THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
Published Quarterly by the 
ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETY 
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Ill. 60605 
umber 153 
March 1970 
THE 
PRESIDENT'S 
PAGE 
by RAYMOND MOSTEK 
1e Urban Crisis and the Environmental Decade: America’s sudden interest 
its pollution problems is a wonder to behold as we enter this “Environ- 
ental Decade.” These problems will not fade away, nor will they be 
sily solved. It is doubtful that the interest of the voter and citizen will 
de away, because air pollution and water pollution are too pervasive, and 
e decline in their quality is too terrifying. It is hardly likely that the 
merican public could have handled the issue any way other than it is 
ing handled now: We have a great faith in the mere expenditure of 
ige funds, and a misguided faith in technology and science to be able 
solve all our problems and to do it quickly. Because we exploited a 
rgin land so easily, we also feel apparently that we can readily right 
: wrongs. 
Having made a mess of our urban 
eas, some planners and politicians 
e suggesting that brand new 
odel cities should be built in some 
n-kissed rural areas of the several 
ates. At present over 80 percent 
our population lives in urban 
eas; by 1980, more than 90 per- 
nt probably will do so. And the 
ost rapid growth takes place in 
e suburbs. By 1990, the suburbs 
Chicago will have twice the 
pulation of the great city itself. 
€ can expect a minimum growth 
100,000,000 more persons in the 
ition in the next thirty years. 
If this is true, we will need to 
build at least 30 new cities to ac- 
commodate the new crop of citizens 
—or one “new Chicago” annually. 
It is not likely that the new Model 
Cities will be built, and even if they 
were, we would still face the gi- 
gantic problems of our old urban 
areas. Given the dimensions of the 
present problems, how do we solve 
them? It is now recognized that we 
will probably have to spend up- 
wards of $200 billion to clean up 
pollution in this nation, a sum to 
be expended by local, state, federal, 
industrial and private expenditures. 
