There they go again – the repeated delusions of the techno-accelerationists (part one)
In the 1970s, we were told to ignore warnings of environmental and social collapse. Once again, we need to resist the fantasy that technology will resolve our problems.
This is the first part of a three-part post which draws on one chapter of my most recent book.
In a U.S. presidential election year in which we might be ‘treated’ to at least one debate between the (historically unpopular) candidates, we’ll also likely be reminded of notable debate moments from the past.
One of the most famous was Ronald Reagan’s “There you go again”.
The 1980 presidential election looked like it was going to be close. The incumbent, Jimmy Carter, had struggled in his first term, with events both domestic (the energy crisis, simultaneous inflation and recession) and international (the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). But his challenger, Ronald Reagan, a former governor of California (and of course, actor and corporate spokesman before he entered politics), was regarded by many voters as too conservative, and too old.
The second debate between the candidates was held a week before election day. At one point, Carter attacked Reagan's record on Medicare, stating that Reagan had voted against it. Reagan chuckled, and then delivered his now famous (rehearsed) reply.
It’s since become part of the political lexicon, a way to suggest that an opponent is engaged in hyperbole or even hysteria (in fact, Carter was correct – soon after the election, Reagan did try to cut Medicare).
Just a week later, Reagan won in a landslide, achieving 50.7 percent of the popular vote and 489 electoral votes, with Carter trailing badly with just 41 percent and 49 electoral votes (John B. Anderson, an independent candidate, got 6.6 percent). The Reagan revolution had begun.
Reagan would use the line in a few debates over the years (other politicians have copied it as well, right up to recent elections). Reagan’s ‘happy warrior’ persona obviously proved much more popular than Carter’s often self-critical seriousness.
But it wasn’t just a matter of a personal style. The change of administration led to a profound shift in policy towards the environment, amongst many other things, one that we are still experiencing the effects of today. The philosophical differences between Carter and Reagan are also echoed in a debate that has recently resurfaced about environmental limits versus ‘technological optimism’, one that will again determine our future. To coin a phrase, here we go again.
To understand the present – and possibly to avoid making the same mistakes – we need to understand the past (which is what we’ll do in these posts).
The 1970s had seen a rising, and increasingly critical, environmental consciousness, including in the United States. In the late 1960s and early 1970s campaigns had pushed, successfully, for cleaner air and water standards, including those passed under Republican president Richard Nixon. There was even growing awareness of the threat of carbon dioxide causing ‘global warming’ (we know now that corporations such as Exxon were more than aware of the threat but kept this hidden).
These concerns were also reflected in popular culture, for example in environmentally conscious science fiction films such as Silent Running (1972), Soylent Green (1973), and Z.P.G. (1972, and an abbreviation of zero population growth), and their predecessors Planet of the Apes (1968) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (also 1968).
Although to begin with few in the new left (such as student protestors against the Vietnam War) were environmentalists, they shared a number of concerns with the growing green thinking, among them criticism of a machine-like industrial-political system leading us to destruction, the apparent insanity of the establishment, and the need for a cultural, not just political, revolution.
One popular book that brought together environmental consciousness and the counterculture was Charles Reich’s The Greening of America (1970). Subtitled How the Youth Revolution is Trying to Make America Livable, it first came to prominence as a lengthy excerpt in The New Yorker magazine and soon became a number one nonfiction bestseller, dominating The New York Times charts for 36 weeks and going on to sell two million copies.
Alongside this growing public consciousness, left intellectuals such as Herbert Marcuse, Murray Bookchin, and Paul Goodman, advanced critiques of industrial society and its dysfunctional relationship with an exploited nature (and our alienated selves). Environmental economists, such as Herman Daly, E. F. Schumacher, and Barry Commoner, critiqued technological progress and argued for post-growth, more sustainable ways of living. Schumacher’s book Small Is Beautiful, which promoted a “maximum of well-being with a minimum of consumption,” was another bestseller. Carter invited him to the White House.
The capstone was The Limits to Growth, published in 1972. Peppered with computer-generated graphs and written in clear, dispassionate language by a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate students led by two young scholars, Dennis and Donella Meadows, this landmark report delivered a devastating conclusion:
“If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.”
The study was initiated and funded by the Club of Rome, an ad hoc, apolitical group of scientists, academics, civil servants, and businesspeople. The Club’s mission was to “rebel against the suicidal ignorance of the human condition.” It sought to better understand the links between economics, the environment, and many other social and political conditions – what it called the ‘world problematique’.
The Limits to Growth was based on a computer simulation called World3, a ‘systems dynamics’ model based on the work of MIT professor Jay Forrester, which tracked the interactions between five factors: population, food production, industrial production, the consumption of nonrenewable resources, and pollution. By linking the world economy with the environment, it was the first integrated global model. The Limits to Growth would put quantitative scenario analysis – possible futures based on hard numbers – into environmental studies.
Whatever its advanced methodology, the report’s message was one that many people could see around them, in pollution, rising prices, plastic-tasting food, urban decline, and political unrest. The Limits to Growth appeared to confirm the sense of being on a civilizational road to some kind of collapse – unless we changed course.
Few people remember that The Limits to Growth was built around a series of scenarios – twelve possible futures stretching from 1972 to 2100. Its main conclusion was that delays in global decision-making would cause the human economy to overshoot planetary limits before growth in humanity’s ecological footprint could be slowed down. The Limits to Growth was then really a warning – about delay, denial, and about committing ourselves to a collective death.
It was also a major hit. The study sold 12 million copies, was translated into thirty-seven languages, and remains the best-selling environmental book of all time. It made headlines in newspapers for months. President Carter and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau launched similar studies. Carter even invoked it in his inauguration speech in 1977: “We have learned that ‘more’ is not necessarily ‘better,’ that even our great Nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems.”
There had to be a serious fightback against this rising, and increasingly critical, environmental consciousness, and there was – as we’ll discuss in the next post.
Come With Me If You Want To Live: The Future as Foretold in Classic Sci-Fi Films, is out now from Lexington Books. You can read more about it here.