ANTICIPATORY POLICY AND MARINE RESOURCES.

This paper draws on three cases from ocean policy to explore the notion of anticipatory policy, or policy which is premised on warnings about future threats and opportunities and seeks to control or diminish their impact through positive government action. The three cases -- deep water ports, ocean thermal energy, and deep seabed mining -- suggest that even the best intentioned efforts can run aground when jolted by external forces over which there is little or no control. Ocean policy in the U.S. is one small part of that broader family of resource and environmental policy issues that played such a prominent role in the politics of the 1970's.