Coping and Collapse

TIME TO GLOBAL STRATEGY DEADLINE: 22 DAYS

Public concern over population management has dominated the response to WICO’s global strategy summary and the national inputs to development of a detailed strategy by March 1.

Reviewing Ambassador Lazlo’s discussion of the issue on January 14, I found a clue to what might be connecting the events Sally described yesterday. I asked Sally about it when she called to continue her story: “Is the fraction of resources we consume affecting how satisfied we are with our lives and how long children might live?”

“Yes,” she said, “except it’s the remaining fraction that people are most sensitive to, which is why the richest are affected first. Their surroundings are more artificial than natural, so they experience less of what nourishes them biologically and psychologically on a basic human level.”

“What can be done about it?”

“The obvious choice is to replace the artificial with the natural. You’ll recognize that as the essence of our global strategy. Another option is to address the effects instead of the cause by, for instance, using technologies such as drugs to feel better and extend how long people can live. For a while you could delude yourself into believing there are more resources than you have, using your imagination or the technology of entertainment. You could remove other people from your environment or just take what they have; at the very minimum you’ll want to keep more people from coming in. Finally, if all else fails, you can just kill yourself.”

“Are those options reflected in the global strategy?”

“They’re built into the trajectory of history that the strategy is based on,” she said, and resumed her story.

We now know that had the United States, the origin of the financial crisis, been a closed system in 2008 then it would have been in the process of rapid collapse. Its connections with other nations kept that from happening, but at great cost to the rest of the world. Still, eighty-five percent of citizens were feeling the effects of too little nature in their environment, and using all of the tools available to cope with it.

Over the course of the next ten years the U.S. reduced total consumption by one-third, effectively slowing but not reversing the collapse that might occur if it becomes isolated. Meanwhile its total amount of resources decreased by more than one-fourth, due to a combination of economic exports and destruction by multiple causes that include storms, drought, and fires. 

We project that by the time our strategy is executed, seventy-eight percent of the people in your nation will find that more effort yields less happiness and life expectancy for their children, while worldwide that fraction will be thirty-seven percent as more nations are approaching collapse than experiencing it. 

Reality Check

Characterizations of the situation in the U.S., including cited numbers, are based on simulations of an idealized population with historical values of relevant variables fed into the model.

Explanations of causes are my own hypotheses based on experience and logic applied to the design and results of the simulations. Options for dealing with the consequences are my own best guesses, and are likewise working hypotheses at best.

Draft Strategies Expose Issues

TIME TO STRATEGY DEADLINE: 16 DAYS

NOTE: The January 14 post has been updated with a correction. Lazlo said “the fraction is criticallylarge” not “the fraction is critically small.”

WICO’s office of Strategy Tracking, Response, Integration, Development, and Execution (STRIDE) announced today that draft sections of thirteen national strategies were received for initial review in the past two days. Ambassador Lazlo, who serves now as both a team lead and press contact, said at a briefing after the announcement that several common issues have been found which require clarification to all parties involved in the effort.

In her introductory remarks, she said, “There appears to be some confusion about how the templates are used to generate strategy components. To eliminate that, STRIDE has created an online tool that provides both guidance and calculations based on regional data and expected interactions between regions based on what each nation includes in its draft strategy. Development teams appointed by their governments have been given secure access to instances of the tool that are tailored to their needs and conditions.” 

She then demonstrated the tool and explained the largest issue found so far. “Restricting births must account for actual death rates, especially infant mortality, so that the population doesn’t decrease too fast. Ideally, everyone would have access to good medical care and healthy conditions before, during, and after birth, but sadly that isn’t generally the case and increased fertility is used to compensate. Part of our strategy integration is to include sharing of best practices everywhere possible so that the sacrifices needed to avoid extinction are as painless as possible for everyone. That’s why we aren’t ruling out development of any new technology; rather, we’re focusing on development of technologies that meet the needs of the overall strategy without excess waste and that can be used well into the final phases of the transition to lower, safer consumption.”

Reality Check

The “birthrate” used in the simulation and which is found to vary predictably with consumption is related to fertility, and is based on historical population growth rates. It therefore has a maximum of 2.1 children per mother, which is less than actual fertility that includes children who die at or soon after birth. Any planning used to keep population from growing or declining too fast will likely have to adjust for deaths as described by Lazlo.