There are, it seems to me, so many similarities between the situation today and that of the early phases of the industrial revolution that, while acknowledging the difficulty of reaching an objective assessment of present events, I feel that we may indeed be living at another major period of transition. Again we have new inventions, all based, this time, on science, whose effects seem certain to be revolutionary and to impose severe strains - already becoming visible - on our society. Among the most vital of these new things are the harnessing of nuclear energy, the invention of the computer the explosive development of micro-electronics, and the remarkable advances in molecular biology. All these have been proceeding so rapidly that during the past twenty years we have been brought face to face with a new world and are forced to look anew at ourselves and to adapt if we are to play any significant role in it. This is especially true of Britain which, although it was one of the first and most successful countries in seizing the opportunities presented by the earlier industrial revolution and in adapting its society to it, has not been outstandingly successful in this new one. There is probably no single or simple explanation for our economic decline relative to some other countries but I believe its origins are to be found in the latter part of the nineteenth century and lie in the twin effects of our early industrial success and the great development of the British Empire. I suspect that the vast inflow of wealth from the empire had a feather-bedding effect on our economy so that we were able to turn a blind eye to our growing industrial obsolescence and our declining productivity during the burgeoning era of science-based technology. And despite all changing circumstances we have gone on diminishing in our wealth-producing capacity and matters have been made worse by our failure to adjust our social and political systems to a rapidly changing world. It could well be argued, too, that a similar feather-bedding occurred in some other countries as a consequence of colonialism and the exploitation of the agricultural and mineral resources of the underdeveloped countries. Now that these underdeveloped countries - partly through population pressure - want a bigger share of the cake the shortcomings of more than one western economy are being revealed. The oil crisis of 1973 came as a rude shock to the industrialised countries and seemed at first likely to make them face their problems realistically. In Britain the discovery and exploitation of massive oil resources in the North Sea and adjacent waters gave us a great opportunity — a kind of breathing space in which we could change our ways and build for a new future. I still hope we will seize this opportunity, although I sometimes fear that we may repeat our past disastrous behaviour and squander the proceeds of North Sea oil in propping up rather than reforming our antiquated economy so that before the end of this century we will be back in the mire again. There are disturbing signs that this may happen - deliberate overmanning and protection of jobs by subsidising lame duck industries rather than by the development of new industries and new jobs, low investment coupled with low profitability, and growth in public expenditure which seems to take little or no account of financial realities. In varying degree, of course, these or similar signs are visible in most industrialised nations and they have caused some people at least to argue that our civilisation is grinding to a halt and others to predict impending doom through exhaustion of the world's resources and inability to meet our energy needs. Personally, I cannot accept either of these gloomy predictions based as they are on what their proponents consider to be current trends. I have little faith in futurology, and forecasts of the future carried out by computer or crystal ball are about equally reliable. Of course the doomwatchers will be right if we do nothing and everything remains as it is now - but that is not, nor ever has been, the way the world goes.
The phenomenal rate of change which has characterised our material civilisation during this century has been wholly due to the application of scientific discoveries to practical problems - in a word, to science-based technology. Yet I wonder whether more than a very small fraction of the population ever pauses to think of the degree to which many of the accepted everyday features of our lives -automobiles, television, antibiotics and all the rest - have depended on science. Although none of us would want to be without these marvels - for that is what they are — some of us, it would seem, are so disheartened by all the social and economic problems we now face as to suggest that science is a hindrance rather than a help and that in the interest of mankind it should be controlled and regulated before it destroys us all. This is the view of the anti-science lobby which adduces the Limits to Growth thesis of the doomwatchers in its support and which vociferously supports extreme environmentalist views. The number of people dedicated to the promotion of such views is small but they obtain the support of a much wider section of the general public, including some of our politicians, who know little of science and who depend for their information about it on press, radio or television. In all these media the aim is to present information with maximum brevity and impact; inevitably this leads to the selection of sensational aspects of new discoveries which can be, and often are, dangerously misleading. Of course, no-one would claim that science has been a wholly unmixed blessing or deny that it has been on occasion misapplied. But on closer inspection its misuse usually turns out to be the fault of man and not of science - and often results from application by those too ignorant of science to realise the implications of its discoveries. At the same time one must admit that, sometimes, environmental problems like pollution have stemmed from shortsighted indifference to adverse effects on others which has all too often been manifest in the behaviour of governments as well as entrepreneurs.
I do not propose to argue here the rights and wrongs of (for example) pesticide usage or of the regulations surrounding the introduction and use of new products in medicine; much could be said about them but these are subjects for another occasion. What I wish to argue here is that just as we owe our present civilisation and standard of living largely to science it is only through the further promotion of science and technology that we will find solutions to many of the seemingly intractable problems set out at length by the Limits to Growth people. Thus I, for one, believe that the technical problems besetting the harnessing of thermonuclear fusion will be solved and mankind thereby given an inexhaustible supply of power. I believe too that the problems presented by diminishing natural resources could well be solved by the development of substitutes as yet unknown. This may sound a little like Micawberism, but it is not; of course we should take heed of the facts set out in Limits to Growth and be less wasteful of our resources - that is only common sense. But if we continue to improve our natural knowledge all experience suggests that we will see changes which will radically alter the whole pattern of our lives - or if not of our lives then of those of our children and grandchildren; and we shall survive.