Technological Trajectories and the Human Environment (1997) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Sustaining the Human Environment: The Next Two Hundred Years
Sustaining the Human Environment: The Next Two Hundred Years
Pages 185-198
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From page 185... ...
With such ponderous response times, today's societal institutions strain to accommodate the pressures arising from diverse forces. The global population has doubled in forty years and may double again in seventy-five more.
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From page 186... ...
Even if the use of dividends and capital could be stabilized, it would imply a zero-sum game of distributing fixed natural resources among people's regional demands for habitability and life-style. A dynamic, turbulent, competitive, and growing world population will likely find such a definition of sustainability too confining.
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From page 187... ...
Finally, the confluence of the exponential trends of population growth and resource depletion could be globally devastating. This qualitative logic leads to the common conclusion that the present generation of decisionmakers should act responsibly through their various governments to mandate the constraints on people's behavior necessary to avoid the pending catastrophes.
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From page 188... ...
If one seeks compatibility with the agenda of most of the world-in which people have primacy the appropriate concept of sustainability emphasizes the efficient use of all natural resources while seeking simultaneously to minimize avoidable degradation. The globally overriding societal concern is the long-term improvement in the quality of life.
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From page 189... ...
It is also the group that most willingly accepts the marginal sacrifices and constraints suggested for mitigation of the undesirable and uncertain outcomes that might develop in the coming centuries, in the belief that the constraints would help. THE NEXT TWO HUNDRED YEARS For decades the debate over the urgency and content of policies intended to save the world from future devastation has been framed primarily by doomsayers with the rhetorical certitudes suggested above.
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From page 190... ...
The quantitative aspects of the water supply have been widely studied and, although complex for specific regions, can be viewed more simply on a global basis. Nature annually contributes in fresh water to the world's continents about ten times the world's water use for all purposes.
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From page 191... ...
Double the present world usage, will this amount suffice when the global population increases threefold? Obviously, in the next two centuries the efficient use of water, its management, and the technology of recycling and desalination must all take part in achieving an adequate water supply.
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From page 192... ...
This growth works out to a rate of 1.4 percent per year, a modest expectation for global economic growth. Threefold population and fivefold per capita energy increases would together multiply global energy demand 15 times.
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From page 193... ...
may be the only source feasible for large-scale expansion because of its relative environmental cleanliness, in spite of the current public fear about its novel safety issues. Of course, in two hundred years we may discover some now-unknown source, or tap "hot rocks" from the Earth's mantle, or focus solar space mirrors on Earth collectors, or invent and build a new energy storage or global superconducting grid that makes solar power more important.
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From page 194... ...
With the prospect of long-term growth in energy demand, such ideological burdens should be removed from responsible long-term strategic perceptions and from the real problems of implementation facing all supply options. Societies inexorably need energy, particularly electricity.
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From page 195... ...
The response to the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in New York exemplifies these problems. The historic motivation for continued urbanization arises from the benefits of juxtaposing important facilities and services, such as large markets, hospitals and health services, theaters, educational institutions, and administrative services.
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From page 196... ...
As numerous subcities develop around adjacent urban centers, they overlap into a regional megalopolis of relatively low population density, as in the northeastern United States. This counterurbanization has been further stimulated by the increasing urban disamenities of social and environmental origin, which detract from the historically high productivity of urban living.
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From page 197... ...
These long-term choices epitomize the philosophical dichotomy between those who believe in the efficacy of government planning by `'command and control" and those who believe that "free markets," with minimal government constraints, will result in optimal economic and technical development. Once a government intervenes to set constraints, presumably in the public interest, the field for free competition is no longer level, if it ever was, and some options will be inequitably treated.
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From page 198... ...
So, I urge minimal governmental interference in the management of global resources and maximum freedom for the development and use of technical options. The real threats to a habitable and sustainable world in the next two centuries arise from the continuing social turmoil associated with the relatively inflexible cultural and ethnic differences among people.
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