How do Teilhard and Johan Norberg see risks to continuing human evolution?

Today’s Post

As we have seen in Teilhard’s unique but increasingly comprehensive insights into evolution, he acknowledges that his audacious optimism for the future of humanity is nonetheless balanced by a recognition of its risks. As we saw in in Norberg’s comprehensive analysis, there is considerable data to justify optimism, but Steven Pinker showed that there is also considerable resistance to the data which supports this optimism.

This week we will address some of these risks and see how they could impede the continuation of human evolution.

The Structural Risks To Human Evolution

As we have seen in a few of his many examples of human progress, Johan Norberg identifies a “Tornado of Evidence” (The Economist) which substantiates Teilhard’s optimistic projection for the future of human evolution.  But even as he goes through the numbers which show exponential growth in human welfare in nine distinct and critical categories of human existence over the last two generations of human evolution, he also notes that every such aspect of ‘progress’ comes with an unplanned and unwelcome consequence.  A few examples:

• Humans learned to replace wood with coal for fuel, which avoided the deforestation of the planet, and probable human extinction, but at the same time led to the near asphyxiation of those living in cities as population increased along with density.
• Advances in sanitation, agriculture and medicine exponentially lowered the death rate of both mothers and children in childbirth, which then led to a huge growth in human population, which then threatened to overtax food production and lead to widespread famine.
• And today we see the threat of global warming (at least partially) caused by dumping tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and trapping heat, possibly leading to the rising of the seas and the drowning of millions.

However, as Norberg and many others note, forecasts of the effects of such consequences have historically failed to materialize as predicted.  Such forecasts, such as those of Malthus, who predicted population growth overwhelming food production and leading to global famine by now, did not factor in the human ability to innovate and invent.  Even though improvements in crops have led to a global decrease in hunger, the population did not continue to grow at the predicted rate.

Why didn’t such dire consequences happen?

As Norberg points out in the example of overpopulation, the reduction in childbirth deaths actually led to a decrease in the rate of population growth as parents no longer felt the necessity for large families when such a large percentage of children began to survive the vulnerable early years.

And, as we have seen, the introduction of coal did indeed lead to deaths caused by foul air, but of course, once again, innovation and invention produced methods of cleaning coal smoke, and new technologies to produce more BTUs with fewer side effects, such as the extraction and management of gas.

But what about global warming?  The CO₂ content in the air may take centuries to dissipate naturally, and by then humans may well have effectively caused their own extinction.   Again, such a forecast fails to factor the ability of humans to invent.  Considering the number of initiatives under development today, such as wind, solar and nuclear power, and Hydrogen power, such prophesies may well be premature.  There are also studies underway to not only extract CO₂ from the air, but to market it as a source of fuel as well.  All these, of course, are optimistic forecasts, and all subject to unplanned consequences which will set off new rounds of invent-pollute-clean up.  Can humans win this war, or will the inevitable consequences rule out in the end?

John McHale, in his book, The Future of the Future, echoes both Teilhard and Norberg when he notes

“At this point, then, where man’s affairs reach the scale of potential disruption of the global ecosystem, he invents precisely those conceptual and physical technologies that may enable him to deal with the magnitude of a complex planetary society.”

   While this point of view definitely suggests optimism, the question can legitimately be asked, “What costs are we prepared to pay for progress?”  This is followed by the more significant question. “How can we be sure that we will continue, as McHale suggests above, to find fixes for the things we break?”

These are ‘structural’ risks.  One key to perspective on this conundrum is to address the other type of risk: the ‘Noospheric Risks’.

The Next Post

This week we began to address the risks that can be seen as we apply Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ to human life, beginning with those that he and Norberg saw as ‘structural’.

Next week we will refocus this lens on the deeper risks that occur when humans, as ‘evolution become aware of itself’, begin to lose faith in its ability to bring us into a fuller realization of our potential.