The Belief in Progress vs. Doom and Gloom: Some Major Challenges Facing Us Today

1. The Belief in Progress vs. Doom and Gloom: Some Major Challenges Facing Us Today

2. The Idea of Progress • Progress is the idea that the world can become increasingly better in terms of science, technology, modernization, liberty, democracy, quality of life, etc. • The belief in progress (some also called “technological optimism”) is the philosophical position that there is a general tendency in nature or history or the process of technological development towards the overall improvement of the human condition

3. Images of Progress

4. The Belief in Progress • Many historians argue that since the Enlightenment, Western people have tended to hold a belief in progress • Contrast this view of time and history with other societies (eg. Ancient Greece, India, China, meso-America), which tended to have cyclical views of history • The historian Lynn White suggests that Western society developed its belief in progress from the Judeo-Christian religious outlook, which posits a linear view of time with distinct beginning and end of history in a final victory of good • This view when combined with the concepts of “dominion”, man as “God’s image” and the desacralization of nature, etc. leads to the unique Western “Techno-scientific outlook.”

5. Moore’s Law • Moore’s Law: Power of integrated circuits doubles every 24 months (there has been exponential growth in the power of computers since their first introduction) • Futurist Ray Kurzweilsuggests that all technological development is defined by this kind of curve • Even as apparent limits to exponential growth approach “paradigm shifts” present themselves, allowing growth to continue indefinitely

6. Jared Diamond:Collapse (2005) • Like Ronald Wright, he argues against technological optimism • Every civilization that has undergone a major collapse is characterized by a set of key technological advances that supported growth, but which were exploited to the point of environmental collapse • Rome: roads, legions and imperial grain requisition (“bread & circuses”) exhausted the Mediterranean basin • Meso-America: hybridization of corn allowed for great cities to emerge from the jungle only to return to the jungle when soils around them became exhausted and distances to the resources of subjugated neighboring societies became too great • Easter Island: tree cutting, cultivation and statue (“moai”) building destroyed the forests leading to soil erosion

7. Some Possible Reasons for Concern: 1. Declining Sperm Count

8. 2. Rising Childhood Cancer

9. 3. Rising Autism Rates

10. 4. Unemployment 25% of last decade spent in economic recession, current of which is the 2nd worse since the Great Depression

11. 5. Climate Change • A UK government report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern suggests that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20% • Floods from rising sea levels could displace up to 100 million people • Wildlife will be harmed; at worst up to 40% of species could become extinct (eg. Pacific Salmon) • Droughts and water shortages may create tens or even hundreds of millions of "climate refugees"

12. 6. Peak Oil • Graph: The Energy Curve of History? • Peak Oil is also called "Hubbert's Peak,“ named for the Shell geologist Dr. M Hubbert who in 1956 accurately predicted that US domestic oil production would peak in 1970 • He also predicted global production would peak shortly after the year 2000

13. 7. Debt and Demographic Crisis • Aging population has Canada on a path to “economic ruin” due to rising health and pension costs—in 1971 there were 8 workers for every one retiree; in 2008 5.1 ; by 2019 3.8 by 2033 it will be 2.5 leading to a 20-40 billion gap being added to the deficit over the next decade alone (Globe and Mail, Feb 26, 2010, A4) • $608 billion Nat. Debt by 2018, requiring approx $3100 more per worker to control (Can Bus Mag Oct 26, 2009)

14. Rising Health Care Expenditures • Eg. A decade ago health care took about 34% of B.C.’s budget. It will reach 42% this year • Unless trend stops, eventually will reach 100% of prov. budgets (about 80% by 2030) • Aging population is not the biggest factor in the increase--the costs are rising primarily because of new medical procedures, new drugs and new forms of treatment

15. 8. Soil Erosion • Land degradation, a decline in land quality caused by agricultural practices (irrigation, fertilizer & pesticide use, tillage), has been described by the U.N. as “the greatest global issue after climate change” • The productivity of some lands has declined by 50% • On a global scale the annual loss of 75 billion tons of soil costs the world about US$400 billion per year, or approximately US$70 per person per year Published in: Eswaran, H., R. Lal and P.F. Reich. 2001. Land degradation: an overview. In: Bridges, E.M., et al. (eds.). Responses to Land Degradation. Proc. 2nd. International Conference on Land Degradation and Desertification, KhonKaen, Thailand. Oxford Press, New Delhi, India

16. 9. Water Crisis • We tend to think of fresh water as a completely renewable resource powered by the rain cycle, but the majority of water used by human beings comes from essentially fixed reserves built up over millennia (lakes, aquifers, glaciers) • The rest comes from rivers which humans are polluting & diverting at an increasing rate • By 2025, between 1/2 to 2/3s of humanity will be living with severe water shortages • Water table beneath China has dropped by nearly 200 feet in the last two decades & is dropping in India, Iran and Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Australia, etc. • The mighty Indus and Ganges rivers are tapped so heavily that they typically no longer reach the sea & the same is true of Egypt's Nile, China's Yellow River and many rivers of the American South West

17. 10. Extinction • Humanity’s impact on the earth has increased extinction rates to levels rivaling the five mass extinctions of past geologic history, transformed nearly half of Earth’s land and created 400 dead zones in the world’s oceans (16th International Botanical Congress, St. Louis, Missouri, August 2, 1999)

18. Declining Fish Stocks • World Fish stocks have collapsed in nearly 1/3 of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating • A recent study, which took 10 years to complete and was published in the international journal Nature, predicts that there will be virtually no major food species left by the middle of the century if current trends continue • It is estimated that fish contributes to at least 50 percent of total animal protein intake of human beings • Use of bigger vessels, better nets, and new technology for spotting fish has increased, but also masked the problem

19. 11. Democratic Engagement • Voter turnout in the last federal election was worst in Canadian history • Participation rates in formal political activities is also declining, with volunteer hours dropping 15 % from 2004 to 2007 • Participation of women in Parliament has remained at around 20% since 1997 Institute of Wellbeing’s Report on Democratic Engagement www.ciw.ca