Objective
The purpose of this blog is generation of an exchange of views on the fundamental role of human values, attitudes, and behavior to achieve an attractive prospect for humankind by reconciling a continually expanding human activity with planet Earth’s finite capacity to support this accelerating development. The exchange of views might be the basis for a proposal to the National Academy of Science to convene a breakout session on this topic at the Annual Meeting of the Academy. Such a proposal would follow an informal suggestion by Academy President Cicerone to Tom Malone at the meeting of Academy Members at Yale University in February 2006.
The considerations presented below are intended as a point of departure for discussion on this blog.
Brief Background
In 1948, Fairfield Osborn warned in Our Plundered Planet, “Every country, all the world, is met with the threat of an oncoming crisis. … man’s very survival depends on cooperating with nature. … He must temper his demands and use and conserve the natural living resources of this earth in a manner that alone can provide for the continuation of civilization.” (1) In 1966, Kenneth Boulding remarked, “Even now, we are very far from having made the moral, political, and psychological adjustments that are implied in this transition from the illimitable plane to the closed sphere.” (2) In a lead-off speech at a conference on "Technological Changes and the Human Environment" at the California Institute of Technology in 1970, Malone called for "a searching re-examination of human values and attitudes " in preparation for the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in order to cope successfuly with the threats to civilization from continued use of fossil fuels to generate energy (reported on page A-13 in the October 19, 1972 Los Angeles Herald-Examiner). In 1972, in Limits to Growth the authors urged profound technological, cultural, and institutional changes (largely ignored) to avoid human demands that would exceed Earth's carrying capacity. (3) In his path-breaking 1981 book Building a Sustainable Society, Lester Brown wrote, “Values are the key to the evolution of a sustainable society not only because they influence behavior but also because they determine a society’s priorities.” (4)
In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development in its seminal report, Our Common Future, noted, “The planet is passing through a period of dramatic growth and fundamental change. … Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable – to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. … [however] The changes in human attitudes that we call for depend on a vast campaign of education, debate, and public participation.” (5)
The 1993 Parliament of World Religions issued "The Principles of a Global Ethic" that included the statements: “The planet is being destroyed … We condemn the abuses of world ecosystems … There already exist ancient guidelines for human behavior which are found in the teachings of the religions of the world and which are the condition for a sustainable world order.” (6) The National Academy of Sciences’ comprehensive 1999 study, Our Common Journey, devoted to “The reconciliation of society’s development goals with the planet’s environmental limits over the long term … [pointed out that] a normative judgment, both scientific and moral …[is needed to pursue] our threefold conceptualization of a successful transition -- meeting human needs, preserving life support systems, reducing hunger and poverty.” (7)
The Earth Charter released in 2000 suggested sixteen principles to achieve harmony between civilization and nature, as well as among people. The Charter’s preface states: “The choice is ours: form a global partnership to care for Earth and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life. … Fundamental changes are needed in our values, institutions, and ways of living. ... When basic needs have been met, human development is about being more, not having more.” (http://www.earthcharter.org/) In 2004, Paul and Anne Ehrlich made a persuasive case for A Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior, “… to expose society to the full range of population-environment-resource-ethics-power issues and thus be a major tool for conscious evolution.” (8) Also in 2004, the book Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update asserted, "A sustainable world can never be fully realized until it is widely envisioned." The authors list "human virtue" as one of the characteristics required for the "transition to sustainability." (9)
Upon induction into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Physics Nobelist Eric Cornell remarked, “Should scientists, as humans, make judgments on ethics, morals, values and religions? You bet.” (TIME Magazine Essay, 10/14/05) In a prefatory note to the September 2005 issue of the Scientific American highlighting “Crossroads for Planet Earth” the editors address the choice between environmental sustainability and environmental collapse by commenting, “Science is not and should not be the sole factor in decision making; others such as moral values are also needed.”
Wayne Baker reflected in 2005 on findings of the World Values Survey, “America has a durable system of transcendental values in which multiple sources of absolutism such as society itself and religion per se, are mutually reinforcing.” (10) Pulitzer Prize winner, Jared Diamond wrote in his 2005 book, COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, "For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline . ... But we are also the first to enjoy the opportunity of learning quickly from developments in societies anywhere else in the world today, and from what has unfolded in societies at any time in the past." (11) Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jimmy Carter wrote insightfully about values also in 2005, including issues of “environmental quality, and justice for the poor” among the issues challenging our nation. (12) In the November 2005 issue of ENVIRONMENT, Leiserowitz, Kates, and Parris argued, “... there is a great need for collaborative research to identify, measure, and explain trends and changes in global sustainability, values, attitudes and behavior. (13) In his 2005 Christmas Message, Pope Benedict XVI called for a “new world order based on just ethics and economics” in the emerging technological era. (NYTimes, 12/28/05). In his masterly 2006 The Parliament of Man, Yale's legendary Paul Kennedy cited the need for improvements "in the hearts and consciences of humankind" to cope with global warming, erosion of our environment, and issues of human rights. (14)
Some Evidence (15)
An Environmentally Unsustainable Global Society.
By 2050, world population is expected to increase 50 per cent, to about nine billion, coinciding with more than a four-fold increase in the global economy. However, present demands on our planet’s finite resources of air, water, land, sunlight, and plant and animal life to support humanity now exceed their natural regenerative capacity by about 23 per cent. This excess incapacity is increasing at a rate of one to two per cent each year. Moreover, most of the energy presently used to power the economy is derived from a peaking supply of fossil fuels that is dominant in generating the global warming now perturbing the life-supporting capability of the environment.
An Economically and Socially Inequitable Global Society.
On the average, each one of the one billion individuals in the industrialized countries produces and consumes six times more goods and services to meet their basic needs and to satisfy their optional “wants” than does each individual in the five billion people in developing countries. This individual capacity to produce and consume is expanding three times more rapidly in industrial countries than it is in developing countries. Similar inequity exists within each group of countries. Simultaneously, the growth of population in developing countries is four (CK THIS) times that in the industrial countries, further magnifying the inequity between the two groups of countries. More than a billion people live in dire poverty in the developing countries. Of special importance, disproportionate use of world energy to power their economies separates the industrial and the developing nations.
A Fractious Global Society.
The competition for Earth’s life-supporting natural resources that have characterized military conflict among nations for millennia are now being exacerbated by the growing stress that more people – as well as many increasingly productive individuals – are imposing on the Earth’s carrying capacity. Moreover, the spread of nuclear weaponry with its potential to obliterate civilization is altering the nature of military conflict and opening the way to a new era of terrorism.
The two main forces that determine the future size of the global economy and the size of the economic gap between the industrial and the developing countries are (a) the rates of population growth, and (b) the rates of gain in Gross Domestic Product per capita that prevail within each of these two groups of nations. These forces depend ultimately on the choices of individuals. These choices, in turn, depend on access to the storehouse of knowledge and on the human values that influence how that knowledge is used. A number of future scenarios can be calculated from a suite of rates for these two forces. The analysis can even be carried down to the level of individual countries. From an array of such scenarios, it is possible to select the one that most nearly corresponds to an attractive future for civilization and develop strategies for the pursuit of that scenario.
A Vision
The vision of a global society in which all basic human needs and an equitable share of life’s amenities are met by each individual in successive generations while maintaining a healthy, physically attractive, and biologically productive environment provides an overarching focus with the potential of uniting the diverse cultural, ideological, political, and religious persuasions of the world to agree on a universal set of human values, attitudes, and behavior.
Endnotes
1. Osborn F. 1948. Our Plundered Planet. Boston: Little Brown. 201 pp.
2. Boulding K. 1966. “The economics of the coming Spaceship Earth." pp. 3-14 in Jarrrett H. (Ed.). Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
3. Meadows DH, Meadows DL Randers Jm and Behrens WW. 1972. Limits to Growth. New York.
4. Brown L. 1981. Building a Sustainable Society. New York: Norton. 433 pp.
5. World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our Common Future. London: Oxford. 400 pp.
6. Kung H. (ed) 1993. Declaration Toward A Global Ethic. Chicago: Parliament of the World's Religions. 24 pp.
The purpose of this blog is generation of an exchange of views on the fundamental role of human values, attitudes, and behavior to achieve an attractive prospect for humankind by reconciling a continually expanding human activity with planet Earth’s finite capacity to support this accelerating development. The exchange of views might be the basis for a proposal to the National Academy of Science to convene a breakout session on this topic at the Annual Meeting of the Academy. Such a proposal would follow an informal suggestion by Academy President Cicerone to Tom Malone at the meeting of Academy Members at Yale University in February 2006.
The considerations presented below are intended as a point of departure for discussion on this blog.
Brief Background
In 1948, Fairfield Osborn warned in Our Plundered Planet, “Every country, all the world, is met with the threat of an oncoming crisis. … man’s very survival depends on cooperating with nature. … He must temper his demands and use and conserve the natural living resources of this earth in a manner that alone can provide for the continuation of civilization.” (1) In 1966, Kenneth Boulding remarked, “Even now, we are very far from having made the moral, political, and psychological adjustments that are implied in this transition from the illimitable plane to the closed sphere.” (2) In a lead-off speech at a conference on "Technological Changes and the Human Environment" at the California Institute of Technology in 1970, Malone called for "a searching re-examination of human values and attitudes " in preparation for the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in order to cope successfuly with the threats to civilization from continued use of fossil fuels to generate energy (reported on page A-13 in the October 19, 1972 Los Angeles Herald-Examiner). In 1972, in Limits to Growth the authors urged profound technological, cultural, and institutional changes (largely ignored) to avoid human demands that would exceed Earth's carrying capacity. (3) In his path-breaking 1981 book Building a Sustainable Society, Lester Brown wrote, “Values are the key to the evolution of a sustainable society not only because they influence behavior but also because they determine a society’s priorities.” (4)
In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development in its seminal report, Our Common Future, noted, “The planet is passing through a period of dramatic growth and fundamental change. … Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable – to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. … [however] The changes in human attitudes that we call for depend on a vast campaign of education, debate, and public participation.” (5)
The 1993 Parliament of World Religions issued "The Principles of a Global Ethic" that included the statements: “The planet is being destroyed … We condemn the abuses of world ecosystems … There already exist ancient guidelines for human behavior which are found in the teachings of the religions of the world and which are the condition for a sustainable world order.” (6) The National Academy of Sciences’ comprehensive 1999 study, Our Common Journey, devoted to “The reconciliation of society’s development goals with the planet’s environmental limits over the long term … [pointed out that] a normative judgment, both scientific and moral …[is needed to pursue] our threefold conceptualization of a successful transition -- meeting human needs, preserving life support systems, reducing hunger and poverty.” (7)
The Earth Charter released in 2000 suggested sixteen principles to achieve harmony between civilization and nature, as well as among people. The Charter’s preface states: “The choice is ours: form a global partnership to care for Earth and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life. … Fundamental changes are needed in our values, institutions, and ways of living. ... When basic needs have been met, human development is about being more, not having more.” (http://www.earthcharter.org/) In 2004, Paul and Anne Ehrlich made a persuasive case for A Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior, “… to expose society to the full range of population-environment-resource-ethics-power issues and thus be a major tool for conscious evolution.” (8) Also in 2004, the book Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update asserted, "A sustainable world can never be fully realized until it is widely envisioned." The authors list "human virtue" as one of the characteristics required for the "transition to sustainability." (9)
Upon induction into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Physics Nobelist Eric Cornell remarked, “Should scientists, as humans, make judgments on ethics, morals, values and religions? You bet.” (TIME Magazine Essay, 10/14/05) In a prefatory note to the September 2005 issue of the Scientific American highlighting “Crossroads for Planet Earth” the editors address the choice between environmental sustainability and environmental collapse by commenting, “Science is not and should not be the sole factor in decision making; others such as moral values are also needed.”
Wayne Baker reflected in 2005 on findings of the World Values Survey, “America has a durable system of transcendental values in which multiple sources of absolutism such as society itself and religion per se, are mutually reinforcing.” (10) Pulitzer Prize winner, Jared Diamond wrote in his 2005 book, COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, "For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline . ... But we are also the first to enjoy the opportunity of learning quickly from developments in societies anywhere else in the world today, and from what has unfolded in societies at any time in the past." (11) Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jimmy Carter wrote insightfully about values also in 2005, including issues of “environmental quality, and justice for the poor” among the issues challenging our nation. (12) In the November 2005 issue of ENVIRONMENT, Leiserowitz, Kates, and Parris argued, “... there is a great need for collaborative research to identify, measure, and explain trends and changes in global sustainability, values, attitudes and behavior. (13) In his 2005 Christmas Message, Pope Benedict XVI called for a “new world order based on just ethics and economics” in the emerging technological era. (NYTimes, 12/28/05). In his masterly 2006 The Parliament of Man, Yale's legendary Paul Kennedy cited the need for improvements "in the hearts and consciences of humankind" to cope with global warming, erosion of our environment, and issues of human rights. (14)
Some Evidence (15)
An Environmentally Unsustainable Global Society.
By 2050, world population is expected to increase 50 per cent, to about nine billion, coinciding with more than a four-fold increase in the global economy. However, present demands on our planet’s finite resources of air, water, land, sunlight, and plant and animal life to support humanity now exceed their natural regenerative capacity by about 23 per cent. This excess incapacity is increasing at a rate of one to two per cent each year. Moreover, most of the energy presently used to power the economy is derived from a peaking supply of fossil fuels that is dominant in generating the global warming now perturbing the life-supporting capability of the environment.
An Economically and Socially Inequitable Global Society.
On the average, each one of the one billion individuals in the industrialized countries produces and consumes six times more goods and services to meet their basic needs and to satisfy their optional “wants” than does each individual in the five billion people in developing countries. This individual capacity to produce and consume is expanding three times more rapidly in industrial countries than it is in developing countries. Similar inequity exists within each group of countries. Simultaneously, the growth of population in developing countries is four (CK THIS) times that in the industrial countries, further magnifying the inequity between the two groups of countries. More than a billion people live in dire poverty in the developing countries. Of special importance, disproportionate use of world energy to power their economies separates the industrial and the developing nations.
A Fractious Global Society.
The competition for Earth’s life-supporting natural resources that have characterized military conflict among nations for millennia are now being exacerbated by the growing stress that more people – as well as many increasingly productive individuals – are imposing on the Earth’s carrying capacity. Moreover, the spread of nuclear weaponry with its potential to obliterate civilization is altering the nature of military conflict and opening the way to a new era of terrorism.
The two main forces that determine the future size of the global economy and the size of the economic gap between the industrial and the developing countries are (a) the rates of population growth, and (b) the rates of gain in Gross Domestic Product per capita that prevail within each of these two groups of nations. These forces depend ultimately on the choices of individuals. These choices, in turn, depend on access to the storehouse of knowledge and on the human values that influence how that knowledge is used. A number of future scenarios can be calculated from a suite of rates for these two forces. The analysis can even be carried down to the level of individual countries. From an array of such scenarios, it is possible to select the one that most nearly corresponds to an attractive future for civilization and develop strategies for the pursuit of that scenario.
A Vision
The vision of a global society in which all basic human needs and an equitable share of life’s amenities are met by each individual in successive generations while maintaining a healthy, physically attractive, and biologically productive environment provides an overarching focus with the potential of uniting the diverse cultural, ideological, political, and religious persuasions of the world to agree on a universal set of human values, attitudes, and behavior.
Endnotes
1. Osborn F. 1948. Our Plundered Planet. Boston: Little Brown. 201 pp.
2. Boulding K. 1966. “The economics of the coming Spaceship Earth." pp. 3-14 in Jarrrett H. (Ed.). Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
3. Meadows DH, Meadows DL Randers Jm and Behrens WW. 1972. Limits to Growth. New York.
4. Brown L. 1981. Building a Sustainable Society. New York: Norton. 433 pp.
5. World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our Common Future. London: Oxford. 400 pp.
6. Kung H. (ed) 1993. Declaration Toward A Global Ethic. Chicago: Parliament of the World's Religions. 24 pp.
7. National Research Council, Board on Sustainable Development. 1999. Our Common Journey. Washington DC: National Academy Press. 363 pp.
8. Ehrlich P. and A. 2004. One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future. Washington: Island Press. 447 pp.
9. Meadows DH, Randers J. and Meadows DL. 2004. Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. White River Junction: Chelsea Green. 338 pp.
10. Baker W. 2005. American Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 307 pp.
11. Diamond J. 2005. COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking 575 pp.
12. Carter J. 2005. Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis. Simon & Schuster. 212 pp.
13. Leiserowitz A, Kates R & Parris T. 2005. “Do Global Attitudes and Behaviors Support Sustainable Development?" ENVIRONMENT. v. 47, n. 9. pp. November, pp. 22-39
14. Kennedy P. 2006. The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Futre sof the United Nations. Random House. 361 pp.
8. Ehrlich P. and A. 2004. One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future. Washington: Island Press. 447 pp.
9. Meadows DH, Randers J. and Meadows DL. 2004. Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. White River Junction: Chelsea Green. 338 pp.
10. Baker W. 2005. American Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 307 pp.
11. Diamond J. 2005. COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking 575 pp.
12. Carter J. 2005. Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis. Simon & Schuster. 212 pp.
13. Leiserowitz A, Kates R & Parris T. 2005. “Do Global Attitudes and Behaviors Support Sustainable Development?" ENVIRONMENT. v. 47, n. 9. pp. November, pp. 22-39
14. Kennedy P. 2006. The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Futre sof the United Nations. Random House. 361 pp.
15. Malone T, & Yohe G. 2002. “Global Partnerships for a Sustainable, Equitable, and Stable Society.” Journal of Knowledge Management, v.6, pp, 368-378
