1.7: Natural Resources and Environment

Responsible Stewardship of Natural Resources and the Environment

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The nation’s natural resources and the systems associated with their use are under widespread and increasing stress, generating intense debate and posing daunting challenges to policymakers at all levels of government. In large part, this is the consequence of the country’s growing population and economy and attendant increased demands on a finite resource base. Accommodating these demands runs headlong into long-standing legislation aimed at protecting the country’s resources in a healthy state for the good of current and future generations. Likewise, how policymakers resolve this balance has global consequences because the United States is the world’s single largest consumer of energy and other resources and is seen as out of step with international efforts to limit resource use and associated pollution. At the same time, the nation needs to protect its natural resources from terrorist threats. In fact, nearly half of the critical infrastructure sectors listed in the President’s National Strategy for Homeland Security cover natural resource areas. These areas are food, meat and poultry, energy, water, chemical industry and hazardous materials, and agriculture. For decades the nation has benefited from plentiful and relatively low-priced domestic and global energy supplies. The long-standing availability of these supplies, however, has made businesses and consumers dependent on large amounts of low-priced energy as a means to maintain our nation’s global competitiveness and way of life. Unfortunately, in recent years, the nation has witnessed a tightening of energy supplies in the face of rising demand—resulting in a more precarious supply and demand balance. This tightening, or stress on energy markets, has contributed to steep price increases for oil, natural gas, and electricity, with prices more than tripling over just a few years, in some cases. If these price increases persist, they may cause economic dislocations for U.S. industry and financial peril for workers and consumers. In addition, the United States has increasingly relied on some imported energy supplies, such as oil, that come from parts of the world that are both hostile toward the United States and politically unstable at times. Recent global trends, such as huge increases in oil demand by China and India, are complicating the nation’s energy picture by further pushing up energy prices. Exacerbating these already difficult market developments and trends is the renewed and widespread debate as to whether the world is nearing a peak in oil production after which global supplies would begin to decline. Finally, despite several years of concerted efforts to combat terrorism, key aspects of the United States’ far-flung energy infrastructure—including hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission lines, pipelines, and rail lines connecting to thousands of major energy facilities—remain vulnerable. It is in this context that federal leaders will face difficult choices on how the nation can meet its energy needs in the near term, and daunting strategic decisions about how the federal government can best aid in a thoughtful transition to the energy systems that will meet the country’s needs in the 21st century. More than ever, the country’s lands and waters are under increasing stress. This is evidenced by rapidly dwindling open spaces, declining biodiversity, depleted aquifers, and collapsing fisheries—the unintended consequences of economic growth and the need to sustain the lifestyle of a growing population. Reconciling and balancing the demands of often competing objectives—economic growth for today versus natural resource protection for the future—is a major challenge facing the American public and its elected leaders. The heated debate on possible future oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska presents this issue in microcosm. In this case, the issue pertains to the use of federal lands, which constitute about 30 percent of the country’s total land surface, but similar controversies exist over privately held lands affected by federal law and regulations. The use of the nation’s waters presents equally sobering challenges, as pollutants and overfishing rapidly threaten coral reefs and deplete offshore fisheries, while competition over rights to freshwater supplies grows among various interests, such as agriculture, communities, utilities, wildlife, and recreational users. Even under normal conditions, water managers in 36 states expect water shortages to occur within the next 10 years. If such shortages actually occur, they could have severe economic, environmental, and social impacts. The increasing globalization of natural resource issues also affects environmental protection matters, as seen in the federal government’s discussions with other governments about climate change issues. Such discussions add a new layer of complexity to the already difficult question of how to sustain economic growth when the engines of that growth—factories, cars and trucks, fertilizers, and electricity-generating plants—often adversely affect air and water quality and can change climates in potentially catastrophic ways. Another factor in attaining federal air and water quality goals is that land use practices, often resulting in "urban sprawl," are controlled mainly by local governments and private owners. Moreover, the federal government relies upon state and local governments for inspection and enforcement actions. Because of the pervasiveness and mounting evidence of the effects of climate change and the potential consequences of human-induced climate change and response options, we are increasing the emphasis on climate change over the next few years. This increase in emphasis was overwhelmingly encouraged by the Comptroller General’s Advisory Board. More than ever, decision makers in public and private sector organizations need reliable and readily understood information to make informed judgments and decisions. Over the past 15 years, the United States has invested heavily in scientific research, monitoring, data management, and assessment for climate change analyses to build a foundation of knowledge for decision making. Also, significant challenges remain in cleaning up the country’s hazardous and radioactive waste sites. Today, an estimated 60 million Americans live within 4 miles of a hazardous site, and radioactive waste from weapons production still needs to be cleaned up at Department of Energy sites in 13 states. These sites’ continued existence poses not only potential health and safety problems, but also fiscal and economic problems. Delayed cleanup results in higher price tags for eventual cleanup and stunted economic development in the affected communities. Potential terrorist attacks underline the need for steps to ensure the security of hazardous and radioactive materials during storage, transportation, and disposal. Finally, the Congress continues to debate the direction of U.S. farm policy in areas such as subsidies and world trade, land conservation, and energy production efforts. Food safety and security lie at the forefront of concerns about the country’s agricultural resources, an urgent matter given the potential for, and the consequences of, agricultural bioterrorism. Besides this troubling matter, a whole range of other food safety issues, while less ominous, nevertheless pose serious questions. These include questions about the adequacy of the government’s devolution of food inspection authority and its efforts to implement a "farm-to-table" food safety approach. At the same time, a number of countries have raised concerns about the safety of U.S. genetically modified crops and foods—a matter of growing importance given the significant role that food exports play in the U.S. economy.

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