A report to the President and the Congress - Third Annual Report

This year, NACOA worked with the consciousness that our society may well be on the threshold of a major discontinuity in human history. From a world in which natural resources such as food, energy, fresh water, minerals, protein from the oceans, and the regenerative capacity of forests and plains seemed to exceed effective demands, we appear to be moving toward a state of affairs in which consumption and utilization of vital resources, such as energy and food, are generating new stresses and strains at home and abroad. To contain the resultant instabilities, we must respond to unprecedents demands on our capabilities to manage national resources. These demands, in turn, aggregate into new imperatives to understand the behavior of the oceans and the atmosphere and the linkages which connect them, and to relate them, through climate, to the productivity of our agricultural enterprise, and to the capacity to absorb waste heat and materials from our industrial enterprise. NACOA is pursuaded that if we, as a nation, are to cope successfully with the needs for energy, food, and materials that will confront us with ever-increasing insistence and urgency over the balance of this century, we must deepen our understanding of the combined influences of ocean and atmosphere on climate, we must strengthen the mechanism by which we convert technological dexterity into effective utilization of the mineral and protein resources of the oceans, and we must marshal and husband the resources of our governmental agencies to do this. The diversity and combined strengths of our governmental agencies, and their ability to complement each other, are so great we do not believe major new investment is required. Some increased funding will be needed in certain areas; reorientation of effort should suffice in others. While we are not in a position to recommend precise action on program details, we are in a position, and in fact have the responsibility, to recommend how our sights should be set.