Tag: Great Acceleration

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United States of America

January 31, 1963 – Malthus and technology, via Roger Revelle

Sixty three years ago, on this day, January 31st, 1963

At a meeting of the Federal Council on Science and Technology in 1963, Revelle, then the science advisor to Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and the chairman of the PSAC’s Committee on Natural Resources, observed “a shift from earlier ‘Malthus’ attitudes of apprehension over scarcity … to an optimism that science could help meet resources needs, but with a new concern on man’s contribution to pollution of his own environment.”195

 Revelle’s words are quoted in: Edward Wenk, Executive Secretary, Federal Council for Science and Technology, “Minutes and Record of Action,” 31 Jan 1963, I. I. Rabi Papers, LOC, Box 45, “Meetings, agenda and minutes, 1957-1972 (1),” 4.  Loetscher 2022

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was as that after World War Two, and especially from the 1950s with coming in military Keynesianism, there was an enormous explosion of economic innovation, activity growth, partly to do with pent up consumer demand from the war, growing populations, but also all the new technologies of production that had been invented during or refined during World War Two; radar, sonar, jet engines, computing, the list goes on and on. This has become known as the “Great Acceleration.”

The specific context 

So the early 60s is an interesting period, because people like Revelle are well aware of carbon dioxide build up and probably some other long-term issues, and they’re thinking about a switch over from scarcity thinking ie Malthus to cornucopia, but not a cornucopia without consequences.

What I think we can learn is that thoughtful people like Revelle were “on it”. 

What happened next. Climate change, oddly, continued  Revelle kept being relatively into climate issues

Then in his literally dying days in the early 1990s he was scammed by a failed scientist called Fred Singer, who put out a bullshit article under both their names. 

You also had Murray Bookchin tackling similar issues to Revelle here in his post scarcity anarchism essay. And, of course, Bookchin was aware of CO2 build up, as per his “Crisis in our Cities” book, published in April 1965. 

The other thing to think about is the tensions between impact science and production science.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

January 31, 1979 – Alvin Weinberg’s “nukes to fix climate change” speech reported

January 31, 2002 – Antarctic ice shelf “Larsen B” begins to break up.

January 31, 1990 – Environmental Racism – then and now… Guest post by @SakshiAravind

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Beer goggles, oil goggles and not seeing what is right in front of us.

It’s 2am. The nightclub is still full, but about to empty.

You are lonely, horny and the options remaining are not as great as they were.

More than that, you’re drunk and your vision and judgement aren’t what they might be in the frigid light of day.

So that one over there in the corner, who’d normally be considered an arm-chewer/put-a-paper-bag-over-his-head-and-he-will-become-“mr-right-now”? They’ve just graduated to “warm body, will do for now.” 

And if someone tries to mock you later, you can shrug your shoulders and say ‘whatever – I was wearing beer goggles.”

So, if I told you I was going to pivot this towards a thing about climate change, you’d brace yourself for some not very funny joke about ‘reducing emissions.’

Not today!

I want to try to be All Serious and Philosophical, and get into epistemology and ontology and other long-words I learnt at my first go on the rodeo of university, all those years ago.

Our judgement is affected by, well, goggles, lenses, expectations. The Germans have a word for it (of course) – Weltanschauung.

I would say that our last 100 years or so, and certainly since the Great Acceleration began in the 1950s, we (1) have been wearing oil goggles. We have been seeing the world as an inexhaustible orchard and playground, where there are no problems that cannot be solved. All you need is to go to a slightly deeper horizon and find more of The Stuff.  And the stuff is all around us, we swim in oil the way that goldfish swim in water.

Scientists and activists have tried to puncture the lens, to rip the oil goggles (or blinkers, depending on your point of view), but we swat them away and duct tape the oil goggles on even more securely (2).

But we’re running out of duct tape, aren’t we?

And we can’t see this world, let along imagine others (there, told you I’d get the ontology stuff in there).

But the world can see us. And the age of consequences has begun.

The second half of (the first half of?) the twenty-first century is going to make the first half of the twentieth century look like a golden age of peace, love and understanding. Ho-hum.

Footloose notes.

  • (1) By “we” I mean people like me – middle-class, raised in the west in relative or absolute prosperity and security, in permanent global summertime, with the expectation that the future was also going to be secure, with ever-cooler and shinier gadgets.  That has never been a “we” that covered most people, even in the West. It covers fewer and fewer people as time goes on. But people do cling to their oil goggles.
  • (2) Vision-smission. The typical western privileging of sight, blah blah. See also John Carpenter’s delirious ‘They Live!’, for a slightly different sunglasses thing.

See also Imperial Mode of Living