Towards A Competitive Malaysia #21

Chapter 5: Consequences of progress and Prosperity (Cont’d)

Physical Price of Progress

The most obvious physical consequences of growth are pollution and depletion of natural resources.5 Cars create pollution both when they are being manufactured and when they are being used. The mining of iron ore and the production of the needed steel are both highly polluting. Areas around Sudbury, Canada, and Duluth, Minnesota, where iron is mined, resemble the moonscape. In Montana, the landscape is irreparably scarred with huge holes miles in diameter and hundreds of feet deep from copper mining. The ground water too is contaminated. In Malaysia, there are mountains of garbage, polluted waters, and denuded forests with the attendant erosion.

Steel making foundries are the classic smokestack industry. With progress and improvements in technology, these industries are now considerably less polluting. Compare the old steel plants of China and America with the modern ones in Japan and South Korea.

Then there is the question of how long those iron ore and other resources would last, and what would we do when we run out of them. That is more hypothetical than a real problem. Long before we would reach that stage, the prices of these resources would have risen markedly and cheaper substitutes would hopefully have been found. Consider that “tin” cans are now made of aluminum.

This issue of resource depletion can be hyped out of proportion. During the energy shortage in the 1970s brought on by the Arab oil embargo, there was plenty of hysteria that the world would soon run out of energy. We still hear that paranoia today. This is clearly fanciful, for if we can believe Einstein’s famous formula, as long as there is mass, there will be energy.

The world is now on to recycling in a very big way. Progress means that we now have better and more effective means of recycling. Not only does this conserve resources, it also reduces pollution directly through reduced need for mining and lower energy consumption. Making a ton of aluminum through recycling takes only a tenth of the energy as producing it from ore.

Through advances in science, what were once considered nonrenewable resources are now no longer so. We no longer simply cut down the forests but replant them, thus ensuring a continuous supply of lumber. Through biogenetic engineering, what once took decades if not centuries for trees in nature to reach harvesting size, today it would take only a single decade or two.

The problems of pollution and others brought on by progress are best solved, ironically, through more progress. This might seem counterintuitive, but that is exactly what is happening. The air over Los Angeles is much cleaner than that of Mexico City. Likewise, the Hudson River in New York that flows through some of the most heavily populated and industrialized areas is much less polluted today, and certainly less so than the Klang River. The wealth and knowledge created through progress make problems like pollution that much more solvable.

Progress occurs in all spheres of human activities. We become better and more efficient at producing materials and machines that enhance as well as destroy our lives. Today’s killing machines are also much more lethal, precise, and devastating, as the Afghanistan and Iraq wars mercilessly demonstrate.

Another consequence of progress is the figurative shrinking of the world. Images of events in closed societies (like China’s Tiananmen Square massacre) or in remote caves of Afghanistan are quickly beamed to the living rooms of the world.

The good news is that brutal dictators cannot readily hide; their crimes are easily recorded and traced. Saddam Hussein’s atrocities on the Kurds were well documented through readily available digital recording devices. On a smaller scale, the ubiquitous cell phone with its camera capability exposed the degrading practices of the Malaysian police, as exemplified by the recent “nude ear squatting” scandal. The bad news is that these new technologies are also highly intrusive, and unless controlled, could easily erode our precious privacy and civil liberties.

With the world getting smaller, we can no longer close our eyes to what is happening elsewhere. The whole globe is now one community, and as our Prophet Muhammad (may peace be upon him) noted, when one part of the ummah (community) is suffering, the whole ummah suffers together. We can no longer ignore or pretend that it does not exist when we see tragedies taking place in remote Darfur and elsewhere.

Nor could the world ignore the sneezing and coughing among chicken breeders in China, for that malady could soon inflict the entire world, as we saw with the deadly SARS virus outbreak. With modern transportation and ease of travel, an outbreak of lethal disease in one corner of the globe can quickly spread. Progress has made us all closely interconnected; we are now truly members of the same global family.

That should be reason enough for us to care for what happens to our fellow human beings elsewhere, if for no other reason than for our own physical health and safety.

Next: Social Price of Progress