What is it in Our Lives That is Really Important
I just finished reading a monumental book, Small Growth; From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil. On the book cover is an endorsement by Bill Gates. Smil is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba.
Smil is a person who scans the horizon and picks out things to study that are of great importance to humankind but are mostly overlooked in politics and by other academics. The book is 600 pages of small print, maybe 100 graphs and 120 pages of footnotes. (I did skim over parts.). I came across it in The New Yorker.
It is reasonable to ask, "What important issue could one study that has not been studied to death in the past?" The topic is the sustainability of humans on planet earth.
Smil does not condemn anyone and the book is not about politics nor about ideology. But, the message ultimately is about these things.
The book starts by discussion Malthus and returns often to him. As you will recall, Malthus said population tends to grow at an increasing rate, geometric, while food production increases only at a constant 'or arithmetic rate. Malthus was more interested in the relationship between increasing or exponential rates constant rates than he was in actual time tables. He also wrote that this relationship might not be destructive to humans if food production increased substantially and population growth was limited.
The world's population when Malthus wrote was under one billion. It is now over seven billion. His observations about the tendency of population growth was quite sound. Author Smil criticizes those more recent authors like Erlichman who put dates the relationships between population and food. Focus should be on relationships as did Malthus.
Smil laments that all focus of societies is on growth, growth of economies, longer life, more food, better standard of living, etc. No one studies or plans for the opposite, decline in all aspects. For nearly all of human history growth has been followed by decline. The book then goes on for hundreds of pages recounting which grew and then declined. Covered is everything from biology to industry to food to economics.
History has shown, he explains, that the growth of all the assets which sustain our standard of living will level off or already have leveled off. Yet, even with a lower world-wide birth rate, population will grow by another billion.
It seems obvious to me every conscientious person in the world should focus on the relationship between our life sustaining assets and our survival instead of religion, abortion, banning gay marriage and silly preoccupation with the sins of other people.
I’m not so sure humankind’s slow dance to extinction can be prevented. We have evolved, it seems, so that an appeal to emotion will always trump appeals to reason. Witness politics and religion. Two subjects we are cautioned not to discuss. Reason might slip into the conversation and overheat the emotion inherent in those topics. Then there is the giddiness and excitement of windfall prosperity for a few as the majority are restrained with a few crumbs. Oh my, it is so contagious, and it gets votes. A chicken in every pot has become one extra order of bioengineered nuggets at a corporate food chute. So deregulate, loose the dogs of capitalism on our public assets until we flame out in a nationwide Superfund Site. Of course it won’t be called that because there is no EPA. The water, what’s that stench? Why that’s the smell of success. It’s breathtaking.
ReplyDeleteArdy B Good comment. Sadly, you are probably right. The human brain seems drawn to emotions, like those of religion, but repelled from the reasoning needed to survive. To think that preventing abortions and birth control is more important than saving humankind is off the rails reasoning. But, it is common.
DeleteThanks Jon. Get a load of this: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/29/politics/joe-biden-denied-communion-south-carolina-catholic-church/index.html
DeleteArdy--I was writing tonight's blog about that while you were posting this.
ReplyDeleteyou people would like David Hume: he said that reason is the slave of the passions. BTW I suppose that you consider yourselves to be rationalists, unmoved by the passions. The rest of us, poor slobs that we are, are irrationalists. I would agree, however, that your man Smil is on to something. How many societies/empires have come and gone in the course of history. Climate change, moral decline, political decline, natural disasters, economic decline, conquest, overreach? Realistically, tho' there isn't much we can do about it: the people that live in future times will deal with whatever issues arise in their world. .
ReplyDeleteUnknown "Realistically there isn't much we can do about it."
ReplyDeleteCertainly one individual can't do much about it. But, we can engage in politics and support those who try to do something--oppose those who try to do nothing. We can make our lives count for something instead of spending it promoting magical notions and miracles.
And "politics" (if you mean protests and legislation, etc.) can't do much about it either. Politicians are notoriously short sited, given to the passions and ideologies of the moment.
DeleteScientists, at least the ones that do the talking in public, often have the same limitations. For example, we have a lot of loose talk about what the world will be like in 2050, nothing but guess work. I would like to be around in 2050 (I won't be) to see how it all turns out. My guess is that a lot of people will look back on our predictions, telling us how stupid we were. And then go on to predict life in the world of 2100. Not that we should not think about the future and prudently go about doing what we can do to make the world a better place for future generations. But prudence entails a certain amount of humility, recognizing that we are very short sighted and easily swayed by the fire of the moment. Always keep in mind the old adage: those who spend too much time gazing into the crystal ball end up eating ground glass.
I would agree with lots of that, as would Smil. We cannot name the year or years when large events will happen. Malthus also knew that. Both advocate, however, the wisdom or recognizing relationships. Population growth is predicted to peak out at nine billion. But, that is just a prediction based on current death and fertility rates. The population could fall or rise in unpredictable ways. Based on current information, the food supply can not keep up with a more rapid rise. Neither can pollution, energy needs and some others. Society is geared for growth and prosperity. If this does not happen how will it react? I've read our military has groups studying and preparing for such unexpected turns of events. We need to support more study and preparation for raising the odds of human survival.
DeleteOf course population could rise or fall in an unpredictable fashion. That said demography is quite reliable when it comes to predicting long term trends. All other things being equal (caeteris paribus). As to "current information" re food supply I haven't heard any such prediction (other than Ehrlich in the 1970s). If growth and prosperity were to "go south" all hell would break loose, probably requiring resort to some sort of totalitarian state. But to predict that is certainly a long shot. There are. of course. ideologues about who are predicting economic collapse (or who are hoping for the end of the industrial world). As to the military, I am sure that they are modeling lots of possible scenarios. World War III, an asteroid hit, climate catastrophe, plagues, etc. It's just what they do.
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