ustxtxb_obs_1974_11_29_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

Editorial and Business Offices: The Texas Observer, 600 W. 7th St., Austin, Texas 78701. Telephone 477-0746. 7.49101f prepared to do ourselves in the affluent societies. Because, I think, there is a certain lack of human respect in saying to the new rich who only got their capital last year, “Hello, now you’ve got it, you can take over,” We are six times wealthier than they. This has got to be a concerted operation, and that means the industrialized powers. So, first of all, get through this crisis by restraint. Not, heaven knows, total austerity, but something, for example, of the kind that is being pioneered in Sweden where there is a national debate and agreement about how much productivity is available in society, how much wages and income can be allowed to rise, how much the transfers between the rich and the poor sink in to a creative but balanced growth, and, within the picture of balanced growth, how much should go to agriculture, to expanding health, education, the kind of services which will lead to population stability. It’s that kind of dual approach that would make it possible for us to come out of the Seventies, not in disarray, but recreating the kind of society in which the planet can survive. Now, let us look just for one moment at what this kind of restraint involves, because people often feel that it involves some desperate sort of wartime rationing, some appalling system which they fear. Looking back, a lot of wartime rationing, and I can say this from my own experience, was not really very desperate. In fact, the feeling of solidarity and the feeling of doing things together infinitely compensated for the fact that your omelette was made of dried eggs. In other words, there are compensations for doing things together. . . . When we talk about this question of a reasonable restraint, what we are really asking is that people examine their standards to see where the gross waste can be cut out. To ask themselves whether a diet of 1,900 pounds of cereal a year, largely taken in the shape of meat products, while others eat 400 in the Indian subcontinent, whether some adjustment is not possible there, especially when we have the doctors pleading with us to reduce our meat eating by one-third so as to get rid of an epidemic of vascular diseases. You know, you can eat yourself silly, as well as other forms of stupidity. So there is a balance which we have to look at if we are talking seriously about the most profound element of our environment, which is our own reaction to it. Take energy again we have to look at the ways in which the conservation of energy takes the place of our spendthrift use of the one-dollar-a-barrel energy .. . One of the most encouraging things is the .number of things that we could do if we accepted that conservation is one of the great ways of life. Let me give you one tiny example, because you are going to get many more. One of the most exciting things that is going on in science now is the possibility of attaching to wheat nitrogeneous; nitrogen-fixing bacteria, so that you can probably halve the use of fertilizer. That’s an enormous saving. It’s organic, it’s biological, it fits into the pattern of our biosphere. That’s one example. Now, take another one very interesting. It doesn’t sound so good, but never mind. That is that you can take parts of city sewage, transfer it to single cell protein, mix it thoroughly and the cows love it. So you complete the cycle, which is one of the great aims of the environmental movement, in the resource movement complete your cycles, and let nothing run to waste. I only signalize those two examples. There are many others insulation of houses, different patterns of public transport. They add up to a whole series of lifestyles which will enable the wealthy world to release itself from the constraints of overdemand, to get supply in balance, and to have resources available for the enormous task of nurturing and building up a world economy beyond collapse, beyond population pressure while we have some hope of leading together the safe and happy life. “Well,” you say, “Pollyanna, Utopia unlimited. Here we go again.” I wonder. I wonder whether, looking back over the history of our society, whether it isn’t the last 25 years that are the aberration. We have not been a society which has always been telling itself that it owes itself a trip to Bermuda. We have not always been, a society in which a young girl was told not to clean up her mind but to clean up her skin. We have not always been a society in which a quick bourbon is the way to business success. We have not always been a society in which we have been bombarded day in, day out by all the siren voices telling us the short cut to everything, except reality in ourselves. On the contrary, the society we have grown up in, the society which cherished the values of freemen was a society of restraint, a society of respect, a society in which the sacred ego was not so lively that neighborliness and sharing were not . Contributing Editors: Steve Barthelme, Bill Brammer, Gary Cartwright, Joe Frantz, Larry Goodwyn, Bill Hamilton, Bill Helmer, Dave Hickey, Franklin Jones, Lyman Jones, Larry L. King, Georgia Earnest Klipple, Larry Lee, Al Melinger, Robert L. Montgomery, Willie Morris, Bill Porterfield, James Presley, Buck Ramsey, John Rogers, Mary Beth Rogers, Roger Shattuck, Edwin Shrake, Dan Strawn, John P. Sullivan, ‘Tom Sutherland. We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the foundation of democracy; we will .take orders from none but our own conscience, and never, will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. The editor has exclusive control over the editorial policies and contents of the Observer. None of the other people who are associated with the enterprise shares this responsibility with her. Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not themselves written, and in publishing them the editor does not necessarily imply that she agrees with them, because this is a journal of free voices. Published by Texas Observer Publishing Co., biweekly except for a three week interval between issues twice a year, in July and January; 25 issues per year. Entered as second-class matter . April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Second class postage paid at Austin, Texas. Single Copy, 50st. One year, $8.00; two years, $14.00; three years, $19.00; plus, for Texas addresses, 5% sales tax. Foreign, except APO/FPO. 50 additional per year. Airmail, bulk orders, and group rates on request. Microfilmed by *Microfilming Corporation of America, 21 Harristown Road, Glen Rock, N.J. 07452. Change of Address: Please give old and new address, including zip codes, and allow two weeks. Postmaster: Send form 3579 to Texas Observer, 600 W. 7th St., Austin, Texas 78701. THE TEXAS OBSERVER OThe Texas Observer Publishing Co. 1974 Ronnie Dugger, Publisher A window to the South A journal of free voices EDITOR CO-EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR EDITOR AT LARGE Kaye Northcott Molly Ivins John Ferguson Ronnie Dugger BUSINESS STAFF Joe Espinosa Jr. C. R. Olofson Keith Stanford Vol. XLVI, No. 23 Nov. 29, 1974 lacorporating the State Observer and the East Texas Democrat, which in turn incorporated the Austin ForumAdvocate.