Science & Society: Global Issues of the 21st Century

Ideas matter.

The 20th century witnessed the most destructive war in all of human history--a war about ideas. Western democracy won that war. It also witnessed a half-century-long cold war. Western democracy won that war.

Despite the hardships and destruction of these conflicts, human beings made more progress in the 20th century than in all previous centuries on earth. This progress was led by remarkable advances in science, technology, free markets and democratic political ideas. This progress could be measured by population numbers, life expectancy, health, education, pollution abatement, living standards and political, economic and personal freedom.

The devastating and despicable terrorist attack on New York City and Washington DC on September 11 of 2001 is not a promising beginning for the 21st century. This attack was carried out by a small group who combine hatred of the values of western democracies with a religious fanaticism probably unmatched in modern times.

Some of the most important of the western values they attacked are the very ones that have led to the extraordinary progress of the 20th century, namely science, technology, free markets and democracy. Despite this beginning many knowledgeable people around the world think the 21st century will yet surpass the 20th in human progress--by a large measure.

Yes, ideas matter.

This program is meant to help you sort out the risks and the benefits of certain ideas in science, technology and a free society for your life in the 21st century. Here are five of the most important global issues today.

1. Population: are there too many people in the world?

2. Resources: are we running out of energy, forests, soil and other natural resources?

3. Pollution: how serious are our toxic waste and pollution problems, including global warming?

4. Biotechnology: how will genetic engineering and other advances in biology change lives in the 21st century?

5. Lifestyles: do we need to change from a growth to a new no-growth (green) lifestyle in the 21st century?

For help in answering these questions, we interviewed some prominent experts.

Question #1. Population: Are there too many people in the world?

For help in answering this question, we talked first to Reid Bryson, an internationally respected climate scientist and for 15 years, the director of the Institute for Environmental Studies here at the University of Wisconsin Madison. I asked Dr Bryson what was the number 1 environmental problem in the world today?

"The world is already saturated with people. That is clearly the number one problem. In fact if we were not as many people, there would not be as much carbon dioxide put in. Right? There wouldn't be as much oil and coal used. There would be plenty of farmland to produce food for everybody. Let's take the example of India because everybody knows that India has had frequent periods of loss of food and I have a lot of experience in India. Could the work of India be done with half as many people? Yes, because they are essentially half unemployed.

“So with half as many people, the land would still produce the same amount of food, they would have twice as much food per person and twice as much wealth per person.”

Biologist Paul Ehrlich in a best-selling book of 30 years ago predicted that because of over-population countries like India could never hope to feed their population. He also predicted that over 65 million Americans would die of famine in the 1980s. Fortunately neither of these predictions came true.

The world today does have over 6 billion people. Assuming for the moment that is too many people, how many fewer people would be better? Howard Odom, one of the founders of modern ecology, and presently professor at the University of Florida, thinks that a growing shortage of fossil fuels and natural resources will cause a major reduction in the world's population in the near future no matter what we might want to happen.

"Not drastic -- certainly down to a billion ... If you want to keep a good standard of living ... and we don't have to do it fast. You've got a couple of generations to do it. "

Until recently, this view that the world is vastly over-populated already, and indeed that overpopulation is itself one of the major, if not the major cause of social disasters was probably the majority view among scientists and among educated people. In recent years, however, it has been sharply and successfully challenged by many scientists. One of the most persuasive and influential of the challengers was the late economist from the University of Maryland, Julian Simon.

"Well I am sure not for overpopulation, but when they say overpopulation, they just mean more people on earth. Strangest thing when you think about it for all of human history, we have been trying to conquer death so that we could live long lives, without worrying about our children dying young. ... Ten thousand years ago we only had the capacity to keep alive one million people on the face of the earth. Even 150 years ago we could only support a billion people.

“Now we can support 5 billion people living longer and healthier than ever before. It would seem to me that anybody who cares about human life would jump up and down and say, isn't this a wonderful triumph, this is the greatest triumph of all human history.

“Instead they turn around somehow and say, look at this terrible thing that is happening to us."

But wait, we asked Dr. Simon, biologists point out that in a pond for instance, frog will multiply and multiply until finally they run out of food and space and they go into cannibalism. Isn't that the way it is with human beings?

"You've got it exactly right, Bill, when you say the biologists, because the biologists have been the strongest of the doomsaying voices. To some extent I think this reflects biological thinking. It is true that if you have a given pond and you increase the number of frogs eventually the process has got to stop.

“But perhaps because of the nature of their training and the work they do, the biologists don't see the human part of this. The pond will only support so many of us; we've got to do something about it. ... And we do.“

Here is how it works with both population as well as with resources, claims Dr. Simon.

“The number of people grow or we get richer or both. And that puts pressure on resources. When that happens the price of resources begins to go up, that is, there is increasing scarcity. Well, the increasing scarcity is an opportunity. An opportunity for people to make a profit, it is an opportunity for people who want to make a contribution to knowledge and to society by resolving problems. So people tackle the problem. Some people fail, but they pay the price themselves.

“Some people succeed and find solutions to the problems. Here's the extraordinary part. The solutions that they find to the problems leave us better off than if the problems had never arisen in the first place. That's why each human generation tends to leave the world and society a slightly richer place than the generation who came before it. That's the extraordinary phenomenon and that's the process that the biologists don't see."

We asked Julian Simon if his was a lone voice or if others shared his views about population.

"With respect to population growth, 10 years ago I was a very small minority that's true. But in the past 10 years the entire scientific world has changed. In 1986 we had a report of the National Academy of Sciences called "Population Growth and Economic Development." And this study turned about 160 degrees, almost completely around from the 1971 National Academy of Sciences Report which was terribly worried about population growth and insisted that slowing population growth was the best way to increase economic development. This report says something like population growth is at most a minor negative affect. In some places it may be negative, and some places it may be positive and it is an extraordinarily unworried report coming almost all the way to my position. So no, I am not giving you a minority view about anything, not even about population growth among those people whose business it is to study these matters.”

Let's move on now to the second of our major questions, one closely connected with the population question--and with other issues to come like global warming. Are we running out of energy and natural resources? Environmentalist Jeremy Rifkin, President of the Foundation for Economic Trends, gives one widely held view today.

“--Our U.S. population is the main user of resources on this planet. Only six percent of the world’s population live in this country yet we’re using a third of the resources of this planet as we are responsible for 28% of the global warming.... Every statistic I’ve seen says we are going to run out of fossil fuels ... Deforestation has become uncontrollable, much worse than we predicted just five years ago.”

“... we are going to have to learn that the more we consume the less resources are available on the earth for other human beings and other creatures.”

This is a widely held view today. Some people may be surprised to know that the majority of working scientists do not share this opinion.

To get the view of working scientists on this issue, we talked to Marion Clawson. Dr Clawson was the head of the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior and has spent his life studying and administering our nation’s natural resources. He recently retired from his work as a forestry researcher with the foundation Resources for the Future. We asked him his views about forests and other natural resources.

“There is a widespread belief that we are destroying and depleting our forests. Not so! Not so! Quite the contrary. We’ve been building them back .. Now no one should deny there are situations which may be considered regrettable, but taken as a whole the situation for american forests is very good.

What about things like farm land, food and other natural resources?

"Well certainly there is an enormous amount of popular interest in and stimulated by the media in the gloom and doom. Go back to Malthus and you can go back even earlier than that, population is growing, how are we going to feed them, yet the fact is food supply has increased as fast as population has increased we have more often had surpluses than not, but I don't think the answer lies in us cutting, well, I think we could cut back on waste, and I think there are more efficient ways of using resources, but the probability is that the rest of the world is going to move up.

“Today half the world is poor and half the world is rich, 300 years ago all the world was poor, 300 years from now all the world could be rich by today's standards, and I think that is the answer. We have always been interested in Resources For The Future and I called this cautious optimism. Sure there are problems, there are always problems, this is what challenges you, but we think that we can solve the problems, we think that the picture as a whole is favorable and good, we think that contrary to many, life today is a lot richer and better than it was a generation ago."

When it comes to energy resources, his cautious optimism was also shared by environmentalist Amory Lovins, Director of the Rocky Mountain Institute and worldwide expert on energy resources.

"I work in about 20 odd countries and am perpetually amazed by the power of 5 billion minds wrapping around a problem. I think the more we talk to each other around the world the less reason we will have to feel guilty at our waste and the more reason we will have to feel good about the lessons we are exchanging and how to live more lively and enable many young people in the world to live as good a life as we do."

I asked Mr. Lovins in his field of energy expertise, could the rest of the world ever hope to equal the United States in standard of living?

"In energy, unquestionably, in fact, in an analysis for the German government around 1980, some colleagues and I assumed for the case of argument a world of eight billion people, all with the West German standard of living, complete industrialization of the world.

“Now for many reasons this is probably not possible or desirable, but energy is not one of them because we found that by using energy cost effectively with 1980 prices, 1980 technologies, we can end up using a little more than one third as much total energy as now and getting it all from cost- effective renewables."

Julian Simon's special field of expertise is natural resources as they are related to population. I asked him about the majority views of scientists regarding resource problems.

"When I say to you that our food situation gets better and better decade after decade and the future looks similarly optimistic, I am giving you the mainstream view of agricultural economists. Here it is not just the mainstream, it is like 98% of them, not the 2% who claim the papers all the time seriously enough, but all of the respected agricultural economists. I learned these ideas from them; they are not original from me. Mainstream with respect to all the running out of minerals and raw materials or will the future hold real availability. Here argues a view that may not be 98%, but it is the consensus of resource economists.."

But what about fossil fuels. Ecologists like Howard Odom point out that almost all of our industrial wealth is built on using fossil fuels, and we are going to run out of them in a few generations. Won’t we then have to cut back drastically on population and living standards.

”He is simply working on an economic theory created by an economist, Thomas Malthus, that is wholly discredited by the facts. He is working solely on the basis of this abstract proposition that there is a fixed amount of stuff used up, there will be less to go around. And this is utterly contradicted by all the scientific facts that show it goes just the other way, raw materials including energy have been becoming more available and less scarce, not more scarce, less scarce all throughout human history.

“It is peculiar, these people call themselves scientists, but if science means anything it means testing your ideas against the observed data. And if your theories don't fit the facts, you change your theories... And yet they continue to maintain the same theory in spite the fact that it has been discredited by all the available facts. And when you say to them why do they maintain this theory despite all the factors of history, they then say all the facts of history are not relevant because things have to be different in the future. Now that is not a scientific point of view, it is a metaphysical point of view."

It should be noted that Julian Simon’s views are strongly opposed by some, though by no means all, scientists involved in environmental movements. Here is how Thomas Lovejoy, for instance, of the Smithsonian Institute reacted to Simon's ideas and criticisms.

"These numbers are not precise numbers, they are estimates, but criticisms from somebody like Julian Simon are utterly trivial. I mean the man does not understand biology at all and doesn't want to. Julian Simon is the guy who says he can do it with mirrors."

As I am sure you are beginning to notice, one problem in science and society measures right up against another one and how you answer one has a lot to do with how you answer another. And I am also sure you are noticing that values and emotions play as big a part as facts and theories.

The third of our big questions, how serious are our toxic waste and pollution problems today, especially the problem called global warming?

To get the majority view on global warming, we talked again to Amory Lovins.

"There is an awful lot of fossil fuel in the world, but we are starting to realize that we can't burn it all. Especially we can't burn the bulk of it, which is the coal for very long without getting into trouble by changing the earth's climate because whenever you burn that carbon that has been locked up in the ground for a long time it becomes carbon dioxide in the air and absorbs heat and you get global warming. If you don't like it, you know, you can probably row up to the Capitol steps in your rowboat and complain about it."

Now to prevent global warming from excessive carbon dioxide in the air, Mr. Lovins, as well as prominent politicians like presidential candidate, Al Gore, propose that we cut back drastically on our use of fossil fuels They also promote increased research and reliance on new renewable energy technologies, dramatic increases in efficiency, and new ways to take carbon dioxide out of the air.

It needs to be emphasized that although too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may lead to a warmer earth, carbon dioxide is not a chemical harmful to life. On the contrary, plants, animals and human beings are all built using carbon dioxide as a critical building material. The green leaves of plants take carbon dioxide out of the air when they make living tissues—and all of our food-- in the process known as photosynthesis. In a living cycle then, all living things, plants, animals and humans, breathe out carbon dioxide every moment of their lives.

Green plants, especially forests, do take out more carbon dioxide than they add, so planting trees is good and cutting down trees us bad for possible global warming. Thomas Lovejoy explains:

Besides burning fossil fuels, the cutting of tropical forests also contributes to global warming. Thomas Lovejoy explains,

"Tropical forests hold an enormous pool of carbon so if they are cut and they are burned they are adding to the accumulation of co2 in the atmosphere and the problems in the increased greenhouse affect."

Despite the majority opinion here of scientists on global warming and the recent controversies about the international Kyoto treaty, there are a significant number of climate experts who disagree. Richard Lindzen, for instance, one of the world’s most respected climatologists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains his dissenting view.

"Certain gasses have been increasing, but the question has been can we readily expect these to lead to significant warming and the evidence of the past which is to say the last hundred years when we have already increased greenhouse substances, or I should better say minor greenhouse substances, certainly the most important is water vapor, the next most important is water in cloud form, then gases like carbon dioxide are a distant, distant, distant thirds and fourths and they have increased significantly over the last century. ... I would argue that what we have seen so far tells us our models are wrong and are greatly overestimating what CO2 will do in the future.

“If you ask that the models be consistent with what we have seen so far, at the end of the next century we will see less than a degree of warming."

Global warming is only one of the science and society issues that arise from unwanted pollutants in our air, water and soil. What about other toxic wastes?

To get some help here we talked to Bruce Ames, biochemist at the University of California-Berkeley and an internationally respected expert in toxic waste problems.

“"... all of whatever I have been learning is telling me that pollution is pretty much irrelevant to public health. A little problem here and there, but it is not a very important problem. And the whole country seems to be thinking that pollution is very important.”

Indeed many people do think pollution is very important. I am surprised. Is this view of yours that pollution in America is not very important today an unusual view for people like yourself -- that is working scientists--toxicologists who specialize in pollution problems?

“Most toxicologists feel that way but the public opinion isn’t influenced by toxicologists. The people don’t pay attention to toxicologists .. For the last ten years newspaper articles have been having stories about toxic chemical here and toxic chemical there and pollution, and carcinogens in water and most of your information tends to comes from environmental organizations that have what I would view as an extreme view on everything and I don't think they are getting the general feel of the scientific community on this and also the science is changing.

"The other thing is people have the idea that carcinogens are rare, they are mostly manmade, and we can get rid of them. And that is not true because 99.99% of the chemicals in the world are natural and natural chemicals, if you ask what percentage of manmade chemicals are coming out as carcinogens, and what percentage of natural chemicals, about half for either one, that is half the chemicals that they have ever tested have come out as carcinogens among the natural group and about half for the manmade group.

“I think most of the carcinogens in the world are going to be natural and the natural carcinogens are much closer to the toxic level than the manmade ones. So we are just not getting enough pollution to make a difference if you compare to every meal you eat is full of natural carcinogens.

“We should be optimistic. We are the healthiest we have ever been in human history, and one thing you can be sure of is that life expectancy is going to get longer and longer, and that modern technology is enabling us to be healthier and healthier and we are continuing to do that"

The hazardous chemicals that people seem to fear the most are radioactive ones. This fear, says nuclear scientist and radiation expert Bernard Cohen of the University of Pittsburgh, is severely handicapping one of the most promising solutions to air and water pollution as well as to possible global warming.

“Nuclear power may cause the death of as many as ten people per year in the United States. On the other hand the principal alternative to nuclear power is burning coal. If you had to produce the same amount of electricity by burning coal you will be killing tens of thousands of people. ... I think the best study is the one done by the Harvard University group. They did a reanalysis of all the data. Well, over 100 different studies have been reported on the health effects of air pollution from coal burning. ... Their estimate is that something like 100,000 people a year in the United States die from air pollution and perhaps 30% of this is due to coal-burning plants, which we 30,000 deaths a year. But I mean the numbers aren’t that important. Suppose it was 10,000 even 5,000 with nuclear power we’re talking numbers like 10, not 10,000 deaths a year.

What about the problem of radioactive wastes?

“Radioactive waste is the least problem from a technical standpoint. What you do is convert it into a rock and put it underground where the rocks are. We know all about how rocks behave. And if you apply our knowledge or rocks to this radioactive waste converted into a rock, it turns out that the health effects of radioactive wastes are very, very minimal. In fact, there are three types of buried waste from coal burning power plants that are 1000 times more harmful than the radioactive waste from nuclear power. For example, coal burning releases lots of cancer-causing chemicals like beryllium, cadmium, arsenic and things like that which go in the ground and eventually get into food supplies and people eat them. When you figure out the health effects of these materials it turns out to be a thousand times worse then the health effects of the radioactive waste. It both cases it’s the same analysis.

“You put the materials in the ground and they might get back in the food. You do the calculations the same way. Another one of the wastes from coal burning is actually radioactive wastes. Coal contains a fair amount of uranium and thorium and radium and these things are going to end up in the ground when you burn the coal. People build their houses on the ground and these materials turn into radon. The extra radon will kill many more people than nuclear power plants.”

Very recently there has been new interest in nuclear power as one way to answer the greenhouse effect and acid rain. Do you think this is likely to change things in this country?

“There’s certainly hope that it might. I mean, certainly the environmental groups -- which are very influential in convincing the media what to publicize and which does most of the direction of what the government does -- environmental groups now seem to be more concerned with the dangers of the greenhouse effect and acid rain and air pollution, they’re finally waking up to than they are about the dangers of nuclear power. This is a very hopeful sign, I mean nuclear power, of course, completely avoids greenhouse effect and acid rain and completely avoids air pollution.”

The fourth major issue in science and society today is biotechnology, especially stem cell research and genetic engineering. How far can we go and how far should we go in manipulating basic life codes of plants, animals .. and human beings?

We asked Dr. Richard Burgess, former director of the Biotechnology Institute at the University of Wisconsin to tell us just what is biotechnology?

“Biotechnology is a general term that has been given to ... Has many definitions. But I think the most understandable one is it’s applied biology. It’s using the knowledge that’s been gained by basic research in biology for practical purposes, for producing new products, new processes. And of course that means it’s not new. People have been domesticating animals, domesticating plants, breeding plants to improve food production for thousands of years. They’ve been making wine and cheese, beer by fermenting, using microorganisms to convert food for thousands of years. What is new is the power that’s been developed through research breakthroughs in the last ten to twenty years., particularly in the area of molecular genetics, but not only molecular genetics, also cell biology.”

Recent advances in just the last few years in cloning animals, in genetically altering plants and animals and in using what are called stem cells taken from discarded human embryos to research and develop radically new ways to cure diseases and repair damaged tissues have made biotechnology even more powerful -- and more controversial.

Opponents like environmentalist Jeremy Rifkin have proposed a moratorium on some kinds of genetic engineering research.

“I’ve been on record for years now saying that we need a moratorium. We should not be releasing any genetically engineered organisms into the ecosystems of this planet at this time. Simply because we have no risk assessment science. In the area of petrochemical technologies we have a science of toxicology. There is no such science when it comes to genetic engineering. We have no predictive ecology that can measure the relative risk in placing a microbe or plant or animal into a complex ecosystem. And so if we don’t have a risk assessment science it seem to me foolish to maintain the fiction that we can regulate the environmental questions here.”

“His opinion is an opinion. ... I respect his opinion on this but I don’t agree with it. I think first of all that there is a substantial body of risk assessment science. And that’s how one determines whether a chemical is likely to be a carcinogen. A new potato that is produced is tested for its safety, whether it is produced by conventional plant breeding or whether it’s produced by genetic engineering.

“The National Academy of Sciences has convened several major meetings to look into this and the conclusion quite simply is that there is no more danger with an organism produced by genetic engineering than there is one produced by normal genetics, more conventional means.

“There is a tremendous diversity of life and new organisms and variations on organisms are being created all the time and have been since the beginning of life. Many of these are problems. Many are problems when they arise and many are problems when they move into another environment. That’s a concern. But it’s no more of a concern -- what about the organisms that are brought in by the dirt on people’s shoe that come in from other countries? Do we want to put a moratorium on travel because we might introduce a harmful organism? I think it is the same category as putting a moratorium on travel ... We re-test an engineered organism that’s been engineered to help fix nitrogen to replace natural fertilizer for alfalfa or soy beans. We know what we’re working with. It’s been tested in the laboratory first. It goes through an extensive review and in fact these things are much more carefully controlled and understood than what one brings in on an orange from some foreign country where you have been traveling.”

“Everything you can think of has associated with it risks and benefits. we ride in cars which are extremely dangerous actually because it’s convenient. There are some risks and there are some benefits. The same thing is true with genetically engineered organisms.”

It is worth noting that in 2006 critic Jeremy Rifkin softened his stance-- somewhat --on genetic engineering of plants. He now says that some forms of genetically altered crops may be desirable and environmentally safe. While he still opposes moving genes from one species of plant to another, he now endorses marker-assisted selection—that is, speeding up natural plant breeding by tampering with the genes of particular species like corn, rice, cotton or soy beans.

Of all the advances in genetic engineering to date the most startling was the successful cloning of sheep by scientists in Scotland in 1996. Since then thousands of other animals–sheep, pigs, mice, cows and others –have been cloned successfully. Someday we may succeed, for instance, in using a combination of genetic engineering and cloning to produce pigs whose organs will be compatible with humans. Then we could clone pig hearts and kidneys, etc. For transplantation into humans.

Dr. Neal First at the University of Wisconsin is one of the leaders in animal cloning. He explains another possible benefit from cloning animal cells. Or more likely now, human stem cells.

“There is another kind of transplantation that perhaps isn’t so commonly thought about. This is the transplantation of cells. And the best example of this is research with HIV now where one of the more highly promising therapies for HIV is to engineer the beginning blood cells, we call them stem cells. But they are stem cells for the blood lineage, different from stem cells for embryonic lineage. We have embryonic stem cells that will make any and all cells of the embryo. But these are stem blood cells. They will make any and all blood cells.

“And by starting at that stage and engineering the cells and the using these cells in a transplant, one has the ability to create cells that will resist the HIV organism so it can begin to populate the blood in place of these cells that are susceptible or to in some cases actually destroy the HIV organism --outside of the body yes,-- in tissue culture. What cloning does is produce the possibility for an animal or even a human I suppose to multiply the cells engineer the cells and then use the cells and with that transplant, interfering with the tumor. That might be a blood born tumor or it might be a solid state tumor perhaps. But those prospects are very exciting and that’s what people are really referring to when they talk about transplantation, That, more than organ transplants.”

Our fifth and last question is perhaps the most important and controversial of all. Where do we go from here?

Wending through many of the conflicting strains and views you have now heard is a growing split between people who think we must move in the direction of a no-growth sustainable society. We must learn how to live more simply in a world of scarcity. This is sometimes called the green movement. On the other side are those who think we need to continue to increase living standards and not only here but around the world. We must learn to live better--and wiser--in a world of increasing plenty.

The late Eugene Odum, one of the pioneer founders of the science of ecology, explains the no-growth sustainable direction that he sees for the future.

"You know I teach and the best way to teach is to start with something that people know about. Everybody has experienced adolescence and how painful that is. Okay, society has the same thing, it goes through adolescence, has a pioneering likely growth stage that Mr. Reagan loves and thinks can go on forever.

“Then you have the mature stage like many European countries are in so we in that adolescence is called the demographic transition by demographers. So we are struggling through and suffering and will suffer from the change from rapid growth to a rapid growth low quality to high quality. Where quality growth continues but not growth just to get bigger and better.

“This is the message that we learn from the holistic ecology because we learn from nature when we look at the whole that is what happens in nature."

Eugene Odum’s brother, Howard Odum (who also died recently), goes further and sees an inevitable decline in populations and resource availability and in living standards. So how can we learn to cope with this transitions. How can we come down without catastrophe?

"Well first we get a task force to lay out the policy and leveling is turning out and we have been trying to get...............for example, if you want to cut back you don't cut people. You cut everybody's salary by that proportion. Now when you cut people's salary if it is done across the board then they are democratically going to have to choose what it is that they can do without. If you fire somebody then you have got welfare problems, and you've got crime and you've got disruption and chaos and we have to learn to come down and quit trying to say we must grow, we must grow because growth has its time and place and that time is over."

Since one of the major ways we use energy today is automobiles, I asked Dr Odom if he drove a car.

"Yes, I believe I am a successional creature whose job it is to prepare for the climax, those who provide for the succession for fear of growth and diversification and my job, all our jobs are to prepare for next, and prepare our youngsters for the next and so I try to operate and use all of our resources that society provides me to get this across. Not excessively, I have a small car, but if there is energy there to make my job more efficient I use it.

“The reason we have democracy and rights is not for yourself, but to give you the opportunity to contribute more. But nobody is better suited to decide how they can serve society then the person themselves. They can decide what can I do for society that is really good that I can really get, that I can be successful at it and feel like I am making a contribution. That gives you just enormous happiness and that is what we have to get across. Somehow people have got democracy and their rights mixed up and all the other two.......... for themselves so that is the purpose. That is what it means, democracy and freedom are our means to ...........Contribute. I think that is the message I want to leave with ........people, an it's ecological that's what maximizes prize performance of ecosystem, that what you learn from our society."

Environmentalist Jeremy Rifkin summarizes a green direction for the future.

“We have to develop a green life style. We have to change our concepts and relationships with the environment. We have to develop tools that are sustainable to our resource base. We have to realize that the planet is an organism and that we need to treat it with respect and dignity. And finally we are going to have to learn that the more we consume, the less resources are available on the earth for other human beings and other creatures.”

On the other side of the growth/no growth controversy, we have young solar voltaic engineers like Ken Zwiebel, who believes that the new solar technologies can be one of the new technologies that lead the way for all the world's people to obtain a higher standard of living that is not only sustainable but enhanceable.

“One of the critical things about third world is that most of the villages do not have electricity. For instance, I have heard that in India there are 500,000 villages that are not grid connected and those are all very fertile field for photovoltaics and essentially what you would have there is, if you could have economic photovoltaic, what you would have there is an option that these people could use without the very high cost of connecting to the grid and without adding to pollution. Because one of the great additions to the greenhouse effect is going to come from the 3rd world as they begin to get electricity in the villages that do not have it right now. They will get electricity either by burning fossil fuels like coal or they can get it with an option like photovoltaics that does not contribute to the greenhouse effect.”

We asked Dr. Zweibel what he thought of the view that we must all adjust to a lower standard of living in the 21st century.

“I think it is a pleasure to participate in the United States high standard of living. I certainly would not want to give up the things that I have become accustomed to and that my two children have also become accustomed to. I don't want photovoltaics or any alternative energy to be looked on as a high cost option that destroys the standard of living that we have become used to.

“We are attempting to make photovoltaics inexpensive. In fact we think photovoltaics can drop in cost in the 21st century. There are not many options for making electricity that can make that claim. I am excited about that and I am not excited about reducing our standard of living."

And finally we asked Julian Simon what he thought of teaching children in our schools that because we are so overpopulated, polluted and running out of natural resources, we must cut back drastically on consumption.

"Our greatest insurance against bad things is to have more wealth. And when I say wealth, I don't just mean things, I mean knowledge. The reason we are able to live longer and more safely now then we were 100 years ago, 1000 years is because we know more. We have their tools, especially the tools of knowledge to cope with the uncertain things in our environment. People who are well off, countries that are affluent live much longer and more safely than poor countries. Wealth, true wealth, not just baubles, but true wealth, knowledge especially, is our best insurance against bad things happening.

“And believe it or not wealth creates more wealth, knowledge creates more knowledge which enables us to live more safely in the future. Those people who say stop the world I want to get off now they are pointing toward a more dangerous world than the world that says let's get out there and do great things because, the outcome of that will be our greater capacity to deal typically, more wisely with our world."

Human beings made more progress in the 20th century than in all previous centuries on earth. This progress was led by incredible advances in science and technology and in economic, political and personal freedom. No one knows how much progress -- or its opposite -- the 21st century will bring.

The experts often disagree. It is you who will have to decide.