A Contract with the Earth

Epilogue

epilogue We need our reason to teach us today that we are not . . . the lords of all we survey . . . we are the Lord’s creatures, the trustees of this planet, charged today with preserving life itself . . . margaret thatcher As we anxiously awaited the turn of a century and the benchmark of the millennium, the world was captivated by the doomsday vision of the dreaded Y2K phenomenon. Dire predictions drove computer upgrades in every household , business, and most nation-states throughout the world. Looking back at Y2K, it is easy to take the position that our vigilance worked because nothing bad happened when the clock struck midnight and we entered the twenty-first century. Somehow, our computers continued to crank out e-mail, and nobody lost his or her inventory of data. Y2K was barely a blip on the digital radar screen in 2000. One retrospective view of Y2K pertains to the estimated $300 billion cost of the systems overhaul as a bargain given the chaos and confusion that was likely averted. An unforeseen dividend was that some potential consequences of the 9/11 emergency were circumvented by technology installed for Y2K. Conversely, critics of the unprecedented remediation argue that the scale of the Y2K A Contract with the Earth 186 disruption was vastly overestimated so the huge expenditure of time and money may have been unnecessary. We do not know whether the mass hysteria associated with Y2K was a helpful or harmful reaction. However, since an early and orderly technology plan was executed worldwide , widespread fear and anxiety did not prevent business and government from proactive tinkering. In this case, rational implementation, according to the known facts, overcame collective hysteria. On the scale of Y2K, Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich issued in 1968 an early catastrophic snapshot of a dismal human future in his best-selling book, The Population Bomb. Ehrlich predicted widespread world famine between 1970 and 1985 due to overpopulation and scarce resources. Instead, the world experienced a precipitous drop in fertility and food was exported by the United States at record levels because of the e√ects of the so-called green revolution in agriculture. The author has softened his tone in recent years, discussing his book in terms of ‘‘possibilities ’’ rather than ‘‘predictions,’’ and by clarifying his intent to prevent a worst-case scenario by alerting the world to a looming emergency. As we see it, the lesson of Ehrlich’s publication is that media are positioned and primed to run with a horror story and they are unprepared to prevent hyperbole from running ahead of the science. One person’s hysteria may be regarded as a legitimate cry for help by another, but one thing is certain, no one has yet made a good living accurately predicting the fu- Epilogue 187 ture of the earth, including the world’s best climate scientists . Given the uncertainty of current science and computer models, doomsday scenarios are not very helpful. However, media prompts succeed when they promote understanding by activating a rational problem-solving process . The complexity of the issue of global climate change is illustrated by the observations of the philosopher Michael Serres who advised: As of now we don’t know how to estimate general transformations on such a scale of size and complexity . Above all, we surely don’t know how to think about the relations of time and weather . . . For do we know a richer and more complete model of global change, of equilibria and their attractors, than that of climate and the atmosphere? We are trapped in a vicious circle. To ensure unbiased reporting and misunderstanding, media professionals should fiercely protect their objectivity . Equally important, media accounts of data projections should be studiously cautious given the great potential for errors in measurement and the inherent limits of statistical sampling and inference. A scientist’s comments hastily uttered at a press event frequently become the next day’s sensational headline. A telling example is one expert’s use of the phrase ‘‘highway to extinction’’ to describe the inevitable fallout from future climate trends. As journalists are trained to ask tough questions, they A Contract with the Earth 188 should be especially tough on doomsday theorists rather than milking a doomsday story for all the drama and angst it can produce. Opinions and advocacy will always have a place in journalism , but they must be balanced by carefully researched and unbiased news stories. The...