Reflections on the Human Prospect

By: Thomas F. Malone

The Sigma Xi Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 27709, and North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27695-8208

Annu. Rev. Energy Environ.. 1995.20:1-29
Copyright ©1995 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved


KEY WORDS: environment, energy, technology, cascade of knowledge, sustainable human development

CONTENTS

SEMINAL INFLUENCES
Roots
In Pursuit of Knowledge
New Horizons
EARLY MILESTONES ON AN ODYSSEY
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Global Atmospheric Research Program
ALTERING PERCEPTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
Weather Control
Greenhouse Warming
Environmental Hazards of Nuclear War
International Geosphere-Biosphere Program
Global Change and the Human Prospect
DOWN THE ROAD TO 2050
OUTLINE OF A PLAN OF ACTION
LEADERSHIP


ABSTRACT

World population and the global economy are expanding in a manner that is propelling civilization along a path that is unsustainable, inequitable, and unstable. A concerted, global effort to discover, integrate, disseminate, and apply knowledge about the natural world and human behavior would change this trajectory to a path of sustainable human development. This path would point toward the vision of a society in which the basic human needs and an equitable share of life’s amenities could be met by successive generations while maintaining in perpetuity a healthy, physically attractive, and biologi­cally productive environment. The scholarly community is urged to provide impetus for the pursuit of this vision. An unprecedented degree of collaboration among the disciplines will be necessary. New modes of communication and cooperation among the major sectors of society will have to be fashioned. Knowledge will become an organizing principle for society in the twenty-first century.

SEMINAL INFLUENCES

Roots

My thoughts on the human prospect are deeply rooted in youthful experiences on the windswept plains of Haakon County, in western South Dakota, during the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1920s, Haakon County was in the throes of dramatic change driven by energy-powered technology, the pursuit of eco­nomic development, and the social aspirations of a restless group of pioneering homesteaders. These forces were all being brought to bear on a fragile eco­system.

Great tracts of prairie, covered with wheat grass, were being plowed. Crops of wheat were planted and regularly rotated with corn. Memories persist of the spectacular, wind-driven “amber waves of grain” that replaced equally magnificent waves of tall prairie grass. Cattle ranching was giving way to farming. Horse-drawn, single-bottom plows were being replaced by multiple-bottom plows pulled by kerosene-powered, Titan tractors. These steel-wheeled, two-cylinder behemoths had a proclivity for mechanical failure because of primitive metallurgy.

McCormick-Deering grain binders, drawn by four horses, were used in the 1920s to harvest the wheat. The stalks holding the grain were cut down, tied in bundles, and mechanically ejected from the machine every few hundred yards. The bundles were then gathered into shocks, collected in horse-drawn hayracks, and hauled to threshing machines where the grain was separated from the straw and loaded into wagons. Other horse teams pulled the wagons to the granary, a very slow method of transport. At the granary, the grain was shoveled by hand into bins to await ferrying, again by horses, to railroad boxcars a day’s journey away.

As the 1920s came to a close with the great crash of 1929, combines, powered by Continental engines and pulled by Farmall tractors, short-circuited this cumbersome, backbreaking process. The combines cut the wheat, sepa­rated the grain from the straw, and deposited a golden torrent of grain into a tank on the combine, from which the grain was emptied periodically into Six-Speed-Special International Harvester trucks. The trucks delivered their loads to the farm, or directly to a railroad town 40 miles distant, for shipping to flour mills in Minneapolis.

As a teenage combine operator in the 1930s, I observed firsthand the dra­matic leap in economic productivity created by energy-powered technology. During those halcyon days, the population of Haakon County was growing at an annual rate of one and a half to two percent. A half-century elapsed before I realized that this economic and demographic development was the result of global forces that are still central to the human prospect as the world crosses the threshold into the third millennium.

Nature’s lessons are sometimes traumatic. An epidemic of anthrax ravaged cattle herds in the early 1930s. Each carcass had to be burned to prevent spread of the fatal disease within the herd and to humans. (Not until many years later did I connect this incident to the looming global threat of virulent infection as a potential factor in the human prospect.) In the middle 1930s, the rains stopped coming and the grasshoppers arrived in force. They consumed the stunted crops struggling to survive the drought. Howling winds lifted topsoil and created great drifts of dust which buried the weed-clogged, woven-wire fences separating the barren fields. The impact of the depression was also severe. The price of wheat plunged from $1.20 a bushel in 1929 to $.20 in 1932.

What I saw of nature’s revenge for our tampering with a fragile ecosystem, such as the profound impact of erratic weather patterns on human existence, strongly motivated me to learn about the link between the environment and the human condition. The particulars of my circumstances led me to focus on the vagaries of weather and climate.

In Pursuit of Knowledge

My father was the eldest son of Tom Malone, a revered patriarch of the Irish community in Sioux City, Iowa, and the proprietor of one of the city’s two “fancy” grocery stores. Dad had a passion for ranching and farming and was one of the South Dakota homesteaders in the early I 900s. He had two avoca­tions: telephones and weather. He established the first barbed-wire telephone system in our community, and he had an uncanny ability to anticipate weather changes with little more than an aneroid barometer and an experienced eye (no radio or TV weather channel in those days!). My brother chose a career as an engineer in the telephone industry. I elected meteorology.

In the mind of my wise and determined mother, an education was indispen­sable to acquiring the knowledge that links humans to their environment and that drives human progress. Unfortunately, my high school education was interrupted from 1932 to 1934 by the hard times endemic to farm life. During those years, I spent summers working ten-hour days riding a Farmall tractor, which cultivated four rows of corn at a time. This high-technology activity was followed in the fall by backbreaking hand labor: husking corn, stalk by stalk, throwing each ear into a horse-drawn wagon. The important role of technology in easing the conversion of natural resources into goods and serv­ices was strongly impressed on me.

I resumed high school in Philip (the county seat and nearest railroad town) in 1934. Debating the issues of federal aid to education and socialized medicine under the auspices of the National Forensic League sparked my interest in the national affairs increasingly impacting Haakon County. This early experience in public speaking and thinking on my feet proved very useful in later years, both in the classroom and on the speaker’s platform. As high school graduation approached in 1936, I journeyed to Rapid City in the nearby Black Hills for career guidance from the meteorologist in charge of the local weather bureau, Harley N. Johnson. He gave succinct and sage advice: “First, get a good grounding in math and physics at the South Dakota State School of Mines here in Rapid City. Then pursue meteorological studies.”

I followed his directive. Four years later, I was a graduate student with a fellowship in meteorology at MIT. However, my studies were interrupted again when the Air Force and Navy called on me to help train hundreds of weather forecasters for World War II. Then, in early 1945, restless for a more direct role in the war effort, I enthusiastically accepted an offer to serve as a civilian consultant forecasting the weather for the impending invasion of Japan.

The countless hours of studying weather maps for eastern Asia in preparation for this assignment turned out to be a waste of time. Upon my arrival in April at Air Weather Service Headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina, I learned that the need for an air supply route across northern Africa called for the creation of an upper-air forecasting center at John Payne Field in Cairo. I was directed to establish that center in collaboration with Major Guy Gosewich of the 19th Weather Squadron. Before the task was complete, the bomb was dropped, the war ended, and I returned to MIT, where I completed the doctoral program in 1946. I then remained at the Institute as an assistant professor of meteorology to teach and do research.

An opportunity for the equivalent of postdoctoral reflection and maturation came with an invitation in 1949 to edit the Compendium of Meteorology (1). This 1300-page book collected the views of more than a hundred authors from around the world on the state of scientific knowledge about weather and climate. Promising avenues for future research were outlined. The second half of the century was destined to be an era of explosive growth in our under­standing of the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmosphere. No better postdoc experience could be imagined. These years deepened my interest in the application of meteorology to the management of human affairs, particu­larly the impact of weather on business and industry.

After publication of the Compendium, I pursued an opportunity to deal quantitatively with the isobaric patterns on weather maps. During World War II, Professor George Wadsworth and Dr. Joe Bryan of MIT used Tschebyshev polynomials to convert these patterns into numbers. This approach made it possible to relate the isobaric pattern on any given day to subsequent patterns and weather elements, such as temperature and rainfall (2).

The predictions involved inverting thirtieth-order matrices. Bob Miller and I used Marchant desk calculators for this procedure until we discovered the incredible computing power of MIT’s ground-breaking Whirlwind computer, which was being developed in the former Polaroid Building, literally in MIT’s backyard. This computer reduced the time needed to invert these matrices from weeks to minutes! The improvement in information handling had implications for economic productivity just as dramatic as those of technology cum energy years earlier in South Dakota.

New Horizons

In 1954, 1 was invited to establish a research center and weather service at The Travelers Insurance Company in Hartford, Connecticut. The activities of the company (then known as the Tiffany of the insurance industry) reached into every facet of business and industry. Hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and the stability of agriculture were of particular concern to those who handled the company’s property and casualty lines of insurance.

At this time, I was making speeches about the potential mutual benefits offered by a more intimate interaction between the meteorological community and the private sector. The challenge of participating in such an interaction, rather than talking about it, prompted me to leave a tenured appointment at MIT. My place at the Institute was taken by an esteemed colleague and close friend, Dr. Edward Lorenz, whom I had met when he was an Air Force cadet in one of my classes. Ed’s place in history is assured because of his pioneering work in chaos.

Bob Miller and Don Friedman, my associates at MIT, soon joined me in Hartford to form the core of our research staff. We assembled a superb group of professional meteorologists skilled in radio and television communications. In invited talks around the state, I described the economic advantages of the use in decision making of probabilities from weather forecasts, because of intrinsic instabilities and uncertainties in weather processes. The classic ex­ample was a savings of 25% over a period of 182 days earned by protecting newly poured concrete from rainfall. The probability of rain was used to decide whether to protect at a known cost or to risk suffering loss because of no protection (3). The reaction to these presentations was so enthusiastic that in 1956 we introduced probability statements into our radio, television, and newspaper weather predictions. The public response was positive and the practice became widespread.

Our research group joined forces with the research department of United Aircraft in 1958 to work on a governmental initiative to explore modernization of the system for weather observations and forecasting. I was able to attract Dr. Robert White from MIT to lead this effort. We created the independent, nonprofit, Travelers Research Center (TRC) in 1961 to pursue this task and other studies. I became chairman of the board of directors, and White was named president. Several decades later, he was elected president of the Na­tional Academy of Engineering.

The TRC group performed the weather research and forecasting started at The Travelers and expanded its research with their continuing support. When Bob White left the TRC to become Chief of the US Weather Bureau in 1963, Dr. Douglas L Brooks, another former student of mine, became president (4). In 1970, in a prescient move, he transformed the TRC into the Center for Environment and Man (CEM). (The era of inclusive language had not yet fully dawned.) Doug’s initiative put humans right at the center of environmental issues, where we belong, and none too soon. I continued as chairman of the board.

Studies of how to modernize weather observation and forecasting tailed off, awaiting more sophisticated advances in understanding of atmospheric proc­esses, and observation and communication technologies. These developments came by the 1980s, following a major expansion in research and development in the 1960s and I 970s, triggered by the landmark report of the Committee on Meteorology of the National Academy of Sciences and the initiation of the Global Atmospheric Research Program. The lesson learned was the critical importance of an adequate body of knowledge, broadly construed and properly framed.

With the untimely death of The Travelers’ young president Sterling Tooker in 1969, interest in a broadly based research program waned, and CEM was transferred to the University of Connecticut (UCONN) in Storrs in 1970.1 had left a senior vice presidency and a seat on the seven-man Operations and Policy Group to become Dean of the Graduate School at UCONN.

In retrospect, I see the 15 years I spent at The Travelers as a period of personal growth and transformation. In 1956, the company created a full-fledged research department and named me Director. I became involved in economic forecasting under the tutelage of Dr. Eli Shapiro, Associate Dean of MIT’ s Sloan School. Tooker and I brought Shapiro in to assist in the executive development stimulated by our research department. I predicted premium growth for the company from my economic forecasts and moderated the Annual Business Outlook for the Greater Hartford business community. Mar­ket research, insurance risk for nuclear power plants, and operations research came under my purview. I persuaded the company to introduce long-range planning and participated actively in that endeavor. In concert with Hartford’s famed Institute of Living, we developed a prototype of a computerized infor­mation system for hospitals, although the project was abandoned after Tooker’s death. I was asked to reorganize the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and, in 1967, was appointed by President Johnson to chair the National Motor Vehicle Safety Advisory Council. In that position, I met United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther and motor-industry critic Ralph Nader.

Professional and scientific interests also occupied my time during this pe­riod. These opportunities included presidency of the American Meteorological Society (1960—1961) and the American Geophysical Union (1961—1964), chairmanship of the US National Commission for UNESCO (1965—1967), and membership on the Advisory Panel on Science and Technology for the Com­mittee on Science and Technology, US House of Representatives (1960—1970). I also sat on the Committee on Meteorology of the National Academy of Sciences (1956—1960) and chaired its successor, the Committee on Atmos­pheric Sciences (1962—1968).

The American Geophysical Union represents the US scientific community in the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG). IUGG is one of the 20 scientific organizations in the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). ICSU is an umbrella organization for, and is supported by, national nongovernmental scientific bodies, such as national academies of science, royal societies, and national research councils. In a sense, ICSU represents the nongovernmental, world scientific community. Its counterpart in the intergovernmental arena is the array of UN scientific bodies (e.g. UNESCO, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organi­zation, and the World Meteorological Organization).

Through my work with the American Geophysical Union, I was introduced to the ICSU and later became a vice president of this international scientific infrastructure (1970-7 1) and its treasurer (1978—84). 1 soon came to appreciate the potential of combining the creative and innovative character of the non­governmental scientific community with the stability and resources of inter­governmental organizations.

For several decades following my first acquaintance with the ICSU, I was involved in international scientific affairs as Director of the Holcomb Research Institute at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, (1973—1983), and through appointments during retirement (1983—1990) and postretirement at North Carolina State University and The Sigma Xi Center in Research Triangle Park (1990—1995).

EARLY MILESTONES ON AN ODYSSEY

National Center for Atmospheric Research

In the middle 1950s, Dr. Francis Reichelderfer, Chief of the US Weather Bureau, suggested to Detlev Bronk, President of the National Academy of Sciences, that the Academy compare progress in meteorology with the ad­vancement of related fields. The bureau wanted an assessment of the nature and scope of unsolved problems and the research and education needed for advances in the field.

Bronk had lost a valuable boat in a hurricane and responded in April 1956 by convening a Committee on Meteorology, chaired by-the legendary Lloyd Berkner, President of the Associated Universities (the entity that managed the Brookhaven National Laboratory for the federal government). Geophysicist Berkner left his footprints in nearly every branch of geophysics. He was the moving spirit behind the International Geophysical Year (IGY) (1957—1958), which was initiated under the auspices of the ICSU when he was president of that organization. Carl Rossby, one of the world’s most respected meteorolo­gists, was named vice chairman of the committee. Another distinguished member was the brilliant John von Neumann, whose many contributions in­cluded a proposal for the operating architecture that dominated the design of high-speed computers for many years.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, von Neumann, Rossby, Jule Chamey, and other collaborators were engaged in predicting the weather by applying finite-­difference methods to the integration of the nonlinear partial differential equa­tions governing atmospheric motion. Rossby and von Neumann realized this approach was within reach owing to the advent of high-speed computers, and von Neumann first demonstrated its feasibility on the ENIAC. This was Lewis Richardson’s 30- year-old dream realized. In a landmark paper for which he received the Sir Napier Shaw Prize of the Royal Meteorological Society in 1956, Norman Phillips, one of von Neumann’s collaborators, showed that this approach could produce realistic patterns of world climate when energy from the sun was applied to a global atmosphere at rest (5).

The deaths of both Rossby and von Neumann led to the appointment of Charney as von Neumann’s replacement. Rossby’s long-time associate, com­mittee member Horace Byers, was named vice chairman. Other notable mem­bers were physicists Edward Teller and Paul Klopsteg, as well as the sage and saintly hydrodynamicist Hugh Dryden, Home Secretary of the National Acad­emy of Sciences and, later, Associate Director of NASA. Although not yet a member of the National Academy, I was appointed to the committee because of my experience with the Compendium of Meteorology. Berkner asked me to take the lead in drafting the committee’s report. Formally entitled Research and Education in Meteorology, this report appeared in 1958 (6) and was known thereafter as The Berkner Report, probably the most significant policy state­ment on meteorology published in recent times.

Summarizing six in-depth meetings, we recommended a 50—100% increase in funding for basic meteorological research at universities and kindred insti­tutions. The need to mount a broad interdisciplinary effort led to an additional recommendation for “ . . .a center of intellectual activity that would bring together scientists from meteorology and the related physical sci­ences. . . [with].. .research facilities on a scale required to cope with the global nature of the meteorological problem.” We proposed that the center be man­aged by a consortium of universities with financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). We suggested a capital investment of $50 million, spread over five years, with a subsequent annual budget of approximately $15 million.

In an era of governmental support for basic research that reflected the philosophy of “Science—The Endless Frontier” (7), this was a feasible initia­tive. The proposal for a center, however, was debated at length. Would it drain support from the universities or strengthen their programs? Within the com­mittee, this issue was brought to a head at a meeting in Washington, DC in November 1957. With typical decisiveness, Berkner instructed Chamey and me to reflect on this matter overnight and return with an unequivocal recom­mendation the next morning.

Jule and I debated the question half the night at the subsequently demolished Roger Smith hotel, where we were staying. We finally reached the conclu­sion—that the center should be proposed—that we reported to Berkner the next morning. He then charged us with visiting a dozen universities to consult on the matter. We did, and found a generally favorable reaction. The stage was set for a discussion with Academy President Bronk.

Our committee met over dinner with Dr. Bronk at his residence on the campus of Rockefeller University, where he was president. He responded warmly but, with characteristic wisdom, asked for a formal statement of support from the university community. The American Meteorological Society was to meet in New York, January 28—30, 1958. Berkner asked me, as secretary of the society, to ascertain the views of several university representatives and, if favorable, obtain a statement. We met at the executive offices of the Asso­ciated Universities in Manhattan. I was joined at the meeting by committee member Edward Teller, whose towering reputation and formidable demeanor provided great support. A statement of strong endorsement emerged from that meeting (8).

The universities created a University Committee on Atmospheric Research under the leadership of Henry Houghton, Chairman of the Department of Meteorology at MIT. I was invited to prepare a report with specific plans for what would become the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. With Roscoe Braham of the University of Chicago and William von Arx of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, I convened 17 two-day workshops at The Travelers Cliff House on Avon Mountain, just outside of Hartford, Connecticut. The report (9, 10) was submitted to the NSF in February 1959.

A lively debate about this ambitious proposal at a meeting of the National Science Board in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, later in 1959 culminated in a favorable decision. An eloquent statement by the NSF’s associate director, Paul Klopsteg, was a deciding factor. Paul was familiar with the case from his participation in discussions with the Committee on Meteorology.

A final hurdle was getting approval from the congressional committee on appropriations of a line item on NCAR in the NSF budget. As a result of an earlier chance encounter on Capitol Hill with Dale Leipper of A&M College in Texas, I knew Texas Congressman Olin “Tiger” Teague. Teague was close to Congressman Albert Thomas, also from Texas and chair of the relevant appropriations committee. Fortuitously, I learned the day before the appropria­tions committee was to act on the budget item for NCAR that a rumor had reached Thomas that southern states were not to be considered as sites for the center because of their segregation policies. In addition, there was some feeling in lower levels of government that the center should be established within the government, not in the university community. Half a night of telephoning assured me that there was absolutely no basis for this rumor. I reached Tiger Teague with this information 20 minutes before the appropriations committee met. Teague reached Thomas in time to set the record straight and the NCAR budget item was approved.

The original roster of 14 universities in the consortium responsible for NCAR has grown to 61. NCAR has developed into a world-class institution with a scientific and support staff of nearly 1000 individuals engaged in a wide-ranging program of research and facility support. A detailed review for the National Science Board in 1992 confirmed NCAR’s substantial contribu­tion to what The Berkner Report described as” . . .one of the most difficult, most important, most challenging—and yet relatively one of the most ne­glected—scientific problems of our times.”

NCAR illustrates how institutional innovation can be brought about by cooperation between the federal government and universities on an inherently international and intrinsically interdisciplinary problem. This organization re­quired new ways of thinking and doing. I am persuaded that NCAR suggests a mode of academic-government interaction that could be adapted to develop the “cascade of knowledge” essential for an attractive human prospect. The cascade of knowledge is the dynamic and nonlinear continuum linking the discovery, integration, dissemination, and application of knowledge concern­ing the nature and interaction of matter, energy, living organisms, information, and human behavior.

The Global Atmospheric Research Program

The first faint signal to me of what ultimately became a major international research program was a telephone call from Jule Charney in February 1961. MIT physicist Bruno Rossi, who was assisting Presidential Science Advisor Jerome Wiesner, had asked Jule for suggestions for an initiative in international cooperation in weather research. President Kennedy was interested in propos­als he could present to Mr. Kruschev during their summer meeting in Vienna. Jule proposed that we meet with Rossi and Richard Goody of Harvard.

Conversation at the meeting was desultory until we turned to the possibility of conscious or inadvertent human intervention in weather and climate. Bruno immediately detected a rationale for a joint endeavor with other nations. We agreed to explore the matter further. I dined with the Rossi family that evening and began to lay plans for a small meeting on February 21.

We met at the Bulffinch House on Beacon Hill in Boston at the offices of the American Meteorological Society, of which I was president. Charney, Goody, and I were joined by Henry Houghton from MIT, Sverre Petterssen from the University of Chicago, David Johnson and Harry Wexier from the US Weather Bureau, and Morris Tepper from NASA. We proposed “... a concerted international program aimed at the study of global weather processes with the intent of developing the scientific basis for weather prediction, thereby establishing a rational point of departure for investigating the feasibility of large-scale modification of weather and climate” . . . to be initiated jointly by the USA and USSR (11). Our report was communicated to Rossi.

The Vienna Conference was a minor diplomatic setback for President Ken­nedy. The proposal was not even presented. Instead, it was set aside as intrin­sically sound, timely, and imaginative, meriting a more auspicious venue. That more favorable setting turned out to be the opening session of the Sixteenth General Assembly of the United Nations in September, at which President Kennedy was scheduled to make an address. I was called to a meeting at the Old Executive Office Building on August 31 to brief several members of the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee. In addition to Jerry Wiesner, par­ticipants included Det Bronk, chair of the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee’s (PSAC) International Panel, Richard Gardner from the State Department, Pete Scoville from the CIA, and Arthur Schlesinger from the President’s office.

The response was positive and the proposal was included in the President’s address. His words at the UN were few, but far-ranging in consequence. He urged international cooperation “... in weather prediction and eventually in weather control....” These words led to UN Resolution 1721, inviting “... members and WMO [World Meteorological Organization] to study measures to advance the state of the atmospheric sciences and technology in order to improve existing weather forecasting capabilities and to further the study of the basic physical processes that affect climate.”

My experience with NCAR in fostering a partnership between government and academia prompted me to urge direct involvement of the ICSU to assure a strong scientific foundation for the project. In 1962, I was serving as a volunteer aide to Assistant Secretary of Commerce J Herbert Hollomon, whose responsibilities included the US Weather Bureau. I proposed to him that a new UN Resolution in 1962 specifically invite the ICSU to participate in planning the research recommended in the 1961 UN Resolution.

In July 1962, Herb Hollomon called me in Hartford and asked me to fly to Washington immediately in The Travelers’ corporate plane and meet with him and Richard Gardner from the State Department to discuss my proposal. When I arrived in Washington two hours later, the meeting had already been held. Gardner had agreed to invite ICSU. Herb described the meeting as “some Indian wrestling.” Gardner and his chief, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, Harland Cleveland, were towers of strength in this initiative, both within the Department of State and at the UN.

The 1962 UN Resolution 1802 recommended that WMO “develop in greater detail its plan for an expanded programme to strengthen meteorological serv­ices and research” and invited the ICSU through its unions and national academies “to develop an expanded programme of atmospheric science re­search which will complement the programmes fostered by the World Mete­orological Organization.”

The remaining task was to identify the ICSU body that could most effec­tively plan this program. The International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics (IAMAP), a subsidiary body of the IUGG, was anxious to undertake this task. I preferred ICSU’s interdisciplinary Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). An important catalyst for this effort was the great po­tential offered by surveillance of the global atmosphere from space. However, exploratory discussions at COSPAR meetings in Vienna, Florence, and Mar del Plata (Argentina) were not fruitful. Even a fine dinner for the Director of the UK Meteorological Service Sir Graham Sutton, and Lady Sutton, at the Three Hussars restaurant in Vienna did not generate support for a COSPAR initiative. Sir Graham preferred to leave the matter in WMO hands.

The promise in a bilateral meeting between the United States and the USSR in Rome in February 1963 to discuss cooperation in applying space science and technology to meteorology was never fulfilled. Co-chaired by Hugh Dryden (US) and Academician Blagonravov (USSR), the meeting was more important for fostering dialogue than for its substance. I participated as chair of the Academy’s Committee on Atmospheric Sciences.

The possibility of a Special Committee within the ICSU (similar to the arrangement for the IGY) was attractive. However, a trip to Toronto in The Travelers’ plane with Horace Byers (President of IAMAP) to enlist the support of Warren Godson, Secretary General of IAMAP, ended in disappointment. We were graciously hosted for lunch at the Godson residence, but Warren was understandably adamant that IAMAP undertake the task.

The impasse was finally resolved at the Triennial General Assembly of the IUGG in Berkeley, hosted by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), in September, 1963. As AGU president, my responsibilities were to chair the organizing committee for the Assembly and lead the US delegation. Once again, a vigorous debate focused on the issue of IAMAP vs a Special Com­mittee. A fortuitous interpretation of an assembly resolution by IUGG Secre­tary General GR Laclavere led to the establishment of a Committee on Atmo­spheric Sciences under the joint auspices of ICSU and IUGG. The committee’s charge was “to develop an expanded programme of atmospheric science re­search.”

Our delegation at Berkeley was successful in securing the election of the US candidate for the presidency of IUGG, Professor Joseph Kaplan from UCLA. Kaplan had been a prime mover in the United States’ participation in the IGY. He appointed Professor Bert Bolin of Sweden as chair of the new committee and asked me to serve as its secretary general.

IAMAP was represented by its new president, Professor AM Oboukhov (USSR) and by Godson on the ICSUIIUUG committee. Other relevant ICSU bodies were also included on the committee, which cooperated closely with a special working group in COSPAR, headed by Morris Tepper from NASA. We met three times at the WMO Secretariat in Geneva and established close connections to the Advisory Committee to the WMO initiative already under way. US Weather Bureau Chief Francis Reichelderfer ensured that agency’s close cooperation as well. His successor, my colleague Robert White, keenly appreciated the value of the nongovernmental scientific community and was influential in subsequent national and international developments.

As chair of the Academy’s Committee on Atmospheric Sciences (1962— 1968), 1 arranged a set of panel studies. I presented my own views (12) in a symposium earlier in 1963 at UCLA on progress in the geophysical sciences as a result of IGY. The paper built upon and brought up to date ideas presented in my address at an inaugural dinner for NCAR in Boulder, Colorado, in December 1961(13). The UCLA symposium was held just before the Berkeley meeting of IUGG, and served as a sounding board for my ideas. The enthusi­astic endorsement I received from the influential oceanographer Roger Revelle gave me courage to proceed.

The first meeting of the ICSU/IUGG committee in Geneva, February 8—11, was notable for a brilliant lecture by Jule Charney that established the scientific rationale for a global program of meteorological observations and research. Jule pointed out that “advances in data-processing technology and physical understanding have so extended the scope and complexity of the numerical models that can be treated that it is becoming possible to deal with the circulation of the atmosphere as a whole and to attack directly the problem of long-range prediction, but such investigations are in danger of becoming mere academic exercises for lack of observations to supply the initial conditions and to check the calculations” (14).

Charney was a chronic late-riser and, after a late and long dinner the previous night at the “Silos,” he had to be summoned from his sleep by my assistant from the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. John Sievers. WMO Secretary General DA Davies left his office on the second floor of the WMO building, came to the balcony above the conference hall, and listened intently to Jule’s talk. Davies’ positive reaction to Charney’s lecture did much to smooth the way to subsequent cooperation with WMO.

A generous planning grant of $75,000 from the Ford Foundation was ar­ranged though the good offices of foundation executive Carl Borglund who had turned to WMO’s Davies for advice. This happy circumstance opened the way for our committee to obtain essential staff support and to proceed with the extended study conference we felt was needed to plan a major international program. A dinner meeting in The Travelers Suite at The Pierre in New York in January 1967 with Davies and Dr. Rolando Garcia (Argentina) led to Garcia’s appointment as Executive Secretary to our committee, with joint support by the WMO and the ICSU.

The study conference was held in Stockholm, June 28—July 11, 1967, co­sponsored by our committee, the WMO, and COSPAR. More than 50 partici­pating scientists produced a 144-page report (15) for the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP). Garcia went to an IAMAP meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, in September 1967, in a little Fiat weighted down with 100 copies of the report, arriving just as the meeting convened. Protocol required that the report be approved by IAMAP, IUGG, and the executive committee of ICSU, in that order, for subsequent consideration by the Executive Council of the WMO.

Bert Bolin, who had chaired the study conference, made a splendid presen­tation to IAMAP. Dr. John Mason, Director of the UK Meteorological Service was quite critical. The day was saved, however, when the UK’s respected RC Sutcliffe, who had served on the WMO Advisory Committee, stood up and quietly remarked that whatever its shortcomings, the plan appeared to have considerable merit and he thought it should be approved. As chair of the session, I called for a vote. The approval was virtually unanimous. With this critical test passed, subsequent approvals were routine. (Mason later became a strong supporter of GARP. He spent several years chairing the Joint Scientific Committee for the Climate Research Program that followed GARP.)

My shuttle diplomacy between K Chandrasekharan, the ICSU’ s Secretary General in Zurich, and DA Davies, at the WMO Headquarters in Geneva, resulted in a formal agreement for cooperation between the two organizations. This agreement is still in effect, with modifications. A combined meeting of governments and scientists in Brussels in 1968 formally launched GARP under the guidance of a Joint Organizing Committee sponsored by WMO and ICSU and chaired for the first several years by Bert Bolin.

The first phase of GARP was a large-scale program of observations and research in 1974 on the critical interaction of the deep cumulus convective systems in the tropics with the mesoscale circulation patterns in the rain areas and with motions at synoptic scale. The GARP Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE) took place during the oil shortage. A measure of the international cooperation it engendered was the offer by Soviet participants to provide oil to ensure continued operation of US research vessels. The full-scale program known as the First GARP Global Experiment (FGGE) (called figgie by those in the know) was conducted in 1979.

The scientific results of GARP greatly improved the accuracy of weather forecasts and the extension of their time range. GARP laid the foundation for the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) into which it evolved. WCRP, in turn, is critical for the international assessment of global warming currently under way (16).

GARP illustrated the potential for international collaboration on a global issue when science, technology, and societal needs simultaneously reach a stage at which significant advances are within reach. An important element in GARP’s success was the cooperation that allowed the imagination and insight of the scientific community (ICSU) to be combined with the stability and resources of national governments (WMO). GARP was a precursor of the kind of partnerships that will be increasingly important in the years ahead. A notable feature of GARP was the unrestricted sharing of data—a splendid tradition currently in some jeopardy.

ALTERING PERCEPTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

Weather Control

The Berkner Report recognized the implications of early experiments attempt­ing to modify supercooled clouds with dry ice or silver iodide (17) and induce precipitation artificially (18). During the 1950s and 1960s, the subject of weather control generated lively discussion. Lawrence Spivak interviewed Reichelderfer and me on this subject on the TV program Meet the Press. A study mandated by an Act of Congress in 1953 suggested cautious optimism about the efficacy of cloud seeding (19). The Advisory Committee responsible for the study recommended that the “government sponsor meteorological re­search more vigorously...” (19) and urged continuity and stability for longer-­term projects. The committee made the point that “the development of weather modification must rest on a foundation of fundamental knowledge that can be obtained only through scientific research into all the physical and chemical processes in the atmosphere” (19). Henry Houghton, Chairman of the Depart­ment of Meteorology at MIT and an eminent cloud physicist, was if anything more restrained (20). Although he said, “It would be unthinkable to embark on such a vast experiment before we are able to predict with some certainty what the effects would be,” he also remarked, “I shudder to think of the consequences of a prior Russian discovery of a feasible method of weather control” (20).

The Academy Committee viewed the results as a significant, but not com­pelling, argument for deepening our understanding of weather and climate. The Berkner Report stated that “It would be an inexcusable distortion of presently available information...to seize upon the single issue of weather control to argue for an expansion of meteorological research.. .however, the question of weather control should not be excluded from the evidence....” As previously noted, President Kennedy’s UN address included the words “weather control.” The ICSU/IUGG Committee’s first report for GARP cited this program as a major international research and development program” directed at observing, understanding, and predicting the general circulation of the troposphere.. .a prerequisite for the scientific exploration of large-scale climate modification” (21).

Greenhouse Warming

Weather control issues shifted during the next two decades from deliberate control to inadvertent climate change resulting from continuing economic and demographic growth on planet Earth. The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over Mauna Loa from measurements started by Charles Keeling during the IGY provided an important clue to the potential for this increase to influence climate by perturbing radiation processes in the atmosphere (22). In a keynote address at a conference on “Technological Changes and the Human Environment” at the California Institute of Technol­ogy on October 17, 1970, I called for “intensive study” of the “greenhouse effect” generated by the burning of fossil fuels (22a). This issue was high­lighted in the first of a 20-report series issued in 1977 by the Geophysics Study Committee of the Geophysics Research Board in the National Research Coun­cil, which I established during my chairmanship of the board (1969—1975). The study committee for this report, Energy and Climate, was chaired by Roger Revelle of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Energy and Climate began with these words: “Worldwide industrial civili­zation may face a major decision over the next few decades—whether to continue reliance on fossil fuels as principal sources of energy or to invest the research and engineering effort, and the capital, that will make it possible to substitute other energy sources for fossil fuels within the next 50 years “ (23).
In a foreword, my study committee co-chair, Phil Abelson, and I wrote: “To reduce uncertainties and to assess the seriousness of the matter, a well-coor­dinated program of research that is profoundly interdisciplinary, and strongly international in scope will be required... [it]... should extend beyond scientific and technical considerations to include the complex factors and institutional innovations that will enable the nations of the world to act with wisdom and in concert before irreversible changes in climate are initiated” (23).

Years later, as chairman of the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Research Council, I gave testimony on February 23, 1984, before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology regarding a 500-page report by our Board on this matter (24). I remarked in my testimony that “The issue, and research directed at its illumination, will be with us for a long time... A successful response to widespread environ­mental change will be facilitated by the existence of an international network of scientists conversant with the issues and of a broad international consensus on facts and their reliability.” Our report was brought to public attention when David Hartman interviewed me on ABC’s Good Morning America. (The concept of a network of scientists connected to educators, decision makers, and the public did not emerge until advances in communication technology brought it within reach in the 1990s.)

A starting point for such a network had already been identified in 1968. Roger Revelle and I had successfully argued at the ICSU General Assembly in Paris that year for the establishment of a Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) to prepare a series of assessments of the increas­ing number of environmental problems confronting society. SCOPE was cre­ated in 1970. I served as Secretary General from 1970—1976. Over the past quarter century, SCOPE has published (Wiley & Sons) more than two dozen authoritative analyses of environmental issues (25).

In 1985, one of these reports (26) alerted the international community to the potential societal impact of the “greenhouse effect.” Today, discussion of measures to stabilize world climate by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases takes place internationally.

Environmental Hazards of Nuclear War

The insidious threat to the climate of global warming differs sharply from the catastrophic impact of a major nuclear war. This threat was addressed by SCOPE in a pair of 1986 reports.

As Foreign Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences from 1978—1982, I became convinced that a scientific dialogue on nuclear weapons between members of our Academy and members of the Soviet Academy would com­plement official channels of communication between the superpowers. I had a comfortable relationship with academician George Skryabin, Chief Scientific Secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences, as we were both members of the Executive Board of the ICSU.

On February 12, 1980, National Academy President Phil Handler and I, in my role as Foreign Secretary, convened a meeting of colleagues that led to the creation of the Academy’s Committee on International Security and Arms Control. Meanwhile, the USSR Academy had established a Scientific Council for Problems of Peace and Disarmament.

I wanted to begin a dialogue on nuclear weapons between the two academies, but little progress was made until the World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1979. Academician Yevgeny Federov, head of the USSR Hydrometeorologi­cal Service (and a member of the Soviet Academy’s Peace Council) was stonewalling the Conference by insisting that a resolution on world peace should precede discussions of cooperation on climate issues. When told by US delegate and conference chair Robert White that the Soviet Academy was not responding to my overtures for joint discussions, Federov withdrew his objec­tions and the Conference proceeded smoothly and effectively. When I de­scribed this incident to George Skryabin at an ICSU Board meeting shortly thereafter, he laughed and said he expected an imminent visit from Federov. Skryabin was right, and within a short time discussions between the two academies were on track (27).

The Soviet Academy was particularly cooperative in the SCOPE study on the environmental effects of a major nuclear war. One personal link between the US and USSR scientific communities was Vladimir Aleksandrov, a fre­quent visitor to the US. His 1984 disappearance in Spain remains a mystery (28).

During Thanksgiving week 1984, Notre Dame’s president, Father Ted Hes­burgh, and I convened a meeting of 30 USSR and US scientists and religious leaders to discuss the environmental consequences of a nuclear war. Scientists included Carl Sagan and Nobel Laureate Charles Townes from the United States, and USSR Academy Scientific Secretary George Skryabin and the head of the USSR Space Institute, Roald Sagdeev. Religious leaders included Bishop (now Cardinal) Roger Mahoney from the United States and Archbishop Kirill from Leningrad (29).

In 1983, Yevgeny Velihkov (Vice President of the Soviet Academy) and I moderated a satellite-based teleconference between a group in Washington and one in Moscow, triggered by some recent studies by Crutzen & Birks (30) and by Sagan and colleagues (31). I thought the international character of this potential threat required a critical and objective assessment by the world scientific community. SCOPE was the logical instrumentality.

I enlisted the distinguished UK engineer, Sir Frederick Warner, whom I met when he was treasurer of SCOPE, to lead the assessment. SCOPE’s two-vol­ume report made a powerful case that the global climatic impact of a large-scale nuclear war would be catastrophic (32). Apart from the immediate devastation of an atomic bomb (33), food production would be grievously impaired in noncombatant countries. Civilization would be in serious jeopardy. These predictions were supported by a subsequent UN study in which I participated. I would like to believe these assessments contributed to the reluctance of the superpowers to start a nuclear war.

International Geosphere-Biosphere Program

My experience with the environmental impact of a nuclear war deepened my conviction that closer interaction between physical and biological scientists was needed. Canadian George Garland had advanced this view in his lecture commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the International Geophysical Year at the 1982 General Assembly of ICSU in Cambridge, England. He noted that many scientific mysteries unresolved by the IGY involve the interaction between physical processes and living organisms, including humans. In a 1982 NASA report intended to stimulate international interest on global habitability, Richard Goody and others made the same observation: “This is a unique time, when one species, humanity, has developed the ability to alter its environment on the largest (i.e., global) scale and to do so within the lifetime of a single species member” (34).

Herbert Friedman, chair of the National Research Council’s Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources urged a bold, holistic, interdisciplinary venture in global research to deepen understanding of global change in the terrestrial environment and its living systems. At a February 1983 meeting of the ICSU’s Executive Board in Stockholm, I proposed that the ICSU mount an effort of this kind. The response was an invitation to Juan Roederer and me to convene a symposium at the General Assembly of the ICSU in Ottawa in September 1984 to consider this proposal. The symposium (35) led to the establishment in 1986 of the ICSU’s International Geosphere­Biosphere Program (IGBP): A Study of Global Change (36). IGBP’s goal is to deepen our understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological systems that regulate Earth’s favorable environment for life and the role of human activity in changing that environment. Six core projects have now been initi­ated and more than 40 countries have created national committees. A compan­ion program on the Human Dimensions of Global Change has also been mounted by the International Social Science Council (37).

In 1990, 1 was invited to chair an IGBP workshop at the Rockefeller Foun­dation’s Bellagio Conference Center to revisit a concept developed at a con­ference in Aspen, Colorado, in the summer of 1971. The Aspen conference was convened by the International Institute for Environmental Affairs (IIEA) and the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. I participated both as Chairman of the Academy’s Committee on International Environmental Programs and
as a member of the IIEA Board of Directors. The workshop’s purpose was to recommend international organizational arrangements for the UN Conference on the Human Environment, which was held in Stockholm in 1972.

The workshop led to the conclusion that “the most compelling organiza­tional requirement is to forge an intimate working relationship in international environmental affairs between the intergovernmental community and the world of science and technology... [through] a network of decentralized but cooperating regional centers of excellence in environmental affairs” (38). The centers were to be linked by a central body in the international scientific community that would interact with a similar body in the intergovernmental community. At one time, I entertained the thought that the privately endowed Holcomb Research Institute at Butler University might be the central body in the scientific community. In retrospect, I think the network concept is much to be preferred.

The result of the Bellagio workshop is START, which stands for a global system of regional networks for analysis, research, and training. This program is intended to mobilize scientific talent to address local and regional environ­mental issues in a global context. START fosters cooperation in interdiscipli­nary research and provides a mechanism for the dissemination and application of research results (39). Fourteen regions have been identified and six regional networks are now being established.

IGBP represents a significant step toward a growing perception of global change that transcends climatic change. Earlier steps in this direction were Osborne’s popular 1948 book, Our Plundered Planet (40) and the scholarly 1956 work, Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, edited by WL Thomas Jr. and published under the auspices of the Wenner-Gren Foundation (41). In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (42) ignited public interest that led to a 1965 study of environmental quality (43) by the President’s Science Advisory Committee, led by John Tukey of Princeton University. More re­cently, The Earth as Transformed by Human Action has deepened our percep­tions of the impact of human activity on the environment (44).

Interest has been growing in the interaction between environmental quality and economic development, particularly for nations in the early stages of economic development. In 1974, SCOPE President Victor Kovda (USSR), Mohammed Kassas (Egypt), and I convened a scientific conference on the intertwined issues of environment and development in Nairobi, Kenya (45). A decade later the World Commission on Environment and Development released its landmark report, Our Common Future (46), which powerfully described the inextricable link between environmental quality and economic development. This document led to the June, 1992, UN Conference on Envi­ronment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. More than 100 heads of stategathered at what came to be called the Earth Summit (47). I attended as a special guest of the Summit’s Secretary General, Maurice Strong.

A new concern is emerging: the uncontrolled spread of infectious airborne diseases (48). In 1994, Laurie Garrett remarked that “while the human race battles itself, fighting over more crowded turf and scarcer resources, the ad­vantage moves to the microbe’s court. They are our predators and they will be victorious if we.. .do not learn to live in a rational global village that affords the microbes few opportunities “(49).

Global Change and the Human Prospect

I passed other milestones in my personal odyssey in the first half of this decade during three meetings at which the deliberations of the preceding three decades converged. These meetings crystallized my ideas on the driving forces of global change (demographic and economic growth), stimulated my thinking on ef­fective responses, and left me cautiously hopeful about the human prospect.

The first of the meetings was an international forum in Washington, DC, convened in 1991 by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Five kindred organizations in the natural sciences, social sciences, and engineering partici­pated in the forum entitled Global Change and the Human Prospect: Issues in Population, Science, Technology and Equity. In order to support and deepen discussions at the Earth Summit in Rio the following year, participants in the forum addressed three basic questions: What kind of a world do we have? What kind of a world do we want? What must we do to get there? I served as chair of the steering committee. Warmly received by the Secretary General for the Earth Summit, the proceedings stressed the importance of knowledge and of institutional renewal and innovation. The forum probed deeply into the forces underlying global change. The essential findings were captured in three sentences in my Foreword to the Proceedings: “Apocalypse is not impending. An attractive human prospect is within reach. However, in several respects the world is embarked on a trajectory that could lead to severe problems. The task for our generation is to change the forces determining that trajectory so that its terminus is that attractive human prospect” (50).

The second meeting was a 1993 international workshop given under the auspices of The Sigma Xi Center. The participants articulated a vision of the kind of world we want and focused on the role of knowledge networks in pursuing that vision. Two possible scenarios were prepared for the year 2050. In the first, economic and demographic growth continue at the rates prevailing during the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. The other explores the consequences of changes in those growth rates should society consciously choose to pursue a vision of the world we want. A Global Array of Nested Networks (GANN) was recommended to develop the cascade of knowledge that drives human progress (51).

The third meeting was the annual gathering of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) held in Chicago in November 1994. I presented a White Paper entitled “Sustainable Human De­velopment: A Paradigm for the 21st Century,” commissioned by NASULGC. I challenged institutions of higher education to forge a new compact between academia and society to succeed the one stimulated 50 years ago by Science—The Endless Frontier. This compact would center on sustainable human de­velopment undergirded by conscious efforts to foster growth in the cascade of knowledge. The goal would be a new vision of society attainable in the twenty-first century (52). That vision is a society in which the basic human needs and an equitable share of life’s amenities can be met by successive generations, while maintaining in perpetuity a healthy, physically attractive, and biologically productive environment.

The thoughts that emerged during these three meetings, in the context of the milestone experiences I’ve touched on here, left me with certain views on the course ahead, some alternative courses, the elements of a response, and a few convictions about leadership.

DOWN THE ROAD TO THE YEAR 2050

Two scenarios constructed by The Sigma Xi Center for 2050 from data com­piled by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) show what the future may hold (52). In each scenario, the countries of the world are divided into three groups: (a) the 46 industrial countries, (b) the 65 countries at an intermediate stage of development, and (c) 62 less-developed countries.

In the first scenario, current population growth rates in the three groups of countries continue. World population increases threefold to 15 billion people. More people are added in the less-developed and impoverished countries than exist in the world today (i.e. five billion).

Present rates of growth in the individual capacity to convert natural resources into goods and services (i.e. economic productivity) in the three groups also continues in the first scenario. With associated population growth, the global production and consumption of goods and services increases eightfold, attaining a value of more than $200 trillion (Purchasing Power Parity dollars). The increase in the economies in the industrial countries (>$70 trillion) is two and a half times the total world economy today (i.e. $27 trillion). The 10% of the world’s people that are in the industrial countries are producing and consuming 40% of the world’s economic output. The 50% of the people that are in the less-developed countries are producing and consuming only 10% of that output.

Stresses on the carrying capacity of our planet increase. The demographic and economic gaps between affluent and impoverished countries widen. Social stresses are exacerbated worldwide. Poverty still exists in all countries, but is especially acute in the less-developed countries, where one billion people already live in poverty. The most disturbing aspect of this scenario is that an increasingly interdependent world travels on a path leading to a civilization that is physically and biologically unsustainable, ethically and morally inequi­table, and socially and politically unstable.

The alternative scenario considers the consequences of pursuing consensus demographic and economic goals for 2050. The demographic goal is a nearly doubled, rather than tripled, world population by 2050. This growth reduction is accomplished by incentives to halve population growth rates in all countries. The world population reaches nine billion in 2050. Instead of exceeding the world’s current population, the population increase in the less-developed coun­tries is less than half the total population today.

The economic goal for the less-developed countries is to raise the production and consumption of goods and services by the average individual by 2050 up to the 1990 level in the industrial countries. This increase requires annual gains in individual economic productivity of four and a half percent. With concurrent population growth, the economies of the less-developed countries grow thirty-fold.

The economic goal for the industrial countries is to double the production and consumption of goods and services by the average individual by 2050, which requires annual economic productivity gains of one and a half percent. The economies of these countries grow threefold. The increase in their econo­mies is 1.3 times greater than the total world economy today.

In this alternative scenario, the world economy still grows eightfold. Vig­orous measures would be necessary to minimize the impact of production and consumption on the environment. The economies of the 65 countries at an intermediate stage of development (including China) grow the most, increasing to nearly four times the current world economy. With nearly 50% of the world’s people, this intermediate group produces and consumes more than 40% of the global economic output.

With nearly 20% of the population, the industrial group produces just over 20% of the world’s goods and services. The less-developed countries, with just over 40% of the population, produce nearly 30% of the global economy, a marked improvement over the first scenario.

OUTLINE OF A PLAN OF ACTION

Five needs must be recognized to move in the direction of the alternative scenario: (a) to strengthen understanding of the interacting physical, chemical, biological, and socioeconomic systems that regulate the total human environment; (b) to transform an energy-, technology-, and consumer-driven socio­economic system into one that is environmentally benign; (c) to stabilize world population; (d) to reduce poverty wherever it exists; and (e) to reexamine societal values and goals and accord high priority to quality of life and sus­tainable human development.

Reduction of poverty will require economic growth, which contributes to the stabilization of population at a sustainable level. Low rates of demographic growth are usually found in affluent societies, high rates in impoverished societies. The premium placed on economic growth underscores the imperative to transform the socioeconomic system into one that is environmentally benign. The National Science and Technology Council has proposed an attractive production initiative (53). This initiative, combined with a complementary consumption initiative and abroad-based, properly framed body of knowledge, would provide a solid base for addressing the fundamental issue of sustainable human development.

Sustainable human development (a) places humans in the center of sustain­able development, (b) empowers individuals through education and meaningful employment to expand their opportunities and options, (c) emphasizes the quality rather than quantity of economic growth, (d) seeks regeneration and enrichment rather than degradation and impoverishment of the total human environment, and (e) provides political and religious freedom and personal security.

The overarching challenge to the pursuit of sustainable human development is to recognize that human progress is driven by the cascade of knowledge. Again, the cascade of knowledge is the dynamic and nonlinear continuum linking the discovery, integration, dissemination, and application of knowledge concerning the nature and interaction of matter, energy, living organisms, information, and human behavior.

Strengthening this cascade is a prerequisite for the pursuit of sustainable human development. Major institutional renewal and innovation will be nec­essary. A dynamic and creative interaction must be generated among physical scientists, biologists, mathematicians, physicians, social scientists, engineers, and scholars in the humanities. Present arrangements in academia and in scholarly and professional organizations often inhibit, rather than encourage, the interaction of individuals in these disciplines; an interaction essential for the integration of knowledge. Some of the most exciting discoveries are taking place at the interface among disciplines, such as advances in modem biology (e.g. biochemistry, biophysics).

New modes of communication and cooperation need to be forged among business and industry, the several levels of government, academia, and private organizations. Individuals need to become involved through the growing num­ber of nongovernmental grass roots organizations (NGOs). New partnerships are needed between industrial and developing nations and among individual countries in those two groups of sovereign nations.

The global nature of the task and the overriding importance of the cascade of knowledge to the human prospect demand that a global knowledge strategy be fashioned. Rapidly emerging technologies in audio/visual information net­working will soon bring within reach implementation of GANN, which will enhance the effectiveness of individuals and of national and international institutional arrangements.

Network I would reach individuals at grass roots levels in both developing and industrialized countries to inform, raise consciousness, provide input to the other networks, and build the public will for action. Network II would link educational institutions worldwide with each other and with the other networks.

The primary mission of Network II would be to embrace the discovery and dissemination of knowledge, with a focus on both formal and informal edu­cation. Network III would increase the effectiveness of several ongoing and planned networks in addressing specific regional and global issues, with a focus on the integration of knowledge across disciplines. Network IV would be largely responsible for integrating and interpreting the outputs of Networks I, II, and III and identifying policy options that emerge from their work. This network would serve as a switching device between decision-making mecha­nisms in the public and private sectors and GANN.

The societal discontinuity created by innovations in information technolo­gies presents a challenge as profound as the one created by the invention of the printing press centuries ago. The world is still trying to solve tomorrow’s problems with yesterday’s economic measures, transfer of conventional tech­nologies, and military power. Electronic transfer of currency has brought the world to the brink of a financial crisis (54). It is time to construct a new framework.

The currency of international exchange in that new framework will not be dollars, nor yen, nor marks. It will be knowledge, construed holistically and developed within the cascade of knowledge. Modest reordering of priorities would provide adequate monetary resources without new funding. A realloca­tion of 3% from (a) the $60 billion spent annually on Official Development Assistance, (b) the $120 billion spent annually on the military in developing countries, and (c) the $670 billion spent annually on the military in industrial countries, would provide $25 billion each year to underwrite a Global Knowl­edge Strategy (estimated from data in Reference 55).

LEADERSHIP

Imaginative leadership will be required to convert these concepts into specific initiatives that will galvanize individuals and institutions to launch a unified effort focusing on the human prospect. From my experience, this leadership is most likely to come from the scholarly community: institutions of higher education, and nongovernmental organizations that bring together wise and innovative individuals. Since the issues are global, stronger links should be established with kindred institutions in other parts of the world.

The opportunities before the scholarly community come at the end of an era of sustained growth and expansion. The compact between society and the scientific research community that grew out of Science—The Endless Frontier is expiring. The imperative of financial integrity, nationally and globally, is introducing painful measures of austerity. Consequent adjustments and reor­dering of priorities are the order of the day. Even as these sacrifices are made, expenditures for education and research must be recognized as investments for the future.

A special responsibility and opportunity faces the land-grant colleges. These institutions played a major role in transforming the United States over the past century. Their importance at the interface between natural and human systems has been noted (56). Land-grant colleges interact with the several levels of government and with the private sector. Their traditional mission of teaching, research, and extension is a point of departure for developing the cascade of knowledge.

In the end, the creativity and dynamism of individuals working within a variety of institutional instrumentalities will determine the human prospect. The cogent comment of the editors of Foreign Policy is germane: “It is our firm belief that the United States has yet to develop a foreign policy relevant to this post-Cold War world. Indeed, much of the foreign policy debate in the United States seems trapped in a time warp” (57).

Foreign policy and national policy are becoming inextricably intertwined. At this moment in history, the full panoply of knowledge must be brought to bear on the formulation and execution of policies that simultaneously serve national and international interests. The involvement of the scholarly commu­nity is imperative. A new and broadly based compact is needed between the community and society. The last one, forged 50 years ago, was initiated within the government. Perhaps this time the scholarly community could take the initiative.


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