Who
Am I? What qualifies me to make accurate
statements and not just prophecies about nature and the human relationship to
the environment?
© 2004
Joseph George Caldwell. All rights
reserved. Posted at
Internet web sites http://www.foundation.bw
and http://www.foundationwebsite.org
. May be copied or reposted for
non-commercial use, with attribution. (
What qualifies you?
A
couple of weeks ago, a visitor to my website sent me an e-mail in which he
posed the following question:
“…I
understand that you have a PhD in statistics and have worked for the DOD and
studied literature regarding your subject matter; however, what qualifies you
to make accurate assessments and not just prophecies about nature and human[kind’]s relationship with the environment? What were some of your specific
positions/jobs, etc?”
My
immediate reaction was that who I was and what I had done were irrelevant –
that the assessment of the truth or worth or utility of my writing should be
based solely on its own merits. Perhaps
this is because criticism of my views is often in the nature of ad hominem attacks
(“racist, sexist, warmonger” etc.), rather than in the nature of reasoned
arguments of why my views may be unfounded or incorrect. Moreover, most of my writing is not concerned
with prophecy at all – it is mainly concerned with strategy for
accomplishing a desired type of planetary outcome. I am not concerned with prediction of an unconditional
future of some sort (i.e., an “average” prediction that is not premised on any
particular conditions or set of assumptions), but with “playing the game of
life” in such a fashion as to achieve a conditional future of a desired
sort (e.g., a planet with an intact biosphere and an extant human race (the
desired outcome), brought about by the actions of a synarchic
planetary government (the condition)). I
am sufficiently optimistic that I believe that it is possible for someone (or some
group) to counter the out-of-control economic system that is destroying the
biosphere and causing mass extinctions, and, at the right time and under the
right conditions (e.g., in the wake of a planetary catastrophe, such as the
outbreak of global nuclear war), implement a quite different,
long-term-sustainable system. In short,
I am much more interested in convincing people to work toward a desired
planetary goal, than in simply conjecturing what the future might be in the
absence of any assumptions about efforts that might be undertaken to modify or
control it. My interests lie more in
strategies for planetary control than in prediction (or “prophecy”) of
an uncontrolled system.
When
I received the e-mail query, I was vacationing in
And
so, I answered my correspondent’s question with a quick summary of my approach
and my credentials. Here, with considerable
amplification, is my response. While I
can see the utility of relying on an ad hominem assessment as a quick and approximate surrogate
for assessing the validity of someone’s work or assertions, it can never be the
equivalent of a direct assessment of the work itself. Although I have a PhD in a branch of
mathematics, if you ask me what the sum of 37 and 47 is, and I (or Jesus Christ,
or anyone else) tell you (inadvertently) that it is 74, the correct answer, the
truth, is still 84 (even God cannot lie with mathematics). While ad
hominem arguments may be legitimately used to
draw initial attention to someone’s work, they can never serve as a basis for
establishing truth, validity, or utility.
Finally,
I will emphasize that what is important in my work lies in the realm of
strategic planning (and game theory and systems engineering, and whatever else
is useful in assisting rational planetary management), rather than in
prediction (“prophecy”) of what may occur in an uncontrolled world, and so it
is my credentials in those areas that I address here. I will, however, also include a few comments on
my credentials relating to my “predictive” abilities.
Some preliminary remarks
on my approach to planetary management
If
you are asking whether I have some sort of formal certification or experience
in “planetary management,” then, of course, I don’t have any (and neither does
anyone else, since we are “playing this game for the first time”). Mainly, I just use logic -- ratiocination. And I read a lot. I am not alone in my forecasts or predictions
of what lies ahead. M. King Hubbert published his seminal work in 1949 (see Kenneth S. Deffeyes' Hubbert's Peak,
2001). Catton
wrote his classic, Overshoot, in
1980. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen
wrote The Entropy Law and the Economic
Process in 1971. Herman E. Daly
wrote Beyond Growth in 1996. The late René Thom did his work 0n
catastrophe theory decades ago, as did Jay Forrester (on system dynamics, in
which the tendency of dynamic systems to fail catastrophically if commonly
observed). Thomas F. Homer-Dixon wrote Environment, Scarcity and Violence in 1999
(based largely on earlier work). Joseph Tainter wrote The
Collapse of Complex Societies in 1988.
David and Marcia Pimentel wrote Food,
Energy, and Society in 1979. Richard
Leakey wrote The Sixth Extinction in
1995. Michael Klare
wrote Resource Wars in 2001. Liddell Hart wrote Strategy in 1929.
Machiavelli wrote The Prince
and The Art of War five hundred years
ago, and Sun Tsu wrote The Art of War in 500 BC. The
best overall source of information on the end of the petroleum age is Jay
Hanson’s Dieoff
website, http://www.dieoff.com , which has
been online, I believe, for the better part of a decade. My analysis of a situation includes a review
of the facts, reading what many other people have to say on similar matters,
technical analysis using the best appropriate tools, creativity, and common
sense. My qualifications to make
accurate assessments are, to a degree, dependent on the validity of what many
other people have to say (for example, state-of-the-world data, history, other
knowledge, and methodologies). If you
reject their statements of fact or conclusions, then you may reject mine as
well.
When
I investigate something significant, I usually collect a lot of information
about it, and I spend a lot of time thinking about it. My major piece on population and the
environment is Can
My record in prophecy
While
much of my work is concerned with logical analysis of a problem and the
application of the techniques of systems engineering and other methodologies to
find a solution, there are some instances in which I state opinions and make
predictions (e.g., that conservation is doomed, that the current global
industrial system will likely collapse catastrophically, and that global
nuclear war is likely). There is a large
body of knowledge concerned with this topic (including statistics, simulation
and modeling, systems analysis, technological forecasting and content
analysis). One of the difficulties in
assessing the abilities of someone working in this area is that predictions
involve the future, and we often do not have an opportunity to objectively
compare predictions to eventual outcomes.
The ancient Hebrews had a good test of a prophet – he was asked to make
a prediction, and if it didn’t come true he was put to death. Now, I’m not recommending that in my case,
but I would like to point out several things.
First,
as recommended by Sir Isaac Newton (in his classic book, Observations
Upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, 1991),
I do not place specific dates on my predictions. This practice alone is the single most
important factor in enhancing the validity of a prediction or “prophecy.” I am pretty sure, based on existing
scientific knowledge, that the current global
socioeconomic system will collapse catastrophically – I am just not very
certain about the date. (About the only
time I have deviated from associating dates with my predictions is my
conjecture that this decade (2001-2010) is the one in which Hubbert’s
Peak is occurring. I am not at all alone
in this conjecture, and the recent rapid rise in the
price of oil and the inability of the world’s producers to increase production
seems to be bearing it out.)
Second,
I do place dates on all of the
articles that I write, so the reader is always aware when it was written (and that
I am not making a prediction after the fact, as is done, e.g., in some
instances in the Bible). Third, I rarely
revise my pieces, except in the week or so after I first post them (to improve
wording, or add some explanation or amplification). Fourth, consider the topics on which I have
made observations or predictions, and assess whether my views have been on or
off the mark. I believe that you will
see that I am generally on the mark. I
started writing Can
Consider
some of the predictions / observations / assessments that I have made. On the matter of immigration, long ago I
pointed out the folly of our porous borders and expressed my view is that it is
rapidly changing (destroying is perhaps the better word) our American culture. Last night I saw a CNN special on immigration
(Immigrant Nation, Divided Country),
in which it was estimated that there are now 7-20 million illegal aliens in our
country. (The current situation is
absolutely incredible – the Under Secretary for Border and Transportation
Security of the Department of Homeland Security, Asa
Hutchinson, stated on the program that it just didn’t seem humane to deport an
illegal alien family after they had two babies who were US citizens (under our
“birthright” policy of granting citizenship to any baby born on US soil,
regardless of circumstances).) I wrote
long ago that
Long
ago, I stated my opinion (“predicted”) that the environmental movement was
doomed, that most conservation measures were a waste of time, and that the
species extinction would continue unabated under the current system of
planetary management. It has. Since I started writing on population and the
environment (in 1993 or 1994), my view has been that industrial society is
doomed – that all world leaders are striving for more and more industrial
development and activity, regardless of the cost to the environment or the risk
that it poses to future generations of mankind and other species. Nothing has changed in this regard.
The
most popular piece on my website at the present time is It’s the Oil, Stupid!.
I wrote this article last August – September, i.e., over a year ago. In the time since then, events have not
diminished the validity of my views in the matter of
I
could cite other examples of my opinions / predictions and their over-time
validity. Some of my predictions have
not yet had time to materialize (e.g., a suitcase nuclear bomb on an American
city, or the catastrophic collapse of Western industrialized society). The point that I am making is to look at my
work as a whole, from the time that I started writing, and assess whether you agree
that my views have stood the test of time.
This, perhaps, is the best available way of assessing “my ability to
make accurate statements and not just prophecies about nature and the human
relationship to the environment.”
My approach to planetary management
I
should point out that, in addition to the occasional predictions that I have
presented on my website, I have a great deal of experience in statistical
forecasting. In 1970, before the
publication of G. E. P. Box’ and Gwilym M. Jenkins’
classic text, Time Series Analysis, Forecasting
and Control, I developed and marketed the first commercially available
general-purpose Box-Jenkins forecasting computer program package.
As
a statistician who has worked much in time-series analysis, forecasting, and
game theory, I am often involved in making predictions, none of which will come
true exactly. The best that can be done
in many real-world situations is to estimate the likelihood of alternative
futures, e.g., by specifying a probability distribution over a set of possible
outcomes. As a person who has spent much
of his life dealing with uncertainty, inference, estimation, and the
development of strategies, I am well aware that, in significant areas, the
future is unlikely ever to come true exactly as anyone predicts, especially in
an uncontrolled environment. It is very
important to realize that we are involved in a game – the game of life – and
that this game has many players with many different value systems and
objectives. Prediction of outcomes is
more appropriate in non-game contexts.
In game contexts, it is important to recognize that the outcome may be
very difficult to predict (it will depend on who “wins” the game), and the best
that can be done is to identify a good goal (relative to one’s value system)
and to develop a strategy that is likely to work well to achieve that
goal. This is the approach used in my
book, Can
In
my view, it is very important to view the Earth as a controllable system. At the
present time, the actions of world leaders are directed toward destroying its
biosphere and increasing the likelihood of human extinction. The point is that human activity is making
macroscopic changes in the planet’s biosphere (mass extinction of species,
killing of lakes and seas, global warming (e.g., melting of ice packs),
deforestation, desertification, destocking of
seas). One thing to keep in mind,
however, is that Earth is a natural biological system, and mankind is
totally incompetent to assert active
control over it. The best that man can
do is to “back off,” and let Nature do its work, i.e., he can assert passive control. That is, the best method of control of the
natural environment is to maintain such a low profile in the environment that
Nature can do its amazing work the way it always has. (I have made this point many times in the
past. Recently, it was emphasized on a
website that summarized Can
Systems engineering Is the most important tool
The
most important tool in planetary management is systems engineering. Systems engineering is the discipline
concerned with the development (design and implementation) of systems for performing
specified functions or accomplishing specified goals. The major components of a systems engineering
project are needs analysis; development of an operational concept; technology
review; requirements analysis; functional analysis; specification of evaluation
criteria; synthesis of alternative system designs; evaluation of alternatives
with respect to the criteria; selection of a preferred alternative; top-level
design; detailed design; prototyping; optimization; implementation; and
test. The truly creative part of systems
engineering is the synthesis of alternatives.
Some people have a lot of talent in this area, others do not. Creative skill can be enhanced by experience,
practice, discussion with others, contemplation, meditation, autosuggestion,
and reading. The design and development
of the system may embrace a wide range of disciplines, including all of the
basic sciences and engineering fields as well as specialized technical skills
such as statistics (e.g., simulation and modeling; estimation, prediction and
control of stochastic processes; experimental design; evolutionary operation;
statistical decision theory); operations research (e.g., optimization, game
theory, artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic), and control theory (system
identification; system control). Systems
engineering may be applied to any field.
As an example of a systems engineering application, see my book, The
Value-Added Tax, where I used systems engineering to develop a new tax
system for the
In systems engineering, knowledge
of many fields is important
In
order to develop a good strategy for controlling any system, it is necessary to
know a lot about the system. The Earth’s
biosphere is a complex system – too complex to be amenable to control by
physical man. What is feasible to control, however, is the human population. In order to do so effectively, it is
necessary to have knowledge of many fields, spanning all bodies of knowledge –
including both the ‘hard’ (objective-oriented) sciences and the ‘soft’
(subjective-oriented, social) sciences.
The hard sciences include mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and
many combinations of these, such as agriculture, geology, computer science,
communications, oceanography and the like.
The soft / social sciences include history, politics, economics,
philosophy, metaphysics, sociology, education, psychology and the like. And, of course, there are many application
areas that combine elements from both hard and soft sciences, such as all types
of engineering, military science, information technology, “business,” and
medicine.
In
my own case, I have experience in a broad range of technical and nontechnical fields, and a wide variety of applications
areas. I have a BS in mathematics and a
PhD in mathematical statistics (dissertation in information theory / coding
theory). I have formal education in all
of the basic hard sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology) and a
number of social sciences (economics, psychology, philosophy, languages). Much of my professional career has been spent
as a statistician and an operations researcher / systems analyst. My lifetime career has exposed me to a wide
variety of technical (analytical) methodologies and substantive (application)
areas. In my career, I have worked in a
wide range of application areas, including defense; health; education; welfare;
economics; economic development; civil rights; international trade; public
finance; tax policy analysis; agriculture; banking (commercial banking and
central banking); information technology; vocational rehabilitation;
transportation; planning, evaluation and analysis of public programs; industry;
commerce; textiles; pharmaceuticals; test and evaluation of military
communication systems; information theory and coding theory; research; teaching
(professor of statistics); consulting; and management.
Two
fields that are particularly important with respect to achieving a desired
planetary management system are education and psychology.
The
development of anything new will always build on previous knowledge. Apart from tapping in to the universal consciousness,
there are four main ways of acquiring knowledge: formal education; informal
study (including private study and short courses); experience (including life
experience, vocational experience, and learning from others); and reading. I place a tremendous value on formal
education, and strove to get the best education that I possibly could. My BS degree in mathematics is from a fine
university –
By
means of informal study, I have expanded my knowledge far beyond my formal
education. This has enabled me to work
as a consultant and researcher in many fields.
My knowledge of game theory, lagrangian
optimization, sample survey design and analysis, time series analysis, database
design, systems and software engineering, public finance, Spanish, and the
guitar were all acquired after I completed my formal education.
I
am a voracious reader. I have a personal
library of thousands of books on a wide variety of technical and nontechnical subjects.
Whenever I become involved in a new subject, I usually purchase dozens
of books (sometimes hundreds of books) on the subject. (I make some use of libraries, particularly
if I am near a major university, but generally I find that large bookstores and
Internet bookstores such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble have a vastly larger
variety of sources on most subjects that I am interested in.)
Other useful skills: game theory,
education, strategic planning, and psychology
The
main point of the articles posted on my website is to motivate and create an
enabling environment for rational (sane) planetary management. The goal of rational planetary management is
to control Earth’s biosphere (or, more correctly, assure that we do not
interfere with its normal operation) so as to preserve it and keep the
likelihood of mankind’s untimely extinction extremely low. The central focus of my activities is the
development of strategies to bring this about.
My view (conceptualization, abstraction, idealized representation) of
the world is a very large game (many players over a long time) or control
system, and my goal is to develop strategies for ensuring that the game moves
to a configuration (state) that I desire (viz., a long-term-sustainable system,
with a stable, largely preserved biosphere and extant human population). Given my focus and viewpoint / perspective,
the most important area of my qualification, apart from systems engineering, is game theory (and related areas such as statistical
decision theory, optimization and control).
Other important areas are education (a primary purpose of my website), strategic
analysis and planning, and psychology (used in a broad sense, to include a wide
range of intellectual, mental, emotional and spiritual areas). Given the importance of this area, scrutiny
of my qualifications should focus on my capabilities in game theory, education,
psychology and related areas.
My skills in game theory
In
the field of game theory, I have some significant accomplishments. This includes the development of optimal
procedures for waging large-scale missile warfare, and the development of
practical (numerical) procedures for solving general-sum (nonzero-sum) games. My paper, Subtractive
Overlapping-Island Defense with Imperfect Interceptors, develops a strategy
for waging large-scale missile warfare. With
respect to the problem of solving general-sum games, I will note the
following. The theory of nonzero-sum
games was developed mainly by Professor John Nash, the subject of the book and
movie, A Beautiful Mind. Nash developed an elegant solution to
nonzero-sum games. It is called the
“bargaining solution,” or the “Nash equilibrium.” The only problem with Nash’s solution is that
it is not explicit – his proposed solution is “nonconstructive.” He describes the properties of a good
solution, but he does not tell how to actually find it. It is similar to the problem in zero-sum (or
constant-sum) games – the optimal solution is known to be at a “saddle point,”
but the main difficulty is actually finding that point. The problem is complicated very much when
constraints (such as resource constraints) are added to it. In my paper, Conflict, Negotiation and General-Sum Game Theory, I develop an
approximate methodology for determining explicit solutions for Nash’s
bargaining solution.
On
the practical side, I might add, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that I enjoy playing
games very much. In high school, I was a
creditable chess player. While a member
of the Lambda poker club (successor to the IDA/WSEG poker club), I held my own
against some of the best technical minds in the world (e.g., Hugh Everett), at
one time winning for thirteen games (monthly meetings) in a row.
My skills in education
In
the realm of education, I will note that, in my graduate education I was
trained to be a researcher and professor.
The Statistics Department at
At
one point in my professional career, however, I did some teaching, serving as
an adjunct professor of statistics at the
Dr. Caldwell is an excellent lecturer.
Very well prepared. I liked the way he summarized what we did in
the previous class at the beginning of each class.
Always prepared. Very thorough examinations. Summary at beginning of
class.
Instructor was very clear and cared about his
teaching..
He understood and explained material well.
Very fluent and he was well prepared for class
meetings, reasonable reviews.
Gave good examples which
prepared me very well for tests.
Very well prepared, always
on time. Very good, organized teacher.
Did a good job in
explaining and presenting his lecture.
Instructor was always prepared for calss and gives very good explanations about the subject.
Well prepared, easy to understand (good
speaking voice and delivery).
Organized, brings material across very
well. One of the best
instructors at the U of A.
The instructor is very good. He is easy to understand and gives good
examples of the concepts.
Mr. Caldwell gives clear explanations to the
problems. I feel as though he is an
excellent instructor. He is also very
polite.
He was always enthusiastic about teaching. Gave clear lectures of
difficult-to-understand material.
The instructor had a well organized
presentation.
He did a good job explaining difficult
concepts.
I liked this course! Very interesting.
Mr. Caldwell was very prepared and
understandable. I would recommend other
students to have him as a teacher.
In
addition to university teaching, I developed and marketed a popular commercial
short-course entitled, Sample Survey Design and Analysis, which I presented in
various cities and to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Bureau of the
Census.
In
summary, I have demonstrated skills in education – a primary ingredient in the
mission of preparing the planet for a minimal-regret population.
My skills in strategic
planning
I
have spent a considerable portion of my career in the area of strategic
planning. Much of this was in the area
of ballistic missile warfare. In this
application area, my approach was to develop a mathematical representation, or
model, of the real world, and derive strategies that were optimal with respect
to the model. More specifically, I
formulated missile warfare as a resource-constrained game (zero-sum or
general-sum, depending on the application), and used the Everett-Pugh
Generalized Lagrange Multiplier (GLM) methodology to determine a solution.
In
most realistic games, the players employ randomized strategies. They are aware of the resources available to
the enemy, but not of his strategy for employment or deployment of his
resources.
In
addition to strategic planning, I have directed projects in modeling of
tactical warfare (e.g., tactical air warfare in theater-level operations). I have also developed and exercised war-game
models, and participated in war gaming exercises (at the
My skills in psychology (in
the broad sense)
One
of the important areas in effecting change from our current planetary
management system to a rational one is that of psychology. As I indicated above, I use this term loosely
to include a wide range of intellectual, mental, emotional, and spiritual
areas. If the global population is to be
mobilized to support a move to a minimal-regret population (or other) system,
it will be necessary not only to educate them in the benefits of this approach,
but to motivate them to act to bring it about and maintain it. As a professional teacher (professor), I have
demonstrated skills in education and in motivating students to learn. With respect to the motivation of global
populations to change, I have essentially no direct experience. I have fairly wide knowledge of many areas
dealing with the mind, such as motivation, religion, meditation, philosophy,
and spirituality, but I am not a political or religious leader.
Given
the stranglehold that the current global economic system has on the world, and
the hypnotic attraction of most people to increased material welfare and more
industrial production, it will take a considerable effort in the area of mass
psychology to bring about meaningful change on a large scale. We are currently engaged in a massive program
of psychological warfare; to prevail in this struggle, it will be necessary to
engage the enemy fully. The world’s
population has been convinced that improvements in material welfare are all
that matters. But, under the current
system of planetary management, more people live in squalor, poverty and
disease every year. They are being told
that their standard of living can be improved.
But this requires living space and a healthy biosphere, and for six
billion people (Earth’s current population), a massive increase in the amount
of commercial energy. Be we have run out
of space, our biosphere is being destroyed, and we are about to run out of
oil. The standard of living for the
world’s masses, as bad as it presently is, is about to fall drastically in the
very near future.
With
the advent of a war of terror, people are kept in a constant state of fear and
insecurity. They are in the process of
trading their freedom for a promise of restored security, safety, and survival
and they will soon have none of these.
The situation is exactly as
described by George Orwell in his prophetic 1948 novel, 1984, with daily television broadcasts of violence and war at the
gates of the empire. See, in particular,
section entitled The Theory and Practice
of Oligarchical Collectivism, by the fictional
author Emmanuel Goldstein, which closes with the following paragraph:
“The
war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an
imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns
are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But
though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable
goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a
hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal
affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might
recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war,
did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished.
In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is
waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war
is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of
society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would
probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to
exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the
Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced
by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three
super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in
perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case
each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering
influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the
same as a permanent war. This -- although the vast majority of Party members
understand it only in a shallower sense -- is the inner meaning of the Party
slogan: War is Peace.” (For the complete
text of The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, see the SynEarth
website for
The
people are being told that the United Nations, the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization will solve the world’s
economic and social problems, and bring freedom from want and disease – even
prosperity – for all. But these agencies
have accomplished nothing. Compared to
fifty years ago, when they began their missions in earnest, billions more
people have lost their freedom, their land, their health, and their
livelihoods, and they are living meaningless, desperate lives in squalor and
disease. In order to achieve a rational
planetary management system, it will be necessary to expose all of these lies
for what they are, and show people the way to a better, healthier planet and a
better life for mankind.
A
global mind-shift, or “paradigm-shift,” such as a religious reawakening or
global transcendental experience, may well be required. This is unlikely to happen by itself, but
rather as the result of a catastrophic event – or a committed, focused and
persistent effort to bring about meaningful change. This I will leave to others – my primary role
is analysis and education, not organization, mobilization and implementation.
My current activities
In
my view, the solution to the world’s environmental crisis will involve
spirituality and religion, as well as specialized knowledge, will, desire, and
action. To this end, I have at times contemplated
direct action in politics and religion, but these efforts have not “gotten off
the ground.” I established the Church of
Nature (http://www.churchofnature.com
(or http://www.foundationwebsite.org/indexCN.htm
)) dedicated to resolution of the environmental problem, and on two occasions
contemplated going into politics in the US (but abandoning these plans on both
occasions when I accepted overseas assignments – see http://www.foundationwebsite.org/indexAIM.htm
(2001 platform) or http://www.foundationwebsite.org/PositionStatement.htm (2003 platform) for my domestic political
views (archived versions with modified hyperlinks)). (The main problem that I have at present is
lack of time. I do not really lack
resources – I have never asked for or received financial contributions from
anyone to underwrite my planetary management work, and I do all of it my spare
time, using my own resources.) At the
present time, it appears that my efforts will continue to be restricted to
educational efforts on my Internet website, rather than in direct political,
religious or spiritual action of some sort, or in traditional education or
research and development via a brick-and-mortar institution of some kind. (As long as my efforts are restricted to the
Internet, negligible expense is involved.
I have been asked more than once, however, to produce my works in
hardcopy, in order to reach a larger audience.
If and when I see that I am no longer able to be effective using solely
the internet, I may do so, and at that time I may have a need to tap additional
resources.)
Although
progress, on a part-time level-of-effort, is slow, it has been steady. The Foundation
website now receives thousands of visitors and hits every month, and traffic to
the site continues to grow year by year.
I don’t get a lot of e-mail from readers, but all that I do is either
sincere inquiry or very positive commentary.
One of the advantages of working overseas, as I have been
doing for much of the last decade or so, is that I have much more time to work
on planetary management than if I were back in the
The
move to rational planetary management will not occur until conditions are
right. In 1950, no one was interested in
the least in rational planetary management – the global environmental crisis
was just beginning to manifest. At the
present time, prior to sliding down the back side of Hubbert’s
Curve, the planet is in the stranglehold of a powerful global economic /
industrial system. But this system
thrives on the energy from oil, and global oil production is about to
peak. (There is a lot more coal, but
coal is a poor substitute, in today’s modern industrial society, for versatile
oil.) Very soon, things will begin to
change drastically, and for the worse, and the world will be receptive to
change.
Things
will probably not “start to pop” until Hubbert’s Peak
is clearly manifest, and global oil production begins a noticeable decline –
that’s really when all hell breaks loose.
(The Peak will probably not be well-defined, but rather “fuzzy,” because
of random fluctuations in supply and demand.
The Peak was not expected to occur in 1993-4, when I began work on
planetary management. It is expected to occur in this
decade. It is probably occurring right
now (i.e., we are likely in the middle of the part of Hubbert’s
Curve which, when “smoothed” a few years from now, will clearly be seen to be
the Peak.) Our times, over the next few
years, are going to be the most exciting in the history of the world.
A note on character,
independence and motivation
In
examining the characteristics of a person as a quick means of conducting an ad hominem
assessment of his views or works, it is important to consider his character,
independence and motivation. (This
reveals further the problem with ad hominem appeals – your can never actually prove
anything about the truth of the person’s assertions, no matter how much you
know about the person. More is never
enough. Knowledge of the condition or
nature or abilities of the man will never be a substitute for a scientific
assessment of the validity of what he says.
While testimony from expert witnesses may be accepted in courts of law,
it can never serve as a satisfactory means of assessing the truth in something
that really matters (like the fate of mankind and the biosphere).) From a legal viewpoint, my reputation is
sound – I have never been convicted of any crime. With respect to the independence of my views,
I will comment that I have worked almost my entire career as a consultant. Early in my career I worked with large
consulting firms, such as Research Triangle Institute, Planning Research
Corporation, Lambda Corporation / General Research Corporation, and Bell Technical
Operations. Mid-career, I either ran my
own contract research firm (Vista Research Corporation) or served as an
independent (freelance) consultant for a number of clients. Since 1991 (the past 13 years) I have served
as a freelance independent consultant , working for clients such as the Bank of
Botswana, the US Agency for International Development, and Canada Trust, either
as a direct-contract employee (such as the Bank of Botswana) or a
consulting-firm intermediary (such as my current USAID work through the
consultancy Academy for Educational Development). I once served as an expert witness
(statistician) for a law firm in a trial in
While
I am not independently wealthy and therefore unable to work on planetary
management full time, I make a good living, and I have been able to work at it
for extensive periods of time between long-term consulting assignments. I have never received a grant to work on
planetary management, and so I am beholden to no on for my views. I should note that no one is funding “my
kind” of rational planetary management (a global “minimal-regret” population of
ten million people, consisting of a single-nation high-technology population of
five million and a geographically dispersed (globally distributed) primitive
(hunter-gatherer) population of five million).
Since my view is that it is large human numbers and industrial activity
that is destroying the biosphere, it is unlikely that I will ever receive
substantial funding. Hardly anyone would
consider spending the profits derived from an industrial system to point out
the evils of that system and work toward its replacement. Also, given my extreme views in the matter,
and my “racist, sexist, warmonger” reputation (whether deserved or not), it is
probably unlikely that any environmental or other group would wish to hire me
or fund me – I would probably flunk their course on gender / ethnic
sensitivity!
Since
my consulting practice pays me adequately, and I take pride in the independence
of my views, I have no incentives to tailor my views to suit any vested
interests.
Cultural background
With
respect to cultural background, I was raised a Christian (Baptist / Presbyterian),
and I subscribe to the philosophical views of Christianity as an ideal system
of morality and social behavior (for individuals – no state could continue to
exist if it “turned the other cheek”). I
was born in
In
1958 I received a full scholarship (General Motors College Scholarship) to
attend
I
worked most of my early career in the
My
professional career has been very interesting and rewarding, and, from my
viewpoint, very successful. It has
provided me with the freedom and wherewithal to do virtually anything that I
wanted to do (although not everything – I would need several more lifetimes for
that!), and to engage in a very wide variety of experiences. From a technical viewpoint, I was able to
work on and solve very challenging problems.
I have had the opportunity to work with some of the world’s greatest
scientists, including Hugh Everett III (one of the world’s great physicists, developer
of the parallel-universe concept in physics and of the Generalized Lagrange
Multiplier optimization method) and Raj Chandra Bose
(one of the world’s great mathematicians, “father” of the mathematical theory
of experimental design, inventor of the Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenguem
error-correcting codes, and solver of one of Euler’s conjectures). In my overseas consulting career, I have had
the opportunity to consult at the highest levels of government, working closely
with governors of a central bank and participating in meetings with cabinet
ministers and a president.
In
brief, my culture is white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, with substantial exposure to
foreign cultures. It was during my
posting in
I
married early and had three children. We
had a rich family life, but some severe blows as well (wife dying of cancer,
son paralyzed in an auto accident, another son with serious legal
difficulties). My children are all grown
now, and I am in a second happy marriage.
Outside of work, while the children were growing up, we spent many happy
vacations. I served as a scoutmaster of
our church Boy Scout troop for 11 years, and occasionally participated in a community
band (baritone horn). While my children
were young, most of my spare time was dedicated to family activities (lawn and
house care on the weekends; soccer games, track meets, swim meets and other
school events; scouting; picnics and other family outings; visits to the
relatives; family vacations, church activities; croquet and badminton in the
back yard; gardening). Outside of family
life, social life was somewhat restricted in those days, including things such
as an occasional Lambda square dance and stage plays in