Weighing
The Benefits And
The Deficits Of Advancements
By Emily Spence
28 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org
During a hot breezy day one summer,
my great-grandfather sat on a shady hill alongside of a river that runs
through Syracuse, NY. Happy to enjoy such a beautiful moment, he watched
young children plunge into the cool refreshing waters and, then, come
out to dry themselves in the sunlight and wind. Thus, the idea of the
electric hand dryer was conceived.
He developed the first generation prototype and sold the patent for
~ $100 K., a tremendous sum around the turn of the century, so that
it could go into production for the good of humankind by removing the
need for the same dirty hand-towels being repeatedly employed by different
people. In addition, he was happy as he could now afford, due to his
lavish fiscal gain, to take Apama, his daughter crippled from Polio,
to visit top specialists in many faraway locations.
Suffice it to say that I sometimes look at dryers in public restrooms
and wonder whether it is better to use electricity (most of which derives
from fossil and nuclear fuels) to dry one's hands or paper towels (that
destroy trees). It is like asking whether one wants paper or plastic
bags at the grocery store, as we know that both harm the environment.
However, there's more to the "story" than just sanitation
concerning the hand dryer's benefits. This is because, from its underlying
principles, design and purpose - air recycling methods in grain silos
(to cut down on moisture and mold so as to greatly increase yield),
parts of refrigeration and air conditioning, along with other advancements,
were conceived and became incorporated in manufacturing protocols for
a wide variety of products.
Especially the silo improvement seems a considerable gain. This is because
the new aeration techniques ensured that huge amounts of excess grain
from high crop seasons could be stored for many years. Thus, events
like the great Irish potato famine of 1845 would no longer wind up killing
huge swaths of people. At the same time, cutting down on the spread
of microbes trapped in hand towels would yield the same results. Likewise,
refrigeration would facilitate safe food supplies and air conditioning
would prevent heat stroke, along with other afflictions.
The long and short of it is that, while these types of fairly recent
innovations (like the ones provided by progress in drug fabrication
and medical procedures) would aid many people, they also would allow
more to survive (and, subsequently, reproduce) than in previous centuries.
Meanwhile, the huge population keeps growing... and keeps using more
and more resources (electricity for air conditioners, manufactured goods,
fuel for transportation of people and commodities, etc).
Yet, at a certain point, the whole process in its current configuration
will, certainly, collapse as there is not an infinite supply of oil,
coal, electricity and goods to serve ever expanding needs, including
the ones related to the billions of people climbing out of poverty (currently
living in shacks) so as to purchase their first cottages with wall outlets,
cars and so on. At the same time, they will want all the trappings (a
myriad assortment of products) that go along with their new economic
improvements. Further, they will want families in any size that they
choose (like the one billion + Chinese, who are, currently, in a heavy
revolt against the one child per family policy).
In this sense, researchers, who warn that we are behaving like bacteria
in a petri dish, do pose a somewhat accurate analogy in terms of its
applicability to humanity [1]. Moreover, we DO know the manner in which
those dish experiments end.
Indeed, it's not as if we haven't been forewarned for some time (i.e.,
by Thomas Malthus in 1798, Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, Jared Diamond, Richard
Dawkins and many others) about the consequences of our species being
motivated to always have more (more personal belongings, more population,
more yield from each farm plot, more spacious homes, more cars per household,
more travel, more shopping outlets, more fiscal gain for one's own individual
family, and so on). As such, we're, collectively, winding up with some
of the horrific predicaments described in a wide variety of environmental
reports [2].
Of course, one tragedy in this overall situation is that humankind is
poised to obliterate a large number of other species in the wake of
our desire to have ever more. (If they are not killed by being turned
into commodities, they will be destroyed collaterally, such as by the
effects of global warming [3].) Another, perhaps worse one, is that
we could have avoided most of the looming starvation, suffering, panic,
spread of pandemic diseases, lack of water in some regions, fires, floods
and misery had we, previously, adjusted our population and consumption
patterns on a willing basis rather than, as always, let "nature
take its course." Yet, it always has, in the final reckoning, done
so, hasn't it?
So, in the end, our unwillingness to, deliberately, cut back on our
trend to employ everything for which we can find some use and the booming
population explosion will, likely, have dire consequences. Consequently,
the limits in our overall resource expenditure and population can be
expected to be achieved by devastating measures -- ones not of our deliberate
choosing.
All this in consideration, one of the saddest accounts that I've read
concerned a Kurd stealing a loaf of bread that was being dropped from
an aircraft flown overhead by US troops during the Gulf War. He took
it from the hands of an elderly Kurd woman, who he overpowered by force.
She had caught it first and meant to feed her husband and herself with
it. The grabber took it because he had eleven children and a wife. (Can
one imagine being faced with this parent's dilemma?)
Subsequently, the old woman, her mate and a number of the thief's children
died from lack of nourishment... So, is this the world that we are increasingly
bringing into being? Will people have to guard their food and other
provisions from robbery by desperately needy others? Will many people,
ultimately, wind up like the crowd in Donner's Pass [4]? (In the meantime,
global food production IS dramatically diminishing due to changes in
weather related to global warming, subversion of crops to biofuel, the
advancement of more virulent pests and other impingements.)
At the same time, the humane and workable models proposed by Amilcar
Herrera [5] and others with regard to equitable distribution of absolute
necessities -- such as health care, food supplies and other resources
so that all presently existing humans can survive AND thrive well --
would constitute sound economic patterns to implement except for one
factor. This is that uplifts in human welfare, like the benefits derived
from the hand dryer, ultimately lead to a more rapid population surge.
Consequently, it seems that our assisting ever more people to achieve
adequate sanitation, adequate nourishment, clean water supplies, access
to medical intervention and goods, while wonderful AND NECESSARY in
themselves, creates the means for more people to breed in ever greater
numbers.
This in mind, what a deeply grim shame that we seem bent on more thoroughly
destroying the planet and each other, and just can't seem to stop without
the natural world handling the affair in its typically horrid and brutal
fashion. (I hope that I am wrong on this point, but it almost seems
as if the earth is a lifeboat floating in a sea of space and a whole
bunch of humans are simply going to have to be abruptly thrown overboard
by "Mother Nature," as there just isn't going to be room in
the future for us all.)
This in consideration, when will people, finally, learn that we, imperatively,
MUST change and why does it always take monumental calamities before
we, finally, decide to do so? As such, I grieve for our children, our
children's children and all of the multitudinous species that are lined
up, one after another, to irrevocably disappear.
Meanwhile, I realize that the key to any successful modifications in
advance of major catastrophe entails widely educating people beyond
the provision of worldwide, Earth support concerts. It means reaching
out, with more depth, to many more individuals so that they get unglued
from focusing on TV sitcoms, the latest fashions that can be acquired
at the mall and other gratuitous fatuous pastimes.
As an acquaintance recently wrote, "The Earth [is] spinning inexorably
without caring who inhabits her. We need a new species of individuals,
without religion, hatred or borders if this is possible. In the meantime,
enjoy yourself. It's later than you think."
[1] Please refer to: Human Nature, Technology & the Environment(http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/
S2003/Slong3/overpupulationindustrialrevolution.htm).
[2] One balanced and compelling overview, particularly in the section
relative to David Pimentel's and Mario Giampietro's conclusions, is
located at: Overpopulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation).
[3] An overview is supplied at: The Sixth Extinction by Niles Eldredge,
Ph.D. (http://www.actionbioscience.org/
newfrontiers/eldredge2.html).
[4] For a summary of the related events, please see: Donner Party -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Donner Party - Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia].
[5] To access Dr Herrera's research findings, please see "Catastrophe
or New Society" at: Clyde Sanger -from Tomorrow-Tamer, by of (http://idrinfo.idrc.ca/Archive/
ReportsINTRA/pdfs/v5n2e/109418.pdf).
Emily Spence lives in MA and deeply cares about the future of the world.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.