Manifest Destiny Grows Up
During the 1840’s politicians often talked of ‘manifest destiny.’ It represented the American ideals of the time: the extension of the United States all the way to the Pacific Ocean. After the realization of manifest destiny, during the 1928 presidential election, Herbert Hoover modernized the idea by promising, “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” They were right – America is now the most prosperous nation in the world.
It seems now, though, that the American ideology has shifted from an optimistic outlook on the future to a pessimistic one. The new ideology is one of impending crisis: resources are being exhausted, urban sprawl is killing the environment, clean water can’t support the earth’s population… I ran across an article on the PERC website today that represents the kind of ideology that will continue to produce a prosperous and progressive America. It gave a poignant example of how technology can solve resource and environmental problems if we can just shake the chains of static rules, and the command and control mentality. The link is http://www.perc.org/publications/percreports/march2005/fresh_water.php
posted by bob @ 3:46 PM
4 Comments:
THe article was pretty cool. I always tend to think that the government controls what information we have access to. I say that to say, if people feel pessimistic about America's future based on information the government has allowed them contemplate, then let them waste their energy in doing so. How stupid do we really think the government is? Keep in mind that if if we "regular people" know about a potential crisis, then so deos the government. Even when it does not look like they have a solution to a problem, the bureaucracies have hier hands on everything. If their was no crisis the bureaucrats would lose funding and their jobs. So basically the impending crisis on America's horizons will stay on the horizon as more theories of death, destruction and mass histeria come to the forefront.
America has itself to blame for the pessimism. start to pay to much attention to the crap on tv, in the magazines and newspapers anybody will start to get bummed. good, uplifting things are happening in this country, like the article points out, but it doesn't get the front page. do we see the bad stuff on the news because that is the only "newsworthy" event going on, or does the media supply what we demand most? don't blame the store for selling a fat guy candy.
just a coincidence that Global Water Technologies and Coors Brewing Company are both in Golden, Colorado?
I think pessimism maybe one of our defining characteristics of American culture. I mean for heaven’s sake our revolution for independence from Britain was one based on pessimism. The American colonies were treated far better than most of the British colonies yet we demanded more autonomy. In fact isn’t it pessimism or a species of pessimism that drives us to invent and improve our existing resources.
I recently read “Prices, Politics, and Petroleum: The Political Economy of Energy” by David Glasner, and he talks about the conservationist perspective that we should try and limit ourselves in our consumption of oil so that future generations can use the oil. Glasner contends, however, that rather than trying to limit our use of petroleum supplies we should seek new more efficient ways of using petroleum. Glasner claims that the “best we can do for posterity is not to leave them with the largest possible stock of natural resources but to leave them with the stock of manufactured, as well as natural resources that has the greatest value” (p.40). The underlying point Glasner is trying to make is that we should not become so concerned with the exhaustion of resources that we halt all uses of the resource, rather we should be using human ingenuity and innovation to make our use of scarce resources more efficient. Pessimism over the future stock of oil is the catalyst needed to make ours and future generation’s consumption of the resource more efficient. Looking at the glass as half empty is what drives us to achieve.
Most of the pessimistic view on energy etc... comes from somebody trying to push a political agenda. It is easy to fall into this trap if we take everything that we hear for face value. It only takes a study of past trends to be able to see that most of these agendas although partially true, probably won't be the demise of society or the environment as we know it. First of all, many of our natural resources are not being exhausted. Oil for intstance...In Alberta Canada, there are oil reserves in the form of tar sands in quantities matching the middle east. Technology is being produced to extract this oil. So we have plenty of oil, the question will be how much we are willing to pay for it. Here again, with new technology in more fuel efficient cars, we will be able to pay the difference in oil costs. We are a very innovative people, this is what makes our nation great. In the past we have confronted many crises and we will continue to do so. I am very optimistic that we will.
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