WEBVTT 00:00:07.202 --> 00:00:18.710 - Nancy, are you on the phone? Hi. The University of California, Santa Barbara. At the beginning of this 00:00:18.710 --> 00:00:30.442 - evening, before everybody came, programs were put on all the seats, which tell you that Professor Harden 00:00:30.442 --> 00:00:35.582 - will be speaking in the Patent Lecture Series 00:00:36.834 --> 00:00:44.456 - The next six Wednesdays, same time, same place every Wednesday, Wittenberger Auditorium at 00:00:44.456 --> 00:00:52.832 - 4 PM. Unfortunately, Wittenberger Auditorium at 4 PM was not good in the program. But it's the same 00:00:52.832 --> 00:01:01.460 - every week. And this does give the subjects of these lectures an introduction to Professor Harden. And 00:01:01.460 --> 00:01:04.894 - I would urge all of you to attend those. 00:01:05.186 --> 00:01:11.648 - If at all possible, they are a very noteworthy event happening on campus this semester. Let me give 00:01:11.648 --> 00:01:18.369 - you a brief introduction to Professor Harden. He was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in the Midwest, 00:01:18.369 --> 00:01:24.896 - receiving his undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Chicago in 1936. Until 1946, he 00:01:24.896 --> 00:01:31.617 - did laboratory work on the culture of algae, the production of alcohol antibiotics, and the cultivation 00:01:31.617 --> 00:01:34.654 - of algae as a source of food for hungry world. 00:01:35.234 --> 00:01:40.410 - But he began to see that the objective of feeding humanity by the production of more food was being 00:01:40.410 --> 00:01:45.741 - defeated by the unlimited increase of human population. He came to believe that the production of more 00:01:45.741 --> 00:01:51.280 - and more food aggravated, rather than diminish, the multi-dimensional problems of the population explosion 00:01:51.280 --> 00:01:56.922 - and, ultimately, hunger. During the 1960s, he was one of the more influential spokesmen for the legalization 00:01:56.922 --> 00:02:02.046 - of abortion. His lectures and writings on the moral need to free women from compulsory pregnancies 00:02:02.370 --> 00:02:08.308 - contributed to the change in public attitude that was reflected in the decision of the United States 00:02:08.308 --> 00:02:14.539 - Supreme Court in January, 1973, which struck down rigid anti-abortion laws in the states. His most famous 00:02:14.539 --> 00:02:20.418 - essay is The Tragedy of the Commons, in which he makes a powerful argument that the human race must 00:02:20.418 --> 00:02:26.591 - forfeit some of its traditional freedoms in order to control population and pollution. When he was named 00:02:26.591 --> 00:02:31.294 - faculty research lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 66, 00:02:31.810 --> 00:02:38.695 - Professor Harden was cited for reinforcing what he has called the humanistic bearings of biology, the 00:02:38.695 --> 00:02:45.647 - active experimental understanding that one's choice of the subject matter or a method of investigation 00:02:45.647 --> 00:02:52.396 - or indeed of a hypothesis is rarely without its moral implications and that these implications need 00:02:52.396 --> 00:02:59.686 - to be faced no matter how difficult the ethical choices may appear to be. On top of that, he's a delightful 00:02:59.686 --> 00:03:00.766 - man with a very 00:03:01.538 --> 00:03:20.777 - Thank you very much, Dennis. Are you hearing all right in the back? If you aren't, wave your hands. 00:03:20.777 --> 00:03:30.782 - Okay? Okay. Well, I'm an old Sierra Clubber myself. 00:03:31.394 --> 00:03:39.205 - I'm sort of the non-walking variety, but I've been a member of the Sierra Club for many, many years 00:03:39.205 --> 00:03:47.015 - and have supported it and been delighted with the things that it's done. And I find Sierra Clubbers 00:03:47.015 --> 00:03:55.139 - much the same every place I go across the country. So I feel that I'm at home here. What I want to talk 00:03:55.139 --> 00:04:00.606 - to you about tonight is what I see as one of the occupational hazards 00:04:00.930 --> 00:04:09.847 - of people like you and me who think the world is slightly less than ideal and do what we can to change 00:04:09.847 --> 00:04:18.763 - it. And as we do this, of course, we run into a lot of opposition, some of it gentlemanly and some not 00:04:18.763 --> 00:04:28.286 - so gentlemanly. And the occupational hazard I think that is most serious for us is that of becoming paranoid. 00:04:29.058 --> 00:04:37.134 - feeling after a while that people are persecuting us, as indeed they are in part. But let's no excuse 00:04:37.134 --> 00:04:45.289 - for being paranoid. You know, what the paranoid says is often quite true, but his mistake isn't saying 00:04:45.289 --> 00:04:53.602 - it. People are persecuting you, but what the hell? That's life. So enjoy it. If you've got a good enemy, 00:04:53.602 --> 00:04:58.590 - this is a sort of a blessing. See what you can make out of it. 00:04:58.754 --> 00:05:06.386 - From the perspective of a number of years of agitating for this or that and being attacked from one 00:05:06.386 --> 00:05:14.017 - side or the other or both simultaneously, I would like to sort of reminisce a bit and look back and 00:05:14.017 --> 00:05:21.725 - see what I see as sort of the basic problems, difficulties that people like us face. Now, of course, 00:05:21.725 --> 00:05:27.678 - first of all, they're just plain factual difficulties, the sort of thing that 00:05:28.226 --> 00:05:34.675 - is hanging us up right now in the stratosphere, you might say, the problem of the ozone, the problem 00:05:34.675 --> 00:05:41.252 - of fluorocarbons, and what they do to the ozone, whether this is a serious matter or whether it isn't. 00:05:41.252 --> 00:05:47.701 - But at the moment, the principal difficulty here is factual. We simply do not for sure know what the 00:05:47.701 --> 00:05:54.406 - facts are. There's a high level, looks like very competent committee of the National Academy of Sciences 00:05:54.406 --> 00:05:57.982 - studying it. They're taking their time, as they should, 00:05:58.562 --> 00:06:04.608 - because they want to be very sure that what they say is true. Originally, the report was supposed to 00:06:04.608 --> 00:06:11.074 - have been out this last summer, but it's been postponed. I don't know what the date is now. But presumably, 00:06:11.074 --> 00:06:17.120 - one of these days, we'll get a well-considered report by people who've studied this as thoroughly as 00:06:17.120 --> 00:06:23.406 - can be done. And then when we have the facts, then we can move to the next stage, trying to do something 00:06:23.406 --> 00:06:26.878 - about them. But at the moment, this is a factual problem. 00:06:27.458 --> 00:06:34.528 - There isn't much use spending much of our time on any of the other aspects of it until we get the facts 00:06:34.528 --> 00:06:41.734 - straight. Then in all of the sorts of things that we deal with, there's the old problem of self-interest. 00:06:41.734 --> 00:06:48.600 - Now this is not something to decry. This is the way the world works. Everybody tries to take care of 00:06:48.600 --> 00:06:55.874 - himself first. We're descended from a long and unbroken line of egotists. The people who weren't egotistic 00:06:55.874 --> 00:06:57.438 - weren't our ancestors. 00:06:57.826 --> 00:07:03.917 - So let's not be surprised if we're a bit egotistical ourselves. And of course, when we find somebody 00:07:03.917 --> 00:07:10.128 - whose occupation is being attacked by some change we'd like to make, or he thinks it's being attacked, 00:07:10.128 --> 00:07:16.159 - he thinks he'll have no livelihood if we get our way, we should be very patient and sympathetic. We 00:07:16.159 --> 00:07:22.430 - should put ourselves in his place and say, what would I do? It's a question of whose ox is being gored. 00:07:22.430 --> 00:07:27.134 - Well, there's no simple answer to this, but there are a number of things that 00:07:27.330 --> 00:07:35.195 - eventually help us. I mean one is just a sheer matter of time. If it's perfectly clear that some occupation 00:07:35.195 --> 00:07:42.623 - does threaten the public welfare, though there'll be a vigorous counter-attack at first, gradually it 00:07:42.623 --> 00:07:50.052 - becomes less vigorous, partly because it becomes clear that if this is so, when it becomes clear that 00:07:50.052 --> 00:07:56.606 - it's so, people don't flock into that occupation as much. There's an attrition factor and 00:07:56.770 --> 00:08:02.859 - those who have the heat put on them, try to look for other ways to do things than the one that's 00:08:02.859 --> 00:08:09.388 - objectionable and so on. It can't be solved overnight if there's a large bunch of people who have jobs. 00:08:09.388 --> 00:08:15.979 - But just steady, sympathetic pressure is needed. Sometimes, of course, second thing that we can do about 00:08:15.979 --> 00:08:23.198 - the self-interest problem, if we can create some countervailing force, the sort of thing that environmental action 00:08:23.458 --> 00:08:29.952 - is and does, and it's only one of many, including of course the Sierra Club, but the sort of thing that 00:08:29.952 --> 00:08:36.197 - Environmental Action does every election year with its select list of the dirty dozen. Now this has 00:08:36.197 --> 00:08:42.628 - had, I think, insofar as one can make any historical statement, I think this has had a definite effect 00:08:42.628 --> 00:08:48.998 - on the country because not only have they succeeded, now I shouldn't say that, for sure we don't know 00:08:48.998 --> 00:08:51.870 - what they've done, but let's put it this way, 00:08:52.066 --> 00:08:59.561 - The dozen people they select as being the dirtiest, environmentally speaking, that is the congressmen 00:08:59.561 --> 00:09:06.908 - who have, during the past session or so, been most instrumental in putting through acts of the sort 00:09:06.908 --> 00:09:14.403 - that we personally disapprove of, we and millions of others. They select the ones that they regard as 00:09:14.403 --> 00:09:21.310 - sort of key people. There's a complex selection process, but they have to be in key positions 00:09:21.410 --> 00:09:28.299 - They have to have had a conspicuously bad record and they have to be up against an opponent who looks 00:09:28.299 --> 00:09:35.390 - better than they are. There's no point in trying to throw one man out of office if the guy who's running 00:09:35.390 --> 00:09:42.819 - against him is at least as bad. Don't waste your money. So they have to have, there has to be an alternative. 00:09:42.819 --> 00:09:50.046 - Well, the fact is that in the past three congressional elections, more than half of their dirty dozen have 00:09:50.146 --> 00:09:56.973 - been eliminated in each election. Now, you can't say that they did it, but I think there's pretty good 00:09:56.973 --> 00:10:03.667 - evidence that they exerted important influence. Now, what does that do? Well, for one thing, it gets 00:10:03.667 --> 00:10:10.561 - rid of six or seven or eight men that we would like to see gotten rid of out of Congress. But the other 00:10:10.561 --> 00:10:14.206 - thing is it puts the fear of God into about 50 others. 00:10:15.010 --> 00:10:22.657 - You see, this is the important thing about targeting very narrowly. I mean, don't fire at everything. 00:10:22.657 --> 00:10:30.305 - This is like somebody going out quail hunting and just firing blindly into the sky at the whole flock 00:10:30.305 --> 00:10:34.878 - of them. You know what you get, nothing. Just fire at a few. 00:10:35.362 --> 00:10:42.853 - The metaphor no longer works, but the point is in Congress, they know when a quail falls. No congressman 00:10:42.853 --> 00:10:50.272 - falls out of the sky without the rest of them noticing it and wondering why, and am I next? And I think 00:10:50.272 --> 00:10:57.477 - the environmental action has been very influential in causing congressmen to think twice before they 00:10:57.477 --> 00:11:00.830 - adopt a strongly anti-environmentalist stance. 00:11:01.250 --> 00:11:07.827 - Finally, we have one other problem that I'm just going to mention, but this is a key problem. It's an 00:11:07.827 --> 00:11:14.275 - unsolved problem. It's unsolved in the technical, formal sense, but it's apparently with us forever 00:11:14.275 --> 00:11:20.788 - and we need some good ideas. And this is what I call the quiscustodiate problem. This is from an old 00:11:20.788 --> 00:11:26.398 - Latin proverb, quiscustodiate ipsis custodes, who shall watch the watchman themselves. 00:11:26.530 --> 00:11:33.123 - this old problem that when you set up a watchdog agency it may be very good for five or ten years and 00:11:33.123 --> 00:11:40.234 - then presently it becomes corrupted. They tend to see like the group that they're supposed to be watchdogging 00:11:40.234 --> 00:11:46.698 - and pretty soon they're no good. Well, I don't know any general solution to this but I'm mentioning 00:11:46.698 --> 00:11:51.934 - it because we should never forget it. That is don't think just because we've won 00:11:52.226 --> 00:12:00.703 - battle and gotten the law passed that we want that we can now sit back and relax. One has to watch the 00:12:00.703 --> 00:12:09.097 - watchdogs and we need agencies for doing this and we have some public groups to do this but we're not 00:12:09.097 --> 00:12:17.574 - doing too much and we're not doing too well. It's still a problem looking for good ideas. Now all this 00:12:17.574 --> 00:12:21.854 - is by way of dealing with the general phenomenon of 00:12:21.954 --> 00:12:29.738 - self-interest. I want to take up another matter now, which I think is more basic, but not of immediate 00:12:29.738 --> 00:12:37.597 - consequence, but more basic in that what one does here will have long-term effects. This is where we're 00:12:37.597 --> 00:12:45.154 - holding out for the long-term effects and trying to see something about this. So many of the things 00:12:45.154 --> 00:12:49.310 - that we do, so many of the laws that we have, in fact, 00:12:49.474 --> 00:12:56.304 - I think one could say every major law that we have has, as part of its foundation, what literary people 00:12:56.304 --> 00:13:03.069 - would call supporting myths, where they use the word myth in a very broad sense, not to mean something 00:13:03.069 --> 00:13:09.702 - that isn't true, but a whole sort of ideology that makes sense to people and which is at a very deep 00:13:09.702 --> 00:13:16.598 - level, just like the belief in myths is, and which people don't examine. They don't even know what there 00:13:16.598 --> 00:13:19.422 - is to examine. And these supporting myths, 00:13:19.650 --> 00:13:26.823 - create all sorts of trouble at the subconscious level. This is one of the reasons they're so hard to 00:13:26.823 --> 00:13:33.924 - deal with. You have to drag them out into the open and then pin labels on them so that you can talk 00:13:33.924 --> 00:13:41.381 - about them before people realize the important role these supporting myths have in their attitude toward 00:13:41.381 --> 00:13:46.494 - political affairs. And this is a major aspect of the problems it faces. 00:13:47.202 --> 00:13:52.658 - And I think all the progress we can make at uncovering these myths, at labeling them, then discussing 00:13:52.658 --> 00:13:58.060 - them in public, getting people to think about them consciously, is money in the bank for the future. 00:13:58.060 --> 00:14:03.622 - It doesn't pay off immediately. But in the long run, this is what one has to do for the next generation 00:14:03.622 --> 00:14:09.292 - to help them see the myths by which we have lived. And in the case of the ones that we see as destructive 00:14:09.292 --> 00:14:15.550 - myths, to try to destroy those myths so that they are not hung up in the same way that the past generation has been. 00:14:16.578 --> 00:14:22.309 - So I want to, during the remainder of the period, talk about a number of these myths, some of which 00:14:22.309 --> 00:14:28.040 - are well known to you, the first ones will be well known to you, but then later maybe I'll tell you 00:14:28.040 --> 00:14:34.173 - a little something that you haven't thought about before. First of all, the predominant one that everybody 00:14:34.173 --> 00:14:39.904 - is aware of now, but believe me, an audience like this wouldn't have been aware of it 20 years ago, 00:14:39.904 --> 00:14:45.406 - is the myth of progress, the idea of progress. The idea of onward and upward, bigger is better, 00:14:45.602 --> 00:14:52.614 - Growth, growth, growth. 20 years ago, this was accepted at such a subconscious level that people hardly 00:14:52.614 --> 00:14:59.491 - knew what you're talking about when you mentioned the idea of progress. This wasn't an idea. This was 00:14:59.491 --> 00:15:06.638 - just a fact in their mind. Well, this myth is only about 200 years old. Before then, people had different 00:15:06.638 --> 00:15:13.515 - myths entirely. One of the myths was the myth of the golden age, that things used to be good, but now 00:15:13.515 --> 00:15:14.526 - they're lousy. 00:15:15.362 --> 00:15:22.693 - That's the Garden of Eden story. Another myth was that history was cyclical. The more it changed, the 00:15:22.693 --> 00:15:29.952 - more it was the same thing. Things got better, things got worse, but they didn't ever really change. 00:15:29.952 --> 00:15:37.355 - And those two really held the minds of most people for most of the 50, 100,000 years that man has been 00:15:37.355 --> 00:15:44.830 - at all a self-conscious animal on this earth. It's only in the last 200 years that the myth of progress 00:15:44.930 --> 00:15:51.813 - has grasped men's minds. And of course, there's a lot to be said for it. On the technological side, 00:15:51.813 --> 00:15:58.697 - there has been fantastic progress in the last 200 years. But the way this idea is developed is that 00:15:58.697 --> 00:16:05.855 - technological progress is synonymous with real progress, and that this can go on forever without limit. 00:16:05.855 --> 00:16:12.670 - See, this is really too much. And that's what we're seeing now. We're seeing that not all progress 00:16:13.090 --> 00:16:19.173 - is synonymous with technological progress, and that certain kinds of change, certain kinds of progress, 00:16:19.173 --> 00:16:25.256 - certain kinds of growth have to come to a stop. Well, this isn't news to you. You know it. You wouldn't 00:16:25.256 --> 00:16:31.339 - be here if you didn't. But I just want you to realize that though you know it and understand it in your 00:16:31.339 --> 00:16:37.597 - bones, many older people of your acquaintance, your parents, certainly your grandparents, don't understand 00:16:37.597 --> 00:16:42.686 - it in their bones if they understand it at all. This is a new idea for our generation. 00:16:42.818 --> 00:16:50.097 - So we have to be patient with older people about this. Another thing, notice I use the word myth in 00:16:50.097 --> 00:16:57.522 - this broad sense because what I'm going to mention now is not exclusively bad certainly. Well neither 00:16:57.522 --> 00:17:04.873 - is the idea of progress exclusively bad. But the idea of innocent till proven guilty. Now this is an 00:17:04.873 --> 00:17:11.934 - idea that we regard rightly as a foundation stone of Anglo-Saxon law. Not all systems of the law 00:17:12.738 --> 00:17:20.353 - abide by this principle, but this isn't a caution comparative law. So I won't mention the others, but 00:17:20.353 --> 00:17:28.117 - the point is the law that we know that our civilization developed in believes in this not guilty until, 00:17:28.117 --> 00:17:35.658 - I mean, innocent until proven guilty, innocent until proven guilty. Now I do not want to call for an 00:17:35.658 --> 00:17:41.854 - examination of this assumption in the area of you might say personal criminal law. 00:17:42.562 --> 00:17:50.242 - I think it is far better than the contrary assumption. So let's let it go. But the idea that this should 00:17:50.242 --> 00:17:57.630 - be extended to all realms of human existence has given a great deal of trouble. And it has only been 00:17:57.630 --> 00:18:04.944 - in the last 15 years roughly that it has been seriously challenged and seriously limited in certain 00:18:04.944 --> 00:18:10.942 - aspects. This is one of the great bits of progress of the last 15 years. This was 00:18:11.778 --> 00:18:19.564 - essentially the belief that Rachel Carson challenged when she wrote Silent Spring. She said in effect 00:18:19.564 --> 00:18:27.351 - that as concerns pesticides and all these other chemicals that we're spewing over the landscape, that 00:18:27.351 --> 00:18:35.290 - the proper assumption should be guilty until proven innocent. In other words, it has to be tested first 00:18:35.290 --> 00:18:38.878 - and adequately before you use it at all. Well, 00:18:39.394 --> 00:18:46.217 - In 1962, that was a very, very radical idea. This is one of the reasons that Rachel Carson's book was 00:18:46.217 --> 00:18:53.374 - so widely and unfavorably reviewed. It got favorable reviews too, but if you want to have some interesting 00:18:53.374 --> 00:19:00.064 - reading sometime, just go back to 1962 and read at random all the reviews you can lay your hands on 00:19:00.064 --> 00:19:05.950 - of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. If you regard the reviewers as the proper population, 00:19:06.114 --> 00:19:12.765 - And if you say truth is determined by the majority view, you'll come to the conclusion that Rachel Garson 00:19:12.765 --> 00:19:19.165 - was just all wrong, because for the most part, she was damned. But although they often criticized her 00:19:19.165 --> 00:19:25.628 - on various factual grounds, if you read the review carefully, you saw that what really affronted them, 00:19:25.628 --> 00:19:31.966 - the reviewers more than anything else, was the fact that she said, no, guilty until proven innocent. 00:19:31.966 --> 00:19:35.166 - This has to be the rule in the environmental area. 00:19:35.682 --> 00:19:44.849 - a radical idea. Well, um, this idea got an unusual assist from an unexpected quarter, uh, two or three 00:19:44.849 --> 00:19:53.125 - years later when the tragedy of the thalidomide babies hit the country. This was a case, uh, 00:19:53.125 --> 00:20:02.203 - where a drug, I suppose by now, many of you haven't heard of it, but, uh, thalidomide was a drug that 00:20:02.203 --> 00:20:04.606 - was, uh, in many respects, 00:20:05.154 --> 00:20:12.105 - a fine tranquilizer. It had been developed in Europe. It was widely used there. It had not yet been 00:20:12.105 --> 00:20:19.196 - approved for this country, I think principally because of the slowness of the FDA just to get through 00:20:19.196 --> 00:20:24.062 - anything. I'm not sure they should be given much credit for this, but 00:20:25.090 --> 00:20:31.161 - Only a few people in this country use the drug, people who had happened to have picked it up in Europe 00:20:31.161 --> 00:20:37.173 - on a trip or a friend had and they used it and they liked it very much as a tranquilizer is fine. But 00:20:37.173 --> 00:20:43.243 - it turned out that if a woman took it during the first three months of her pregnancy, there was a very 00:20:43.243 --> 00:20:49.314 - high chance that her child would be very seriously deformed. The typical deformity being one of having 00:20:49.314 --> 00:20:54.206 - no arms, just little flipper-like hands at the shoulders where the arms should be. 00:20:54.466 --> 00:21:01.875 - defects could be worse than that. Well, it was a dreadful thing. Over 10,000 babies in Europe were affected 00:21:01.875 --> 00:21:08.872 - by it, only a few in this country because of our luck in not having approved of the drug. But Senator 00:21:08.872 --> 00:21:15.800 - Kefauver had tried to get through a bill, get a bill through in Congress for many years covering the 00:21:15.800 --> 00:21:19.230 - drug area, those drugs for human beings, in which 00:21:19.426 --> 00:21:26.321 - the gist of the bill was guilty until proven innocent. In other words, it has to be thoroughly tested 00:21:26.321 --> 00:21:33.148 - before it can be marketed at all. And he had no luck at all. Long came with the litemite tragedy and 00:21:33.148 --> 00:21:40.245 - his bill just went zipping through Congress like that. You see this great tragic event in public affairs 00:21:40.245 --> 00:21:47.073 - was the impetus that needed to get this through Congress. We see that not only got that bill through 00:21:47.073 --> 00:21:48.830 - Congress, but it also got 00:21:48.994 --> 00:21:57.724 - many thinking people to realizing that maybe the old Anglo-Saxon principle, innocent until proven guilty, 00:21:57.724 --> 00:22:06.125 - was wrong in this area. Maybe we should reverse it. And the country did reverse it in this particular 00:22:06.125 --> 00:22:15.102 - area. So this set the stage for the events of 1970, which was a great year of awakening on the environmental 00:22:15.874 --> 00:22:22.833 - in the environmental area for various reasons. And in this year, NEPA, the National Environmental Protection 00:22:22.833 --> 00:22:29.473 - Act was passed. And the gist of that is guilty until proven innocent. You have to have an environmental 00:22:29.473 --> 00:22:36.240 - impact study before you can do whatever it is that you're thinking of doing, building a dam, channelizing 00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:42.880 - a river, whatever it is. So what I'm trying to get across to you is that this is a revolutionary change 00:22:42.880 --> 00:22:43.646 - in the law. 00:22:44.514 --> 00:22:51.392 - In Anglo-Saxon law, there'd never been anything even remotely approaching it. And all of this took place 00:22:51.392 --> 00:22:57.942 - in less than 10 years. Now, just passing a law doesn't make everything hunky-dory. I'm sure many of 00:22:57.942 --> 00:23:04.493 - you in this room are involved in vigorous battles to try to get this new principle operational. And 00:23:04.493 --> 00:23:08.030 - the battles will continue. It isn't going to be easy. 00:23:08.258 --> 00:23:16.722 - You can't just pass a law, you have to ride herd on it for a long time. Well, forever in a way, but 00:23:16.722 --> 00:23:25.271 - for many years at first at a very high intensity before you get it effective. But the point is we do 00:23:25.271 --> 00:23:33.905 - have this revolutionary change that has taken place. Now, what I want to mention now is what seems to 00:23:33.905 --> 00:23:36.190 - me an even more basic myth 00:23:37.186 --> 00:23:45.057 - more basic way of looking at things that hasn't yet been adequately signalized. It hasn't been adequately 00:23:45.057 --> 00:23:52.853 - labeled, but which I think if we label it, if we talk about it, we can begin to make fundamental changes 00:23:52.853 --> 00:24:00.650 - in people's way of initially approaching the world that eventually will put us in a much better position 00:24:00.650 --> 00:24:06.590 - to live a sane and productive life in this crowded world. And this concerns our 00:24:06.850 --> 00:24:14.934 - first approach to any problem whatever. Now, in the past and at the present time, many people like to 00:24:14.934 --> 00:24:23.255 - subdivide the world into optimists and pessimists. I think this is a very bad subdivision. I don't think 00:24:23.255 --> 00:24:27.614 - it does any particular good. About all it does is that 00:24:28.162 --> 00:24:34.381 - usually turns out that I'm an optimist, my enemy is a pessimist. It's just that sort of pejorative term 00:24:34.381 --> 00:24:40.539 - that you use. Or my enemy is a pessimist, I'm a realist. Very subtle things, you see, you have to have 00:24:40.539 --> 00:24:46.937 - the right label. Well, I don't think any of these are very useful because they tend to get people thinking 00:24:46.937 --> 00:24:52.976 - about a situation and I'm not sure the situation is so important. What is important is the processes 00:24:52.976 --> 00:24:53.694 - that are in 00:24:54.306 --> 00:25:01.875 - intact and that are taking place. And these are the ones that we want to identify. And I think it's 00:25:01.875 --> 00:25:09.594 - more useful to have as a contrasting terms some rather fancy words derived from Latin, but which have 00:25:09.594 --> 00:25:17.239 - a perfectly good background, Meliorism and Pagerism. Now Meliorism you may have heard of. This comes 00:25:17.239 --> 00:25:24.126 - from Meliorari, which means to become better or to make better. And a Meliorist is one who 00:25:24.258 --> 00:25:31.016 - thinks things are becoming better or thinks he can make them become better. A pagerist by contrast is 00:25:31.016 --> 00:25:37.708 - one who thinks things are becoming worse. I don't know anybody who wants them to become worse, so we 00:25:37.708 --> 00:25:44.466 - don't need to talk about that aspect. The point is the pagerist says things just naturally tend to be 00:25:44.466 --> 00:25:51.157 - worse. Now, for contrast, substantive contrast between these two ideas, I would offer you these two. 00:25:51.157 --> 00:25:52.350 - First of all, the 00:25:53.122 --> 00:26:00.565 - Adam Smith's view of the invisible hand, and secondly, an even older view known as Gresham's law. I 00:26:00.565 --> 00:26:08.157 - want to spend some time on these to explain what these ideas are, how they work, and how they sort of 00:26:08.157 --> 00:26:16.046 - fix our minds in the way we look at the world. Well, Adam Smith's invisible hand comes to us from Smith's 00:26:16.046 --> 00:26:21.182 - book, The Wealth of Nations, which was published just 200 years ago. 00:26:22.178 --> 00:26:29.521 - A very famous passage in that, which I'm not going to quote exactly because I can't, but what he says 00:26:29.521 --> 00:26:36.720 - in effect is this, that if we have a free market in which the forces of the marketplace are free to 00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:43.343 - act out without government interference, we don't need to set prices for goods because they 00:26:43.343 --> 00:26:50.686 - will automatically set themselves at the most advantageous level for the consumer because if somebody 00:26:50.882 --> 00:26:57.615 - If some enterpriser is charging too much for his goods, some other enterpriser will see a way of making 00:26:57.615 --> 00:27:04.153 - a profit by undercutting him. And so he'll sell at a lower price and he'll get the business. So this 00:27:04.153 --> 00:27:10.692 - competition between producers automatically leads to the best price and the highest productivity. It 00:27:10.692 --> 00:27:15.806 - is as though, Smith said, as though things were governed by an invisible hand. 00:27:16.194 --> 00:27:21.885 - I don't want to go into the details of how true this is. We know now 200 years later of many exceptions 00:27:21.885 --> 00:27:27.522 - to Smith's view, many conditions under which it doesn't work well and so on. That's a technical matter 00:27:27.522 --> 00:27:32.994 - for economics. All I want to point out to you is that there's something in this idea, there's quite 00:27:32.994 --> 00:27:38.576 - a bit in it, that if you don't fix prices, they will gravitate down to a pretty low level. Whereas if 00:27:38.576 --> 00:27:44.267 - you fix them, then you're stuck because all sorts of vested interests become tied to those fixed prices 00:27:44.267 --> 00:27:45.854 - and they'll fight like fury. 00:27:45.954 --> 00:27:52.082 - to ever get them unfixed. Whereas if they aren't fixed, they have nothing to fight against. The enterprises 00:27:52.082 --> 00:27:57.756 - have principally nobody fight against, except themselves. And that drives prices down. So there's a 00:27:57.756 --> 00:28:03.770 - good deal in it. But my point is, this is a mellioristic view. It says that leave things alone and things 00:28:03.770 --> 00:28:09.444 - will automatically become better. This is mellioristic. And this has become the predominant guiding 00:28:09.444 --> 00:28:15.742 - myth of our civilization, particularly in the United States. It's the idea of laissez-faire, leave them alone, 00:28:15.906 --> 00:28:23.636 - and they'll adjust themselves all right. Don't interfere. Now for a clear-cut example that works the 00:28:23.636 --> 00:28:31.290 - other way, I cited Gratiam's Law. Gratiam's Law is two or three hundred years earlier, depending on 00:28:31.290 --> 00:28:39.097 - when you want to start it, and simply stated it is this, that bad money drives out good. It says that 00:28:39.097 --> 00:28:41.470 - if you have two sorts of, say, 00:28:41.698 --> 00:28:48.661 - $10 bills circulating and one of them are genuine $10 bills and the other are counterfeits. If you don't 00:28:48.661 --> 00:28:55.492 - do anything about it, pretty soon you'll have nothing but counterfeits because whenever a person finds 00:28:55.492 --> 00:29:02.455 - he has both a real bill in his pocket and a counterfeit bill and he wants to buy something at the store, 00:29:02.455 --> 00:29:08.158 - he will, if he can, pay for it with a counterfeit, saving the real one in his pocket. 00:29:08.482 --> 00:29:14.097 - for hard times, but getting rid of the counterfeit as fast as he can. And this is the way everybody 00:29:14.097 --> 00:29:19.824 - behaves. Well, maybe not quite everybody. Not everybody has to, but most people do. And that's enough 00:29:19.824 --> 00:29:25.438 - so that as a result of this process of free competition between real and counterfeit bills, finally 00:29:25.438 --> 00:29:31.221 - the counterfeit bills replace the real ones completely and there are no real bills in circulation. Bad 00:29:31.221 --> 00:29:34.590 - money drives out good. Nobody has ever questioned the truth 00:29:34.690 --> 00:29:40.658 - of Ration's law. Everybody knows it's true. It comes up time after time in many different situations 00:29:40.658 --> 00:29:46.567 - and always works out in the same way. So what does this mean? This means if things work out for the 00:29:46.567 --> 00:29:52.594 - worse, then this is a pejoristic situation, pejorary to make worse. It automatically becomes worse if 00:29:52.594 --> 00:29:58.503 - you don't do anything about it. This is quite different from Adam Smith's invisible hand. It is, as 00:29:58.503 --> 00:30:01.694 - one economist said, an invisible foot that kicks you. 00:30:04.866 --> 00:30:12.767 - Now, what do we have facing us in the future? Well, I'm going to give you a very peculiar sort of argument, 00:30:12.767 --> 00:30:20.229 - sort of a logical argument, and I think it's true. And that is, if you imagine at any particular time 00:30:20.229 --> 00:30:27.544 - that there are many facts of nature, most of which we don't know, but many facts of nature, some of 00:30:27.544 --> 00:30:34.494 - these facts are melioristic and some are pejoristic. If we have a melioristic myth guiding us, 00:30:35.106 --> 00:30:41.714 - We will find the melioristic situations first. And during the past 200 years, we found all sorts of 00:30:41.714 --> 00:30:48.653 - self-adjusting mechanisms that work nicely if you just leave them alone and don't interfere. So we found 00:30:48.653 --> 00:30:55.592 - most of the melioristic situations already. But because we don't like to think of pejoristic situations, 00:30:55.592 --> 00:31:02.267 - we haven't become aware of them. It's something we hope isn't true, and we tend to close our eyes to 00:31:02.267 --> 00:31:03.390 - the possibility. 00:31:04.162 --> 00:31:11.289 - So that as time goes on, because of this winnowing process of selective attention, more and more of 00:31:11.289 --> 00:31:18.415 - the yet undiscovered facts are pageristic ones. More and more of the yet undiscovered processes are 00:31:18.415 --> 00:31:25.756 - pageristic processes. So that if my argument is correct, I would say that during all of your lifetime, 00:31:25.756 --> 00:31:31.742 - you're going to see more and more pageristic processes uncovered for what they are. 00:31:33.186 --> 00:31:38.743 - you're going to have to learn how to deal with them because that's where the pay dirt is, so to speak, 00:31:38.743 --> 00:31:44.138 - in the undiscovered facts of the world. This is what we've got to look for. I don't think there are 00:31:44.138 --> 00:31:49.641 - many more maliouristic facts to be found, many more pleasant things to be found. From now on, I think 00:31:49.641 --> 00:31:55.468 - it's mostly unpleasant and we'd better get at it. And the reason we do this is not because we're masochist, 00:31:55.468 --> 00:31:57.950 - not because we like to torture ourselves, but 00:31:58.626 --> 00:32:04.983 - Because we realize, well, if the facts are there, if the processes exist, we'd better find out about 00:32:04.983 --> 00:32:11.340 - them. If Gration's law is true, we'd better find out that it is true and act accordingly. What do we 00:32:11.340 --> 00:32:17.634 - do? Well, you know what we do in the case of money. We simply pass laws that say money is not to be 00:32:17.634 --> 00:32:23.928 - governed by laissez-faire. You are not free to pass on counterfeit coins. You pass on a counterfeit 00:32:23.928 --> 00:32:27.390 - bill, and if we catch you, we'll throw you in the jug. 00:32:28.386 --> 00:32:34.682 - No laissez-faire, no invisible hand, but instead the very visible and unpleasant hand of the law will 00:32:34.682 --> 00:32:40.915 - reach out and grab you. And we say, that's that. No freedom. You're not free to do what you want to. 00:32:40.915 --> 00:32:47.211 - And in general, with the paid juristic facts, we have to interfere. We have to create state agencies, 00:32:47.211 --> 00:32:53.445 - state laws, and so on to prevent people from acting as they want to. Because if we allow them to act 00:32:53.445 --> 00:32:54.494 - as they want to, 00:32:54.594 --> 00:33:01.529 - By the very definition of a patriotic situation, things will get worse. Well, if you'll stop and think 00:33:01.529 --> 00:33:08.734 - about it, I think you'll realize that there are many things you already know that are patriotic processes. 00:33:08.734 --> 00:33:15.669 - And we're already dealing with them or trying to deal with them as they should be dealt with or at any 00:33:15.669 --> 00:33:22.604 - rate you see what has to be done. Many of the things that we want to do as individuals, we now realize 00:33:22.604 --> 00:33:23.614 - we just cannot 00:33:24.706 --> 00:33:31.332 - do as individuals, but we have to have some sort of a group consensus. Each one of us individually wants 00:33:31.332 --> 00:33:37.642 - to have his own private car and drive around. And we're doing it. And what's the result? The result 00:33:37.642 --> 00:33:43.952 - is that we're all suffering from a surfeit of cars. At the present time, I guess there's only about 00:33:43.952 --> 00:33:50.577 - one private car for every two people in the United States. But if we succeed in getting still wealthier, 00:33:50.577 --> 00:33:54.174 - I guess finally we'll have one car for every one person. 00:33:54.338 --> 00:34:01.280 - let's hope over the age of 16, driving around, and by that time then things are really going to be bad. 00:34:01.280 --> 00:34:07.955 - Well, the point is, this is a pejoristic process. It's one which you let everybody do exactly as he 00:34:07.955 --> 00:34:14.631 - wants to, even though his own desire is looked at in the absence of the others, perfectly innocent. 00:34:14.631 --> 00:34:18.302 - But if you aggregate them, the result is not innocent. 00:34:18.402 --> 00:34:24.673 - The result is too much. So we have to do something else. And you know the many possibilities and the 00:34:24.673 --> 00:34:31.005 - mass transportation, so on, the many problems that arise here. But difficult as these are, we realize 00:34:31.005 --> 00:34:37.462 - we've got to do something else. We simply cannot have complete laissez-faire in the transportation area 00:34:37.462 --> 00:34:43.671 - in a rich country, in a country rich enough to have potentially one car for every person. Something 00:34:43.671 --> 00:34:44.478 - has to give. 00:34:45.250 --> 00:34:50.909 - The pollution area, of course, is another one in which we've realized we've got to abandon laissez-faire. 00:34:50.909 --> 00:34:56.300 - We cannot let people just throw their waste into the air, into the stream, or wherever they want to. 00:34:56.300 --> 00:35:01.799 - We've done this for 200 years. And for maybe the first 150 years, it didn't do much harm. But finally, 00:35:01.799 --> 00:35:07.137 - there got to be too many of us for the absorptive capacity of the air and the water. And we finally 00:35:07.137 --> 00:35:12.476 - realized, well, we have to restrict people's freedom here. We have to find some way to ration them, 00:35:12.476 --> 00:35:15.038 - some way to tax them, some way to license them. 00:35:16.034 --> 00:35:23.906 - on the substantive level, some way to decrease the amount of pollution. And so on. Well, I don't want 00:35:23.906 --> 00:35:31.932 - to go over more of these. I think you can fill in many yourself. But what I'm trying to get across here 00:35:31.932 --> 00:35:40.036 - is that here is an area in which we need more originality in the education area. We need ways of getting 00:35:40.036 --> 00:35:45.438 - some of these new ideas into the whole education system much earlier. 00:35:46.274 --> 00:35:52.483 - stories, poems, Lord knows what, in the grammar schools and so on. So that as children grow up, they 00:35:52.483 --> 00:35:58.937 - do not automatically grow up with the idea that more is better, that growth is good, that laissez-faire, 00:35:58.937 --> 00:36:05.207 - they won't use that fancy term, but freedom. Freedom is always good. Just let people do whatever they 00:36:05.207 --> 00:36:11.355 - want to and it'll work out for the best. Don't interfere with people's freedom and so on. They have 00:36:11.355 --> 00:36:15.166 - to grow up with the idea much closer to the original sin that 00:36:15.458 --> 00:36:22.183 - religious people used to believe in, but I think no longer do very much, much closer to the idea that 00:36:22.183 --> 00:36:28.974 - if you let people do what they want to, things won't turn out well. Now this is not because people are 00:36:28.974 --> 00:36:35.633 - originally sinful as we see it now, but in the aggregate. The aggregate of many innocent actions may 00:36:35.633 --> 00:36:42.622 - in fact be a rather wicked or sinful one. You simply cannot allow complete freedom in these areas. And if 00:36:44.418 --> 00:36:51.519 - young people go up with the idea of these group effects, of these community effects, of the way the 00:36:51.519 --> 00:36:59.046 - community has to enter in in some way in restricting individual decisions. If they take this for granted, 00:36:59.046 --> 00:37:06.147 - then they'll be far more open-minded in weighing the pros and cons of any particular measure that's 00:37:06.147 --> 00:37:09.982 - proposed. Now, I'm not giving you any overall answer. 00:37:10.402 --> 00:37:17.204 - that'll fit all cases, that's a thing we continually have to debate on. But I'm saying that if we have 00:37:17.204 --> 00:37:23.940 - a pejoristic view of the world, if we realize that many innocent-looking processes, long-continued or 00:37:23.940 --> 00:37:30.940 - multiplied many-fold, become anything but innocent and do a lot of harm, then we'll be far more sensitive 00:37:30.940 --> 00:37:38.270 - to the harms that we're doing the environment and far more receptive to the idea that we have to take positive 00:37:39.074 --> 00:38:05.354 - a positive stance in making ourselves guardians of the environment. Thank you. Are there any questions 00:38:05.354 --> 00:38:08.926 - for Dr. Hart? 00:38:09.282 --> 00:38:19.476 - I think I can do this fairly simply in ways that he would approve too. His view is, as I understand 00:38:19.476 --> 00:38:29.773 - it, first with respect to pollution, that this is largely a technical matter and is largely a matter 00:38:29.773 --> 00:38:38.846 - of the malfeasance of the people in control of the technology using improper technology. 00:38:39.266 --> 00:38:45.398 - And I agree with him that this is a very important matter. In other words, we can do better without 00:38:45.398 --> 00:38:51.653 - changing the fundamental system at all. We can and we should do better, but it'll be a hard battle as 00:38:51.653 --> 00:38:57.786 - he knows to and as he is admitting. Where we differ is a thing that puzzles me a little bit. I have 00:38:57.786 --> 00:39:04.041 - the feeling that he minimizes the population component of it. And it seemed to me that in this debate 00:39:04.041 --> 00:39:05.758 - that took place between him 00:39:06.274 --> 00:39:12.664 - sort of running debate between him and Paul Ehrlich a number of years ago, that Ehrlich was in the right 00:39:12.664 --> 00:39:18.810 - and he wasn't. Ehrlich said that the amount of pollution is a function of the number of people times 00:39:18.810 --> 00:39:24.956 - the amount of pollution produced per person. I don't see how one can argue with this. Commoner never 00:39:24.956 --> 00:39:31.285 - exactly contradicted that, but he always focused only on one factor in that equation, namely the amount 00:39:31.285 --> 00:39:34.814 - of pollution produced per person, implying that the other 00:39:35.106 --> 00:39:41.737 - would solve itself. I don't know just what he implied, but that at any rate is the difference as I see 00:39:41.737 --> 00:39:48.176 - it. He simply does not seriously want to consider the population angle, I think principally because 00:39:48.176 --> 00:39:54.743 - he sees that any measures that might be proposed for dealing with it would violate what he regards as 00:39:54.743 --> 00:39:55.966 - human rights. Yes. 00:40:33.410 --> 00:40:40.061 - Yeah, there's a funny puzzle here. It's sort of a lifting yourself by your bootstraps kind of puzzle. 00:40:40.061 --> 00:40:46.777 - Look at the Gresham's Law thing. Self-interest dictates that I should pass on the counterfeit and keep 00:40:46.777 --> 00:40:53.493 - the good bill, right? But if I do that, see, I want to be free to do that. No question about that. But 00:40:53.493 --> 00:41:00.013 - if I have no way of doing that, of having that freedom without letting all the rest of you have the 00:41:00.013 --> 00:41:00.926 - same freedom, 00:41:01.538 --> 00:41:08.757 - then I very quickly perceive that all of you behaving in exactly the same way I'm behaving will absolutely 00:41:08.757 --> 00:41:15.774 - make shambles of the economic system. Yeah, once that's in shambles, then we're all lost, including me. 00:41:16.386 --> 00:41:22.733 - So at that point, I say, well, I've got to look at my self-interest from a second level. The first level 00:41:22.733 --> 00:41:28.898 - is I want to pass the coin. Now the second level is, if everybody has this, we're all one. Therefore, 00:41:28.898 --> 00:41:35.123 - I say now it is in my self-interest to combine with other people and to write a law that restricts all 00:41:35.123 --> 00:41:41.651 - of us. No, no, no. Do it only on whatever level exists politically. You cannot write laws in a non-existent 00:41:41.651 --> 00:41:46.366 - legislature. There is no world legislature. So don't try to write laws there. 00:41:47.234 --> 00:41:53.680 - But there is a national legislature. So we can prevent counterfeit, counterfeiting money in the United 00:41:53.680 --> 00:41:59.937 - States. Now we cannot prevent somebody in Brazil from counterfeiting United States money. We'll try 00:41:59.937 --> 00:42:06.258 - to prevent the, we'll try to prevent the entrance of them. Yeah. Yeah. So that's it. But we have to, 00:42:06.258 --> 00:42:12.766 - it's self, in other words, I restrict my, my own freedom in the, in my self-interest in a larger sense. 00:42:12.994 --> 00:42:34.751 - And it is a kind of a paradox, but we already recognize that we have to do this. Yes? Well, I spoke 00:42:34.751 --> 00:42:41.278 - without sufficient knowledge. 00:42:41.602 --> 00:42:48.827 - I think what one should do first would be to look at the readers and things in the elementary school, 00:42:48.827 --> 00:42:56.123 - look at them with an alert and sensitive psychiatric eye and ask, well, what is this story telling the 00:42:56.123 --> 00:43:03.419 - children? And I haven't done this work. I've seen a little bit, but I really haven't done my homework. 00:43:03.419 --> 00:43:07.102 - I think that what they're telling for the most part 00:43:07.234 --> 00:43:13.887 - is pretty innocuous and not very useful for something I think they ought to be told. But the thing to 00:43:13.887 --> 00:43:20.736 - do first would be to look at it. And then the second would be to see if you could write something better 00:43:20.736 --> 00:43:27.389 - that would form their minds in a better way. And the third more difficult job is how could you get it 00:43:27.389 --> 00:43:34.238 - accepted into the textbooks? If you write a story, for example, that builds the moral that nobody should 00:43:34.658 --> 00:43:40.148 - buy another car until he's driven the present one for 10 years, immediately all the car dealers in your 00:43:40.148 --> 00:43:45.481 - town, when they get wind of this story in the textbooks, are going to scream bloody murder. You say, 00:43:45.481 --> 00:43:50.813 - this is un-American. So you've got to be subtle. I don't know how you're going to do it, but I think 00:43:50.813 --> 00:43:56.145 - there's a marvelous field here. This is one of the most important areas there is. For the most part, 00:43:56.145 --> 00:44:01.582 - it's ignored by almost everybody. A bunch of professional textbook writers write it, and what they use 00:44:01.582 --> 00:44:04.222 - for ideas, I don't know. Mostly, they just try to 00:44:04.386 --> 00:44:13.188 - divert the children, I think, what little I've seen without forming their minds at all. It's an important 00:44:13.188 --> 00:44:19.166 - area. I can't see very well until, there's one, yeah. The yellow shirt. 00:44:35.458 --> 00:44:43.974 - Well, I would put it this way that I think catastrophes are great learning opportunities and we can 00:44:43.974 --> 00:44:52.831 - hardly do without them. A person like me making propaganda, what I see myself doing is preparing people 00:44:52.831 --> 00:44:58.366 - to deduce the correct moral from the catastrophe when it occurs. 00:44:59.234 --> 00:45:06.757 - But I really can't move people's minds enough to move legislatures, but I may be able to sensitize them 00:45:06.757 --> 00:45:13.990 - so when a catastrophe occurs, they say, oh, yeah, that's what that crook meant. You see, that's it. 00:45:13.990 --> 00:45:21.007 - But you cannot plan a catastrophe. You have to plan for it. Be prepared to take advantage of it. 00:45:21.007 --> 00:45:22.526 - In the back, yellow. 00:46:29.986 --> 00:46:37.038 - That's a large question, as you know. Of course, a part of my objection, I did not make it clear in 00:46:37.038 --> 00:46:44.725 - that article written there. A part of my objection is substantive. I think people have simply underestimated 00:46:44.725 --> 00:46:51.214 - the costs of doing this, the costs of moving out into space vessels and so forth and so on. 00:46:51.214 --> 00:46:56.926 - It's fantastically expensive. And this is important because the only way you can 00:46:57.058 --> 00:47:03.138 - pay for that cost, so that's a capital cost, the initial cost is capital, the only place to get capital 00:47:03.138 --> 00:47:09.277 - from is income deferred. If you're talking about not having enough income, and then you start converting 00:47:09.277 --> 00:47:15.474 - a lot of that income into capital for some distant goal, that means you're going to have even less income 00:47:15.474 --> 00:47:21.320 - until you get that final thing thoroughly capitalized. And I think the capital that's required here 00:47:21.320 --> 00:47:22.782 - is absolutely fantastic. 00:47:22.882 --> 00:47:29.289 - Another thing that's involved here, and this is a matter of temperament, I view this as an escapist 00:47:29.289 --> 00:47:35.824 - proposal. I think it is so outrageous, practically speaking, that I think it's just running away from 00:47:35.824 --> 00:47:42.551 - the problems. See, in any case where you have a problem of an imbalance between supply and demand, there 00:47:42.551 --> 00:47:49.150 - are two ways to bring about balance. One is to increase the supply, the other is to reduce the demand. 00:47:49.282 --> 00:47:55.276 - For the past 200 years, we've always assumed we could always increase the supply. I think now each additional 00:47:55.276 --> 00:48:00.889 - increment of the supply comes harder, requires more capital investment. So maybe we better look at the 00:48:00.889 --> 00:48:06.339 - other arm of this and see how to reduce demand. I think that's where the pay dirt lies from now on. 00:48:06.339 --> 00:48:11.789 - I think we're still going too long on this old idea of trying to increase the supply. I think we're 00:48:11.789 --> 00:48:17.293 - close to the end. In other words, I think the idea of limits to growth is fundamentally a sound idea 00:48:17.293 --> 00:48:18.110 - and that we're 00:48:18.370 --> 00:48:32.229 - closer than you think to those limits. Louder. Well, you have to look at each individual process and 00:48:32.229 --> 00:48:44.030 - see what it tends to produce. I think the attempt to increase the supply all along is 00:48:44.194 --> 00:48:51.598 - now, at our level, is now a patriotic process. Every time we increase the supply, we also have a whole 00:48:51.598 --> 00:48:58.714 - bunch of side effects, as we like to call them, of increased pollution and so forth. So that each, 00:48:58.714 --> 00:49:05.974 - you see, if we go down to Brazil, if Western man, so to speak, is lumping us all together, clear the 00:49:05.974 --> 00:49:11.006 - tropical forests of Brazil to plant crops, I think the result will be 00:49:11.106 --> 00:49:17.893 - disastrous at least for Brazil and maybe even for the whole world. The effect this may have on the climate 00:49:17.893 --> 00:49:24.299 - and so on, about which we know all too little. I think this is so risky a thing to do that there has 00:49:24.299 --> 00:49:30.960 - nothing to recommend it. I don't, I think that's a poor way to increase the supply. Leave the rainforest 00:49:30.960 --> 00:49:36.478 - alone. They may be more valuable untouched than they are quote developed unquote. Yes? 00:50:31.202 --> 00:50:38.385 - this whole need supply thing, we can cut down on our demand if that's another way to do it. And I cannot 00:50:38.385 --> 00:50:45.363 - believe that, well, for one thing, it's certainly possible to have a civilization that uses no fossil 00:50:45.363 --> 00:50:52.341 - fuels. Coal was not used on anything except a play scale until about 1600. And I disagree with you if 00:50:52.341 --> 00:50:59.934 - you say there was no civilization before 1600 AD. There were some very fine civilizations with no coal at all. 00:51:00.066 --> 00:51:07.342 - And no oil, no atomic energy, none of these. Well, how many people do you have in mind? We could live 00:51:07.342 --> 00:51:14.547 - on nothing but solar energy, but not probably 225 million people in the United States, but I suspect 00:51:14.547 --> 00:51:21.680 - that 50 million could live very well on solar energy, have a rich, blooming civilization, plenty of 00:51:21.680 --> 00:51:26.174 - technology and everything. It's a question of how many people. 00:51:26.274 --> 00:51:32.616 - And why are 225 million better than 50 million? Or why are 500 million better than 50 million? I'm not 00:51:32.616 --> 00:51:39.265 - belittling the difficulty of moving backward in population, but I'm just saying there is nothing inherently 00:51:39.265 --> 00:51:44.991 - incompatible between the use of simple forms of energy, solar energy, wood, fuel, and so on, 00:51:44.991 --> 00:51:51.148 - with civilization, even with a technological civilization. They are completely compatible, provided 00:51:51.148 --> 00:51:53.118 - the population isn't too great. 00:52:33.442 --> 00:52:42.285 - No needed reform ever happens quickly enough. But as they say, better late than never. You see, we should 00:52:42.285 --> 00:52:50.961 - have passed a Kefauver-Harris type amendment to the Pure Food and Drug Act, not in 1964. We should have 00:52:50.961 --> 00:52:58.302 - passed it in 1864. Okay, we were a century late. That's better than waiting until 2064. 00:52:58.690 --> 00:53:07.287 - You see, you do what you can when you can, and you're not going to get much done until there's a catastrophe. 00:53:07.287 --> 00:53:15.258 - So relax. But prepare people. Make yourself unpleasant. Make yourself unpopular by preparing them for 00:53:15.258 --> 00:53:22.526 - the worst. And then when the worst happens, be as irritating as you can. Say, I told you so.