The Future

Al Gore’s book, The Future, is fascinating and perplexing.  The world is being pummeled by enormous waves of change, and most are destructive and unsustainable.  What should we do?  To envision wise plans, it’s important to know the past, and understand how the present mess evolved.  The book presents a substantial discussion of six megatrends that are influencing the future:

EARTH INC is the global economy, dominated by a mob of ruthless multinational corporations.  It’s pushing radical changes in the way we live, work, and think.  Many leaders in the world have become its hand puppets, shamelessly selling influence in exchange for treasure and power.  Earth Inc. is the monster that’s killing the ecosystem.

GLOBAL MIND is the worldwide web that enables communication between people everywhere.  Two billion now have access to it.  It provides access to a cornucopia of fresh information — knowledge from sources outside the walls of culture and propaganda.  The Global Mind is our single hope for inspiring rapid, intelligent, revolutionary change.

BALANCE OF POWER is changing.  Following World War II, the world was happy, as America provided virtuous leadership that helped maintain stability in the world.  Today, the U.S. is no longer respected.  Power is shifting away from Western nations to new powerhouses, and from national governments to corporate interests.

OUTGROWTH is the explosion of unsustainable growth in almost everything — population, pollution, consumption, soil mining, water mining, extinctions, and on and on.  Earth Inc. is fanatically obsessed with perpetual growth, and aggressively flattens anything that stands in its path.  Bummer growth must be replaced with the benevolent growth of Sustainable Capitalism.

LIFE SCIENCE is providing us with technology to manipulate biological processes in new ways.  We’ll cure more diseases and live much longer.  Our ability to deliberately alter the genes of any living organism allows us to play a significant role in controlling the planet’s evolutionary journey.  Of course, evolution must be manipulated cautiously, to avoid embarrassing calamities.

THE EDGE is the catastrophically dysfunctional relationship between humankind and the ecosystem.  On the down side, trashing the atmosphere and climate has created a monster we cannot control.  On the plus side, it’s inspiring many enlightened efforts to guide civilization back into balance with the ecosystem.

Al Gore is a charming lad with a good sense of humor.  The son of a senator, Gore has spent much of his life amidst the barbarian tribes of Washington.  He eventually became the vice president and a wealthy tycoon.  While at Harvard, one of his professors was a pioneer in climate change research, a big juju subject, and a primary influence on Gore’s career path.  Gore is a senior advisor to Google, and a board member at Apple.  He is exceptionally well informed about the digital world, climate change, ecological challenges, global politics, and the shenanigans of the rich and powerful.

In the book, Gore sometimes jabbers like a politician giddy with optimism.  Yes, things are a big mess, and the status quo is in need of speedy, intelligent, radical reform.  We can fix it!  Politicians rarely win elections when their objective is damage control (Jimmy Carter’s mistake).  The way to win is to wear a big smile and promise hope, solutions, and better days ahead.  I sometimes wonder if damage control might accomplish more.

Much of the book is impressive, but its optimism for the future is not well supported by compelling arguments and evidence.  Readers learn that it’s not too late to nip climate change in the bud.  We simply need to reduce greenhouse emissions by 80 to 90 percent.  But how could we do this without blindsiding the system that enables the existence of seven-point-something billion people?  Easy!  Create a carbon tax.  Shift subsidies from fossil energy to renewables.  Require utilities to use more alternative energy.  Create a cap and trade system.  If every nation eagerly did this next week, our worries would be over.

Population continues to grow exponentially.  Gore recommends that we “stabilize” population.  It would be risky to actually reduce population, because this might trigger a “fertility trap,” a terrible downward spiral of population free-fall.  When there are too many seniors, and not enough taxpayers, pension systems collapse.

But stabilizing an enormous population raises serious questions about how much longer we can continue to feed so many people.  Agriculture is currently engaged in “strip-mining topsoil” on a staggering scale.  Each kilogram of Iowa corn costs 1.5 kilograms of topsoil, a precious nonrenewable resource. 

Gore asserts that this can be corrected by a transition to crop rotation, and to organic low-till technology.  But low-till cropping is designed for conventional agriculture, and works well with heavy applications of herbicide.  Organic low-till is still in the experimental phase, and is extremely difficult to do successfully, because weeds are not wimps.

While water usage is increasing, water resources are declining, because underground aquifers are being depleted in many highly productive farming regions.  Gore recommends drip irrigation, wastewater recycling, and cisterns for rainwater storage.  Considering the current scale of water mining, and the cost of high tech irrigation, it’s hard to see these options as effective solutions.  When the water is used up, farm productivity drops sharply, or completely.

Meanwhile, another monster is rising on the horizon — global phosphorus reserves are moving toward a crisis.  Because phosphorus is an essential plant nutrient, this will have huge effects on conventional agriculture.  Oh, we also need to get the nations united behind reversing deforestation, fish mining, and mass extinction.  

Gore says that it would be insane to burn the fossil energy we’ve already discovered, because this would worsen the effects of climate change.  But we’re unlikely to stop.  Experts aren’t sure when Peak Oil will arrive, but it will, and it will be followed by an era of increasing turbulence, as industrial civilization is painfully weaned.  Most of the easy oil has already gone up in smoke, and what remains is far more difficult to extract.  Expensive oil means expensive food, and many poor people can barely afford food today.  Spikes in food prices led to food riots in 2008 and 2011.

Gore adores civilization’s two magnificent achievements, democracy and capitalism, but he laments that both have been “hacked” by the evil slime balls of Earth Inc.  If we don’t fix this, we’re doomed.  It’s time to fetch our pitchforks and chase the slime balls away.  The solution to our problems is to restore dynamic democracy, and then create a utopia of Sustainable Capitalism, which will allow Sustainable Growth to continue forever!  The best is yet to come!

The book provides an impressive discussion how we got into this mess.  It’s unique in that it comes from a card-carrying member of the global elite, not a hungry dirty radical.  Readers are given a rare opportunity to enjoy the view from the top of the pyramid.  I hope that the second edition clarifies some questionable assumptions in this otherwise fascinating book.

Gore, Albert, The Future — Six Drivers of Global Change, Random House, New York, 2013.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

There will come a day when the consumer way of life dissolves into an embarrassing freak show episode of history.  Our descendants will struggle to survive on the devastated planet they inherited.  They will resent their crazy ancestors, and repeatedly ask, “What were they thinking?”

History professor Yuval Noah Harari provides answers to this question in his book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.  It documents common perceptions of mainstream consumer society, a culture famous for its remarkable advances in irrational exuberance and cognitive dissonance.  This culture imagines that humans are gods, our technology is miraculous, and the best is yet to come.

Readers learn how humans soared to the top of creation in three leaps — the Cognitive Revolution of 70,000 years ago, the Agricultural Revolution of 12,000 years ago, and the Scientific Revolution of 500 years ago.  Prior to this, we were “insignificant” animals, much like our closest living relatives, the bonobos and chimps, with whom we share more than 98 percent of our genes.  They have remained insignificant, living in the same place for two million years without destroying it.  What was wrong with them?

I disagree with the “insignificant” tag.  Technological innovation artificially catapulted our humble ancestors into the elite club of apex predators.  This transition was not the result of genetic evolution gradually providing us with better teeth and claws.  It was the result of bypassing the limitations of our genes.  We manufactured prosthetic teeth and claws.  This opened the gates to a joyride in tool making that has grown to staggering proportions.  Thus, our ancestors were significant ecological oddballs even before Homo sapiens appeared.

Harari is not a cheerleader for the Agricultural Revolution, which he refers to as history’s biggest fraud.  Farming was backbreaking work, not a brilliant invention.  It did not provide a way of life that was more secure.  The diet was less nutritious.  People were less healthy.  Farming spurred population growth and conflict.  The costs have exceeded the benefits.

Like the consumer culture in which it was born, the book is primarily humanist in viewpoint.  Ecology only gets brief moments on stage.  The devastating environmental impacts of agriculture are not mentioned.  Readers are not encouraged to contemplate why sustainable agriculture is an oxymoron.  Here are some words not found in a search of the book’s text: erosion, deforestation, overpopulation, sustainable, materialism, climate change, methane, dioxide, acidification, anthropocentricism.

Agriculture was an unfortunate experiment, but highly addictive.  Each generation continued marching in the same dirty rut.  By the time the game had become hopelessly miserable, there were way too many people, and nobody remembered the path of simple living.  The same is true for consumerism, a fad designed to fan the flames of perpetual economic growth.  It has become the lifeblood of our economy, and most consumers have no memory of simple living.

Consumers have been brainwashed into believing that shopping like crazy is the golden path to fulfillment and happiness.  They go deeply in debt buying unnecessary status-boosting stuff, and promptly discard it with every shift in trendy styles.  Like hamsters racing on a treadmill, they spend their lives chasing impossible expectations, whilst gobbling Prozac by the fistful.  There is no socially acceptable alternative.  Living in a frugal manner is indisputable evidence of demonic possession.

Harari is not a fan of the consumer lifestyle.  It is just the tip of an ancient iceberg that he barely mentions, the skanky duet of stuff and status — a major blunder in the human journey.  Hunter-gatherers owned almost nothing, and had zero interest in hoarding belongings.  In those days, nobody owned the aurochs, and the aurochs were free to live as they pleased.  Eventually, we reduced them into passive, half-bright domesticated cattle.  They became personal property, and the more you owned, the higher your status.

Status was more important than the health of the grassland.  This led to overgrazing and desertification.  The rustling of cattle and horses became a widespread enterprise, and the cause of countless bloody conflicts.  The emergence of private property created insanely destructive status cults.  The hunger for status turns people into idiots who stampede to the latest bonanza, eager to get rich quick via gold, gems, oil deposits, or smart phones.  Status seekers gaze at a forest of ancient redwoods and see a gold mine.

Agricultural civilization provided an unstable foundation for the turbulent centuries that followed.  Harari describes how science, empire, capitalism, and intolerant religions have brought us to the brink of both consumer utopia and ecological helter-skelter.  The benefits of our great achievements have all come at great cost.  Was it worth it?  Are consumers happier than the cave painters of 30,000 years ago?  “If not, what was the point of developing agriculture, cities, writing, coinage, empires, science, and industry?”  Wow!  Super question!

I would add more questions.  Are we happier than the bonobos who enjoy abundant food, no jobs, no money, no bosses, no governments, and have sex all the time?  What good is a happiness that requires a ridiculously destructive dead-end way of life?  Sustainability is far better proof of intelligence, wisdom, and success.

In the last five paragraphs of the book, Harari reveals his concerns about the dark side of the human juggernaut.  He concludes that we are lost, discontented eco-terrorists.  Looking back over the human journey does not make us glow with pride.

But we’re not merely a clown act.  Look at us!  We are the wealthiest generation of all!  Human genius has enabled us to consume ever-growing amounts of energy.  We have discovered “inexhaustible energy resources,” and now enjoy access to “practically limitless energy.”  Modern medicine miraculously saves lives (largely by reducing mortality from the diseases of civilization).  Humans are far less violent today, international war is nearly extinct, and large-scale famine is now rare.  Everyone joyfully celebrates demise of patriarchy.

This review began with the question, “What were they thinking?”  The book provides answers, a recognizable portrait of today’s consumer society.  This mindset is a whirlwind of human exceptionalism, acute awareness, and magical thinking.  We’re smart, and we’ve learned how to do many cool things.  Yes, there are also some serious problems, but the overall story here is one of progress, not foolish incompetence.  This is exactly what consumer society wants to hear.  The book is selling well, and reader comments are primarily praise.

The bedrock fantasy of consumer culture is that technology will solve all challenges, the future will be powered by safe, clean renewable energy, and the consumer way of life can continue on its current path, without any sacrifices, until the sun burns out.  Edward Abbey once wrote, “Where all think alike, no one thinks much.”

I wish that Harari had been raised in a sane society.  I wish that his history had documented a clear thinking culture on a far healthier trajectory — well educated, wide awake people who understood the mistakes of their ancestors, and were fully committed to a return to genuine sustainability.  We’re long overdue for a fourth revolution, a homecoming, a healing.

Harari, Yuval Noah, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harper, New York, 2015.

Here is Harari giving a 15-minute TEDx talk.

Late Victorian Holocausts

In the years 1876-1879 and 1896-1902 between 12.2 and 29.3 million died of famine in India.  In the years 1876-1879 and 1896-1900 between 19.5 and 30 million died of famine in China.  In the same period, an estimated 2 million died in Brazil.  Famine hit these three nations the hardest, but many other nations were also affected.  In the US, churches organized to send relief to hungry farmers in the Dakotas and western Kansas.

Mike Davis wrote about these famines in his book Late Victorian Holocausts.  The famines occurred in regions slammed by severe drought.  The droughts have been linked to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a major factor in global weather patterns. 

Droughts have been common throughout history, and agricultural societies have commonly prepared for them by creating emergency reserves of stored grain.  Because of political shifts in many regions, these safety nets were in poor condition during the late Victorian droughts.  In the wake of the Industrial Revolution came a new mode of economic thinking that frowned on setting aside significant wealth for insurance against disaster.  It was more profitable to sell the grain today, pocket the cash, and worry about tomorrow’s problems tomorrow.  Peasants were expendable.

The Qing dynasty in China believed that subsistence was a human right, and it had relief management systems in place to reduce the toll of famines during drought years or floods.  By the late Victorian era, conflicts with colonial powers had drained the wealth of the Qing government, so it was incapable of effectively responding to the catastrophic droughts.

Prior to the British colonization of India, the Moguls had a similar system for responding to famine.  The British, on the other hand, were cruel masters (as they had been during the 1845 famine in Ireland).  Food was widely available, but few could afford the inflated prices.  While millions were starving, they exported Indian wheat.  They outlawed donations of private relief.  They forbid the Pariahs from foraging for forest foods, leading to 155,000 deaths.  They created relief camps where the starving received inadequate rations, and 94 percent died.  Very civilized chaps, eh?

The hungry hordes in Brazil were the victims of their own corrupt government, which had disposed of grain reserves.  Brazil was not a colony of Britain, but English investors and creditors played a powerful role in the economy, turning Brazil into an “informal colony” that was kept permanently in debt.

Davis argued that the millions of deaths were largely a deliberate “holocaust” rather than a spell of bad luck, because political actions were a primary factor behind the high mortality rates.  He also argued that this holocaust played a role in the creation of the Third World.  In the eighteenth century, Europe did not have the highest standard of living.  The biggest manufacturing districts were in India and China.  Their workers ate better, had lower unemployment, and often earned more than workers in Europe.  Literacy rates were higher, including women.

One of Davis’s primary objectives was to spank capitalism, colonialism, and the hideous overseers of the British Empire.  There has been lively discussion in the reader feedback at Amazon, and a number of critics have questioned the way in which Davis assigned blame for the massive famines.  For me, the book had important messages:  (1) Droughts happen.  (2) Agricultural societies are highly vulnerable to droughts.  (3) Famines commonly follow droughts.  (4) Famines can be horrific. 

When rains ended an Indian drought in 1878, the mosquito population exploded, and hundreds of thousands of malnourished survivors died of malaria.  Meanwhile, locusts gobbled up the growing young plants.  Hungry peasants murdered many creditors who threatened foreclosure.  Then came gangs of armed tax collectors.  Hungry wild animals became very aggressive, dragging away the weak, screaming.  In the Madras Deccan, “the only well-fed part of the local population were the pariah dogs, ‘fat as sheep,’ that feasted on the bodies of dead children.”

In China, the flesh of the starved was sold at markets for four cents a pound.  People sold their children to buy food.  Husbands ate their wives.  Parents ate their children.  Children ate their parents.  Thousands of thieves were executed.  At refugee camps, many perished from disease.  If too many refugees accumulated, they were simply massacred.  In some regions, relief took more than a year to arrive.

Davis’s vivid and extensive descriptions of famine times remind an increasingly obese society that we are living in a temporary and abnormal bubble of cheap and abundant calories.  Importantly, he puts a human face on the consequences of climate change, a subject usually presented in purely abstract form: parts per million, degrees Celsius, and colorful computer-generated charts, graphs, and maps.

Near the end of the book, Davis gives us a big, fat, juicy discussion on the history of agriculture and ecological catastrophe in China.  People who remain in denial about the inherent destructiveness of agriculture typically point to China as a glowing example of 4,000 years of happy sustainable low-impact organic farming.  Wrong, wrong, wrong!  This chapter provides a powerful cure for those who suffer from such embarrassing naughty fantasies.

The late Victorian droughts happened at a time when the world population was less than 1.4 billion.  Today, it’s over 7 billion, and growing by 70 million per year.  Cropland area per capita is shrinking, and soil health is diminishing.  Energy prices are rising, and water usage for irrigation is foolishly unsustainable.  We’re getting close to Peak Food.  World grain production per capita peaked in 1984, at 342 kilograms per person.  World grain stocks (stored grain) peaked in 1986, and have been declining since then.

On 24 July 2012, the venerable Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute published a warning in The Guardian.  “The world is in serious trouble on the food front.”  World grain stocks are currently “dangerously low.”  “Time is running out.  The world may be much closer to an unmanageable food shortage — replete with soaring food prices, spreading food unrest, and ultimately political instability — than most people realize.” 

For me, the main message of this book was a powerful warning about the huge risks of agriculture, and its insanely destructive companion, overpopulation.  The famines discussed in this book were not a freak event in history.  Famine has been a common, normal, periodic occurrence in virtually all agricultural societies, from the Cradle of Civilization to today. 

As the collapse of industrial civilization proceeds and life slows down, opportunities to live more in balance with nature will emerge.  Clever societies will carefully limit population size, and phase out their dependence on farming.  Un-clever societies will continue to breed like there’s no tomorrow, beat their ecosystems to death, and hippity-hop down the Dinosaur Trail.

Davis, Mike, Late Victorian Holocausts, Verso, New York, 2001.