Posted 10/16/2005 05:13:00 PM by Douglas

A longtime reader pointed me towards this article, and I'd be remiss if I didn't make a few comments. First of all, chicken little, the sky isn't falling.

I had the misfortune of having to review a stack of National Geopraphics from the 70s a few months ago, and it was quite revealing. First off I had no idea how far to the Left NG was, but it was also interesting just how dire their prediction of the future actually was. Petroleum reserves were to be depleted by 1990, the earth would have an un-sustainable population by 2000, and global cooling (yes, this was their line in the 70s, look it up) was going to reap catastrophic climatological mayhem across the planet before we got to stop using the pre-printed 19__ on our checks. Oddly enough, detailed on the same NG pages, nuclear reactors and strip mines in the worker's paradise of Cuba were supplying essential jobs and needed income to local economies, but that's the rant for another day.

Anyhoo, no one that's been paying attention would think that the average schmoe doesn't have it better than any of the crowned heads of Europe 500 years ago. But just because we're hitting a few snags doesn't mean it's all going to come crashing down on our heads now does it? Does it?!?

You will enjoy a standard of living that would have glazed the eyes of the Emperor Nero, thanks to the 2% annual economic growth rate sustained by the developed world since the industrial revolution. You will have access to greater knowledge than Aristotle could begin to imagine, and to technical resources that would stupefy Leonardo da Vinci. You will know a world whose scale and variety would induce agoraphobia in Alexander the Great. You should experience relative peace thanks to the absolute technological superiority of the industrialised world over its enemies and, with luck and within reason, you should be able to write and say anything you like, a luxury denied to almost all other human beings, dead or alive.

Whatever goes wrong in our lives or the world, the march of progress continues regardless. Doesn't it?

Almost certainly not.

Well, yes and no. The natural state of any system is decay, but that doesn't necessarily apply to all of society because there's lots of people that are working to keep that from happening. In the middle of December, I can go out and buy a lemon the size of my fist, yet the possibility of this event is totally unheard of to the King of England a short 200 years ago. Why? Because of the market, and the technology that makes it possible, and the best part about the technology is that it's almost 100% unforeseeable to those that create it. No one can possibly imagine what it would be like in 100 years, so to sit back and prognosticate doom and gloom at the peak of mankind's achievements is somewhat akin to be the turd in the punchbowl and that ants at a picnic at the same time. But something tells me that this statement sums up the author's sentiment better than I ever could:

The great nations just aren't throwing enough money at the problem.

Holy crap. I'm hesitant to call this guy an ignorant Leftists, because I've seen this problem on both sides of the aisle, but geesh. The energy problems of the planet aren't cause by a lack of funding.