Here’s a column from July 12, 1989. Three decades later, still in the same hole, sadly we keep digging ourselves deeper.
Dr. Sagan’s quotes have been added because no way in hell would they have made it past my editors back in the day. – JDW 
Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course.
Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death. – Carl Sagan
“This meeting is an experiment,” Terry Bristol said as he introduced the keynote speaker at an afternoon public policy workshop entitled “The Technological Future of the Pacific Northwest.” So is this column. Mr. Bristol, director of Portland’s Institute for Science, Engineering and Public Policy, actually thinks there is still time for us to take control of our destiny. This meeting was a beginning.
The speaker, Dr. Carl Sagan – described by Bristol as “one of the greatest intellects on this planet” – believes we have reached a fork in the road. Two futures lie in wait for the human species, and it’s Time we made a choice. It was time yesterday. NOW would not be too soon.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
You are doubtlessly familiar with Dr. Sagan. His show “Cosmos” is the most widely watched series in public television history. The book from that TV show was on the best-seller list for 70 weeks. “Cosmos” is the best-selling science book ever published in the English language. (Which is not the same as the best-selling book. That would mean serious money.
Sagan has written some twenty other volumes, one which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. A pretty big deal. Sagan is currently president of the Planetary Society, which has 100,000 members interested in outer space. Most of them earthlings.
To say that Carl Sagan knows something about astronomy is like saying Pete Rose gambles. His scientific research- Carl’s, not Pete’s – has increased the greenhouse effect on Venus, the origin of life, dust storms on Mars, the search for intelligent life elsewhere, including California, and the organic haze on Titan. Useful stuff you can apply to daily life.
By the way, a recently-awarded research subsidy will permit Dr. Sagan to discover why only only one sock of any pair disappears when doing laundry. A previous grant funded research which indicated the clothes was not the perpetrator.
“There’s such a thing as being too smart for our own good,” Sagan explained, quoting a phrase originally spoken by my grandmother. According to the professor, we can now create technology much more rapidly than we can understand the long-term results of these developments. Thus, there is a particular responsibility that faces our generation that has never faced any previous generation.
For us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
“WE MUST AT LEAST TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT WE’RE DOING,” Sagan says.
The cosmos is within us; we’re made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
The first concern must be nuclear arms. There are some 60,000 nuclear weapons scattered around the world. Anybody else think that’s plenty? Since there are only about 2,300 actual cities – population 100,000 or more – “you can see,” Sagan notes, “there’s a certain excess.”
So, why do we keep building more? Sagan’s thinking is counter-intuitive. Common sense doesn’t always make for wisdom. He suggests we would all be much safer if fewer weapons protected us, not more.
An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth – scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books – might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity and consumerism.
Sagan’s second concern is ozone depletion. He tells us about Mars, – a planet very close to our own – which does not have an ozone layer protecting it from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. As a result, the surface of Mars is fried. It’s toast. Cooked. Not only is there not life on Mars, there is not a single organic molecule. It’s antiseptic nothing. And hot. Real hot.
Earth could expect much the same without the ozone layer which protects us. That layer is less than an inch thick. That’s thin. And technology… civilization… pollution… human beings… you and me… we’re messing with it.
Imagine your body without the skin. You don’t want to, right?
The idea that God is an over-sized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But, if by God, one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a god. This god is emotionally unsatisfying…. It does not make much sense to pray to the Law of Gravity.
Sagan suggests that we are so afraid of the results of destroying our protective ozone layer that, as a society, we are practicing what psychologists call “denial.” If we don’t think about, maybe the problem will go away. We might; it won’t.
The third most pressing concern facing us today, according to Dr. Sagan, is global warming. You’ve heard about the greenhouse effect. That’s what keeps our environment as comfortable as it is. “Comfortable” being a relative term. (Bismarck in February?) Industrial , including automobile exhaust, is putting more gases into our atmosphere and the entire world is getting warmer.
Now, before everybody throws out their winter coats, keep one thing in mind regarding the greenhouse affect. It is not good. By the year 2000 – which is closer to us than 1978 – sea level could rise significantly, causing all coastal cities to flood. By the year 2050, the Midwest, breadbasket to the world, will look more like a scrub desert. If we keep polluting our atmosphere.
“The vast majority of species that have ever existed on this planet are extinct,” Sagan lectures. “Just as the vast majority of civilizations on this planet are now extinct.” This man did not come to town to sweet-talk us. Sagan came to get our attention, to sound a warning, to offer hope, even to suggest solutions.
To paraphrase Sagan, we need a massive reduction immediately in military forces in Europe. ALL countries with nuclear weaponry must begin a reduction in arms, and there must be intrusive inspections. Then maybe we won’t blow ourselves up before we address the other problems.
Like ozone depletion. Obviously, the elimination of fluorocarbons is the first step. They have a lifespan of one hundred (100) years and nothing to do after we spray our armpits but to float upward until they can eat a hole in this planet’s protective shield.
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Obviously, we must also devote significant research efforts to new sources of energy. Sagan suggests solar might make the most sense.
We must seek much more effective use of fossil fuels. Definitely, we must demand much more fuel-efficient vehicles. “Why do we need fast and flatulent cars?,” Sagan asks.
If we lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there would be little to do. There would be nothing to figure out. There would be no impetus for science. And if we lived in an unpredictable world, where things changed in random or very complex ways, we would not be able to figure things out. But we live in an in-between universe, where things change, but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature. If I throw a stick up in the air, it always falls down. If the sun sets in the west, it always rises again the next morning in the east. And so it becomes possible to figure things out. We can do science, and with it we can improve our lives.
Local politicians may want to skip this next part, Sagan’s answer to global warming: PLANT FORESTS.
“Humans are destroying an acre of forest every second,” Sagan says, clearly with a heavy heart. “Night and day. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month.”
Trees, of course, consume carbon dioxide, the same thing that threatens to destroy human life. Apparently, trees are even more valuable alive and standing than they are chopped down and exported to Japan. It’s true boys and girls. Mr. Science said so.
“We are no longer in a position of Business-As-Usual,” Sagan told a local writer. “I have difficulty understanding the motives of lumber companies. After all, they have children and grandchildren who will have to live in the world we make…. Cutting down trees is dumb.”
Carl Sagan is not dumb. He’s tall timber, as far as I am concerned. He’s a man we might listen to more closely.
The species we save may be our own.
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the thirty-second sound bite (now down to ten seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on psuedoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
Like I said. Not dumb.
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