Richard A.
Anthes
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, Colorado
(This paper was published in the Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society, Volume 74, No. 6, 1993, pp
1121-1130; copyright 1993 American Meteorological Society.)
If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed. Chinese proverb
As president of the
University Corporation
for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) , I have become increasingly
aware that the atmospheric sciences are only part of a global change
drama that is unfolding around the globe at an ever increasing pace.
So the purpose of this paper is not to rehearse the good things that
atmospheric sciences has done for society in the past, nor all of the
exciting potential for the future, including improved forecasts and
warnings as a result of the modernization of the National Weather
Service; the exciting science underway in the universities,the
National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR), and other laboratories; the likelihood of global
models with fine-scale resolution; and the marvelous observations of
the atmosphere, oceans and land to come from the Earth Observing
System (EOS) early in the next century. Instead, I want to offer some
thoughts about global change, very broadly defined, of which
environmental science, weather and climate are significant parts, but
only parts, and how environmental science fits into the larger
picture of our global society. Many of the ideas in this essay,
including the title, were developed, borrowed, or stolen shamelessly
from scores of articles and reports that I have studied over the past
year.
In fact, the very title of this essay -- The Global Trajectory -- is
borrowed from a 1991 Sigma Xi Forum on Global Change
(Malone 1992). "Global Trajectory" refers to the
projected quality of human life on Earth in the 21st century and
beyond. The results from this forum, Global Change and the Human
Prospect: Issues in Population, Science, Technology, and Equity, do
not make for comfortable reading, but I am convinced that the
seriousness of the times argues against comfort, complaisance, and
business as usual. Lester Brown, in
the just-published State of the World 1992, calls for an
Environmental Revolution, a Revolution that will rank with the
Agricultural Revolution of 10,000 years ago and the Industrial
Revolution, which began 200 years ago, in changing society forever.
The scientific community, as well as every segment of society, must
participate in this revolution, and I argue that scientists should be
among its leaders.
Table 1 lists some facts of our present-day condition. The
overwhelming point of consensus in the many related documents and
discussions is that the health of the planet's environment, taken as
a whole, has never been worse in human history, and the global
trajectory we are now on is toward an increasingly unsustainable
state. In just the past few decades humanity has become a planetary
force which many believe is out of control.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. Revelation 6:8
The Biblical Chapter Revelation, is also known as the Apocalypse. The "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" were war, conquest, famine and death (fig.1). A modern version of these four death-dealers might be overpopulation, unsustainable economic development, poverty and environmental degradation.
Fig. 1. "the Four Horsemen,"Albrect Durer, 1471-1528.
Maximum welfare, not maximum population is our human objective. - Arnold Toynbee, Man and Hunger, 1963
It has been almost 200 years since Thomas
Robert Malthus wrote his 1798 classic An Essay on the Principles
of Population. Malthus argued that population tends to grow
exponentially while food supplies grow only arithmetically, and hence
there is, and always will be stress associated with overpopulation in
human societies. Perhaps because Malthus' arguments were by his own
admission based mainly if not exclusively on his opinions rather than
facts, for years the potential dangers of overpopulation were ignored
or countered with arguments that "technology" or "agricultural
revolutions" would solve the problem. And for years advances in
technology, including the "green revolution," did increase the
standard of living for growing numbers of people, and the apocalypse
predicted by Malthus seemed avoidable forever, or at least
comfortably distant in the future.
But the Malthusian clock is still ticking, and the evidence that we
are running out of time grows daily. As shown in
Figure
2, global population continues to increase exponentially, a
trajectory that is clearly unsustainable in our finite world.
A colleague at the University of Colorado in Boulder (Bartlett,
1978) emphasizes this actuality with a parable
which I call "The Bugs in a Bottle." It goes like this: Suppose a
hypothetical colony of bugs, which doubles every minute, is in a
bottle and at 11:00 AM there are two bugs; at 11:01 four bugs, etc.
By 12:00 noon it is observed that the bottle is full. Consider three
questions:
1. At what time is the bottle half full? Answer: 11:59 AM!
2. If you were a bug in the bottle, at what time would you first
realize you were running out of space? Of course, this depends on how
smart you are and how many data are available to you, but let's
consider 11:55 AM when the bottle is 3% full and 97% is "open space."
I can easily imagine some bugs in the colony making arguments such as
"technology will take care of us," "the data are incomplete,"
"uncertainties in future predictions exist," and, therefore,
"it is premature to take action." However, suppose that at 11:58 AM
some far-sighted inhabitants of the bottle discover new data that
indicate -- with certainty -- that there are only two minut es left,
and devote all their resources and energies to a search for a new
bottle. Miraculously, at 11:59, not one but three new
empty bottles are discovered. Great celebrations ensue because the
discovery produces three times the amount of space previously known.
This leads to the third question,
3. How much more time does this great discovery give the colony?
Answer: 2 more minutes!
So, what does this have to do with the today's human population? I
will not attempt to define an optimum total human population but I
will give you a view of an upper bound. Most people will agree that a
density of one person per square meter of land su rface (excluding
Antarctica) is an extreme upper limit to human population. At the
present growth rate of 1.8% per year, this limit will be reached in
about 600 years, about one-fifth the span of human civilization. This
is not to suggest that I believe this limit to be a realistic one, or
that the population will continue to increase at it's present rate --
it almost certainly cannot. The point is that since no one knows the
capacity of the Earth to sustain human population with a reasonable
quality o f life, it is very dangerous to determine that capacity
experimentally -- which is what we are now doing.
People properly and understandably wish to improve their standard
of living. These improvements almost always have involved increased
consumption of unrenewable, or slowly renewable resources such as
fossil energy and raw materials. Furthermore, humans have generally
pursued their quest for improved living standards without regard to
the welfare of others, most particularly to future generations much
less other species. Garrett Hardin's
1968, The Tragedy of the Commons, compares the
international environmental predicament with the degradation of
medieval common grazing lands -- individual herders, believing that a
single person's effort to conserve the resource of the commons would
be overwhelmed by the actions of others, pursue individual gains
which are realized to the detriment of the community. This appears to
be the rule rather than the exception in human history to date; it
cannot remain the rule of the future.
Globally, energy consumption is growing even faster than the
population. China, with over 1 billion people, is a prime example.
China is now undergoing a boom in development. Real GNP in China has
grown by an average of almost 9% per year during the past 14 years.
From 1979 to 1992 the number of individually-owned enterprises in
China grew from near zero to 14 million. Private enterprises with
multiple owners now number six million, and foreign companies nearly
60,000. By the year 2002, China expects to have an economy eight
times bigger than in 1978. If China's economy grows (relative to that
of other countries) as fast for the next 20 years as it has for the
past 14, it will be the largest economy on earth. At the present
growth rate of 9% per year, consumption by China will exceed all of
its previous consumption in less than eight years. It is a
relatively safe prediction that this rate of economic growth in a
country with more than one fifth of the world's population will have
enormous impacts on the global economy, security and environment.
We do not wish to impoverish the environment, but we cannot forget poverty. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters? --Indira Gandhi Tom Malone (1992b)
About 20% of the world's population or one billion people live today in severe poverty, earning less than $1 per day. (Postel, 1992) Chronic illness and starvation accompany this poverty. For these people, the apocalypse has arrived. The inequities of this widespread poverty create a global instability that if it persists, is sufficient to make a sustainable global trajectory impossible. We should ask ourselves: If the 20% of the world currently impoverished and starving is not sufficient to spur the remaining 80% of us into action, what fraction would be sufficient to trigger the kind of environmental revolution Brown calls for?
Driven by the first three horsemen, and despite local examples of improvements, the global environment taken as a whole has worsened demonstrably over the two decades since the first Earth Summit meeting in Stockholm in 1972. Some well-known examples are listed in Table 2. The most significant and disturbing example by far is the rapid rate at which we are losing species, thereby depleting the planet's biodiversity. Compared to global warming for example, this is a fast-moving and irreversible process. No amount of scientific research, no amount of money or technology, will ever bring lost species back. This is not merely an academic or abstract tragedy; these losses eliminate present and future life-saving drugs. Of the 20 largest-selling prescription drugs in the world, all either came from natural sources or the molecules of the drug were patterned after natural sources (Malone, 1992b).
Science, by itself, provides no panacea for individual, social, and economic ills. It can be effective in the national welfare only as a member of a team, whether the conditions be peace or war. But without scientific progress, no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity and security as a nation. Vannevar Bush, Science -- The Endless Frontier, 1945 We need more societal transformation than we need science. The time for a paradigm shift is upon us. U.S. Rep. George E. Brown, Jr., 1992
Vannevar Bush believed that science and technology will make society better and therefore that society should support science. In fact, society has supported science generously in this country, in particular during the past 50 years, but there are signs that the halcyon days are at an end. Influential people like Congressman George Brown have been asking hard questions of scientists, such as: why in spite of the enormous increases in knowledge gained from the past 50 years of public support are the global environment and the people of the world in many ways worse off now than then? Brown goes on to urge us to "begin to think of science and technology in entirely different terms -- not as mechanisms to increase our wealth and comfort through exploitation of material resources, but as sources of innovation that can drive us to less consumption, less pollution, less depletion of virgin resources, and lower rates of population growth." Science can help define a sustainable global trajectory, and technology can move us onto it. However, the concept of a sustainable trajectory contains many unknowns, and uncertainty will exist as we move along the trajectory. Surprises like the ozone hole and AIDS will occur. While scientists strive to eliminate the unknowns and reduce the uncertainties, societies must build in flexibility to adapt to new knowledge, to cope with uncertainty, and to adjust to surprises.
The concept of tithing is central to the involvement of busy scientists and engineers in the process of influencing the forces that determine global change. Tom Malone (1992b) As for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it. Antoine de Saint- Exupery, The Wisdom of the Sands
I contend that it is time for scientists, who are among the
brightest, most educated and best informed people in the world, to
take a more holistic and activist role in defining and changing our
global trajectory. We must not just forecast it, as if we were
innocent and powerless bystanders along for the ride -- we are
neither! We must help change it.
It is a truism that the atmosphere and the oceans do not respect
political boundaries; they connect the environments of all regions of
the earth.Thus the people of the United States or any other country
cannot be assured environmental security unless the rich and poor of
the world address cooperatively issues of population growth,
industrial practice, land and energy use, poverty and environmental
degradation. While there is fear among many that something is
terribly wrong with the direction we are presently heading, there is
a consensus among even those most concerned that this direction is
changeable, though the change will require major shifts of values,
attitudes and morals on the part of individuals and governments.
Moving our current trajectory from one headed toward smothering
overpopulation, stark poverty, rampant disease and famine, and
environmental ruin toward a target of an equitable and sustainable
global society with a decent quality of life for everyone will
require an unprecedented level of effort and sacrifice by
individuals, and by governmental, academic, private and religious
institutions throughout the world. Fine tuning or "muddling along"
will not work. It's a tough job, but everybody must do it.
Global survivability is not a spectator sport.
In Tom Malone's concept of tithing, each scientist would devote some
fraction of his or her research time to becoming informed on human
development issues and to participating in policy-relevant or
strategic research. This will not be an easy change for some
scientists, who tend to be conservative in many respects. We
emphasize uncertainties in our knowledge rather than certainties.
Some of us treat science, particularly the "hard" sciences as pure
and everything else including "soft" sciences, applied science,
engineering, politics and policy making as intellectually inferior
activities. We generally avoid using science to influence the public
or leaders of society and those that do, like Paul Ehrlich, Steve
Schneider, or Carl Sagan, to give three examples, are often
criticized strongly by colleagues.
Difficult as it may be, there must be change; the scientific and
political systems and cultures in the United States and elsewhere are
so dissimilar that the amazing increase in knowledge produced by the
research done over the past several decades has had far less of a
positive impact than its potential. Congressman Brown, in an address
to a meeting of Sigma Xi on March 12, states it eloquently "The siren
song of scientific objectivity can draw us onto the rocks of
legislative inaction, by creating rhetorical gridlock, on the one
hand, and by perpetuating the illusory expectation of better
prediction through more research, on the other"(Brown 1993).
Referring to the efficacy of communication between scientists and
policy makers, Brown goes on to say "Science advice to Congress often
falls on deaf ears because it is not user friendly. In a vain effort
to be accurate, measured, unbiased, and comprehensive, science advice
can also be irrelevant, impractical, untimely, and
incomprehensible."
We must also be aware that increased scientific understanding, even
to the point of near certainty, does not guarantee that the knowledge
will be used by policy makers, the private sector, or by the public,
all of whom make decisions based upon many other factors than level
of scientific knowledge. Ludwig et al.
(1993) point out that scientific certainty and consensus in
itself does not prevent over exploitation of resources and
environmentally destructive activities. They provide as an example
the use of irrigation in arid lands and the inevitable degradation of
the soil through salification. Approximately 3000 years ago in Sumer,
the once highly productive wheat crop had to be replaced by
less-productive barley because barley was more salt- resistant and,
through irrigation, the soil had become too salty for wheat. In 1899
E. W. Hilgard pointed out that the effects of irrigation in
California would be similar. His warnings were not heeded; thus 3000
years of experience and a thorough scientific understanding of the
process did not prevent a repeat of an environmentally destructive
activity. Thus, more research and less scientific uncertainty will
not necessarily address the environmental problems of today or the
future. In fact, the call by many for more research may be used by
others to avoid or delay dealing directly with difficult and
sensitive problems.
Walt Roberts, the founder of UCAR and NCAR, believed strongly in the
concept of "science in the service of society." Behind Walt's concept
and Tom Malone's notion of tithing is the assumption that there is
much socially useful research that scientists can do. I suggest that
atmospheric scientists ask themselves the following question: If I
were to be 100% successful in my research, would it contribute in any
positive way to society? Any negative way? Is there any way to modify
the project to increase the probability of positive impacts, and
decrease the probability of negative ones? These questions clearly
require conscious consideration of values and ethics in the
scientific process.
I believe the call for scientists to devote an increasing fraction of
their efforts toward solving global environmental problems, and the
choice made by many scientists to follow, on their own, Walt Roberts
"science in the service of society" path, will lead to a new paradigm
for environmental science. I list some probable characteristics of
this paradigm in Table 3. (As an aside, it is interesting to note
that the history of operational numerical weather prediction has
already followed, to a great extent, this paradigm).
However, for scientists to be effective in solving goal-oriented
problems, it is necessary that society develop well-articulated
goals. We need simple yet profound environmental goals analogous to
the goal President Kennedy set in 1960:
I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.
The environment is a strong candidate for a compelling new
organizing principle for the nation and the world. Following the
environmental revolution, a sustainable environment should be a
unifying vision of all people forever.
Examples of the actions that many believe are necessary parts of an
environmental revolution include the following:
1) Set realistic but meaningful national and global goals, and
establish policies and incentives to meet these goals. An overall
goal should be to get the planet on a sustainable trajectory, one
that plans for and ensures the environmental security of future
generations.
2) Develop new national and global priorities. Redirect scarce
resources from, for example, the military, extravagant and
meaningless health care for a few, expensive and marginally effective
environmental regulation, excessive litigation and size of
settlements, to, for example, education, reduction of poverty,
contraception, and development of energy conservation and other
environmentally benign technologies. Figures
3
and 4
show military and health spending statistics, while Figs.
5
and 6
demonstrate the size of entitlement programs and the Federal deficit.
The deficit is depicted even more graphically in Figure
7,
which shows the annual deficit from 1947 through 1992.
3) Monitor and publish widely and on a regular basis objective
indicators of environmental trends on all scales, as we now do with
economic and political trends. In monitoring and accounting for
progress, development and growth, assign realistic values to the
environment and natural resources such as minerals, energy, topsoil
and forests. In accounting for quality of life, account for
extinction of plant and animal species, health costs of air and water
pollution, increased UV radiation, etc.
4) Improve the education, standard of living, human rights,
especially the rights of women, in all parts of the world.
5) Educate the public about global environmental issues. Emphasize
what we know rather than what we do not know. A society that doesn't
understand exponential growth in a finite world cannot be expected to
make sacrifices and wise decisions.
6) Stabilize population on all scales -- individuals, families,
cities, regions, nations, the world. Table 4 shows what some
countries are already doing in this direction.
|
Country |
Actual ratio of children/women, 1990 |
Goal by 2000 |
|---|---|---|
|
Bangladesh |
4.9 |
2.3 |
|
Nigeria |
6.2 |
4 |
|
Mexico |
Cut growth rate in half |
|
Let me turn briefly to my own field, atmospheric sciences.
Although the global situation calls for action now, research must
continue while we begin to take actions that are benign and positive
in and of themselves, and that can be taken on the basis of what we
know already. However, there is much we do not know and science and
technology must play a major role in getting us on a sustainable
trajectory. Atmospheric sciences in particular can help support that
trajectory by protecting life and property, making society operate
more efficiently and thereby conserving resources, providing
climatological information for planning, developing a scientific
basis for wise and effective environmental regulations and predicting
future consequences of human actions on the environment. Identifying
other ways the atmospheric sciences community can contribute is an
important and urgent challenge.
We can and should continue to make cogent arguments why environmental
sciences, including atmospheric sciences, should receive more
resources. The U.S. is presently spending about $25 on environmental
regulations for every dollar spent on environmental research. Much of
this regulation is based on inadequate science and demands of a
society that does not understand how to accept reasonable levels of
uncertainty and risk. This argument alone suggests that increased
research on the environment would be cost effective. But other
factors, global and national, suggest that growth in atmospheric
sciences will be difficult. These factors include the national
deficit, competition for new funds from other more popular causes
such as health care, retirement and veterans benefits, and
big-science projects such as Space Station Freedom. Therefore, while
continuing to make the best case possible for increased support for
justifiable and well-reviewed atmospheric sciences programs, I
believe that we must plan for level, or near-level funds. I believe
that much can be accomplished under such a scenario, especially with
farsighted and careful planning. I suggest five elements of a
"sustainable atmospheric sciences" construct:
1) Establish real priorities based on the most important and
tractable problems.
2) Stop pork barrel science. Scientific pork is growing rapidly;
Figure9
shows how particular interests have influenced federal appropriations
in just over 10 years. During this period Congress earmarked $2.5
billion for special R&D projects, half of it in 1991 and 1992
alone. This kind of funding is damaging because it circumvents the
priority setting, planning and peer-review process and takes away
from programs justified on these bases.
3) Develop real long-range plans in a no-growth scenario, with an
appropriate balance among: support for people; acquiring and
maintaining state-of-the art scientific facilities; field programs;
and education. A major part of this long-range planning will be
carefully scheduling "big-ticket" items such as upgrades in research
aircraft, ships, computers and field programs.
4) Develop stronger partnerships, with the international community,
among universities and national laboratories, between research and
operational institutions and universities, the government and
industry. Partnerships and collaborations reduce unnecessary
duplication and create efficiencies, and can thereby increase the
return for each dollar spent.
5) Make use of and strengthen the existing infrastructure and high-
quality institutions wherever possible rather than create new ones.
There is an increasing tendency to create new programs and
institutions to address environmental science when existing, high
quality institutions are increasingly strapped for resources.
With serious efforts by the community along the lines proposed above,
I am confident that the atmospheric and related environmental
sciences can thrive in the years ahead and continue to make powerful
contributions to all societies of the world.
We are like the bugs in the bottle. What time is it, 11:50, 11:55 or 11:58? It doesn't really matter; it is late and there are a lot of difficult choices and changes that must be made before noon. We have a new Administration and I believe it has the potential to place a high priority on the global environment. Let us help shape the agenda for the rest of this century and the one after that, and begin to make the shift to a sustainable global trajectory that will ensure the survival and quality of life of humans and the other species that share the planet with us.
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