How Can You Tell?

“If things go on as they are, by the year 2000 the world will be . . .”

PREDICTIONS of this sort have now become commonplace. Books, magazines, newspaper articles and broadcasts on the subject saturate the market. Professional “futurologists,” not unlike ancient court seers, get paid for forecasting the future. And the bewildering amount of often conflicting facts and figures they generate leave most people wondering just what to believe.

Overwhelmingly, such predictions paint a picture of gloom and doom for the future. They tell of population explosion, food shortage, pollution, energy crisis, nuclear war, and so forth. For example, the 800-page Global 2000 Report, published by the United States government, warned that time is fast running out, and “unless nations collectively and individually take bold and imaginative steps . . . the world must expect a troubled entry into the 21st century.”

The UN Environment Program presented a similar picture in a 637-page report. It spoke of “a diseased, crowded world whose neurotic inhabitants continue to foul the air and sully the water while devising more efficient methods to kill one another,” according to Toronto’s Globe and Mail.

On the other hand, there are equally qualified experts who regard such reports as nothing but calamity howling. They feel that such are gross exaggerations by officials of international agencies for the purpose of increasing their funding. Technology, they say, will find the ways and means to make up for the shortages, and things will work themselves out.

It is interesting to note, though, that very often the experts on both sides will seize upon the same data and come to completely opposite conclusions. For example, in the book The Ultimate Resource, economist Julian Simon argues that even though “there will always be shortage crises because of weather, war, politics and population movements,” these are only in the short term. “An increased need for resources,” he claims, “usually leaves us with a permanently greater capacity to get them, because we gain knowledge in the process.” And as the population increases, he adds, “there will be more people to solve these problems and leave us with the bonus of lower costs and less scarcity in the long run.”

Taking a completely opposite view is environmentalist Garrett Hardin, well known for his ‘lifeboat ethics.’ He claims that what we have is a “veneer civilization​—a layer of something good on top and trash below.” His reaction to the argument that more people means more problem solvers is classic: “England now has 11 times as large a population as it had in Shakespeare’s day​—but does it have 11 times as many Shakespeares? Does it have even one Shakespeare?”

As we follow the pros and cons, we note a common denominator that stands out among all of this: the acknowledgment that mankind today is facing overwhelming threats and problems as never before, and something urgently needs to be done. While the experts are debating what to do, millions of people are suffering and dying from malnutrition and disease, more plants and animals are becoming extinct, air and water are being polluted, and the nuclear arsenals of the nations are expanding.

It gives little comfort to know that the percentage of people dying for one reason or another is smaller today when that percentage represents millions of lives. Or that the material standard of living in some areas is going up when the majority of mankind still live in dire poverty and deprivation, with no real hope for improvement.

Even in those few areas where there is relative abundance, it is difficult to say if the quality of life is getting any better. People there may not be struggling for food and fuel, but they live in constant fear of annihilation by nuclear war. Their lives and property are threatened daily by crime, violence and vandalism. Their wealth is eaten away by inflation. Their families are wrecked by divorce and juvenile delinquency. And the list goes on and on.

In our quest to know the future, it is essential that we see the difference between what really is happening and what some people think or promise will happen. We should go only on facts, not on someone’s speculation. Nobel prize winning physicist Niels Bohr once said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” The phrase, “If present trends continue” or, “Unless something is done,” so frequently seen in futuristic forecasts, tells us that a better future depends not only on finding the ways and means to solve today’s problems but also on whether we are willing to act on them.

Have all the doomsayings moved peoples and nations to act? Will they?