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4.
This strain on the carrying capacity of the vessel results from the contemporary confluence of three
distinct developments, each of which places tremendous or even unmanageable strains on the life-carrying
55
capability of the planet and all of which together simply overload it. The first of these is the enormous
strain imposed by the sheer burgeoning of population. The statistics of population growth are by now very
well known: the earth's passenger list is growing at a rate that will give us some four billion humans by
60
1975,and that threatens to give us eight billion by 2010. I say «threatens», since it is likely that the inability
of the earth to carry so large a group will result in an actual population somewhat smaller than this,
especially in the steerage, where the growth is most rapid and the available resources last plentiful.
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6. We shall return to the population problem later. But meanwhile a second strain is placed on the earth
by the simple cumulative effect of existing technology (combustion engines, the main industrial processes,
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present-day agricultural techniques, etc.). This strain is localized mainly in the first-class portions of the
vessel where each new arrival on board is rapidly given a standard complement of capital equipment and
where the rate of physical and chemical resource transformation per capita steadily mounts. The strain
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consists of the limited ability of the soil, the water, and the atmosphere of these favored regions to absorb
the outpourings of these fast-growing industrial processes.
7.The most dramatic instance of this limited absorptive power is the rise in the carbon dioxide content of
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the air due to the steady growth of (largely industrial) combustion. By the year 2000, it seems beyond
dispute that the CO2 content of the air will have doubled, raising the heat-trapping properties of the
atmosphere. This so-called «greenhouse» effect has been predicted to raise mean global temperatures
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sufficiently to bring catastrophic potential consequences. One possibility is a sequence of climatic changes
resulting from a melting of the Arctic ice floes that would result in the advent of a new ice Age; another is
the slumping of the Antarctic ice cap into the sea with a consequent tidal wave that could wipe out a sub
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stantial portion of mankind and raise the sea level by 60 to 100 feet.
8.These are all «iffy» scenarios whose present significance may be limited to alerting us to the
immensity of the ecological problem; happily they are of sufficient uncertainty not to cause us immediate
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worry (it is lucky they are, because it is extremely unlikely that all the massed technological and human
energy on earth could arrest such changes once they began). Much closer to home is the burden placed on
the earth's carrying capacity by the sheer requirements of a spreading industrial activity for the fuel and
100 mineral resources needed to maintain the going rate of output per person in the first-class cabins. To raise
the existing (not the anticipated) population of the earth to American standards would require the annual
extraction of 75 times as much iron, 100 times as much copper, 200 times as much lead, and 250 times as
105 much tin as we now take from the earth.
9.Only the known reserves of iron allow us to entertain such fantastic rates of mineral exploitation (and
the capital investment needed to bring about such mining operations is in itself staggering to contemplate).
110 All the other requirements exceed by far all known or reasonably anticipated ore reserves. And, to repeat,
we have taken into account only today's level of population: to equip the prospective passengers of the year
2010 with this amount of basic raw material would require a doubling of all the above figures.
115 10. I will revert later to the consequences of this prospect. First, however, let us pay attention to the third
source of overload, this one traceable to the special environment-destroying potential of newly developed
120 technologies. Of these the most important — and if it should ever come to full-scale war, of course the
most lethal — is the threat posed by nuclear radiation. I shall not elaborate on this well-known (although
not wellbelieved) danger, pausing to point out only that a nuclear holocaust would in all likelihood exert its
125 principal effect in the Northern Hemisphere. The survivors in the South would be severely hampered in
their efforts at reconstruction not only because most of the easily available resources of the world have
already been used up, but because most of the technological know-how would have perished along with the
populations up North.
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1l.But the threats of new technology are by no means limited to the specter of nuclear devastation. There
is, immediately at hand, the known devastation of the new chemical pesticides that have now entered more
135 or less irreversibly into the living tissue of the world's population. Most mothers' milk in the United States
today — I now quote the Ehrlichs verbatim — «contains so much DDT that it would be declared illegal in
interstate commerce if it were sold as cow's milk»; and the DDT intake of infants around the world is twice
140 the daily allowable maximum set by the World Health Organization. We are already, in other words, being
exposed to heavy dosages of chemicals whose effects we know to be dangerous, with what ultimate results
we shall have to wait nervously to discover. (There is something to think about in the archaeological
145 evidence that one factor in the decline of Rome was the systematic poisoning of upper-class Romans from