Remarks on Inscribing a Copy of the Report of the Council on Environmental Quality for the Council Staff.

AS ALL of you are aware, the purpose of this meeting is simply to inscribe for the Council a copy of the report that I understand has already been sent to the Congress and Chairman Train has already briefed the press this morning on at 9 o'clock. So I will inscribe this one.

I would like to say, too, while we are sitting here in the room, that this is, of course, a historic report, historic because it is the first one. It, however, will be we hope the beginning of not only reports but action by this Council in the field of the environment.

It seems to me that this committee, this Council, has one of the most difficult and, at the same time, one of the most challenging assignments of any of the many government institutions that we have in Washington or throughout the country.

It seems at first blush when you consider the problems of the environment that there is an irreconcilable conflict when you speak of the quality of life between economic growth and clean air, clean water, open space, all those things that we associate with a good environment.

Those who argue at one extreme, of course, would say that we must stop economic growth or actually retard it in order to save the environment.

As I have often pointed out, there is not an irreconcilable conflict between the two. The fact that we have growth in itself improves the environment and if anybody has any doubt about that, visit any of those many countries in which over 2½ billion peoples in the world live, in which they don't have economic growth and see whether that environment, insofar as the quality of life, is one we would want for our people.

On the other side of the coin, we realize, the fact that we are the richest, most productive nation in the world gives us the resources with which to deal with the environment, deal with it effectively; in other words, to take the genius which created the problems in the first place and turn it to the solutions of the problems.

This seems to be, of course, a problem that is insoluble because two great forces come into conflict. Actually, like so many things in government, it is one of those problems where reasonable people considering all of the difficulties can find solutions.

I think the Council has in its report approached this problem with, it seems to me, great statesmanship, with some strong recommendations, and we are committed in this field to a program that we think that not just this generation, but more important, the generation that the young people, the interns and the staff, will be living in 25 or 30 years from now-that you will thank us for it because when you are as old as I am, those of you who are in college, around the year 2000 or a little after that, if we don't do the things that this Environmental Council and others who are working on the environment have recognized now about the air, water, and open space here in America, we will have the richest country in the world but a country in which we can't drink the water, where we can't breathe the air, and in which our children, your children, will not be able to have the beautiful open spaces that you usually think of which characterize the American landscape.

So I am glad you have the summer interns here.

Every time that you work on a problem you recognize that while the smog rolls in and suffocates the whole eastern seaboard for a few days, then it goes away, and then we tend again to think, "Well, that was only a temporary phenomenon." When it rolls in as it does on the west coast from time to time, even now in southern California, as I know, and as you know, Doctor, we tend to think that is a temporary phenomenon.

But all of us who have studied this problem know that unless we deal with this, it is not going to be temporary. It is going to be a permanent affliction of all of the industrial societies in the world.

That is why I have such strong convictions that this Council, a council that I don't meet with very often, but a council with very high quality, is engaged in the work of enormous importance to this Nation, and incidentally through the work you do in this Nation that you are engaged in, work that will be an example for other nations, other nations like Japan, the European industrial societies, and the new nations or the newly developing nations in Asia, in Africa and Latin America, which 50 years from now will be confronted with the same problems they decide now they are not going to make the same mistakes.

With that, we thank you for your work.