190 The Broadening Base of Resource Policy 



resource, then the approach perforce becomes essentially a negative 

 one. 



An approach to public policy along these hnes inherently means 

 that we are buying time, but for what purpose? In the fields of the 

 nonrenewable resources, we can buy time in order to develop alter- 

 native substitutes; in the fields of the renewable resources, we can buy 

 it in order to institute the works and measures that will restore the 

 renewal cycle. Viewed in this light, however, our natural resources 

 policies of the past fifty years could be regarded primarily as stop-gap 

 affairs. 



Perhaps we are now at the stage in our national development when 

 we should take a new look at our natural resource policies. This is the 

 obvious and most important conclusion I draw from Dean Mason's 

 paper. It also seems to me that the paper points in the direction of 

 using the over-all approach in such a reappraisal rather than a frag- 

 mentary one. Considerations of national security alone would seem to 

 require this way of tackling the problem. 



Another conclusion that might be inferred from the paper is that a 

 unified public policy covering water, land, and energy resources might 

 be a highly desirable national objective. I believe the idea of such a 

 unified policy will be increasingly pressed as science and technology 

 open new vistas of the resources that are really available to us on this 

 planet. And if, in the long run, the resources of the earth do not suf- 

 fice, we might — as Dean Mason guardedly suggests — look elsewhere, 

 for there is little doubt in my mind that we now stand on the threshold 

 of a new age. Whether traditional concepts of the political economy 

 of natural resource use will continue to be valuable to us as we move 

 forward into this new era remains, however, to be seen. 



