GILBERT F. WHITE 221 



provement of review procedures are often desirable and sometimes 

 attainable, but I am not persuaded that any of these organizational 

 reforms can effect major changes in the impact of public efforts upon 

 the environment as it is now being used or abused. This does not 

 mean that we should stop working for organizational improvements; 

 it means only that we should not be satisfied with those we can get, or 

 feel that if we could get more they would be sufficient in themselves. 



Ten years ago I would not have made so guarded a statement. It is 

 only that further experience and reflection have more and more em- 

 phasized the durability of social and political facts that outweigh mere 

 neatness and conference-table logic. But what I hope is a more sea- 

 soned view is not necessarily a pessimistic one. One practical way of 

 bringing much more order into the prevailing chaos has not as yet 

 been given a real test. It is simply that of broadening the base of polit- 

 ical choices on important resource issues. When all of the evidence is 

 reviewed together, rather than in separate pieces, the narrowness of 

 the present base is clearly revealed. 



The effectiveness of organization for resources management always 

 will be affected by our stock of ingenuity and courage in making ad- 

 ministrative reforms and innovations, and by the flexibility of that 

 system in responding to emerging needs. One of its major limits, how- 

 ever, is in the lack of understanding of national aims and, conse- 

 quently, of national means as well. So long as this is diffuse we cannot 

 expect any amount of reorganizational legerdemain or budgetary man- 

 agement to more than palliate the difficulties. If we seem confused in 

 the field of defense where there at least seems no doubt that we wish 

 to protect and preserve the United States, how much more complex is 

 the case of natural resources where we are not certain as to what we 

 are to conserve? We are not certain that we want to develop all of our 

 water power or save all of our soil, or how much oil, if any, we should 

 keep under ground, or whether we should curb our appetite for lead 

 in gas and iron in tail fins. Having already and of necessity modified 

 the web of nature, we do not know how far is too far in directing our 

 changes in it. 



In recent years we have had a generous review of both policies and 

 administration. Raw materials situations have been assessed; water 

 policy has been proposed; a new attack has been made upon problems 



