Exhaustion of Resources and Technological Optimism

Abstract

Since the progressive view of history has appeared, contrary to it, the pessimistic one also appeared. The progressive view is based on the material wealth, and, as for the material wealth, it is natural to think about the limitation of resources. In this article, we analyzed the communications about exhaustion of resources and long-range technological forecasts. It seems to be a problem of the ideology what kind of attitude we take for the exhaustion of resources: optimistic or pessimistic one. However, if we thought a role of uncertainty-communications as reduction of uncertainty, optimism should never be welcomed for introducing new uncertainty of technological development. On the other hand, pessimistic one is always welcomed, though the prediction is always betrayed. At first sight, it is plausible to argue that the technological development only postpones time limit of resource problems. However, if time limit is postponed for 50 years, new resources might be developed in the meantime by new technology and the problems could be solved naturally. A change of a lifestyle as the solution that the pessimists advocate has nature to evade technological uncertainty. On the other hand, they confine arguments in the known range of technology. Though it seems radical to advocate a solution through a change of lifestyle, in fact, it is the proposal of extremely conservatives.