88 The Environmental Debate
Technology and Resource Policy in
the Nuclear Age
One of the reactions to the devastation caused by
the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Naga-
saki in 1945 in the process of bringing World War II
to a conclusion was a reconsideration of the uses of
technology [see Document 91]. As people came to
understand that they had the ability to destroy life
on earth on an unprecedented scale, a litany of voices
arose to plead for the preservation of the earth and
the living things that inhabit it. Some of the voices
belonged to antinuclear weapons activists, while oth-
ers were those of individuals and groups protesting
the waste and destruction of the America’s irreplace-
able resources.
Forty years after Teddy Roosevelt had attempted
to set up a commission to study the nation’s resources
and establish a viable resource policy [see Document
70], President Harry Truman created the Materials
Policy Commission with much the same objective.
This time, adequate funding was made available.
Although the commission’s report commented on
the dwindling supplies of many natural resource, it
nevertheless recommended that the main goal of a
U.S. materials policy should be the development of
a sufficient supply of resources to ensure economic
growth [see Document 89]. There was swift reac-
tion to the report, with conservationists like Samuel
Ordway calling for sustainable development [see
Document 90] and economists like John Kenneth
Galbraith questioning the right of the United States
to continue to consume resources at an inordinately
high rate [see Document 95]. At about the same
time, mining and drilling companies, recognizing
that mineral, coal, oil, and gas deposits are finite,
were undertaking their own assessments of not just
the United States’ stocks of resources, but of whole
world’s [see Document 94]. The findings of both the
government and industry clearly indicated that the
time had arrived for the United States to develop a
coherent, long-term energy and resource policy, but
Congress, caught in the vise of partisan interests
and short-term economic priorities, has never been
able to accomplish the task.land use zoning regulations. By the 1920s, real estate,
mining, and industrial interests were feeling the sting
of these regulations and appealed to the courts for a
redress of grievances [see Documents 74 and 75]. In
general, the courts tended to side with the interests
of big business, but over time, zoning laws became
increasingly stringent and forced individual prop-
erty owners, as well as businesses of every type, to
adjust to communal interests. By the 1930s, local and
regional planning [see Document 83] had made great
strides in bringing order to land development. Nev-
ertheless, even in the 1950s, insufficient thought was
given to the consequences of building in areas with
inadequate water supplies [see Document 92].
Much of the nation looked with favor on the
transformation of the natural landscape, as indus-
try expanded, dams were built, wetlands reclaimed,
and forests and farmland paved over and turned into
roads and housing developments. But a small seg-
ment of the population was horrified by the complete
lack of regard for the needs of nature. In 1928 Henry
Beston [see Document 76] proposed that we rethink
our relationship to other living things, and in 1933
Luther Standing Bear [see Document 80] pointed out
that respect for other living things is fundamental to
the Native American view of life. Arthur Tansley [see
Document 81] introduced the idea of the ecosystem in
1935; the following year, H. V. Harlan and M. L. Mar-
tini [see Document 82] raised concerns about decreas-
ing biodiversity. In 1947 Marjory Stoneman Douglas
[see Document 85], in an evocative book on the Ever-
glades, called into question the policy of draining
wetlands to reclaim land for agriculture and build-
ing development. By the time Fairfield Osborn pro-
claimed that Americans needed to become sensible to
the interrelatedness of all living things [see Document
87] and Aldo Leopold proposed a new “land ethic”––
which called for humans to view themselves as ordi-
nary members of a community whose other members
include water, soil, plants, and animals rather than as
superior to the other members of the community [see
Document 88]–– the foundations for an environmental
movement expanded from the conservation movement
of the turn of the century, had been laid.