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On Growth (1974)

On Growth

(1974)–Willem Oltmans–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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39. Elisabeth Mann-Borgese

Elisabeth Mann-Borgese is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Santa Barbara, California.
Mrs. Mann-Borgese was born in Munich, the daughter of famous German writer Thomas Mann. She studied at Zurich and Chicago. She is a member of the American Society of International Law and the American Society of Arts and Sciences.
She is an author of several books, Ascent of Women, To Whom It May Concern, The Language Barrier and The Ocean Regime. She is the widow of Dr. Borgese, an Italian professor of literature.

You are mainly preoccupied with world organization, with international organizations. Limits to Growth - as a first step to design a planetary model - does this strike you as an important endeavor?

 

Well, the way you put the question, I would have to answer it negatively. I do not think that this book, such as it is, will be the beginning of a world order, let us say. I put myself on the side of the sixty people in the developing and socialist nations, whom you are going to interview subsequently, which is where I think I belong anyway. This does not diminish the importance of the book. I think the book is very important, even if I disagree with most of its premises. I think that the book points up the need for a global management of resources. I one hundred percent agree. I think that it demonstrates this need forcefully, and that is very valuable.

 

But what does the report lack, in your opinion?

 

The report in my opinion is defective in some respects. It is defective because it leaves out a number of absolutely crucial variables in its calculations. I mean an economic statement that leaves out the social dimension of the problem is to me as far remote from reality as anything. I think in this I would concur with the criticism advanced by my friend

Gunnar Myrdal.1 Another thing which of course is almost inevitable, is almost intrinsic in this method, is that the projection is based on present trends, on present technologies. If there is one thing sure, it is that there will be very dramatic changes in these things. So, for instance, I mean if one speaks of the limits, not of growth right now, but of resources, I think there the projections are probably wrong because the technologies that we are developing, let's say in the field of energy production, are changing. This problem just may change aspect altogether within the next fifty years, I would say.

 

By borrowing energy from the sun and further nuclear fusion development -

 

I think in particular of fusion energy. We will have a source of energy which will be certainly cheaper than any that man has tapped so far. We will have unlimited sources of energy because the deuterium from the oceans is unlimited. We will be freed of geopolitical restraints as far as energy sources are concerned. This, I think, will amount to what you might call an energy revolution. Mind you, that if one has potentially unlimited energy, as I think we will have, that means - if I may quote my colleague, Professor Roger Revelle2 - theoretically illimited energy means illimited resources.

 

How about food?

 

Even food. The amount of proteins that one can produce out of oil, theoretically would be sufficient to feed the world population twice over. I don't say that it is going to work out that way. I don't say that we are not going to head toward starvation and crisis and disaster, because I think we are. I say merely that one can make a projection which is as far from the reality as Mr. Meadows' is, or just as valid.

 

But organizing the planet - would that not require first inventory taking like the Club of Rome has tried to promote?

 

Absolutely. Inventory taking and monitoring is an inevitable premise. One has to base whatever one does on that. I think that the MIT as a methodology is very, very important and will continue to exercise quite some influence. But this is but one projection. It is an interesting one, but I need not accept it as the only valid one. I think that the emphasis

on the Limits to Growth is very one-sided and is certainly not well received as you will find out when you go to the developing nations. It is not well received among people whose economy must expand and must grow. One then has to convince them that it's not meant that they should stop their development but that what we have in mind is a redistribution of resources, a redistribution of wealth. When they will be sure that we are earnest about that, they may change their mind. In other words, the Limits to Growth to me is another word for socialism. If one is ready to accept world socialism, then one can accept Limits to Growth, otherwise one cannot.

 

In other words, you concur much with the speech that Robert S. McNamara made in Stockholm.

 

Oh, yes, I think that he has made some very, very important statements, in Stockholm and even before, in Canada.

 

Have you seen a speech for the World Bank in September, 1972? He mentioned, for instance, that the World Bank is financing birth-control measures in Indonesia, which will cut the Indonesian population between '72 and the year 2000 by fifty million people.3

 

Well, I have a notion he may be kidding himself.

 

Why?

 

Just like the pollution problem or the environment problem, the population problem is so immensely interacting with so many other things that if you think that you can single it out and cope with it in isolation by emphasizing birth control techniques one is kidding oneself.

 

What to do about the unbelievable barriers between scientists of all different disciplines, who compete with each other instead of working together on solutions to save the planet?

 

One finds the same thing in peace research. All these thousands of organizations and they don't talk to each other, thereby making the whole enterprise futile. Of course, systems analysists and economists and what-not must work together. I think one of the basic lessons of these last twenty, twenty-five years is that all these attacks on the world's problems

have to be international and interdisciplinary, otherwise we just won't get anywhere. But the fact is that if one attacks problems that way, one runs into immense difficulties: nationalism, parochialism, departmentalism, but not only among people, but also among the funding agencies, because your projects usually fall between each and every chair and if one deals with environment, for instance, then one is told, our funds are only to finance national projects. If you deal with international aspects of it, well then one must go under international relations. These two things must be done together and can no longer be separated with the hope that Maurice Strong's4 new agency will make a new departure in this direction. The philanthropic organizations, the funding organizations have not caught up with the changes of the last twenty-five years. The financial infrastructure is very far behind, and this makes work extremely difficult.

 

From my dozen years of work at United Nations headquarters, I know it was always said, ‘Wait until China joins, then we will really have an international organization.’ The first thing Peking did was veto Bangladesh. What is your view on the future of international organizations in general?

 

I think that international organization is evolving very rapidly. Pure diplomacy, old style, has no future, unless it, too, joins the trend toward the interdisciplinary essence of problems.

 

What exactly do you mean by interdisciplinary order?

 

I mean that international life today consists no longer merely of relations between governments. It is no longer merely political. There are a lot of other interests and a lot of other forces which are not governmental and not political and they overcut and undercut nation-states. They have to interact properly with politics if we want to get any practical result. The United Nations reflects the world of thirty-five years ago. It is not set up to cope with the problems of our day. The functional agencies in some respects are more fortunate - I mean WHO and so on. But even they are very, very limited. I think the time has definitely come to develop new forms. I have very high hopes. I have spent my last four years on working on the problem of ocean space, in close cooperation with the US Seabed Committee. I think that the new international organization that will emerge for the management of ocean resources will

be a breakthrough toward a new form of international organization, which I would say should join together economics, industry on the one hand, science on the other, and politics - a new form of international organization which then may be applicable to other forms of resource management or of transnational activities in general.

 

How would Thomas Mann5 have viewed Limits to Growth? He was rather pessimistic about mankind's future anyway, wasn't he?

 

My father was definitely not very much interested in economics, nor was he a materialist. He was not. He was a humanist throughout. The question of economic growth would not have been uppermost in his mind, I think. But many people today tend to throw out the baby with the bath. Of course I agree with the idea advanced by many developing nations like the Chinese on the one hand, and the humanists on the other hand (and the Chinese are humanist, very profoundly, in a deep sense), that economic growth is not everything, that there are other values in life besides economic growth. But that does not mean throw it out. It means put it into the right perspective. With this aspect of the thesis of MIT, I agree. But once one puts one's emphasis instead on stopping it and on slowing the progress of people who instead need faster and faster progress, then I disassociate myself from it.

 

But Aurelio Peccei6 is working for human equilibrium, no?

 

I think that whatever I said today is in agreement with what Aurelio thinks. I have had long talks with him over the years. I found nothing to disagree with him at all. He is a humanist in the best sense of the word. I do not think that nowadays and especially in dealing with international relations, which means in dealing with the people of the Third World, one can say that economics is secondary. It is not secondary. It is as important as anything else. That does not mean to say that it is the only thing. Certainly considerations of distribution, of equilibrium, of social values, of social justice, are inseparable from purely economic considerations. I think as a matter of fact, to deal with economics in itself when you look at world organization, is old-fashioned, is as old-fashioned as to neglect it, to ignore it.

 

You know that I am aiming at the second volume of interviews prepared in mostly the Third World. Would you think it a positive development to schedule for '74 a Bandung-type7 conference between the seventy

minds of the first volume and the seventy minds of the second volume?

 

It is a splendid idea. I think as a time schedule we have time enough to organize that. I think it is a splendid idea, I look forward to it. I want to be there.

 

A last question: Are you working on a book?

 

Unfortunately I am working on about three books. One is coming out now, called Pacem in Maribus, and concerned with activities to design an international ocean regime.

 

You borrowed the name from Pope John.

 

Yes.

 

What importance can we attach to the ninety-one nation convention signed in London in November 13, 1972, not to dump any more poisonous waste into the ocean?8

 

It is a step in the right direction. There are a number of steps in this direction now. But, by itself, it is not enough. First of all, dumping accounts for only a minor part of pollution. The most important sources of pollution are land-based. Pollution of the oceans is just one of the symptoms of the breakdown of our entire industrial-urban system. And this leads me to the second point: One cannot deal with pollution by itself. One can cope with it only if one addresses oneself to the basics of resource management and development. The emphasis on pollution controls betrays a Western bias. Which does not necessarily mean that it is wrong. It certainly means that it is too narrow.


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