John Shuttleworth, Founder of Mother Earth News, Interview Part II

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Again and again in The Great Frontier's section on science, Webb sifts through hard facts and figures and arrives at one conclusion: Science creates nothing. It only accelerates the destruction of what is there. "Which would you rather have," he asks, "the earth as it was in 1500 — before the Age of Science — with its natural forests, clear streams, virgin soils, and precious metals intact? Or the earth as it is now covered with stumps, foul streams, eroded soils and left with a depleted store of precious metals?" And that was written before massive oil spills, leaking storage vaults of nuclear wastes, and the pop top beer can!

I think that one direct quote from The Great Frontier pretty well sums up what Webb thought about science's chances of "saving" mankind: "Technology has given us the luxuries and comforts in a riotous holiday in which we can eat and breed, but all the time it is sawing off the limb on which it complacently sits, on which civilization rests."

PLOWBOY: Did Webb have anything to say about energy?

SHUTTLEWORTH: He covered the subject better 25 years ago in a concise six and a half pages than all of the last two years' longwinded books, magazine articles, and TV specials on the subject put together. His main reference was M. King Hubbert, who was then Associate Director of the Shell Oil Co. Hubbert, by the way, is another man who's never received the national and international recognition he so justly deserves. In the late 1940's he began predicting that U.S. production of petroleum would peak out by the end of the 60's ... and he began calling for the stabilization of population and a switch to solar, wind, and water power.

By the time Webb wrote The Great Frontier, Hubbert had already forecast that if we didn't both limit our numbers and make a change to renewable sources of energy ... that if we "deny the physical facts before us" and "allow ourselves to be caught in a cultural lag", we'll suffer a "debacle." To put it another way, M. King Hubbert accurately foresaw the world's wrenching energy bind of the 70's and 80's ... 25 to 30 years before it took place. He sounded the warning in plenty of time for us to head off — or at least soften — the chaos and suffering that lies just ahead of us now.

Webb, of course, picked up Hubbert's thoughts and worked them into his larger theory about the fate that awaited the Metropolis once it no longer had the Frontier to exploit.

PLOWBOY: Can you tell me more about that fate? What did Webb see in our future?

SHUTTLEWORTH: First of all, that the years ahead will be different from anything we've known. Even if science makes some sort of dramatic breakthrough — which Webb strongly doubted was possible the boom which will result will not be the kind of boom we've had for 450 years. At best, then, a great number of our most cherished institutions, myths, and ways of doing business will have to be discarded. At best, we must prepare for cataclysmic changes in the way we live. Upheaval, one might say, is the best possible case that Webb could forecast for the future.

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