Page 72 - The Drucker Lectures

Politics and Economics of the Environment [ 53

come to grips with enormous tasks like the environment are very
scarce. Instead of concentrating on a few big tasks, everybody
rushes off every morning in a new direction. The right thing to
do is to say instead: Here are our priorities. They are either—
like air and water—the problems we understand, at least to the
point where we know where to start, or, like electric energy and
food production, they are problems where we do not know the
answers but know that we need answers urgently so that we can
do the environmental job. Let’s forget in the meantime about all
the other things, or let’s relegate them to the Sunday supplement
where they are forgotten by Tuesday afternoon.
The lack of priorities is perhaps the most serious matter today.
As a result everybody is excited about the environment. But no-
body is willing to develop any commitment, any policy, or any real
attempt to do something effective except to be self-righteous.
We have to think through what the priorities are for this
country. Then we have to think through how to carry them out
in such a way that the necessary and badly needed and highly
conservative concern for the environment does not degenerate
into the real sin of conservatism, namely into a war of the rich
against the poor, either at home or abroad.
The poor always suffer the most when things become more
expensive. Then the one who has the least gets less. There is no
way out of this if costs go up. That the black community consid-
ers the environmental excitement an attack on it is no accident;
the black poor are right. When they think that the white kids on
campus who are now all in favor of “earth” are in effect deserting
civil rights, they are right. When air is no longer free so that you
have to pay for it, it makes everything more expensive. When
water is no longer free because you have to pay for keeping it
clean, it makes everything more expensive.
We also have to reconcile the needs of the environment and
the need for jobs. Twenty years ago, up in northern New Eng-