Diversion Safes Water Bottle
Diversion Safes Water Bottle
What age will you be in 2050?
Most of the people on the planet now will, probably, still be alive in 2050. Even if you are in “middle age” it may seem a bit away but with current levels of healthcare it is inconceivable you may live well into your 90′s or even past the century. And even if don’t think you will make it that far, what age will your children or grandchildren be then? Now think back to 1970. What age were you then? (if even born). How much has the world changed? Really, quite a lot.
Politically, communism has collapsed and even in China the market has been allowed to take a much greater role in how the economy is organised. The western consumerist lifestyle has now become the global lifestyle of choice.
In all countries but especially the developed ones, there is a lot more “stuff”. Cars have got a lot faster and more comfortable, clothes and fashions a bit less extreme, clothes (and lots of other things) much cheaper, food more varied and plentiful. We eat out of the home a lot more but as a family a lot less. A green revolution has even allowed us to produce enough calories for a world population more or less double what is was 40 years ago but the distribution system means that the world’s 800 or so hungry people are out numbered by the billion who are overweight.
Economically, money is no longer cash but balances in accounts and computer files: given value only by market’s opinions of the outlook. In 1971 the US decided that the dollar was no longer to be linked to gold reserves and brought to an end a 25 century long era. Gold ceased to be at the centre of the international monetary system although it remains a “safe haven” for investors fleeing any of the many crises the financial system has suffered over the past 40 years. Floating exchange rates ushered in the era of globalised production as capital sought out the lowest labour charges.
What has changed more than anything, however, has been our ability to compute and communicate using information technology. It still shocks to think that the craft that took men to the moon and returned them safely to Earth carried as much computing power as would now be found in a cheap phone. The same year as the moon landings, 1969, saw the first computer user login to a computer remotely when an undergraduate named Charley Kline at the University of California in Los Angeles successfully logged in remotely to a computer at Stanford Research Institute. From that moment, the world was destined to change unimaginably as the internet revolutionised the way people were able to communicate and collaborate. It didn’t seem so at the time (modern revolutions seldom do) and it was slow to start off. Even as late as New Year’s Day 1994 there were only an estimated 623 websites, in total, on the whole internet.
Despite all these enormous changes, the world is still pretty much recognisable; a kind of better but faster version of 1970. There are more labour-saving gadgets, more places that are easier to go and visit more choice when you go to the shops, cinema or virtually anywhere. Our societies have generally become safer and healthier and life expectancy has been rising. But overall, the world is still a pretty recognisable place. If only the same could be said of the next 40 years.
The downside of our economic activity is pollution. Some of it we can see, like plastic bags or bottles in the streets, some of it we cannot, like the carbon dioxide that is released whenever we burn fossil fuels. And it is the impact of that later kind of pollution could make the world of 2050 unrecognisable to the one we see now. On our current path of growth in emissions levels, we are on track to cause a rise of global average temperature by 40 centigrade, a level that will severely test the natural world’s ability to function. In a paper presented at the Royal Society, Rachel Warren says,
… a 4°C world would be facing enormous adaptation challenges in the agricultural sector, with large areas of cropland becoming unsuitable for cultivation, and declining agricultural yields. This world would also rapidly be losing its ecosystem services, owing to large losses in biodiversity, forests, coastal wetlands, mangroves and salt-marshes, and terrestrial carbon stores, supported by an acidified and potentially dysfunctional marine ecosystem. Drought and desertification would be widespread, with large numbers of people experiencing increased water stress, and others experiencing changes in seasonality of water supply.
Europe’s borders are already pressurised by refugees and “economic migrants” from Africa and central Asia while the US has an ambiguous approach to the flow of illegal immigrants from the south. By 2050 they could be completely overwhelmed by people just looking for a drink of water.
This scenario is by no means guaranteed to happen but the likelihood of it becomes ever greater the longer we put off the choice to change the way we conduct our economic activity. Very soon, (and ideally 20 years ago) we need to ensure that carbon pollution starts to fall rather than continues to increase.
The size of that challenge is enormous. It implies that we need to rethink not just how we generate our electricity and heat our homes but also how we grow things, how we make things, how we build things and how we move around. Remarkably for the scale of the issue, “polite society”, in the UK at least, finds it easier to ignore rather than engage. From the media coverage, it appears that the majority US public prefer to deny any such problem exists. (As a brief aside, the underlying physics and chemistry of the issue are the stuff of high school science. The real controversy is in trying to work out how bad the impacts will be and whether we and the natural systems will be able to “adapt”. If you are one of the people who still think this is not a “real” problem, I would urge you to run down this list of common “objections”. If you are one of the people who would like to “do something” but are unclear about how to act, my book is an easy and accessible guide to the major issues and what you can do in your personal life to reduce your impact and to influence the bigger society).
There is a way that we could increase the probability of success and that is to reform the way we account for our economic activity. Currently, the benefit derived from burning fossil fuels seems great and the cost of using them, in terms of price paid, seems small. And that is the crux issue.
When 15th century accountants invented the method of accounting for our economic activity that we still use today, the world was a very different place. There were many fewer people on the planet, we had not discovered a use for fossil fuel and the prevailing world view was that man had dominion over all other things.
That might have been a workable assumption had the human population remained at the few hundred million it was when the “rules” were set up but it clearly doesn’t hold for a population of 7 going on 9 billion. There is a cost associated with the use of the Earth’s resources and services and the sooner it is recognised, the better. When restocking oceans, protecting forests and bio-diversity and taking carbon out of the atmosphere is an economic activity, there will be no shortage of people and companies wanting to engage in it.
Changing the way we account for the activity would also speed a transformation of the way the manufacturing economy works from being a linear take, make and dump model being replaced with one that is circular. (this idea is expanded by Cradle to Cradle thinking, whose originators have the brilliant vision for ” a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world with clean air, water, soil and power – economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed”)
Within the UK context, there are several well thought through alternatives with “Prosperity Without Growth”, “The Great Transition” and “Zero Carbon Britain 2030″ all describing scenarios and policies that would bring about major change in our pollution levels.
But for any of this to happen we need political will and political will comes from the people. There are encouraging signs that the people do want positive change: California’s voters in November 2010 voted down an attempt to “suspend” their anti-pollution laws. We need that idea to spread because the unique aspect to averting disastrous climate change is that it requires action at a level of collaboration never before imagined, never mind attempted.
There are many possible futures and how we act influences the outcome; anybody in business certainly understands that.
The key challenge is for us to act in a collaborative way so that we can restructure the rules of the game and reward our economic activity that lives with the planet, not on it. It is a Herculean challenge and the oil, coal and gas companies will resist like hell: but if whatever birthday you celebrate in 2050 is to have any chance of being remotely like the one you had this year, it is a challenge we must take on.
About the Author
Harold Forbes is Author of “How to be a Humankind Superhero: a manifesto for individuals to reclaim a safe climate”. Read chapter summaries at http://www.hksuper.com or download the complete first chapter at http://bit.ly/freehksh
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