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On Growth (1974)

On Growth

(1974)–Willem Oltmans–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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26. Barry Commoner

Professor Barry Commoner was born in New York City in 1917. He graduated from Columbia College in zoology and obtained a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University in 1941. In 1947 he came to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, as an associate
professor of plant physiology. From 1965 to 1969 he was chairman of the department of botany, and during the same years he was appointed director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at the same university.
In 1966 he published Science and Survival. His latest work is The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology, Alfred A. Knopf (New York, 1972).

What is your reaction to Limits to Growth?

 

I have studied the report and I find it very seriously flawed, scientifically. The approach that Limits to Growth uses is to gather data regarding the historical trends of various parameters that are involved in the world resource environmental crisis; it then projects these curves mathematically and allows them to interact in the computer. The way in which various parameters interact - e.g., population growth, availability of food, technological development - is of course the substance of the computer program. And it becomes crucial to ask what mechanisms of interaction were chosen to design the computer program.

When you examine the Club of Rome report, you find only a very brief statement, asserting that the interaction among the factors was determined by discussions with leading authorities and by examining the literature. The interactions that were chosen have eliminated entirely one set of parameters, namely economic factors and social factors. Leaving those factors out has fixed the software of the computer - i.e., the program - in such a way that it eliminates the possibility of altering the relationship by economic measures. To put it very simply: If economic information does not come into the computer, then the computer gives answers which do not relate to economics. That is the result of how the computer program is designed.

The approach which I have used is quite the reverse. I have looked at historical trends in pollution levels, population size and so on, and have asked, what interactions among these factors are revealed by these trends. This is described in my book The Closing Circle. As you know, the outcome of that study is that in a country like the United States the chief cause of the rapid rise in pollution is not the growth of population, not the growth in per capita consumption, but the change in productive technology which has been dictated by economic causes, by the desire

to raise productivity and profit. This leads me to the conclusion that the chief driving force for the pollution crisis in the United States is an economic one. Therefore, the chief cure has to be sought for in the realm of economics.

This is precisely the area which the MIT design avoids in its conclusions. In other words, built into the entire mathematics of the Meadows design is the elimination of what my data indicate is the most important factor in dealing with pollution, namely the economic forces. And so, on scientific grounds, I have to conclude that the analytical technique used by Meadows has built into it an inevitable error.

 

It will not ‘close the circle.’ Do you believe in a computer model as a means to -

 

No. I think computer models are at the present time misleading because they force you to select the data in such a way as to leave out any information which cannot be put into strictly mathematical terms. It is much better for us to accumulate data and think about it than to turn the data over to the computer. In my experience a computer model built on an inadequate understanding of the theoretical basis of the problem is not only useless but misleading. The Meadows study has been a step backward. Let me explain why.

In the first place to assert that there is a limit to growth, you would not need a computer. Many ecologists, myself included, have said over and over again that if you look at the theoretical base of ecology, and the characteristics of the biosphere, it is absolutely clear that there is a limit to the growth of the exploitation of the biosphere.

Therefore, the chief conclusion of the report that there is a limit to growth is redundant. The basis for that conclusion is presumably in the computer analysis. However, the computer analysis is so wrong and so misleading that they have added to this old idea a set of misleading conclusions. And so, in a sense, I think what the Meadows study has done is really a step backward, because it takes an old idea and gives it a misleading meaning, a misleading coating.

And for people to feel that the basic issue in solving the problems of the world is to control growth is in my view wrong, although it's clear that we cannot grow forever. The question that has to be asked is, What is the reason for our present difficulty? If we want people to act, they have to understand why they are in trouble and what needs to be done about it.

There is no evidence that the reason for our present environmental difficulties is that we have come up to the limit of growth. In other words, if as we all know, there is a limit to the growth of production - let's say in the United States - clearly you could be in environmental trouble if we had grown to the point where we were near that limit. But that is not the reason for the environmental troubles in the United States. For example, why have we got into trouble with power production?

Let me go back. Power production is going up very fast, and it's a major cause of pollution. One of the reasons is that we have shifted production from metals like steel to aluminum. Aluminum production requires a great deal more electricity. Now why have we shifted from steel to aluminum? Because we are running out of steel? No, because there is more profit in making aluminum than in steel, and in our competitive society production shifts over to where there is more profit.

The point I am making is that the reason for our trouble is not that we are approaching the growth limit. The reason for the trouble is that we have developed technologies which are insanely counterecological. I rather imagine that if we took all the food in the world and divided it equitably among the people of the world, nobody would starve - which tells us right away that the reason for starvation is not that there isn't enough food, it is that we don't distribute food in an equitable way. It becomes an economic and political issue.

Therefore, I regard the MIT report as a step backward, because it takes what is an abstract and generally accepted notion - that there is a limit - and in a false way applies it to the immediate situation. And I think it gives people a misleading idea as to why they are in the trouble that they are in now. I also think that it is very unfortunate that the Club of Rome decided to give the report the kind of political push which it did, resulting in many people accepting the ideas without having the opportunity to look at the scientific background.

 

You see also a political danger because you have mentioned in the Herald Tribune that the environmental crisis is the world's most dangerous political issue today.1

 

Yes, I think that the history of the Club of Rome report is an example of what I meant by the environmental issue becoming a dangerous political issue. It seems to me that if on the basis of this study you come to the conclusion that the only way to solve the environmental crisis is

to cut down on consumption and population, you are very near to the next step which is exemplified by the Blueprint for Survival in England, which lays out an authoritarian regime for Britain, dictating where people shall live, what shall be built and so on. In other words a highly organized - orchestrated, as they say - regime. Obviously it is necessary to decide what things should be done, but what is so politically dangerous is that the scheme is put forward for enormously rigorous control over the life of the country without saying one word about who is in control. In my view that kind of approach lays the ecology concept open to, shall we say, fascist use.

 

Do you feel that for a proper rational use of US resources, socialization in the classical Marxist sense of the nation's economy is essential, what Peter L. Berger2 has called ‘a hidden agenda for socialism’?

 

The main lesson from the environmental crisis is that the biosphere represents essential productive capital, both in industrial and in agricultural production. It is also clear that the biosphere is necessarily, a socially owned good. It makes little sense to divide up the air or the water and assign it to private ownership. We are now confronted with what I regard to be a fairly important new idea, which I emphasized in one of the chapters of my book. For the first time it has become clear that all present economic theories, whether capitalist or socialist, have neglected a major factor of production, the biosphere. In a sense both socialist and capitalist theories are therefore missing this important constituent. When you turn around and incorporate this new constituent into these two theories, what I find is that the concept of private-enterprise economics clashes violently with ecological imperatives. Clearly it makes little sense to organize ownership on a private basis when not only the human organization of production in the classical Marxist sense is socialized but when part of the capital, the biosphere, is socially owned.

In other words, as I said in The Closing Circle, private enterprise, free enterprise, may be free, but it is not wholly private, because every private enterprise is using a social good, the biosphere. Thus, a system of production which is based on social ownership of the means of production would appear to be more suitable than one of private ownership. In that sense, the classical Marxist concept of socialized ownership of the means of production, namely socialism, appears to fit in better with the needs of the biosphere than one involving private ownership.

People always say, ‘Why is it that the Soviet Union has pollution?’ The reason is that in the Soviet Union just as in the United States, the biosphere was ignored as an essential productive factor. While in the US, managers looked for more profit; in the USSR, the managers tried to fulfill the production quotas. But it appears that often they fulfilled their productive plans without worrying about the consequent pollution.

Now that in both countries the need for preventing environmental pollution has become clear, I think that it may be easier to do it in the Soviet Union than it is in the United States. In the US it is already clear that there is a serious clash between the industrialist's desire for profit, the worker's desire for a job and the people's desire for clean environment. In many places the pressures for cutting down industrial pollution has cost people jobs. The clash between the desire for profit and what the workers want is likely to be intensified as we attempt to clean up the environment.

 

How come to action?

 

As I describe in detail in both my books, the issues here are not scientific. They are political, they are value judgments. You have to judge between the value that you get from a nuclear power plant and the hazard from the radioactivity. Now, that is not a scientific question. For that you don't have to be a Ph.D. You don't need to have any particular profession for that. What you need is an understanding of the facts and a human conscience.

Now, as far as I am concerned, everyone in the world has the right to exercise their conscience. I think that what prevents most people from making the decisions on these matters is that they don't have the necessary facts. And in my view the role of the scientist, the professional, is to see to it that the people of the world have the necessary facts. I am willing to rest on the people's decision. I am not willing to rest on the decisions of Mr. Peccei3 and his friends among the prime ministers. They are not, in my view, given the right to lead the conscience of the world.

What we have to recognize is that we are faced with a new political situation. We have neglected an important aspect of our lives, which is now being reintroduced into our thinking. I think that the judgments ought to be made on the basis of worldwide popular understanding and opinion. You may say, well, how are people going to act? I don't know how they are going to act. People invent ways of acting once they understand the situation.

In the debate that I had with Peccei, I pointed out that he put his faith on prime ministers and scientists and I put my faith on the wisdom of ordinary people. And we'll see who is right.

 

But Peccei also puts faith in journalists and media. Would you add to the group of people that could be of help to arouse human consciousness, journalists?

 

Yes, of course that is true. In the United States it has been very evident. We have a movement among scientists - the Scientist Institute for Public Information - for bringing this information to the public. We get enormous help from the news media and journalists. The political issue here is whether you trust the people or feel that you have got to manipulate the opinion of politicians. I would rather trust the people.


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