The Predicament of Mankind
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Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings90 / 340
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00:00
Gabor, DennisParticle physicsMusical developmentCartridge (firearms)LimiterSource (album)Alcohol proofYearGround (electricity)Cord (unit)MachineAerodynamicsRulerBook designClub (weapon)Engineering technologistStock (firearms)Focus (optics)MinuteTelephoneHot workingLastField-effect transistorBasis (linear algebra)Electric power distributionDepletion regionGentlemanA-26 InvaderPower (physics)HourCardboard (paper product)Model buildingFood storageOrder and disorder (physics)Effects unitWind powerSpare partMaterialHomogeneous isotropic turbulenceNightStationerySaturnKlappmesserAudio feedbackCapital shipNanotechnologyStalkingGunBook coverCylinder headSharpeningVideoPlanetensystemRRS DiscoveryBauwürdigkeitScientific modellingHydrogen atomMultiplizitätContactor
08:11
Gabor, DennisParticle physicsEngineEngineering technologistTypesettingUnterseebootAlcohol proofStandard cellYearAmplitudeBand gapSpare partRemotely operated underwater vehicleMachinePower (physics)SnowmobilePlant (control theory)WoodRadioactive decayHitzeschildSteinkohlenbergbauFinger protocolExtraction of petroleumDepletion regionOptical aberrationFuelGentlemanAtmospheric pressureCoalWeather forecastingLumberLightEuropean Train Control SystemKopfstützeForceHourRelative articulationSource (album)LeadQuality (business)Order and disorder (physics)AmmunitionHot workingModel buildingElektronentheorieMental disorderKickstandMinuteFinishing (textiles)TemperatureLevel staffMetreFiberMechanical fanBird vocalization
16:21
Particle physicsGabor, DennisNatural gasHydrogen atomPlant (control theory)Nuclear reactorFuelYearCoalAtomismCartridge (firearms)EngineSemiconductor device fabricationNoise figureThin filmFord ExplorerNuclear powerStation wagonStationeryAutomobileBauxitbergbauLiquidScale (map)SwitcherTrade windRadioactive decayMeasurementSingle (music)NeutronFood storageNuclear power plantClub (weapon)CoolantProgressive lensAtmosphere of EarthReaction (physics)Railroad carNanotechnologyCell (biology)Rail transport operationsTypesettingMassMusical developmentDayDefecationFinger protocolAngeregter ZustandToilet paperHourAircraft carrierStar formationGentlemanGasKühlkörperBicycleDirect currentHot workingShip classWater vaporTwilightRulerOrbital periodBand gapCommercial vehicleUran-238Group delay and phase delayDuty cycleMoonImpact event
24:32
Gabor, DennisParticle physicsSpare partNuclear explosionFusion powerSource (album)Nuclear powerMusical developmentSeasonNanotechnologyThermal energySpread spectrumYearGeothermal energyFinger protocolDayEveningEnergiesparmodusSkyStationeryBook designPower stationCapital shipRailroad carSolar energyAtomismField-effect transistorElectricityClimateGasMeasurementOrder and disorder (physics)Nuclear power plantPlant (control theory)MinuteBuoy tenderProtectionFoot (unit)Water vaporCartridge (firearms)Antenna diversityPower (physics)MetreWorkshopDrehmasseEngineUran-238DampfbügeleisenFuelNuclear reactorSeparation processNuclear fuelTagesschachtGradientBarrage (dam)ConcentratorSchneller Brutreaktor
32:43
Particle physicsGabor, DennisYearProgressive lensSpare partDuty cycleHot workingPolradPresspassungWater vaporSunriseCommunications satelliteEngineering technologistRailroad carRegentropfenGround (electricity)Will-o'-the-wispAngeregter ZustandMaterialTeilchenrapiditätPlane (tool)ManipulatorOceanic climateMusical developmentCartridge (firearms)Brake shoeScale (map)StationeryStation wagonShip breakingRefractive indexHiltTypesettingSource (album)KopfstützeAccelerationBicycleShip naming and launchingHourMeasurementCounter (furniture)Trade windNightSummer (George Winston album)Pair productionSynthesizerMarcos, Ilocos NorteDrehmasseWearGentlemanCardinal direction
40:54
LuggerComputer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:11
In the world average, the consumption of energy and of raw materials goes about 5% per year. That is doubling in 14 years.
00:22
But this is mainly happening in the industrialized third of the world. In the whole world population, the hydrogen is growing at a rate of a little over 2% a year, and this means doubling in time over 35 years. And this is mostly happening in the poor countries.
00:42
This has been summed up in the brief sentence. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting children. The Club of Rome calls itself an international non-organization. It has no president, no secretary, no budget. It is just a body of 85 carefully selected people of all nations in the world.
01:03
And we have no intention of letting the membership grow above 100. But don't be alarmed. The tenure is not certain in the Club of Rome. If somebody doesn't work for it, he's dropped immediately. So there's always, still always room in this 100. Well, regrettably, we have only a small representation from the communist countries,
01:25
and we have nobody officially from the USSR. Though one of the meetings of the Club of Rome was held in Moscow, and we know that some very highly placed Russians are following our proceedings very carefully and with sympathy,
01:41
but officially they have not joined us. Now, as against the work of the Club of Rome, from the beginning, the Club of Rome was looking for a comprehensive method to deal with the problems of the world, of our extremely complicated world system. And we were very lucky that we made contact in 1968 with Professor Jay Forrester of the MIT,
02:02
who at that time had just finished his city dynamics. Forrester was the first to construct computer models of a city and show how it grew from its beginning from a green field to its maximum then decayed. And this agreed extremely well with observations.
02:21
And his model became various policies, and something very disturbing came out. This is what Forrester calls the counterintuitive behavior of complicated social systems. As Forrester says, nature has not equipped us with an intuitive insight into complicated multiple nonlinear feedback circuits.
02:44
We did not need this in the course of evolution, but we certainly need it now, because the complication of social events has grown beyond our intuitive comprehension. Almost everything that appears good immediately, almost everything that happens in four or five years,
03:02
will almost certainly turn against us in the long term. This is what the electronic computer can do. I have a strong belief that the electronic computer has come just in time to save our industrial civilization, which has grown above our heads. Now, Forrester undertook at the instigation of the Club of Rome
03:24
to construct a world model. And this he did in a remarkably short time. His book, World Dynamics, came out in 1971. After that, the work was continued by his student, Dennis Meadows, which is an international team of 17 people,
03:41
and which was financed by the Volkswagen Foundation. And this came out last year in 1972. The book is called The Limits to Growth. It has been translated into 20 languages. Now, I have no time to talk too much, to talk in detail of this book. I hope many of you have read it.
04:01
Almost certainly you have seen abstracts of it. And so I just sum it up in brief. The model has got five variants. World population, industrial production, per capita food consumption, the earth resources, and pollution. And these are linked with one another
04:21
by a great number of complicated relations, which partly could be taken from experience, partly had to be guessed. Had to be guessed, but there was just no other way of producing a complete world model. Now, one can feed different policies in this computer
04:41
and then see what effect they have. The computers always said, so that from 1900 to 1970, it runs on the historical path. And then one can put in various policies. In a few minutes, it will run to the year 2100. Now, the computer is rightfully complicated. There's no point in showing it goes far beyond human intuition.
05:03
But the results are extremely simple and extremely unpalatable. If we go on, as we are doing now, the world catastrophe in something like 100 years, give or take 20 years, an overshoot of world population and the world consumption,
05:21
followed by a sharp decline by depletion of natural resources. If we are very foolish, there may be also a pollution catastrophe. I will not talk very much about that because I can't quite believe that mankind will be so foolish as to poison itself. It's quite bad enough.
05:41
The depletion catastrophe will be quite bad enough. Now, as you could expect, these results here received by most economists do not bear all, I'm glad to say, with extraordinary hostility. And yet there's nothing implausible in them. There's no complicated machine leader. Rule of thumb calculation shows that if you look at the world resources,
06:05
give or take factors of two, three, five, and look at our increase in consumption, then the world resources will be exhausted, not in 10 years, not in 1,000 years, but something in the matter of 100 years. First, the line of mineral resources will be as good as exhausted
06:22
in something like that time. Now, against this, the economists argue, this has been often said before, Malthus, you know, but the discovery of new resources and new technologies has always helped to overcome scarcity. As against new resources, well, of course, they can postpone the catastrophe,
06:43
but they cannot eliminate forever. As against new technologies, I hope that this naive believer in the technologies, in us applied scientists and technologists, will be right. But what I object to is this. The economists don't really tell us what they are scared of.
07:01
They just cannot imagine a world in which growth has stopped, because they are convinced, and not without reason, that our world, in particular the free economy world, is kept stable only by continual growth, by everybody hoping or actually having it better next year than this year.
07:22
And they just cannot visualize the stationary society when we have stopped growing in material consumption. Now, this is what I call ostrichism. The ostrich puts their head in the sand and then hopes that everything was right until now, why shouldn't it go on so forever? Well, it certainly will not go on forever.
07:43
Well, of course, forests and meadows have also stabilized lands without this catastrophe in them. They have also steady lands which go over into a stable situation around the year 2100. But I'm afraid these are also somewhat disheartening,
08:02
because they are somewhat poor worlds, and it's not sure enough. If we make a fair distribution of the resources of the earth, even increase several times, and distribute them in the world population, which by that time will be of the order of between 7 and 15,
08:20
15,000 million people, then, of course, that we will give a living standard still well above that of India and Africa, but far below ours. But I have another objection against this. In these forests and meadows curves, the depletion still goes on. It still goes on,
08:40
and it will go stable all right for a few hundred years. Now, what is a few hundred years? Homo sapiens has at least 100,000 years behind him, and the biologists assured us that he's fit for another few hundred thousand years. Now, a few hundred years of prosperity and light
09:00
between several hundred thousand years of darkness, that's not good enough. So what we scientists and technologists must create is a new technology, one which uses only inexhaustible or self-renewing resources. May I remind you, it was not so very long ago
09:21
when all the world lived on a self-renewing resource, timber, wood. It was used for burning, it was used for building houses, and it renews itself in the forest. Now, of course, humanity has become far too big for a timber economy, also for coal economy, but new economies can be created.
09:40
It is, when I say inexhaustible resources, it is really possible to think of resources which will outlast a million years or so. This has not calmed, of course, the opponents of forest in the meadows. The hostility still continues. People just don't want to believe it,
10:01
and they just don't want to believe that the catastrophe is 100 years away. But while all this talk was going on, a forerunner of the catastrophe is actually appearing at our door and referring to the fuel and energy crisis which is right at our door.
10:22
Now, this is a crisis of the highly developed countries, chiefly of the United States, but concerns us in Europe just as well. The United States have 6% of the world's population, and they consume 33% of the world's energy. That's 10 times more than the rest, so the rest contains also England, France, Germany, Japan, etc.
10:45
So this is something 50 times more than what, for instance, Indians consume. One could say that so right as long as they consume their own, their own oil, their own coal, etc., this may have been foolish until then, but morally, no objection so long as you are using up your own.
11:04
But this was only until a few years ago. It's not like this. A typical depletion catastrophe has happened. In the meantime, it's like this. If you plot here the oil production points of the United States, it goes up left, starting from agriculture, there's nothing here.
11:23
Here we are, just 1973. And the demand curve has started overshooting this just about these years, and it goes up like this, while the oil production of the United States is something like this.
11:40
To give you an idea, at the moment, well, actually it's more than, the gap is already larger, 25%, but by this time, about two-thirds of the oil will have to be imported and one-third produced internally. This is the real, actually, just that type of overshoot
12:02
which occurs in meadows curves. Only global overshoot comes perhaps 100 years away. The local overshoot is right here. The same applies in Europe. Of course, Europe has always existed almost 100% on imported oil, but we have also been very foolish.
12:21
We have converted, we have let coal mining decay or stagnate, and we have converted many of our coal-burning electric plants to oil, and oil was cheap. Yes, now this crisis illustrates how badly we are lacking in long-term foresight.
12:40
It could have been foreseen, and it was indeed foreseen, just by the big oil companies. The research departments of big oil companies have made precise forecasts of this, which are considered reliable to everybody. But during the same time, the sales departments of the same oil companies were urging more and more consumption.
13:04
And as against the governments, the governments just don't dare to tell the people that they had no lack of foresight and we are running into a serious crisis. Really, nobody can claim nowadays that he hasn't heard of it, that he's ignorant of it. I don't know how it is in Germany, but in America,
13:22
it's been published in all the good newspapers. Most of the magazines have published long and very careful articles on it. But the man of the street just doesn't want to believe it. The man in the streets wants to believe that it's a machination of the big oil companies to get higher prices for the petrol. Well, let's forget the political part of it
13:43
and see what technology can do to alleviate the situation. I'm afraid we have indeed been very, very slow. And we must make a confession. It's not just the politicians who are to blame and the economists and the sales people.
14:03
The peak achievements of technology since the war have been either prestige or luxury achievements, such as the Polaris submarine for defense, so the astonishing thing if you look at it, you have a shield from technical angle, or the multiplayer anti-atomic missile,
14:24
or such luxury project like the man on the moon and the supersonic airplane. Well, it is no excuse for us, technologists, that this was foisted on us by politicians. There rose also from the pressure of the advanced industries and by the pressure of the inventors themselves,
14:43
from the principle which rules our lives that what can be made must be made. And this causes aberrations. And this is not surprising that a considerable part of people, especially of younger people, are now becoming very suspicious of technology and feel that maybe technology has taken a bit in its teeth.
15:04
Well, I must confess, I'm not quite unhappy about it that this first trouble is coming right now, long before the royal combatant, because it will stir us, because it gives us the right kick to start now. It may be the right challenge, which a civilization needs to keep alive,
15:22
according to Toynbee, to save our civilization. Now, there may be some of you, especially among the younger people here in the audience, who don't think that our consumer society is worth saving. It's easy to be contemptuous about the consumer society when we think of such things as force sales,
15:42
throwaway goods, pollution, soulless suburbs, mindless racing about in large motor cars, power boats, snowmobiles. Yes, but the consumer society has also secured a high standard of living and a considerable degree of security for hundreds of millions of people.
16:02
There's definitely more happiness among the common people now than there ever was in the world. Perhaps when we finish with this crisis, in probably not less than 20 years, there will be less of the mindless race than more of the good in our society. Well, what then is a reasonable program for applied science technology?
16:21
We're taking first things first. We must confess that there's no way of making up for the ten lost years. I've been running a little program inside the Club of Rome, and I've got information from the best experts of all sides, and the consensus is that nothing we can do will produce substitute synthetic fuel
16:42
inside ten years in appreciable quantities. Incidentally, neither will the supplies from the USSR start running inside seven or eight years. We definitely have been so foolish that in a few years there will be, quite certainly, a very considerable shortage of fuel,
17:03
and if we are as foolish as can be expected, very considerable unemployment, because so much of our world is based now on the waste of fuel and energy. To make it in more detail, it's rather interesting that now they are taking out
17:21
the German water and development, the lower gasification and other things, and the progress is now rather poor. There's one single pilot plant running for coal gasification in America. It's three tons a day, and there's not a single coal liquefaction plant going yet.
17:41
It will take about ten years before coal gasification plants can be built on a big scale, and by that time the American mining of coal has to be doubled, and by the year 2000 we have to be quadrupled. Now think of this as technical and social difficulty. Of course, it doesn't mean,
18:01
new technology doesn't mean doubling or quadrupling the number of miners, but certainly it means putting underground people whose fathers and grandfathers were not miners, and that won't be an easy social problem. So then here we are very, very backward. In this rather long interim period,
18:23
ten years, maybe even more, temporary relief must be found from such measures as secondary and tertiary exploitation of oil wells. Nowadays half, sometimes even more than half of the oil remains in the oil wells. That will have to be tanked on somehow to help us over difficulty.
18:40
Now of course, new exploration. Then of course, the electric plants, which are now firing with oil, will have to be converted back to coal. And what is the easiest of all is the exploitation of tar sands and of oil shale. Incidentally, figures which have been bandied about
19:01
by oil shale are completely wrong. It is not at all true that this civilization as an increased consumption could leave an oil shale for another 100, 150 years. That's just not true. The oil shale deposits are roughly equal to the remaining oil deposits. At the same time, of course,
19:21
there will have to be reasonable saving measures, such as smaller motor cars, in particular in America, more use of fabric transport, more bicycles, less air conditioning, only by more efficient devices. Now to this, I must mention, what worries me very much, and also other people, is that our free society reacts so badly
19:41
to this sort of crisis. In America, two years ago, they enacted the Anti-Pollution Act. By 1975, that's been upon to 1976, the production of unburned fuel, nitrous gas, et cetera,
20:02
Now what is the reaction of Detroit? The simplest would have been, of course, to make smaller motor cars. No, they make the same horsepower, but as the non-polluting engine is so much less efficient, the new cars of this year, instead of the usual 12 miles to the American gallon, can do only 10 or 9.
20:21
And they say by the time they're finished, they'll do perhaps 6. This was the reaction of Detroit. This sort of thing worries me very much because it means that unless free enterprise takes on a little sense, there won't be free enterprise. And then, of course, political measures such as international agreements to secure at least the present supply
20:42
from the Middle East countries, and trade agreements between the free economy and the communist countries. There is hope for that, but not immediate. An almost pipeline, for instance, for natural gas has to be built. Exploration has still been done in Siberia. Etc, etc.
21:01
The Siberian liquefied natural gas and oil have been in the store for 7 or 8 years, the best case. Now, all right, so we have lost in this time. There's no reason for not starting our preparations at once. The research on coal gasification, coal liquefaction, which has been so much neglected,
21:21
has been so much neglected that we are falling back to fissure optional in about 50 years. And to bear with us also in the 20s and 30s. This must be taken up on a large scale. The long-term outlook is good. If the price of liquid fuel is allowed to rise to three times the present,
21:42
which is a healthy thing because there will be less waste, then a great number of substitutes can come in. First of all, tar sands, oil share, but then also there is a serious hope that atomic energy will be able to produce synthetic fuels. That is the most interesting of the hopes.
22:01
This, in particular, the existing Canadian, the Canadian reactor called the CANDU, which works on the uranium-sorium cycle, burns about equal amounts of uranium-sorium, so it's very cheap and abundant fuel. And absolutely non-radioactive primary coolant.
22:22
The primary coolant is a high-boiling organic cell liquid which is only served on bombardium and neutrons and gives only stable constituents. And then the secondary coolant, which is always water, is of course even freer.
22:40
So there is no fear of radioactive damage. Now, at this point, I come also to the point which was already mentioned by Minister Amke, the fear of people of nuclear stations. Nowadays, when a nuclear station is to be built somewhere in America,
23:00
then the price of the land and of real estate is as certain to fall as if Negroes would be going there. This is, of course, the excuse, of course, is that nuclear plants are dangerous. Well, as against explosion of nuclear plants, the lowest estimate is 10 to the minus 8 per year.
23:21
That is to say one plant explosion by failing of every sort of safety in 100 million years. Now, my friends, the nuclear engineers assure me that if we had been ever as safe with steam plants, then no steam plant would ever have been built.
23:43
So, as I say, it is already possible to foresee that there will be no shortage of liquid fuel. Otherwise, nuclear energy promises mostly hydrogen economy. I don't like the idea of hydrogen economy very much.
24:00
It's per volume, it's much worse than petrol, and the danger in case of accidents, of course, even much bigger as the evaporation of hydrogen is so much more than of petrol. But, as I said, as I say, there's hope that in the end we'll be able to synthesize hydrocarbons at about three times the price. And why not?
24:20
We have had our energy ridiculously cheap. In the United States, it's about 6 or 7% of GMP, all the expenditure on energy, including oil. And the expenditure on food is 16 to 18%. Now, I think it would be perfectly right
24:42
in our industrial civilization if we spent as much on energy as we spend now on food. As against mineral sources, there again, we'll have to dig much deeper. At present, all the mineral sources except oil cost only about 3% of the GMP.
25:01
So there is again the hope that we'll be able to exploit deeper mineral sources once we have got reasonably cheap nuclear energy. But by reasonably cheap, I mean something like three times more than the present. Which will also enable the nuclear engineers to put all the safety devices, put them underground with recirculating water, no contamination of rivers, et cetera, et cetera.
25:24
Nuclear power development has not been really neglected. Of course, enormous money has been spent on it. It's only the development is of course a little slow. In order to make the reactors really efficient, there must be either breeder reactors or very big such uranium thorium reactors.
25:42
And in both cases, the optimistic estimate is that they'll be starting about 1990. Now in the United States at the moment, there are 150 atomic plants planned, quite big ones, quite big units, 1,500 to 5,000 megawatts.
26:02
But even if the opposition of the environmentalists can be overcome, which is by no means certain, and the ore will be built, only 25% of the electric energy in 1985 and 1980 will be supplied by nuclear power. In England it will be somewhat better, it's already 10%, it may very be 25% by then.
26:25
As I say, now we have got the opposition of the environmentalists, which partly of course has got a psychological origin. The nuclear reactor is of course an offspring of the atomic bomb,
26:40
and as against the first plants, though they never exploded, that contamination was by no means impossible. You may ask me, now what about fusion? Twenty years ago, the only hope of an inexhaustible source was fusion because of the heavy hydrogen in the seas. But now, the position is very different
27:03
because we know that there is enough low-grade uranium granite and dissolved in very low concentration in the sea, from which you could expect it at probably not more than about two to five times the present cost of uranium, and that's a very small part. Uranium oxide is only a very small part of the cost of the finished fuel rod.
27:25
And as against the total fueling cost of a station, it's about one-tenth of its capital cost. So it's by no means important. If we never get fusion, we still have an inexhaustible source of power
27:40
because the river was so much uranium into the seas that a very profligate humanity, which energy, could still exist for unlimited time. But of course it would be nice to get nuclear energy by fusion for the simple reason that fusion does not produce plutonium.
28:01
The real danger in nuclear energy is, of course, plutonium. One could, according to several world experts, increase the world consumption now at four times the present population at twice the American consumption, which means a 50-fold increase in world energy production,
28:23
without any serious danger of changing the climate. Then perhaps it might become dangerous. Yes, but can we give this power into the hands of humanity as it is, into the hands in particular of adolescent nationalists?
28:41
Well, for this reason, I would much like, of course, to have fusion power. But subjectively, I don't give it a very big chance. Certainly. We ought to barrage the hundreds of millions of dollars which it will cost. I must say, in all my life I've never met such an exciting and wonderful idea
29:01
as producing fusion by implosion of little grains, of lithium deuteride or DD. It's absolutely fantastic idea to compress that little grain about 10,000 times and then bring it to the controlled nuclear explosion. But as I say, we must consider it as a windfall.
29:20
If it comes, all the better. But no reason, it cannot be put into any reasonable program. There is really better program, better hope for geothermal energy. Geothermal energy, of course, in Germany is not important. All Europe except Iceland is not important. But in America it might be important.
29:43
And far too little money has been spent on it so far. Far too little research has been done. There are protagonists of it who say that if we dip shafts five kilometer deep and next to it another, say four, four kilometers deep and pour water into the one,
30:00
then we get a wonderful supply of steam from the others and we can easily build stations of several thousand megawatts each. That is possible. I don't know yet what the economy, there is nobody there to indicate it. There may be not too many places in the world now. With solar power, solar power is the cheapest possible and the cleanest possible
30:24
and the most expensive because there is no upset of the climate. Rather that solar energy is first converted into electricity and then liberated as heat, that doesn't make any difference. But unfortunately, the lowest estimate of solar energy is twice that of nuclear power
30:46
and that comes from the inventor himself. I'm an inventor myself and know that the estimates of inventors must be multiplied by pi. So I should say six, seven times nuclear energy will be probably nearer to it.
31:01
And here I wish, of course, that we could break the iron law of economics, that the cream has to be taken off first, that the cheapest way of getting energy is the one which comes first. I wish we could pursue at least, for instance, the very, very rich Arab countries
31:20
to have solar energy instead of plutonium producing nuclear plants. Yes, well, otherwise if you think of the plutonium danger, then I must say which Alvin Weinberg, the great American expert, our best hope is that you can make out of the tenders of these, of the nuclear stations, a dedicated priesthood.
31:44
These considerations of physics and technology lead us quite naturally to the human factor. After, as I always said in my book, up to now we were up against nature, for now we are up against human nature. And the past history of mankind, which is incessant wars,
32:04
does not encourage, of course, to believe us that we have come to the end of our folly. I must still cling to the hope that the folly of a nuclear war now would be such that perhaps mankind will abstain from total suicide. This is always the assumption which goes through all our prophecies,
32:23
no nuclear war and no total warfare of any kind. Of course, this is still only unconditioned. The other thing for producing a better world would be to help the developing nations.
32:40
And here again this crisis in our developing nations, which I have told, might produce such an upset in our countries that we will cut down even further the already very insufficient foreign aid. Nevertheless, that foreign aid could exist at all, does exist at all, is a sign of human progress.
33:03
This idea 100 years ago at the time of the economics of Ricardo, et cetera, would have been absolutely impossible to give something for nothing, to give something to the Africans or the Indians so that they should develop their own industries. Absolutely unthinkable. So when it comes to human nature, I don't want to say very much about this.
33:23
It's always my chief preoccupation. How will human nature fit into a peaceful world? Is it possible that a peaceful, rich world should be possible on an economically stationary scale? Of course, humans have existed on a almost stationary world for thousands of years.
33:41
The development was very small, but that was in poverty. And the dangers come, of course, with riches and freedom. Can we change human nature? I should say one can very much change human nature indeed. The strongest inborn traits of human nature are certainly the will to material satisfaction
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and the will to survive. And yet this has been changed into exact opposite by the monasteries in which the monks live a self-imposed ascetic life, making it taking on not just the inordinate poverty but random but uncalled for hardships.
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And as regards human life, brave soldiers have been educated everywhere. And may I remind you, for instance, that Yanis Saris, the Christian children who were taken in the Balkans from the Turks when they had murdered their parents,
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they were educated and brave soldiers who wanted nothing more than to fall gloriously in battle. So human nature can be turned into exact opposite. Now why shouldn't it be possible to put a little more sense into us? I should say because we have never seriously considered this.
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Yes, the monasteries never know how to do it. The military have also known it. But we have never seriously considered what education which the proper conditioning has done to smooth out these little things of human nature which can give so much trouble. I think it can be done. And the main thing is to give people, to give the young people,
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a strong feeling that our world is not the worst of all possible worlds, that our consumer civilization is indeed worth saving. And it has not been smashed up, and I hope that something will come in its place. At the moment, of course, whatever conditioning manipulation exists here is just the wrong way.
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We are being manipulated to consume and to waste. This is the strongest manipulation of the Western world is the sales pressure, the inducement to spend and to waste. And the excuse is, of course, that this keeps the industry going.
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It's the duty of any good American to buy a big car because it gives work to Detroit and also to burn as much oil as possible, to overheat his house, et cetera, et cetera. This, of course, cannot go on forever, and this sort of propaganda must stop. I think it's quite likely that if it will be an effort shared by older people as in case of war,
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the response will be quite a good one. If, for instance, unless the petrol prices go up to three times so that the rich can run the big cars and the poor can't, then there will be trouble. There's one other thing which I would like to be able to see, and this is also something mentioned by Mr. Amke.
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This is de-urbanization. You see, the enormous growth of megalopolises, especially in the developing countries in the United States, is a frightful phenomenon which alone is a big danger. But there's another advantage in de-urbanization. In smaller towns where people can go to their work on bicycles,
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they consume far less energy than in the big towns. And so I wish that part of the unemployment which will be caused by the drop in our oil, et cetera, wasting industries should be used for de-urbanization, for decentralization.
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And communication is to replace commuting. Can we really replace our material-clenching, energy-wasting, industrial civilization by a knowledge and communication society? This has been suggested, incidentally suggested, by the Japanese, that instead of the consumer society, we want a knowledge and communication society.
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Well, it's a beautiful idea, but if you want to realize it, you must start with a new education, which puts, first of all, which satisfies people that this is not the worst of all possible wars, and that we owe it to our ancestors who had to work so hard to get on with it instead of smashing it up.
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And then, of course, to establish the non-energy-wasting, non-material-wasting values, which I think will also succeed if we started in earnest. Well, now, summing up, if the rapid material growth of the first 25 years has given the impression
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that now at last mankind is on a straight way towards peace and happiness, the next 25 years are likely to destroy this illusion. We must realize that we are living on an earth which is now becoming too small for us. Applied scientists and technologists must radically revise their priorities.
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The first priority is to get our civilized oceans going and not to continue with this irresponsible wasting of energy and material resources. So as for to create at least a bearable life on an overcrowded earth.
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And I have full confidence that the technologists will rise to this challenge, and make a seriousness which will match the problems before us. I want to address one more word. What is at stake is not just our wealth, but also our freedom. It's our democracy.
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Because if our democracy doesn't rise to these problems, then democracy will have to cease. There will have to be something like emergency water measures, and have a tendency to linger on after the emergency has passed. Anyway, the emergency will not pass so quickly. In 20 years we may overcome the energy crisis.
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After that comes the other, I should say, the forest and meadows difficulty. And anyway, getting into a stationary state. And getting into a stationary state is not so easy. I once gave a lecture in the German circle, and from Weizsäcker who was present said, Well, if we go on like this, then we must put as much energy into breaking the social system
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as we have put into accelerating it. And I think this is roughly true. And now may I quote also what a great historian Arnold Toynbee has said of this, of the great danger which threatens democracy by the system that we have identified,
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hope with growth, continual growth. And now we have to stop growth, whether we like it or not. He said, We cannot be sure that even in England, parliamentary democracy will be able to survive the frightful ordeal of having to revert to a prestigious state on a material plane.
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This is the problem before us, nothing less is at stake, not just our wealth, it's also our democracy and freedom.