On Growth

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40. Hugh Montefiore

The Right Reverend Hugh Montefiore, Bishop of Kingston-on-Thames, near London, was born in 1920.
He attended Rugby School, St. John's College at Oxford University, Westcott House and Cambridge University.
In 1954 he became dean of Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge. In 1963 he was nominated vicar of the University Church of Great St. Mary's also at Cambridge.
Since 1970 he has been Suffragan Bishop of Kingston-on-Thames. He is also a trustee of the Ecological Foundation of Great Britain. Among other works he has written The Question Mark: Can Man Survive? and Doom or Deliverance?

You spoke in your 1971 Rutherford lecture of ‘man as knocking against the limits of the world.’ This is exactly what Limits to Growth tries to get across.

Yes, man is knocking against the limits of the world. He is only knocking. He hasn't actually reached the limits of the world yet. But obviously if he continues to increase the number of his species, if he continues to increase the rate at which he uses raw materials and consequently increases the rates of waste, pollution and environmental deterioration, then he will - quite soon - reach the limits of the world. I hope it won't happen. My interest is in stopping it.

Pope Paul condemned contraception in his Humanae Vitae. You have called this document, ecologically speaking, the most disastrous Christian utterance of the century.

Yes, it is ecologically disastrous because it prevented the largest church in Christianity, with millions and millions of adherents, from using contraceptives in good faith or in good conscience. The Pope put restraints upon that, whereas I think the church should be leading the way towards

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a stewardship of mankind just as much as a stewardship of resources. This document was disastrous in as much as it turned its back upon this.

Teilhard de Chardin felt that humanity no longer was imaginable without science, but neither was science possible without some religion to animate it.

We have got to ask ourselves what science is. Science is simply knowledge about the natural world, about its nature and about its functioning. Science in that sense is not a way of life at all, it simply tells us how the natural world works; or anyway it comprises certain hypotheses about the way it works based on empirical observation; and hypotheses, of course, can be amended or proved wrong later. Now, this gives you no ‘way of life’ whatsoever. There may be a certain form of religion called ‘scientific humanism.’ But that is not science, it is only a series of value judgments based on what people think is valuable for them and consistent with their knowledge of science. I suppose it is a form of secular religion. Man cannot live without religion of some kind, because he needs ideals to inspire him and a worthy goal at which to aim. Some religions nowadays are even entirely secular. I myself believe that a transcendental religion of some kind is necessary, not only because it is true but also to meet the deepest needs of man's spirit.

You said in your writings, that no doubt one day the world would end, but you also spoke of a duty towards posterity.

It is a natural human instinct that parents should wish well for their children. Indeed it is implanted in us by the process of evolution that we should be concerned with our progeny, and so we all naturally are concerned for the welfare of our children. I think the extent of our duty to posterity is to keep open for them the options and to retain for them choice about the way in which to live and the way in which they wish to treat the world. We must not so abuse the planet that the environment will have permanently deteriorated.

But the degree of laissez-faire that is presently permitted to private capital will have to be considerably restricted. Who will restrict it? By a world management?

I must say that this question not only applies to private capital but

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also to public corporations and to government corporations, which can abuse the resources of the planet just as much as individuals. Restrictions will have to be placed upon them, first of all by national governments; and that can only be done by the consent of the people. Hence, the attitudes of the common person are of paramount importance. We should also reach international agreements, the more so because it is the multinational organizations which are so immensely powerful in this field. Multinational organizations can only be controlled by international agreements.

You have quoted Maurice Strong¹ several times, but he does not believe in a united world government.

I did not say ‘by united government.’ I said ‘by international agreement.’ That is another matter. I myself think that the world of tomorrow - if civilization as we know it is to remain - will have to be far more regionalized; people will have to identify themselves with townships, with neighborhoods, with communities, with regional areas, if they are to feel that they are participating and hence act with a sense of responsibility (because unless you participate, you do not act responsibly). But the fact that we shall require more regionalization also means that we shall require more international agreement. International agreement is not the same as world government. It means that countries are agreeing about certain tactics, not that they elect a world government which then tells them what to do.

But who polices the agreements?

I don't know. I haven't thought about this in sufficient detail. I take it that there will be a kind of sanction. I think that even though you decide to have a United Nations Army, no one would want to enforce this kind of thing by military means. You have to do it by international agreement and therefore by agreement to ostracize those countries which break the agreement.

But how to arrange the containment of world growth without some form of world body?

I can tell you that this afternoon, this very afternoon, at this moment,² an agreement with ninety-one countries is being signed here in London,

1 See conversation no. 30.

2 November 13, 1972.

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concerning the dumping of toxic materials into the oceans. If this can be done, then these kinds of agreements can be extended.

Yes, just as the world agreed through the United Nations that we should aid the Third World. What happened in Unctad III in Santiago de Chile? You know that not a single affluent society has yet given one percent of its national growth in direct aid.

Yes, I know all this. But it is very important to emphasize that the cure should not be worse than the disease. It would be comparatively easy to solve the problems of the environment by a government which is authoritarian whether fascist or socialist, but this cure would be as bad as the disease. I see no other possible solution than the gaining of the consent of a majority of people on the globe - or anyway of their governments - for international cooperation. I do not regard this as impossible. When I first started writing about the environment, some six or seven years ago, people thought I was mad. Well, perhaps I am, but not in this respect. When I look at the way in which knowledge has spread, attitudes have changed, action is beginning to be taken, as seen at the Stockholm Conference, then I do not regard this as impossible. I am not a doomsday man in this matter.

Sir Julian Huxley told me that the fishes are returning to the river Thames. There now is a minister of the environment in the British Cabinet. Isn't that seal part of a general deception?

I am sick and tired of the river Thames. Whenever national pollution is brought up, we are always told how many fish have been caught in the Thames at London Bridge as never before. Even at County Hall they put them in a tank as though this had solved our environmental problems. Of course there are aspects in which life in London is far better than ever it was environmentally. Look out of the window now. You will see a lovely clear November day, whereas twenty-five years ago you might as well have had a peasouper fog. Again, the Thames is cleaner. Yes. There have been things done, but this does not alter the fact that far more needs to be done than smokeless fuel or the fact that we drink all our water in London four or six times over. As for the ministry of the environment, this is just a conglomeration of three big ministries; and I do not myself think that the ministry of the environment has as

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yet tackled seriously the major environmental problems, such as a national policy for transport, or the question of a selective increase of growth, rather than encouraging a five percent package growth all round. I think it is a help to have a ministry of environment, but I don't think that as yet they have grappled with the very radical questions which face us.

Speaking about the young, you mentioned the suicide rates going up.

In a way, the young are our only hope in this matter. Firstly, because they are, after all, going to be in charge of the world very shortly; and secondly, because they are, on the whole, fed up with the consumer society. It's so materialistic, so concerned with the rat race, and of course many of them opt out. Many of them cannot take it, the rate of those who attempt suicide has gone up, there has been an alarming increase in drug taking and in alcoholism among the young. This is all part, alas, of the disintegration of our culture, which is a very complex matter but it's partly caused by the increase in urbanization and the materialistic outlook of our culture. So there are the dropouts. But the great majority of the young do not drop out, and therein, I think, lies our hope, because there are many of them who are determined that we will not continue our kind of affluent society, with each person seeking only to be better off than the neighbor next door.

I've worked among young people for nineteen years, and I regard them now as far more honest and better at facing up to real problems than they were when I first started living and working among them. The tragedy to me is that the institutional church lacks credibility to so many of them. Whereas they are determined that the present situation shall not go on, they have no real world outlook, no shining ideal of that to which they should aim, no real inspiration and vision of the Kingdom of God which they might help to build. And hence, one tends to see a lot of negative attitudes towards authority and a tendency towards anarchy in the proper sense of that word. The young lack this vision, and they also lack a self-discipline which is going to be necessary to build a better world. The proper use of our resources is something which is going to require a great deal of self-discipline. The ‘permissive society’ is usually thought of in terms of sex, but it is not going to help forward environmental improvement because permissive attitudes spread into the whole life.

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Do you think Limits to Growth has contributed to the raising of the consciousness of mankind to the realities of the planet?

I think it did a lot of good, and I think it did a lot of harm. I think it did a lot of good because it raised these questions and received a great deal of publicity; I think it did a lot of harm because I think the model that was used on the computer was nothing like sufficiently sensitive and detailed to produce a correct answer. For example, with this great increase in population, you will have also eventually what's called ‘the demographic transition,’ so that population does not go on increasing exponentially. When it comes to resources, you get some negative feedback when things go short, you use alternative resources, there are, I think, a great deal more complexities and difficulties, than those represented in the model. I am no expert on computers, but I think the model must be much much more sophisticated to carry a great deal of credibility. I am only criticizing as a first shot. I think the method of using a computer is as valid in this sphere as it is in any other sphere. It is an aid to thinking, it is no better in its results than in what you put into it, but it can make the kind of complex calculations which the human brain unaided cannot make in accurate detail, so it's a step forward.

The ‘MIT boys,’ as they are called by those who disagree with them,³ are the first to recognize this, but it was a first decisive step.

Yes, but this is really only the first step because, throughout this matter, the basic issues are questions of our attitudes, our motivations, our expectations. To tell mankind what will happen if we go on as we are is merely to prophesy about the unseen and the unknown, which they probably won't believe. What is required for humanity is a change of interior attitudes.

How to achieve that?

In my judgment such a fundamental change in deep-seated attitudes will only come about through - I measure my words - something like religious conversion and a sense of direct accountability, as well as by a clearer vision of where real happiness and joy lies, not in things but in people.

3 Professor William D. Nordhaus; see also conversation no. 19.