Linus Pauling: Nobel Prize Scientist

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On the other hand, I think that one might well question whether the next 25 years in the history of the world will be pleasurable ones to live through.

PLOWBOY: Please explain.

PAULING: I gave a lecture about a year ago at the 100th anniversary meeting of the American Chemical Society. In it, I said that I thought there would almost certainly be a catastrophe of some kind within the next 25 or 50 years ... a catastrophe which might destroy the human race.

Just what that catastrophe might consist of, I can't predict. I think the greatest problem facing the world today is — of course — the population problem ... the problem of starvation. I expect we'll see mass starvation some time in the next few decades because of the failure of governments and people to recognize the need to limit the world's population.

If we are ever to address the population problem, however, the current waste of the world's resources on militarism must stop. I think that the recent fuss about the — " neutron bomb " — which isn't much different from other tactical nuclear weapons — is just a ploy to keep people from moving toward more general disarmament. Twenty years ago, the military experts were talking about "clean" nuclear weapons. This neutron bomb is just as much of a fraud as the "clean" nuclear weapons that they were agitating about then.

Paul Ehrlich has pointed out that the coming catastrophe could take many forms: the complete loss of oceanic fisheries, for instance, through over-fishing. Or severe weather changes brought about by governments to improve the yields of crops. Or the rapid destruction of the ozone layer.

I am forced — as I observe governments in their processes of decision — making — to conclude that the next century will probably be one in which the amount of suffering in the world reaches its maximum. Unless we are wiser than we have shown ourselves to be in the past, we shall encounter catastrophic problems in the years ahead. A hundred years from now, however, we shall — I hope — have solved these problems ... and from then on, we may have a world in which every human being will have the opportunity to lead a healthy, long, and pleasurable life. That is what I hope.

PLOWBOY: Dr. Pauling, thank you very much.

PAULING: Thank you.

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