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OCR for page 107
Afterword
rat
_ _ he biological problems considered in this book
have ranged from the molecular to the global, from the very specific to
the very broad. Ethical problems can be arrayed on a similar scale.
Some ethical issues involve the individual and the family: How should
human tissues be used for transplantation? What are a person's obli-
gations to family and friends? Other ethical issues involve the entire
species: How did ethics evolve in human beings? What are the obli-
gations of human beings to the other living things on the earth?
On this broadest scale, ethical and biological issues intertwine around
a central question: Will the human race be able to survive and prosper
in the years ahead? Science and technology have given us the power
to greatly reduce our chances of survival, through nuclear war or the
degradation of the environment. Science and technology have also given
us the capacity to raise standards of living throughout the world, through
better sources of food and energy, improved disease prevention and
health care, and economic development. Thus the problems and pos-
sibilities facing humanity involve both scientific and ethical issues; they
relate both to what we can do and to what we need to do.
"In an ethical sense, we have no choice other than to secure our own
future," says Peter Raven, professor of Botany at Washington University
and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. '`The central obligation
that we as human beings have is to preserve the sustainable capacity
of the ecosystem into which we have evolved. if we don't do that,
think we're clearly carrying out an immoral act."
107
OCR for page 108
Population and Wealth
The `'major factor" in the pressure being placed on the global eco-
system, according to Raven, is the accelerating increase of the human
population. In 1930, the global population was about 2 billion people.
Today it is more than 5 billion, and by the turn of the century it will
be well over 6 billion. Given current trends, demographers ddo not expect
population growth to cease until sometime in the middle of the twenty-
first century, when it is estimated that the global population will be
somewhere between 9 and IT billion people. Even reaching a stable
population at those levels will require sustained global and national
efforts over the next 50 or 60 years.
Population increases have begun to strain many of the biological and
geological systems that have long sustained human life. Only a few
countries, and none of them in the tropics, are net exporters of food.
As a result, about 500 million people receive less than 80 percent of
the minimum diet recommended by the United Nations. Population
growth also exerts pressure on what may be already limited sources of
energy, water, and minerals. In many less Hev~?lon`~H on,~ntrif`~ fair
instance, firewood is the fuel most often used to cook food, consuming
a large portion of many families' budgets. But the great demand for
firewood has caused whole forests to be denuded, and in many parts
of the world neon]e have to try for milieu to Omm'1rm Om`T {;~ar~ ^+
all.
~ ~ ~~ ~ r ~He ~ An
~.
~ __ .,~, ~ ~ ~ ~ v ~` ~ ~' 1lillw~ LO O~WU1~ ally lilOWOOU t1L
"There's no one who really has a clue as to whether we may not have
already exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth," Raven says.
vvc 1~; t;~llUU(;LlIl~ a mayor global experiment, without controls, and
with the implicit assumption that everything will somehow work out."
Population growth is not the only source of stress on the world's
social, political, ant] biological systems. Another troubling problem
arises from the inequitable distribution of wealth among the peoples of
the world. About 25 percent of the worlcI's people live in inclustrializec!
countries, which include the United States, Canacia, Europe, the Soviet
Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealancl, and a few others. Yet this
quarter of the worlcl's population controls 83 percent of the world's
economic product. By various measures of consumption, the inclustrial-
ized world consumes 80 to 95 percent of the world's material goods.
Therefore, three quarters of the world's people survive on less than a
fifth of the goods produced in the world.
These statistics can be put in more human terms. Of the 2.8 billion
people living in less developed countries, excluding China' ~ billion
live in conditions that the World Bank refines as absolute poverty'
TYL ~ ~ ~ .~ ~ ~1 1 1 · . ~
108 SHAPING THE FUTURE
OCR for page 109
meaning that they cannot count on finding adequate food and shelter
from one clay to the next. About half of these people are malnourished.
Some 14 million children uncler the age of fours almost all of whom
live in the developing world, starve to death or die of diseases related
to starvation every year. The deaths of these chilciren amount to one
out of every three cleaths that occur throughout the florid.
The social and economic problems exacerbated by population growth
and the unequal distribution of wealth are becoming increasingly fa-
miliar, Raven points out: unstable governments, inflation, war, massive
international clebts, and large numbers of displaced people and im-
migrants moving throughout the world. These problems cannot be con-
fined to the countries where they occur. The anguish of less developec]
countries will be transferred to the inclustrializec! worIc] through a variety
of social and economic links. Thus the people of the industrializec!
countries have reasons of self-interest as well as humanitarian reasons
for confronting problems of cleclining per capita resources and ineq-
uitable living standards. C`As long as we keep the distribution of wealth
around the world stretched as taut as it is and fait to recognize our self-
interest in joining other people of the world in building their standards
of living to an adequate level, we are not taking a responsible attitude
toward creating a sustainable ecosystem'" Raven says.
Solutions to problems facing the less developed world need to be
framed C`in a context of social equality, of justice, of fairness," Raven
maintains. We need to look for ways to extend the ethics that govern
our relationships with members of our own society to other societies
and the world as a whole.
Biology and the Future
Biological research will be central to the effort to create a productive
and sustainable global ecosystem. It can produce better crops ant!
domesticated animals through traclitional breeding programs, through
the selection of wild crops for cultivation, ant! soon through genetic
engineering. It can replace dwindling supplies of energy and minerals
with new ant! alternative resources. It can demonstrate the intercon-
nections within the global biosphere, providing the knowledge necessary
to manage global systems.
`'The need to manage the environment collectively to net away from
1 ~. . .
~ , v ~
our locus on the snort term, Is a need whose realization can be very
much informer! by biological knowlecige," Raven says. C`We must ded-
icate ourselves to the preservation of conditions that will allow people
AFTERWORD 1 09
OCR for page 110
to exercise their moral judgments, to make their scientific calculations,
to live the sorts of life that we live ant] have a reasonable expectation
of passing lives of that sort on to our children and grandchilciren."
Scientists and engineers in the developed countries have an irre-
placeable role to play in using biological knowledge to meet human
needs. Only 6 percent of the worIcl's scientists and technologists live
in developing countries. International collaboration is therefore critical
if developing countries are to generate the expertise to manage their
own resources.
As befits the wealth of an industrialized nation, the United States is
now conclucting more biological research than any nation ever has. This
science is not just a `'gimmick," Raven insists, done to satisfy a basic
human urge for increased knowledge. C`The science that we're doing,
the technology that we're developing, the education that we're under-
taking are of key importance for human survival," he says. `'Better
scientific un(lerstancling underlies collective human progress.... It
is a way of improving the human condition throughout the world."
Will biological research provide the knowle(lge needed to build a
prosperous and stable future for all human beings? That has to remain
an open question. But the potential of biological research to do so is
unquestioned. One of biology's many enticements is its open-endedness.
It will never be complete, so long as there is life to study and biologists
to study it. Biology is not just the science of what we are and of how
we came to be-it is also the science of what we can become.
1 10 SHAPING THE FUTURE
Representative terms from entire chapter:
population growth
