Prophet's of Doom

Recently I watched a program on The History channel in which six "experts" got together to predict the downfall of the United States (and civilization in general perhaps)

in the near future. According to these people, the U.S. and possibly civilization as we know it is on the brink of a major disaster from several sources. It was interesting, but I found that for the most part, their reasoning was completely flawed.

Take the coming oil shortage for example. Okay, at the moment, our chief source of energy is from oil, but it is obvious to anyone who keeps up with technology that there are many ways to obtain energy besides oil. To name a few: biofuel, coal, atomic energy, wind power, geothermal power, solar power, natural gas, garbage, and so forth. Also, by a few easy conservation methods, we could extend the supply of oil by many years. Just recently, I read an article about a tall office building that uses no fossil fuel for either heating or air conditioning and is completely self contained by using solar panels for all of its electrical needs. Also, as the price of oil increases, other methods of energy and conservation will become more popular. Just a year ago, when the price of gasoline shot up to four dollars a gallon in the U.S., high mileage hybrid autos began to sell.

The same is true of water. When clear fresh water becomes scarce, there are many ways of cleaning what we have by such as methods as removing salt from sea water, cleaning polluted water, not polluting it in the first place, etc. I'm sure we'll find a way.

As far as the money crisis goes, inflation and deflation run in cycles. Sure, at times such as the great depression, the recent downturn in the economy, the inflationary period in the 1980s and so forth, it seems that we are the brink of disaster, but things turn around. Much is made of the national debt, but this can be fixed if the politicians really desire it, by either cutting costs in big budget items such as the military or raising taxes on those who can afford to pay them. Or by trying some new ideas such as legalizing drugs and taxing them. This would provide a source of new revenues through taxation and reduce spending on policing. The post office could be privatized.

Then there was this guy Hugo De Gras who believes that artificial intelligent robots and computers will become smarter than humans and take over the world, keeping us at pets. I know that computers can do some marvelous things, for example this Watson beating contestants at Jeopardy, but artificial intelligence has a long way to go before it becomes as smart as people in the ability to respond to unfamiliar unprogrammed situations. And even if it did, certainly we would build in safeguards such as Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics.

The one scenario that was really feasible came from Robert Gleason. He said that the greatest threat was from terrorists using atomic bombs. The knowledge for building such a bomb is readily available, the fissionable material can be easily stolen or bought and the security to guard against such a threat is practically non-existent. Of course, blowing up a major city may be devastating, but it certainly would not bring the United States to its knees.

What I found most troubling about the program was an undercurrent of anti-technology, anti-science to it. For one thing, one of their major assumptions was that the earth is a closed system and that once we run out of some natural resource it's just gone. Hogwash, we have an entire solar system to mine. Or if not, we can find, discover or create substitutes.

I had to shake my head at their solution to the problems they brought up. They proposed that we move out of our great cities and live in small self-contained agrarian villages where all our needs are provided by the local community. In other words, we should return to the way people lived in the middle ages. Are you kidding? Who would want to live like that?