Against "The Sky is Falling" part 2

Population, Consumption, Carbon Emissions, and Human Well-Being in the Age of Industrialization (Part II — A Reality Check of the Neo-Malthusian Worldview)

by Indur Goklany
April 23, 2010

Editor’s note: This is the second of a four part series. Part I provided a long-term view of commodity prices, their affordability and the impact on human well-being. Here, Indur M. Goklany looks in more detail at global trends in human well-being in the Age of Industrialization, from 1750 – 2007.

In the worldview of many environmentalists and Neo-Malthusians, as population and economic development increase so does the consumption of energy, land, water and other natural resources. Originally, Malthusians feared that we would run out of these resources, and natural resource–based products, particularly food, would be in short supply, resulting in famine and a general decrease in human well-being. But as shown in the previous post, instead of becoming scarcer, resources (such as metals and food) actually have become more affordable, and the hunger and famine that had been foretold went AWOL. [I will out of charity, not beat the dead horse of Paul Ehrlich’s failed predictions.] Elsewhere, I have also shown that, at least before the enactment of government policies to boost biofuels, land and water use had, more or less, stabilized in the richer world and, possibly, worldwide (see here and here).

Today, Neo-Malthusians focus more on pollution, environment, and climate change, consumed by the notion that the by-products of all the production and consumption that underlies humanity’s economic activity would overwhelm the earth’s assimilative and regenerative capacities. This view is captured in the identity, I = PAT, where I is a measure of impact (usually, environmental impact); P is the population; A stands for affluence, and is measured by per capita production or per capita consumption and often proxied by the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita; and T, denoting technology, is a measure of the impact per unit of production or consumption. Notably, the product of P and A is the GDP, that is, consumption. Therefore, under the IPAT formulation: (a) T is the ratio of impact to GDP, which I will call “impact intensity,” and (b) the impact should grow in proportion to GDP.

As noted here:

The IPAT identity has been remarkably influential. It has intuitive appeal because of its apparent simplicity and seeming ability to explain how population, consumption or affluence, and technology can affect human and environmental well-being. It serves, for example, as the “master equation” for the field of industrial ecology (e.g., Graedel and Allenby 1995). One of its versions underpins the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s emission scenarios … (IPCC 2000, pp. 83–84)…

Despite recognizing that “benign” technology could reduce some impacts, many Neo-Malthusians argue, to quote Jared Diamond (2005, p.504), it is a mistake to believe that “[t]echnology will solve our problems.” In fact, goes this argument, “All of our current problems are unintended negative consequences of our existing technology. The rapid advances in technology during the 20th century have been creating difficult new problems faster than they have been solving old problems…” Diamond (2005, pp. 505). Ehrlich and co-workers argue that for most important activities, new technology would bring diminishing returns because as the best resources are used up (e.g. minerals, fossil fuels and farm land), society would increasingly have to turn to marginal or less desirable resources to satisfy demand which would increase energy use and pollution (Ehrlich and Holdren 1971; Ehrlich et al. 1999).

According to the IPAT identity, if all else remains the same, an increase in population, affluence or technology would each act as multipliers for environmental impact (e.g., Ehrlich and Holdren 1971; Ehrlich 2008). And as that impact increases, human well-being would necessarily deteriorate. The IPAT identity has been used to support the contention that the human enterprise as currently constituted is unsustainable in the long run, unless the population (P) shrinks, we diminish, if not reverse, “overconsumption” or economic development (A) (particularly in the United States), and apply the precautionary principle to new technologies, which in their view essentially embodies a presumption against further technological change unless the technology involved is proven safe and clean in all respects (Ehrlich and Holdren 1971; Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1991; Myers 1997; Raffensperger and Tickner 1999).

But do empirical data support the notion that increasing population and consumption coupled with technological change reduces human well-being?

Figure 1 shows global trends from 1760 onward for population, affluence (GDP per capita), CO2 emissions, and life expectancy (a surrogate for human well-being).



Figure 1: World population (P), GDP per capita (A), life expectancy (LE), and CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in the Age of Industrialization, 1760-2007. Data for P, A and LE are sporadic until 1960. This figure assumes that trends between adjacent data points are linear. Sources: Maddisson (2003, 2010); World Bank (2009); CDIAC (2009).

It shows that contrary to the Neo-Malthusian worldview, despite an octupling of global population, and increases in affluence by an order of magnitude and CO2 emissions by three orders of magnitude, the state of humanity — as measured by average life expectancy at birth, the single most important indicator for human well-being — has advanced. In fact, life expectancy more than doubled from 26 years to 69 years. Table 1 summarizes the changes from 1750 to 2007.


Table 1: Global Population, Affluence, CO2 emissions, and Life Expectancy, 1750–2007. Sources: Maddison (2010), CDIAC (2009), World Bank (2010).

Not only are we living longer, we are also healthier, as is evidenced by the fact that for virtually every country, the Health Adjusted Life Expectancy — life expectancy adjusted downward to account for life years spent in poor health — currently exceeds the unadjusted life expectancy from a few decades ago (see, The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet, page 40). And as anyone who has travelled elsewhere recognizes, water and food are safer in richer countries.

By contrast to safe food and water, the situation with respect to other environmental indicators is more complex. Empirical evidence suggests that as countries advance economically and technologically, some environment indicators (e.g., air pollution and some water pollutants) first gets worse, then, as they achieve a certain level of development, the environmental deterioration peaks and the indicator begins to improve again. This “environmental transition” can be explained by the environmental transition hypothesis that initially societies opt for economic and technological development over environmental quality because such development allows them to escape from poverty and improve their quality of life by making both needs and wants (e.g. food, clean water, education, health, homes, comfort, leisure and material goods) more affordable. But once basic needs are met, society begins to perceive that environmental deterioration compromises its quality of life, and starts to address its environmental problems. Being wealthier and having access to greater human capital, it is now better able to afford and employ cleaner technologies. And also with the passage of time, society now has access to improved technologies that are cleaner and/or more effective. Consequently, environmental deterioration is, first, halted and, then, reversed. Thus, technological change and economic growth may initially be the causes of environmental impacts, but eventually they work together to effect an “environmental transition” — after which they become a necessary part of the solution to environmental problems. Thus we see that rich countries have better air quality, for instance, as do many poor countries, while countries in-between have worse air quality.

Figure 2 presents a stylized representation of the Environmental Transition Hypothesis.



Figure 2: A stylized depiction of the Environmental Transition Hypothesis, a generalization of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. It shows the evolution of environmental quality – the negative of environmental impact (EI) – as a society evolves from a low to a high level of economic development. The figure assumes that affluence and technology advance with time, which is broadly consistent with historical experience since the start of the Industrial Revolution. NOTE: p(P) = “period of perception,” the period during which the notion that environmental degradation can compromise human well-being gains acceptance; p(T) = “period of transition,” the period over which that perception leads to actions which eventually reduce environmental degradation; “Race to the Bottom Region” (where society strives to increase economic development despite increasing EI); NIMBY Region = “not in my backyard region” (EI enters this region if benefits far exceed costs to beneficiaries); C/B Region = cost/benefit region (where benefits and costs have to be more carefully balanced). Source: Goklany (2007)

In my next post, I will focus on long-term trends for population, consumption, and affluence for the U.S., and verify whether its human and environmental well-being have been compromised by the increased use of fossil fuels, synthetic chemicals, metals and other materials.

11 comments

1 Matt { 04.23.10 at 3:09 am }

You’ve premised your argument on the assumption that GDP correlates to wellbeing. It does up to a certain point, as you provide basic level services for people. However, as the consumption/GDP continues past this point, the happiness/welbeing stays flat while consumption rises.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index#cite_note-4
It seems that by labeling realists as “neo malthusians” you are able to make cherry pick silly arguments regarding how realists are somehow anti-technology. Nothing could be farther from reality. Technology has not created more problems. Our culture of consumption has created the problems. Technology has simply been unable to keep pace with our ever expanding appetite for consumption. You cannot consume your way to happiness. It’s about sufficiency, not excess. I’d suggest focusing on success metrics for your next post, not a continuation of this self fulfilling, head in sand prophecy.
2 Down PAT | The Rational Optimist… { 04.23.10 at 3:15 am }

[...] always perceptive Indur Goklany has turned his attention to IPAT, the formula by which some environmentalists insist that human impact (I) gets worse if population [...]
3 Steve Burrows { 04.23.10 at 12:51 pm }

Reading this series of posts with much interest, I’ve been finding it a very useful summary of this topic.
4 Jon Boone { 04.23.10 at 3:19 pm }

Neo-Malthusians such as the Ehrlichs, Jared Diamond, Lovins, etc, have more in common with eschatology than they do the disciplines of economics and science. That they are occasionally correct has more to do with the fact that a stopped clock is right twice a day than it does with the successful predictions wrought by scientific rigor.

I too will look forward to Parts III and IV.
5 A Reality Check for Neo-Malthusians | Think Tank West { 04.24.10 at 8:35 am }

[...] [...]
6 Jon Boone { 04.24.10 at 2:20 pm }

Although I can’t agree with Matt that Ehrlich, et al, are “realists” in any functional sense, he does have a point about the lack of a good operational definition of “happiness,” a concept kept purposely vague by Jefferson, who evidently believed that its pursuit was sufficient for good society. GDP is one of many possible measurements of happiness–or its absence–but no metric is the same as the thing itself.

Matt and others might read Gary Wills’ Inventing America, who provides a stimulating discussion about happiness as it relates to life, liberty, and property, covering Locke, William Wollaston, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Ferguson, George Mason, and Ben Franklin, as those stalwarts struggled to provide at least contextual understanding of the concept in the 18th Century.

For me, consumption, at many different levels, contributes to happiness. The question, as is the case in so much of life, is what constitutes satiety. I love the new Ipad, on top of my computer, pickup truck (to get around mountain terrain), HDTV, an old Victorian home. I also thrive on mediative walks through old-growth forest, where no human technology encroaches for miles around, and by reading 200-year old books by a quiet fire. I don’t feel at all that I’m putting either my neighbors, the people of Africa, or the planet at risk by over-consumption. Quite the contrary. I’d love for all to have what I have, and more, if they wish.

So, come on, Matt, tone down your jeremiad, leavened as it is with self-righteous notions about consumption, and help fashion a practical public policy that protects–even enhances–the best of our modernity. Which I think that Indur Goklany is working to do here.
7 Indur M. Goklany { 04.24.10 at 8:29 pm }

Thanks for your comments. Matt. Following are specific responses — your comment, followed by my response.
————————————–
MATT: You’ve premised your argument on the assumption that GDP correlates to well-being. It does up to a certain point, as you provide basic level services for people. However, as the consumption/GDP continues past this point, the happiness/welbeing stays flat while consumption rises.

RESPONSE: First, I agree, wealth or GDP per capita does not buy happiness. But I do not (and would not) equate “human well-being” to “happiness”. My work is based on objective measures of well-being. See, e.g., http://www.ejsd.org/docs/HAVE_INCREASES_IN_POPULATION_AFFLUENCE_AND_TECHNOLOGY_WORSENED_HUMAN_AND_ENVIRONMENTAL_WELL-BEING.pdf or page 376 of the book The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet (link is provided on the left of this page). I am sorry that this wasn’t emphasized in the blog. So please accept my apologies.

“Happiness,” on the other hand, is literally a state of mind and, therefore, quite subjective. You will not see any reference in my work to “happiness”.

Second, using life expectancy (LE) as a measure of human well-being, the relationship is not between LE and GDP, but LE and GDP per capita. Third, the relationship between the latter two is logarithmic. So while the slope declines, it does not quite flatten out. So, yes, the poorest folks get the greatest extension of LE for every dollar of income, but, all else being equal, richer will live longer, but every additional dollar will get that much less.
————————————
MATT: Technology has not created more problems. Our culture of consumption has created the problems. Technology has simply been unable to keep pace with our ever expanding appetite for consumption. You cannot consume your way to happiness.

RESPONSE: I am glad we agree that technology has not created more problems, but it certainly has more than kept pace in terms of ensuring that the objective measures of well-being continue to improve, as the data presented here for LE (and health) show. But we are talking about two different things. You are talking about “happiness” and I am talking about objectively measured well-being.

Finally, you have no quarrel with me when you claim that “you cannot consume your way to happiness.” I don’t equate consumption with happiness. I am skeptical that many people do, or ever did, as evidenced by the old saying, “money doesn’t buy happiness.” If some people consume more on the basis that they are going to be happier, it’s a tip-off that their lack of happiness is due to a more fundamental factor than lack of consumption. However, it’s unclear what are “the problems” (that you refer to) that consumption has created.
8 Indur M. Goklany { 04.24.10 at 9:12 pm }

Rational Optimist, thanks for visiting.

For readers of this blog, Rational Optimist has some interesting observations and poses very interesting question regarding how much land is needed to provide energy for a light bulb today versus how much land was needed to get equivalent lighting via tallow.

RO: I will post some info on a related matter on your website later today, but I do not have the exact answer to your precise question.
9 Robert R. Reynolds { 04.24.10 at 9:41 pm }

I was born in 1917 and feel I was able to “ride the curve” of rising expectations to its apex in the 1990’s. The Green fantasy of AGW is an attempt to halt the rise of expectations to a sustainable level that will first affect the populations of the poorer countries of the world. I believe I was most furtunate to have lived in the “best of times” man has achieved during his short reign on Earth. About 10 years ago an article appeared in Geotimes (now Earth) that estimated at 6 billion, the earth was overpopulated by a factor of 4 times if everyone was to live on the scale of northern Europe and the United States. I regret that this has come to pass within my long lifetime.
10 Goklany takes on greens - danielbenami.com { 04.25.10 at 4:14 am }

[...] always interesting Indur Goklany takes on neo-Malthusians and environmentalists in this post on the masterresource website. He gives useful statistical examples of how human well-being has [...]
11 U.S. Well-Being in the Age of Fossil Fuels | Think Tank West { 04.25.10 at 9:03 am }

[...] Elsewhere, I have shown data that, notwithstanding the Neo-Malthusian worldview, human well-being has advanced globally since the start of industrialization more than two centuries ago, despite massive increases in population, consumption, affluence, and carbon dioxide emissions. Here I will focus on long-term trends in U.S. well-being, as measured by the average life expectancy at birth, in the age of fossil fuels. [...]

Against "The Sky is Falling" part 1

Population, Consumption, Carbon Emissions, and Human Well-Being in the Age of Industrialization (Part I — Revisiting the Julian Simon-Paul Ehrlich Bet)

by Indur Goklany
April 22, 2010

Editor’s note: As the United States commemorates the 40th anniversary of Earth Day we can expect to hear various commentators bemoan the growth in population, consumption, and carbon emissions driven by fossil-fueled technologies. We will be told that this is unsustainable, that we are running out of resources, that prices are inevitably headed up, and, worse, that such consumption reduces both environmental and human well-being. In this worldview, industrialization and economic development are the inventions of the Devil; de-industrialization and de-development will be our savior.

In this series of posts, Indur M. Goklany will compare the above Neo-Malthusian view of industrialization, economic growth, and technological change against empirical data on human well-being from the age of industrialization. First, he will revisit the bet made in 1980 by Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich on the direction of commodity prices, and examine long-term trends in the prices and affordability of various commodities, specifically, metals and food, going back to at least 1900. Parts II and III will compare long-term trends in population, consumption, economic development, and carbon emissions against trends in human well-being for the world and the United States, respectively. Part IV will provide an explanation as to why the empirical data is at odds with the Neo-Malthusian worldview.

This series of posts draws liberally from: Goklany IM (2009), Have increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being? Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, vol. 1, no.3.

Based on the run-up in global commodity prices over the last decade, some observers speculate that Julian Simon lucked out in winning his famous bet with Paul Ehrlich. Paul Kedrosky, for instance, notes that had the bet been made in subsequent years, Simon would, more likely than not, have lost. And, indeed, there is an element of truth to that, but that would not vitiate Simon’s larger point, namely, that human ingenuity left to itself would probably reduce the the price of goods and, more importantly, advance the state of humanity.

In my opinion, the direction of commodity prices in the bet itself served as a surrogate for the fundamental difference between the worldviews of the two protagonists, namely, whether human well-being would advance over time considering increases in population, and economic and technological development. In fact, some Neo-Malthusians opine that present day populations are already too large, while others of the same ilk believe that continued economic and technological development is unsustainable (see, e.g., here).

But before getting into the larger and more important issues, let me first address the bet itself. Recall that the bet was made in 1980, and the late 1970s and 1980 had seen a spectacular increase in commodity price following the second oil shock. But what goes up is also likely to come down. Statisticians call this the regression to the mean. And Simon, being an economist and an entrepreneur at heart, took a calculated risk and “gambled” on that.

And, indeed, commodity prices reverted to trend and prices turned down during the 1980s. So fortune favors the prepared, and Simon was the better prepared and, perhaps, the wiser of the two protagonists. But he was also lucky, because 10 years is but a brief moment in the context of history. The appropriate period to determine whether Simon or Ehrlich’s worldview is better aligned with historical reality is to look at the matter over many decades, if not generations.

Metal Prices

Figure 1 shows the ups and downs in metal price indices since 1900.


Figure 1: Metals commodity price indices, 1900-2009; 2005 level = 100. Updated from Goklany (2009), Have increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being? Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, vol. 1, no.3, based on sources cited therein.

Predictably, nominal prices have increased over the long term. Real prices, on the other hand, while fluctuating, have generally trended downwards but with a big bounce in the 2000s. Real prices peaked in 2008, but at a level substantially lower than they were in the early decades of the last century when the world’s population was less than a third — and GDP, a surrogate for overall consumption, about a twentieth — of what it is today. Prices have dropped since 2008, but are rising once again because of the global economic recovery, albeit more modestly.

The price increases in the early 2000s should be viewed as a victory for humanity rather than with dismay. It was fueled by an increase in demand in developing countries, mainly China and India, as they joined the rest of the world in benefiting from modern economic growth. This demand drove — and was driven by — the economic development that has turned out to be the most effective poverty reduction machine ever devised. From 2002 to 2005, according to the World Bank’s PovcalNet, the number of people living in absolute poverty in developing countries declined by 230 million (from 1.60 billion to 1.37 billion) despite a population increase of 210 million. Higher commodity prices for the affluent West seems to be a minor inconvenience in light of that (see below).

Real prices, however, miss out on a critical factor. What is important is not whether metals prices have dropped or increased but whether metals are more or less affordable. Wages and income also change over time, generally rising over the longer term. Thus prices should be adjusted to reflect changes in wages or incomes. Accordingly, I define Affordability as the ratio of average per capita income to price. Figure 2 shows the trends in the Metals Affordability for India and the US from 1900 to 2009, based on indexing the affordability of metals in the US in 1900 to 100.



Figure 2: Metals Affordability, US and India, 1900-2009; US 1990 level = 100. Updated from Goklany (2009), Have increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being? Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, vol. 1, no.3, based on sources cited therein. Note that the left hand axis is for the US, and the right hand axis for India.

Note that:

· Despite the price run up in the past decade, and notwithstanding the massive increase in demand from larger and wealthier populations, metals are more affordable now than they were for most of the past century.

· There has been a general increase in affordability in both the US (left hand scale) and India (right hand scale).

· Metals affordability is 10 times higher for the US currently than it is for India. This spread is about the same as it was in 1900.

· Metals affordability increased by more than an order of magnitude since 1900 in both the US and India.

Going back even further to 1800, Figure 3 shows the trends in prices for various metals relative to wages for the US from 1800 to 2007. This figure suggests that the latest increase in prices is just a speed bump in the long road of history.


Figure 3: Metal prices relative to wages, U.S., 1800–2007. Updated from Goklany (2009), Have increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being?

Food Prices

Even more critical for humanity than metals is food, which was Malthus’s original concern. The world’s population has more than quadrupled since 1900. Despite that, and the fact that average real income per capita (adjusted for purchasing power) has sextupled (which ought to further increase demand), food is more affordable today, as indicated by Figure 4. The increased affordability of food from the 1950s onward is the reason why the massive increases in hunger and famines in the developing world foretold by Neo-Malthusians in the 1950s and 1960s never materialized. So much for Malthus and his modern day disciples.



Figure 4: Food Affordability, US and India, 1900-2009; US 1990 level = 100. Updated from Goklany (2009), Have increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being?

Of course, a good portion of the increase in affordability over the long term is that real incomes have increased worldwide. So there is at least one resource whose price continues to increase — human beings!

Affordability

Although the above figures (2–4) indicate that commodities have indeed become more affordable over the long term, there is no guarantee that will continue into the future. Trend is not destiny, but if we wish for positive trends to continue we should understand what drove them in the first place, and try to ensure that the underlying driving forces are sustained. Although this is not a panacea, it does increase the chances of further improvement. Underlying the increases in affordability is a reasonably free market economic system that respects property rights, embraces freer trade, and rewards innovation and risk taking (Goklany 2007). These have ensured that commodities are economically less scarce today than in times past and boosted incomes everywhere, thereby increasing their affordability.

Human Well-Being

Finally, whether certain commodities will continue to become more affordable is actually beside the point. If a brand new use of great benefit to humanity were to be devised for an old commodity, one should not be surprised if its price were to rise. But instead of signaling a worsening of human well-being, that would indicate an improvement (in well-being). The real issue is not whether commodity prices are going up or down but whether human well-being is going up or down. And this is what sets the Neo-Malthusian pessimistic world view apart from that of outright optimists, or more guarded optimists and pessimists.

In my next post I will address whether long term trends are consistent with Neo-Malthusian prognostications that increased population, affluence (a proxy for consumption per capita), technological change and carbon emissions have reduced human well-being over the long haul.

Peace Makers

A Tribute to Samantha Smith

by Robert Hawes

Recently by Robert Hawes: Nullification Revisited


“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” ~ Matthew 5:9

I was only ten years old in 1983, but I well remember the political tensions of the time. In those days, my family and I lived in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, a mere stone’s throw from Washington D.C.; and I knew enough even then to realize that, if the Soviet Union ever decided to send President Reagan some radioactive airmail, we would be there to sign for it right along with him. I imagined that I had some idea of how awful a nuclear war would be (looking back on it, I was clueless, really), but I also thought that there was a whole lot of nothing I could do about it. If and when the alarms went off and the Emergency Broadcast System interrupted Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to announce that negotiations between East and West had broken down for the final time, well, I figured that that would be that. I had heard that Soviet ICBMs would take around forty minutes to reach us, whereas submarine-launched missiles would take maybe less than half of that time. We were too close to the city to go anywhere fast, not when hundreds of thousands of other people would be trying to get out of Dodge, too, and points to the south and west of us would likely be hit as well (Dulles Airport and Quantico among them…cue Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”). My only consolation at the time was the knowledge that, while my parents and I were running for the basement with what we could carry, somewhere out there Uncle Sam would be sending the commies a formal protest, one inscribed on the gleaming steel cylinders of thousands of nuclear bombs and missiles of our own – and our stuff was better than theirs. Surely, we wouldn’t lose.

Meanwhile, while I was busy imagining how manfully (or not) I would face The End, a little girl living several hundred miles to the north had considered the same scenario and put her foot down. Enough of this “Will we or won’t we?” business, Samantha Smith decided. It was time to call the Soviets out.

Writing to the newly installed General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov, in November of 1982, Smith was charmingly polite but to the point:

My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren't please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.

The Soviets received Samantha’s letter and published it in Pravda. Later, in April of 1983, Samantha received a reply from Andropov himself. In it, Andropov complimented her courage and assured her that the Soviet people deplored the idea of nuclear war every bit as much as Americans did:

We want nothing of the kind. No one in our country – neither workers, peasants, writers nor doctors, neither grown-ups nor children, nor members of the government – want either a big or 'little' war.

We want peace―there is something that we are occupied with: growing wheat, building and inventing, writing books and flying into space. We want peace for ourselves and for all peoples of the planet. For our children and for you, Samantha.

Andropov followed this assurance with an invitation for Samantha to visit the Soviet Union, to meet the people, visit a children’s camp and, in short, to “see for yourself: in the Soviet Union, everyone is for peace and friendship among peoples.”

Samantha and her parents accepted Andropov’s invitation, and history was made. The intrepid little girl from Maine became an instant, global celebrity, an inspiration to millions who feared for the future, as well as an object of skepticism on the part those who felt that the Soviet government was using her for propaganda purposes. Dubbed “America’s Youngest Ambassador,” Samantha spent two weeks in the Soviet Union and was impressed with the friendliness of the Soviet people (although she never did meet Yuri Andropov in person, the Soviet leader being seriously ill and in seclusion at the time). Upon returning to the United States, Samantha continued for a time in the public eye, speaking at the Children’s International Symposium in Kobe, Japan (during which she suggested an “International Granddaughter Exchange” in order to facilitate peace and understanding between opposing countries), interviewing various political figures during the 1984 general election campaign, writing a book about her trip to the Soviet Union, and even starring in a television show.

What more Samantha Smith might have accomplished, and in what direction her budding idealism might have developed, can only be imagined; tragically, both she and her father were killed in a plane crash while traveling home to Maine from California on August 25, 1985. She was thirteen years old.

I still remember the media attention that surrounded Samantha Smith and her trip to the Soviet Union. Most of the adults I overheard in conversation at the time were of the opinion that she was being used by the Soviets to put a pleasant face on Communism, and I pretty well took my cue from what I heard. Still, I couldn’t help but be impressed that a kid just like me had captured the world’s attention by the simple act of writing a letter. What Samantha had done challenged my perception of the world as a place where one person could not make a difference, unless that person happened to be rich and famous.

Samantha also challenged me in another important way in that what she had to say about her visit made me really see, for the first time, that the Soviet people were distinct from their government. Prior to that time, I had seen the entire Soviet Union, down to the last individual, as a repressive monstrosity, teeming with evil, dedicated to the destruction of human freedom in general and the United States of America in particular. I would not have been saddened had I heard that the earth had opened up and swallowed the entire country in one righteous gulp. I was only a child then, of course, immature, lacking in knowledge of the world at large, and fiercely loyal to “my side,” as children so often are (and as Samantha Smith herself was at first, given the wording of her letter to Andropov); but my worldview began to mature after Samantha opened the Soviet Union up a little and let us average folk have a look inside. From then on, the tragedy of nuclear war (of war at all, for that matter) took on a new dimension. I no longer saw only American children huddled in their basements in fear of impending annihilation, but Soviet children as well – both equally wanting to live and grow up, both feeling equally helpless as their governments tried to destroy one another for whatever reason.

Now, don’t get me wrong here: none of this should be taken as an apology for the Soviet Union. The Soviet state was, in fact, a repressive monstrosity, second only to Communist China in terms of oppression and murder among the nations of the modern world. Nor was Yuri Andropov the grandfatherly sort of man that Samantha Smith envisioned him when she received his reply to her letter. In reality, Andropov was brutal and ruthless, a true believer in iron-fisted tyranny. He had played a key role in the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Afghanistan, and, had he been younger and in better health when he ascended to the leadership of the Soviet empire, East and West might very well have had that war they so narrowly avoided.

So, no, Yuri Andropov was no kindly old reformed Communist eagerly seeking an opportunity to display the fruits of his repentance before the world. His invitation to Samantha Smith was a convenient propaganda piece, and a masterful one at that. Whether it was his idea or a bit of public relations magic his handlers conjured up for him, we may never know; but it was a play that would have made Lenin himself crack a chilly smile. It scored the Soviet government some brownie points in the court of international opinion at the time.

That said, however, Samantha’s visit ultimately back-fired on the Soviets more than it benefited them, and it did so in two important ways: first, by providing a much-needed respite in an atmosphere of otherwise unremitting hostility; and second, as I’ve already indicated with regard to myself, it caused the American and Soviet people to re-evaluate one another a bit. As the Christmas truce of the First World War demonstrates, the last thing that most governments want is their people mixing with the enemy, as, more often than not, once those peoples come together, they discover that those they have been trained to hate really don’t sleep in coffins or toss babies about on bayonets. The Soviet people impressed Samantha with their – well, humanity – and she opened their eyes a bit as well; the Soviets eventually named a diamond, a mountain and an asteroid after her, and issued a postage stamp with her likeness. At the time of her death, Mikhail Gorbachev wrote:

Everyone in the Soviet Union who has known Samantha Smith will forever remember the image of the American girl who, like millions of Soviet young men and women, dreamt about peace, and about friendship between the peoples of the United States and the Soviet Union.


Samantha Smith postage stamp issued by the Soviet Union in 1985


Samantha once told Nightline’s Ted Koppel that she hoped her efforts on behalf of peace would do some good. Clearly, they did. While Samantha herself never lived to see the Berlin Wall battered to pieces and the hammer-and-sickle lowered from the spires of Moscow to the cheers of hopeful millions, she became a symbol of the courageous vision that brought about those events in the fullness of time.

History’s gallery walls are crowded with the portraits of warriors, conquerors and tyrants, but precious few advocates for peace. And of those few, Samantha Smith is unique; never before or since has anyone so young impacted the world stage, and she did so at an especially crucial time. It is to our shame and detriment that we have largely forgotten her. Today’s troubled world could use an infusion of her optimism and her call for understanding. We could do with a reminder that, although there are truly evil people in the world and we do right in opposing them, far too often we allow ourselves to be overcome by prejudices that blind us in terms of how we perceive other cultures, and how they perceive us.

And so, here’s to you, Samantha, one of the blessed peacemakers, from one of your generation who still remembers. You challenged us. You encouraged us. You gave us hope. You did us proud.


Reprinted from The Jeffersonian.

April 12, 2010