PHILIP M. HAUSER 101 



basic problems in consumption and conservation, insofar at least as 

 the philosophical heights can be scaled by an economist. 



Before dealing with Galbraith in kind, however, I should like to 

 point to a few fundamental statistics with which he obviously is famil- 

 iar, that he uses as a point of departure in his discussion. I refer first 

 of all to the fact that the postwar boom in marriages and babies has 

 drastically altered both short-run and long-run population growth in 

 the United States. Using the relatively conservative projections of the 

 United States Bureau of the Census, it is likely that our population 

 may increase over 1950 by some 55 million at the lower limit and by 

 over 75 milHon at the upper limit, to reach a level of from 207 to 228 

 million by 1975. Broader Umits are possible which could, as Whelp- 

 ton has shown, result in a possible population of 193 million to 243 

 miUion by 1975. 



The Census projections indicate in the brief span of twenty-five 

 years an addition to the population of the United States equivalent to 

 all of Western Germany at the lower limit, and all of Indonesia or 

 Pakistan at the upper limit. The Whelpton projection allows for an 

 addition to the size of the nation within a quarter of a century, of a 

 population the equivalent of all of Japan. 



Increments of this magnitude, of a population consuming at United 

 States levels of living, obviously point to appreciable acceleration in 

 the rate of utilization of many resources and to depletion or threat- 

 ened depletion of a number of critical things including oil, copper, 

 lead, zinc, additive alloys for steel, and, on a local basis, water. 



The worriments of conservationists, if warranted before World 

 War II, were justifiedly exacerbated by the prodigious consumption of 

 the war, together with the course of demographic events in the post- 

 war world. If one wishes to use what is perhaps the ultimate weapon 

 in the cause of conservation in the United States, it is necessary only 

 to point to the Social Security Administration's (T.N.E. Greville's) 

 projections of future population, which demonstrate that the continu- 

 ation of present fertility levels along with reasonable mortality gains 

 would, within a century, by the year 2050, produce a population in 

 the United States of about one billion people. If one were to use present 

 consumption functions, let alone taking into account their secular 

 trends, and apply them to a population of one billion persons, I am sure 



