Jane Meiklejohn

What are people's material needs?  Food, houses and household goods, transport and communications, entertainment?  Yes, of course; but how many are getting them?  Or rather, how many people are getting as much as we do, here in the prosperous West?  And if they did, how long would it be before the world's resources were used up?

The world supply of food has been a source of anxiety for some 25 years, anxiety partly allayed by the production of better varieties of cereals (wheat, rice, etc.) by Dr. Norman Borlaugh and his team, in the so-called Green Revolution.  This has put off the day when the world will run out of food, but has it put it off for ever?  For Soil is another natural resource, and is not unlimited.  It is all too easy to destroy soils, especially under hot climates.  In Roman times North Africa was the granary of the Empire, but look at it now!  First the trees were cut down, and then overgrazing and lack of water control simply destroyed the soils, leaving a semi desert.  The same thing will happen on a much larger scale in West Africa, the Congo Basin and South America, if the tropical forests are cleared away in the name of 'Development', 'Productivity', or some such excuse for thoughtless greed.

Power is essential, but some natural power resources are running out.  Coal, Oil and Natural Gas are fossil fuels, formed underground by processes that took millions of years.  Once they are used up (which may happen in 30 years for oil), there will be no more.  Some useful Metals are beginning to get very scarce, too.

Various ways of dealing with these threatened shortages have been proposed.  Technology is a possible way out; or is it?  Clever inventors may find (and in fact have found) alternative ways of generating power, (Hydro-electricity, direct use of the sun's energy).  They are also inventing new foods (food yeast, bacteria grown on waste oil, etc.).  These alternatives will help to eke out the dwindling resources of the world, true; but they will help the richer countries first, because technology is developed there.  Conservation is a better way - the avoidance of waste, and the most efficient use of what we have.  For world-wide conservation to succeed, international co-operation is absolutely necessary. Luckily much co-operation exists already (the United Nations agencies FAO and WHO, fishing agreements), though conservation can be undone by human folly.  The civil war in the Yemen caused locust plagues in Africa by hindering the work of international Locust Control teams.

Mankind also has personal needs, for health, education, family life and religion.  Disease, disability and illiteracy are wastes of the most valuable resource of all, human beings.

The best solution to the problem of mankind's needs and resources is a moral and spiritual one – a change of  heart.  If only mankind could renounce the 'profit motive'!  By the grace of God perhaps we can.