Dreamworld

After a week of planting native trees with me and Al as part of the new region-wide Restoration program, Maura awoke from a dream of a day in a world where such a program and the strategy that inspired it were never considered more than a dream themselves.

As “Mari,” she worked as a low-level financial analyst at a defense company that had no interest in developing truly life-saving technologies. The day began with a casual breakfast in front of her television, swearing at news reports of a self-destructing federal government led by isolationists who were focused on accumulating as much personal power as possible for themselves and their supporters. Her live-in fiancé John, an electronics store technician she met in a previous job, reminded her that the current focus on weapons development and profit-boosting deregulation meant they had a better chance of paying off her recent medical bills and moving from their tiny apartment into a real house just in time for their wedding at the end of the year.

Mari’s commute was excruciatingly long and perilous, spent mostly in start-and-stop traffic undeterred by automated signs requesting that people not drive due to elevated ozone levels exacerbated by vehicle exhaust. Bored by the music choices on the radio, she gambled on listening to more news, and almost caused a crash when a reporter announced that a deep recession might be imminent if not already in progress. She had a flash of a global trend analysis that Maura had done months ago, which anticipated just such a possibility in this timeframe as a precursor of a world population peak five years in the future. The implication of the report sent a shock through her mind; if it turned out to be true, then the peak might be too, along with the rapid fall toward extinction that followed. 

She took a deep breath as she listened to the much more benign explanations being offered by economists: that the government’s corruption had critically reduced market confidence in it exercising rational economic policy; that recent GDP fluctuations indicated a reset was due following the last twelve years of growth; and that automation and other technologies were reshaping the workplace faster than expected. All of them would have been enough for the original Mari, but as Mari/Maura she knew there were much larger forces in play that demanded an understanding that encompassed more than strictly political and economic considerations.

By the time she arrived at work, the company’s Chief Financial Officer had already directed analysts in her office and elsewhere to run reality checks on the recession fears, develop likely scenarios, and recommend strategies for minimizing exposure to losses that might result. Technically, Mari’s role was to error-check the scenarios and strategies that the experts produced, but she felt compelled to share her concerns with them directly at the earliest stage. The dream ended following a particularly uncomfortable meeting with them.

“They acted like she was crazy,” Maura told me near the end of her narrative, “dismissing it as a dystopian fantasy that no rational person would subscribe to. It reminds me of the debate when WICO proposed the biosphere assessment. At least we finally agreed to replace opinion with facts, and accept all their implications. These people were limiting the scope of the ‘reality’ they considered, based on their own opinions, and blaming her for questioning it.”

I decided to play the devil’s advocate. “To be fair, she couldn’t divulge the source of her concern, what you learned, mainly because they reasonably wouldn’t believe it coming from her.”

“They had more than enough information already. Their scientists and a lot of activists were already sounding the alarm over several aspects of the extinction threat. The United Nations, their version of WICO, was even getting nations to enter treaties to deal with it. Private industry was pushing what they called renewable technology, an ill-conceived attempt to continue the status quo without a very limited set of environmental costs. Unfortunately, they failed to consider a lot of the critical costs.”

“You learned all that in a dream?” I asked.

“You can learn a lot when you share someone’s mind.”

“Which outside of a dream would sound crazy, right?”

“Right,” she admitted. “Some of the simulations I did when I was at WICO were turned into a story by my subconscious. I’m sure that with some research I could identify which ones they were, which makes the story worth telling.”

Reality Check

Mari’s world is based on the simulation Hella, whose history and future starting in 2015 matches simulation Green - what I judge to be the best match to our real world. In the fictional backstory (explored in Will Jackson’s Personal Log), Maura has a limited ability to observe and interact with versions of herself in the “worlds” of other simulations (as they can with her) - providing a means of comparing relevant parts of the simulations in any given story.

In Hella, global variables change annually as follows:

In all three simulations, self-sustaining impacts reduce total resources after 2014, but of course Hikeyay (Maura’s world) is intentionally decreasing consumption as part of the global strategy.

Transition Targets

With two weeks left until the global strategy is in full execution, WICO released its annual targets for per-capita consumption and population, with its estimated effects on the global economy, over the course of the transition. 

To meet the targets, population will need to decrease at least two percent per year, and per-capita consumption between two and nine percent per year (with possibly more, depending on what’s needed to stop the self-sustained impacts). The economy will be in what feels like a deep depression, with world GDP contracting seven percent next year, and up to 12 percent per year during the rest of the transition.

The total declines from 2019 to 2040 will be 36 percent for population, at least 50 percent for per-capita consumption, and at least 86 percent for world GDP.

On a personal note, I resigned from Possibilities from Responsibilities, and have accepted a position as a documentation manager and research assistant at Colorado Holistic University (CHU) on a project Maura is leading to assess the historical context of the imminent threat response. I will of course continue writing this blog.

Reality Check

Annual rates of change for the future of the simulation, including failure to stop self-sustained impacts, are shown in the following graph. GWP, Gross World Product, is real global GDP.

There is no Colorado Holistic University in our world.

High Level Global Strategy Announced

TIME TO GLOBAL STRATEGY DEADLINE: 24 DAYS

Ambassador Lazlo today announced that the Strategy Integration group has synthesized a high-level global strategy consistent with the national strategies submitted last week to deal with the DIE threat. It is similar to one of its three top candidates, reducing population and per-capita ecological footprint to stable levels by 2040. “The target population is approximately 5.3 billion people,” she said, “averaging 1.3 standard resources per person per year for a total footprint of 0.5 Earth per year. In July we will begin with an estimated 7.7 billion people, 3.4 resources per person, and 1.9 Earths per year. Development of a detailed strategy that meets these targets comprises the majority of the group’s remaining work, which continues on schedule.”

Lazlo released several charts to illustrate the global strategy, beginning with a time series of main global variables.

The corresponding Hope Chart shows the total consumption and assumed impacts of natural feedbacks over time. Note that Sally’s worst-case feedback is now included.

A new piece of information is a projection of annual change rates for global variables, which gives a sense of the effort required to meet the target. Lazlo explained that population change varies slightly from what could be expected by not replenishing die-off of older people (appearing as a dotted line for reference). 

The last graph illustrates the distribution of global variables across the population in 2041 for the range of “samples” corresponding to basic effort per person.

Reality Check

The numbers and graphs are direct outputs from the simulation based on no impact from sustained natural feedbacks. 

Industry Leaders Warn of Existential Threat

TIME TO STRATEGY DEADLINE: 17 DAYS

Today leaders of the world’s largest transportation companies held a public forum at a hotel near WICO headquarters in London to protest the imminent extinction response as an existential threat to their industries and the world.

Expansaerospace CEO Mark Luke summarized their concerns in opening remarks to over 400 attendees and nearly a million online observers: “The goals and strategies being considered by the world’s governments would decimate our collective ability to move people, products, and resources as needed to maintain even a semblance of global civilization. Humanity might not go extinct, but the world we create won’t be worth living in.” Revealing his opinion of the entire effort, he added that “the last time global GDP was at the target provided by the whackos at WICO was sixty years ago, when there were two billion fewer people than what they say we’ll have at the end of this experiment thirty years from now. If isolation is as bad as they told us yesterday, or worse, then what they want us to do will make it unavoidable.”

Among the attendees was a group of energy industry representatives who co-opted the meeting after the first hour. Renewable energy icon Ronald Wingate announced a partnership between his conglomerate Expansivtek, the two largest oil companies, and the top three biotech companies to promote a research and development project called Evolution over Devolution. “ED will create technological solutions that provide all the needs of a growing population at a standard of living that builds on the work of past generations instead of spitting on it.” Wingate defended the late timing of the announcement: “We have been incubating this project for five years, and it’s just a lucky coincidence that it is ready now to help our friends and customers in transportation and other sectors of the economy that would be hurt by doom-and-gloom extremists who have hijacked the debate over our future.”

In a statement following the forum, WICO Secretary General Decatur sharply disagreed with the dominant characterizations of the crisis and strategies based on WICO’s recommendations, and rebuked the notion of Wingate’s ED as a viable alternative. “I must remind everyone, once again, that time is of the essence,” he warned. “We are collectively hurtling through a minefield toward a cliff, and we don’t have the luxury of trying to build an airplane as we go instead of putting on the brakes and attempting to defuse the mines.” 

Reality Check

Luke’s description of projected GDP and population match simulation of the baseline strategy. His concern about resulting isolation are exaggerated but something to think about, given that the scale and complexity of transportation would be much less – like virtually everything else in a sustainable future that relies on natural systems.

WICO’s call for detailed strategies is acknowledgement that without preparation the present economic order (on its world and ours) would likely react to strong economic contraction like a deep depression with a lot in common with the early stages of collapse. 

The portrayal of the energy industry’s reaction to reducing consumption is based on observed (and previously experienced) reactions to similar proposals.