A Short History of the Future

Surviving the 2030 Spike

Colin Mason

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781138423954
• eBook ISBN: 9781136572883
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

Has the future a future? Are we bringing history to an end? Observing any one of several individual but critical trends suggests that, without rapid and positive action, history may have only a very short way to run. Whether it is the growth of world population, of greenhouse gas concentrations and the accelerating rate of climate change, the running down of oil and natural gas reserves, growing shortages of fresh water for agriculture, industry and domestic use, or the increasing difficulty in controlling epidemic diseases we are facing a mounting global crisis that will peak in less than a generation, around the year 2030. Taken together, these trends point to a potentially apocalyptic period, if not for the planet itself then certainly for human societies and for humankind.

In this compelling book, and update to The 2030 Spike, Colin Mason explains in clear and irrefutable terms what is going on largely below the surface of our daily or weekly news bulletins. The picture he paints is stark, and yet it is not bleak. Being forewarned, we are forearmed, and he draws on his own extensive political experience to describe how much we can do as individuals, and above all collectively, not merely to avert crisis but to engineer thoroughgoing change that can usher in genuinely sustainable and valuable alternatives to the way we live now.

PART ONE

Is There a Crisis?

CHAPTER 1

THE DRIVERS

On the edge of the sea, a modern village. Low set houses, built strong to withstand the severe storms of the near future, each flowing out into its own open space, grouped around a large, circular compound. Inside this are the school/youth leisure centre – for they are the same – the entertainment/community complex, theatre, tennis courts, swimming pool, whatever. There is a lot of live theatre, music, art and sport – almost everyone here has an active talent. All this can be, and has to be, approached on foot, for no wheeled traffic is allowed inside the village perimeter.

This place is largely autonomous for energy, water and food. If you looked down from above, you’d see all the roofs are blue – ‘blue denim’ solar collectors – with more than a few small wind generators spinning silently. Most people grow their own food, but the village shares its own orchards and community vegetable gardens. Water recycling is so efficient only that transpired to the air by growing plants is lost – this economy is necessary in a drier world.

Housing is quite varied and individual, but the majority choose the communal grouping – private self-contained accommodation within a community of perhaps 30 adults and children sharing facilities like a library, music room, hobby centre. Here, stress and tension are minimal – people get support from those they know and choose to live near, children have easy and regular contact with their peer group.

The landscape is dominated by one huge feature, a slender tower rising over half a mile into the air, surrounded by a greenhouse which drives hot air past generators inside the tower. This, the solar chimney, provides the baseload electric power for this village and the 20 others that make up this spacious, dispersed town. From the ground you can’t see the other villages for the shelter belts of trees between them, but they are all linked, and to the metropolis, by high-speed magnetic levitation trains running in a regular, automated shuttle. Looking out along the single elevated line on its slender pylons, you see beneath what looks like a shining highway at ground level – the solar panels that power these trains.

This village – call it Satu – is largely self-sufficient, but it prospers by operating on a co-operative basis its specialized industry, in this case making thoughtboards for the world computers now helping to transform the developing world with new ideas and appropriate technology. The neighbouring village, Dua, specializes in a world-popular computer game called Ideas.

You can use money or not, as you wish, here. It is possible to live and be content without it. But those who want to work harder, be smarter, can get money and use it for luxuries – maybe their own electric car, rather than a pooled one, works of art, foreign travel. The money circulates efficiently, because it loses value just a little each day you hold it.

Work on the International Space Station has been deferred indefinitely while the problems of this planet are solved. There are still armed forces and weapons, but they are being progressively reduced and incorporated into a world police. Nuclear weapons have been reduced to about 800, with a set programme to eliminate them all within another 10 years. The technology, the knowhow, for all this exist. The people in these villages feel secure, they have everything they need, they have a firm hold on the earth. They are tranquil and happy.

The midday sun struggles to penetrate a dense brown smog that has enveloped the city since early morning. But this is nothing new, it happens every day. However, the city is strangling in more ways than this. Rubbish is uncollected on the streets, which are choked continuously with motor traffic emitting the severe pollution from petrol substitutes. And these streets are dangerous – the absence of community support and breakdown in law and order have given free scope to large numbers of desperate unemployed youths, criminal gangs and deranged individuals the state no longer cares for. Children must stay inside their apartments – traffic problems and the huge cost of running a car make it almost impossible to reach any facility for them other than the school, which is drab and conventional. They have little chance to play with other children, they become silent and withdrawn. Virtual reality games are popular – they are so much more attractive than real life.

Food on the whole is monotonous and of poor quality – the economic rationalist imperative to make everything as cheaply as possible makes sure of that. Almost all the food is manufactured, with doubtful additives. Most people are unhealthy, big pharm thrives as never before. The government, which has long since stopped trying to struggle with these problems, maintains its authority by continuously frightening people about ‘terror’. There are some very wealthy people. They live in gated suburbs, surrounded by high walls and razor wire, protected by armed guards, in constant fear they, or their children, will be kidnapped. Almost everyone in this city is unhappy, insecure and frightened.

Yes, there is a crisis – the two contrasting and admittedly extreme word pictures above hint at its nature, and our responsibilities to choose. In the decade from 2030 six major forces – the ‘drivers’ – are set to combine dangerously, a spike on the graph paper of life that will influence our world for good or ill as never before. Combating its worst effects will need urgent action, informed by the clearest possible understanding of where we are now and where we might go. The history of the future will be profoundly affected by the way we deal with these drivers over the next 20 years. Our options for reacting to them are, accordingly, a major theme in this book.

The right choices will lead us to a saner, healthier and safer society – the not too distant future could be one of unparalleled peace, prosperity and general well-being. The knowledge and resources for this are in place, or can be seen not too far away. We have the best educated generation ever; wealth and potential wealth, although badly distributed, are at their highest and increasing, the automation of industry and agriculture promises almost universally high living standards and an end to the tyranny of heavy and tedious work. The world’s population may stabilize – but only if the poverty afflicting most humans can be alleviated.

Speaking in London in 2001, former American president, Bill Clinton, called for ‘a truly global consciousness’ to spread the benefits of the 21st century around the world.¹ ‘We have the means to make the 21st century the most peaceful and prosperous in human history. The question is whether we have the will.’ That hope is unlikely to be realized by 2030, no matter what we do. But, if effective social and economic reform can be started now, we could see a peaceful and productive transition to a new society shaped by, and successfully adapted to, the oncoming adverse influences – the 2030 drivers. Beyond that is a reasonable prospect of a world order better than the planet has ever seen.

Over the last couple of years there have been some major breakthroughs in the energy field. If these achieve their promise there are indeed prospects beyond the end of oil – energy will be scarcer, more expensive, for several decades at least, but it will be available. Poverty and avoidable disease are being tackled effectively in a number of places – notably China. There is growing public awareness of the dangers of climate change, and some governments are bowing to these. In spite of the negative influence of much major business, new conservational technologies are developing.

But if the wrong choices are made – like taking up the nuclear option, ignoring the reality of climate change, refusing to acknowledge the links between ‘terrorism’ and poverty, or simple denial that there must be change – the near future could be bad enough to kill tens of millions of people in a variety of terrible disasters, even plunge us into a global dark age, and damage the very foundations of life in ways that would take centuries to repair. The harbingers of these disasters are already with us; as I write these words an ugly and costly war is still threatening security in the Middle East, 10 million people are facing starvation in Africa, natural disasters like hurricanes and drought are killing more and more people, while the warnings of severe water shortages and ecological damage are becoming more urgent. So there is a clear need to choose, to establish the courses of action that would contribute to one outcome or the other. Those informed choices will have to be made quickly, and enforced by public opinion and by spending power.

For instance: The International Energy Agency (IEA)² has forecast that more than $1 trillion ($ refers to US$ throughout this book) will be spent on non-hydro renewable energy technologies by 2030 to triple their share of world power generation to 6 per cent. Not good enough – not nearly good enough. Almost all climate experts now say that there needs to be at least a 60 per cent replacement of carbon-based energy to prevent greenhouse gases reaching dangerous levels. Could we do it? Yes. Using that IEA costing as a base, it emerges that by spending $12 trillion over the next 25 years – half what we spend on armaments – the necessary infrastructure could be built. The money and the means are there – it’s as simple as that. If we do it, we are controlling our future. If we don’t, we’re in bad trouble.

There is compelling evidence for the 2030 spike – the combined effect of at least six adverse drivers. The most reliable estimates set readily available oil resources at under a trillion barrels – probably considerably under – and world consumption at 30 billion barrels a year, indicating exhaustion in, at most, 32 years. Predicted increases in oil use would reduce this time substantially. If this is not cushioned by urgent development of alternatives, this will have major and unexpected consequences, not least a catastrophic drop in world food supplies for a population that will grow above 8 billion by that time.

Continued nuclear proliferation, policy changes for the use of atomic weapons by the US and Russia, confrontation in the Middle East, and political pressures from the drivers, make a nuclear war of unpredictable intensity only too possible within 20 years. The consequences of this would seriously aggravate greenhouse effects, due to become significant by 2030. The ‘war against terror’, the growing tension between Islam and ‘the West’, the doctrine that nuclear weapons can safely be used in a ‘limited’ way – all these will tend to aggravate the effect of the drivers. There needs to be a clear understanding of these likely consequences with, unfortunately, little evidence that governments are taking them into account now.

The International Water Management Institute predicts that a billion people will face an absolute water shortage by 2025; the United Nations warns of war over use of the world’s rivers by 2032. Problems of soil degradation, desert spread and salination, already considerable, will be out of control by 2030 in much of the world.³ Unless these threats are recognized and effectively countered, we risk famine and deaths counted in the millions. Recent research into climate trends warn that severe global warming associated with carbon release from the Amazon rainforests, recently afflicted with the worst drought for 40 years, and methane from hydrates in the Arctic is possible by 2030, with perhaps catastrophic effects by 2050.⁴ Even global warming and sea level rises on a much lesser scale would adversely affect agricultural land in developing countries.

Failure to redress the poverty most humans live in, and an almost total lack of political control over globalization – which is irresponsible in the pure sense of the word – are likely to increase economic disproportion and the conflict it causes. Populations will increase most rapidly in the poorest countries, with the West containing no more than 15 per cent of the world’s people by 2030. The world is anarchic, it urgently needs global law – but the largest and most powerful nations are backing away from it.

Most people are aware of some of the facts surrounding some of these issues. However, because the drivers gain force by the simple fact of their interaction, their coincidence presents unique dangers. This major cumulative effect of the drivers, if they are permitted to peak, will be within the lifetime of most of us – certainly within that of our children. Can we avert it, or at least soften its impact? This is feasible but only as a result of fundamental changes in technology and society, beginning now. Unfortunately, there is too little evidence that these dangers have been recognized. So, who will make the necessary decisions? Judging by the available demonstrable facts, governments, political hierarchies, think-tanks, dictators and military juntas are mostly saying and doing the wrong things – according to Bill Morrison, retired agricultural scientist and a pioneer of permaculture, in the Sydney Sun-Herald in August 2005: ‘We’ve got suicidal idiots in charge’. Those new holders of power, the multinationals, could play a crucial role, simply because they are global and so big. But to be useful, including to themselves, their perception of the dangers of the near future must become clearer, their accountability guaranteed, their influence more responsible. And they must stop confusing the issues with slick public relations exercises, behind which not enough of significance is being done.

For the first time in history, the means are emerging for individuals to collectively influence the necessary decisions, using two potent tools – the internet and spending power. It is possible to discern the beginnings of international networks that could put decisive pressure on offending corporations simply by the way consumers spend their money – there have already been a number of successful exercises along these lines. But such pressure needs to be well informed by a reliable assessment of the state of the world and an agenda of reasonable priorities for action.

What follows, then, is an attempt to distil from the formidable range of information available, a broad picture of the world as it is, and courses of action that might logically be deduced from this and which might shape the future we all want. This has taken a lot of time and effort, because the public record is indeed a minefield, full of misinformation, spin, lies, call it what you will, often coming from dishonest think tanks financed by big business. And to quote Woody Allen: ‘Don’t underestimate the power of distraction to keep our minds off the truth of our situation.’ Elements of distraction exist in our world as never before – traffic, television, ‘terrorism’, telephones, computer games…

We all suffer from information overload, which is, in itself, a distraction. The sheer volume of available information tends not only to obscure the important issues, but also to dissuade people from coping with the problem of understanding its relevance to their lives. Hence this book is planned as a single volume of reasonable size, accessible to people with no prior knowledge of the subject, covering the major facts and trends. This objective, and its necessary limitations, must be my only apology to those who feel their specialist area has been dealt with too briefly, too superficially or even omitted – and I am sure there will be many of those.

If we want change, we must find out what reasonable conditions it requires. If an interest group, be it students, workers, Balinese or capitalists, see themselves as threatened by change, they will fight it. Much of the lack of progress in solving obvious and urgent world problems can be traced back to a lack of recognition of this fact. So important and self evident is this, that I believe it ranks as one of two axioms upon which much of the argument of this book is based. We might state Axiom One as:

Useful change is likely to come only if it can provide as, equal, obvious and general a benefit as possible.

Regrettably, much of the recent debate about the future has been confrontational and extreme. Two of the better known examples, books published in the 1970s, have without doubt influenced decision-makers of today. The Limits to Growth⁵ was typical of the ‘doomsayers’ – those who warned of an imminent crisis because of population pressures, pollution and the exhaustion of natural resources. While many of its premises are still valid, its modelling of world problems has been criticized, and some of its conclusions – such as the exhaustion of mineral resources like aluminium, lead, zinc and silver, and ‘a sudden and serious shortage of arable land’ by 2000 – have not been justified by events.

The Next 200 Years⁶ took almost exactly the opposite point of view, aiming, in its own words, ‘to present a plausible scenario for a “growth” world that leads not to disaster but to prosperity and plenty’. Here again, many of the conclusions have subsequently been shown to be flawed, especially in regard to the availability of energy, which, as we shall see, is one of the most important and imminent areas of crisis now facing the world. Prediction of the future is notoriously risky, and it is not the purpose of these comments to criticize the writers of these two books and many o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• Preface
• Part One: Is there a Crisis?
• Part Two: Directions
• Part Three: Upgrading the Individual
• Part Four: The New Society
• Notes
• Index