Page Content (OCR)
97 Some of the most extreme predictions by cultural pessimists in the 1960s and 1970s already have been disproved. The authors of The Limits of Growth, published in 1972, claimed that we would run out of oil, gold, zinc, and mercury in 20 years. Conservation biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote in The Population Bomb that “the battle to feed humanity is over; in the course of the 1970s, the world will experience starvation of tragic proportions, and hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.” Although many suf- fered from malnutrition, the number dying of starvation was orders of magnitude smaller than Ehrlich predicted. Apocalyptic Punishment Modern predictions of doom bear some resemblance to the traditional Christian apocalypse, in which the world as we know it is destroyed. Some see that destruction as just punishment for corrupt civilizations, with only the righteous being saved. As we will see later, this theme has appeared among the predicted consequences of contact with a more powerful civilization. The failure of the doomsters’ predictions showed that cultural pessimists had underestimated the human ability to deal with problems by adapting and inventing. Human behavior does change in response to pressures, including population growth and damage to the environment. The failures of these predictions also illustrate the danger of assuming continued exponential growth in an index. This, warned journalist Gregg Easterbrook, is the Fallacy of Uninterrupted Trends." It is understandable—even admirable—that concerned people would put forward doomsday scenarios to deter behavior that could lead to a disaster. However, to make our self-destruction an assumption is some- thing else again. A well-intended political purpose does not make predic- tions of short civilizational lifetimes a fact that we can plug into the Drake equation. We may not be looking far enough into our future; there could be later thresholds as well. If those thresholds applied to alien societies, they might add up to a winnowing process that would reduce the number of civiliza- tions that we can detect.'® What science can do, it will do, some time, somewhere, whatever obstacles may be put in its way. a 900920 Threatening Science Threatening Science —Christian de Duve, 20027’