There are 52.3 million kilowatts of hydroelectric capacity in the United States, which is less than one 
third the country's potential. Most of the remaining two-thirds will never be used, largely because of 
conservationist opposition. 
Nuclear power plants are the great hope for the future. Though building costs are high, operating costs 
are low, and adequate uranium fuel seems assured for several decades. By that time the fast-breeder reactor, 
which actually produces more fuel than it consumes, hopefully will be ready to take over. 
But if environmentalists are upset over strip mining, air pollution, and hydroelectric dams, they become 
positively incoherent over thermal pollution, disposition of radioactive solid wastes, and the spectre of the 
ultimate pollutant--lethal, long-lived radiation--that could result from an accidental catastrophe in a nuclear 
plant. So far, lawsuits have blocked most plans for new nuclear power plants. 
Interconnection of Problems 
It would indeed be fortunate if these problems - population, pollution, resources, and energy - could be 
attacked individually. But they are obviously interrelated in a most disheartening way. This spring the 
prestigious Club of Rome sponsored a computer study carried out by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
tracing the interaction of population, food supply, natural resources, industrial production, and pollution over 
long spans of time. The results showed that even when the hypothetical inputs were most conservative, the 
forecast was roughly the same: Bad. If current trends continue unchanged, the team found, **the limits to 
growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years. The most probable result will be 
a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in population and industrial capacity". 
A similar British study, called a **Blueprint for Survival" concluded that “indefinite growth cannot be 
sustained by finite resources". The demand for natural resources is becoming so great *'the breakdown of 
society and the irreversible destruction of the life support systems on this planet, possibly by the end of the 
century, certainly within the lifetimes of our children". 
This summer the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment discovered that not everyone sees 
the problems in the same way. Ethnic minority groups see population control as a way for the industrial powers 
to remain rich by preserving the status quo (which is Latin for “the mess we are in’’). Poorer nations cannot 
afford, and rightfully feel that they should not be required, to pay for cleaning up a global mess that they did 
not create. They also are aware that ecological restraints will penalize them, directly of indirectly. Intensive 
recycling of used goods will cut the demand for their raw materials. Pollution controls on factories in the 
industrial nations will inevitably raise the cost that poor nations must pay for finished goods. Developing 
nations see recommendations for slowing industrialization in order to preserve the environment as attempts 
to deny them the high standards of living enjoyed by those who have already done the polluting. It is as difficult 
for the developer of a paper mill in Brazil to think that he can pollute the mighty Amazon as it was for the 
American colonist to think that his factory would destroy the Hudson. 
These Facts Are Not New 
But, all these facts are not new or original with me. As we used to say at the university, “If you copy from 
one source, that is plagiarism. If you copy from many, that is research". This talk is based on research. These 
statistics have been published again and again and examined from every possible angle. As economist Barbara 
Ward said at Stockholm, **Truth is moving toward platitude with alarming speed"*. Somebody else said that 
if all the time spent writing and listening to speeches about ecology were spent picking up beer cans, the world 
would already be a better place to live. This being so, and in view of my earlier expressed concern not to waste 
your time, why didn't I send you out to clean the streets rather than repeating things you already know? Well, 
apart from the fact that the streets of Ottawa are already well kept, the reason is that I think photogrammetry, 
more than any other profession except politics, can contribute to the solution of the world's problems. And we 
must see them in their totality before we can attack them. United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, speaking 
to the Apollo 15 crew, said, ** You saw our planet Earth from the Moon as an indivisible entity, a small planet 
orbiting in space, without boundaries, without frontiers, without any indication whatsoever of which part is 
rich, and which is poor; which part is black or white or yellow. This is a correct vision of this small planet”. 
The space ship Earth - like Apollo - is a closed ecological system. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says 
that it is easier to get into trouble than to get out of it. Our space ship is in trouble and only planetary 
engineering and management can restore the balance. The role of photogrammetry in that task is one that we 
must appreciate and accept with vigour. Just as there are several separate, but interrelated, problems, I think 
there are several actions that photogrammetrists should undertake. 
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