However, in the intervening four years the world around us has changed so much that it is hardly 
recognizable. Astonishing technological events have taken place. Supersonic transports have reduced 
intercontinental travel time by one half. Five times men have walked on the surface of the Moon and brought 
parts of it back to Earth. Instantaneous voice and television communication around the world is an everyday 
occurrence. Automation makes us wonder how essential men will be in the next few years. A whole new 
industry called Remote Sensing has grown up around us. The ubiquitous computer has entered every phase 
of our professional and private lives. Laymen are astonished to find that the circuits of the fourth generation 
computers are far too complicated for engineers to understand; they have to be designed by another 
computer--a fact which, as far as I can tell, has no theological significance and has nothing to do with the origin 
of life! 
At the same time that all these advances were taking place, we have begun to realize that maybe this is 
not the best of all possible worlds. Astronaut Jim Lovell on the historic first manned mission around the Moon 
in December 1968 radioed back ‘From here the Earth looks like a fragile blue-green Christmas tree 
ornament’. Though men of wisdom have for decades appreciated the fragility of our planet, it is only in the 
past few years that the general public has become aware that the vaunted progress of modern civilization may 
only be a thin cloak for global catastrophe. Characteristically, they are demanding that their leaders do 
something about it. Ecology and environmentalism are household words and have become a major driving 
political force. Fundamentally, the problems can be summarized as: population, pollution, resources, and 
energy. 
Population 
I suppose that if any government official were asked to name the most valuable resource of his country, 
he would inevitably reply that it is the energy and spirit of his people. And yet burgeoning human population 
is clearly a principal root of the world’s problems. Those who specialize in such estimates say that by the year 
2000 world population will grow from the present 3.7 billion to 6 or 8 billion. It doesn’t really make any 
difference what the number is--either one of them is more than the planet can support at present levels of 
consumption. The biblical injuction **Be fruitful and multiply"! has apparently backfired. We seem to have 
created a life form which is inimical to the natural environment of the planet we live on. This is not the forum 
to discuss arguments for Zero Population Growth, Legalized Abortion, or other forms of population control. 
But to me it seems a great tragedy that the one limitless resource is the one that we have not learned to 
utilize. 
Of more immediate impact than the eventual numbers of total population, is the changing pattern of 
population distribution. Anyone traveling through western Canada or the western United States would have 
a hard time believing that overpopulation is a problem. If the population in the United States should rise to 
a billion, the average density would only be 130 people per square kilometer. The Netherlands has a density 
of 380 per square kilometer, Japan 290, Britain 360. The real difficulty is that 75 per cent of the people have 
been concentrated on 2 per cent of the land. The attendant urban problems of transportation, power and light, 
water and sewage, police and fire protection, education, overlapping administrative responsibilities, tax 
inequities, ethnic concentrations, central city decay, and suburban sprawl, are almost more than the mind can 
comprehend, and make one wonder why anyone would seek political office. 
There is another aspect of population that is of particular importance to us as scientists and engineers. 
There is strong evidence, particularly among the young people and students, that the public has become 
disenchanted with science and technology generally. On American college campuses, there are currently ten 
times as many students enrolled in astrology courses as in astro-physics courses. There exists, at best, an 
indifference to, and, at worst, an active antipathy towards science and technology. There is a mistrust of 
rational, conceptual, calculative, and abstract modes of thought. Logical minded managers, technologists, 
engineers, business administrators, planners, accountants, experimenters, for whom rational, orderly, and 
logical methods are the royal road to truth--instead of being regarded as the professionals who keep our society 
running--find themselves accused of having presided over the sacrifice of man and his environment on the altar 
of continuing economic growth. 
There is indeed a certain attractiveness in the desire to stop our frantic rush to bend nature to the human 
will and in its place to restore a vital, more harmonious, and more humble balance with nature. But as Stuart 
Chase has said, “Retreat to a simpler era may have had some merit 200 years ago when Rousseau was extolling 
the virtues of Cro-Magnon man, but too much water has gone through the turbines’. The emotional urge to 
return to the forests, to live on nuts and berries, is simply not a viable alternative. Much of the public, and 
particularly the young, are nearly unaware of the width and depth of the intricate technological base upon 
which every moment of their comfort and even their daily survival depends. While it may be true that 
technology has helped to get us into our present plight, it remains the only real hope for getting us out of it. 
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