Progress and democracy, we assume, go hand in hand. Progress means abundance: more labor-saving machines, more comforts, more choices. It means a rich life for everyone, not for the privileged classes alone. Or so we used to believe, until recent events began to suggest that progress may have limits after all.
Compared with the rest of the world, industrial nations enjoy a lavish standard of living. The affluence generated by industrialism looks even more impressive when compared with living standards that prevailed throughout most of the millennium now drawing to a close. Goods that would once have been considered luxuries have become staples of everyday consumption. Medicine has reduced infant mortality and conquered many of the diseases that formerly struck down people in their prime. A vast increase in life expectancy dramatizes the contrast between our world and that of our ancestors in the distant past.
To be sure, we pay a price for progress. Constant change gives rise to widespread nervousness and anxiety. In solving old problems, we often create new ones in their place. Improvements in life expectancy make possible an aging population that puts a growing strain on the health-care system. Private cars give us unprecedented mobility but swell the volume of traffic to the point of gridlock. In the course of enjoying the delights of consumption, we generate so much garbage that we are running out of places to dump it.
Yet none of this destroys our faith in progress. The benefits, we think, outweigh the costs. As long as the question of progress is posed in this way, the question answers itself. The price may be high, but few would seriously choose not to pay it. Progress is an offer we have been unable to refuse.
The real question today is whether progress has built-in limits. Environmentalists argue that the earth will not support indefinite economic expansion along the old lines. Reports of global warming, damage to the ozone layer and long-term atmospheric shifts caused by deforestation raise further doubts about unlimited growth. Even though much of this evidence remains controversial, it has already transformed the debate about progress. For the first time we find ourselves asking not whether endless progress is desirable but whether it is even possible, as we have known it in the past.
The global distribution of wealth raises the same question in a more urgent form. If we consider the effect of extending Western patterns of consumption to the rest of the world, the potential impact on the earth is truly staggering. Imagine the populations of India and China equipped with two cars to a family, air conditioning in private homes and appliances galore, participating fully in a consumer economy that already makes heavy demands on the world's environment even when it is confined to a mere fraction of the world's population. It is obvious that the wasteful, heedless life now enjoyed by the West cannot be made available to everyone without stretching the energy resources of the earth, as well as its adaptive capacity, beyond the breaking point.