CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE

March 15, 1968

Page 6681

THE URBAN FUTURE

Mr. SPONG. Mr. President, the publication Nation's Cities has begun a series of articles on "The Urban Future" which focus on the rapid technological changes currently taking place in the Nation and the needed government responses to such changes.

It is fitting that this magazine has launched this series by interviewing the Senator from Maine [Mr. MUSKIE], the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution and a leading authority on the Nation's environmental problems.

I invite particular attention to Senator MUSKIE'S discussion of his proposal for a Select Senate Committee on Technology and the Human Environment, and to his observations on the need for establishing priorities and allocating our resource dollars where they are most needed, or of focusing them in terms of the problems of the cities.

Mr. President, I commend the article to the attention of the Senate and ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

THE URBAN FUTURE: CAN WE KEEP PACE WITH TECHNOLOGY'S FALLOUT?

(With this issue, Nation's Cities begins a continuing series of articles on "The Urban Future." designed to focus on the rapid technological changes currently taking place in our society and the needed municipal government responses to such charges.

(It is fitting, we think, to kick off this important series by interviewing Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-Maine) who wants the Senate to set up a Select Committee on Technology and the Human Environment. During the hearings which Senator Muskie conducted last year on this proposal, he noted:

("Man's technology is national and international, but his environment is really a local matter. How we improve his environment in large part depends upon how well state and local governments plan and program their efforts to meet public needs. They are the first to feel the pressures from the people to do something about these problems because these governments are on the firing line of human activity."

(Daniel Bell, chairman of the Commission on the Year 2000 (sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences), also has recognized this. Said he:

("The only prediction about the future that one can make with certainty is that public authorities will face more problems than they have at any previous time in history....

("The problem of the future consists in defining one's priorities and making the necessary commitments."

(In the coming months. Nation's Cities will endeavor to pinpoint some of these priorities of the future.)

Question. Senator Muskie, you had extensive hearings last year on Senate Resolution No. 68 to establish a select Senate Committee on Technology and the Human Environment. Could you tell us about the origin of those hearings, the outcome of your efforts to have the select committee formed, and the purposes which this committee would serve?

Answer. The idea had its origins in the work of the Senate Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution. Here we have had first-hand exposure to the problems of a changing and deteriorating environment. especially in our cities. Secondly, legislation in recent years dealing with the economic growth and development, as well as legislation dealing with the environment. generally, and the urban environment, specifically, had disclosed the overlapping jurisdiction of Senate committees today.

I happen to be on three Senate committees: Government Operations, Public Works, and Banking and Currency, and after nine years on these committees, I find myself discussing the same subject in each of them. Each committee is approaching urban problems from a different angle. The overlapping jurisdiction of the committees and the multi-faceted aspect of these problems are a reflection of the growing complexity and interdependence of our society, our economy, and our people. Changing technology has so changed these problems in terms of solutions to them that legislation is almost obsolete and out of date before it is enacted.

Out of all of this it became evident to me that it would be useful if we had such a special committee. Its members would come from five basic legislative committees, and the members would develop some background on and understanding of the prospects of technological change, not only tomorrow, but over the next 50 years. This, of course, has to be "guesstimating" in a sense, but an appreciation for technological change and also some thinking about what this would mean to people, are necessary.

So, I introduced the resolution to create such a special committee, and we undertook, in the 1966-67 hearings, to put together a sample of what such a committee might do, the kinds of subjects it might get involved in, and the kinds of witnesses it might take testimony from. We thought that this would be the best way to sell the idea of the special committee. I think we had some very interesting and stimulating hearings. They were a good sample. Even with that kind of demonstration, it isn't easy to get a new committee created, and we haven't yet received a committee report on the resolution.

The whole idea, of course, of looking into the future isn't new with this resolution or with this subcommittee. It is the sort of thing that increasing numbers of people and groups are doing all over the country. You begin to run into them as you generate this kind of activity.

Question. The Year 2000 Commission and some of these other groups?

Answer. Yes. There also was a network television show this past year, "The 21st Century." We incorporated the text of the programs into the hearings. This is fascinating stuff in and of its own. But, I think there is a serious legislative need and use for this kind of contemplation and reflection; so, I hope we get to it.

Question. This select committee you envision would be a way of coordinating and drawing together all of these things. In that regard, do you foresee the future need for a new federal department of, say, environmental health, which would bring together the now scattered agencies dealing with air and water pollution, solid waste disposal, and other types of pollutants that affect all citizens?

Answer. It is difficult to anticipate government organizational patterns of tomorrow, but this is certainly a logical one that might well develop.

Federal departments now are organized on operational or functional lines, rather than environmental lines. Whether we can or should convert from what we now have to that is a question. It is not possible to pigeonhole subjects along environmental lines entirely. It is easy to suggest that we should relate all activities dealing with water use, water supply, and water pollution together in one agency. Inevitably, however, when you have achieved the maximum concentration that you can in this respect, you find that you still have to recognize the jurisdictional interests of other departments in the same resource.

For example, it is logical from one point of view to think of air and water pollution as being in the same agency, and yet, my view at the moment is that air pollution is primarily a health problem whereas water pollution is a health, water supply, recreational, industrial, agricultural, and water quality problem. These problems don't necessarily all go together.

So that while air and water pollution -- in terms of the techniques of enforcement, the development of the policy, and the development of standards -- might be thought of as belonging in the same agency, I would at the moment resist that answer to the organizational problem. But, it could change.

Question. The amount of money that the federal government is now spending on research and development activity is very substantial. Do you think there is a way now to channel some of these new developments into urban technology?

Answer. I suspect that we are not doing an orderly and systematic job of establishing priorities and allocating our resource dollars where they are most needed, or of focusing them in terms of the problems of the cities. Like almost all federal programs, they have just grown without any overall relationship to what we are trying to achieve in establishing priorities or evaluating results.

The Bureau of the Budget, of course, is now concerned in evaluating all programs in terms of results, in terms of performance criteria, and in terms of returns for the dollars spent. I think increasingly Congress will have to do the same, and as we do, I think we will see recommendations for consolidation of programs.

Your question is related specifically to research, but I think we are going to have to do it with respect to all programs in the social and economic fields, including the resource field. We proceed on the assumption there is no limit to what we spend provided we can justify each program on its merits. But obviously there are limits, especially in this period of a war economy. There also are limits to our resources. We will have to limit spending and to establish priorities.

In connection with research dollars, I don't have the figures at my finger tips, but I suspect that a large proportion of our research money goes into the weapons and defense fields. This is where the great federal research effort began after World War II. We have begun to branch off into non-military fields more recently and with relatively fewer dollars. In recent years we have authorized a considerable amount of research money for air and water pollution control, but, I suspect there are other research areas we ought to be getting into in the domestic nonmilitary field. And research, I think, is going to have to be reoriented. I hope sooner than later that we can turn more dollars now being spent in the military field to the nonmilitary field. 

Question. There is obviously a good bit of technology available that could be utilized to deal with urban problems but it has been very slow in being adopted at the state and local level. Were you able to identify any of the reasons for this in any of your hearings or do you have any other personal observations?

Answer. I can't recall that there was too much testimony directly on that point in these hearings. I think we know what the answer is in connection with such problems as air pollution. There hasn't been the will to apply available technology. Available technology could make quite a difference in the quality of the air in a great many of our metropolitan areas if the community will develop, and if that will were imposed upon the polluters.

We could do a great deal if every metropolitan area were to do as much as Los Angeles, for example, has done in making use of available technology to control air pollution. There would be a marked improvement in the air quality in cities like New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and others that have an aggravated problem, including Washington. It is clear in the case of water quality, in the case of air quality, in the case of transportation, and in so many other areas that we are not using available technology.

We fail to do so in part because of the lack of community will; secondly, in part because dollars aren't available to do the job; and in part, as in the case of modern transportation, because the public isn't quite ready to use the modern transportation that technology would make possible. We have an education and selling job here that hasn't been done. At some point. I suppose, automobile traffic, especially commuter travel in our cities, will get to be so inconvenient and uncomfortable that public transportation in the new technological forms will be demanded by the motoring public.

I suspect that the field in which we really have done too little in developing or using technology is housing. Technology may hold some of the answers to the problem of housing for lower income groups, maybe better answers than public housing. Many people have wondered why we haven't somehow used the techniques that developed trailer housing to develop more acceptable and lower cost conventional housing for lower income groups; but, we haven't done it for some reason.

Question. It has been said that one of the reasons the private sector hasn't been as innovating with urban technology as it has in military or space technology is that we haven't been able to demonstrate that there is a ready market which will absorb the product of the research, development, and production. Do you think that federal programs, particularly grant-in-aid programs, can be modeled in such a way that they can help stimulate some kind of a market?

Answer. We always have to deal with the defense mechanism of established technology, in housing especially. Every time we try to write into federal housing legislation policies designed to stimulate the development of new materials and new technology, there is always the resistance of those who have a vested interest in existing materials, existing technology, existing methods of building houses, existing labor supply, and so on.

I don't know that a determined enough effort has been made yet to overcome this resistance. I think perhaps this may not be the time to try because of the tight money market and the slow-down in the whole building picture. I think, however, we will have to push the government policy eventually to get some of this development started and in being.

Question. You played a major role in steering the Model Cities program through the Congress. Do you have some hope that this might open up some of these doors?

Answer. I don't know that it will. The concept behind the Model Cities, of course, is that the program ought to get at the human element of the problems of the cities rather than the physical element.

I don't really see the Model Cities program leading to that kind of development. It might in individual cases, especially in the case of a large city like New York, which, because of its size and of its housing market, might be able to exert heavy enough pressure, just as California did in the case of pollution from automobiles. California was a large enough market so that when California said to the industry, "You can't sell cars here unless they meet certain air quality standards," the industry had to listen, did listen, and did produce the cars. If the State of Maine had done that, the automobile industry would have probably said, "If you do that to us, you can drive your horses." But, California had the economic muscle to get some results from the industry.

So, it is possible, I suppose, that if in New York, for example, in connection with a deteriorated or blighted neighborhood, it was decided by those who initiate the local Model Cities plan that they want to demonstrate and to develop some new housing technology, they could exert enough economic muscle to get some movement out of the industry. Short of that, however, I doubt that the Model Cities program could stimulate innovation, unless industry can be stimulated just by ideas.

There are so many exciting things, it seems to me, that could be done in housing. I know that there are some innovating and imaginative thinkers in the housing field. Certainly among the planners and the architects in this field there are some imaginative possibilities. But, there has been a great deal of resistance to change, advance, and progress, at least the kind of advance and progress that actually materializes in the form of housing for people who need it.

Question. What function or what particular action do you think that local governments can take to open up better utilization of technology in such fields as this?

Answer. Speaking especially of housing?

Question. The range. You mentioned housing particularly and this is a very important question to the urban city, but there is a wide range. You also mentioned transportation, water pollution.

Answer. A given local community could stimulate thinking and ideas, but I think in order for those ideas to result in innovation either in technology or in its use, you've got to get acceptance of those ideas on a much broader scale. Of course, sometimes one city may make effective use, say, of a new transportation mode that might excite interest of others and result in the spread of an idea and the acceptance of that mode on a wide scale.

But I can't recall any instance of a community, by reason of its own thinking or initiative, actually prodding or stimulating or exciting industry to develop something that was not in being before,, unless it is, as in the case of California, a large enough economic force. And there they did it by compulsion, not by stimulus.

Question. This really suggests, doesn't it, that if there is really going to be any meaningful readjustment in the use of new technology at the urban level, it is going to have to be stimulated, the market supported, the leverages developed, at some level other than at the individual community level?

Answer. In order to get private industry to invest in necessary, research and production facilities to develop new technology, they have to see a profit. There is this potential for profit, of course, in homes for middle income and higher income groups, but for lower income groups, unless a builder or builders are convinced of the existence of a mass market. they are not as likely to innovate.

If the profit quotient is not sufficient to meet the particular social problem that is troublesome -- and this at the present time is housing for lower middle income groups -- then there has to be some other sponsorship for this kind of advancement in technology. I am afraid this can mean a federal role or governmental role at the state or local level if they are large enough. I wish that there were greater risk taking in the private sector in this field, but there hasn't been and I am not sure there will be without either a prod or an incentive provided by government. That at least seems to be the lesson of the last 34 years.

Question. Are there any pending pieces of legislation which might provide this prod to industry?

Answer. No. As I say, the mildest kind of legislative policy in this respect has been resisted. That is what I think can be one of the values of the Special Committee on Technology and the Human Environment that we have been talking about. Here is a forum that will have the prestige of the five constituent Senate legislative committees behind it, prestige to attract public attention to the hearings that such a committee would hold, as well as the attention of the experts who would testify. I think that we could bring exposure to stimulating new ideas that might finally prod industry, or might finally result in new policy to stimulate or prod industry. The committee's greatest value might be as a showcase for new ideas.

Incidentally, I think it is of interest that Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., who is on the Republican side (from Tennessee) on our Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee, has been very interested in this resolution. He and I together wrote to people across the country calling their attention to the resolution and to what we hoped it might accomplish. Senator Baker has put in the Congressional Record the replies he received from hundreds of these people who see this as an exciting way of moving us into a brighter technological future. People are excited about it. It is amazing that apparently a dry little organizational resolution should have the attraction that this one has had.

Question. In all this talk about rapid change and the complexity of modern technology, isn't there a danger that lack of real comprehension of these technological developments on the part of citizen leaders and on the part of elected officials at all levels of government could lead to an undue reliance on the technicians and the scientists in planning whet they think is good for the rest of their countrymen?

Answer. I think that is what has happened to us up to now, and it has produced results that we ought to try to avoid. Again, I get back to air pollution for an illustration of what I mean.

Somebody made the decision to develop the internal combustion engine as a source of power for the automobile, and it has turned out to be a mistake from the air pollution point of view. If somebody had made a decision to develop the electric automobile, for example, I suspect by now we would have a very good electric automobile without the air pollution problem. It may have had other problems, but it would not have been the prime source of air pollution. Just to pose a point of view, if our internal combustion cars were a mistake, the special committee might have suggested how it could have been averted.

In a democratic society we don't want decisions on production made by a president or a ruler.

They have to be made as a result of the operations of the private enterprise system. But I think, by exposing the emerging new technology to the examination of those who are concerned with the social problems, the welfare problems, and the human problems of American society, before the technology moves into the market place and before it begins to influence the environment, we might be able to inhibit, or encourage or to direct its use in some respects so that we can avoid mistakes.

For instance, pesticides and insecticides have been loosed into the atmosphere and into food chains and life chains before we really know what the ultimate impact may be.

I remember the hearings we had last year on lead in the atmosphere from automobiles. There are traces of lead in animal life at the North Pole that come somehow from the atmosphere, presumably from this part of the globe, not from that part up there. We have let loose these chemicals and these forces into our environment without fully appreciating, or without even trying to come to an appreciation of, the long term consequences.

You will recall in the 1958 presidential campaign that the question of radioactive fallout from A-bomb testing was in issue. Adlai Stevenson at that time said we ought to stop experimenting in the atmosphere. There were some "guesstimates" in the hectic last weeks of the campaign from competing scientists, those who endorsed President Eisenhower's point of view and those who endorsed Mr. Stevenson's point of view as to what were the long-term dangers to the human race from fallout. Even the most conservative guesses have proven to be not conservative enough. In other words, the danger was greater than the worst alarmists at that time thought. The safeguards that have been taken since have not been adequate, and we are still living with that long-term consequence, which in some respects may be irrevocable.

These are the sort of aspects about technology we need to try to anticipate. All new technology has a fallout. We have paid too little attention in the past to that fallout and what it might mean for human beings and life on earth.