The Personality of Environmental Prediction: Griffith Taylor as 'Latter-day Prophet'

Abstract

Environmental prediction is a practice that may establish and enhance the status of predictors but it also carries risks that vary in relation to the professional and political contexts of its communication. Exploring the lives of scientists involved in the difficult task of environmental prediction highlights the significance of personal identities in the cultural history of science. Geographer Griffith Taylor (1880–1963), whose raison d'être was environmental prediction, is an ideal subject to examine from this perspective. Facing opposition to his early predictions of Australia's limited settlement prospects, owing to the continent's aridity, he used intemperate language to deliver sober warnings and sparred with naysayers and doubters in the popular media. By the 1920s he saw himself as a ‘latter-day prophet', and he carried that sense of self forward when he moved to North America in 1928. Yet in Canada his environmental predictions, although favourable, were considered overly optimistic and often disregarded altogether. This prophet realized that he was happier being attacked than ignored. Taylor's career suggests that positive prognostication, when dismissed, offers less personal compensation than cautionary prophesies that face opposition in hostile political or intellectual contexts.