Which future should we prepare for, industrial or agrarian?

The more Harrison Brown talks about the future of industrial society, the more unlikely it seems that it has a future. Brown is the author of a seminal book entitled “The Challenge of Man’s Future” which outlines the ecological predicament we find ourselves in today. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Brown’s book is that it was published in 1954 long before our predicament had taken its full shape and when there were only about 2.6 billion people on Earth. (The current world population is estimated to be 6.7 billion.)

Brown’s aim was to limn out the obstacles that lay ahead for industrial society and to suggest a course for navigating them. He concluded that the most likely trajectory for industrial society was a reversion back to agrarian society. Only by maneuvering ever so carefully through the narrow passage to sustainability would industrial society be able to continue for an extended period, say, many centuries or millennia.


Brown’s views may seem strange to the modern ear accustomed as it is to hearing how thoroughly we have subdued nature through technology. But even back in 1954 it was already well-known in scientific circles that 1) we would one day run short of finite fossil fuels, 2) we were working our way from high-grade metal ores down to low-grade ores, and 3) industrial society would ultimately be faced with the task of obtaining its required metals and other basic resources from nothing more than air, rock and seawater. The key to making a successful transition, Brown reasoned, would be finding the necessary energy since if one has enough energy, getting needed materials from the ultra-low-grade resources of air, rock and seawater would be feasible.

Of course, he realized that recycling would have to be enforced to keep as much of the previously extracted metals in circulation and that certain destabilizing dangers had to be avoided. Chief among them was nuclear war which he believed would so undermine the complex systems of industrial society that those systems might never recover. He also recognized that if the whole world were to industrialize–he made special mention of India and China–then population would have to be stabilized so as not to overwhelm the ability of the Earth to provide the necessary food and other materials.

Energy Bulletin