THE SUSTAINABILITY OF MATERIAL PROGRES John McCarthy Computer Science Department Stanford University jmc@cs.stanford.edu http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/ 2006 May 25 • I’m not intentionally contrarian. • Can human material progress continue for the indefin future? Some questions remain, but the evidence stron supports yes. Maybe a few billion years. • Does the high standard of living of the advanced co tries prevent the backward countries from advancin The answer is no. 1
• What possible obstacles exist to long term progre Only big wars—not likely at present. • Whose responsibility is the advance of the backw countries? Only they can do it.
WHAT IS PROGRESS? • Societies that people choose to migrate to. • Increased access to material goods. • Increased life span, reduced childhood death, and bet health • Women’s control of their fertility. • Increased opportunities for education. See ad for tr tor, Successful Farming , 1920. • More individual choice of occupation, lifestyle and a cations. 2
• More opportunity to enjoy both culture and nature. • Cleaner environment. • Increased consideration for the values in nature, e.g. the preservation of biological diversity. • Increased concern for less advanced people and th cultures. • An increase in the minimum standard of living. • More and more new goods and services available to m and more people. Available novelty is a good. Comp sory novelty is often a nuisance or worse.
NATURE DOESN’T LOVE US • It isn’t a law of nature that humanity will prosper. T it can depends on many facts. Each of many poss problems must be discussed. I’ll treat the most imp tant in this lecture and treat more in the web pa www.formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/. In 1865 William Stanley Jevons had good reasons to wo that England would lose its prosperity from running of coal. Only since nuclear energy was developed ha been possible to be confident that humanity won’t out of something essential. 3
• Does the continued progress of the advanced co tries depend on the continued poverty of the backw countries? No! All natural resources and technology available to them. • Fortunately, there’s no world government. The co tries making bad decisions will eventually copy those do better. • The greatest rate of progress in the daily lives of the vanced countries was around the end of the 19th centur safe water, telephones, automobiles, electric lighting, h refrigeration. • We will need some very large projects. Large proje are temporarily out of fashion. Experiment with defle ing asteroids? Prevent the next ice age. Deal with p longed regional droughts.
• Very long term problems are best left to our descenda who will be more capable than we are. They’ll have prevent the next ice age and prevent or compensate the major droughts and other climate changes like th paleoclimate studies tell us more and more about. • Some rate “moral progress” above material progre However, ideas of moral progress take hold only wh there has been material progress. Thus the anti-slav movement arose in the richest country first. Nature-fi movements exist only in prosperous societies.
ENERGY • There’s plenty of nuclear energy. What’s plenty? A billion population at several times present American capita energy use—for several billion years. • Breeder reactors are needed for the medium term. will have to face the risk of diversion of plutonium a do our best. • Liquid hydrogen will work for vehicles without loss range or performance. BMW deserves our gratitude demonstrating it. • In the year 2100, will there still be cars—even SUV Yes, if people want them. 4
• Solar will also work, though it’s much more expens than nuclear, because of the storage problem. • Nuclear will almost surely be used when natural runs seriously short. Countries that lag will learn fr the prompt.
FOOD • Advanced countries have persistent agricultural s pluses. • In How much land can ten billion spare for nature? , P Waggoner argues that 10 billion people can be fed and s give up considerable existing land using only technolo now in use. [I copied it on my web site.] • The green revolution saved the backward countries fr famines. The world is still increasing in food per cap and reducing the number of malnourished. 1600 million (1970) → 800 million (1996) → 400 mill (2010?). The problem is bad government. 5
• Genetically modified organisms will give another boost. Europe will get over its fit of panic, paran and protectionism • Loss of topsoil is an immediate problem in a few pla and a long term problem of unknown magnitude in m places. Very likely our descendants will have to figure how to make more.
WATER • Water supply is a localized problem because of the qu tity required. It is also a time-dependent problem. Th was a 200 year drought in California. • California used 43 million acre-feet in 1995 for 35 mill people. • If we spent per capita what L.A. spent in 1904 on Ow Valley water, California would spend $8 billion. • California could even afford to desalinate seawater. $800 per acre-foot that would come to about $32 bill per year to supply all our water. • Consider the Oglalalla aquifer. 16 million acre-feet year are being mined. It will run out. What then? 6
THE CO2 PROBLEM • The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere may be harm It isn’t clear yet. • Nuclear energy is the most obvious way of avoid CO2. • It seems that the earth’s heat balance can be sig icantly controlled by small quantities of aerosols in upper atmosphere. • We could persuade the people clearing Amazon jun not to burn the wood. 7
• We could chop down Canadian and Siberian forest, the wood in swamps, and replant with fast-growing tre Repeat as necessary. • But probably we’d better wait and see how much war ing there is and whether it’s good or bad.
POPULATION • Population is a problem for each country separately. • The world lucked out on population increase, but people of the advanced countries are having too few c dren. • The UN projects a world population peak of about billion, to be reached in the middle of this century. • Voluntary use of birth control technology seems to winning out—even in the backward countries. • At what population would the U.S., California, or L cease to attract immigrants? 8
NATURAL RESOURCES • Oil and natural gas will run out. When? • We will have to go to low grade mineral ores. T technologies haven’t been developed—for lack of nec sity. Would people be reassured by development of te nology for low grade ores—50 years before any need? • The US and Europe are ok for wood products, mos in managed forests. Backward countries can’t suppor decent standard of living on fuel wood. 9
MENACES • Asteroid • Climate change • A stop in the Gulf Stream • A super disease • Super terrorism? • Nuclear war—the worst menace but much less lik now that the Soviet Union has collapsed. 10
WHAT ABOUT THE BACKWARD COUNTRIES? • The technology that made the West prosperous is av able worldwide. • Success in advancing has been mixed. • Their success is fundamentally their own problem. • Blame-the-West ideology has been harmful, especi in providing excuses for their own politicians. • Religions have often been harmful. 11
OTHER PROBLEMS—discussed on web site • waste disposal • pollution • biodiversity, • disasters • wars. Outside the scope of this lecture. 12
DOES IT MATTER WHETHER WE BELIEVE PROGRESS IS SUSTAINABLE? • Yes, because important policies depend on it. • If progress were not sustainable, we’d be making thi last as long as possible, and there would be real compet for the remaining scraps of resources. • As it is, the poor countries can follow the paths p neered by the rich. • The current energy religion is a mistake. Conserv energy pays when it saves money. 13
REFERENCES • Details on all these questions are in www.formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ and its subsid pages. • Bjorn Lomborg’s recent The Skeptical Environmenta makes most of the same points, but he doesn’t ment nuclear energy. He has taken tremendous flak from pessimists in the scientific community. • The State of Humanity , edited by Julian Simon ma many of the same points. He seems to have believed t population could not be a problem. I think it could but it isn’t except in a few countries. 14
ADVICE • Develop prosperity, science and technology. • Help backward countries get more technology. • Help them get birth control technology; but maybe t already have it. • I’m an extreme optimist.What’s that? 15
• An extreme optimist is one who believes the world probably survive even if it doesn’t take his advice.
SUPERSTITIONS AND PREJUDICES • The intellectual world today is rife with superstitio Some are prevalent among scientists. • Many believe organic food is healthier, but its ad cates resist the idea of testing the proposition scient cally. The bans on GMOs and radiation sterilization w added to the official organic specifications purely a trarily, because the organic enthusiasts have additio prejudices. • The anti-nuke movement is a superstition. • The anti-GM food movement is a superstition. • However, the superstitions common in advanced co tries haven’t recently led to large scale violence. 16
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