Page 71 - The Drucker Lectures

52 [ The Drucker Lectures

But perhaps the greatest single problem we face is that no-
body is willing to set priorities in the attack on the crisis of the
environment. Nobody is willing to say there are 50 million jobs
to be done, yet nobody can do more than one at a time and that
is usually hard enough.
What are the things we do first, the things to commit our-
selves to, the things to work on until they are licked? Instead, we
run off in all directions.
In preparation for this lecture, I took the telephone and called
up a friend at the Library of Congress and asked, “How many en-
vironmental bills have Congress and the states passed by now?” I
expected him to say 60. But his answer was 344. I said, “Are they
all funded?” “Yes,” he said, “they are all in some budget.” I asked,
“Are they all staffed?” and he said, “Don’t ask silly questions.”
We are running off in all directions. Everybody with a little
hatchet and a spray gun is attacking huge problems. As a result,
we get lots of headlines. And that’s all we get. And lots of ulcers,
and that’s all we get. But we get no results.
I am not saying that I know what the priorities are, though of
course I know what my priorities would be. My list is not terribly
important, but a list is important.
My list, by the way, would be clean air first and clean water next
and then the problem of thermal pollution in generating electric
power for which we have no technology so far. Finally, I would put
the food problem, for we are caught in a dilemma between having
millions of children die as a result of a sharp drop in crop yields if
we stop using herbicides and pesticides, and doing inevitable eco-
logical and biological damage because the pesticides and herbicides
are too potent. In the long run this may be the most tragic problem
we face. But so far few people are even working on the problem.
This would be my list. But what matters is that we settle on
a list and then organize very scarce resources for work. It is not
money that is scarce; it never is. But good people who can really