Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered Read Online Free
Author: E F Schumacher
Tags: Economics, Political Science, Business & Economics, Philosophy, Public Policy, Environmental Policy, MacRoeconomics, Aesthetics, Microeconomics
Middle East and North Africa, would attract envious attention on a scale scarcely imaginable today, while some high consumption areas, such as Western Europe and Japan, would move into the unenviable position of residual legatees. Here is a source of conflict if ever there was one.
As nothing can be proved about the future - not even about the relatively short-term future of the next thirty years - it is always possible to dismiss even the most threatening problems with the suggestion that something will turn up. There could be simply enormous and altogether unheard-of discoveries of new reserves of oil, natural gas, or even coal. And why should nuclear energy be confined to supplying one-quarter or one-third of total requirements? The problem can thus be shifted to another plane, but it refuses to go away. For the consumption of fuel on the indicated scale -
assuming no insurmountable difficulties of fuel supply - would produce environmental hazards of an unprecedented kind, Take nuclear energy. Some people say that the world's re sources of relatively concentrated uranium are insufficient to sustain a really large nuclear programme - large enough to have a significant impact on the world fuel situation, where we have to reckon with thousands of millions, not simply with millions, of tons of coal equivalent. But assume that these people are wrong. Enough uranium will be found; it will be gathered together from the remotest corners of the earth, brought into the main centres of population, and made highly radioactive. It is hard to imagine a greater biological threat, not to mention the political danger that someone might use a tiny bit of this terrible substance for purposes not altogether peaceful.
On the other hand, if fantastic new discoveries of fossil fuels should make it unnecessary to force the pace of nuclear energy, there would be a problem of thermal pollution on quite a different scale from anything encountered hitherto.
Whatever the fuel, increases in fuel consumption by a factor of four and then five and then six... there is no plausible answer to the problem of pollution.
I have taken fuel merely as an example to illustrate a very simple thesis: that economic growth, which viewed from the point of view of economics, physics, chemistry and technology, has no discernible limit. must necessarily run into decisive bottlenecks when viewed from the point of view of the environmental sciences. An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited. Already, the environment is trying to tell us that certain stresses are be coming excessive.
As one problem is being 'solved'. ten new problems arise as a result of the first 'solution'. As Professor Barry Commoner emphasises, the new problems are not the consequences of incidental failure but of technological success.
Here again, however, many people will insist on discussing these matters solely in terms of optimism and pessimism, taking pride in their own optimism that 'science will find a way out'. They could be right only, I suggest, if there is a conscious and fundamental change in the direction of scientific effort The developments of science and technology over the last hundred years have been such that the dangers have grown even faster than the opportunities. About this, I shall have more to say later Already, there is overwhelming evidence that the great self- balancing system of nature is becoming increasingly unbalanced in particular respects and at specific points. It would take us too far if I attempted to assemble the evidence here. The condition of Lake Erie, to which Professor Barry Commoner, among others, has drawn attention, should serve as a sufficient warning. Another decade or two, and all the inland water systems of the United Stats may
As nothing can be proved about the future - not even about the relatively short-term future of the next thirty years - it is always possible to dismiss even the most threatening problems with the suggestion that something will turn up. There could be simply enormous and altogether unheard-of discoveries of new reserves of oil, natural gas, or even coal. And why should nuclear energy be confined to supplying one-quarter or one-third of total requirements? The problem can thus be shifted to another plane, but it refuses to go away. For the consumption of fuel on the indicated scale -
assuming no insurmountable difficulties of fuel supply - would produce environmental hazards of an unprecedented kind, Take nuclear energy. Some people say that the world's re sources of relatively concentrated uranium are insufficient to sustain a really large nuclear programme - large enough to have a significant impact on the world fuel situation, where we have to reckon with thousands of millions, not simply with millions, of tons of coal equivalent. But assume that these people are wrong. Enough uranium will be found; it will be gathered together from the remotest corners of the earth, brought into the main centres of population, and made highly radioactive. It is hard to imagine a greater biological threat, not to mention the political danger that someone might use a tiny bit of this terrible substance for purposes not altogether peaceful.
On the other hand, if fantastic new discoveries of fossil fuels should make it unnecessary to force the pace of nuclear energy, there would be a problem of thermal pollution on quite a different scale from anything encountered hitherto.
Whatever the fuel, increases in fuel consumption by a factor of four and then five and then six... there is no plausible answer to the problem of pollution.
I have taken fuel merely as an example to illustrate a very simple thesis: that economic growth, which viewed from the point of view of economics, physics, chemistry and technology, has no discernible limit. must necessarily run into decisive bottlenecks when viewed from the point of view of the environmental sciences. An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited. Already, the environment is trying to tell us that certain stresses are be coming excessive.
As one problem is being 'solved'. ten new problems arise as a result of the first 'solution'. As Professor Barry Commoner emphasises, the new problems are not the consequences of incidental failure but of technological success.
Here again, however, many people will insist on discussing these matters solely in terms of optimism and pessimism, taking pride in their own optimism that 'science will find a way out'. They could be right only, I suggest, if there is a conscious and fundamental change in the direction of scientific effort The developments of science and technology over the last hundred years have been such that the dangers have grown even faster than the opportunities. About this, I shall have more to say later Already, there is overwhelming evidence that the great self- balancing system of nature is becoming increasingly unbalanced in particular respects and at specific points. It would take us too far if I attempted to assemble the evidence here. The condition of Lake Erie, to which Professor Barry Commoner, among others, has drawn attention, should serve as a sufficient warning. Another decade or two, and all the inland water systems of the United Stats may
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