THE BROADENING BASE 

 OF RESOURCE POLICY 



Robert W. Hartley 



Any analysis of what might be called the "political economy of natu- 

 ral resource use" is bound to be controversial. This is true from the 

 outset of Dean Mason's clear and thought-provoking paper. He sets 

 limits on the meaning of the term "conservation" so that it encom- 

 passes only the elimination or lessening of a particular kind of eco- 

 nomic waste — the waste involved in a faulty time distribution of the 

 rate of use of a natural resource. But if we accept these limits we are 

 led, I believe, to a sympathetic consideration of an important view 

 expressed in the paper — namely, that despite periodic public alarm at 

 the prospective weakening of our natural resources position, remark- 

 ably little public action has been taken for the specific purpose of 

 reorienting in time the rate of resource use. 



We might well ask the question: Why should this be so? Why 

 should so relatively few of our natural resource policies have been 



ROBERT W. HARTLEY, as Vice President and Director of Inter- 

 national Studies for The Brookings Institution, is concerned primarily with re- 

 search and education in international relations. He is a former staflf member 

 of the National Resources Planning Board, the Bureau of the Budget, and the 

 Department of State; and was technical adviser to the United States delegation 

 at the United Nations Conference in San Francisco. At Brookings, he col- 

 laborated in the surveys on Major Problems of U.S. Foreign Policy; edited the 

 periodical, Current Developments in U.S. Foreign Policy; and at present is 

 directing a series of studies dealing with the United Nations. Mr. Hartley was 

 born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1911. He obtained his degree from Ohio State Uni- 

 versity in 1933. 



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