Phased Leadership

Since my last entry, Maura and I have finished moving into a new home and been busy analyzing all of the information collected by WICO relating to the preparation and implementation of the global strategy to delay extinction. Sally, who has since adopted the surname Sanda (her name until she came out as a sentient artificial lifeform), spared enough bandwidth to help us with much of the data collection and analysis.

We’ve made several discoveries, among them the relationship between social leadership characteristics and the changing distribution of population between activity phases. This naturally required an historical perspective that Maura was happy to provide: 

“To be effective, leaders must address the range of life experiences in their community or else the community loses cohesiveness. Our biology has prepared us to live as colonizers, the first phase, but cultural and technological innovations have enabled us to inhabit the other six phases. 

“One if the most significant of the cultural innovations was a response to most people having become developers, in the second phase. The creation of a government where every person has equal value, and is responsible only for what they do instead of who they are, provided a way for developers to peaceably coexist with the remaining colonizers and coordinate their actions to potentially benefit everyone. 

“As the world entered the adaptation phase in the 1800s, roles and experiences diversified with the use of technology to convert natural environments into artificial environments, and a growing number of governments extended their main tools for regulating behavior, laws, along with new ways to enforce them, to deal with the changing range of interactions people could have with those environments and each other. 

“The number of people increases exponentially with increasing phase, so there is typically a net loss of people in the lower phases even as the total population gets larger, with the greatest rates of loss when new phases start being populated. Such transitions are therefore the most fraught with danger, which the world found out a century later when the fourth phase was breached with twice the population at stake. It took two world wars to set the stage for a truly global community whose scale would be necessary to manage the consequences.

“It’s lucky for us that the WICO framework was chosen for the design of that community. The magnitude of the changes underway and the threat of misjudging them that the last war exposed was enough to convince the world’s leaders to be cautious and provide a means of sharing knowledge and coordinating activities that could have potentially global impact. While national autonomy was still prized, having too much presented an unacceptable risk to everyone; and so, monitoring and control mechanisms were adopted following a vigorous debate about basic values to be adopted on a core level by every organization on the planet.

“Unluckily for us, the risks of developing fossil fuels and their derivatives were not considered as thoroughly as they should have been. Leaders were too fixated on its promise of quickly achieving the ultimate goal of maximum happiness, population, and life expectancy. They also failed to also consider that the goal itself might be a trigger for catastrophic consequences involving variables they didn’t even know existed. 

“The combination of those two oversights led to a series of what we now know as transitions to higher phases over the following 70 years. Despite not understanding their cause, WICO was able to reduce the most disruptive aspects of each, such as radical flipping of ideological dominance within component governments, by tracking and anticipating effects while initiating coping protocols through local agents such as the Extinction Response Units. Understanding their causes and switching governance to ecologically-defined regions and sub-regions will make those efforts more effective and efficient as we intentionally move through transitions into lower phases.”

Along with the majority of other nations, the United States is holding its last major election this year. The winners, most of whom have already been identified, will be responsible for decommissioning of government infrastructure and functions along with any remaining handoffs to the Extinction Response Unit and relevant sub-regions.

Reality Check

History matches ours up to the end of the second world war and only approximates it after that.

The annual change in the number of people within each phase over the period 1950-2050 is shown below for the simulated world of Hikeyay Prime, as a fraction of people in each previous year.

For reference, the following is the annual change for simulation Green (matching historical data) for the period 1950-2040:

Note each pair of peaks, where a large peak is closely followed by a smaller one (such as the pair for Exploiters consisting of a peak in 1973 and the smaller one in 1976).

The large peak marks the transition of people into its phase which appears to be correlated to the dominance of politically right-leaning leadership. The smaller peak appears to be correlated to dominance of politically left-leaning leadership.

This is in stark contrast to the peaks in Hikeyay Prime, a difference that is explained away by Maura as a consequence of WICO’s organization but is actually due to the more well-behaved function used for the underlying ratio of remaining resources to human needs. If the political correlation does hold up for Hikeyay Prime, it is likely with the decay portion of the larger peak.

Phases of Time

 

Maura recently had a new insight about the historical context framework she first lectured about on June 21. Today she shared it with other members of the history department, many of whom were onsite to prepare for the beginning of classes.

“WICO’s decision to add subregions got me thinking about how to make sense of all the new information.” Behind her at the head of one of the lecture halls, a world map displayed the thousand subregions color-coded according to which of the original regions they were part of. 

“Instead of thinking in terms of ecosystem types, or biomes, we can look at them in simpler terms.” She pressed a hidden button on the lectern and only seven colors remained. “Here, they’re categorized according to their dominant phases. WICO came up with the concept of phases while trying to predict behaviors based on observed correlations with the ratio of basic consumption by people to basic consumption by members of other species.” She showed a graph of the behaviors as a function of phase. “Those behaviors include living longer, seeking happiness, and having children and dying which affects population. Each phase is a range of the ratio that corresponds to aspects of the behaviors. Until the addition of subregions, there was a lot more uncertainty in the predictions than some of us who worked on the global strategy were comfortable with. With refined data collection and testing, it is now possible to have better resolution on what phase a person or group occupies at a given time.”

She scanned the nearly-full hall and smiled coyly. “So… what does this have to do with history? Just as people and groups move through phases, all of humanity has moved through what I call ‘phase epochs’ that each correspond to a range of time where the characteristics of a particular phase are dominant. In my first lecture, I used a crude version of that concept to define ‘milestones’ marking off certain trends in history. Now, I propose being more explicit about the nature of the phases in all its manifestations as the characterization of life’s interactions over time and space.”

A review of the past two centuries followed, where she referenced the milestones in their new context and suggested some new directions of research using both historical records and the growing dataset of observations taken by professionals and the global network of trained citizens living out the transition.

Reality Check

A phase diagram for today is shown below, where L is life expectancy, h is happiness, Fert is fertility, P is population, R is consumption by a group, Cap is capacity (total resources), C is per-capita consumption, and Wealth/p is per-capita wealth (fixed 2010 dollars). Years listed at the 90% value are the original milestones.

Phase epochs are based on which phases are dominant over a period of time. Every epoch except the first epoch is represented in the following graph, which shows the fraction of global population in each phase from 1800 through the transition for the simulated world as indicated by the difference in population ratio between any pair of colored lines. The black line is the projected phase for the population. 

Epoch 1 (dominated by phase 1, the purple line) ended in the year 152. Epoch 2 ended between 1810 and 1850 (likely 1837), when the dark blue line representing phase 2 reached 100%. Epoch 3 ended between 1940 and 1950 (likely 1947). Epoch 4 ended in 1973, and Epoch 5 ended in 1999. The present Epoch 6 (yellow) first ended in 2014, which began the present Epoch 7.

The global strategy intends to reverse the progress this year, and reenter Epoch 6 by 2022. Epoch 5 will be reentered in 2031, where the world will hopefully stay past 2040.

Following is the equivalent graph for our world (“Green”):

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.

Phase Transition

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 54 DAYS

“I’ve found that the best way to think about it is in terms of the seven phases.” Maura was sprawled on the couch in our new office, a converted conference room at the Boulder field office. She was still tired from a day of driving and hours of unpacking that lasted past midnight, not to mention a traffic-filled drive from Colorado Springs this morning. “The strategy is going to be used as a tool for moving from unhealthy phases to healthy phases, and helping others do the same.”

As if on cue, a chart appeared on the blank wall above the table that served as a desk for both of us. I stared at it from my office chair next to the couch, trying to imagine what she saw in the squiggly lines that crawled across the embedded graph representing the world’s population when the strategy is due to go live. “Most people are moving from phases six and seven to phases one through four,” I cited what I already knew, “but what does that mean to them?”

“For one thing, it means competition with the group that’s already there, a group that without WICO and the emergency declaration would be aggressively and effectively resisting them.”

I studied the graph. “That group is less than ten percent of the population, with less than twice that in total wealth. How could they effectively fight off more than two-thirds of the population?”

“By co-opting the quarter of the population in the phase between them who are in the final stage of approaching maximum happiness and life expectancy. Without understanding and believing the big picture, the people in that peak phase could easily and reasonably be convinced that the majority is trying to steal the prize they’re working hard to achieve. Self-defense is maybe the strongest motive for fighting.”

“Ignorance would be their friend,” I observed. “For some of them it still is, judging from recent events.” 

“Yes,” she agreed, and closed her eyes. Then she got weird. “In most worlds like ours, their success is everyone’s failure.” She opened her eyes and turned to me. “That can still happen in this one, Will.”

Her gaze, normally comforting, triggered a spike of adrenaline. I tried to focus on the solution. “Doesn’t the majority still have an edge in that case?” In addition to superior numbers, they had a few percent more of total wealth.

“It’s close to a tie at this point,” she admitted, sitting up and looking at the graph, “but because power traditionally derives from consumption of natural resources, they can’t generate more power. To get what they need, they have to effectively decrease consumption by increasing resources in the environment, which will take away an equivalent amount of power and give the others the advantage.”

 “So why are we better off again?” I asked, my voice betraying the panic I felt.

“We accept the fact that we’re all in mortal danger if we don’t make this happen.” I saw her point: self-defense means nothing if you kill yourself in the process.

Reality Check

The phase diagram for 2019 discussed by Will and Maura is shown below.

Response Coordination

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 68 DAYS

Maura officially remains a special agent of the U.S. Extinction Response Unit. Prior to being attached and operationally reporting directly to WICO she worked out of the USERU’s field office in Denver, developing local strategy options and helping identify their potential outcomes (the latter of which she was doing with the global strategy when I was summoned). Today we visited the field office, whose personnel have been tasked with coordinating the strategy’s execution in the Rocky Mountain states.

Regional Director Felicity Jonas greeted us warmly and then compared notes with Maura on the status of preparations for the roll-out. After the attack on WICO, USERU made educated guesses about that the final strategy would look like, with emphasis on the national strategy’s inputs, and yesterday finished a review comparing their guesses with the current version of the strategy. Sally had been particularly helpful in the review, which she was simultaneously doing with extinction response units in the other nations. 

“Our guesses were pretty close,” Jonas said as the briefing wrapped up. “Locally we have a couple dozen action items that we can address by the end of the month, no sweat. After that, and until the execution date, we’ll be enlisting public and local governments to refine the impact reduction criteria and translate them into activity plans on a granular level. Do you think you can help us with that, Maura?”

“That’s one of the reasons I’m here,” she replied, giving me a knowing look. “I’m expecting a full report on my team’s personal environmental assessment suggestions and related test plans by end-of-business today. I’ll review them tonight, and I’d like to get your take on them tomorrow morning.” She explained that individuals could use such approaches for high-level detection and assessment during the initial phase, while more technology intensive approaches would be applied to conditions expected to be too large or unsafe. “It will improve the overall efficiency, and give us critical feedback for developing the next version, which will eventually be dominant. For those reasons, we should test them as soon as possible. After you see what we’ve got, I’d like to brainstorm how we can leverage what you’re doing with the activity plans.”

“Agreed,” Jonas said. “Meanwhile, I’ll pass this up the chain of command to see if any other regions can get involved.”

“Will’s next blog post should make that easier,” Maura suggested.

After we left, she suggested we do some sight-seeing and talk about the next steps, beginning with the radical idea I mentioned in yesterday’s post.

As she drove us into the mountains, I gave her an overview. “It’s related to a discussion I had with Sally back on February 7. I know because last night I looked up a post that I wrote then. Ambassador Lazlo even commented on it the next day. People are reacting to their environmental conditions in some ways like other animals do. We’re so used to looking at big picture statistics that we don’t see how it can scale to everyday experience.”

I waited for a reaction. “You mean, people are the detectors?” she asked.

“You got it,” I confirmed. “When people lived in nature all the time they were doing exactly what we want to do, with nothing more than what they could carry. We evolved to routinely make environmental assessments just to survive. Clearly some of it is still happening, affecting how happy we are, how many children we have, and how long we each live. If you believe Sally’s statistics, it even affects how much we trade with each other.”

“But life expectancy is tied to technology,” she argued, “and the economy depends on who is trading with who.”

I had thought a lot about those questions before falling asleep. “We still get sick, even fatally so, which is a direct effect of the toxins we breathe, drink, and eat. As for the economy, the quality and distribution of resources are averaged out in the stats, but they don’t have to be.”

“You sound more like a scientist than a journalist every day,” she observed.

“I like to read as much as I like to write. Also, I have a lot of smart friends.” She smiled, but I was specifically thinking of someone else. “You know what? I think it’s time for you to meet one of those other friends.”

Reality Check

Near the end, Will was of course referring to the correlations between remaining ecological resources and the global variables he cited. In my simulations, I have not used specific distributions of resources but rather inferred them from historical trends, essentially treating populations as resource distribution detectors. In the characters’ quest to test, I’m basically presenting a case for testing the assumptions and results of the simulations on small scales.

Phases of Perception

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 118 DAYS

Professor Archibald Ali is famous as an expert on the ways that self-perception influences social dynamics at multiple scales from immediate families to cultures. Following are some excerpts from a wide-ranging interview that I had with him today.

He began by sharing some new information. “WICO’s new framework for the global strategy is very clarifying. Before the crash, I spoke with several people testing the assumptions built into the strategy. They wanted my opinion about a new version of the framework that they were developing to explain their results. Instead of four stages, they proposed seven ‘phases’ that are a closer fit to the relationships between the global variables they were tracking. 

“The biggest problem they had was with the first stage, growth, which misleadingly lumps together all but the last three decades of human history, and even today doesn’t account for a fraction of the observed variety in the regions assigned to it. In the new framework, that one stage would have three phases. The transition and peak would stay the same, but collapse would be split into two phases, one corresponding to the decline of happiness and life expectancy, and the other having just a falling population with no happiness or life expectancy.

“At the time the server crashed, WICO’s AI was in the midst of evaluating if and how application of the phases could enhance the global strategy. Unfortunately, we will never know the result. It occurred to me that the AI might have given you a clue about the status of its deliberations during your interactions with it.”

I couldn’t recall anything relevant in my conversations with Sanda that I hadn’t already reported. Then I realized how stupid I’d been. Sanda’s last message read “NR53X C310119JNK” which I misreported as referring to junk mail from January 19, when it actually referred to mail on January 31 that I wrote about at the time. The message said, “Prepare for the worst, work for the best, question everything, and fully accept nothing,” which for the purpose of identifying the attacker meant nothing.

Ali agreed with my interpretation of the message, but had a suggestion that made me feel even more dumb. “Readers like me assumed you had what you Americans like to call a brain fart, understandable given the stress of the event. What if it wasn’t, though? This is why I asked about your relationship with the AI last week. Maybe it knew you well enough to forecast the error, and the error referred to the real message.”

Five minutes later, I found another message, still in my junk folder, dated 19 January and from a sender with a slightly different name. This one read: “Climbing is stressful, destinations are for perspective, and trips down must be taken carefully or they end badly.”

“Sounds like stages beat phases,” I observed after some thought.

“No, I disagree,” Ali said. “It mentioned multiple destinations and trips down. The stages apply to one ‘destination’ or peak, and one trip down. The first three phases each have different degrees of effort, making the climb stressful, and last two phases are each a separate trip down. I would say that the AI was favoring the new framework.”

“Why send its conclusion before completing the assessment?” I asked him. “Also, what does this have to do with the servers crashing?”

Ali’s eyes lit up. “Perhaps there is one answer to both questions! My not-as-smart computers back up their data on a regular basis in case there is a serious failure of software or hardware. The AI trusted you enough to make your e-mail a backup destination when it sensed a failure was becoming probable, and sent you a retrieval code when the failure was imminent.”

I recalled the speculation by pundits that Sunday’s deadly protests were planned weeks ago. If there was a common source for the server crash and the protests, then Ali could be right, and new evidence would show that preparations for both were in progress on January 19.

Reality Check

The “phases” are based on points of inflection in global variables as functions of the population/nature ratio. In the following graph, the time is indicated for when the average world population reaches the end of each phase historically and in a business-as-usual future:

The fraction of the world population in each phase is shown below (in gray), and a triangle indicates the world average, for the simulated world’s mid-2019:

As for the misreporting of the date of the “message,” it really was due to a brain fart.

Cascades

TIME TO GLOBAL STRATEGY DEADLINE: 21 DAYS

Ambassador Lazlo began the WICO press conference today with a statement that was clearly motivated by information that Sally shared with me over the past two days. 

“There has been a lot of discussion about how the presence of other species in environments affects people’s feelings and behavior. The precise explanation eludes us, but empirical evidence shows that it is real. Our present hypothesis is that people experience happiness and life expectancy as the result of reactions by many of the species in their bodies to what ecologists call ‘trophic cascades’ within the outer environment.

“We might have missed it if our collective ecological impact wasn’t so great that the effects could be observed on multiple scales in nearly real time. As I implied, there’s still a lot we don’t know, but what we do know reinforces the premise built into our strategy that we must stop exterminating other species in order to save our own from the same fate.” 

Reality Check

This explanation is based on observed periodicity of happiness and life expectancy as functions of the ratio of basic consumption to remaining resources. I plan to flesh out details in future posts.

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.

Christmas Outbreak

TIME TO GLOBAL STRATEGY DEADLINE: 23 DAYS

My anonymous source Sally finally returned my calls and offered to provide deep background on STRIDE’s development of a global strategy. She began with the following story which she cautioned is “only approximately true.”

On Christmas 2002 the world’s richest person realized that she had accomplished everything that mattered to her and that no one would never have a better life than she was having right then. She could accumulate more money and things, but it had become noticeably harder each year, with diminishing satisfaction to show for it; and the effort was both objectively and subjectively on the verge of making her life worse.

After a year roughly four hundred people representing nearly five percent of the world’s wealth shared a similar experience, with most feeling that their lives were getting worse. Growing desperate to break their malaise, they worked harder at what they associated with their previous success, consuming more resources and acquiring more ability to do so. In retrospect it predictably had the opposite effect, behaving much like an infectious virus, and forced others into the same predicament.

Nearly five thousand people and one-ninth of the world’s wealth were affected by the spring of 2005 when another problem arose: life expectancy reached a peak, again affecting the richest people first. By then more than half the amount of resources usable by all species each year was being directly consumed or converted into unusable waste by humanity, contributing to the death of creatures who couldn’t defend themselves or what they needed.

In 2008 the world found out what happens when one-fifth of global wealth is owned by people who are freaking out because they are growing unhappy and their life expectancy is falling: they make big mistakes. Because of those mistakes, the economy contracted for the first time in decades. The magnitude of the drop caught many by surprise, in part because of a driver of inflation that was unknown at the time.

When she was done, I asked if the consumption statistic for 2005 was related to the cause of the declines in happiness, life expectancy, and economy that she described. I also asked why she didn’t mention climate change and its related impacts during that period since the whole point of our discussion was to address how humanity was going to cope with the extinction threat.

“To understand the future, you must understand the past,” she said cryptically. “Think about that and I’ll continue the story tomorrow.”

Reality Check

The story is, like the rest of this blog, is an interpretation of events based on my simulation. The explanation can be derived from my other writing, such as discussions of the Timelines model that is the core of the simulation. I plan to soon spell it out here in somewhat easier-to-understand terms.

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.