Prescription for Survival

Keith MacLeod

1992

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 2nd quarter 1992, No. 327

There is considerable evidence at present suggesting that we, cannot for too much longer, continue to do many of the things that we are now doing to the only environment in which we can live. The things we have done in the name of price and profit are rendering the air unfit to breathe, the water unfit to drink and the soil incapable of growing food that is edible. When we reach that point, where do we go from there? CO₂ buildup in the atmosphere, causing global warming, ozone depletion, the destruction of our tropical moist forests and temperate forests, technological unemployment, depletion of energy and mineral resources, population explosion, war and threat of war -- we could go on. The list is long, but let's just go back and concentrate on a few of these points.

From the onset of the industrial revolution, excesses of carbon dioxide began entering the earth's atmosphere in quantities that began to upset a balance that had existed for goodness knows how long. The CO₂ buildup became more than noticeable fifty or sixty years ago. Some investigators started to ponder what the result might be in the forseeable future. Now they are getting very concerned; the eight of the warmest years on record have occurred just in the last decade.

The ozone layer, as you probably know, acts as a filter that filters out harmful ultra-violet radiation and makes planet earth livable both to plants and animals. One molecule of chlorine has the capacity to destroy on a ratio of 10,000 to one; 10,000 molecules of ozone can be destroyed by one molecule of chlorofluorocarbon. We are doing damage to our stratosphere, dissolving the ozone to the point now where there are huge gaps in that very necessary thin protective covering ten to fifteen miles up. The incidence of skin cancer is being recorded in numbers that far exceed anything that has been the case in previous history. It used to be a condition that was noticed primarily in people who had spent their entire lives in the outdoors unprotected from the sun. Now they're finding more and more people, even young people in their twenties, children in their teens and even younger who are developing problems from undesirable ultra-violet radiation.

Tropical moist forests are disappearing in Brazil, Amazon, Borneo and all the way around the world. Often these forest areas are cleared to try to conduct some sort of agriculture, but the fertility of the soil is poor. Trees fall, and decay occurs; then new trees are recycled from old in a short cycle. The soil itself has little fertility, but it gets a boost with the burning of the forest, because the ash is good fertilizer for only one or perhaps two crops. Then a process of depletion occurs. Without the tree cover, rainfall patterns change, erosion occurs, and what little fertility there is soon washes away into the rivers -- an irreversible devastation.

Looking at our own temperate forests, we see logging that far exceeds the rate at which trees grow. Of all the logging that has taken place since British Columbia was first inhabited, fifty percent occurred in the last nineteen years.

TECHNOLOGICAL UNEMPLOYMENT

Slowly at first with the onset of the industrial revolution, we found more and more ways of harnessing extraneous energy to the process of doing work. We have harnessed coal and petroleum, natural gas, the power of falling water. We have harnessed the chemical fuel cell, the atomic nucleus, the internal combustion engine and the hydro turbine. We have, for the most part, brought about the retirement of the old methods of hand-tools and muscle- power. With hand-tools and muscle-power, nothing more than a scarcity could ever be produced. It was only when new methods and technological advance made it possible to produce more and to consume more that we used more energy that required less human muscle-power and human attention. We have recently progressed to the point where many of our productive processes are completely automated. The raw materials go in one end and the finished product comes out the other -- untouched by human hands. Technocracy has now been on the scene for close to sixty years; it pointed out then that this trend was destined to continue. This Continent has been capable of producing more than enough of everything for everybody.

In the 1920s, before Technocracy Inc., a group of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, foresters, medical practitioners and others set about to study scientifically the method by which our society operates, and they found that the more we produce, the less we can consume! This is because we live under the dictates of what we will call a Price System -- a Price System being any social system whatsoever that brings about the distribution of goods and services by employing some means of commodity valuation and employing some form of money or debt tokens. A Price System has validity only under conditions of scarcity -- whether that scarcity is real or contrived makes little difference. At the present time we find all manner of restrictions set up primarily to curtail the amount of production that is allowed, so that we can maintain an artificial scarcity and maintain price and value. Undoubtedly, all have heard of eggs being dumped, flocks of chickens and turkeys being slaughtered, herds of cattle or hogs being slaughtered -- this in order to maintain scarcity. Canada and the United States, for instance, are growing more wheat, corn and soya beans than they have ever grown at any time in the past, and yet we are paying more for a loaf of bread at the present time than we have ever paid at any time. At the same time, we have more millions of people who are absolutely homeless here in the richest continental area on the globe. We have people who are lacking for health care, shelter, education, food, transportation, communications and recreational pursuits, because they cannot pay. At the same time, the political governments are going around telling the rest of the world how they should manage their affairs.

It might be useful to note that the United States has never come away from a war-time economy since the onset of the second World War. They have spent more on defense and the manufacture of munitions, the hardware for war, for their own use or for sale to anybody who has the money. Worldwide, the production and sale of armaments exceeds one trillion dollars annually. And of that trillion dollars, the United States has the largest share. In operating this business we are squandering the resource heritage of this land area and also that of other land areas. Meanwhile, we are rapidly running out of the essential ingredients to continue to operate a high-energy technological society, the kind of society we live in.

Little of what is done can be attributed to human muscle-power and hand-tools. Not much more than one-percent of the total energy expended is attributable to the human engine. More than ninety- eight percent of the total energy that we convert annually is from petroleum, coal, natural gas and electricity. So, in effect, we do not work for what we get. True we go through some ridiculous excercises in futility in order to qualify for a paycheck, but none of us are ``earning'' a living in the old sense of ``earning'' a living.

We are allowing our population to expand at an exponential rate. It took all previous time up to approximately the year 1800 for the world's population to first reach and then exceed one billion human beings alive at one time on planet earth. It took 125 years to go from one billion to two billion, and then it took not much more than thirty years to go from two billion to three billion; then seventeen or twenty years to go from three to four billion; and about fifteen years to go from four to five billion. Now, we are rapidly approaching six billion human beings alive on planet earth at the same time. We ask: Where are the resources to come from to sustain that sort of human onslaught, remembering that standard of living and quality of life go far beyond just food, clothing and shelter?

A long time ago Technocracy stated that with the resources this continental area possessed, it would have been possible to elevate the standard of living and quality of life many times above what we now consider to be the average standard of living -- and for everyone. It was pointed out that if you have the land area, the fresh water, the arable land, the energy resources, the mineral resources and the already technologically trained personnel that are operating that equipment, you can devise a new system of social administration that circumvents the need for price and profit.

If we have the wherewithall, why destroy food, why require the taxpayer to pay the farmer for his wheat and then ask the taxpayer to pay for the transportation from where the wheat is grown to the nearest seaport to ship it somewhere else at a fraction of the domestic price? We, even in our humanitarian efforts to prevent starvation or to ease starvation elsewhere, give away resources mainly so that we can maintain a comfortable scarcity -- a scarcity that can then be sold at the highest price.

Technocracy states that it is necessary to completely abolish politics and do away with a monetary method of distribution. Technocracy also points out that nothing takes place without energy being converted from one form to another. Without energy you cease to exist, and energy in all its forms is measurable and doesn't change. A kilowatt hour is a specific quantity. So, here is the opportunity to construct a social design based on the common denominator -- energy. Here is a social design that would automatically eliminate the economic requirement for adversarial relationships and, instead, employ cooperation as its hallmark -- in keeping with natural, human relationships.

Citizens of the North American Continent are the ones who must execute the tactics which will support a strategy for survival. The Price System does not have any strategy for survival. Technological development has given social change a momentum that it never had before. This generation must face the problem and find the answer, and there is not that much time left.

Technocracy has always pointed out that Technocracy's method of social operation will not be adopted because it is desirable but because it is necssary; the choice is literally Technocracy or chaos. Science applied to the social order is the only effective method of correcting our dangerous course. Technocracy is non- business and non-political; it is strictly scientific. It alone can meet the requirements, and the process may be painful. You have no security in the Price System; the only future worthwhile is a future in a Technocracy.