“People can’t worry about the air their grandchildren will breathe when they are worried about the food their child will eat today.”
– William Ruckleshaus

“In some businessmen’s minds it’s acceptable to sacrifice the environment of the future for the profits of today.”
 – David Rockefeller

People the world over worry about economic need outweighing environmental conservation
By Reed Glenn
Camera Staff Writer

   David Rockefeller Addresses the Conference – We seem to be experiencing the first cosmic vibrations of the Harmonic Convergence – if the Fourth World Wilderness Congress held here last weekend is any indication.
   “We are having a great convergence today – not a Harmonic Convergence – but a global convergence,” said convener Maurice Strong, the Canadian president of American Water Development Co., Inc.
   The congress – which concludes in Estes Park Friday – marked the unprecedented philosophic convergence of two traditionally warring factions: environmentalists and developers.
   “I’d like to introduce two of America’s most distinguished leaders, who to some are ‘Mr. Environment’ and ‘Mr. Development.’ ” said Sunday’s moderator James Speth, president of the World Resource Institute. “Mr. Environment.” William Ruckleshaus, and “Mr. Development,” David Rockefeller, addressed the private sector’s role and responsibilities in financing conservation and sustainable development.
   Attorney Ruckleshaus was the first U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator. (Some might debate his quoted title because of his affiliations with various corporations.) Rockefeller is a world financial leader, philanthropist and retired Chase Manhattan Bank chairman.
   Both agreed that protecting the environment is everyone’s business, and that “the survival of our planet depends on profound changes in the way we do business,” Ruckleshaus said – noting that “the way we do the wilderness depend upon solving underlying global problems – poverty being the foremost. “Tomorrow is swallowed up in the mouth of today. People can’t worry about the air their grandchildren will breathe when they are worried about the food their child will eat today,”
   David Rockefeller addresses the “damages that can result when we fail to realize a reasonable compromise between economic and environmental concerns.” Two extreme positions threaten the future, he said – “those who pollute helter-skelter” and “those who place all environmental concerns before the well-being of the people on the planet.”
   “In some businessmen’s minds it’s acceptable to sacrifice the environment of the future for the profits of today. The blind pursuit of profits has enacted its own form of tyranny on the rest of humankind.” Rockefeller added that it was not fair, however, to place all the blame on business.
   “The desperation of the poor places as much stress on the environment as industrial growth. Seventy percent of the world depends on wood to heat and cook,” he said. Overgrazing in places like the Sahel region in Africa lead to desertification, but it’s the only way some farmers can stave off starvation.