Guess the author and year written:
With disturbing regularity we uncovered "new" pollutants that harm us or our surroundings. We do know a great deal about the origins of pollution, but too much of it comes from nonpoint sources to make its control simple. Our ability to pinpoint the adverse health or environmental effects at a given concentration, or measure those adverse concentrations in the air or water, varies greatly with the individual pollutant and media in which it is found. Lastly, while we can technologically virtually eliminate pollution, the costs to the society are enormous and in some cases prohibitive...
...great progress has been made in improving our environment by any standard. And it has been made in the face of continued industrial and population growth--the two great contributors to pollution. Setting for ourselves unachievable goals of perfection has greatly inhibited our ability to measure progress and thus to reassure the American people that we are grappling successfully with our own complexities. Clearly we have not reached the millennium in our efforts to guarantee a global future. New and vexing problems like toxic dumps and acid rain, to mention only two, crop up almost daily. But we have awakened to the darker side of viewing air and water as free, limitless commodities and to the thoughtless application of new technology. We are striving mightily to cope. From that effort we should take pride and instill public confidence that all is not lost. The time for hand-wringing has long since passed.
The American people do understand that we have a problem in cleaning up our environment and protecting public health. They overwhelmingly support efforts to address this problem. It is my conviction that if the public better understood both the complexity of our undertaking and the...determination of our government to successfully respond to the public will, they would support the rationalization of our environmental laws.
Answer: William D. Ruckelshaus on the 10th anniversay of the EPA, Dec 2, 1980. Ruckelshaus was the first head of the EPA. The economic undertones of the article are amazing for 1980. The rallying cry near the end is worthy of Hollywood:
The essential question for us to answer in America today is: Are we a wise enough people to achieve our environmental goals and minimize the impact on other legitimate social concerns--all within the context of freedom? To the extent we are capable of answering that question in the affirmative, we will have shown the rest of the world, in the best way possible, that the path of freedom is the one to which all should repair. It is very much the job of every employee at EPA to show our country how the environment can be protected without doing violence to freedom.
I need a tissue.
