The State of Humanity
Julian L. Simon (ed.)
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1995
Distributed in Australia by Allen & Unwin
608 pp., $49.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Peter Montague
The recent outpouring of hefty "feel good" books has not let up. Last year the book world was buzzing about Gregg Easterbrook's 700-page A Moment on the Earth, which tried to make the case that most of our environmental problems have already been solved. Close analysis revealed that Easterbrook's optimism was based on errors, selective omissions and deliberate misinformation.
Now comes Julian Simon, a professor at University of Maryland, with an even rosier view.
Simon's new book, The State of Humanity, concludes, "We have in our hands now ... the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next seven billion years ...
"Indeed, the last necessary additions to this body of technology — nuclear fission and space travel — occurred decades ago. Even if no new knowledge were ever invented after those advances, we would be able to go on increasing our population forever, while improving our standard of living and our control over our environment."
As you can probably tell from this quotation, Simon is the Crazy Eddie of "feel good", and his latest book is nearly 700 pages of optimism for the human prospect, including optimism for the natural environment.
The book is divided into 58 chapters written by 67 authors, crammed with charts, graphs and tables. It is an information storehouse of prodigious proportions, particularly historical information. When I began reading it, I thought, "What a treasure!" However, much of the treasure is counterfeit, and many of the optimistic conclusions are bogus.
Still, the book has some value. It reminds us of the real progress that humans made between 1750 and 1950. Infant mortality decreased dramatically, working conditions improved for tens of millions of people, technology opened up vast opportunities for travel, education and enjoyment of life for huge numbers. Diet improved, life expectancy increased, opportunity expanded. Democracy and freedom spread.
However, Simon is so determined to accentuate the positive that he ignores almost completely the serious negative counter-currents that give our age its bitter-sweet tinge:
- We live in an age of perpetual wars, with anywhere from 20 to 30 major wars going on simultaneously around the globe. More than 90% of the people killed in these wars are civilians, largely in developing nations supplied with modern weaponry by the rich nations. At a cost of less than half their military expenditures, developing countries could initiate basic health services and clinical care that would save 10 million lives each year.
For their part, the rich nations spend on armaments each year an amount equivalent to the total income of the world's poorest 2 billion people. In describing historical trends, Simon hardly mentions the increase in wars, the build-up of armaments and the anti-life priorities.
- Humans now appropriate 25% of earth's total net primary production (NPP) — the amount of energy captured in photosynthesis by primary producers minus the energy used in their own growth and reproduction. NPP is thus the basic food resource for everything on earth that is not capable of photosynthesis. Humans are now thought to be using for their own purposes 25% of global NPP and 40% of NPP on the land. If this estimate is correct, it means that two more population doublings (which will occur in about 80 years) will leave nothing for any species besides humans. Simon simply ignores this trend. (Simon sees us migrating into outer space on nuclear-powered rockets after we have filled this planet.)
- In the developed world, human health is declining. On this topic, Simon includes a surprising amount of bad news in an essay titled "Trends in Health in the U.S. Population: 1957-1989", by Eileen M. Crimmins and Dominique G. Ingegneri:
In 1957, the US government initiated the National Health Interview Survey; each year some 100,000 non-institutionalised individuals in 40,000 households are surveyed. Among the whole US population during 1957-1989, "activity limitation" increased 43%. Between 1961 and 1989, the number of "restricted activity days" increased 28%. These measures indicate substantial increases in both chronic and acute ill health during the last 30 years.
Health deterioration has also been investigated in a variety of other countries where mortality is low and continuing to decline. Surveys have shown deteriorating health in Canada during the 1970s, Australia during the 1980s, Great Britain from the 1970s through the mid-1980s and Japan from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Simon's book offers only one hypothesis for this decline in health: more frail people are being kept alive. But alternative hypotheses are certainly possible: the modern "junk food" diet that is so common among young people may be partly responsible, combined with a lack of exercise. In addition, chemical exposures, which are certainly occurring, seem to be degrading the immune systems of humans, giving rise to increased infections and auto-immune disorders such as asthma, arthritis and diabetes. Simon ignores these factors.
To maintain his ever-optimistic view, Simon relies upon the same techniques Easterbrook employed: misinformation, specious comparisons and selective omissions.
Misinformation: For example, Simon says, "Fear is rampant about rapid rates of species extinction. The fear has little or no basis." The evidence from the fossil record is that extinctions are occurring today 10 to 100 times faster than natural background (pre-human) rates of extinction, and in some regions the rate is 1000 times background. There is genuine cause for concern.
Selective omissions and specious comparisons: For example, Simon says, "The Great Lakes are not dead; instead they offer better sport fishing than ever". First, no-one ever said the Great Lakes were dead.
Second, in some of the Lakes (Michigan and Erie, for example) sport fishing is able to thrive only because governments stock the lakes with hatchery-bred fish each year. Literally hundreds of studies have shown that fish, birds and mammals in the lakes have had their reproductive systems damaged by chemical contamination.
Third, each year state and provincial governments in the US and Canada issue book-length catalogues listing coves and bays throughout the Great Lakes where it is not safe to eat the fish.
Fourth, there is substantial evidence that humans who often eat fish from the Great Lakes give birth to children who are stunted physically and mentally.
Yes, humans made important progress between 1750 and 1950. Is the progress continuing? The record is clearly mixed. Good news today is nearly always accompanied by real side-effects that are genuinely bad. If we continue on our present path, does the future look rosy? Simon thinks so, but to maintain this rose-coloured view he is forced to ignore or dismiss important trends, ask and answer irrelevant questions, and make specious comparisons. It is probably very rewarding to write "feel good" books, but the way these fellows do it is intellectually dishonest.
[From Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly.]