forward evaluation in the federal government of such things as materials and population prospects, and many other future factors, but thought that "maybe we need an economic planning agency like the Japanese or French." Indeed, in calling for some form of long-range analytical capability in the federal government, Mr. Stein and I were simply part of a rising chorus of voices that included not only a number of authoritative reports such as those I have mentioned, but such experienced and informed public servants as Chester Cooper, formerly of the National Security Council, and Richard Nathan, formerly assistant director of the Office of Management and Budget. The fact is that the really critical issues before the country are not the immediate and isolated ones, but the interrelated and long-range onesindeed, the day-to-day "crises" that seem to capture all our attention and consume all our energies are, for the most part, simply manifestations of far deeper problems that we never seem to get around to acknowledging, much less addressing. The old cliche that everything relates to every 69-838 0-76-51 thing else and we live in an interdependent world has become the fundamental fact of our economic, social and political life. Our economic health and growth, our patterns of settlement and physical development, our social stability and strengththese both determine and depend upon a vast and intricate system of material (including food), energy and environmental resources. Under these conditions, we cannot hope to come to grips with the issues before us unless we strengthen our ability to assess problems and programs, not simply in isolation, but in relation to each other; not simply over the short term, but over the longer span of ten, 20 or 30 years. Without this capacity at the national level, we will never be able to work the kinds of accommodations between demands for and supplies of resources that will enable us to achieve stable and sustainable levels and kinds of growth. We often forget that time itself has become one of our most critical resources. If we expect to solve the problems of the 1980s and 1990s, we need to start nowas we should have started some years ago-to foresee and forestall the present energy crisis. To the degree that we fail to do so, we foreclose the options open to us. In an age of resource scarcities and physical constraints, we are going to have to be a lot more choosy than we have been in the past. We no longer have as much room for maneuver and margin for error as we once did. We are, as a result, going to have to engage in some long-range planning. The National Resources Planning Board The National Resources Planning Board (NRPB), which in various forms spanned the decade from 1933 to 1943, was the only permanent federal agency in the nation's history explicitly responsible for overall national planning. The first incarnation of the NRPB occurred when Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior and head of the Public Works Administration, discovered he had no orderly plan to follow and set up the National Planning Board to undertake long-range public-works planning. In 1934, the agency was reconstituted as an interdepartmental group called the National Resources Board and given independent status as the primary planning organ of the federal government. Finally, in 1939, as the National Resources Planning Board, the agency became part of the Executive Office of the President. Over the decade of its existence, the board assumed broad planning and coordinating functions in almost every important area of national policy. Based on its quarterly reports on trends of business and unemployment, it formulated long-range plans for work relief, finance, and fiscal policies. It developed a comprehensive national transportation policy. It made recommendations for energy resource development, use and conservation. It became involved in urban and rural land planning, encouraging and developing improved planning techniques and data as well as regional planning programs. In the words of one analyst, it produced "definitive statistical and analytical studies... on such vital but neglected subjects as river basin development, city governments, city planning, urban and rural land policy, technology and research, patterns of industry, energy resources, trends in population, income and spending habits of consumers, housing and transportation." The board apparently felt that, as a matter of policy, a staff arm of the President should not develop close relationships either with the Congress as a whole or with individual members. And the Congress, inevitably, looked with an increasingly jaundiced eye upon an agency whose scope was so sweeping and which had direct access to the President. In 1943, for a variety of reasons, the Congress abolished the board. Besides the fact that it did little to try to gain Congressional and public support, the board never did decide whether its main job was to spur and stimulate public works projects and activities at all levels of government or to advise the President on long-range economic and social problems. Charles Eliot, the staff director, believed that planning should result in something immediate and concrete, "something that one could take bids on tomorrow." On the other hand, Charles Merriam, a member of the three-man board, was fond of referring to the Constitution as "an economic and political plan on a grand scale." The board did produce an array of excellent and authoritative studies. It did a great deal to stimulate state and local planning. And many coordinative and planning functions have been taken over by various federal agencies. But despite the suspicions of Congress, the board does not seem to have had much of an influence upon national policy. If it owed its very existence to the A graveyard of the California Coastal Redwoods. depression, it was also in some ways a victim of the fact that first the depression, and later the Second World War, placed such a high premium on immediate action and results. An Office of Long-Range Analysis In 1958, a member of the staff of the Bureau of the Budget concluded an examination and assessment of the work of the National Resources Planning Board by considering the question of whether a new overall planning agency should be established along the lines of the old board. He pointed out that in the years since the NRPB was abolished, |