21 



am retired as director of Monsanto Company's Environmental 

 Sciences Center, a large industrial environmental R&D facility. I 

 am also very active within the American Chemical Society. I Chair 

 their Committee on Environmental Improvement, which sets most 

 of their public policies in environmental areas. 



I will borrow liberally from ACS policy statements, but again, I 

 do not represent ACS and will depart from their official policy 

 statements in substantial ways. 



I tend to advocate a free market environmentalism. I hope that 

 can become clear as we go along. I think that somehow or another 

 we are going to have to bring the public into our environmental 

 paradigm. 



It is a particular concern to me that many long-term environ- 

 mental impacts are not addressable with current technology. We 

 are living in a world that is growing more people than it can sup- 

 port. With a current population of 5.5 billion people, current trends 

 suggest that we may get to 10 billion people in 30 to 40 years. 



Senator Reid. Let me just interrupt. I don't like to do that, but 

 I know that I have my friend here from Friends of Earth. 



I have been concerned about population problems in the United 

 States. We have about 1.5 million new people come here every 

 year. This is in addition to the people who are born here every 

 year. I think it is a serious problem not only with our illegal immi- 

 gration but I think we have to take a look at the number of people 

 we allow to immigrate here legally. There are 1.5 million new peo- 

 ple every year in addition to the ordinary growth, and that is sig- 

 nificant. 



I wrote what I thought was a good letter of 3 pages laying out 

 the problems I felt we were havir.g in this country, not the world — 

 we all know the problems of world population — to approximately 80 

 environmental groups around the country indicating that I thought 

 this was something on which they should take a position. I got a 

 letter back from one of the 80 letters we wrote. The rest of them 

 must have thrown my letter in the garbage. 



I was extremely disappointed. I would rather that someone had 

 written back and said, 'Tour legislation is a piece of garbage," 

 rather than simply being ignored. I agree with you that this popu- 

 lation explosion around the world, of which we are getting our 

 share, is the most significant problem we have facing our country 

 and the world. Problems with infrastructure, sewers, water sup- 

 plies, highways, bridges — maybe tomorrow, if not next week, we 

 are going to take up on the Senate floor Interior appropriations. 

 This deals with many things, but one of the things we deal with 

 is our forests, our park system, fish and wildlife refuges. The prob- 

 lem with those is that we have too many people that have just 

 overburdened these areas we have set aside. We just totally ignore 

 the fact that the problem is too many people. 



In Las Vegas, Lake Mead Recreation Area — we had 9 million 

 people visit that last year. 



I agree with you. 



Dr. Ford. I know you have championed this issue. That is one 

 of the reasons I highlighted it. I very much applaud your interest. 



Senator Reid. I wish someone else was interested. That is the 

 problem. 



