Hope Chart

TIME TO STRATEGY DEADLINE: 21 DAYS

In response to questions about natural feedbacks at yesterday’s WICO briefing about the DIE threat, the Secretary General’s office provided what strategy integrators call a “Hope Chart.” The chart shows resources consumed by humanity and limits on that consumption due to natural feedbacks. 

The consumption curve on the chart released today (see below) is derived from the baseline strategy. Three dotted red lines illustrate the range of natural feedback effects that WICO considers realistic. Those effects could potentially be offset and then stopped by natural processes, as indicated by a similar set of green dotted lines. If the consumption curve intersects a dotted curve, then consumption will follow the dotted line downward to zero; if not, it will continue as if there are no sustained feedbacks.

Science and Policy Ambassador Lazlo explained at a press briefing that the chart is referred to as “hope” because it is based on assumptions about the feedbacks and how they might respond to reduction of consumption which can only be tested under actual conditions. She warned that sudden feedbacks such as the release of methane from melting permafrost could rapidly accelerate resource deduction (move the “high” curve closer to the present due to a pulse of global warming).

Reality Check

The Hope Chart is based on a simulation of falling consumption that allows other species to be able to consume as much resources as possible while keeping the population reduction rate near the amount expected from not replacing people who die from old age. It levels off just before the worst projected feedback would be reached and force it to zero if the hoped-for recovery of natural systems does not occur.