90 How Much Should a Country Consume? 



since World War I our consumption of most materials has exceeded 

 that of all mankind through all history before that conflict. 



This gargantuan and growing appetite has become the point of de- 

 parture for all discussions of the resource problem. In face of this vast 

 use what is happening to our domestic reserves of ores, to our energy 

 sources, to the renewable resources? Are we being made excessively 

 dependent on foreign supplies? How can we ensure that they will 

 continue to flow in the necessary volume and with the necessary in- 

 creases to our shores? How is our security affected? 



The high rate of use has catalyzed conservationist activity on many 

 other fronts. Because of it we have been busily assessing reserves of 

 various resources and measuring the rate of depletion against the rate 

 of discovery. We have become concerned with the efliciency of meth- 

 ods of recovery. As a result, for example, of the meteoric increase in 

 natural gas consumption, the prospect for further increase, and the 

 limited supplies at least within the borders of continental United 

 States, we have had an increasing concern over what was flared or 

 otherwise lost. The large requirements and the related exhaustion of 

 domestic reserves support the concern for having ready stocks of ma- 

 terials in the event of national emergency. (Support for this also 

 comes from the not inconsiderable number of people who, in this 

 instance, find prudence a matter of some profit.) Our large fuel re- 

 quirements have deeply affected our foreign policy even though it 

 remains a canon of modern diplomacy that any preoccupation with 

 oil should be concealed by calling on our still ample reserves of sanc- 

 timony. 



Finally, and perhaps most important, the high rate of resource use 

 has stirred interest in the technology of resource use and substitution. 

 Scores of products would already have become scarce and expensive 

 had it not been for the appearance of substitute sources of materials 

 or substitute materials. We still think of innovation in terms of the 

 unpredictable and fortuitous genius which was encouraged by the pat- 

 ent office. In fact, input/output relationships for investment in inno- 

 vation, not in the particular case but in general, are probably about 

 as stable as any other. And investment in such innovation may well 

 substitute, at more or less constant rates, for investment in orthodox 



