Re: [asa] A Sustainable Future

I agree with David. Economists like the late Julian Simon and more recently Walter Williams have pointed out that the doomsayers have invariably been wrong. Simon made a bet with Paul Ehrlich that each of the predictions he made in "The population bomb" would be proven wrong, and he won. This does not mean that the economists are always going to be correct, but it ought to give us pause when people begin suggesting drastic measures such as population reduction. One wag once said "Prediction is very difficult -- especially about the future"

 William E. (Bill) Hamilton, Ph.D.
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----- Original Message ----
From: David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
To: Kenneth Piers <Pier@calvin.edu>
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 10:22:37 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] A Sustainable Future

Ken, it seems to me that the Smail article just rehashes the Malthusian fallacy that technology must remain static while population grows. For example, Smail says this: "Clearly, assertions that the Earth might be able to support a
population of 10 to 15 billion people for an indefinite period of time
at a standard of living superior to the present are not only cruelly
misleading but almost certainly false." Why is this so clear and certain? Smail doesn't say. (Rhetorically, whenever someone uses the words "clearly" and "certainly" in the same sentence, it's likely that the actual evidence is neither clear nor certain).

It's quite possible that agricultural biotechnology will indeed enable us to feed 10 to 15 billion people indefinitely; it's also quite possible that communications technology will facilitate a global economy in which that many people; and it's also quite possible that new technology will substantially change the "peak energy" curve. The market demand for all this will continue to grow (with population growth), and market demand tends to drive technological progress. At the very least, it seems impossible to say what is "clear" or "certain" to be the case 50, 100 or 150 years from now technologically. Moreover, technological progress and diffusion tends to result in a reduction in average birth rates, as people move from traditional agricultural societies into more advanced technological ones.

On the flip side, I get deeply concerned about arguments that suggest "we" must begin acting to control population. Population control policies tend to go hand in hand with totalitarian regimes and the burdens of such policies tend to fall most heavily on poor, disenfranchised populations, including women in rural communities -- China being Exhibit A. Folks like Smail seem to suggest that "we" ought to curtail fundamental liberties involving human sexuality and procreation in order to avert a tragedy of a commons that can't be adequately defined without knowing what future technology will look like. I have a very hard time swallowing that kind of claim.

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Kenneth Piers <Pier@calvin.edu> wrote:
Friends; I know that almost the entire conversation on this listserve is devoted to the creation-evolution-design debate but let me make a small effort to broaden the discussion to issues that affect our lives today at least as directly.
Here is a link to an essay by Kenneth Smail addressing population issues and the future of civilization that I found worth reading. I think Prof. Smail comes close to hitting the nail squarely on the head. If he is at all correct, how should Christians, and especially Christian scientists respond to this challenge?
>Confronting the inevitable: Population reduction, voluntary and otherwise< by Kenneth Smail
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=168&Itemid=2#cont
I also recommend to you, if you have not already seen it or even if you have, the video Arithmetic, Population, and Energy (it is in 8 parts available on youtube - link below) on understanding exponential growth by Prof Al Bartlett (prof Emeritus, Physics, U of Colorado) which is also quite relevant for the pressing issues facing civilization addressed by Prof Smail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
Respectfully,
Ken Piers
Ken Piers
"We are by nature creatures of faith, as perhaps all creatures are; we live by counting on things that cannot be proved. As creatures of faith, we must choose either to be religious or superstitious, to believe in things that cannot be proved or to believe in things that can be disproved."
Wendell Berry
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