Benilde St Margarets School - Sangraal / Benilden Yearbook (St Louis Park, MN)

Page 13 text:

The most persistant problem facing the world of the future came to global attention during the 1973-1974 school year. For the f'.rst time in man's history he has realized that the world's resources are not unlimited. The overdeveloped nations of the world have blindly squandered energy for the last hundred years so that now the world’s supply of petroleum fuels is forecast to be entirely depleted by the year 2000, as will the supplies of nuclear fission fuels. The short-term effects felt by all have been a reduced supply of gasoline to allow for more home heating oil and reduced public lighting. The long-term effects are predicted to lx; increased unemployment, a decrease in the rate of economic growth, and scarcity of petroleum and petroleum by-products. Conflicting with the goal of getting enough power to meet our needs are the environmentalists who do not want to be overshadowed in the deluge of publicity given by the media. An oil pipeline from Alaska is potentially ecologically destructive. Vast untapped reserves of coal lie in the Midwest and Alaska, but the only practical way of removing it is devastating strip mining. In response to the problem it has been proposed that pollution control laws lx; relaxed to allow factories and power plants to burn less fuel or more polluting fuels. It amounts to this: we will have to change our priorities, from those of a luxurious, pampered nation to ones which allow for an equitable sharing ol our Cod-given natural resources.