Historical Context

This morning, Maura tried out a lecture to a group of other professors (and me). It was a summary of the imminent extinction threat and the first public presentation of her preliminary framework for putting it in historical context. Following are some of the highlights.

“The last quarter of the thirteenth century is known for at least two technological innovations: eyeglasses and firearms. One allowed people to see better, and the other allowed them to kill more efficiently. Unknown until recently, it also marked the beginning of an era when the world’s human population would be dependent on the populations of the world’s other species. 

“Technological innovation progressed in tandem with scientific discovery, enabling advances in transportation, mining, agriculture, and construction that accelerated the conversion of everything into ‘resources’ that could be traded between people to increase how long they lived, how satisfied they were with their lives, and how many children they had.

“A second milestone was achieved in the 1930s. If we measure the amount of resources as the impact of actions on ecosystems, the resources consumed by the entire population was double what people needed to survive. After that, there would be more resources in stuff than in people. That new reality accompanied and was enabled by the creation of a global civilization marked by revolutions in science and technology, development of cheap fossil fuel, and conflict between groups of people who were trying to dominate or survive the merging of cultures into an interdependent whole.

“Rapidly accelerating per-capita consumption in the 1940s stopped growing in the 1970s, just as total consumption exceeded the amount of resources provided on a renewable basis by other species. This third milestone corresponded to a peak in life satisfaction that was achieved by four out of five people while the rest kept trying to reach that peak. Meanwhile, there was growing concern that fossil fuel production had itself reached a peak, and the status quo might not be able to be maintained.

“For more than two decades, population growth drove growth in how much of the world’s ecological resources humanity used, both in needs and wants. Science and technology contributed to more efficient use of resources that helped reduce per-capita consumption. At the end of that period, a fourth milestone was reached: the population consisted of people still pushing toward that happiness peak and people between that peak and a higher one that also corresponded to a peak in life expectancy.

“Per-capita consumption began to grow again in the mid-2000s, and most of what was added made parts of the world uninhabitable by other species and us. By 2015, more than one-seventh of the original resources were not consumable. Also, that year, a few percent of the population was not having children, reflected by a life expectancy of zero, and self-sustained impacts began cutting into the remaining resources.

“WICO projects that, if the global strategy isn’t implemented on schedule, a fifth milestone will be reached in 2023 as the world’s population reaches its peak. That will be followed by rapid population loss until 2030. Hopefully, we will settle into something between the third and fourth milestones, maintaining a smaller population by living mostly off of renewable resources produced by a healthier biosphere.” 

Reality Check

Historical events are correlated with the historical record until 1940. After 1940, projected global values for the simulation “Hikeayay” are used to identify the boundaries of the phases, which correlate to the “milestones” recited by Maura.

Strategy Integration Begins

 

Ambassadors from all WICO members met in the headquarters Main Hall and officially signed their nations’ pledges to take required action to implement their individual strategies with any amendments that result from WICO’s strategy integration.

“This is a great and important day in the history of civilization,” Secretary General Decatur told the assembly at the beginning of the signing ceremony. “We unite to confront the greatest threat to our civilization and our species with the best ideas and tools ever available to humanity. Members have all submitted strategies that they judge as meeting their needs and the needs of us all, pursuant to the requirements of the Global Emergency declaration of January 3, 2019. The world thanks everyone involved for their heroic effort under almost impossible time constraints, and in advance for their preparations to implement the global strategy that will result from combining those strategies and be presented for approval by treaties no later than the first of March. The World Information and Coordination Organization promises timely guidance to expedite preparations for action, which will focus on areas of material conflict between dependent strategies, and on issues that would clearly reduce the efficacy of the global effort.”

Following the signing ceremony, WICO released a compendium of all national strategies for public review and comment during the strategy integration process. An appendix was included that summarizes the requirements and guidelines for a global strategy, along with regional projections of impact and responsibility under the business-as-usual scenario subject to the expected range of relevant natural feedbacks.

Reality Check

The procedural steps in developing local and global strategies is based on my best guesses and some fictional license (since this is an imaginary “world”).

A dedicated global effort would reasonably flesh out details at the granularity of “regions” which have similar and interdependent physical and social characteristics. I don’t have that information, but examples and critical relationships can be inferred from my simulations and some basic publicly available data.

Supply Chain Problem

TIME TO STRATEGY DEADLINE: 15 DAYS

In an interview at Expansaerospace headquarters in Colorado, CEO Mark Luke discussed what he calls “the supply chain problem.” That issue is what motivated him to host the forum two days ago which added fuel to the public debate over the merits of actions proposed by the World Information and Coordination Organization in response to the imminent extinction threat.

At age 46, Luke is an expert at business logistics, which is why he got into the transportation industry 17 years ago. “The global economy depends on extracting raw resources, creating things with them, and enabling people to get and use those things. For every person who uses something, there is a community of people called a supply chain that performs those functions. My industry, for example, contributes to moving resources, products, and people, and this company focuses on doing that above the ground. 

“Whether we like it or not, what we call raw resources includes other creatures and what they need to survive on, basically their supply chain. They also have to live with what we can’t put into products, as well as the products when we’re done using them, which of course they can’t use. That makes them the losers in every aspect of the economy, even the service industries that rely on moving people into their homes. You see where this is going? If we don’t use resources so more of them can live, or live better, then people don’t get what they want and need. It’s basically them or us.

“One of the main points that WICO and its environmentalist base likes to make is that other species provide products and services that help keep us alive. That’s misleading, because what we get is incidental to them keeping themselves alive; and there are other things they do that can hurt us, such as trying to consume us or putting substances in the environment that are toxic to us. In my opinion, which I share with many others, we’re better off creating supply chains we can control so we can keep ourselves alive. I see that as one of the core functions of civilization, which our economy was created to serve.

“Some of the alarmists have compared our impact on other creatures as equivalent to a company demanding more product for less money each year from its suppliers until eventually its suppliers go out of business and the whole supply chain collapses. Again, that’s a false equivalence, because they’re more resources and competitors than suppliers. A business solution is to expand the supply chain to include suppliers who compete with each other to become more efficient, and pick whoever’s winning at the moment. Obviously, other species aren’t competing to better serve us, so we’re justified in taking what we can get from them while developing a network of humans, and ultimately much more efficient and controllable machines, that will be increasingly capable and motivated to give us what we want.

“So, I basically disagree with the definition of the emergency. It isn’t that we’re about to go extinct because of growth. It’s that we need to grow a new supply chain to replace the one that’s becoming useless.”

Reality Check

Luke’s points are based on my experience in business and engineering, some of which I once agreed with. I’ve portrayed the logic as I imagine someone in his position would, and have left out my own considerable criticism so it stands on its own.

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.