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Alexander V. Maslikhin - PhD,
professor of Mari State University, Russia

Nikolai А. Khlybov, Alexander N. Fedyaev

Global problems of mankind: existing dangers and organizational decisions

Alexander V. Maslikhin

The problems facing mankind have global and local scales. The problems representing danger to all mankind concern the global. Local problems are dangers to the existence of people of separate regions. Global problems of the present express the prospects of increase of contradictions in the development of mankind, and its relation to the nature’s evolution. The greatest danger to the modern mankind is represented by the threat of nuclear-rocket world war. If nuclear warfare comes on it will throw in the shade of all last bloodsheds – mice and men including mankind will go to pieces. Then there won't be on the Earth neither global, nor simple problems, – there would be no need and nobody to solve them.
Number of essential global problems concern:
– The problem of ecological crisis – whether can the growth of mankind and scientific and technical progress irreversibly destroy the biosphere of the Earth?
– The problem of demographic crisis – it consists of the impetuous growth of the population of the planet and simultaneously of the reduction of population in Europe, including Russia;
– The problem of urbanization – the growth of cities and settlements;
– The problem of raw crisis – whether will the growth of using raw materials (both organic, and mineral) set to its exhaustion?
– The problem of energy crisis – whether will be all accessible to the mankind energy sources exhaust as a result of scientific and technical progress and extensive development of manufacture?
There is a number of other global problems being components of listed – the problems of global warming, ozone layer destruction, distribution of especially dangerous diseases etc.
The relation of scientists to the global problems is ambiguous. There are polar positions: on the one hand the global problems are absolutized, the fatalism is presented at their understanding. That is shown in the opinion of impossibility to resolve global contradictions. As a result follows the sermon of ideas of catastrofism and inevitability of the destruction of mankind. On the other hand the global problems are completely denied, only local problems are admitted.
In our opinion, the understanding of global contradictions in the development of mankind begins from the XVIII-th century when the great geographical discoveries had been ended. The outstanding minds of mankind began to reflect on global problems, i.e. on the problems existing on scales of all Globe. For example, Thomas Maltus in the book «The Essay about the principles of population» has deduced a severe objective law: the ability of a planet to provide people with the foodstuff, at growth of population of the Earth will be depleted sooner or later. So the image of pessimistic understanding of the global problems and antihumane ideas of overcoming of these contradictions in malthuzian and neomalthuzian doctrines come into existence.
Catastrophic ideas are characteristic for religious thinking. In antique mythology, the majority of world religions has prophecies on global shocks and destruction of mankind. So, the basic book of Christian religion – the Bible (New Testament) has a division "Apocalypse" predicting cataclysms and drawing a picture of destruction of the Earth. Similar ideas, as a rule, feed the political and ideological conceptions having antihumane and antiscientist character.
Despite the gloomy prophecies of Maltus no one of resources of a planet hasn’t been exhausted to the beginning of the XXI century. What’s the matter? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to address to the scientific theories developed in the XX-th century. The doctrines about global processes in biosphere’s development were created by the representatives of some natural and humanitarian sciences.
The outstanding Russian geologist and philosopher Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) wrote: in the XX-th century the mankind became the geological force of planetary scale defining many parties of existence as the sphere of life – biospheres, and the reason spheres – noospheres [2]. According to him, the growth of influence of mankind on a cover of the Earth has both negative, and positive consequences. Therefore the mankind should incur the responsibility for the further evolution of the nature and the development of a human society. He possessed by the merit of dialectic research of contradictive consequences of growth of people’s life-sustaining activity.
At the beginning of the XXI-st century the number of people on a planet continues to increase and simultaneously the average life duration grows in the majority of the countries of the world. It testifies that the condition of “homo sapiens” as a biological specie is adequately. Such consequence can be deduced on the basis of the classical evolutionary doctrine created by English biologist Charles Darvin (1809-1882)[7]. According to his views, there is only one objective and absolute criterion of specie’s prosperity– the increase of its number. However the favorable condition of mankind can be replaced by the adverse. Numerical growth of people and scientific-technical progress afford an escalating impact on the nature, that can have tragical consequences. Global antropogenic, ecological accidents are sharply able to reduce the population of the Earth, they become more and more probable. It is necessary to predict the results of any coil of mankind’s progressive development which can turn back to the regress with the most tragical consequences.
Ideas about the necessity of environmental protection should be strengthened with the strategy of rational wildlife management. It is wellknown, through the activity the person is connected with the nature and by the fact of the existence influences the nature. Therefore it is impossible to put all economic activities under an interdiction, as also to reject its separate kinds. On the contrary, it is necessary to manage rationally, with the attraction of the data of ecology and other sciences.
In the newest time some of the forms of human’s influence on the nature – for example, connected with oil recovery, nuclear energy use – get catastrophic character. Ecological accidents happen even more often, they have the scale and remote consequences for all mankind. Hence, there was a sharp requirement of structuring of ecological consciousness for all subjects of economic activities, and in the sphere of scientific researches – for overcomings of the simplified representations about the ecological equilibrium laws between the nature and the society.
Let's take a number of examples. Oil emissions in ocean as a result of failures of tankers, chisel platforms become regular, they have character of accidents. However, their consequences are ambiguous. Insignificant emissions increase biological efficiency and a biological variety in the ocean. Considerable emissions reduce it. The blocks of a land polluted by oil products, sometimes become unsuitable for many forms of wildlife. However, the biological variety in the places of oil pollution appears approximately the same, as in pure places[1, 4]. The matter is that oil is organic connection which is acquired by many live organisms. At oil surplus the quantity of the organisms acquiring it increases, and the quantity of the organisms, not capable to acquire oil, decreases. So the surplus of oil in environment can be both useful and harmful.
Let's result one more example. On April, 26th, 1986 there was a large antropogenic accident – Chernobyl NPP explosion. The territory in some thousand square kilometers was polluted by emission of the radiation materials. The basis of radioactive substance was made by long-living isotopes. It was difficult to expect an improvement in ecological situation around accident in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, it has appeared that thanks to natural self-cleaning, the environmental condition during the last years has considerably changed to the best. By 1988 ecological situation around Chernobyl has stabilized. At the beginning of the XXI century a biological variety and biological weight in a failure zone has appeared even above, than before accident. By data both Russian, and foreign experts[3, 5], life expectancy of chernobiltszev has exceeded the average life expectancy of other levels of population (at the expense of the best material maintenance and greater attention of doctors to their health). These facts testify that consequences of ecological accidents can appear back expected and for the forecasts it is important to involve all arsenal of a modern science[6].
The comprehension of mankind ‘s unity as the planet’s evolution’s factor occurs not only at the expense of positive aspects of the influence on the world, but also through the whole spectrum of negative consequences of an antropogenic way of development. The globality of existing problems complicates their decision at regional level, i.e. in the scales of one or several states. In the organizational plan the decision of global problems inevitably demands the creation of special «intellectual anti-recessionary center common to all mankind» which should define the strategy of application of scientific knowledge for the prevention of global accidents.
In finding-out ways of the decision of global problems it is necessary to define the strategy of their decision. Here as a basic point it is necessary to pay attention to «the sustainable development Concept» (HENS), accepted on the conference on environment and development (1992, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro) under the aegis of the United Nations. In the structural relation it is multidimensional, contains political, economic, ecological, social, international, information aspects. All of them are interconnected among themselves and necessary for its understanding. Here we will allocate its actual aspect – ecological.
Its maintenance contains: a) the coevolution’s maintenance of the society and the nature, the restoration of relative harmony between them, the aiming of all transformations at noosphere’s formation; b) the preservation of real possibilities not only for present, but also for the future generations then to satisfy the basic vital needs; c) the theoretical working out and practical realization of methods of an effective utilization of natural resources; d) the maintenance of ecological noosphere’s development’s safety; e) expansion at first low-waste, and then wasteless manufacture on the closed cycle, wide development of biotechnology; f) gradual transition from the power based on the burning of organic fuel, to the alternative power using renewed energy sources (the sun, water, a wind, energy of a biomass, underground heat etc.); g) perfection of administrative, economic and legal methods of protection of the nature etc.
An important example of the organizational decision of working out of ways of the decision of global problems is the Roman club which was headed for a long time by Aurelio Pechchei. By the initiative of this non-governmental organization a number of the large researches published in the form of reports has been carried out. Their number concern: «growth Limits», «Mankind at a turning point», «the mankind Purposes», etc. Within the limits of this direction already in the last quarter of the XX-th century the educated people began to realize the unity of a modern civilization and the generality of destinies of all countries and people of the Earth.
The essential contribution to understanding of global problems of mankind is brought by the World philosophical congresses spent under the aegis of the World federation of philosophical societies. So, on the XXI World philosophical congress in 2003 (Turkey, Istanbul) the most urgent theme: «Philosophy faced to global problems» have been discussed. The Istanbul congress discussed, first of all, such world problems exciting all mankind and each concrete person, as a preservation of peace and the prevention of nuclear war, affinity of ecological accident, a demographic problem, poverty and backwardness of the Third World countries, crisis of the person. On the congress were also actively discussed such threats for mankind, as hunger, high death rate, illiteracy, inequality. According to the outstanding philosopher of the present, professor I. Kuchuradi, the process of globalization is one of the major aspects of world problems. It ascertained: the globalization has both its supporters, and opponents. It has carried to negative sides of globalization: drug traffic, environmental contamination; cultural imperialism; fundamentalism, recourse of some the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America.
Global problems broadly change the approach to the understanding of social progress, have forced to overestimate those values which were put throughout all history of the civilization in its basis. There is obvious for many a men that, on what academician V.I. Vernadsky half-centuries ago has paid attention: «the Person has understood for the first time that it is the inhabitant of a planet and can – should – to think and operate in new aspect, not only in the aspect of the separate person, a family, a sort, the state, but also in planetary aspect». Such generalized, planetary sight at the person and its place in the world was an important step to formation of global consciousness on the basis of person's understanding of the integrity. The following step consists of moral reorientation of people, of understanding from these positions of a current situation and search of practical ways of it's exit.
Crisis of the modern society is appreciably caused by total, global alienation of the person. There appears a necessity of rescue of mankind for improvement of a society and for education of the person, and not just for scientific and technical achievements.
Global problems demand from mankind of a spiritual unification for the sake of civilization rescue. They have led to necessity of qualitative changes for life-support systems of a society and its valuable orientations. They demand essentially new human relations, and also the relation of people to the nature. To be or not to be to new world war depends on the person, and environmental problems depend on the relation of the person to the nature, from a condition of environment, its evolution.

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Literature:

1. Vasilyev S.V. The influence of the oil-extracting industry on wood and marsh ecosystems. – Novosibirsk: the Science, 1988. 136 p.
2. Vernadsky V.I. Reflections of the naturalist. – М: the Science, 1975. 175 p.
3. Ilyin L.A. Realities and myths of Chernobyl. – М: Alara Limited, 1994. 446 p.
4. Koshelev V. V, . The reaction of hydrobionts to pollution of environment by working out of oil and gas deposits in the shelf of Barentsev sea . – Murmansk: ПИНРО, 1997. 92 with.
5. Miretsky И, etc. Chernobyl – scales of medical consequences//Life and safety,
№ 4, 1998, p. 245-247.
6. Ecology bases. V.L.Obuhov and V.B.Sapunov. – S-Pb: Spetslit, 1998.
7. Darwin C. The origin of species. – L.: J. Murray, 1859.

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