Page 73 - The Drucker Lectures

54 [ The Drucker Lectures

land, where the old paper mill is the mainstay of the small town,
everybody in the town was willing—indeed eager—to suffer the
smell for the sake of the jobs. Today, perhaps, the decision is not
so clear-cut. Tomorrow it is going to be clear-cut again—and,
again, the vote will be for the jobs. There is going to be no labor
shortage the next 10 years because the babies born during the
baby boom are now reaching the labor market.
From now on, for the next 10 years, there will be 50 percent
more job seekers on the labor market each year than we have
had the last 15 years. So there is going to be no shortage of
people. Then people will again think of jobs. We are on a col-
lision course between environment and jobs, and I do not think
we can afford it. We will have to think through what risks we are
willing to take to maintain jobs for people who otherwise would
not have any. For those people in Ticonderoga, north of Albany,
New York, there are no other jobs, nor are there in Maine or in
West Virginia.
No one knows how much money we are spending today on
the environment. But the amount is high—up in the billions and
going up rapidly. If there are no results in a few years, we are go-
ing to get a terrific backlash and a terrific disillusionment. Many
people who are now wildly excited about ecology will then say,
“It’s only a political racket after all.” Then I think the ecology
would be in for a very rocky time, and we have enough difficul-
ties without inventing unnecessary ones.
The time has come for those who are really concerned with
the environment—and not just concerned with the excitement
about the environment—to say, “What do we do?” rather than,
“What do we say?” Are we facing the imminent doom about
which you can read in every Sunday supplement these days?
Probably not yet. But it is pretty late. We’d better go to work
rather than being satisfied with proclamations. We’d better de-
mand results rather than good intentions. We’d better demand