Logo DBNL
On Growth (1974)

On Growth

(1974)–Willem Oltmans–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

56. Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling is professor of chemistry at Stanford University, in Stanford, California.
He was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1901. He received his Ph.D. in 1925 at the California Institute of Technology, where he became a member of the teaching staff from 1922 to 1964. He has
also been visiting professor at Cornell University, the University of Illinois, MIT, Harvard University, Princeton University and the University of Madras, India.
Much of his scientific work has dealt one way or another with the nature of the chemical bond. He studied the structure of proteins, the molecular basis of general anesthesia, the rule of abnormal molecules in causing disease, and abnormal enzymes in relation to mental disease. He also studied the theory of the structure of atomic nuclei and the nature of the process of nuclear fission. During recent years much of his work has been centered on the application of chemistry to biological and medical problems.
In 1954 Professor Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry. In 1962 he was also given the Nobel Peace Prize. He received the International Lenin Peace Prize, the Gandhi Peace Prize and other awards and honors. Among some of his best-known works are No More War!, The Architecture of Molecules (1970), Science and World Peace, and Vitamin C and the Common Cold (1970), which was dedicated to Albert Szent-Györgyi.

Are you familiar with the study of Limits to Growth?

 

Yes.

 

Do you think it is a useful effort to organize the planet, to catalogue the planet, in order to better manage it in the future?

 

I think it is not only useful, but it is necessary and essential that we do this. I think that the course that we have been following is one that does an injustice to future generations of human beings. We must begin to catalogue our resources and to analyze our uses of these resources with this ethical principle in mind, that it is not proper for us to steal from future human beings all of the wealth of the earth.

 

In 1976 several dozens of countries, a quarter of all the nations in the world, will possess large nuclear reactors for the production of electric power. In the United States alone, by 1990, there will be some three hundred power reactors. How safe is this?

These reactors are not safe in the sense that there is no probability of a catastrophe. There have been enough reactor accidents to show that accidents with reactors will happen. I myself believe that nuclear reactors based upon nuclear fission should not be built, because once they are built - with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in each one - it is almost certain that they will be used. They will do damage by released radioactivity and they constitute a real hazard to the public, to the people as a whole or to the earth. There will be a chance that some serious accident spreading a large amount of radioactive substance over the surface of the earth will occur.

 

It has been forecast that it is even possible that gangsters would make homemade nuclear devices, and that atomic scientists do not take sufficiently into account the irrational behavior of people, like the threatening by highjackers to blow up the nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

 

Yes, of course, this is a real danger I have not mentioned, namely, that fissionable material cannot be completely controlled. It is possible to steal from a plant that produces fissionable isotopes a certain amount of fissionable material without this loss being discovered. This fissionable material might get into the hands of unscrupulous people, even the leader of some small nation. Or just some private person or organization which could then use it to the detriment of the world.1

 

That really could be possible? The catchphrase - a teaspoon of strontium 90 would be enough to kill the human race - is then true?

 

I would say that if you could get each person to take his share of this teaspoonful, it probably would do the job; but to distribute one teaspoonful of strontium 90 into the atmosphere would not kill the human race. There have been much larger quantities spread already in the atmosphere. This is enough, however, to do damage, to cause some people to die of cancer and to cause children, infants, with gross physical or mental defects to be born. In my book No more War and also in my Nobel Peace Prize lecture I gave my estimates of the amount of damage from nuclear tests that had been carried out up to that time, 1958 and 1963 respectively. In 1963 I estimated sixteen million: The bomb test carried out would in the course of time cause sixteen million infants who were born to have gross physical or mental defects, and who would

have been perfectly normal if bomb tests would not have been carried out.

This gives an idea when there was only six hundred megatons of nuclear explosives exploded up to that time, part fission and part fusion, in 1963.

 

Who makes certain that it is not dangerous to the planet to have underground tests?

 

Yes, who is it? I remember fifteen years ago when it was said that Secretary of States John Foster Dulles volunteered for all of us to be guinea pigs in this study. Dulles was one of the criminals, I would say, who had moved us ahead in this direction without proper consideration of the amount of damage being done to people. Of course, the Atomic Energy Commission suppressed the information that was available. It was very hard to get any information on these points out of the AEC. The corresponding authorities in the Soviet Union of course followed a similar course with suppression of the information about the amount of damage done to people by nuclear radioactivity, radioactivity from the nuclear bomb tests.

 

At Cal Tech2 it was established that underground nuclear power plants would be feasible.

 

Yes, it's just a matter of spending somewhat more money to put power plants underground. I don't think that this means that there still would not be a hazard. There would still be some danger, because there is the possibility of the blowout from an underground plant too, and the contamination of ground water, say, by radioactive substances. It is my belief that we should control the amounts of energy that are used. Following my own basic ethical principle, the principle of the minimization of human suffering. I believe that it is not important to the well-being of mankind, the happiness of individual human beings, to have larger and larger amounts of energy available and to allow day-to-day simple economic considerations to determine the nature of the life that we shall live. We could get along with means of transportation much simpler and much better than the ones that we have now. We do not need to have seventy miles per hour as the standard speed of operating on highways, or to have the ability to accelerate so rapidly that you can pass other high-powered cars on the freeway. We would be just as happy, perhaps

even happier, if we restricted the amounts of energy that now are being used. The propaganda by the power companies - to build more and more power plants, that we shall have to have four times as much energy per person twenty years from now as we have now - is really harmful and dangerous.

 

You mentioned we need a little more money to build underground atomic plants. But the Baltimore Gas and Electric company is giving up its two planned atomic units, costing seven hundred million dollars, because of environmental opposition. Other companies, like Con Edison, are cutting down on expansion, because they don't have the money needed. Where could the money be found to make nuclear plants safe and underground?

 

I don't advocate it. I was just commenting. I advocate not building nuclear power plants. I think that we can get along without them. We should lead simpler lives. Our economy, I believe, should be controlled in such a way as to preserve the wealth of the world.

 

Here you join Limits to Growth again.

 

That's right. I advocate that. I believe that we should have a decreased population. The quality of life is decreasing. We have inflation of the amounts of goods that one can buy. The quality of the food that the American people eat is lower than that fifty years ago or even twenty years ago. It is deteriorating rapidly. When I lectured in New Delhi in January, 1967, I said that I believed that in the United States should live only one hundred and fifty million people. We have at present some two hundred and ten million. I tried to analyze the mode of life, the needs for labor, the amounts of consumer goods that were made available, the food, the drinking water, the opportunities for recreation, the need to preserve primitive areas, forests and so on. I reached the conclusion that there are already too many people in the United States. For India I estimated - they had just reached five hundred million in January of 1967 - that there should be only one hundred million people in India instead. In other countries of the world the optimum population which would permit every person to lead a good life should be perhaps one billion rather than three and a half billion. I do not believe that the goal of the United States should be to have a ten percent increase each year in the Gross National Product. I think we should level off the GNP, even decrease it, and decrease likewise the population.

It might interest you that Dr. Herman Kahn3 told me that for millennia we would have enough resources and we could easily feed twenty billion people. My question would be scientists seem to show such enormous gaps in beliefs and theories of what's possible and what's not possible, that the public must be at a loss whom to believe.

 

When I was debating with Edward Teller,4 of the University of California, fourteen years ago, someone said to my wife, ‘Now, your husband says one thing and Dr. Teller says another thing. How do I know whom to believe?’ And my wife replied, ‘You just look at them and listen to them and decide who is the one to believe.’ In this case too. Herman Kahn was a student in my class. He came to only three lectures and then gave up the course. I don't think Herman Kahn has attacked these problems from the standpoint of ethics and morality. It has been said that everything that becomes scientifically and technically possible will be done. This is nonsense. There is no reason for us to try to do everything just because it is possible. There is no reason to have fifteen billion people on earth even if it is technologically possible or to keep them alive by using all possible resources, sacrificing everything to the job of just keeping people alive. The thing to do is to decide how many people can lead reasonable lives on earth and then work toward the goal of permitting this number of people to lead these lives.

 

What role do you ascribe to scientists in the future management of the globe?

 

Of course I think that everyone should have some knowledge and understanding of science, but I don't believe that scientists should run the world. They should contribute. I believe that a scientist has two duties: First, as a citizen, to help get his fellow citizens the benefit of what special knowledge and insight he has, this is educational; the other is to make up his own mind about questions and to tell his fellow citizens what his opinions are. It is important that these opinions be expressed, but we should not have any oligarchy of scientists.

 

If we are going to manage the planet like the Club of Rome is advocating, how to get away from mostly mediocre politicians to say the least, or corrupt dictatorships?

 

The planet is not run only by mediocre politicians and other powerful

people, but by immoral politicians, immoral powerful generals, and immoral business people. The principle of business is to sacrifice everything to profit, even morality and ethics. This the government is supposed to control, but of course governments are immoral too. They have not taken the broad view. They do not look into the future. Governments do not make decisions because of their ethical soundness, instead they are expedient and selfish. This is what we have to change. There is a basis, a fundamental basis to science, namely, honesty and willingness to accept the truth. This is the most fundamental principle in science. This very principle of honesty and willingness to search for and accept the truth is one that needs to be introduced into government, the government of the world. This is going to be difficult to do, but I think that we should strive to achieve this goal. Analysis of the problems as done by the Club of Rome is extremely important. There should be a basic principle involved, and I believe that the principle that I've formulated and have described in many places, the principle of the minimization of human suffering, taking into account the suffering of future generations of human beings, as well as of people now in existence, is one that could be used as the basic principle for all decision making.


Vorige Volgende