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On Growth (1974)

On Growth

(1974)–Willem Oltmans–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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50. Eugene Wigner

Professor Eugene Wigner was Thomas D. Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, from 1938 till he retired in 1971. In 1963 he received the Nobel Prize for physics.
Professor Wigner was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1902. He obtained a doctorate at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin in 1925. In 1930 he came to Princeton as lecturer. In 1937 he became an American citizen.
He is still teaching at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For many years he has been adviser to the US Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C.

Alva Myrdal1 said in Geneva recently in July, 1972, that during the past eighteen months there had been sixty-six atomic explosions. Are we in danger because of these continued experiments with hydrogen fusion?

 

Those experiments do not hurt many people. I think the danger from the radiation produced by weapons tests has been exaggerated - in many cases grossly exaggerated. Most of it comes, of course, from USSR tests. The real danger is that it won't stay with tests and it won't stay with experiments, but that either threats will be made of nuclear attack or that a nuclear attack will take place. Contrary to much of what we read, even that would not exterminate mankind, but it would be a trauma for the future to come which might be terrible.

 

But could we envision the use of limited nuclear weapons in Vietnam or in any area of conflict?

 

In Vietnam I don't think there is a danger because the United States will not use nuclear weapons there. I don't believe that the North Vietnamese will have nuclear weapons at their disposal. There is no real danger there of nuclear weapons. Actually I am more afraid of blackmail than of nuclear warfare. In other words, I am afraid that one day one country will go to another country and say: Unless you permit us to station regiments in St. Louis, Chicago, Boston and so on, we will kill tomorrow this many and that many of your citizens.

 

Like Hitler did with Rotterdam.

 

Like Hitler did with Rotterdam. That is what I am principally afraid of.

 

How safe is mankind from defaults in atomic planning, like atomic power generators?

 

Mankind is safe because such disasters can only strike a limited region. But a limited region could be struck, since we are all stupid. We cannot foresee with certainty how things will function. Some problems with reactors exist, but I cannot believe that the total calamity which will be caused will be significant on a global scale.

Would you go along with the approach of the Club of Rome, that in order to manage the planet we would need a model to study the interactions of pollution, population, resources, etc.?

 

I think these things can be exaggerated. I think we have to watch pollution, but if I look now above your head, I see the blue sky. And certainly we have enough welfare, enough affluence in America so that we don't need more pollution due to added production than we now have. Now, the population may increase, and that may increase the production and hence the pollution. Do you know how much the average temperature increases in the United States as a result of all the power which we produce? You see, if you look up, that we waste power a great deal; but the temperature increase is one-hundredth of a degree. That is not significant. We do put into the air, though, a number of things which it would be better not to have there. We do many, many things which are bad, including misinformation in the media, which is also pollution.

 

Misinformation on science in the media?

 

On everything. On the police, on how people vote, on almost everything. Misinformation on Vietnam, Also on pollution, and we should fight it. But the effect of physical pollution to mankind in its present form is, in my opinion, being exaggerated. I don't want to support the physical pollution of our environment, I want to reduce it; but there is a difference between wanting to reduce something and considering it to be a menace to mankind.

 

But look at Japan, there are very serious problems.

 

The density of population in Japan and the Netherlands is very much larger than the density of population in the United States or than the density of population in other areas of the earth. And you are right: If the density of population increases to such an extent, much more attention should be paid to danger of pollution. But even then I don't consider it as a menace to mankind. There are many things that need to be changed, but don't menace us. If you look around, you see books. They don't menace my life. Just the same, I would like to put them into order. But I fight against many things which are not a menace to my life and similarly we should strive to improve the atmosphere and surroundings.

When Rachel Carson wrote the Silent Spring the fight against insecticides began. You spoke about misinformation, well, Hannah Arendt would say, ‘The liar is defeated by reality.’ Did that book by Carson not help to raise the issue as Limits to Growth might help likewise?

 

Yes, it did help to raise the issue, and I admire that book. I admire her courage, her imagination. But I don't have to say that somebody fights for the survival of mankind in order to admire her. I think it may be worth doing even if it isn't the saving of mankind.

 

But do you foresee the world moving towards a form of world management?

 

I have an ideal for the future of the world, which is no longer ‘one world.’ I think that if we have a single government in the world, it will be autocratic, suppressing. My ideal is that there should be many nations -perhaps not many but several nations, perhaps even several cultures. And the different governments should vie with each other for the loyalty of their subjects. They should permit emigration from their country, as the United States permits emigration from our country, and settlement in other countries, so that people, if they are unhappy with their government and with their rulers, could move elsewhere. And that would induce the governments to cater for the welfare and happiness of their people rather than strive for power.

 

In La Condition Humaine Malraux2 changed the revolutionary into a painter. How can we make the world livable for all these people from all these developed and undeveloped, rich and poor? By changing them from what into what?

 

If I tell you how much the general welfare in the world increased in the world in my own lifetime, you would be amazed. I read a short time ago four signs of poverty: The first one was no running hot water; the second was no automobile; the third one was no radio. My grandfather was a physician. He lived in what was considered then reasonable affluence. He had no automobile, he had of course no radio and as for running hot water, he did not have running cold water either. And just the same he lived in happiness: Our welfare increased tremendously, and I do not believe that lack of welfare is a principal cause of unhappiness. I consider this as one point where the young people are right, the affluence is high enough.

In other words there is a limit to this affluence, and there should be a bending back or a zero growth of affluence in the rich world in order to let the rest of the world catch up.

 

In that sense zero growth of affluence for this country is enough, and indeed it will soon have very small increase of affluence. Most people have everything they need. There are many things, spiritual matters, where much improvement is possible. I admire many things which other countries do concerning welfare, but in America we have enough food, we have almost enough lodging, we have enough means of transportation, we have enough books; these are not our problems.

 

Twenty percent of the American population lives under the poverty line, so that would give the others a chance to catch up too.

 

This twenty percent under the poverty line reminds me always of the teacher who complained that in spite of all his work, in spite of all his effort and all his industry, half of his class was still below its average. The people who now live under poverty level, I would like to improve their lot, but it is much better than the average life was fifty years ago, it has a much higher standard than the average life had fifty years ago. Nobody has to go hungry. Once I decided I want to find out how much I have to spend for food. I went to the grocery store and looked for cheap food. I bought chicken backs and wings for eighteen cents, enough for three dinners.

 

Robert McNamara in his September 1972 speech before the World Bank said that none of the rich nations in the world really reached the minimum goal of aiding the underdeveloped nations. Would you feel that we have an obligation here to the rest, the largest half of mankind, while we go on spending billions on nuclear rockets?

 

Well, I think, as I told you, we help mankind because we discredited aggression. Aggression is one of the worst enemies of mankind, like the desire of some autocratic rulers and dictators to extend their power - as North Vietnam is trying to do. I will say this, even if I make myself unpopular.

 

All right. We in Europe always feel that our freedom is guaranteed unfortunately by your nuclear rockets. We recognize this fact. But on the other hand, would you tell us how many times can the United States destroy

the Soviet Union at this juncture or how many times the Soviets could destroy us and the money this costs?

 

This is one aspect of the misinformation which is rampant. I can present a calculation which I carried out myself. The Soviet Union has a possibility to evacuate its cities. If it evacuates its cities, and if we were to shoot all our rockets at the people and if the Russian antiballistic defenses were totally ineffective, we could kill a tremendous number of people - tremendous - about six million. More than half of what they lost in the second world war and almost a third of what they lost as result of all sorts of semiexecutions.

 

But, Dr. Wigner, that still leaves the common man with the question, Is it necessary? Albert Szent-Györgyi3 calls Brezhnev and Nixon ‘pigs,’ who continue to take the immoral responsibility to go on making more and more and more rockets, and they announce that the United States can destroy the Soviet Union a thousand times, et cetera.

 

That's just a foolish, incorrect, arbitrary statement, which is not true at all. Russia has a population of two hundred forty million. The United States can kill, if the Russians evacuate their cities, six million of them. That is not being able to kill everybody a thousand times. This is the possibility to kill every sixteenth person - no, every fortieth. The United States has not increased its missile power for two and a half years. In fact, the United States has decreased its missile power in the last two and a half years because the Russian missile defenses made this necessary. Not the civil defenses, the missile defenses. As a result of that, the United States was forced on MIRV, that is, to increase the number of its missiles, but decrease their size much more, in order to maintain a certain deterrent in spite of the growing ballistic-missile defenses of the Soviet Union. The last two and a half years the missile power of the United States decreased and did not increase. We did not increase it because we hoped Russia would follow soon. Russia did not follow and increased its missile power by a large factor. If somebody says the United States increased its missile strength in the last two and a half years, he is giving out false information.

 

Recently the New York Times mentioned that one US atomic submarine costs a billion dollars. For the same amount of money one could build a transit system for a US city. Why the hell do we have to spend such

fantastic sums of money on nuclear submarines if so much social work needs to be done?

 

I don't know. The New York Times is not infrequently spreading misinformation. I don't have it in my head how much a nuclear submarine costs. I don't know it.

 

Nietzsche foresaw the devaluing of all values. I sense that you are an optimist.

 

I am an optimist concerning the physical future of mankind. I am worried about what we should strive for. There is a beautiful Hungarian poem saying that man needs a goal, that he always strives for something, good or evil. Man needs a goal in order to lead a life that he enjoys, and I don't know what the future goal of man will be. In the past, in my generation still, it was to earn a decent living. This comes now free, at least in our countries, for the majority. I don't know what people will strive for, I am worried about the spiritual welfare of mankind, not about his physical welfare.

 

Baudelaire4 felt that we needed beauty in our lives to survive.

 

That is the problem. Where does the beauty come from? The fight for survival I think will be over, unless we can control the growth of population. If we can control the growth of population, the fight for survival will be won, and I am then worried about the fight for spiritual values, for purpose, a goal to man, a meaning. This is the problem that worries me, not the physical problems.


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