The Next Industrial Revolution

Abstract

WHILE WE ALL know that population is a central problem, if we are doers we must do the things the best way we know how for the population we have and what I am talking about is an industrial revolution which is already going on around us. We must have this new industrial revolution; invent it; encourage it. The other industrial revolutions came along somewhat unplanned and certainly people were unprepared for their side effects. The first, which started in England, was magnificent. It was hailed as a way to ennoble man by substituting other forms of power for his muscles. But with that power came filth and smoke and other things that were the side effects. However, the primary benefits were so worth while that the side effects went unnoticed for a time; but you might say that, with power, we had also invented air pollution. Then the availability of power had a second effect; it enabled us to mass produce things for people so tlhat they could have more things to ease their lives. But by mass production, multiplying things to put in people's hands to give them an ease of living, we produced so many things that after use there was more and more to throw away and in this way. we invented the solid waste problem. Then came about the chemical revolution, the ability to tailor-make chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, things that could selectively destroy elements of the biological system which were inim,icable to man. But again with these new chemicals came an upsetting of the ecology and so we invented accelerated eutrophication and other new ways to pollute water. No balanced person regrets the discoveries themselves. Without them we would not be living in the ease of the present century as contrasted to the dis-ease that existed before the first industrial revolution. To replace two hundred million automobiles of a hundred horsepower each would take twenty billion horses each causing 25 pounds of solid waste. That's a lot of organic gardening! Concern, however, for the steadily increasing poisoning and the spoiling of our environment has caused some to just say, stop doing what you're doing, . . . stop increasing the production of things for people. Some conservationists, for example, wish to block the building of power plants because of the waste heat problem and to ban the automobile before we have anything to take its place. We must, I think, morally attempt to bring to all people as many things to ease their lives as modern science and technology is capable of providing; but at the same time, we must bring them, and I am sure we can, a clean environment, now that their rising aspirations insist on this. Hopefully, people will be willing to pay for it. We must revise our vocabulary. For instance, tlhere is no such person as a consumer. We consume nothing, whether it be the food we eat, the automobiles we drive, or the hardware in our houses. We merely use things, and according to the law of conservation of matter, exactly the same mass of material is discarded after use. Thus, under our present system of mismanaging material after use, as the standard of living goes up, the amount of waste and consequent pollution must go up. In poor countries where things are scarce, there is very little waste, but the solution in any country is not to reduce the supply of things that people need in order to reduce waste. The object of the next industrial revolution is to ensure that there will be no such thing as waste, on the basis that waste is simply some substance that we do not yet have the wit to use. Industry and business, what some call the private sector, have only been asked to do half their job. They perform magnificent feats of scientific, technological and managerial skills to take things from the land or to grow them in the land, refine them, mass-manufacture, mass-market and mass-distribute them to the so-called consumer; who is nothing but a user. Then the same mass of material is left to the public sector to dispose of after use. By and large, in our society, the private sector makes the things before tise and for