DUMP ON US, BABY, WE NEED IT Julian L. Simon It was Martin Luther King Day, and the researcher from Cable News Network was in a terrific snit. Because of the holiday she couldn't find anyone to comment on a scary new pollution report that had just broken. The danger? Disposaable diapers using up so much landfill that we will soon run out of farmland, causing food to become scarce. Waste disposal is not my specialty, so I gave her the home phone numbers of some experts whom I know. But afterwards I reflected on the entire problem of waste disposal. Many "environmentalists" worry that the unintended by- products -- the "externalities", in the economist's term -- of humankind's economic activities are malign even if the direct effects of production and trade are beneficial. But a case can be made that even activities which are not intentionally constructive more often than not leave a positive legacy to subsequent generations. That is, even the unintended aspects of humans' use of land and of other raw materials tend to be profitable for those who come afterward. Going one step further, population growth that increases the volume of trash may increase our problems in the short run, but it bestows benefits on future generations. The pressure of new problems leads to the search for new solutions. The solutions constitute the knowledge that fuels the progress of civilization, and leaves us better off than if the original problem had never arisen. That is the history of the human race. Would Robinson Crusoe have been better off if there had preceded him on the island a group of people who had produced and consumed, and left the trash in a dump that Crusoe could uncover? Sure he would. Consider how valuable that dump would have been to Crusoe. If his predecessors had had a low-technology society the trash would have contained sharp stones and various animal parts that could be used for cutting, binding, carrying, and so on. If the preceding society had had high technology, the dump would have contained even more interesting and useful materials - metal utensils, electronics parts, and [the like] - which a knowledgeable person could have used to get help. What is waste to one community at one time is usually a valuable resource to a later community that has greater knowledge about how to use the material. Consider the "borrow pits" by the sides of turnpikes, from which earth is taken for road-building. At first look the pits seem a despoliation of nature, a scar upon the land. But after the road is finished the borrow pits turn out to be useful for fishing lakes and reservoirs, and the land they occupy is likely to be more valuable than if the pits had never been dug. Even a pumped-out oil well--that is, the empty hole-- probably has more value to subsequent generations than a similar spot without a hole. The hole may be used as a storage place for oil or other fluids, or for some as-yet-unknown purposes. And the casing that is left in the dry well might be re-claimed profitably by future generations. Humans' activities tend to increase the order and decrease the randomness of nature. One can see this from the air if one looks for the signs of human habitation. Where there are people (ants, too, of course) there will be straight lines and smooth curves; otherwise, the face of nature is not neat or ordered. Production of material goods brings like elements together. This concentration can be exploited by subsequent generations. Reflect on lead batteries in a dump, or the war rubble from which Berliners built seven hills which are now lovely recreational spots. The only reason that used newspapers are worth so little now is that we have learned how to grow trees and manufacture paper so cheaply. When I was a kid, we collected and sold bundles of old papers to the paper mill at the edge of town. And then when the mill pond froze in the winter we exploited it as our hockey rink. Many acts that we tend to think of as despoiling the land actually bestow increased wealth upon subsequent generations. Ask yourself which areas in the Midwest will seem more valuable to subsequent generations--the places where cities now are, or the places where farmlands are? One sees evidence of this delayed benefit in the Middle East. For hundreds of years until recently, Turks and Arabs occupied structures originally built by the Romans 2,000 years ago. The ancient buildings saved the late-comers the trouble of doing their own construction. Another example is the use of dressed stones in locations far away from where they were dressed. One finds the lintels of doorways from ancient Palestinian synagogues in contemporary homes in Syria. Still more generally, humans have for tens of thousands of years created more than they have destroyed. That is, the composite of what they sought to produce and of the by-products has been on balance positive. This is evidenced by the increasing standard of material living generation after generation, the decreased scarcity of all natural resources as measured by their prices throughout history, and the most extraordinary achievement of all, longer life and better health. Other evidence is found treasuries of civilization that our ancestors bequeathed, each century's inheritance greater than the previous one. The core of the inheritance, of course, is the productive knowledge that one generation increments and passes on to the next generation. If human beings destroyed more they produced, on average, the species would have died out long ago. But in fact people produce more than they consume, and the new knowledge of how to overcome material problems is the most precious product of all. The more people there are on earth, the more new problems, but also the more minds to solve those problems and the greater the inheritance for future generations. Do I have a solution to the used-diaper problem other than burning them for energy? Not at the moment. But there is every likelihood that, as with other wastes created in the past, human ingenuity will find a way to convert them to a valuable resource rather than a costly nuisance. The same is true of nuclear waste, of course. I just wish I could feel as hopeful about the pollution of human thought and intercourse that we all contribute to both in our private relationships and in our public utterances - of which this scare report about disposable diapers is an example. Now that's a problem more worth our attention than the disposition of disposable diapers. trash 88-166 from bromley 3-3-9 /page 1 /article8 trash/[date?]