The Danish Peace Academy

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

John Avery
H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen

Chapter 20 LOOKING TOWARDS THE FUTURE

A sustainable global society

From the history sketched briefly in the preceding chapters, we can see that the impact of science on society has been profound and on the whole beneficial. However, we can also see that because the evolution of our social and political institutions is slow compared with the enormous speed of scientific and technological change, this change has frequently thrown society off balance. For example, the Industrial Revolution produced great suffering until social legislation, labor organization and birth control distributed its benefits more evenly. Similarly, the rapid lowering of death rates in the developing countries through the introduction of modern medicine has thrown these countries off balance: The resulting population explosion has produced terrible poverty and suffering and has blocked development. Equilibrium can only be restored by lowering birth rates; but when this is done the effects of medical progress will be purely beneficial.

Uncontrolled industrial expansion in the developed countries is now leading to a new situation where society will be thrown off balance: We now face environmental degradation and depletion of non-renewable resources. To prevent these negative effects of progress we must make the appropriate economic and social adjustments. Similarly, automation will lead to widespread unemployment unless we think carefully about the economic and political adjustments which will be needed to avoid it. Finally, science and technology have produced weapons of such destructiveness, and global communications and interdependence have increased to such an extent that our present international political system seems inadequate, characterized as it is by absolutely sovereign nation-states and an absence of international law.

Thus, the rapid growth of science-based technology has presented both dangers and opportunities: If we use science wisely - if we build a new global society where population is stabilized, where ecology and economics are merged to form a single discipline, and where our political and ethical development matches our technical progress, then we have the opportunity for a degree of widely shared happiness previously unknown in history. If not, technical progress presents us with dangers of catastrophe on a scale previously unknown.

It is interesting that the word for “crisis”, when written in Japanese, consists of two characters, one meaning “danger” and the other “opportunity”; and this Japanese double word is very appropriate to describe our present situation. It is up to us to build a future world where the opportunities will be utilized and the dangers avoided. Our responsibility to future generations calls us to give our best efforts to this cause.

The end of the Cold War provides us with a unique opportunity, because there is now a general consensus that war is unacceptable as a means of settling international disputes, and because of the enormous amounts of money which a reduction in military spending can release for constructive uses - the “peace dividend”. If properly used, the peace dividend can help us to take the steps needed to build a sustainable global society, and at the same time reemploy young people thrown out of work by automation.

What are the necessary steps towards sustainability? The Worldwatch Institute, Washington D.C., lists the following: 1. Stabilizing population; 2. Shifting to renewable energy; 3. Increasing energy effi- ciency 4. Recycling resources; 5. Reforestation; 6. Soil conservation. 1 All of these measures are labor-intensive, and they can therefore help 1Lester R. Brown and Pamela Shaw, Worldwatch Paper 48, March 1982. us to solve the problem of technological unemployment. Especially the shift to renewable energy sources will be an enormous, labor-intensive task.

The transition from fossil fuel use (at present 77 percent of total energy consumption) to renewable energy sources should begin immediately. This transition will be difficult and time-consuming because of the immense capital investment in our present energy-production system - roughly 8 trillion dollars - and because of the long lifetimes of installations - typically 40 years.

Renewable energy sources include wind energy, hydroelectric power, energy from tides, geothermal energy, biomass and solar energy. Power from nuclear fission is not renewable, since uranium is needed for fuel. Furthermore, widespread use of fission for power generation would carry a severe danger of nuclear weapon proliferation because plutonium is produced as a byproduct. Fusion does not have these drawbacks, but it is difficult to predict when or whether it will become an economically viable energy source.

Several forms of renewable energy technology have reached or are nearing the stage where they can compete in price with fossil fuels. For example, in Brazil a highly efficient technology has been developed for producing ethanol from sugar cane. Anhydrous ethanol is combined with 20% gasoline and used as a motor fuel. In 1981, Brazil produced 4 billion liters of ethanol for fuel at costs as low as 18.5 U.S. cents per liter. Vehicles driven on the ethanol-gasoline mixture produce very little local pollution, and no net CO2 is released into the atmosphere by the burning of ethanol derived from photosynthesis.

Another promising renewable energy technology uses thermal or photovoltaic solar energy devices to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It is estimated that solar installations covering 500,000 square kilometers (2% of the world’s desert area) could produce hydrogen equivalent to the world’s total fossil fuel consumption. The hydrogen would then be compressed and distributed by pipeline to centers of population and industry. Fuel cell technologies are being developed for the direct conversion of hydrogen’s energy into electricity. In one design, H2 molecules are converted to H+ ions and free electrons at a permeable anode. The electrons flow through an external circuit, providing power. Meanwhile, the H+ ions migrate through a phosphoric acid solution to the cathode, where they combine with the electrons and molecular oxygen, producing steam. If the energy of the steam is utilized, the efficiency of such fuel cells can be as high as 60%.

The need for a system of international law

It is extremely important that research funds be used to develop renewable energy sources and to solve other urgent problems now facing humankind, rather than for developing new and more dangerous weapons systems. In spite of the end of the Cold War, the world still spends more than a trillion U.S. dollars per year on armaments. At present, more than 40 percent of all research funds are used for projects related to the arms industry.

Since the Second World War, there have been over 150 armed con- flicts; and on any given day, there are an average of 12 wars somewhere in the world. While in earlier epochs it may have been possible to confine the effects of war mainly to combatants, in recent decades the victims of war have increasingly been civilians, and especially children. Civilian casualties often occur through malnutrition and through diseases which would be preventable in normal circumstances. Because of the social disruption caused by war, normal supplies of food, safe water and medicine are interrupted, so that populations become vulnerable to famine and epidemics. In the event of a nuclear war, starvation and disease would add greatly to the loss of life caused by the direct effects of nuclear weapons.

The indirect effects of war and the threat of war are also enormous. For example, the World Health Organization lacks funds to carry through an antimalarial programme on as large a scale as would be desirable; but the entire programme could be financed for less than the world spends on armaments in a single day. Five hours of world arms’ spending is equivalent to the total cost of the 20-year WHO programme which resulted, in 1979, in the eradication of smallpox. With a diversion of funds consumed by three weeks of the military expenditures, the world could create a sanitary water supply for all its people, thus eliminating the cause of more than half of all human illness. It is often said that we are economically dependent on war-related industries; but if this is so, it is a most unhealthy dependence, analogous to drug-dependence or alcoholism. From a purely economic point of view, it is clearly better to invest in education, roads, railways, reforestation, retooling of factories, development of disease-resistant highyield wheat varieties, industrial research, research on utilization of solar and geothermal energy, and other elements of future-oriented economic infrastructure, rather than building enormously costly warplanes and other weapons. At worst, the weapons will contribute to the destruction of civilization. At best, they will become obsolete in a few years and will be scrapped. By contrast, investment in future-oriented infrastructure can be expected to yield economic benefits over a long period of time.

It is instructive to consider the example of Japan and of Germany, whose military expenditures were severely restricted after World War II. The impressive post-war development of these two nations can very probably be attributed to the restrictions on military spending which were imposed on them by the peace treaty.

As bad as conventional arms and conventional weapons may be, it is the possibility of a nuclear war that still poses the greatest threat to humanity. One argument that has been used in favour of nuclear weapons is that no sane political leader would employ them. However, the concept of deterrence ignores the possibility of war by accident or miscalculation, a danger that has been increased by nuclear proliferation and by the use of computers with very quick reaction times to control weapons systems.

With the end of the Cold War, the danger of a nuclear war between superpowers has faded; but because of nuclear proliferation, there is still a danger of such a war in the Middle East or in the India-Pakistan dispute, as well as the danger of nuclear blackmail by terrorists or political fanatics.

Recent nuclear power plant accidents remind us that accidents frequently happen through human and technical failure, even for systems which are considered to be very “safe”. We must also remember the time scale of the problem. To assure the future of humanity, nuclear catastrophe must be avoided year after year and decade after decade. In the long run, the safety of civilization cannot be achieved except by the abolition of nuclear weapons, and ultimately the abolition of the institution of war.

In the long run, because of the terrible weapons which have been produced through the misuse of science, and because of the even more destructive weapons which are likely to be devised in the future, the only way that we can insure the survival of civilization is to abolish war as an institution. It seems likely that achievement of this goal will require revision and strengthening of the United Nations Charter. The Charter should not be thought of as cast in concrete for all time.

It needs instead to grow with the requirements of our increasingly interdependent global society. We should remember that the Charter was drafted and signed before the first nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; and it also could not anticipate the extraordinary development of international trade and communication which characterizes the world today.

Among the weaknesses of the present U.N. Charter is the fact that it does not give the United Nations the power to make laws which are binding on individuals. At present, in international law, we treat nations as though they were persons: We punish entire nations by sanctions when the law is broken, even when only the leaders are guilty, even though the burdens of the sanctions fall most heavily on the poorest and least guilty of the citizens, and even though sanctions often have the effect of uniting the citizens of a country behind the guilty leaders. To be effective, the United Nations needs a legislature with the power to make laws which are binding on individuals, and the power to to arrest individual political leaders for flagrant violations of international law.

Another weakness of the present United Nations Charter is the principle of “one nation one vote” in the General Assembly. This principle seems to establish equality between nations, but in fact it is very unfair: For example it gives a citizen of China or India less than a thousandth the voting power of a citizen of Malta or Iceland. A reform of the voting system is clearly needed.

The present United Nations Charter contains guarantees of human rights, but there is no effective mechanism for enforcing these guarantees. In fact there is a conflict between the parts of the Charter protecting human rights and the concept of absolute national sovereignty. Recent history has given us many examples of atrocities committed against ethnic minorities by leaders of nation-states, who claim that sovereignty gives them the right to run their internal affairs as they wish, free from outside interference.

One feels that it ought to be the responsibility of the international community to prevent gross violations of human rights, such as the use of poison gas against civilians (to mention only one of the more recent political crimes); and if this is in conflict with the notion of absolute national sovereignty, then sovereignty must yield. In fact, the concept of the absolutely sovereign nation-state as the the supreme political entity is already being eroded by the overriding need for international law. Recently, for example, the Parliament of Great Britain, one of the oldest national parliaments, acknowledged that laws made by the European Community take precedence over English common law.

Today the development of technology has made global communication almost instantaneous. We sit in our living rooms and watch, via satellite, events taking place on the opposite side of the globe. Likewise the growth of world trade has brought distant countries into close economic contact with each other: Financial tremors in Tokyo can shake New York. The impact of contemporary science and technology on transportation and communication has effectively abolished distance in relations between nations. This close contact and interdependence will increasingly require effective international law to prevent conflicts. However, the need for international law must be balanced against the desirability of local self-government. Like biological diversity, the cultural diversity of humankind is a treasure to be carefully guarded. A balance or compromise between these two desirable goals could be achieved by granting only a few carefully chosen powers to a strengthened United Nations with sovereignty over all other issues retained by the member states.

The United Nations has a number of agencies, such as the World Health Organization, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and UNESCO, whose global services give the UN considerable prestige and de facto power. The effectiveness of the UN as a global authority could be further increased by giving these agencies much larger budgets. In order to do this, and at the same time to promote the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, it has been proposed that the UN be given the power to tax CO2 emissions. The amount of money which could thus be made available for constructive purposes is very large; and a slight increase in the prices of fossil fuels could make a number of renewable energy technologies economically competitive.

The task of building a global political system which is in harmony with modern science will require our best efforts, but it is not impossible. We can perhaps gain the courage needed for this task by thinking of the history of slavery. The institution of slavery was a part of human culture for so long that it was considered to be an inevitable consequence of human nature; but today slavery has been abolished almost everywhere in the world. The example of the dedicated men and women who worked to abolish slavery can give us courage to approach the even more important task which faces us today - the abolition of war.

Ethics in a technological age

Modern science has, for the first time in history, offered humankind the possibility of a life of comfort, free from hunger and cold, and free from the constant threat of death through infectious disease. At the same time, science has given humans the power to obliterate their civilization with nuclear weapons, or to make the earth uninhabitable through overpopulation and pollution. The question of which of these paths we choose is literally a matter of life or death for ourselves and our children.

Will we use the discoveries of modern science constructively, and thus choose the path leading towards life? Or will we use science to produce more and more lethal weapons, which sooner or later, through a technical or human failure, may result in a catastrophic nuclear war? Will we thoughtlessly destroy our beautiful planet through unlimited growth of population and industry? The choice between these alternatives is ours to make, and it is an ethical choice.

Ethical considerations have traditionally been excluded from scientific discussions. This tradition perhaps has its roots in the desire of the scientific community to avoid the bitter religious controversies which divided Europe following the Reformation. Whatever the historical reason may be, it has certainly become customary to speak of scientific problems in a dehumanized language, as though science had nothing to do with ethics or politics.

The great power of science is derived from an enormous concentration of attention and resources on the understanding of a tiny fragment of nature; but this concentration is at the same time a distortion of values. To be effective, a scientist must believe, at least temporarily, that the problem on which he or she is working is more important than anything else in the world, which is of course untrue. Thus a scientist, while seeing a fragment of reality better than anyone else, becomes blind to the larger whole. For example, when one looks into a microscope, one sees the tiny scene on the slide in tremendous detail, but that is all one sees. The remainder of the universe is blotted out by this concentration of attention.

The system of rewards and punishments in the training of scientists produces researchers who are highly competent when it comes to finding solutions to technical problems, but whose training has by no means encouraged them to think about the ethical or political consequences of their work.

Scientists may, in fact, be tempted to escape from the intractable moral and political difficulties of the world by immersing themselves in their work. Enrico Fermi, (whose research as much as that of any other person made nuclear weapons possible), spoke of science as “soma” - the escapist drug of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Fermi perhaps used his scientific preoccupations as an escape from the worrying political problems of the ’30’s and ’40’s.

The education of a scientist often produces a person with a strong feeling of loyalty to a particular research discipline, but perhaps without sufficient concern for the way in which progress in that discipline is related to the general welfare of humankind. To remedy this lack, it would be very desirable if the education of scientists could include some discussion of ethics, as well as a review of the history of modern science and its impact on society.

The explosive growth of science-driven technology during the last two centuries has changed the world completely; and our social and political institutions have adjusted much too slowly to the change. The great problem of our times is to keep society from being shaken to pieces by the headlong progress of science - the problem of harmonizing our social and political institutions with technological change. Because of the great importance of this problem, it is perhaps legitimate to ask whether anyone today can be considered to be educated without having studied the impact of science on society. Should we not include this topic in the education of both scientists and non-scientists?

Science has given us great power over the forces of nature. If wisely used, this power will contribute greatly to human happiness; if wrongly used, it will result in misery. In the words of the Spanish writer, Ortega y Gasset, “We live at a time when man, lord of all things, is not lord of himself”; or as Arthur Koestler has remarked, “We can control the movements of a spaceship orbiting about a distant planet, but we cannot control the situation in Northern Ireland.”

Thus, far from being obsolete in a technological age, wisdom and ethics are needed now, more than ever before. We need the ethical insights of the great religions and philosophies of humankind - especially the insight which tells us that all humans belong to a single family, that in fact all living creatures are related, and that even inanimate nature deserves our care and respect.

Modern biology has given us the power to create new species and to exert a drastic influence on the course of evolution; but we must use this power with great caution, and with a profound sense of responsibility.

There is a possibility that human activities may cause 20% of all species to become extinct within a few decades if we do not act with restraint. The beautiful and complex living organisms on our planet are the product of more than three billion years of evolution. The delicately balanced and intricately interrelated communities of living things on earth must not be destroyed by human greed and thoughtlessness. We need a sense of evolutionary responsibility - a non-anthropocentric component in our system of ethics.

Science and human values

In many ways, the scientific community is very well qualified to help in the task of building a more unified world. Science is, after all, essentially international. The great expense of scientific research can best be justified when the results are freely available to the entire international community. Furthermore, the laws of nature have a universal validity which scientists from every nation can agree upon. Almost every important scientific meeting is international, and not only international, but also characterized by a spirit of close friendship and cooperation. Also, certain human values seem to grow naturally out of the results of scientific research:

Relativity theory reminds us that the laws of nature are independent of the observer. Albert Einstein, the founder of relativity, was always unwilling to accept the prejudices of a particular time or place as representing absolute truth. Both in his scientific work, and in his moral and political judgements, he freed himself from the narrow prejudices of a particular frame of reference. Respect for objective truth and freedom from personal bias thus seem natural to anyone who has worked with relativity.

Not only relativity theory, but also thermodynamics, ought to give scientists special insight. Knowledge of the second law of thermodynamics, the statistical law favoring disorder over order, ought to make scientists especially aware of the danger of our present situation. The second law of thermodynamics reminds us that life itself is always balanced on a tightrope above an abyss of disorder: Destruction is always easier than construction. It is easier to burn down a house than to build one - easier to kill a human than to raise and educate one. It might take only hours to destroy our civilization, but it has taken millions of dedicated hands millennia to build it.

Biology at the molecular level has shown us the complexity and beauty of even the most humble living organisms. Looking through the eyes of contemporary biochemistry, we can see that even the single cell of an amoeba is a structure of miraculous complexity and precision, worthy of our respect and wonder. This knowledge should lead us to a reverence for the order and beauty of all life, underlining the importance of a principle which religion has always taught.

The basic biochemistry of all life on earth has been shown to be the same. Thus, the insight of St. Francis, who called birds and animals his brothers and sisters, has been confirmed by modern biology. The unity of all life is a theme common to the great religions of humankind; and the truth of this theme has been confirmed by twentieth century research.

Modern astronomy has revealed the majestic dimensions of the universe, with its myriads of galaxies, each containing billions of stars; and humans have even voyaged out into space. The beauty and majesty of the fathomless universe, which men and women of our time have been privileged to see through the eyes of science, should make us not arrogant, but humble. We should recognize the vastness of what we do not know, and the smallness of what we know.

What kind of world do we want for the future? We want a world where war is abolished as an institution, and where the enormous resources now wasted on war are used constructively. We want a world where a stable population of moderate size lives in comfort and security, free from fear of hunger or unemployment. We want a world where peoples of all countries have equal access to resources, and an equal quality of life. We want a world with a new economic system where the prices of resources are not merely the prices of the burglar’s tools needed to crack the safes of nature, a system which is not designed to produce unlimited growth, but which aims instead at meeting the real needs of the human community in equilibrium with the environment. We want a world of changed values, where extravagance and waste are regarded as morally wrong; where kindness, wisdom and beauty are admired; and where the survival of other species than our own is regarded as an end in itself, not just a means to our own ends. In our reverence for the intricate beauty and majesty of nature, and our respect for the dignity and rights of other humans, we as scientists can feel united with the great religious and philosophical traditions of mankind, and with the traditional wisdom of our ancestors.

Pictures sent back by the astronauts show the earth as it really is - a small, fragile, beautiful planet, drifting on through the dark immensity of space - our home, where we must learn to live in harmony with nature and with each other.

Suggestions for further reading

1. W. Brandt, World Armament and World Hunger: A Call for Action, Victor Gollanz Ltd., London (1986).
2. Olof Palme and others, Common Security, A Programme for Disarmament, Pan Books, London (1982).
3. E. Chivian and others (editors), Last Aid: The Medical Dimensions of Nuclear War, W.H. Freeman, San Francisco (1982).
4. Medical Association’s Board of Science and Education, The Medical Effects of Nuclear War, Chichester, Wiley (1983).
5. Leonard S. Spector, The New Nuclear Nations, Vantage Books, Random House, New York (1985).
6. M. Khanert and others (editors), Children and War, Peace Union of Finland, Helsinki (1983).
7. Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, Bantam Books, New York (1977).
8. Irenus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, The Biology of Peace and War, Thames and Hudson, New York (1979).
9. R.A. Hinde, Biological Bases of Human Social Behaviour, McGraw- Hill, New York (1977).
10. R.A. Hinde, Towards Understanding Relationships, Academic Press, London (1979).
11. Albert Szent-Györgyi, The Crazy Ape, Philosophical Library, New York (1970).
12. E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology, Harvard University Press (1975).
13. C. Zhan-Waxler, Altruism and Aggression: Biological and Social Origins, Cambridge University Press (1986).
14. R. Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, New York (1984).

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