Serendipity

What will be the main topic in the next 2 decades?

• Climate change?
• Financial issues?
• Resource constraints? Oil depletion?
• Unlimited growth?
• Cultural wars?

Some people think they can predict the future. These are mainly a bunch of self-centered ignorants that do not even have the notion of their basic cognitive limits as Homo sapiens (we are only slightly more smart than Baboons).

But even if you believe that predicting the future is beyond human capability that does not mean that we can forget the future. Our actions today (especially our ability to stand discomfort) are based on the premise that they are useful in the long run. Just one example to make this clear: If you have a job that you don’t like and you strongly believe that the world will end in 2012, the correct course of action might be to stop working and enjoy the last moments of your life. Most people don’t believe that the world will end and 2012 and thus, put up with a lot of discomfort in order to assure food on the table in the long-run and a retirement in peace.

So, even if you think that the future is uncertain you still have to make a few bets based on your uncertain beliefs and faiths about the future.

The current paradigm of development is based on growth. Mainly on the growth of a cooked up number called GDP. You can hear things like: “If we don’t grow at 2% a year, unemployment will increase” or “Nation A is better than B as the GDP per capita is bigger” or “if we grow we can eliminate poverty” and such propaganda.

Notice how ridiculous this concept is, a few examples: Hurricane Katrina was good for American GDP. Why? It increased economic activity (rebuilding, rescue operations, hiring more security to control rioting, …).

Growth might also be strangely distributed, in some developed countries (which have “grown”) the wealth of middle and lower classes has actually lowered or stagnated when compared to roughly 30 years ago. “Growth” was pocketed by someone else. In fact one could say that apparent increases in material wealth have more to do with technological advance than real increases in wealth: The TV that I have is much better than the equivalent of the ones my parent’s bought 20 years ago not because I can buy more, but because technology evolved. My parents, by the way, had stable jobs with assured job security. “Growth” also came with job insecurity (we have to compete with Chinese serfdom now).

So, the present (and late 20th century) narrative is that growth is good and that growth is eternal. Before you dismiss this idea as totally unsustainable note that technological advances have delayed Malthusian predictions at least until now. And there are good arguments to support the idea that this can go on for longer. In fact, in the long run, solar energy, is in practice infinite. So, in theory energy can be seen as infinite. For now in theory only, I will get back to that in a moment. But also note other obvious constraints for unlimited growth: physical space and maybe other environmental considerations.

So what will dominate the future narrative of the next two decades? Well, my initial bet (leap of faith) will be Financial Armageddon. Remember that the Great Depression was in fact a double-dip recession. The initial ‘29 stock market fall was followed by a small “recovery” period, and all those images of famine and poverty that we associate to the Great Depression are normally of ‘31 and onwards. The parallels between now and then have their limits, but the same kind of greedy, corrupt, intellectually impaired, self-centered baboons are in control. Though I don’t give too much credit to predictions I do see some sovereign defaults happening in the next 12 months (think Dubai in a big scale).

But finance is mainly a social construction. Money, gold are mainly psychological and sociological constructs, their value is based on Human trust. Don’t get me wrong, primates are social species and social issues are 90% of defines the human variety. So social constructions are very important. But physical constraints, if they exist, take precedence.

Before we go into the physical world, some last words for social and political realities. Note the disconnect between the elites and the average Joe: The unpopular bailing out the of the banks. Not putting the EU’s Lisbon treaty to a referendum for the fear of the democratic option. The disconnect between the politically correct “minority integration and respect” and the Swiss referendum vote, or the Austrian and Dutch support for anti-immigration parties. These all points to a strong disconnect between “the will of the people” and the ruling elites. Note that I am not stating any preference for any of the sides, I am just observing this ever growing disconnect.

Ok, now the hard constraints. Oil (easy access oil) is probably peaking. I say “probably” because there is no open, reliable information about reserves in some key countries (Saudi-Arabia, Iraq, Iran, …). But, for the transparent ones (Norway, UK, US, …), peak oil theory works like a charm and fits data very well.

The ubiquity of oil is amazing. Yes it is a form of energy, but more than that, it is a flexible one: Try putting wind, solar or nuclear in your car. Modern agriculture is also totally dependent on oil: fueling the machines but also making fertilizer. Most plastics: oil derivative. Replacing oil is not just replacing energy. It is way much more. One could say you eat oil, which is transported because of oil.

And yes, maybe in the future we will have full renewables, hydrogen as a storage of energy, another kind of agriculture. I am a full believer, in the long term, on the practical infinity of solar energy. But until that bright future gets here, there will be a transition period. This transition period has to exist in lots of fundamental areas. Errors will be made (e.g., most biofuels are a “nice” way to destroy food to create fuel) before good solutions. The transition has the potential to be chaotic.

What about global warming? I don’t care at all. Let me explain.

• Being a “Talebist”, a philosophical fan of the Black Swan, the future predictions of temperature change strike me as something not to be called Science. I am afraid I cannot develop this idea much further as I unfortunately work very close to predictive science and until I finish my PhD I don’t think it will be wise to exercise full freedom of expression. Note that I am not a denialist. I am just a skeptical/agnostic, I have no position on the issue.
• I see some political hijacking of the whole issue, especially by banks. The whole cap and trade solution strikes me as yet another strategy for the intermediary institutions to profit. Even if climate change is a real problem that can be mitigated, the solutions proposed see to me like more of the same: a complex web of rules and regulations to make financial institutions profit as middlemen.
• Finance and oil will become urgent priorities. If people are unemployed, if food is not arriving at tables, the hypothetical warming of the planet in 5 decades time becomes, in the short time, a non-problem. People will want to eat first. In fact you can see what is happening in Canada as an harbinger of things to come: societies will scuffle for basic resources.
• The solutions that I see fit for the resource crisis are totally compatible with controlling carbon emissions: Less and more rational consumption. Public transport. Renewables. Localized economies. Protectionism.

Believe it or not, I am not a doomsday person. Most of the issues above are circumventable. A more stable society (with less growth, less uncertainty, less interconnectivity) also seems to be not that bad in my eyes. The physical and financial constraints could be a good opportunity to redesign society in a more decent way without much pain. The reasons why I despair have little to do with the constraints the world imposes us, but the expected reactions of both the ruling elites and the general public to the big issues that we are now entering. The last 30 years developed the idea that greed, consumption, atomization, globalization, lack of autonomy and massification are “good” moral values: this will serve us very poorly in the years to come.

Interesting times, indeed.

Credits: Most images are from Wikipedia. The image on Chinese pollution is from here. I strongly recommend you to have a look.

Tags: energy, future

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