Doomsday Politics: Prospects for International Co-Operation
| Published date | 01 March 1973 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070207302800106 |
| Author | A. J. Miller |
| Date | 01 March 1973 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
A.
J. MILLER
Doomsday politics:
prospects
for
international
co-operation
As
the
artist,
William
Hogarth,
approached
death
he
recorded his
inner
feeling
of
hopelessness
with
an engraving
designed to
con-
vey
the
end
of
all
things
-
the
Bathos.
In
it
Time
lies
exhausted
amid
rubble
while,
nearby,
a
tavern
sign
shows
a
globe
rent
open
and
burning.
In
one
hand
Time
holds
his
last
will
and
testament,
sealed by
the
three
Fates.
It
reads,
'all
and
every
Atom
thereof
to
Chaos
whom
I
appoint
my
sole
Executor.'
This
last
desperate
ex-
pression
by
an
artist
on the
edge
of
personal
oblivion
is
an
appro-
priate representation
of a
current
school
of
scientific
thought
which
sees
man
as
trapped
in the
vice
of
an
environmental
crisis
of
such
magnitude
that
it
threatens
to
obliterate
civilization
or
even
humanity
itself.
There
is
a
gulf,
however, between
these
contemporary
doom-
watchers
and
those
fellow
scientists
who
view
the
environmental
crisis
as
a
temporary
not
a
terminal
condition,
one
in
which
the
seeds
of
a
cure
are
implicit
in
the
crisis
itself.
In
the
imagery
of
Hogarth,
these
people
are
the
cheermongers
-
the
inhabitants
of
Beer
Street
as
opposed
to
Gin
Lane.
The
frequently
bitter
debate
between
these
two
schools
of
thought
has
profound implications
for
international
politics,
for
upon
its
outcome
depend
the sort
of
institutional
arrangements
which
will
attempt
to
regulate
the
world
community
in
the ensuing
decades.
It
is
the
purpose
of
*this
paper
to
examine
a
representative
sample
of
the
proposals
that
environmentalists
and
concerned
political
scientists have suggested
as
the
basis
of
future
internation-
al
co-operation
and,
more
important,
to
assess
their
prospects
of
Assistant
Professor,
Department
of
Political
Science,
University of Western
Ontario.
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