Dickson Despommier gives four answers: the Malthusian, the Darwinian, the Smithian, and his own.
Dickson Despommier:Well, if I were Malthus I’d give you that answer of course. My name isCharles Darwin, I’ll give you another answer. In fact, if I was AdamSmith I’d give you a third answer. Well, I have too many answers foryou. The mechanical era has sort of obviated the need for doomsdaypredictions with regards to out of control populations because everytime it appeared that we couldn’t do anything more, we could dosomething more. So we had the first green revolutions which I justtalked about. The second green revolution came when it became obviousthat if you don’t start fertilizing the ground with fertilizers, withfood supplements I should say, and if we don’t start trying to get ridof the competitor species, mainly the weeds with herbicides and alsothe pests that want to eat this crop, that we can outgrow to profusionas a result of the invention of dynamite by the way. Yeah, because itallowed us to clear the fields of all those rotten little trees that wehad to get rid of. So too bad, because we can use those trees again. Wenow find ourselves in another dilemma where we think the populationwill peak, and the food supply will dwindle, so we’ll be once againinvolved in a Malthusian mind game. I don’t believe that for a minute.I think that that whatever problem is presented to the human species,we’ve got such a big cerebral cortex we can solve it if we all agreeto. And that’s the issue. Do we want to solve the next problem to usherin the third green revolution? The second one was all of thosepesticides, herbicides and fertilizer things, plus not geneticallymodified foods but certainly highly selected foods, and in fact, if youlook at our foods today virtually every crop that’s grown originatedfrom some wild plant that you would not recognize. An apple was aboutthe size of a little pea. It started out in Russia someplace, and ifyou took a bite of it you wouldn’t be able to eat for a week. Yourmouth would be closed. It’s so sour that you wouldn’t believe thatsomeone would actually want to eat this thing. But yet domestication ofthat plant has now resulted in believe it or not 20,000 differentvarieties of apples from a single unit plant. All right, so you look atwheat, it’s been the same. You look at rice, it’s been the same. We’vebeen marvelous at selecting crops to fit into climates that are suitedfor the optimum growth of those plants. But what was there before?That’s the point. There was a natural ecosystem there before we plantedthose crops.
Recorded on: 6/10/08
The objection I have to the idea that the human race will find a solution to any problem is this;
The argument is misused to absolve one from his or her own responsibility to think about, criticize and change their own behavior. Yet when another person comes up with a possible solution (as per the argument) that solution is often rejected in favor of keeping the status quo simply for fear of change.
Division of labor has become what Adam Smith feared. The way people get stupid.