Weekly John Locke Foundation research division newsletter focusing on environmental issues.
The newsletter highlights relevant analysis done by the JLF and other think tanks as well as items in the news.
NC Public Schools Using End of Course Test to Spread Environmentalist Propaganda
Below is a question from the North Carolina End of Course Assessment, allegedly in biology, that was released recently by the state Department of Public Instruction. It should be pointed out that this is one of several propaganda-based, and not science-based, questions on the test. In coming weeks, this newsletter will focus on other questions from this same test.
What will most likely happen if the human population continues to grow at
current rates?
A There will be fewer natural resources available for future generations.
B There will be an increase in nitrogen levels in the atmosphere.
C There will be a decrease in water pollution.
D There will be an increase in the number of strong hurricanes.
The "correct" answer, as shown in the answer key, is A. Note that the question asks what will "most likely" happen. This suggests that there is settled statistical research based on historical evidence showing that the highest probability outcome of increased population growth at current rates is "fewer natural resources for future generations." As an aside, global population growth has fallen from 2.2 percent in the early 1960s to 1.1 percent in 2011 and is expected to continue to decline for the foreseeable future, so present population growth rates are not expected to continue as the question might imply. The real problem is that there is not a shred of historical evidence to support the claimed correct answer, let alone rigorous statistical analysis, again based on historical facts. In other words, the use of the expression "most likely" has no grounding in rigorous analysis.
As global population has grown over the past couple of centuries, resources have not become more scarce but more abundant. And this is true of almost any natural resource one can think of. The fact is that when the scarcity of any resource begins to increase, its price goes up, which prompts a countervailing response from those using and producing the resource. People find ways of using the resource more efficiently (for example by getting more output from each additional BTU of energy), find cheaper and more plentiful substitutes, or some combination of the two. Also, the higher price typically provides an incentive to find more supplies of the resource. For example, as whale oil became increasingly scarce in the early 19th century, humans (those creatures who, according to this question, will be the reason for fewer natural resources in the future) discovered new technology for using much more plentiful and cheaper crude oil as a source for lighting. A more recent example is the conversion from expensive and relatively scarce copper for communication transmission to fiber optics, whose main input from nature is sand. By the way, it should be noted that since the 1860s when crude oil started to become a standard source for energy, population has grown quite significantly and oil has become less, not more scarce.
The premise behind this exam question, which is both theoretically and empirically false, is that humans are strictly resource consumers. In fact, we are resource creators. The late Julian Simon, University of Maryland economist, referred to the human mind as the ultimate resource. It is the creator of all resources which start out as simply stuff in nature. Again, taking oil as an example, before the 1850s and 60s crude oil was considered to be a nuisance. It would bubble to the surface and ruin what would otherwise have been fertile farmland. It did not become a resource, and therefore valuable, until the human mind, the ultimate resource, figured out that it could be processed and converted into a useful and relatively inexpensive fuel. As the population grows, more minds are added to this resource base. This explains why there is no historical evidence linking population growth to resource depletion. The ignorance embedded in this question should not be tolerated in North Carolina classrooms.
A final point I’d like to make is that it is not at all clear that this question belongs on a biology exam. The question is much more relevant to economics, which is the science of how scarce resources are allocated both in the moment and through time. It is clearly a subject with which the authors of the question have no familiarity. If such a question is to appear on a natural science exam, it seems to me that geology, not biology, would be the appropriate subject. According to a standard definition of the term from Merriam-Webster, biology is:
1: a branch of knowledge that deals with living organisms and vital processes
2 a : the plant and animal life of a region or environment
b : the life processes especially of an organism or group
From this definition, it is not at all clear how this question is appropriate or why this subject matter is being taught in North Carolina classrooms under the heading of biology.
(For a more extensive look at the whole issue of sustainability see this study I did several years back.)
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