File:Can our environment be saved George E Brown, 1969.png

Quoted from the Congressional Record, September 1969

File:Can our environment be saved George Brown-Omnibus Environmental Bill 1969.pdf

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National Environmental Policy Act of 1969

• https://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/91/190.pdf

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 is a landmark legislation that established a framework for environmental impact assessments in the United States.

NEPA was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on January 1, 1970.

Updates:

Public Law 91–190 -- As Amended Through P.L. 119–21, Enacted July 4, 2025

• https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10352/pdf/COMPS-10352.pdf

Environmental policy laws and the beginnings of the environmental era

The Modern Environmental Movement

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Congressional Record September 11, 1969-September 22, 1969: Vol 115

Steven Schmidt - GreenPolicy360 Founder/Siterunner

On this day, September 11th, 1969, Californian Congressman George E. Brown, from East Los Angeles, introduced an “omnibus” environment bill.

At the time, those of us who were having the conversations with our Representative could see progress being made in line with our values and hope for cleaner air (especially in LA where the 'Smog in the basin' was described as the 'worst air pollution in the world) and on the worldwide front we were demanding an end to the Vietnam war carnage. In high schools across the U.S. graduates were being put through compulsory military draft, if they/we didn't have exemptions. The reasons given for the war didn't make sense to us, to many Americans, and the future of the nation, and the spiral in nuclear war threats, were all too real.

Our local, recently elected Congressman brought a new energy to the challenges at hand -- and we planned together what could be, and should be, done policy-wise. George became a point person in our efforts on peace and transition to a safer, better world.

We at GreenPolicy360 now look back at our friend and a man we called 'George' and we see the beginnings of what we refer to as The Modern Environmental Movement ...

GreenPolicy360 takes us on a ride, up close and personal, a 'being there' perspective and 'participant, observer' view of how those of us who were there worked to create change ...

Here's George, one month before the October 15, 1969 peace demonstrations across the nation, the Moratorium, as we and George attempted to stop the war and transition to a better world ...

The Congressman explained his (and our) thoughts as we pushed forward ...

CAN OUR ENVIRONMENT BE SAVED?

HON. GEORGE E. BROWN, JR. OF CALIFORNIA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, September 11, 1969

Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Speaker, almost every thoughtful citizen of this country realizes that we face great problems in preventing further deterioration of our environment, to say nothing of restoring it to conditions of an earlier generation.

That awareness is reflected daily in the growing number of complaints from individuals concerning situations in their own communities, complaints which, I am sure, every Member has received. The increasing literature on pollution, the changing attitudes of many organizations as they focus on the problem, including conservationists, scientific and professional organizations, and political groupings, also reflect this growing awareness.

Congress is not insensitive to this growing pressure, and has, in fact been at work through many of its committees, and through the enactment of much legislation, in efforts to reach solutions.

EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS

POISONING OF OUR ENVIRONMENT

It is probably unnecessary for me to cite detailed examples of how serious the situation has become. There is hardly a major urban area in which air pollution does not degrade the quality of living— and there are many, such as my own city of Los Angeles, in which it imperils life, property and normal workings of the community. Because this poisoning of the atmosphere increases slowly and insidiously over a long period of time—more than 25 years in the case of Los Angeles— corrective action has always been characterized as “too little and too late.”

Pollution of our Nation’s water supply has likewise crept up on us unaware. Major rivers and lakes are great sewers, water in them unfit for human consumption, or even human contact in most cases. This blight has spread to underground water sources in many areas, and increasingly we find the oceans themselves beginning to show the impact of man’s disregard for his environment.

The land suffers its own kinds of damage. Waste products of civilization spread over it. Garbage, rubbish, old autos— every kind of junk—cover vast reaches, in every open space, beside every highway and byway. Forests and mountains have been laid waste to supply man’s needs. Pesticides and other chemicals of every type have been spread, without regard to nature’s balance, and in some cases poisoning the land for generations.

Our technological onrush has created newer forms of environmental pollution unknown to a simpler culture. Radioactive wastes are beginning to pose a potential threat, whether through accident or merely elapse of time. Underground nuclear explosions—for weapons tests, to experiment with their use in releasing gas and oil, and for excavation— leave great reserves of underground radioactivity. Nuclear powerplant wastes, whether buried in caves or sunk to the ocean bottom, cannot remain permanently contained. Waste heat from nuclear reactors, as well as from conventional powerplants, is measurably affecting the temperature of streams and estuaries, changing surrounding ecology.

Noise, long a modest inconvenience of an urban industrialized civilization, is becoming more dangerous and its effects threaten to spread from urban to rural environments as tests go on of the newest supersonic aircraft. Even conventional aircraft noise has already become unbearable in the vicinity of increasingly crowded urban airports.

Pollution of oceans and beaches by the release of huge quantities of oil apparently now has become a normal hazard today. Vast increases in the volume of offshore drilling, and the use of supertankers in ever larger numbers for transporting oil around the world, leave little hope that this form of pollution will abate.

While we may think that pollution mainly concerns cities, any exploration of rural areas or even wild and uninhabited portions of the country shows that proposition to be false. Overcrowding and pollution has become a characteristic of almost all the more desirable and accessible natural recreation areas of this country. Even less accessible locations, reached only by hiking, canoeing, or flying, frequently will be found contaminated by a careless civilization. Particularly apparent are the thousands of square miles of once beautiful country that have been devastated by logging for lumber and pulp or by strip mining and other destructive tactics.

THE ESSENTIAL DILEMMA

As environmental destruction and poisoning becomes more obvious, and more dangerous, more thought gets devoted to analysis of basic causes. And to a growing number of observers, it has become obvious that there is a simple relationship between the number of human beings on earth and their impact on the environment. The more people, the more pollution. The population explosion over the last 100 years, and more particularly over the last generation, has created unexpected and almost uncontrollable hazards for man’s environment. Paradoxical as it may seem, the fact that there appears to be no end in sight to presently geometrically increasing population growth rates in the world may be the greatest threat to man’s survival on earth. This threat is the “population bomb.”

Accentuating this problem of population growth is the increasing trend toward urbanization by industrial and industrializing societies. In the cities we see the most massive fouling of the environment. Not only are air, water, and land reduced to the most hazardous levels of pollution that human life can tolerate, but this is generally coupled— particularly in city slums and ghettos— with overcrowding and with conditions of social and economic deprivation which constitute still another form of pollution. And there seems to be no slackening in this drive for human beings to live in and move to larger and larger cities.

Inability or failure to do an effective planning job to protect the environment has worsened pollution problems, Since this problem has never been experienced on the scale it has now reached, there is little precedent for the kinds of action necessary. Responsibility for the necessary far-reaching efforts are fragmented among many different kinds and levels of public organizations. Basic knowledge required for effective pollution control is frequently lacking.

THE “GOOD LIFE” SYNDROME

Of the many causes contributing to this crisis of our environment now confronting us the one that may be the most difficult to correct is bound up in our own concepts of “the good life.” We cause pollution and despoilment of the environment through our deification of continually increasing production and consumption of material goods. Almost from birth each of us is inculcated with the goal of consuming more, and the economy of which we are so proud is geared to meeting that goal. The country’s great corporations have developed to a fine art the techniques of creating markets for the consumption of increased quantities of unnecessary—sometimes even harmful— commodities. Some examples may help to make this point clearer.

As a nation we consume more food and drink per capita than any other nation.

We insist further that it be antiseptically produced, expensively processed, and artisticly packaged in a multitude of ways. All this creates waste and pollution. From the farmers, whose budget must now include large sums of money for new chemicals to increase production and eliminate pests, through the processors, packers, canners, and distributors, whose budget also must now include added frills to stimulate consumption, to the doctors, dentists, and psychiatrists whose practice is now devoted to correcting the problems of overeating and over drinking, our mania for consumption creates waste and pollution and despoils the environment, Each person in this country now discards as solid waste—in garbage, and the paper, glass, metal, plastic, and what-have-you which contained the original product—close to 1 ton per year. Practically all this refuse returns to pollute the environment in one way or another.

THE AUTOMOBILE SOCIETY

An even more astonishing and destructive feat of consumption results from our worship of the automobile. There are approximately 80 million passenger cars in use in this country today. I would make a rough guess that each car consumes about 2!2 tons per year of hydrocarbons—mostly gasoline—or the equivalent of 1 ton per person for each man, woman, and child in the United States. The waste products of this consumption are emitted into the air, and the total annual amount of our pollutants in this country amounts, coincidentally, to about 1 ton per person—200 million tons—the largest percentage coming from automobiles. To this pollution of the atmosphere by the automobile must be added the perennial several million tons of junk automobiles which are generally stacked, artistically, main thoroughfares.

WASTE OF ALL SORTS

In terms of sheer volume of consumption and waste, few people realize the amazing amount of water consumed by our style of living. We have tended to assume that water was available in unlimited quantities, and have increased domestic consumption continually to the point where it now amounts to close to 1 ton per day for each person in the country. Industrial and agricultural uses consume additional massive amounts. This water, heavily laced with organic materials, chemical poisons, and miscellaneous byproducts, is, of course, all wasted to the underground water table, streams, lakes, or the oceans, and causes pollution—in fact, destruction—of most of our surface water supply.

The drive toward continually increased consumption, fueled by the need for constant increases in the size and profitability of our industrial economy, causes us to welcome the easily destroyed toys, the short-lived household item, the throwaway container, the annually restyled automobile, appliance, or clothing, and the host of other gadgets we excel in producing. As we chase ourselves around the upward spiral o7 increasing consumption, we devour the resources of the earth and return them to the land, air, and waters as waste. The only result of this process will be to condemn our descendants to living in a true wasteland.

An inventory of causes of pollution and environmental destruction would not be complete without mention of another cultural trait inherited from our early days as pioneers on a new continent; that is our propensity to view nature as something to be conquered and subdued. It was, and is, almost an article of faith with many of our most dynamic entrepreneurs that God placed the bounty of nature here for us to take. As we considered God’s power to be unlimited, so did we consider nature’s resources equally unlimited. All that was required was skill and hard work to wrest bounties from nature. It was hard for those pioneers, and their modern descendants, to conceive the earth as a closed and limited system, one whose resources must be conserved and reused for the continued existence of man. And harder still to conceive of themselves as a part of nature, a link in a delicate chain which, if destroyed, destroys man with it.

I have made this brief examination of the nature and causes of environmental pollution problem primarily as a prelude to outlining some possible solutions. This suggested framework will necessarily be brief, for to remedy all the problems eminating from man’s impact on his environment would require nothing less than a complete cultural revolution, and that moves way beyond the scope of my effort today.

POPULATION CONTROL

First—and absolutely vital—is a national policy of limiting the rate of growth of our own population, and contributing our maximum effort to limiting the population growth rate of the remainder of the world. I have stressed this in connection with my introduction earlier this session of legislation (H.R. 9107, H.R. 9108 and H.R. 9109) embodying the recomendations of the President’s Committee on Population and Family Planning, contained in that committee’s report of November 1968. Every concerned citizen must now realize that exploding world population not only threatens the environment, but also threatens our ability to solve most of mankind’s problems—including the problem of human survival itself.

URBAN LIFE AND URBAN CONTROL

As the mayor of every leading city will testify, conditions of urban life in this country must be drastically changed. This can be achieved only if we begin to devote our highest priorit: to resolving urban problems, not only in allocation of tax dollars, but in the distribution of trained manpower, technolcgical innovation, and imagination. If the human condition will be based upon a pattern of urban living, as seems to be the unavoidable situation at least for the near future, urban living must be designed to protect human values.

Two aspects of organizing urban living systems must be examined and must be improved as a top priority. First, the structure of urban administrative power—capacity to make decisions and deliver services—must be rationalized. That is, problems of the total urban region must be susceptible to prompt and adequate analysis, to decision, and to action by appropriate locally controlled central authority with adequate resources and an adequate legal basis.

In a sense, in our cities we have reached the situation which confronted the Founding Fathers after the initial 10 years under the Articles of Confederation. Those articles were inadequate to control affairs of the States and their largely rural scattered population of 4 or 5 million citizens.

Therefore, the Constitutional Convention was assembled to create a new structure adequate to needs of all the people.

Such is the situation today with our urban areas. Power to act is fragmented into hundreds of different, and semi-autonomous jurisdictions in each urban area, and even in these separate jurisdictions, executive power frequently gets hamstrung.

A new urban-directed legal structure must be created, just as in 1787 a new Constitution was written for the United States. This design need not be that of a highly authoritarian urban dictatorship. It may well be any of several other structural forms, just as the Constitution evolved a new type of Federal basis to meet our national needs. But there must be provision for central analysis of problems, for future planning for establishment of guidelines for urban development—particularly of land—and for executive power authorized to act quickly and effectively on all major problems.

Second, centralized and effective executive power must be complemented by a new concern for effective citizen participation in establishing policy for the urban area as well as for the total environment. In my opinion this will require establishment of a new community based unit of political participation—one I have outlined in an earlier discussion here on the House floor—through which citizens may help form policy and oversee its implementation. Such a political unit would not administer or deliver services, but would provide the vital element of citizen feedback and control to the administrative structure. Only through such a mechanism will we be able to stem the tide of alienation and fear of “city-hall” so characteristic of a large part of urban populations.

Having made these two structural changes in urban organization, we are then in a position to look at some other urban problems affecting quality of life and impact of the city on its environment. In approaching these other problems, I think it is now necessary that we consider the city as an integral system. The various aspects of that system must be related into much more of an organic whole.

A deliberate effort must be made to design and build neighborhoods and communities which bring together opportunities for work, shopping, education, recreation, cultural, and other activities in ways which minimize travel and other wasteful time for individuals. Economical and convenient mass transportation facilities must be provided to minimize use of personal vehicles.

Waste disposal systems must be designed on a total urban basis. Technology must be developed to maximize reuse or recycling of waste materials, particularly metals, glass, paper, and water.

Much more emphasis must be placed on characteristics of material commodities such as quality, permanence, and simplicity rather than ephemeral styling, complexity, and short life. As a people, we must learn to live a kind of life which does not require exploitation and destruction of all the earth’s resources— either living or inanimate—but which requires instead living in both balance and harmony.

While much of what is immediately required to reduce the adverse impact of the city on its environment requires large capital investments—in water treatment plants, for example, to restore water quality—in the long run, a properly structured city can operate more economically and efficiently than our existing urban chaos in both Government costs and in costs to private citizens for their normal activities.

This will particularly be true if in the process of creating a nonpolluting city we also achieve a city without large blocs of alienated, impoverished, uneducated, aid unhealthy ci.vizens. We may then aspire to an urban life containing the ingredients for enlarging the human spirit rather than degrading it—as is now so often the case.

NEW CITIES

While I am commenting on metropolitan reform, it is appropriate to mention the pressing need to apply similar efforts and planning to improve smaller cities, and to create experimental new cities. The benefits, if any, which accrue from metropolitan living, do not continue to increase as urban size grows. I deem it important to encourage excellence in cities of all sizes and in rural areas, as well as acting to avoid continued urban directed inmigration, if we are to provide the cultural diversity vital to a healthy society.

Development of new towns, incorporating innovative social and technological advances is quite feasible and has been demonstrated by prototypes created by private enterprise. The latest of such planned new towns was announced September 9, an $800 million development for 20,000 people near Anchorage, Alaska. As described in news reports, the city will be totally climate controlled on a year-round basis. It will be reached by an aerial tramway running over the ocean and hence be free from automobiles and trucks.

Under these circumstances, the outlook is for a largely nonpolluting city. I suggest encouragement and financial assistance for large numbers of such experimental cities should be given by the Federal Government.

GOVERNMENT ACTION

A great part of the damage to our air, land, and water today arise from the pollution-causing actions of individuals and enterprises. These actions are in accord with past patterns ignorant of environmental limits of absorbing pollution without damage to man himself. But today, those individuals and enterprises must take a new responsibility; they can no longer follow the old patterns, the conventional wisdom. They must be willing to pay the required costs of alleviating the impact of their individual activities on environmental quality for the welfare of all. EDUCATION

Admittedly, vast areas of ignorance exist about the nature .and permissible limits of pollution of the environment. This ignorance must be ended. In many areas of science today, dedicated professionals are working to achieve this goal. In some cases professional associations of scientists are furthering and supporting such research as a contribution to total human welfare.

It is the ultimate responsibility of all the people acting through their Government to*insure that action is taken to maintain a healthy and satisfying environment. This responsibility must include defining the problem, establishing standards, and apportioning the costs on an equitable basis. Undoubtedly, in dividing the costs of correcting environmental pollution, a fair share must be first given to those whose actions cause the pollution. Those individuals and business enterprises which have traditionally dumped their wastes free of charge must now accept the burden of preventing and eliminating this pollution. This requirement in itself may have a healthy effect in changing the overall sense of values about certain kinds of economic activities and products.

Our immediate peril is that already we may be “too little and too late’ as seems to be the case in Los Angeles with its smog problem. I hope through my efforts to focus attention on these issues—now, by legislation and in other ways—to avoid that peril. And in the process, it may help create the more humane environment which we all desire and need.

THE OMNIBUS ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT

Today, I am introducing legislation establishing what I consider the strongest program yet set before the Congress to determine national concern and national machinery to maintain environmental quality. I term my bill the “ Omnibus Environmental Quality Act of 1969 ” because it brings together series of policies and tools—all of which I feel are necessities in this crucial area.

The bill contains the Declaration of National Environmental Policy already passed by the Senate; this policy objective is both comprehensive and powerful. In its key statement it recognizes that each person “has a fundamental and inalienable right to a healthful environment and that each person has a responsibility to contribute to preservation and enhancement of the environment.”

The ultimate fate of Government control of environmental quality largely will be determined by the mechanism set up to do the job. At present, there is a proliferation of authority to act in a number of different Federal agencies. The Agriculture Department deals with pesticides, for instance, while the Interior Department deals with lakes and streams and the Coast Guard deals with. coastal pollution. The Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare administers the air pollution laws.

Such diffusion of Government management of the environment has been one reason that serious problems have gone almost unnoticed until they are so large that they can no longer be avoided. Better coordination and regulatory power is imperative if Government can successfully act to contain the ever mounting attacks on the environment.

For this reason, my bill proposes a permanent National Commission for Environmental Protection, a regulatory agency for environmental affairs similar to already existing agencies which deal with other functional areas.

The five man commission would have the continuing responsibility:

To review proposed projects, facilities, programs, policies and activities of the Federal Government which may adversely affect environmental quality;

To review and appraise existing projects, facilities programs, policies and activities of the Federal Government which affect environmental quality and make recommendations with respect thereto to the President and_ the Congress;

To set priorities with respect to problems involving environmental quality;

To advise the President on matters involving environmental quality and to make recommendations to him with respect thereto;

To collect, analyze, bring together, collate, digest, interpret and disseminate data and information, in such form as it deems appropriate, to public agencies, private organizations, and the general public;

To conduct studies and research, by contract or otherwise, into problems and other matters involving or relating to environmental quality;

To develop criteria and promulgate standards defining desirable levels of environmental quality;

To consult with and advise other representatives of governments, and to utilize, with their consent, the services of Federal agencies and, with the consent of any State or political subdivision thereof, accept and utilize the services of the agencies of such State or subdivision;

To assist the President by clearing and coordinating departmental policies and activities affecting environmental quality;

To assist in the consideration and, where necessary, in the preparation of proposed Executive orders and proclamations affecting environmental quality;

To keep the President informed of the progress of activities by agencies of the Federal Government with respect to work proposed, work actually initiated and work completed by any such agencies which affect environmental quality;

To assist the President in efforts to achieve environmental quality in the community of nations; and

Where appropriate, to participate in behalf of the public interest as an intervenor in proceedings before State and Federal courts and administrative agencies.

The situation in Congress regarding the environment is greatly similar to that within the Executive agencies; it is horribly fragmented and uncoordinated. Short of comprehensive congressional reform and reshuffling of functional activities, I do not foresee major changes coming at the committee level. However, I do feel that we can better coordinate and plan congressional policies regarding the environment, and for that reason, I propose establishing a Joint Congressional Committee on Environmental Quality. The Joint Committee would: conduct a comprehensive study and investigation of appropriate matters contained in any environmental quality report transmitted to the Congress and recommend any such studies and investigations to the appropriate standing committees of the Congress; and make an annual report to the Congress and the appropriate committees of Congress on or before March 1 of each year on environmental quality.

Government activities must be synchronized with activities ongoing in the private sector if we are to achieve a complete national program for environmental control. Certainly, I feel that the indignation and anger I have seen coming from my constituents over the past months indicates that a large amount of alienation already exists over these issues. As with many other topics of both national and local concern, individual citizens feel they are left out when it comes to making decisions and acting on problems of the environment.

Therefore, my bill also contains a Citizens Advisory Committee on Environmental Quality. This committee would be composed of 15 members selected from and Government and private sector, hopefully would include representation from concerned citizen’s groups.

The committee would report at least once each year to the President and to the Environmental Quality Commission on the state and condition of the environment; provide advice, assistance, and staff support to the President on the formulation of national policies to foster and promote the improvement of environmental quality; and obtain information using existing sources, to the greatest extent practicable, concerning the quality of the environment and make such information available to the public. I believe this omnibus environmental quality bill would provide the direct and broad based effort which is essential if we are to maintain and improve the world around us. I hope all my colleagues take a serious look at this approach and I hope to receive their support for it. Yet, this bill is at best a framework, and it does not deal specifically with current problems.

In the coming weeks, I hope to introduce a series of bills which have critical relevance to present environmental problems. Included in these bills will be new and vital measures affecting air pollution and water quality.

Mr. Speaker, at this point I would like to insert in the Record ...

(GreenPolicy360: It is essential to know what Congressman Brown was doing politically here is a sign of his lobbying the U.S. president for 'a signature'. George was involved in the setting up of a new Science Advisor for the President and Science/Technology Office. An overarching goal of George's during this period was to bring together U.S. environmentally involved agencies and departments into a new organizational framework. George envisioned an environmental protection 'umbrella' and began legislatively organizing and making a case for a presidential imprimatur of a new 'environmental protection agency'. Nixon would eventually agree to sign and create the new Environmental Protection Agency. George's eulogy in 1999 looks at his EPA accomplishment as one of his great life achievements. At GreenPolicy360 we present 'our friend' George Brown's story as a testament to vision in action. George was a dreamer and a doer, a catalyst who stepped up and helped to shape The Modern Environmental Movement. We are all the better for George E. Brown having been of our world...)

(Inserted into the Congressional Record, for the U.S. president especially to read...)

POLLUTION CALLED PERIL TO ALL LIFE

By Victor Cohn

New York, September 9, 1969

Man’s pollution has now become a danger to all life on earth. Dr. Lee A. DuBridge, President Nixon’s science advisor, told the American Chemical Society here today.

“I assure you the present administration is committed” to combat this, he pledged in his first major public report as executive secretary of the new federal Environmental Quality Council which the President himself heads.

He then disclosed three areas in which the administration would soon move:

It will be “looking very hard,” he promised, at establishing a federal agency to prestudy the effects of such everyday chemicals as the housewife’s new enzyme presoaks and detergents.

(Among other agents that should be screened by such an agency “before they are released” — according to a plea from a concerned biologist speaking at the same meeting — are “gasoline additives, all pesticides, fertilizers, fumes from chemical and power plants and heat and radioactivity from nuclear plants.”’)

“The government will move hard against auto pollution,” DuBridge predicted. Federal law now calls for a nationwide standard, starting in 1970, stipulating that new cars may not emit more than 180 parts per million of unburned hydrocarbons. Following California’s lead, DuBridge forecast, this should soon be reduced to 120 parts (compared with 900 parts emitted by cars built before 1966.)

Also, he said, lead must be eliminated from gasoline and all exhaust emissions must be even more radically reduced—“or else quite new forms of engines will have to be developed.”

The administration, he said, hopes to “stimulate” both local communities and whole regions to join in building better sewage treatment plants and requiring more thorough treatment of industrial wastes. The council will also study possible federal criteria.

DuBridge spoke on the most radical thought of the day—the idea of screening common chemicals before release—in response to Dr. Barry Commoner, director of the Center for the Biology of Nature Systems at Washington University, St. Louis.

Commoner’s very place on the program testified to the new concern in conservative institutions of society with pollution. A kind of male counterpart of the late Rachel Carson, he has been organizing “concerned scientists” for years to speak up against despoiling the globe.

“Five years ago I’d never have been on this platform, or on the same platform with President’s science adviser,” he observed.

Today he said:

“We all live in one system—a global ecosystem consisting of cycles within cycles that tie together plants, animals and microorganisms—and we change it at our peril. We have to change it, but we ought to weigh costs against benefits.”

“Unless we begin to consider the effects on this ecosystem of new substances I am convinced we will risk our survival.”

“We have reached the point where we should not release any new substances without understanding the ecological consequences.” And some single federal agency, he said, should be responsible for advance studies.

DuBridge replied in agreement: “Unfortunately we now have no agency in government responsible for making such anticipatory studies. I hope such an agency comes into being.”

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