XVI. Earth Day Fallout:
The Two Cultures Revisited
America's Unknown Enemy: Beyond Conspiracy
Editorial Staff of the
American Institute for Economic Research
[1993]
Beyond revealing popular endorsement of the notion that humans ought
not destroy the planet Earth, the current environmental movement also
suggests continuing opposition to science -- and the degree to which
even crucial findings remain unknown to the public.
The recent Earth Day celebrations, and reactions to them, in a number
of ways seem to reflect an evolution of the "cultural"
division outlined by C. P. Snow some 3 decades ago.[1] At that time,
Snow lamented what he believed was a growing distance (in Britain)
between ways of thinking that were characteristic of followers of the
modern "scientific revolution" -- chemists, physicists,
biologists and other practitioners in the "hard" sciences --
as distinguished from those of the adherents of a humanistic tradition
- "intellectual" writers, poets, artists, publicists, and
others who were the products of education that embraced arts and
letters.
At that time, especially at Cambridge University, the spilt between
the scientists and the nonscientists degenerated to the point that
effective communication between the "combatants" ceased
altogether. The scientists ridiculed the scientific illiteracy of the
"arties"; the intellectuals, on the other hand, observed
that scientists seemed "innately incapable either of creating or
appreciating art" in its myriad forms.
In the words of one historian, Snow reckoned that this "refined
form of adolescent naming calling" was in large part a reflection
of the apparent fact "that scientific intellectuals were at heart
committed to and optimistic about the scientific-industrial evolution
of British society. Poets, writers and artists generally, on the other
hand, were at this time estranged from the advancing mass-civilization
which threatened to overwhelm their minority culture. To the extent
that natural scientists were identified with various forms of
'modernization', it is not surprising, Snow has concluded, that they
became favorite targets for students and donnish aesthetes."[2]
In its current continental and transatlantic mutations, this cleft --
or something similar to it -- appears to have assumed a particularly
shrill form in the approaches to environmental concerns (not
necessarily problems) that have captured public attention and that
some say will shape the political and economic agendas of the 1990's
both here and abroad.
It also has undergone a couple of twists: it no longer is confined to
the halls of academe, but employs all the techniques of modern mass
communication and persuasion; and what appear to be the profoundly
anti-modern views of today's aesthetes now often are shrouded in the
language of science. Insofar as they tend to champion the goals of
such "futuristic science" at the expense of the institutions
that have fostered the growth of liberal Western civilization, today
they would seem to harbor the potential for eroding the foundations of
political and economic democracy.
Put simply, we are told that, if it is not already too late, the
planet Earth will become uninhabitable unless humans cease their
destructive ways in short order -- by some accounts in a matter of
just a few years. According to this scenario, if we do not poison
ourselves and the other creatures on the planet first with the toxic
residues of herbicides, pesticides, and other carcinogenic by-products
of production, or if we do not become silent victims of nuclear waste,
then we will fry (or drown, depending on where you live) as the
greenhouse effect and the depletion of the ozone layer simultaneously
heat the earth, turning verdant forests into deserts and melting the
polar ice caps, and permit lethal ultraviolet radiation to penetrate
us all. It is said that only vastly expanded Government regulation of
resources and production -- "environmental planning" -- can
prevent all this.
Fortunately, there are ample data to suggest that the reports of the
impending death of the planet may have been greatly exaggerated. It
may give some comfort to know that earlier, similar, predictions went
unfulfilled ( e.g., in 1969 Paul Ehrlich predicted that "the
end of the oceans" would be forthcoming in the summer of 1979;
others said we would all starve by the mid- 1980's). It is far beyond
the scope of this discussion to review even in brief the entire record
pertaining to the potential for such disasters. However, a few
examples may suggest how wide the communications gap between the
scientific world and the general public has become.
For one, although many apparently believe that conditions for the
sustenance of human life have deteriorated steadily with the advance
of modern technology and are perilously close to ending, the most
pertinent data -- namely, mortality and life expectancy records -
indicate the opposite. The indisputable record is that humans in the
technologically advanced countries live longer and healthier lives
than humans elsewhere, and that the risks of disease and early death
are continuing to decrease.
This does not imply that life is now or can ever be without risks.
But it does suggest that popular perceptions of current risks may have
been distorted by the selective presentation of data -- especially
seemingly alarming probabilities that reflect what one statistician
calls "multiplier terrorism." As he writes:
"Recently an antipollution group predicted a
100-fold increase in cancer risk in a neighborhood where someone had
dumped dioxins. On the face of it, the prospects sound terrible. Is
it not best to move out of such a neighborhood? The prediction may
well be correct, but what is the actual risk? Assuming the
probability of contracting cancer because of dioxin ingestion in a "clean"
area is only .00001 to begin with, it would now be .001. How bad is
this? The probability of contracting cancer from all sources is
already .2 for the general population. Is the difference between
.200 and .201 worth selling one's house for? The decision is
obviously a personal one, but it might as well be an informed one. "[3]
Or take acid rain. It apparently is widely believed that acid rain in
the Northeast has created hundreds of "sterile lakes" and
threatens to destroy entire forests. The data strongly indicate that
acid rain has indeed decimated the red spruce population at higher
elevations. However, other data suggest that decreases in the fish
population in the Adirondacks, the area chiefly affected, were the
result not of acid rain but rather of the reforestation of previously
timbered watershed. Conifer forests are themselves highly acidic (they
thrive in acid soils, and acid rain actually may fertilize many of
them). The acidified runoff from the new forest floor lowered the pH
in lakes and streams to earlier levels that prevailed for the eons
when those waters had been naturally fishless. A 1984 lake survey by
the Environmental Protection Agency's National Acid Precipitation
Assessment Project (NAPAP) found that over half of the acid lake
capacity identified is in Florida, which does not get appreciable
amounts of acid rain.[4]
Or consider the greenhouse effect, which has been known to science
for decades but currently has generated near-hysteria and demands for
a drastic reduction in human carbon dioxide emissions (for what it is
worth, the world's termite population generates more than twice as
much carbon dioxide as do humans; the more forests, the more
termites). Only recently has the popular press revealed that actual
temperature data show no sustained long-term warming trend and that
computer models that have predicted rapid global warming have failed
to take into account offsetting cloud effects, evaporation,
precipitation, and other changes.[5] On the other hand, reliable data
show that the earth is at the peak of its latest geological warm
cycle, a product of the earth's wobble on its axis. Geological
predictions based on consistent data covering more than 20,000 years
indicate that we are about to slip into a long-term cooling cycle that
will culminate in the next Ice Age.
One can only conjecture why data that are well-known to the
scientific community and are easily accessible to anyone who is
literate have not been more widely communicated to the public. One
reason no doubt involves the scientific illiteracy of the American
public. The unfortunate fact is that those who have assumed
responsibility for reporting and interpreting pertinent discoveries (i.e.,
the media) are themselves ignorant. It may also reflect lingering
contempt among scientists for the "intellectual" culture
described by Snow, and vice versa. One supposes also, as he did, that
those on both sides who withhold or deny contrary evidence have
specific interests in doing so. But that is the topic for another
discussion.
NOTES
- Snow's The Two Cultures
and the Scientific Revolution, first published in 1959, has
been revised as The Two Cultures: And a Second Look
(Cambridge University Press, 1969).
- See Gary Werskey, The
Visible College: The Collective Biography of British Scientific
Socialists of the 1930s, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
(1978), p.25.
- A. K. Dewdney, "Mathematical
Recreations," Scientific American, March 1990, p.
120.
- See Edward C. King, "Fish
Story: The Great Acid Rain Flimflam," Policy Review,
Spring 1990, pp.44-48. King is a soil scientist with the Illinois
State Water Survey who studied lake acidification for the
Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
- For a discussion of the
earth's "self-regulating" mechanisms, see The New
York Times, May 7, 1991, p. C4.
|
