On Growth

[p. 361]

52. Edwin M. Martin

Ambassador Edwin M. Martin is chairman of the Development Assistance Committee at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.
He was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1908. He studied at Northwestern University in Illinois.
In 1945 he was adviser on Far Eastern economic affairs in the office of the Assistant Secretary of State at the State Department in Washington, D.C.
In 1946 he became acting director of the Office of Economic Security Policy; in 1948, deputy director in the office of international trade policy; in 1949, director of the office of European regional affairs. In 1952 Mr. Martin was appointed special assistant to the Secretary of State. In 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him US ambassador to Argentina.

To consider the question raised by Limits of Growth and choose a course of action, it is necessary to make certain assumptions. I describe my positions thus because they can be no more than that; they are not susceptible - except one or two quite marginally - to logical debate or factual proof. You may allege that that too is an ‘assumption’ in the same sense. I accept the point, but it is mine.

I believe the following:

1. The uncertainties are too great to make forecasts based on the use of resources other than those of this earth and its atmospheric envelopes.

2. Man has an absolute priority in the use of the resources of this earth for his well-being.

3. His well-being can have as many meanings as there are people, but I include only his well-being while ‘alive’ on-this earth.

4. Each generation has a responsibility for the ability of the earth to serve the well-being of future generations, but how high a priority to

[p. 362]

give this claim and for how far into the future is an individual political choice incapable of objective definition.

5. All human beings are born with an equal ‘right’ to have a satisfactory life on earth - inequalities being the result of the actions of man, past and present, and hence changeable by man.

6. Those now living who have unsatisfactory lives, do so largely because of chance factors which have determined in what countries they were born, into which communities and families, and with what genes.

7. There is therefore a heavy obligation on those who have been lucky, to improve the levels of well-being of others, an attitude sometimes referred to as Christian charity or humanitarianism.

8. What constitutes a better level of living will differ widely between cultures and often between individuals and for each over time, the latter changes seeming to accelerate in recent decades.

On the basis of these eight points, I would draw the following points with respect to Limits to Growth:

1. For a repetition of current life-styles, there can be foreseen serious problems of pollution, resource exhaustion and population excess, but the date depends on an unpredictable rate of technological progress and on our skill at managing our societies' politics.

2. There is no reason to suppose that the current life-style, with its high average component of consumption of energy and things, will persist, rather the contrary seems likely, with important consequences with respect to the time pressure under which science must produce better answers.

3. Nevertheless, the majority of mankind lacks enough material goods, private and public, to permit a very minimum decent level of well-being, or life fulfillment. Hence, substantial further increases in output of things, consumption of energy and production of pollution will be required, regardless of whether zero population growth is achieved. The major adjustment needed in the foreseeable future is not in output but in the distribution of consumption. For the better-off people, the slogan should be not ‘zero growth’ but ‘zero consumption growth.’ Apart from redistribution within rich countries, major new channels must be found to shift both production and consumer goods from rich countries to poor ones.

4. This necessity to expand global output for a good many decades, considering the difficulties to be overcome in slowing population growth

[p. 363]

and the political obstacles to redistributing output globally, demands a major continuing effort to find new sources of energy and raw materials, to use and reuse them efficiently and to reduce their polluting effect. These will be major challenges for our scientists and technologists. It is vital that a decline in many societies in respect for material things not be accompanied, as it sometimes already seems to be, by a decline of interest on the part of the ablest minds in pursuing careers in scientific and technical research and innovation.

5. This continued pressure on resources provides added reason to reduce as rapidly as possible the waste of scarce resources, which is represented by production of military weapons to defend one part of mankind against another. These fears, if continued, can greatly complicate the lives of future generations. This is just one example, though an important one, of our great dependence for material and nonmaterial well-being, now and for the foreseeable future, on our political skills. These too still need careful nurturing in future generations.

6. While recognizing the importance of preserving resources, which we believe - we cannot know - will contribute to the richness of the life experience of future generations, we should not allow this concern to impede too greatly efforts to improve the lives of those now alive for whom existence is barely possible. This includes concern for our flora and fauna. The variety of species does enrich the lives of a small percentage of us, but one shouldn't forget the thousands, at least, of species which nature herself has eliminated.

From your remarks on Limits to Growth in the 1972 report on Development Corporation,¹ you gave the impression that you thought Limits to Growth was a little too pessimistic. You felt rates of growth and future disasters could be substantially modified by man. What makes you believe in the rationality of man?

I think, as you quoted me, I said can be substantially modified. This does not imply that I am sure they will be. I am convinced that if man can find the political will and the political organization to deal with this problem - which includes reduction of waste, of which arms expenditures are one, which includes a proper financing and advanced planning of science and technological research addressed to the problem, which includes a willingness of the best brains to work on these problems - then I think that the possibilities of finding additional resources, of finding new sources of energy, of reducing the pollution impact of production

1 See 1972 Review, Efforts and Policies of the members of the Development Assistance Committee, OECD, Paris, p. 28.

[p. 364]

can be achieved. I would emphasize that with concern for the position of the developing countries, I feel that we must find ways to continue producing more. The problem is not limitation of production for the foreseeable future, but a redistribution of consumption, so that many people - the majority of the world's population - who are now living at a subsistence level, can live halfway decent lives. Even though this may mean, in order to keep total off-cut within reasonable bounds, that people now living with two cars and a motor yacht, will get along with considerably less. I do think that man can effect this also by changing beliefs in what is important in the world and that we are seeing a generation in the richer countries which is less interested in material things and believes less that personal wealth is the answer to man's happiness. This could change consumption patterns and hence production requirements in a way which will postpone the date of crisis.

Carl G. Jung once said that ‘the imposing arguments of science represent the highest degree of intellectual certainty yet achieved by the mind of man.’² Do you believe that scientists could get the necessary ball rolling, to get the decisions taken that are necessary?

Perhaps it's my generation but I am on the whole a pessimist of what men of science acting in the social field, in the political field, can do in having an important influence on how the life of society should be conducted. By and large these are people who are looking for certainties, who are used to dealing with absolutes and who find difficulty in dealing with the compromises that are necessary between the multitude of individuals with different capacities, wants and ambitions, which is the very heart of all political life. Discoveries that scientists make may have a very important impact on social, political and economic life; but as individuals I feel their interventions have on the whole been naïve, unsophisticated and not always helpful.

But the shock effect of Limits to Growth, put together by scientists, had a healthy influence on public opinion.

This is right. The book, with all its defects, did focus attention on a problem in a way which was useful. I am not quite clear that it was done by scientists. It was a system-analysis approach, which tends to derive from social sciences, which must be distinguished rather clearly from physical sciences, natural sciences.

2 Carl G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, Little Brown Company (Boston, 1957), p. 3.