Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1.1In the preparation of this document, particular mention should be made of the following staff members:
1.2 Carl G. Nelson - senior research assistant and graphic coordinator.
1.3 Research – Neil Hansen
1.4 Graphics – Dale Carlson
1.5 Secretarial Supervision – Mary Ann Kelly
1.6 Manuscript Typing – Diana Wachter
1.7 John Dixon, Washington, D.C. - Information Consultant.
Other Volumes in the Series
1.8Other volumes in this series are:
1.9 Phase I (1963) Document 1: Inventory of World Resources Human Trends and Needs by R. Buckminster Fuller and John McHale
1.10 Phase I (1964) Document 2: The Design Initiative by R. Buckminster Fuller
1.11 Phase I (1965) Document 3: Comprehensive Thinking by R. Buckminster Fuller
1.12 Phase I (1965) Document 4: The Ten Year Program by John McHale
1.13 Phase II (1967) Document 5: Comprehensive Design Strategy by R. Buckminster Fuller
1.14 N.B. The present volume (Document 6) extends the outline of Phase II given in Document 4, "The Ten Year Program," above.
1.15 World Resources Inventory Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Illinois U. S. A.
List of Charts and Tables
1.16Title Page World Food and Population . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 World Population Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Countries in World Population Areas . . . . . . . 11 The Earth’s Biosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Photosynthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Photosynthetic Energy Conversion . . . . . . . . . 18 The Global Ecosystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24/41 World Hydrologic Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 World Carbon Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The Earth’s Energy Balance . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Ocean and Food Chain: Fish & Fish Products . . . 30 Nitrogen and Phosphorus Cycles . . . . . . . . . 35 Human Daily Metabolic Turnover . . . . . . . . . 43 Elements in Modern Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Life Expectancies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Stages of Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 World Volume of Technical Documents . . . . . . 56 Computer Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 The Earth’s Energy Flux . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
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1.18 Title Page World Population/Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 The World’s Major Energy Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 World Energy Flow Sheet - 1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Projected World Energy Consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Potential Marine Energy Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Growth of Nuclear Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 World Nuclear Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Energy Conversion Efficiencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Energy Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Relative Abundance of Metals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Selected Metals, World: 1963 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Steel Consumption/Production Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Construction Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Plastics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Composite Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Materials Replaced by Plastics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Material Usage in Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Population/Materials: Projected Consumption . . . . . . . . 116 Closed Ecological System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Iron and Steel Scrap Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
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PREFACE
1.20In the second half of the twentieth century, there is a perceptible shift in human consciousness and conceptuality which begins to alter man’s overall relations, both to his fellow men and to his planetary habitat. Aspects of this change in conceptuality extend inwardly, from unravelling of the micro life-code at the molecular level, to the successful maintenance of men beyond the earth’s atmosphere and under it’s oceans, to the outward monitoring of other worlds and galaxies.
1.21 A new awareness of the origins, parameters and possible limits of human life and intelligence is engendered in these explorations. In our relation to time, we now begin to probe and plan forward into the future, almost in due ratio to the extent that we successively locate the beginnings of life itself even more remotely in the past.
1.22 At the daily level of experience, we may note this increased awareness in more popular acceptance of a ’one world’ view. Even where this lacks any positive action, and is most often qualified in ’their world’ or ’our world’ terms, it still marks a shift toward recognition of the planetary interdependence of the human community and the sustaining system of natural forces within which it exists. Such awareness is due, in no small measure to the swift and myriad diffusion of images and messages in the world communications networks. The repercussions of local events of any large scale consequence for the whole community are rapidly felt and reacted to around the world.
1.23 Where tribal man became disoriented when separated from his immediate group and surroundings, and early city/local state, man could barely conceive of any larger territory; we are now in a period when many men think casually in terms of the whole earth. The planet as ’life space’ comes as naturally to the grasp as did the previous successive conceptual extensions of childhood area, hometown, region or country.
1.24 Accompanying these various expansions of the levels of conceptual awareness is a significant recourse to ecologyź, or ecologically oriented thinking, as a defining framework for their containment and inter-relation. Beginning in botany with the study of the interactions of plants with other organisms, and with their environs, this transdisciplinary approach now begins to encompass the study of large scale regional ecosystems and global interactions and distributions. The role of man, both as symbiotic component and disruptive agency has been particularly focussed upon in recent years.
1.25 Human ecology involves finding out what resources are available in our environment and how to make the best use of them. We have to think, first of all, of all the materials resources – minerals, water-power, soil, forest, agricultural production – but we must also think of the non-material or enjoyment resources of the habitat, such as natural beauty or enjoyment, interest and adventure, wild scenery and wild life . . .if man is responsible for the future of this planet, he must pay more attention to ecology – the science of relations between organisms and their environment.š
1.26 źCoined by Haeckel in 1873 – the Greek roots Oikonons, ’house’; and Logos, knowledge.
1.27 š"Towards a Fulfillment Society", Sir Julian Huxley FRS., New Scientist (Eng.), 27 June, 1963. vi
1.28 The above quotation might almost serve as a definition of our present program – as it also implies, in making the best use of resources, that we consider the re-design of such uses in more naturally efficient ways. What we have earlier referred to as ’literacy regarding world problems’ is essentially contained within such an approach.
1.29 The various major problems evidenced in the present disparities between developed and lesser developed regions of the world – food, shelter, health, life expectancy and education – may be more clearly defined in terms of ecological imbalances. In adopting such a viewpoint, we can more sharply outline them in operational terms. The urgency of their solution thereby broadens from its present evaluative level, of appeals to the humanitarian concern of the more fortunate few – to the common self preservation of all.
1.30 Within the closely knit interdependence of our now, global, community the continued disparities between have and have not nations may be viewed as a grave threat to the overall maintenance of the human community. The explosive rises in population, the pressures on food lands and other resources, the scale of wastage, disorganization and pestilence now accompanying our ’local wars are also linked in due measure to the revolution in human expectations – a further, even if negative, aspect of the increase in awareness referred to above. As physical events, these press ever more critically upon the total resources and social energies of the developed regions. As world problems, they go increasingly beyond the capacity of any locally organized effort to mitigate or solve them, in anything but the shortest range.
1.31 In these terms, there are no ’local’ problems anymore – such as may be left to the exigencies and dangerous predilections of local economic or political ’convenience’. We have now reached the point in human affairs at which the ecological requirements for sustaining the world community take precedence over, and are superogative to, the more transient value systems and vested interests of any local society!
1.32 The world, then, which the expanding network of electronic communication is fast reducing to a complex but single eco-system, confronts the technological civilization with a profound and growing imbalance . . . The first step towards a human future is the acceptance of responsibility for meeting the emergency in our total environment by creating those generalized human conditions which will at least prevent the system from degenerating further. In the immediate term, the only way we know how to do this is by devoting the necessary physical resources to feeding the hungry; in the mediate term, we must do it by inventing the necessary means to graft our technological knowledge on all branches of the human tree.ş
1.33 As we examine not only the local aspects of such problems within the lesser developed areas, but also their global effects on the more fortunate, it is clear that they form part of a larger context of ecological mismanagement. Wasteful resource-usage, soil exhaustion and spoliation, air, water and earth pollution, etc., are world phenomena. They have
1.34 şTechnology and Man’s Future – Hasan Ozbekhan, Systems Development Corp., (U.S.), Sp-2494; May 1966.
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1.36 all been contingent factors on human occupancy of the earth during historical time. Until recently, however, their effects were more localized and their scale relatively small, Now they may affect a whole region or continent in a few years, or in a few days, in the case of radioactive fallout. Most of the problems of the lesser developed regions are all present in greater or lesser degree in the so-called developed regions. All are, in vary- ing measure, contingent upon the ’piecemeal’ nature of our present modes of knowledge integration, the gaps between such knowledge, its diffusion and effective application, and the lack of a consistent body of agreement on the physical stewardship of the planet.
1.37 In this phase of our program, the focus on the use of key energy and material re- sources may not be dealt with only in technological or economic and social planning terms. They require setting within the broadest ecological context. It has seemed pertinent, therefore, in this source document to include some introductory materials which may serve to provide some orientation to the overall ecological framework within which the present uses and the necessary re-design of our energy and materials resources may be considered. The future of generalized architecture and environmental planning lies most obviously in this approach.
1.38 John McHale Carbondale, Illinois, USA June 1967
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