May 8, 1969
Page 11708
TECHNOLOGY, MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT – A SENATE STUDY UNIT IS CRITICAL
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, yesterday the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations held its final hearing on Senate Resolution 78, to establish a Select Committee on Technology and the Human Environment. During the past several months, we have heard from eminent scientists and representatives of professional organizations, including the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The support for the proposed select committee has been most gratifying. There is a common theme running through all the testimony – that both the benefits and hazards of technology are escalating at such a pace that a central forum is necessary to assess technological impact on man and his environment. In particular, the witnesses have stressed that the Senate should have a mechanism for informing itself on an across-the-board basis, rather than the present fragmented approach.
Mr. President, in this connection, I should like to place in the RECORD at this point in my remarks an editorial by the New York Times, May 3, 1969, concerning hearings on Senate Resolution 78, which, I believe, will be of interest to the Members of the Senate and to the public.
There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows
BY LAND, SEA, AND AIR
By land, sea,and air, the enemies of man's survival relentlessly press their attack. The most dangerous of all these enemies is man's own undirected technology. The radioactive poisons from nuclear tests, the runoff into rivers of nitrogen fertilizers, the smog from automobiles, the pesticides in the food chain, and the destruction of topsoil by strip mining are examples of the failure to foresee and control the untoward consequences of modern technology.
"The new technological man carries strontium-90 in his bones, iodine-131 in his thyroid, DDT in his fat, and asbestos in his lungs." That was the graphic description offered by Dr. Barry Commoner of Washington University in his testimony the other day to the Senate subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations. Under the leadership of Senator Muskie of Maine, this subcommittee is holding hearings on the multiple threats to the environment.
Dr. Commoner cited a wide range of evidence to demonstrate that the laboratory and the assembly line such as the internal combust ion engine and the powerful chemical fertilizers have upset the sensitive balance of nature by which life renews itself. The economic benefits and the technical ingenuity are obvious to everyone but the hidden ecological costs are not.
The difficulty is that the environment. is everybody's business but nobody's responsibility.
Another subcommittee witness, W. H. Ferry, vice president of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, suggests a National Ecological Authority with legal power to forbid any activity which seriously menaces the environment. Congress and the nation, however, are not ready to establish a superagency with such a sweeping grant of power. Two more modest proposals are immediately feasible and would do much to lay the basis for better public understanding and improved public policy.
The first is Senator Muskie's resolution to establish a Senate select committee to study the effects of technology on the environment. The second is a complementary proposal sponsored by Senator Jackson of Washington to create a council on environmental quality. Modeled on the existing Council of Economic Advisers, it would advise the President on environmental issues, provide an independent review of departmental programs, and issue an annual report on the state of the environment.
The Nixon Administration reportedly has under consideration an interdepartment Cabinet Committee on the Environment to be chaired by the President. This would be the wrong approach. The President is much too busy and many environmental issues are too technical for him to give the kind of personal direction which a chairman should provide. Moreover, Cabinet committees tend to dwindle into polite inconsequence because no member likes to attack a colleague's policy if he can avoid it. However, a council of experts with an independent staff of its own could give the President and Congress the necessary guidance on the environmental outlook. Such a council is an essential agency if this country is to develop what Senator Jackson has termed "a national strategy for the management of the human environment."