Competing visions of the human future

There are two compelling visions of the future, but only one of them can be true in the longer term. Vision 1, "the conventional idea of progress" is focused on increasing miniaturization and technological complexity, advanced networks, virtual reality, highly efficient transportation, advanced genetic therapies and artificial organ development, solar and wind electric systems, etc. Vision 2, "the limits to growth," is focused on the world as human industrial societies bump into hard limits on the availability of cheap energy, the law of diminishing returns, an exploding human population that cannot be supported on existing resources, an acidifying ocean and a deteriorating climate that is leading to increasingly severe droughts, floods, extreme storms, rising sea levels, pestilence, epidemics, famines, power outages, heating and transportation fuel shortages, resource wars, collapsing infrastructure, civil violence, fracturing of large nations into smaller more governable regions, technological declines in all areas including medicine, and a series of declines and falls in industrial civilization accompanied by a massive plunge in the human population level and the disappearance of 1/4 - 1/2 of all species.

We cannot have both of these in the long term, although we can, and do, in the shorter term. Eventually, like two species competing for the same resources, one will die out. My bet is that it's vision 1 that is not sustainable, crushed by the horrors of vision 2.

Committing Suicide

Industrial civilizations are committing suicide in an approach similar to what long term drug addicts go through. The unlucky ones die because eventually their bodies give out or they get killed by someone or some disease. The lucky ones hit bottom and have some treatment options that might help shift them back towards health.

The problem we face, though, is much worse. Not only are the industrial civilizations suicidal, but the "hitting bottom" events occur well into the global warming process. Many tipping points will have been passed. And unless the pains from hitting bottom are so catastrophic, so lethal to the wealth and property of the world's wealthiest families, then most governments will stay on a suicidal course.

Only when the pains of changing course, of abandoning fossil fuels and high consumption lifestyles, appear better than the pains of continued global warming responses is any change possible. IOW: Not until the industrial nations suffer prolonged droughts, floods, sea level rise with huge damaging storms, epidemics, famine, civil breakdown, loss of reliable electricity, gasoline and natural gas supplies, breakdown of international trade, shortage of clean water, will there begin to exist a politics are responding to climate change rather than making it worse.

And by then, it's too late. Centuries to millennia will have to pass before the earth's climate has any chance at all of returning to the Mediterranean version that gave birth to all human civilization. We've created a new planet, one that Bill McKibben refers to as Eaarth. It's going to be very, very difficult to live on this planet. People will need to live with far, far less energy and technology. New myths will be needed to explain to people, especially children, how the old earth got so desecrated. The world's traditional religions will disappear with they cannot come up with compelling *new* stories. "Jesus died for your sins" isn't going to cut it.

Why are the citizens so resistant?

My sense is that most of the US non-denier public (and perhaps publics in other industrial nations) are simply terrified and/or paralyzed. They sense that the current fossil-fuel based way of life is coming to an end, one way or another, climate catastrophe, disappearance of cheap energy supplies and/or global economic collapse. But no one's providing any scenarios of what a future life not based on fossil fuel could/might be like.

Typically, as close as one gets is either some pie-in-the-sky we'll just switch to solar, wind, water and geothermal, use electric cars, low wattage light bulbs and off we go. Or else we get an apocalyptic "back to the neolithic, Mad Max" calamity. There's nothing in between that's presented, much less proposed and planned, and so most people either ignore climate change and hope "someone thinks of something", or else hope that our current era of "Happy Motoring" lasts as long as possible.

People will never voluntarily sacrifice unless they know the game plan, strategy and desired end game. They need to know what it is we're working towards, something other than, "Let's avoid climate disaster".

The Century of Malthus

It was possible about a quarter century ago to believe that the planet's largest, most energy consuming nations might be able to negotiate agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent the rapid thermal runaway we're now seeing.  It's perhaps debatable whether these countries actually could have done so, but we'll never know because the governments simply were not interested.

And now we face a truly surreal situation.  There's about 5 times as much oil reserves in the ground than would be needed to boost the earth's temperature above the 2 deg C threshold (that could allow governments to manage climate change).  But those reserves are already booked as petroleum company assets and the oil companies have made it very clear: They are not "unbooking" them.  These assets will not be stranded because that would affect company profits and stock values.  And besides: we have no idea how to live without unlimited growth, do we?

We're not going to do anything substantial to avoid even the worst climate change effects because that would mean governments of the industrial nations would need to force their citizens to live less energy consuming lifestyles, and that means what we would call a depression.  Even an authoritarian nation like China cannot force that degree of sacrifice on its population.  There would be a revolution.

So it's time to dust off Malthus.  The earth's human population is going to radically shrink this century.  How much?  90%?  95%?  99%?  Too soon to tell, of course.  We don't know how bad climate change will get.  We don't know when industrial economies will collapse.  What do we know?  It's going to be a terrifying century, full of chaos, violence, disease, pestilence, epidemics, warfare and bare knuckled efforts to survive. 

Radically new religions will replace the current ones.  Young people are going to demand new narratives that explain "what the hell happened" and what, if any, is the basis for hope.

In the future

The future meaning mid-21st century...

• People will smell more.  Hot water will be much more of a luxury
• Meat, especially beef, will be too expensive for most citizens
• Fresh, safe drinking water will be difficult to come by in many locations
• Septic tanks and outhouses will make a big return.  People who can install and maintain them should have little trouble finding work
• Local "low tech" security services: sheriffs who live in town and part-time deputies.  
• Horses.  They'll be back as common transportation, especially in more rural areas.
• Golf carts.  Huh?  As a means of cheap local transport, their price will be hard to beat, at least in places where there's enough electricity to power them.
• Firewood makes a big comeback... in regions that can learn to treat it as a renewable resource
• Gardens, gardens, gardens: everywhere there's decent soil and rainfall and somewhat reliable climate.  Look for small scale seed firms to pop up.  
• In urban areas where electricity supply is sketchy, look for ice boxes to come back... Assuming people can figure out how to build and maintain ice houses.
• Radio makes a comeback: Far less power than TV.  

Authoritarianism on the rise

Climate change events (extreme storms, flooding, loosing of arable land, habitat destruction, drought, famine, pandemics) will continue to severely challenge the ability of modern governments to respond. Add to that the looming disappearance of cheap energy supplies, especially oil. The net result is that every modern nation is going to be extremely stressed and many of its citizens will be facing various types of pain, from physical to economic. It's inevitable that authoritarian movements will grow as people demand a restoration of order and punishment for various scapegoats.

The reality is that there is no going back to the cheap energy, safe climate world of the mid-20th century. Every modern nation will be facing emergencies that they have never before faced and the traditional remedies, from "drill, baby, drill" capitalism to brutal crackdowns on weaker groups or nations is not ultimately going to solve the real problems of climate and energy. Governments will struggle to remain in control and in some of the larger nations, they may eventually find that like the Roman Empire in decline, they simply cannot and are better off letting the nation fracture into smaller more manageable regions.

In the US, the Tea Party represents one such movement demanding an impossible restoration of prior order. This is what "I want my country back" is about. In Europe, with its history of fascism, it's not surprising that some nations are again looking to right wing ideologies, even wearing Nazi inspired uniforms, and selecting the usual scapegoats for condemnation (e.g., Jews, immigrants).

Waiting for the meltdown

At this point, There's only one way that the industrial world might have a chance of holding global temperature rise to 2 degrees C: A global economic meltdown that severely restricts the amounts of fossil fuels that get extracted and burned, primarily coal and oil. 

Obviously no politician is going to run for office under a "vote for me and I'll crash the economy and make you all lose your jobs" platform... So we'll have to depend on Wall Street shenanigans again, or some kind of black swan event that strangles much of the world's oil supplies and produces such a collapse. And we'll have to "hope" that the nations' central banks cannot restart the industrial economies nor can any other government actions... So, a good time for wars to get started.

I wish there were some other "hope", but this much should be clear: Since neither the US nor China is willing to voluntarily crash their own economies, we're either heading for climate catastrophe or else we have to hope that a global economic collapse - long term - happens within the next decade. There are no miracles. Industrial civilization is going through a huge bottleneck, along with the human population.