Lecture 10: “Chapter 9:

Turning points: Perennial

pessimism after 1900”

CCGL9042: The Evolution of Civilization

Dr. Larry Baum & Dr. Jack Tsao

Song 1 Song 2
Are we reaching a turning point?
Is the world coming to the edge of a cliff?
Will civilization soon be DESTROYED!?
 Outline
1. People often think
things will soon get
much worse.
2. They don’t.
3. Why such pessimism?
 Introduction
• Throughout history, intellectuals
criticized economic growth, yearned
for a return to a simpler life, and
warned of global disaster unless we
reversed direction now.
• In the past few centuries, they were
proven wrong, as life improves.
 Cancer
• Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (1962): risks
of pesticides; “today, more American
children die of cancer than from any other
disease”. But misleading because other
causes of death were declining faster than
cancer.
• Widespread fear that synthetic pesticides
cause cancer
– Bans of some pesticides, or limits to
extremely low levels
– But harm greatly exaggerated (Lecture 4,
Ames video)
• Often no harm at low levels
• Many unregulated natural pesticides far more
dangerous
 Food supply
• Lester Brown, founder of the Earth
Policy Institute, predicted food
shortages for decades:
– 1974: Farmers could “no longer keep up
with rising demands”.
– 1984: “the slim margin between food
production and population growth continues
to narrow”.
– 1994: “Seldom has the world faced an
unfolding emergency whose dimensions are
as clear as the growing imbalance between
food and people” and “After forty years of
record food production gains, output per
person has reversed with unanticipated
abruptness”.
– 2013: “We've actually seen world grain
prices double since early 2007 and … that
rise in prices … may well accelerate because
we're pressing against the limits….”
 Food supply
• In the long run, what happens to grain production and prices? Here’s
rice:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228551048_Rice_trade_in_a_liberalized_world_A_review_of_economic_studies
 Food supply
• Here’s a century of prices for other grains:
 Starvation
• In 1967, William and Paul Paddock wrote “Famine,
1975!”.
– “Population-food collision is inevitable; it is foredoomed”.
– They felt some countries were already beyond help and
should be left to starve.
– In 1975, William wanted to stop research to increase food
production in countries with high population growth.
– Surprisingly, William’s life paralleled Borlaug’s.
• In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote “The Population Bomb”.
– “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will
starve to death”.
– In 2008, Ehrlich said “our long evolutionary history is,
through our actions but not our intentions, coming to a
turning point”.
 Resources
• In 1972, Club of Rome wrote “The
Limits to Growth”.
– Predicted global depletion of
minerals and fossil fuels in two
decades.
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
kIQvBYOtgMg
(7:29)
• Depletion
– Many people say we must slow use of
non-renewable resources because
they’ll run out.
– Paradoxically, some renewable
resources run out, but non-
renewables don’t!
 Resources (Extinct Animals)
Passenger Pigeon

Caribbean Monk Seal

Sea Mink

Tasmanian Tiger
 Resources
Non-renewable resources:
Iron price
 Resources
Non-renewable resources:
Copper price
 Resources
Non-renewable resources:
Coal price

http://archive.treasury.gov.au/documents/1042/html/docshell.asp?URL=02_Resource_commodities.asp
 Resources
• Why don’t we use up finite resources?
– We only mine small portion.
– We continually discover more.
– If price rises, demand falls.
• Conservation
• Substitution
• The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone.
• In 1943, the economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote: “It is one
of the safest predictions that in the calculable future we
shall live in an embarras de richesse of both foodstuffs and
raw materials, giving all the rein to expansion of total output
that we shall know what to do with. This applies to mineral
resources as well”.
 Clean air
• In 1971, US magazine Life predicted: “within
a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear
gas masks to survive air pollution …., by 1985
air pollution will have reduced the amount
of sunlight reaching earth by one half”.
• In 1984, German magazine Stern reported
that acid rain would kill all German forests by
2002. People feared acid rain was killing US
East coast forests.
• But by 2000, European forests grew. In
North America, a 700-scientist study found
no “decline of forests in the United States or
Canada due to acid rain”.
 Democracy

• “There is a concerted and combined effort by the likes of Putin, Erdoğan and Trump to
hollow out democracy….Let’s be brutal: democracy is dying.”—2017 (Paul Mason, in
The Guardian)
• Writers in “A Global Report on the Decline of Democracy” ask “whether democ­racy will
become, at best, the lingering form of government in an economically and
demographically declining corner of the world.”—(2018, Council on Foreign Relations)
• But democracy is rising in the long run.
Center for Systemic Peace (CSP)
 Wars

• Harari says: “The source of wealth in California

today is knowledge, in the minds of engineers and
technicians and CEOs. And you just cannot
conquer it by force.”
• If China invaded California, there would be no
mines of silicon.
• Wealth resides in the minds of people.
• Reason that more developed nations potentially
fight less wars.
• Nuclear weapons turned war between
superpowers into collective suicide and impossible
to seek world domination by force of arms.

References: Chapter 18: A Permanent Revolution of Harari YN,

2015, Sapiens: a brief history of humankind
 Terrorism

• Harari argues that terrorism uses fear and captures

“our imagination, turning our imagination against
us, and causing us to overreact.”
• For example, Al-Qaeda destroying Iraq through
overreaction of the United States.
• Fighting terrorism starts with our own
imaginations.

References: Chapter 18: A Permanent Revolution of Harari YN,

2015, Sapiens: a brief history of humankind
 Eugenics
• In early 1900s, intellectuals worried that humanity
would deteriorate because “lower classes” have
more children than “higher classes”.
• Theodore Roosevelt, among others, wanted to act
harshly now to prevent distant catastrophe: “I wish
very much that the wrong people could be
prevented from breeding…. Criminals should be
sterilized and feeble-minded persons forbidden to
leave offspring behind them”.
• Eugenic laws forced many people to be sterilized in
US and partly inspired Nazi genocide.
• The philosopher Isaiah Berlin said: “Disregard for
the preferences and interests of individuals alive
today in order to pursue some distant social goal
that their rulers have claimed is their duty to
promote has been a common cause of misery for
people throughout the ages”.
 Biotechnology
• Every advance in genetics and
reproductive medicine was predicted to
cause disaster.
• Jeremy Rifkin considered biotechnology
to threaten “a form of annihilation
every bit as deadly as nuclear
holocaust”.
• Such advances cured diseases and
saved lives.
• First in vitro fertilized baby born 1978.
Vatican said it would “have grave
consequences for humanity”.
• In vitro fertilization brought happiness
to childless couples.
• US restricted human embryonic stem
cell research in 2001 (reversed in 2009).
 Nuclear accidents
• Chernobyl nuclear accident
– Early predictions: half a million cancer deaths
– Latest predictions: ~4000 cancer deaths
– No increased birth defects found
– Wildlife flourishing
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-h15wX14
po
(3:13)
 Infections
• Mad-cow disease
– 1980-1996: British cattle infections by vCJD prion.
Experts warned of mad-cow disease in hundreds of
thousands of people.
– 2017: people who lived in UK then still not allowed to
give blood in Hong Kong.
– By 2017, vCJD deaths reached only ~200.
• Ebola and SARS virus threats all overblown.
• HIV/AIDS is epidemic but spread/death fell in recent
years.
• Bird flu (H5N1)
– In 2005, UN predicted 5-150 million deaths, like H1N1
in 1918-9.
– By 2018, killed ~500 people worldwide.
• By contrast with worries, major progress against
infections:
– Smallpox used to kill millions but was eradicated in the
1970s.
– Polio now almost eradicated.
Climate change

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/597kpd/new-report-suggests-high-likelihood-of-human-civilization-coming-to-an-end-in-2050
 Everything!
• https://vimeo.com/164798600 (4:24)

https://giphy.com/gifs/dumpster-fire-floating-853jNve3ljqrYrcSOK
APOCALYPSE NOW!
…No, Now …um, now?...
Since the beginning of our time, religions
predicted its end. A few of many predictions of
when the world will end:
• 66-70: Essene Jews
• 365: Catholic Bishop Hilary of Poitiers
• 1000: Pope Sylvester II
• 1284: Pope Innocent III
• ~1350: Black Death
• <1600: Martin Luther
• 1697: Cotton Mather
• 1716: Cotton Mather
• 1736: Cotton Mather
• 1844: William Miller
• 1991: Louis Farrakhan
• 1994, 1995, 2011: Harold Camping
• <2000: Nazim Al-Haqqani
• 2000: Sun Myung Moon
• 2007: Pat Robertson
• 2017: David Meade
 Apocalypse
• http://www.history.com/topics/religions-on-the-end-of-the-world (2:16)
• Let’s take a quiz now
• How many think the world will end in their lifetime?
– 1/7 of people worldwide
• 22% in US
• 22% in Turkey
• 21% in S. Africa
• 19% in Indonesia
• 8% in UK
• 6% in France
– A fraction of Muslims worldwide
• 23% in Indonesia
• 68% in Turkey
 Apocalypse
• http://www.history.com/topics/religions-on-the-end-of-the-world (2:16)
• https://play.kahoot.it/v2/?quizId=e2ca22cf-4f72-48ef-a2da-e6cfecb1c47e
• How many think the world will end in their lifetime?
– 1/7 of people worldwide
• 22% in US
• 22% in Turkey
• 21% in S. Africa
• 19% in Indonesia
• 8% in UK
• 6% in France
– A fraction of Muslims worldwide
• 23% in Indonesia
• 68% in Turkey
 Secular apocalypse: turning point
• Despite progress, people keep warning of
disaster.
• “Humanity stands at a defining moment in
history. We are confronted with a perpetuation
of disparities within and between nations, a
worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and
illiteracy, and the continued deterioration of
the ecosystems on which we depend for our
well-being” UN Conference (1992).
• “By the time my young sons reach retirement
age, half the world’s species will be extinct, the
air radioactive, and the seas polluted with oil”
Jared Diamond (1995).
• A generation later, how are we doing?
 Sounding the retreat
• Extreme environmentalists: sustainable solution is to shrink the
economy.
• Maurice Strong (first director of UN Environment Programme): “Isn’t
the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations
collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
• The journalist George Monbiot: we need “an ordered and structured
downsizing of the global economy”.
• How will we shrink the economy?
– Restrict business?
– Limit travel?
– Cap family size?
– Ration food?
– Drastic actions. Is this necessary?
Why so pessimistic?
 Pessimism bias
• Pessimistic global predictions
often accepted.
• But optimistic predictions often
criticized.
– Bjorn Lomborg was accused of
scientific dishonesty for his book
“The skeptical environmentalist”
(2001).
• Emotion
– People are emotional as well as
rational.
– Many cognitive biases. One is
pessimism about the world (but
optimism about oneself).
 Extrapolations
• “If, for example, each person in
China consumes paper at the
current American rate, then in
2030 China’s 1.46 billion people
will need twice as much paper as
is produced worldwide today.
There go the world’s forests….”
Lester Brown (2008)
• What’s wrong with these
extrapolations?
– Technology may change (horses to
cars).
– Trend may stop.
– Real trend may not be use but rate,
or rate of change in rate (1st or 2nd
derivative).
• Let’s look at each possibility.
http://www.uctc.net/access/30/Access%2030%20-%2002%20-%20Horse%20Power.pdf
 Extrapolations
• Technology changes
 Extrapolations
• Trends may not continue

http://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/the-highs-and-lows-of-drinking-in-britain
 Extrapolations
• Real trend may not be amount but rate, or rate of change in rate (1 st or 2nd derivative).
Paper use
(per person per year relative to
income/person)
gm/person/$/yr

6
4
2
0
1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_rate_1950%E2%80%932050.svg
https://www.risiinfo.com/product/world-pulpwood-study/
 Robert Southey

Romanticism
• Many people view past too positively,
preferring past over present, dreading future.
• “Look, for example, at the great mass of your
populace in town and country…. Are they
happier in childhood, youth and manhood,
and more comfortably or carefully provided
for in old age, than when the land was
unenclosed, and half covered with woods?
…. Their condition is greatly worsened, ….
[They] have lost rather than gained by the
alterations which have taken place during the
last thousand years.” Robert Southey (1830)
• But we had problems in the past, too, and
usually worse.

http://www.madisontaylor.co/2015/11/back-to-good-ol-days.html
 Control
• Which cancer risk feels scarier?
– nuclear radiation
– pesticides
– beer
• Common amounts of beer may cause
far more cancer than common amounts
of radiation and pesticides.
• Why not fear beer? Maybe because you
control drinking but not pesticides or
radiation.
Control

https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die-from
 Negative news bias
• Bad things always happen
(somewhere).
• Bad news more newsworthy:
– people pay more attention to
it
– more important to our survival
• But constant exposure to
bad news may generate
pessimistic world view.
 Negative news
bias
• Negative spin: even on
positive data
• In 2008, BBC reported heart
disease among young and
middle-aged British women
had “stopped falling”,
ignoring fall in heart disease
in others.
• In 2009, New York Times
comment on world
temperature not rising for a
decade: “Plateau in
temperature adds difficulty
to task of reaching a
solution”
 Pessimism bias
• Pessimism in a World of
Increasing Abundance
(Steven Pinker)
https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=XPHd8GLuCgU
(9:53)
• Listen at home: Why are
we so gloomy about the
world?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds
/play/w3csyv01
(23:07)
 Optimism bias
• People often pessimistic
about society and the
world, but optimistic
about themselves.
• Most people rate
themselves above
average in looks, ability
and virtue. Obviously
they can’t all be right!
 Optimism bias
Tali Sharot: optimism bias
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8rmi95pYL0 (17:40)
 Summary
• Over past two centuries,
pessimistic predictions
persist despite proving
wrong, and despite global
improvements.
• Such pessimism may
prevent complacency and
disasters, but may lead to
bad policies.
Not The End
(of the world)