Collision of Values?

CERN, the atomic research facility in Switzerland/France, recently announced plans to build a circular particle collider much larger than its collider that was used to discover the Higgs particle last year. The cost of the new facility will be in the 2-figure billions of francs; the cost of the Higgs particle project was ca. CHF 4-5 billion. At the time that plans for researching the Higgs particle were announced, a friend wrote an essay asking if such a costly project was ethical, considering the number of starving children in the world.

This is a worthwhile question; given the fact that in West Africa alone, something like 1 million children are starving. It raises a host of other questions as well, questions about other huge expenditures in the world and why, in a world with enough food, people are starving. Let’s look at some of the answers to these two questions, starting with the causes of starvation.

First, there is the enormous problem of food waste. Something like 40% of the world’s food is wasted before it gets to the table. In developing countries, home to the majority of the world’s starving children, most of this waste occurs in the field because of the lack of efficient harvesting techniques, adequate storage and transportation. Globalization contributes as well, as too many people in developing countries are growing cash crops rather than food for themselves.

Two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, famine and war, ride roughshod over large areas of the world, leaving starving populations in their wake. Then there is extreme poverty, and rapidly rising food prices in the wake of speculation that sees food as just another commodity. Global warming means more crop shortages due to inclement weather and droughts. Another example of the law of ecology that says everything is connected to everything else.

We know about these problems; we read about them in the newspaper and see pictures of pitiful children with the swollen bellies of severe malnutrition and stick arms and legs. We know that various organizations are on hand with food distribution in crises, teaching programs for farmers, and Fair Trade implementations. Greater investment in infrastructure and transportation are needed. On a larger scale, peacekeeping missions and measures to slow global warming mean, among other things, less hunger in the world. All of these programs are very, very costly.

So here we have an enormous humanitarian problem in need of a lot of money, on the one hand, and a huge scientific project that will use a lot of money, on the other. Seems imbalanced. But wait; there are other sinks for huge amounts of money in the world:

Military spending: In 2013, the United States had a military budget of $682 billion, 39% of the world’s total.

Fossil fuel subsidies: These are estimated to be close to $2 trillion a year. In the developed world subsidies are mostly indirect, in the form of a dearth of responsibility on the part of the fossil fuel companies for the havoc wrecked by global warming, the negative health effects of burning fossil fuels etc. Direct subsidies in the developing world have contributed to a raised standard of living but created problems for the future (global warming, the negative health effects of burning fossil fuels etc.) Given the fact that fossil fuel companies are the most successful companies of all time, raking in enormous profits, one questions why such subsidies are given at all.

Bailing out Greece: The EU rescued Greece from financial meltdown at a total cost of €240 billion in two loans. The CERN project costs peanuts by comparison.

Super-high salaries: Small in scale compared to military spending and fossil fuel subsidies, these salaries are so out of proportion that they raise a moral question:

-Bankers’ boni: in the EU these are supposed to be capped at 100% of the salaries of top officers, but a loophole may make possible boni of up to 250%. Needless to say, the salaries themselves are out of sight.

-CEO, sports figures and entertainers’ earnings: the 2013 pay to Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney, was $37.1 million, an increase of 18% over his 2012 salary. Golf pro Tiger Woods made $78 million and tennis star Roger Federer $71.5 million. Madonna was the highest paid figure in the entertainment industry, with $125 million for the year.

I would say that most of these examples are of inflated spending, money not spent wisely. And the CERN project? It concerns our most fundamental understanding of the structure of our world. In addition, basic scientific discoveries often lead to useful applications in the most diverse fields. Einstein’s discovery of the photoelectric effect made possible solar power, for example. The World Wide Web got its start at CERN. One can’t get much more basic than the discovery of the electron in 1897, and that has become the basis for all of our electronics.

 Let’s not forget that doing and analyzing the experiment are only the final steps in what is essentially a huge construction project, providing jobs for thousands of people, new techniques and smaller discoveries along the way. That part of the project money paid for these things gets plowed back into the economy.

Even with all the technical challenges, building the new collider will

be a lot easier than solving the problem of starvation in the world. Spending money on the latter can alleviate hunger but will not keep countries from going to war, nor make the weather less fickle or globalization less damaging. It is basically a human problem, not a financial one.