Predicting a Sustainable Future

0:00 one of the courses that I teach here at 0:02 the University of Michigan is called 0:04 predicting the future and in that course 0:06 one of the big topics or themes that we 0:08 engage with is the history of predicting 0:11 the future so one question that we can 0:14 address in connection with Earth Day is 0:16 what can we learn from the history of 0:19 predicting environmental futures about 0:22 how to evaluate present-day predictions 0:25 and how to think about present-day ideas 0:28 about what the future may hold 0:30 environmentally one episode that I would 0:33 point to from around the time of the 0:35 first Earth Day in 1970 is the history 0:39 of fears about overpopulation and 0:42 overpopulation induced catastrophes Paul 0:46 Ehrlich and a number of other people 0:48 around the time of that first Earth Day 0:51 in 1970 were making predictions that the 0:55 Earth's population had already exceeded 0:59 the capacity of the planet to sustain 1:03 and that because of that unless we got 1:07 our population the human Pablo blumen 1:10 population under control very swiftly 1:12 there would be global catastrophes along 1:16 the lines of global famines or pandemic 1:19 disease or what have you that would wipe 1:24 out kill hundreds of millions or 1:26 billions of people as early as the 1970s 1:29 or the 1980s there was a rather large 1:33 scale panic that was induced by the set 1:37 of highly extreme and apocalyptic 1:40 scenarios that were advanced by Ehrlich 1:43 and others it turns out that 1:46 overpopulation as an idea just 1:49 fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem 1:52 it saw people themselves and sheer 1:56 numbers of people as the problem as 2:00 what's automatically causing 2:02 environmental ills and there are a 2:06 handful of issues with that one is it 2:08 creates the question of if there's 2:10 overpopulation who is the over 2:13 right so there's sharp political and 2:17 cultural and moral ethical kinds of 2:21 consequences of speaking about people in 2:25 that kind of way but even just at a 2:27 basic level it was a gross 2:30 oversimplification to think that just 2:33 the sheer number of people on the planet 2:34 was going to single-handedly drive us 2:37 into global catastrophe the action if 2:42 you will is really at the level of 2:44 societal infrastructures and economic 2:47 structures and the sort of collective 2:50 actions and decisions that we make as 2:54 individual societies and as a global 2:57 society it turns out that people both 3:00 produce resources and consume resources 3:03 we're not just mouths to feed we're also 3:06 we have Minds we can change our destiny 3:10 if you will we can affect the future 3:12 through what we produce and what we 3:15 create and at the level of social 3:18 structures and social institutions if 3:22 infrastructures if social structures and 3:26 economic structures can create 3:28 environmental problems they can also be 3:32 redirected to solve or at least respond 3:35 to those same problems or those same 3:38 issues and so overpopulation was a badly 3:44 damaging misdiagnosis that led to 3:46 widespread panic and also led to in some 3:51 cases very coercive population control 3:53 measures so one thing I think is we need 3:56 to stop seeing people as the problem or 4:00 people as an inherent evil or an 4:02 inherent blight on the planet and we 4:05 need to take a much more complex and 4:08 nuanced look at social structures 4:11 sustainability is not just about the 4:14 human relationship with the natural 4:16 environment it's fundamentally a social 4:19 question as well as one that engages the 4:22 Natural Sciences another important 4:25 lesson that I think we 4:26 can learn is the importance of avoiding 4:30 extreme apocalyptic predictions there 4:34 are consequences to making predictions 4:36 of the future what we think is going to 4:38 happen in the future and what we talk 4:40 about as likely to happen in the future 4:43 affects the present it affects how we 4:45 act in the present and in the case of 4:48 Paul Ehrlich and the zero population 4:50 growth movement around the time of the 4:53 first Earth Day there were some very 4:56 serious consequences including things 5:00 like forced sterilizations there were 5:02 some grave abuses of human rights 5:05 connected with the panic and the fear 5:08 that apocalyptic over population based 5:12 predictions produced in people at the 5:16 time and so I think we need to be 5:19 careful not to lose the sense of urgency 5:21 that apocalyptic and very extreme scary 5:27 kinds of predictions can produce in us 5:31 because there may very well be need of 5:34 that kind of sense of urgency but at the 5:37 same time we need to be very careful not 5:39 to view people as a fundamental problem 5:43 or to advocate sort of anti humanistic 5:49 kinds of solutions to problems that may 5:53 not ever materialize in the way that we 5:58 think they might just as some of the 6:00 worst predictions of what would happen 6:02 as a result of the supposed 6:04 overpopulation of the earth just didn't 6:07 come to pass there were no global 6:09 catastrophes of the sort that Paul 6:12 Ehrlich predicted happening in the 1970s 6:15 in the 1980s