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National Priorities and the Physical Habitat: Focus of Continuing Controversy

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PechmanJoseph A., ed., and others, Setting National Priorities: The 1979 Budget.Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1978, 399 pp., $12.95; $5.95 paper.
OphulsWilliam, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity.San Francisco: W. R. Freeman and Co., 1977, 303 pp., $6.95 paper.
QuarlesJohn, Cleaning Up America: An Insider's View of the Environmental Protection Agency.Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1976, 255 pp., $8.95.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Harold Sprout  and
Margaret Sprout
Harold Sprout
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Margaret Sprout
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

Ever since arresting the progressive deterioration of the physical habitat emerged as a live political issue in the United States in the early 1960s, it has been a subject of continuing disputation—both as to the urgency of repair and protection, and as to who should bear responsibility for deciding what and how much to undertake or to leave undone. Since all societies, especially industrial societies, are exposed to proliferating damage and hazards from diverse sources, environmental programs compete for support with a multiplicity of other claims on disposable resources. Since nearly everything that is done to maintain a decently livable physical habitat affects to some extent the distribution of income within and among nations, public authority has become increasingly the focus of environmental repair and protection, and the budgetary decisions of government the core of that focus—claims of some economists and other specialists to the contrary notwithstanding. The four books compared in this article consider these and related issues from various perspectives, both domestic and international.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , July 1979 , pp. 600 - 615
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1979

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References

1 “National Priorities: Demands, Resources, Dilemmas,” World Politics, XXIV (January 1972), 293–317Google Scholar.

2 The volume carries the standard formula that affirms the author's or authors’ sole responsibility for interpretive opinions expressed.

3 On this issue, see the forceful argument by physicist Amory Lovins, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 55 (October 1976), 65–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Melman, Seymour, The Permanent War Economy (New York: Simon & Schuster 1974)Google Scholar.

5 On this and related issues, we suggest Lockard, Duane, The Perverted Priorities oj American Politics (New York: Macmilkn 1971)Google Scholar.

6 Originally published in Science, Vol. 162 (December 13, 1968), 1243–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reproduced in numerous anthologies and collections of textbook readings.

7 Another bio-ecologist illustrates the same point by likening humankind to a parasite that destroys its host by overexploitation. Odum, Eugene P., Ecology (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1963), 109Google Scholar.

8 Goldman, , “The Convergence of Environmental Disruption,” Science, Vol. 170 (October 2, 1970), 37–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Commoner, Barry, The Closing Circle (New York: Knopf 1971), 278Google Scholar.

9 For a detailed exploration of the difficulties of preserving pre-industrial structures and values in industrializing society, see two books by Levy, Marion J. Jr.: The Structure of Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1952), 108Google Scholar and passim; and Modernization and the Structure of Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1966), 537Google Scholar and passim.

10 Daley, and others, eds., Toward a Steady-State Economy (San Francisco: Freeman 1973)Google Scholar.

11 See, in particular, Kaysen, Carl, “The Computer that Printed out W*O*L*F,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 55 (July 1972), 660–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for additional references to similar effect see Sprout, and Sprout, , The Context of Environmental Politics (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky 1978), 76–80Google Scholar, and notes on p. 196.