17
well have we opened our lines of distribution to our
remotest consumers that our sources are weakening
under the constant strain of demand. As a Nation,
we have always been more interested in sawmills than
seedlings. We have put much more engineering thought
into the layout of factories to cut up metals than
into mining processes to produce them. We think
about materials resources last, not first.(20)
A stronger note was expressed in 1968 by Charles
F. Park, Jr., a professor of economic geology, who wrote:
People have learned to use mineral resources
extensively only during the present century; they
have used them to establish a standard of living
undreamed of prior to World War I. But minerals
are present only in finite quantities. The world
cannot continue to use them at ever and rapidly
increasing rates without creating tremendous
problems. Whereas in the past many minerals were
at times in troublesome surplus, it now appears
that the world is about to enter a period when
shortages of minerals will become increasingly
common. Critical shortages of several minerals
may well develop within the next decade.(2l)
And yet, in spite of these warnings, we find in
the 1970s that our focus remains upon production, capital
accumulation, changes in technology, and sufficiency of
demand, rather than upon extracting and using the
material wealth of the earth. When we talk about resources
at all we are concerned not with their scarcity, but with
the emergence of ecological and environmental effects.
This comes as a natural result of the emphasis in thinking
that has come to be placed upon rational, abstract
20
President's Materials Policy Commission,
Resources for Freedom, I (Washington, D. C.:
Government Printing Office, 1952), p. 1.
21
Affluence in Jeopardy (San Francisco: Freeman
Cooper & Co., 1968) p^
vi.