Man's Fate

Having examined, in the past three years, the origins and development of mankind, the Ray Winfield Smith Lectures in their final series turned attention this summer to the future prospects of the human species.

Three eminent lecturers - astronomer Carl Sagan, physicist-cum-environmentalist Amory Lovins, and computer pioneer John Kemeny - looked into a future they found forboding without a drastic shift in mankind's direction.

Lovins, British representative of Friends of Earth, Inc., called for a radical change in U.S. energy policy. Continued dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, he predicted, would put an unacceptable strain on the nation's economy; threaten the environment through pollution and the nation's health through the potential dangers of mounting piles of nuclear wastes; increase international tensions by proliferation of nuclear arms; and require governmental regulations to a degree that would jeopardize individual freedom.

As an alternative to be adopted while time still permits, Lovins urged a "soft energy path," with emphasis on improved efficiency through insulation, the development of better vehicular engines, and encouragement of research into solar, water, and wind power and into the potential of small, energy-efficient local power plants using renewable fuels. Such a course, he suggested, could virtually eliminate dependence on fossil and nuclear fuels by the year 2025.

President Kemeny, while declaring himself still optimistic about man's ability to "muddle through," warned that "American civilization is building up to a major discontinuity within the next 30 years." Two trends which must not continue, he contended, are the sharply increasing complexities of all facets of life, particularly urban life; and the "changing fabric of society," occasioned by assaults on the role of the family, the abrupt breakthrough of women into new roles, and a rapid shift , in age distribution amounting to a "demographic revolution." "If democracy is to survive," he said, "it will require changes in society greater than anything I've experienced in my lifetime." Modern technology must be harnessed to alleviate conditions created in large part by that very technology, he said. "Either society will find a way to a new golden age or we'll experience a slow deterioration in the quality of life." The greatest need, Kemeny asserted, "is for a major breakthrough in the realm of the social sciences. It will come, but I do not know if it will come in time."

Sagan, the Cornell professor and popular exo-biologist who opened the original series three years ago with a lecture on the origins of man, set his sights beyond the planet in the closing discussion of mankind's future. Conceding that technical achievements have reached a state where they endanger the very existence of society, he said that continued use of high technology offers potential answers to earth's current problems and the possibility of identifying unforeseen catastrophes.

Planetary exploration and a continuing search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Sagan suggested, will affect mankind's survival by providing knowledge of the fate of other planets. Through space missions we have learned, for example, that Venus has been the victim of a "runaway greenhouse effect," a phenomenon which scientists have warned could result on earth if increased use of coal bombards the atmosphere with greater numbers of particles, thereby altering weather and climate patterns.

The 1977 lecture series, endowed by Egyptologist Ray Winfield Smith '18, became something of a media event, attracting wide attention from national news services and publications.