Once again, it is back to the future.

The challenges facing public policymakers never seem to change much. They just wax and wane with the times.

Right now, we are revisiting the 1970s. The question is, will politicians and policymakers do a better job of it this time around than they did in the '70s?

In the 1970s, the big policy issue was growth control. With then-Gov. George Ariyoshi pushing the question to its limits, Hawai'i debated how it could control growth, or at least manage it in a way that would take us to — in the phrase of the day — "our preferred future."

To kick-start the discussion, Ariyoshi even made the audacious suggestion that Hawai'i explore ways in which it could limit in-migration to the state. That idea posed some obvious constitutional problems, and it eventually went away.

But it put Hawai'i's name at the front of consciousness, both here and on the Mainland as the growth debate raged.

(It's no small irony that just last week federal Judge David Ezra formally struck down a state law that bars nonresidents from applying for state and county jobs in Hawai'i. Although the Lingle administration says it is philosophically opposed to such residency requirements, it will appeal Ezra's ruling.)

While migration controls didn't fly, the state (and the counties behind it) did engage in a flurry of planning and growth-management actions during the time.

The state produced a master state plan, backed by numerous "functional plans" in areas ranging from education and health to tourism and water management.

Those plans technically remain operative today, although rarely consulted.

Ariyoshi, in fact, argued recently that it is time to revisit the plans, update them and return them to active use.

That makes sense in that we are once again fully engaged in debate over how to control our destiny.

As Advertiser writer Kevin Dayton reported last week, the debate over growth is at a fever pitch, with the operative word today being "sustainability." How can we have a sustainable tourism industry, housing industry, agricultural industry and the like?

The nuance about the sustainability approach is that it does not call for specific limits or controls on growth. It assumes growth will continue, but it seeks a way that growth does not get ahead of itself; that it becomes, in effect, permanently sustainable.

It's an open question whether this approach will be more effective than previous efforts. As Dayton reported, a special legislative "sustainability" task force will conduct studies aimed at identifying how much growth Hawai'i can support.

A key challenge will be to develop growth targets and standards that will control during bad economic times as well as during the boom. Public policy far too often is about curing yesterday's problems rather than anticipating tomorrow's.

Jerry Burris is The Advertiser's editorial page editor.

Reach Jerry Burris at jburris@honoluluadvertiser.com.