Address to Conference Delegates

Abstract

In extending the good wishes of the Federal government to all the delegates I am aware that you, as scientists, have been concentrating your attention on the scientific aspects of acid precipitation. You want to identify and characterize the various sources of atmospheric pollution; you wish to know what components give rise to acid precipitation, how they change with time, and under what conditions they are leached out of the air; you are interested in how they react with plants and farmland, and what the ultimate consequences are for living things. Even more important, you want to know what are the gaps in our knowledge and how we can fill them. However, as a politician, I am more concerned with what can be done about the problem, about what practical arrangements are most effective, and how scientific considerations can best be integrated into decision-making.