Page 4, Tha Herald, Friday, November 9, 1979 TERR ACE/KITIMAT daily herald Published by Sterling Publishers Gonera | Office - 35-6357 Circutatlon - 435-6357 GEN. MANAGER - Knox Coupland EDITOR - Greg Middleton CIRCULATION - TERRACE - 635-6357 KITIMATOFFICE - 632-2747 Published every weekday at 3212 Kalum Street, Terrace, B.C. A member of Varifled Circulatlon. Authorized as second class mall. Registration number 1201, Postage pald in cash, return postage guaranteed. NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT The Herald retains full, complete and sole copyright In any advertisement produced and-or any editorial ar photographic content published in the Herald. Reproduction is not permitted without the written parmission of the Publisher. . LETTERS TO THE EDITOR and changing elec.) 1 know that the recreatlon centre has expences, but charging this much is lowering the use of the facilities, I think it makes much more sense to lower the rate charge and therefore making the arena and swimming poo] more accessible to the working public. J would be interested .in knowing how other people feel about this Thank You. B.A. Woodcock UONNECTIONS Dear Sir: Tam writing this letter to you, hoping that the public reaction may help me and clher working people like myself, 1 would like to know If it would be possible for the recreation centre to in- troduce a noon hour pass that we working people could use for both swimming and skating, at a reasonable rele, As it stands now, we pay ¢1.50 for approx. 15 to 20 riinutes use of the facility. (As most people have only ene hour for lunch and half of the time is used for travel ‘Technology This is the seventh of a weekly, fifteen-part general interest, non credit, educational series on techaology and change, called Connections, offered by the Open Learning Institute. Each week, an article will appear in this paper. On Sunday, at 8 p.m. on Channel 9 (Cable TY), you can. wateh the weekly PBS television series, Connections, vert of this multimedia continuing education. nrogram. As well, youcan purchase a Viewer’s Guide irom the Open Learning Institute. in this article, population expert Kingsley Davis of the University of Southern California discusses the relationships ameng technology, population and “esources. vtt: TECHNOLOGY, POPULATION, AND 2 = SOURCES | By KINGSLEY DAVIS Theoretically, technology gives man: the’ unique power to determine his own fate. In practice, however, the long-run consequences are unforeseen and usually undesired. . A tragic illustration is the population crisis. Technology has made possible a formidable increase in population that now threatens to exhaust the energy yesources on which the growth itself has depended. If not stopped by deliberate policy, population growth will probably be stopped in unintended, less humane WAYS. During most of human existence there was no aopulation problem. Human fertility was low because ehildren require a long period of learning and hence dependence. Mortality, on the other hand, was sub- alantial, partly because of warfare, predation, and occasional famine, but mainly because of parasitic and infectious diseases. Such long-run population growth as did occur was made possible by migration into new areas. ‘ Thus, although man has existed for more than half a million years and probably numbered 50,000 some ‘0,000 years ago, by 8000 B.C. there were probably only about 5million people, according to the estimates. af demographer John D. Durand. The rate of increase was only one-tenth of one per cent per century. (See Table 1.) If that rate had continued after 8000 B.C., it would nave required over 700,000 years to reach the present world population — 4.3 billion. Instead it took only 10,000 years. Why? Table i Percent Growth of Estimated Increase per Human Population Population Century 400,000 years ago 50,000 40,000 years ago 5,000,600 01 A.D. 1750 791,000,000 5.2 A.D. 1979 4,285,000,000 109.1 DESTROYING THE BALANCE OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS The answer is technology. At first used mainly for hunting, technology was spplied to agriculture and animal husbandry about 10,000 years ago, Since then, the balance between fertility and mortality has been destroyed. The im- provement in production strengthened people's -esistance to disease but did not, since it came too -wiftly, cause fertility to adjust to reduced mortality. Aetween 10,000 years ago and 1750 A.D., the rate of cypulation increase, 5.2 per cent per century, was fifty ines the rate before then. The coming of industrialism dramatically reduced ‘he death rate in two ways: first, enormous further improvements in “productive” technology strikingly improved shelter and diets, and second, the development of “medical technology began, after sbout 1850, to control infectious diseases. As a resuit, between 1750 and 1979 the rate of global population growth was twenty-one times as fast as it had been ‘ring the preceding 10,000 years. Yet the level of living rose simultaneously, because aw ] f The furor over Monty Python's latest movie, “The Life of Brian’, has implications which extend far beyand the boundaries of.good taste and artistic quality, the only valid grounds for the criticism of any work of art. I can't say whether it is a good movie or a bad one, a tasteful movie or a disgusting one, because I haven't yet. Iam certainly not surprised that the movie has offended members of certain religious groups. Such is the nature of the Monty Python troup, five Englishmen and an American who initially gained fame because of their outrageous brand of satire..They do not always deal with social issues. In fact, their television programs were at times senseless, and worse, not funny at all. The worst of their programs were the most pedestrian, while the best were the ones in which the troup attacked, often hilariously and always viciously, the most accepted and revered social customs of their society. Humour of this type is bound not to be universally appreciated -or ap- plauded. The point of this comment is not to defend the movieitself, but to defend the group and its right to express its sometimes dubious opinions in the manner which it sees fit. Members of the Jewish and Catholic hierar- chies have demanded the banning of the movie on the grounds that it is offensive’ and insulting. These are hardly grounds, in a free and democratic society, to ban a film, or, for that matter, abook, a television program or anything else, Offense and insult are purely matters of personal taste, and the tastes of the leaders of our major religions are simply not shared by ali of the society which they serve. Nor, I imagine, are their tastes shared by all of the members of the religions they represent, a fact which would seem obvious, yet apparently these men disregard it and place their injured dignity above the simple and basic right to freedom of speech, a basic tenet of our society and the very tacks. _ Apparently, other membersof our society who seen it, It hasn't come to the theatre in Terrace © It is a matter of rights support thelr call for the movie's han. Buckley says that we nolonger respect God, But for God’s sake and for ours, we must not forget the historical truth that the worst, the most inhuman, the most imaginatively ‘cruel and repressive regimes in the world have been based on the constriction of thought, on the banning of opinions which did not parallel the govern- IN MY \s by DON SCHAFFER * ; oy freedom which they exercise to make their at- — ment’s: based, in fact, on the censorship of art, literature and thought. ; Buckley appears to endorse the opinions of the church: leaders, and by doing so appears to one would assume would be intelligent enough to recognise this contradiction are missing it, or are ignoring it because they too are offended by what they see on the screen. : William F. Buckley, a respected American intellectual whose controversial politics are definitely not shared by all of his fellow citizens, ' has derided the film in a recent essay as callous and morally bankrupt, He describes the film as a “grotesquerie’’, He says that the life of Christ is “burlesqued” by Monty Python. In the last, lengthy sentence of his essay, he suggests that . Monty Python’s film is the worst kind of blasphemy , one in which “we are relieved of the obligation to experience sorrow at man’s inhumanity to mat, let alone man’s inhumanity to God.” Buckley appears to misunderstand the nature of satire, which is to expose human folly by . [find it a banal, insipid program, which insults ‘for myself, thank you. matter of the personal taste of the abserver a5 18 the nature of offense. Would Buckley suggest that the works of John Dryden, Jonathan Swift or Alexander Pope are blasphemous in this mast horrid way? They, too, attacked social mores and specific people in brutal fashion. Their scatalogical, “immoral” poetry and prose 18 ranked with the highest achievements of human thought. Would Buckley deny anyone the op- portunity to satirize their society and its faults, as these three poets did theirs? ; Hitler began by opposing, then banning, socialist and religious tracts, progressed through the banning of political and intellectual opposition, and ended with the atrocious ‘final solution,” the banning of an entire race of people, Today, the Ayatollah Khomeini censors music from Iranian radio and television, and - censors moral insurrection by executing adultresses. ; ; By daring to suggest a ban on a movie which does not cater to their views of the world, the leaders of the Jewish and Catholic faiths show traces of the same moral degeneracy as these two others, these monsters. ; Certainly the religious leaders have a right to be offended. Certainly they have a right to ex- press their opposition to this movie. They have, however, no right to ban it, Nor do they have the right to ban a book, or anything else. Little House on the Prairie ottends me deeply. me every time I watch it, I don’t suggest banning the program, though, I practice the only form of censorship acceptable in a democratic society. I shut it off. I plan to go see the Life of Brian, if it comes to Terrace, If it offends me, I'll get up and leave, and I'll be sure to tell my friends what I thought of it. If you go see the movie, and you feel in- sulted by it, get up and ask for your money back. Please don't presume ta tell me what will offend me before I have a chance to find out for myself. Don't take away my opportunity to see what I wish tosee by banning it from the theatre, or the bookshelves, or the television, I’d like to find out “burlesquing”’ it. The nature of folly is as much a and change POPULATION 7 AND RESOURCE SE te BS Sy Sa ~S SS q BREE ah Ph i Lh . - Atte unlimited productive capacity. Population growth and prosperity came to be equated. POPULATION GROWTH TODAY Since 1950 the rate of Population growth has remained approximately sta per year. This is little cause for joy, however, because the rate is extremely high: it would double the population every 37 years. And, because af the enlargement of the base, that is, the greater number of people each year, the “absolute increase” continues to rise (Table 2). From 1975 to 1979 the absolute in- crease was 64 per cent greater than it was between 1960 and 1955, although the “rate” was almost Iden- tical. At present, approximately 80 million people are being added each year! Tronically, 79 per cent of the world’s population growth is occurring in the 45 per cent of the world's area thatis still underdeveloped, an area mostly in the tropics which is already 2.5 times as densely settled a3 the developed regions. The reason is that the medical: knowledge that developed slowly in the industrial nations can now be transferred overnight to backward areas, causing death rates to drop about four times faster than they did from similar levels in the industrial nations. Yet the social structure has changed only slightly, and incentives for having children remain strong. — Thus the less developed countries have the highest + natural increase ever known, In Syria, for example, it is estimated at 4 per cent per year, a rate that will ‘nr harnessing of fossil energy meant seemingly double the population in less than 18 years. In Egypt, je, around 1.9 per cent. . whére the density on agricultural land is already - unbelievable and the poverty legendary, the natural _ increase is 2.6 per cent per year, enough to double the population in 27 years. TECHNOLOGY AND RESOURCES Fundamentally, the 5.5-fold upsurge in the earth’s population since 1750 rests on fossil energy. Coal, oil, and gas permitted a novel development: a - simultaneous rise in population and in level of living. In the past, productive gains were used to sustain. more people rather than to raise standards, Now the use of seemingly inexhaustible energy meant that each human being could have the equivalent of dozens of servants. It meant that costly medical science could be developed and death rates around the world reduced. Table 2 RECENT INCREASES IN THE WORLD'S POPULATION Tnerease in Estimated World Population Five Years (1) 1950 2,526,000,000 Absolute Per cent 1955 2,770,000,000 244,000,000 9.65 1960 3,058,000,000 288,000,000 10.40 1965 3,971,000,000 314,000,000 10.25 1970 3,722,000,000 350,000,000 10.39 1975 4,100,000,000 379,000,000 10.18 1979 4,421,000,000 (2) 401,000,000 (3) 9.78 (1) Calculated on the basis of figures less rounded than those shown in Column 1. (2) Adjusted to a 5-year basis. (3) Estimated by Present Author. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, ‘World Population 1977” (Washington, D.C.: 1978), pp. 14-15. PART VIT But alas, the heedless consumption of energy is exhausting the earth’s supply of oil and gas, forcing a new reliance on coal, the best deposits of which have been mined. Furthermore, the world’s population is so huge that any satisfaction of energy demands, from ‘whatever source, endangers the environment. ) ‘The desperate search has turned to nuclear energy, but the more complex the technology required, the more dangerous it is. The problems of uranium supply, radioactive wastes and nuclear weapons and accidents are not easily solved. Nuclear fusion remains a costly dream likely to consume huge amounts of energy before yielding a net return some fifty to a hundred years from now. . Although predictions are uncertain, it seems probable'that either the world’s consumption or the world’s population will have to be reduced. Many people advocate the first alternative: returning to a simpler technology based more on muscle than‘on mechanical power. The world’s population, however, is far beyond that possibility. Human beings are now so numerous in relation to resources thatonly the most advanced technology can keep them alive, much less give them a decent living. The reason is simple: We use more energy to | produce food than the food itself supplies. We are thus eating fossil energy. The countries in which half to four-fifths of the labor force is engaged in agriculture — that is, where human muscle is important to cultivation — nearly all import food from countries where mechanical energy is abundantly used. As the energy dries up, so will the food supply. Since 1955 the world’s arable land has hardly in- * creased, while the population has risen by 60 per cent. As much farm land {is lost each year through erosion, urban encroachment, and desertification as is added by irrigation, drainage, and terracing. There are now approximately 789 persons in the world per square _ mile of arable land. Thus the huge increase in the world’s food supply, paralleling the. growth of - population, has been due almost entirely to greater use of energy for fertilizers, irrigation, and so forth rather than expansion of agricultural land. -In the next four decades humans will doubtlessly strain every nerve to support an ever larger population. Ifso, it will demonstrate that the species is tool-smart but goal-stupid. No purpose is served by adding more people to an overcrowded planet. The hope that the world’s birth rate will drop to match the low death rate is forlorn, because most governments are content merely to institute “family planning” programs and hope for the best. Because of their birth rates, less developed countries have an extremely young population. Even with low fertility per woman, they will expand their population prodigiously. The struggle for dwindling resources may cause the small wars now raging in the world to flare into a major conflagration. If so, the frightful weapons that modern technology can create may wipe out most — or perhaps all — of the human population, NEXT WEEK: Economist Nathan Rosenberg of Stanford University explores the problem of providing incentives for new technologles that will meet soclety’s needs, ABOUT THE AUTHOR KINGSLEY DAVIS is Distinguished Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Population Research Laboratory at the University of Southern California. From 1955 to 1977, he was Ford Professor of Soclology and Comparative Studies and Chairman, International Population and Urban Research atthe University of California, Berkeley, Ar expert in population trends and urbanization, he is the author or co-author of dozens of articles and of several” books, including “World Urbanization 1950-1970" and “Population Policy and International Change.”