Their main mental block is their belief in infinite industrial growth on a finite planet, an idea so powerfully foolish that it obviates their standing as technocrats.
This is the Erlich/Simons bet. It's not that the author is wrong to say there is a limit to growth, it's just that it's preposterous to assert we're close to it. We are not close to it in any useful sense. It's not even 200 years off: it's beyond.
We will have normal cyclical boom and bust many times before we reach it. The rape of the Amazon and they CO2 burden are more worrisome, but as limits represent a different reason to clamp consumption and growth.
My theory, for what it’s worth, is that the civil rights legislation of 1964 and ’65, which removed legal barriers to full participation in national life, induced considerable anxiety among black citizens over the new disposition of things, for one reason or another. And that is exactly why a black separatism movement arose as an alternative at the time, led initially by such charismatic figures as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael.
I don't know about the second clause but I believe differently about the first clause. Removing the legal impediment did not obligate society to change, black America received as much systemic instituionalized racism after the law changed as before, it was now simply illegal. Freeing the slave (btw, largely they freed themselves) didn't give them work and passing the civil rights laws didn't magically end racism or provide opportunities.
This is the Erlich/Simons bet. It's not that the author is wrong to say there is a limit to growth, it's just that it's preposterous to assert we're close to it. We are not close to it in any useful sense. It's not even 200 years off: it's beyond.
We will have normal cyclical boom and bust many times before we reach it. The rape of the Amazon and they CO2 burden are more worrisome, but as limits represent a different reason to clamp consumption and growth.
My theory, for what it’s worth, is that the civil rights legislation of 1964 and ’65, which removed legal barriers to full participation in national life, induced considerable anxiety among black citizens over the new disposition of things, for one reason or another. And that is exactly why a black separatism movement arose as an alternative at the time, led initially by such charismatic figures as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael.
I don't know about the second clause but I believe differently about the first clause. Removing the legal impediment did not obligate society to change, black America received as much systemic instituionalized racism after the law changed as before, it was now simply illegal. Freeing the slave (btw, largely they freed themselves) didn't give them work and passing the civil rights laws didn't magically end racism or provide opportunities.