ETHICS, AESTHETICS, 



AND THE BALANCE OF NATURE 



Paul B. Sears 



Professor Galbraith's thoughtful, salty, and good-humored paper 

 boldly opens up one of the least popular aspects of the resource prob- 

 lem — namely, the importance of a reasonable frugality. Another basic 

 but unpopular aspect is, of course, our increasing population pressure. 

 This, too, has recently been discussed from the standpoint of eco- 

 nomics. Joseph Spengler of Duke University and Earle Rauber of the 

 Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta have both, independently, given 

 solid arguments against the popular doctrine, "the more the merrier" 

 or "each mouth a new customer." 



I feel no particular mission to defend conservationists, so called, 

 against his gentle strictures, yet perhaps I am expected to make some 

 comment on them. It would take a bolder student of life and environ- 

 ment than I am to enter the lists on behalf of all who assume, or have 

 imposed on them, the title of conservationist. 



PAUL B. SEARS has been Chairman of the Yale University Conserva- 

 tion Program since 1950. Previously he was Professor of Botany at the Uni- 

 versity of Oklahoma, and at Oberlin College. He is a former president of the 

 Ohio Academy of Science, the Ecological Society of America, and the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of Science. Among his numerous writings 

 he is perhaps best known for his book Deserts on the March. For the last 

 several years he has been studying, through pollen analysis, the climatic history 

 of the site on which Mexico City is built. Mr. Sears was born at Bucyrus, 

 Ohio, in 1891. He received his degree in botany from the University of Chicago 

 in 1922. 



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