*"Thus twice five miles of 
fertile ground 
With roads and bridges 
were circled round”. 
Dumps of discarded automobiles disfigure the periphery of major cities. 
Clearly the land is in a mess! 
Natural resources 
World use of natural resources by the year 2000 is expected to be five times that of today. It is inevitably 
true that as the standard of living increases, the per capita consumption of resources increases. In the United 
States the percentage of minerals consumed is approximately four times larger than our percentage of the 
world’s population. As populations and standards of living increase elsewhere, where will all these materials 
come from? The reserves of most metallic minerals are such that at present rates of consumption they will be 
exhausted in decades; for aluminum and iron, in centuries. One can find all kinds of numbers--pessimistic or 
optimistic--depending upon the point one wishes to make. But it is time to stop playing the numbers game. The 
inevitable truth is that a finite world cannot produce an infinite amount of non-renewable resources. 
One of the bright spots in the resource picture is the land itself. The United Nations Food and 
Agriculture Organization has estimated the total world area of arable land and land under tree crops at 1.4 
billion hectares while there is another 1.6 billion hectares of uncultivated but potentially arable land. Even 
faster than the rate of population growth has been that of agricultural productivity. In the United States the 
total is up 40 per cent since 1945, but almost 250 per cent for the individual farm worker. One man now farms 
enough food for 35 people, as against 14 in 1945. Average yields per hectare are up 60 per cent above 1950, 
and are expected to be 100 per cent by 2000. Though these increases are not found world-wide, drastic 
improvements are being initiated. Thus there is no fundamental reason why food supply cannot be tripled by 
the end of the century. What is lacking is the organizational and political capability to transport fertilizer, seed, 
food, and populations to better areas when necessary. Unless these adjustments are made widespread famines 
are nearly inevitable. 
Energy 
In 1850, coal, oil, and gas supplied 5 per cent of the world’s energy, and the muscles of men and beasts 
94 per cent. Today those figures are exactly reversed. With high standards of living goes high energy 
consumption. Machines furnish the average American industrial worker with energy equivalent to that of 244 
men, and household appliances are equivalent to 33 men. While population has grown 70 per cent in the last 
40 years, energy consumption has increased 310 per cent. Americans now use more than six times as much 
energy per capita as the world average. Consumption of electrical power has shown by far the greatest growth. 
The Federal Power Commission estimates that electrical power usage is doubling every ten years. During the 
1980s a new one million kilowatt plant must be brought into service every 12 days to satisfy power needs. The 
phenomenal growth of electrical consumption has emphasized the shortage of clean, cheap fuels--oil and 
gas--to make electricity. 
Domestic oil production is down 8 percent from its peak in November 1970. Although Alaska's North 
Slope will add 2 million barrels a day by 1980, the once rich fields in Texas and Oklahoma are dwindling so 
rapidly that domestic output may never again reach its peak of 11 million barrels a day. 
Gas production has not yet topped out, but proven reserves have fallen to their lowest level in 15 years. 
The United States now buys 27 percent of its oil from foreign suppliers, mostly Canada and Venezuela, but 
those countries face the same prospect of shortages in the next few years. The only foreseeable solution is based 
on imports from the Middle East. Foreign affairs aside, the price that will have to be paid for super-tankers 
and ports to handle them must inevitably be added to the consumer's bill. 
Coal is our most abundant energy resource. It is also the easiest fuel to extract and use, but despite these 
advantages its use is decreasing. The main reason is that coal is dirty. Coal burning discharged 9 million tons 
of sulphur into the atmosphere last year. The pressures of environmental laws will simply not allow this in the 
future. Unless current research programmes in sulphur scrubbing and coal gasification are successfully beyond 
anyone's expectation, the use of coal must continue to decline. In order to provide economic supplies, coal 
industry leaders argue that they must rely on strip mining, the greatest destroyer of the American countryside. 
Ecologists and the public alike deplore this practice. 
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