Media, Technology and Society

Of Two Dire Scientific Reports: Fish Stocks and Global Warming

Sometimes its better for your sense of optimism about the world to just not listen to the news. However, it is generally unavoidable if you're at all out and about these days. Its times like these that it becomes necessary to do your own small part, and just wonder at the plight of humanity at the present time.

Will we survive into the next century? What untold millions or billions will sufffer because of our lack of foresight now?

In economic terms, how can we stop individual nations from engaging in short-term economic self-benefit at the expense of long-term catastrophies? If the costs are not internalized, economically inefficient markets continue to exist (in industries, vehicles, etc, that pollute at a negative level of net social benefit, and as well, within fishing operations that cumulatively lower net social welfare). In short, how can externalities be countered on a global scale?

I am not altogether pesssimistic about the future. I think things will get worse before they get better, and we will pay a higher price for our slow reaction to disastrous courses of action, but the capacity for change has not yet developed a critical momentum. As the consequences (costs) of the status quo become ever-closer, the incentives to change become much more potent.

The Trouble with Stem-Cell Research

President Bush's recent veto of the use of federal monies to finance stem-cell research has drawn praise and condemnation from various segments of public opinion, mostly along partisan lines. Although there are valid ethical questions raised by this research, and there is rightful public concern about democratic control over the direction of such research, there can be no doubt that Bush's veto will only stall its progress. In fact, stem-cell research continues in many other industrial democracies, and in many US private research facilities.

I mentioned that there are valid questions raised by stem-cell research, and indeed many aspects of cutting edge research which can result in technologies and understandings open to many potentialities - not just those that involve healing, or medical usage, but destructive, nefarious uses as well. In contrast to a discussion about these potentials, to my knowledge, the rationale for Bush's condemnation of stem-cell research is primarily religious; identified with maintaining a 'moral sanctity for life.'

This is important no doubt, though the use of baby props somehow exposes the contrivance of the presidents position. One could easily argue that the sanctity of life is better assured by research which holds the possibility of undoing the ravages of particular diseases than it is by an irrational aversion to the harvesting of the cells from which all life springs, and thereby gaining understanding into the intelligence with which it was all designed...surely I jest.

In any case, I was reading through the New York Times, and I found this choice letter on the issue, expressed in an economy of words that I personally rarely manage:

To the Editor:

Those who oppose embryonic stem cell research have it backward. We who value life should rejoice that a human embryo, slated for being discarded, evades complete destruction when a part of it is endowed with potential immortality in a cell culture.

Robert Lehrman
Santa Monica, Calif., Aug. 1, 2006

Robert Lehrman, how could you be so caustic?