| Harold L. Mansfield, Ph.D. | |
| 7366 North County Road 27, Loveland, CO 80538 | |
| Phone: 970.667.3878 | E-mail: mansfield_h@fortlewis.edu |
April 20, 2006
This is a talk about failures, failures by individuals, by groups, by nations and by the human race. Because of this litany of failures, uncounted species are becoming extinct, finite resources are being used up, renewable resources are underutilized or ignored, and the human race, itself, may be heading toward incalculable catastrophes, or possible extinction.
It is a talk about failed predictions and failed movements that might have averted all of the above. The roots of the problems go back to antiquity, but I will begin with a prediction that Thomas Malthus made.
But first, a quote: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." (Attributed to Yogi Berra)
Oversimplified, Malthus predicted that humanity was headed toward catastrophe because the human race was procreating at a geometric rate while its food supply was being increased at an arithmetic rate. And, Malthus felt, once the number of human 'mouths' exceeded the available food supplies, mass starvation would ensue.
His prediction created a storm of controversy when it became general knowledge in 1798. Some came to his defense; some reviled him as being a latter day Cassandra. As is generally the case and unfortunately, in many ways, most of the human race was either unaware of his prediction or paid little or no attention to it. And, up to today, his prediction has failed to come to pass.
It is true that millions have died of starvation and malnutrition since the time of Malthus. However, careful analysis will reveal that many of those deaths were and still are due to economic, political and distribution factors, rather than food shortages, per se. That is particularly true in so-called modern times. Mass starvation in China several decades ago and in the Third World today are cases in point. Most starvation goes on in spite of more-than-adequate worldwide food stocks.
My thesis of failure goes far beyond the Malthusian notion of the relationship between population growth and food supply increases. Rather, it encompasses the entire panoply of human existence: environmental concerns in both the broadest and narrowest senses; politics; economics; energy and other aspects
First, let's look at why the Malthusian prediction of disaster failed in its most fundamental sense. It is fair to say that the growth in the numbers of humans has, in fact, kept increasing geometrically since the time of his prediction. In recent decades the rate has slowed, somewhat. What changed was agricultural production. While it has not been steady, there have been times when agricultural production has experienced dramatic increases in its growth rate.
The 'industrialization and mechanization' of agriculture are cases in point. From the invention of the steel plow board and tractors to the application of science to hybrid crops and to the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, agriculture has undergone one 'revolution' after another in the past 208 years (using the publication of Malthus's failed prediction as an historical base line.)
In addition, vast 'wastelands' - I used that term sarcastically - have come 'under the plow.' Dramatic examples of this are the Great North American 'desert' - the Canadian and United States' grainbelts - as well as California and vast areas in China, just to mention some of the dozens, if not hundreds, of major examples.
In some cases, the growth rates of basic agricultural crops have exceeded that of the human populations! The only constant is change, as I am wont to say. Malthus was a pre-industrial revolution prognosticator. He could not have envisioned any of the vital agricultural changes. Hence, his prediction failed, so far!
Here are some other notable quotes, attributed according to information on the internet.
"I laughed till . . . my sides were sore." Adam Sedgwick, British geologist in a letter to Darwin regarding Darwin's theory of evolution, 1857.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology, France, 1872.
"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever." Thomas Edison, 1889.
"Heavier than air machines are impossible." Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society in England, is said to have made that statement in 1895.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." Charles H. Duell, Commissioner in the United States Patent Office, made that statement in 1899 and is said to have recommended that the patent office be abolished.
"Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value." Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre (probably before World War I).
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" This is attributed to Harry M. Warner of Warner Brothers in 1927.
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." This quote is said to have come from Irving Fisher a Professor of Economics at Yale University in 1929 (one assumes before the October crash)
"The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine." Ernst Rutherford, 1933.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, IBM, 1943.
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 15 tons." Popular Mechanics, 1949.
"Space travel is bunk." Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of Britain, 1957, two weeks before the USSR's launch of Sputnik.
"But what is it good for?" Engineer Robert Lloyd, IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." Ken Olson, Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977.
"640K of computer memory ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates, Microsoft, 1981.
"How could this be a problem in a country where we have Intel and Microsoft?" Al Gore commenting on the Y2K concern (presumably before 2000).
I have not put those quotes in here merely for comic relief, but rather to show how very wrong some the best minds in history have been in their efforts to predict the future. Malthus has a great, long list of failures to keep him and his prediction company. (Nostradamus and Jeane Dixon notwithstanding, I say with sarcasm.)
Modern examples are Paul Ehrlich with his "Population Bomb" and Donella Meadows and the other Club of Rome members with their predictions about resource exhaustion in their "Limits to Growth" treatise based on early computer modeling
Now for some more recent predictions, and the not-so-funny consequences of failures to both predict the future and to prepare for it.
In the 1960s, I became convinced that the world was headed toward serious cultural collapse! So, in 1972, I bought some land near Durango, Colorado with the idea of setting up a sustainable 'homestead.' My plan was to build a solar home, to establish a large garden and orchard and to 'harvest' game animals.
Fortunately, in 1974, when I was ready to move to my sanctum sanctorum, Fort Lewis College needed a person in the psychology department. I took the job with the realization that having some income would augment the development of my self-sustaining plans.
What a disaster it would have been! First of all, society did not collapse. Secondly, my wife developed medical problems that ran up enormous medical bills over a period of years preceding her death, bills that would have spelled economic disaster if they had not been covered by the college's excellent, comprehensive medical insurance programs.
How very wrong I was to think that I could live successfully 'outside of and independent from' the social milieu.
I became interested in solar energy in the 1960s. So, when I moved to Durango, I began the process of organizing a local solar energy group. For a time, this group was a great success. We held regular meetings. Up to 137 people attended the meetings, averaging over 80 for a couple of years. I edited a newsletter for two years; we had several hundred subscribers in several states.
Our solar home was featured in books that sold internationally and our home was the focus of several local and regional newspaper articles. Over seven hundred people toured the home in the first couple of years.
The Durango solar group became one of the largest and most active local solar groups in the world. Dozens and dozens of other solar homes were built and many other people put solar additions or energy conservation applications on their existing homes.
I believed that we were moving into a 'golden solar age.' I took a leave of absence from the college and served for a year as Deputy Director of the American Section of the International Solar Energy Society. The American Section was, by far, the largest solar energy group in the world.
President Carter was pushing for a national alternative energy program, including conservation and solar provisions. He even had a solar system installed on the While House.
Then, Ronald Reagan became President. He had the White House solar system dismantled. He abolished most of the alternate energy initiatives and effectively 'destroyed' the budding solar movement along with energy conservation and other alternate energy options, in part by ending tax incentives.
How stupidly naïve I was! What a poor predictor of the future. What a failure to appreciate the power and pervasiveness of the established energy companies and their minions among lobbyists, the Congress and the bureaucracies.
Fortunately, I was only on leave from the college. I went back and became a professor once again, turning to computers for my hobby. Even our local solar group languished and finally 'disappeared.'
In the late 1970s, I became aware of the work of Albert A. Bartlett, Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado. We became friends have remained so. Here is his thesis in his own words: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is man's inability to understand the exponential function."
That is a profound statement. Simple, but true. It takes us back to Malthus in that Malthus based his prediction on his belief that the human population increased geometrically, that is, exponentially, whilst the food supply increased arithmetically.
Professor Bartlett expands the argument to all aspects of growth. Using the mathematics of exponential growth, he provides clear evidence that the human population cannot continue to increase. Nor can our use of fossil fuels, or land, or water, or any finite resource.
Professor Bartlett has given his talk on the exponential function over 1,500 times. Versions have been published in various journals. He has a DVD that was prepared by the University of Colorado. A book of his salient articles is available at the University of Nebraska.
His calculations make it patently clear that the human population will, eventually, level off or decline. We will become a world that relies on renewable resources. It is not a matter of whether; it is a question of when. If we don't, disasters will ensue. The optimal time to do so may already be 'past.'
Lester R. Brown and his many cohorts and collaborators at The World Watch Institute and, more recently, at the Earth Policy Institute have written extensively about the problems that population growth and its consequences entail for Mother Earth.
Two books of direct importance to this presentation are "Beyond Malthus" and "Plan B." In the former, Brown and his co-authors, Gary Gardner and Brian Halweil, discuss nineteen dimensions of the population challenge.
These nineteen topics range from grain production and fresh water availability through energy choices and biodiversity, in terms of the physical world, to urbanization, education and conflict, in terms of the social world. Their message is clear and it is substantiated by extensive data: The human population in terms of numbers and in terms of resource uses is exceeding the carrying capacity of our Earth!
We can dramatically alter our relationship to the Earth and to our use of its resources or the gravest sorts of cultural, social, political, economic and environmental disasters will follow!
"Plan B" is Brown's answer to the impending disasters. In this book, he recounts the problems and consequences of continuing down the present path; then, he offers alternatives designed to avert the impending disasters
There is a fundamental flaw in Brown's Plan B: namely; it 'flies in the face' of everything we know about human history. In order to put Plan B into effect, nothing short of dramatic cultural revolutions would have to occur. Every major cultural power base would be 'threatened.'
Religions would have to accept and champion Draconian birth control measures. Governments would have to reorganize their laws, policies, procedures and bureaucracies. Corporations would have undergo dramatic changes. People would have to set aside their life-styles, their cherished beliefs and their own 'self-interests' (over the short term).
Let's look at a dramatic example of why Brown's Plan B won't work. Ethanol is another giant government/energy industry/agribusiness scam. Here's why:
It takes energy to extract the carbon fossil fuel from the ground. It takes energy to transport the raw extracted material to the processing facilities. It takes energy to processes them into usable forms such as gasoline, fertilizer and pesticides. Refineries, for example, use huge amounts of energy. It takes energy to deliver the final products to storage, jobber and distribution points.
It takes energy to plant, grow and harvest the biofuel crops. Corn and soybeans are particularly energy intensive crops (but not the only ones). It takes energy to build and to run biofuel processing facilities. It takes energy to process the biofuel crops into the ethanol. It takes energy to store and to distribute the ethanol.
Credible scientific studies show that, if all of the energy costs and other costs are fully and completely accounted for, ethanol is a net energy loser by up to 29 percent!
Now, how in the name of common sense could something that uses energy at every one of the stages mentioned above, be energy efficient? The short, clear, common-sense, honest answer is that it cannot! Is not! Probably never will be!
Why are the energy industries, the government, the agribusiness industries, the farmers and an ill-informed public touting this form of energy?
Simple. The extractive industries already operate with huge - often hidden - government subsidies. The entire ethanol industry will be additionally subsidized. Already, the government is subsidizing the planning and construction of up to 100 biofuel processing facilities!
In addition, the programs to purchase biofuel crops from the agri-industry and farmers is popular with those farmers. Why not? It's an all-win and no-loss situation for the agribusiness and giants and the individual farmers: To wit, another form of farm subsidies!
Energy companies feed the campaign coffers of the elected officials and 'wine and dine' key government bureaucrats. Farmers vote in greater percentages than many other constituencies.
Is it any wonder?
If you go to Google and type in 'ethanol as an energy scam,' you will get 550,000 files. Several listings on the first two pages are directly relevant to what I have written, but not all.
Several that I looked at are exactly on the mark. They support what I have written above. Still, I need to seek out and find more 'weighty' articles in professional journals.
Perhaps it is time that all citizens began thinking in terms of what is best for generations to come (to at least the seventh generation, as some have advocated) rather than to the present.
Please recognize that I wrote the above BEFORE I consulted the Google sites. I wrote from what I think is a 'common-sense' perspective.
'Be not the first the new to try, nor yet the last to set the old aside' could no longer be closely adhered to.
Some other issues relevant to and standing in the way of radical changes are discussed by my long- time friend, Professor David Kidner. Dr. Kidner approaches the problems in terms of radical environmentalism and the politics of subjectivity.
For him, our dilemmas, at least in part, stem from our psychological betrayal of the natural world. Only a reintegration between the human psyche and nature will 'lead' us back to relationships in which both nature and the human race can be 'healed.'
In short, we are back to "who will bell the cat?" Who will take the lead, convince the masses, duel with and defeat the powers that are presently in control? Advocate the necessary changes and see to it that are 'put in place.'
For example, I believe as deeply as I believe anything that one of the greatest threats to freedom in the world is corporations and their power in the political and economic arenas and their focus on 'quarterly report' results.
The political 'powers that be' are mostly interested in staying office and in pleasing those who give them the most money or who otherwise wield the most political clout.
The answer? Far be it for me to join the multitude of failed predictors and their predictions! I am a short-term pessimist but a long-term optimist.
My contention is that a new species will be needed: homo responsibilus must replace homo sap! Only then will the monumental problems be dealt with to anything approaching an effective degree. But I am not predicting that that will happen.
Which brings me to my final comment:
"The future ain't what it used to be." in the words of Pogo by Walt Kelly.
Bartlett, Albert A. "Arithmetic, Population and Energy." DVD, Department of Physics, University of Colorado. Available from the CU bookstore.
Bartlett, Albert A. "Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis." American Journal of Physics, 46(9), September, 1978.
Bartlett, Albert A. et. al. "The Essential Exponential: For the Future of Our Planet." University of Nebraska. Available from The Center for Science, Mathematics and Computer Education at the University.
Brown, Lester R. "Plan B." W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2003.
Brown, Lester R., Gardner, Gary, Halweil, Brian. "Beyond Malthus." W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1999.
Ehrlich, Paul. "The Population Bomb." Ballantine Books, New York, 1971.
Kidner, David W. "Nature and Psyche." State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 2001.
Malthus, Thomas, Robert. "An Essay on the Principles of Population." 1798.
Mansfield, Hal: There are samples of my writings ranging from population growth through energy conservation to solar energy utilization on my web site: http://halmansfield.com
Meadows, Donella, et. al. "Limits to Growth." (For the Club of Rome.) Signet Books, New York, 1972.
Townhall.com :: Columns :: ethanol
Bloomberg.com: Bloomberg Columnists
Ethanol is the largest Scam . . . etc
Taxpayers for Common Sense Energy Campaign
Errors of Enhancement: The Ethanol Fraud
xymphora: The corn ethanol scam
Ethanol Mandates & Subsidies
Energy Bill Raises Fears About Pollution, Fraud . . .