The European Dream

by Jeremy Rifkin

  We’re going to have to get used to the idea that the European Union has its own global agenda and its own dream about the kind of world it would like to fashion—that dream won’t always coincide with our own. Indeed, in many respects the European Dream is so utterly different from our own that the two superpowers are likely to find themselves, at times, at odds on the world stage, as we journey deeper into the century.

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  A Second Enlightenment

  SIR MARTIN REES is one of the world’s distinguished astronomers. The famed Cambridge University professor caused a brief ripple in scientific circles in 2003 with the publication of his book Our Final Hour. Rees warned that a new genre of high-risk scientific experiments and pursuits threatened the very existence of life on Earth and even the existence of the universe itself. He said he thought that “the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that our present civilization on Earth will survive to the end of the present century.”1 Ordinarily, such bombastic claims would be ignored altogether or dismissed as the ravings of a fool, but in this instance, the warnings earned a hearing in the media and became the subject of some controversy within the scientific community because of the impressive credentials of the messenger.

  Questioning Unbridled Scientific Inquiry

  Rees is an authority on black holes, and his theories on the origin and evolution of the universe are considered by many of his peers to be, if not the last word, at least the best word on the why and how of existence itself. So when Rees suggested that some current and proposed new avenues of scientific pursuit perhaps ought not to be entertained because of the great potential risk they pose to existence, his words blew through the scientific community like an ill wind, threatening the very canons of science. After all, the notion of unfettered scientific inquiry is the very foundation of modern science. Enlightenment science is based on the idea of relentless pursuit of nature’s secrets. To attempt to limit that pursuit or put constraints on avenues of inquiry is regarded by many in the scientific community as tantamount to squelching the scientific spirit itself. “Man’s” very nature is inquisitive, argued the architects of the Enlightenment. We are a Promethean creature in constant search of understanding the grand scheme of things so that we can amass power over the forces of nature and command our own destiny. The idea of progress, so fundamental to the thinking of the modern world, is rendered moot if human beings were to accept self-imposed limits on what the mind could explore. Moreover, the entertainment of doubt about our ability to use reason to control and direct the forces of nature and our own future would put an end to the cherished utopian dream of the perfectibility of life on Earth. For all these reasons, the scientific community has, from the very outset of the Enlightenment, argued that virtually all human inquiry is worthy of pursuit.

  Rees well understood the implications of his statement. Still, he asked, do we have obligations that now transcend the Enlightenment catechism? Is freedom of inquiry, experimentation, and technological application sacrosanct, even if it means the possible demise of life as we know it, maybe even of existence?

  Rees put this question to a real-life test on the subject he knows the most about. He pointed to a project begun at the Brookhaven Laboratory on Long Island in 2000. Physicists there are using a particle accelerator to attempt to create a “quark-gluon plasma,” a hot soup of dense subatomic materials that replicate conditions believed to exist at the time the “big bang” gave birth to the cosmos more than 13.7 billion years ago. Some scientists worry that a high concentration of energy of the type being pursued at Brookhaven could conceivably lead to three doomsday outcomes. A black hole might form—an object with such gravitational pull that even light could not escape. A black hole could “suck in everything around it.”2 It is also possible that quark particles could form a compressed object known as a “strangelet,” which is “far smaller than a single atom” but could “infect” surrounding matter and “transform the entire planet Earth into an inert hyperdense sphere about one hundred metres across.”3 Or even worse, the subatomic forces of space itself could be transformed by the experiment. If that were to happen, the effect might be to “rip the fabric of space itself.”4 The result, warns Rees, could be that “the boundary of the new-style vacuum would spread like an expanding bubble,” eventually devouring the entire universe.5

  Rees and other scientists admit that the chance of any of these events occurring is exceedingly low. But while it’s “very, very improbable,” says Rees, “we cannot be 100 percent sure what might actually happen.”6 Rees then asks the question, Even assuming that the odds of something going wrong on this scale are as high as one in fifty million, would the potential benefit be worth the remote possibility of destroying the Earth and the entire universe ?7

  Rees goes on to warn of a number of current experimental pursuits that pose the threat of disastrous consequences for life on Earth, including the construction of small nanobots that replicate like viruses and that could race out of control, devouring matter and turning the Earth’s surface to a “gray goo.”8 Rees worries about similar threats posed by genetic engineering and computer technology—especially as knowledge in the high-tech fields spreads, increasing the likelihood that someone will, by accident or intent, cause irrevocable harm. He concludes by saying that the risk attendant to these powerful new scientific and technological pursuits ought to engender a global discussion about the limits of scientific inquiry.

  The immediate rejoinder by most scientists is that if we had entertained the same misgivings and fears about the harnessing of fire because it caused harm as well as good, we might never have enjoyed the vast benefits of progress and would instead have remained in a primitive state of being. The big difference, however, is that the effects of past scientific pursuits were always felt locally and were of limited duration. Today’s cutting-edge scientific technology is of a different ilk. The effects and consequences of computer technology, biotechnology, and, soon, nanotechnology are global in scale and potentially long in duration.

  The first realization of the vast difference in scale and duration of the new scientific endeavors and technologies came with the splitting of the atom and the dropping of the atomic bombs over human populations in Japan in the last days of World War II. Although some of the scientists engaged in the top-secret U.S. government project—the Manhattan Project—had misgivings about pursuing the research and applying the results, and expressed their concerns, the weight of scientific orthodoxy prevailed, and nuclear weapons and, later, nuclear power continued to be developed unabated. The reasoning, until this day, has been that while nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants pose a potential threat to the continuance of human life on Earth, the benefits of military security and adequate energy supplies exceed the potential threat posed by misuse and abuse or negligence. The belief has always been that the potential for wrongdoing or accidents could be “rationally” avoided, controlled, or at least mitigated.

  Although Americans, by and large, continue to champion the European Enlightenment vision, putting their unswerving faith in scientific advances and technological pursuits, Europeans are beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of uncritical acceptance of the old shibboleths. As in the case of governance and foreign policy and security matters, Europe is beginning to diverge, in a fundamental way, from the American approach to science and technology. At the heart of the difference is the way Americans and Europeans perceive risk.

  We Americans take pride in being a risk-taking people. We come from immigrant stock who risked their very lives to journey to the New World and start over, often with only a few coins in their pockets and a dream of a better life. When Europeans and others are asked what they most admire about Americans, our risk-taking, can-do attitude generally tops the list. We are often willing to gamble it all on a whim, a hope, or just a gut feeling. That’s why Americans are so incredibly inventive, innovative, and entrepreneurial. Where others see difficulties and obstacles, Americans see opportunities. One o
f the traits that Americans most dislike in a person is the defeatist attitude that something can’t be done or isn’t worth attempting for fear of failure or unintended deleterious consequences. “You don’t know until you try” is a refrain that reverberates throughout American history. If people elsewhere really want to know what irks Americans the most, it’s this. We can’t abide pessimism, a quality often perceived in our European friends. We are eternal optimists—although many Europeans I know say we are just plain naïve.

  Our optimism is deeply entwined with our faith in science and technology. It has been said that Americans are a nation of tinkerers. When I was growing up, the engineer was held in as high esteem as the cowboy. He was viewed as a rugged individualist willing to cut against the grain, always in search of creating a better machine. The engineer was admired for his efforts to improve the lot of society and contribute to the progress and welfare of civilization. I remember seeing the lights on late at night in my neighbor’s garage, as father and son experimented with various machines and engines at their homemade workbench, dreaming of a breakthrough invention that might change the world.

  It’s hard to give all that up. It’s too ingrained. It’s who we are. But on the other side of the water, the sensibilities are different. It’s not that Europeans aren’t inventive. One could even make the case that over the course of history, Europe has produced most of the great scientific insights and not a few of the major inventions—although certainly the Chinese might justifiably lay claim to some of the accolade. Still, Europeans are far more mindful of the dark side of science and technology. They’ve had longer histories with the negative as well as the positive consequences of science and technology and are, therefore, less starry-eyed. Moreover, until the post-World War II era, science and technology in Europe were largely in the hands of an educated elite and associated with control over society and the perpetuation of class divisions, whereas in America, science and technology were always more democratically dispersed. The founder of my own alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, as well as Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and many of the other founding fathers, fancied themselves as scientists and inventors as much as revolutionaries and spent endless time working on scientific pursuits and the creation of new inventions. They envisioned America as a nation of inventors. Thomas Jefferson, our third U.S. president, fashioned the first modern patent laws to reward the prowess of American inventors. He hoped that the patent laws would encourage the democratization of the inventive spirit. They did.

  Just as Americans took up the European Enlightenment dream of material progress, the pursuit of self-interest, and individual autonomy, and ran with it in its most pure form, while European attachment was more tentative, so, too, with the Enlightenment notions of science and technology. The Brits come closest to the American sensibilities when it comes to our unflagging faith in the pursuit of Enlightenment science and technology. But, even they temper their enthusiasm with an occasional romantic and sometimes class-directed reaction from the likes of a Samuel Taylor Coleridge or the Luddites. We have our Thoreaus and our anti-technology populist traditions as well, although these countercurrents don’t run as deep in America as they do in Europe.

  The divergence in views on science and technology between Americans and Europeans is growing and is now coming to the fore in a myriad of public policy debates, threatening a schism as significant as the divide over our different sense of how best to pursue foreign policy and domestic security.

  Burden of Proof

  In recent years, the European Union has turned upside down the standard operating procedure for introducing new technologies and products into the marketplace and society, much to the consternation of the United States. The turnaround started with the controversy over genetically modified (GM) foods and the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment. The U.S. government gave the green light to the widespread introduction of GM foods in the mid-1990s, and by the end of the decade, over half of America’s agricultural land was given over to GM crops. No new laws were enacted to govern the potential harmful environmental and health impacts. Instead, existing statutes were invoked. Nor was any special handling or labeling of the products required.

  In Europe, the response was quite different. Massive opposition to GMOs erupted across the continent. Farmers, environmentalists, and consumer organizations staged protests, and political parties and governments voiced concern and even opposition. A de facto moratorium on the planting of GM crops and the sale of GM food products was put into effect. Meanwhile, the major food processors, distributors, and retailers pledged not to sell any products containing GM traits.

  The European Union embarked on a lengthy review process to assess the risks of introducing GM food products. In the end, the European Union established tough new protections designed to mitigate the potential harm of GM food crops and products. The measures included procedures to segregate and track GM grain and food products from the fields to the retail stores to ensure against contamination; labeling of GMOs at every stage of the food process to ensure transparency; and independent testing as well as more rigorous testing requirements by the companies producing GM seeds and other genetically modified organisms.

  The U.S. government charged the EU with foul play and suggested that the Union was using GMOs as a ploy to win concessions on other trade-related issues to which the two superpowers were at loggerheads. The U.S. trade representative even threatened to challenge the EU GMO policy at the World Trade Organization, suggesting that its restrictive policies violated existing free-trade agreements.

  What the U.S. didn’t understand is that Europe’s opposition to the introduction of GMOs was not just a political maneuver to gain a bargaining chip with the U.S. on trade, but something far more important. For Europeans, the introduction of GMOs cuts much deeper, challenging many of the fundamental assumptions that underlie the nascent European Dream. The European public worries about the potential unforeseen environmental impacts of introducing large volumes of genetically modified organisms into the biosphere. They also worry about the possible consequences to human health that might result. The argument one hears over and over again by men and women on the streets of Europe, as well as by governing elites, is that while millions of dollars have been spent on readying the new products for market, far less care, attention, and funds have been committed to assessing the potential ecological and health risks that might accompany the introduction of this radical new agricultural technology. Europeans argue that because GMOs are alive, reproduce, mutate, proliferate, and can contaminate and create irreversible niches, they pose potential threats that are global in scale and therefore require a different level of oversight.

  Europeans also express concern over the impact that GM foods may have on their cultural identity. In Europe, unlike America, food plays a critical role in defining culture—many would argue that food is as important or even more important than language in maintaining the social cohesion of Europe’s many cultures. Americans have a difficult time understanding the close cultural relationship Europeans have toward rural life, farming practices, food cultivation, processing, and consumption because we gave all that up long ago to become a fast-food, commercial culture. For Europeans, GM foods represent a potential threat to deeply held beliefs about sustainable development and the protection of cultural diversity, principles that go to the very heart of the European Dream. According to public opinion surveys, 89 percent of the French public, 81 percent of the German public, and 74 percent of the Italian public oppose the introduction of GM foods. On average, two out of three Europeans oppose GM foods, while in America, nearly half (48 percent) of all consumers support GM foods.9

  Nor is the GMO issue an anomaly. The European Union is forging ahead on a wide regulatory front, changing the very conditions and terms governing how new scientific and technological pursuits and products are introduced into the marketplace, society, and the environment. Its b
old initiatives put the Union far ahead of the United States, and the rest of the world, in procedures and protocols overseeing scientific and technological endeavors. Behind all of its newfound regulatory zeal is the looming question of how best to model global risks and create a sustainable and transparent approach to economic development.

  In May 2003, the European Commission proposed sweeping new regulatory controls on chemicals to mitigate toxic impacts on the environment and human and animal health. The proposed new law would require companies to register and test for the safety of more than thirty thousand chemicals at an estimated cost to the producers of nearly €8 billion.10 Under existing rules, 99 percent of the total volume of chemicals sold in Europe have not passed through any environmental and health testing and review process.11 According to the EU environmental commissioner, Margot Wallstrom, “There is no control whatsoever of the 400 million tons of chemicals sold in the European Union each year.”12 In the past, there was no way to even know what kind of chemicals were being used by industry, making it nearly impossible to track potential health risks. The new regulations will change all of that. The REACH system—which stands for Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals—requires the companies to conduct safety and environmental tests to prove that the products they are producing are safe. If they can’t, the products will be banned from the market.