all. As long as that issue remains, Crutchfield says, the United States should take care not to jeopardize trade relations with other nations in order to gain access to nodules whose exact value has yet to be determined.
Moreover, the United States should not move too fast to tap its offshore oil and gas reserves. Crutchfield asks: Why not leave such reserves intact until foreign oil becomes prohibitively expensive? Con- trary incentives, however, are built into the U.S. Interior Department's present...