Measuring Progress and Building Heritage 33.2-3

I am very happy that I can speak at a science convocation because the practice of science, the daily work in the lab, has been the source of so much pleasure and fulfillment in my own life.
Allow me, then, to speak about the common insights that have flown from the advances of science, both recent and traditional. These insights have come from all the diverse disciplines within the sciences, including all the disciplines from which you are graduating today. ...

What a lovely boom it was to be. Earth Day 1970 was a recent memory, and then president Richard Nixon was expanding American involvement in Vietnam. But for many, the action was in Northern Canada. It was full speed ahead for frontier oil and gas. Oil wells would be pumping, compressor stations shrieking, and to carry the wealth south, soon the biggest megaproject of all: the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. ...

Doubtless, people are optimistic that sustainability is possible. Pessimism is enervating and deflating. However, both optimism and pessimism are merely states of mind that have little connection with reality. What we really need is a good dose of realism, and from this perspective much of what we take to be progress is delusional. It creates a false – or at least inflated – sense of achievement, and thus relieves the psychological and political pressure needed for real change. ...

British Columbia faces a massive social, economic and environmental crisis in the form of the mountain pine beetle. Unemployment among aboriginal people in the province is more than twice that of non-aboriginal people, and commuting times in the Greater Vancouver Regional District have increased 30 per cent in the past 10 years.