Waterlilies

Waterlilies

When I was at school in the 1970s, one day we had outside speakers who frightened me. I can’t remember much about it, but I think they were talking about the impending crisis of over-population, and they used an illustration of waterlilies.

Apparently, waterlilies can double in size in a single day, and if they completely choke a pond, all other life in it is killed. So, you can visit a pond and see that a quarter of it is covered by waterlilies. “Oh, what beautiful waterlilies”, you say to yourself. Next day, when you visit, you think, “Wow, those waterlilies have really grown – but never mind, half the pond is still clear”. Next day, the pond is choked and everything else is dying.

I felt helpless and frightened that the world was heading for disaster.

And those speakers were right: the world population has indeed more than doubled in my lifetime. However, the apocalyptic disaster they were predicting did not happen. If everything else had stayed the same, and population had simply doubled, the prediction of mass starvation and the breakdown of society would have been correct.

Instead, the “Green Revolution” happened, whereby we learnt how to enormously increase agricultural productivity. Billions of people have been brought out of extreme poverty and are acquiring a decent standard of living. Receiving an education has become standard for most people, including girls. Countless improvements in technology and growth of global trade have created more wealth than was dreamt possible. All round the world, women are deciding that they don’t, in fact, want the long-term world average of 6 children; 2 or 3 will be just fine. All of this has happened in the 50 years since I heard that talk, yet many people do not realise what is happening around them, and are far more pessimistic than the facts justify.

Today, many people, particularly in the younger generation, are afraid. They have imbibed an apocalyptic doomsday mentality from the false prophets of fear, who peddle a relentlessly negative narrative to frighten people into submitting to their political programme. Many are convinced that the planet is already doomed by climate change – or it can only be saved by measures so severe that it would be these measures that would create mass starvation and the breakdown of society.

We have to keep our courage. And our wisdom. We are not denying that the world has perhaps its greatest ever crisis to tackle. But if we do have such a crisis to face, it is imperative that we don’t let our actions be dictated by fear; the people shouting, “Fear and doom”, are precisely the ones to ignore.

Just as when I was a boy, the answer to the world’s problems will be found in our ingenuity and creativity. Yes, our problems are caused by our greed and ruthless exploitation, but we have the ability to solve our problems. Today’s doomsayers claim that everything is getting worse and we’re on the brink of catastrophe. In fact, on just about every measure you can take, the lot of the human race is improving. We are immensely better fed, healthier, freer, safer than we were in 1800, as the Industrial Revolution created the wealth to lift the vast majority of the world’s population from extreme poverty.

Yes, we have to take on the challenge of sustainability, but we will achieve that through further scientific and technological progress, not by dismantling society to return to the misery of poverty which was typical for us before 1800.

When I was a boy, I was wrong to be so frightened. We had the ability to change and develop and to find solutions to our problems. We really will have to all pull together and exert ourselves to the fullest extent of our capacities. But I am not afraid. We can do it.