Globalization: Breakdown part 1

THE CHAOS POINT

THE WORLD AT THE CROSSROADS

ERVIN LASZLO

PIATKUS                  2006

PART I

The Club of Budapest, founded in 1993 by Ervin Laszlo, is an informed association of globally, as well as locally, active opinion leaders in various fields of art, science, religion, and culture, dedicated to the evolution of our values, ethics, and consciousness in the interest of averting global crisis and creating a peaceful and sustainable civilization. It publishes books and reports, conducts surveys, awards prizes, hosts the World Wisdom Council and the online Wisdom Academy, and is creating a network of likeminded organizations (the Wisdom Alliance), as well as television and affiliated radio series.

 

Foreword by Sir Arthur Clarke, 1 February 2006

• Ervin Laszlo, scientist, and founder and president of the Club of Budapest, makes a vital point: The future is not to be forecast, but created.
• What we do today will decide the shape of things tomorrow. Especially the way we perceive the challenges that await us, and the vision we develop for coping with them.
• His book furnishes essential guidelines for creating a positive scenario for our common future: for the new thinking and acting that this calls for.
• I want to briefly address questions of technological hardware, the area closest to my interests. Here too, some of the warnings issued by Laszlo are relevant: for example against obeying the technological imperative. Not all things that can be produced should, evidently, actually be produced.
• The failures of people to forecast developments fall into two categories: the hopelessly pessimistic and the overly optimistic. This may be because our logical processes are linear, whereas the real world obeys nonlinear processes, often with exponential laws.
• Thus, we tend to exaggerate what can be done in the short run but hopelessly underestimate ultimate possibilities.
• When the news of Alexander Bell’s new invention reached Britain, the engineer-in-chief of the post office exclaimed loftily: “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” That is what I call a failure of imagination.
• When the mayor of an American city heard about the telephone, he was wildly enthusiastic. “I can see the time when every city will have one.” What would he have thought if somebody had told him that one day many households would have several?
• Around the end of the 19^th century, the president of the Carriage Builders Association of Great Britain lectured his fellows on the subject of the newly invented motor car. “Anyone would be a fool who denied that the motor car has an important future. But he would be an even bigger fool if he suggested that it would have any impact on the horse and carriage trade.”
• We are now in the midst of one of the greatest technological revolutions in history, and if the bifurcations in the area of economy, ecology, and politics outlined in this report are adequately managed, the end will be nowhere in sight.
• Who could have imagined that something the size of a fingernail, constructed by technology inconceivable only a few decades ago, could change the face of commerce, industry and everyday human life?
• Although we science fiction writers assumed that computers would play an important role in the future (Hi there, HAL!), nobody dreamed that one day the world population of computers would exceed that of human beings.
• We are now approaching a time, for better or for worse, when we will be able to do anything that does not defy the laws of physics. Of the many things that are possible, not all are desirable.
• Contrary to popular perception, we science fiction writers don’t predict the future, we try to prevent undesirable futures taking place.
• Let me share a few of my own extrapolations in some areas of technology and engineering for the coming decades:

1. 1.      New energy sources: There is a real possibility that the most important event of the 21^st century will be the advent of unlimited amounts of clean energy. I am 99% sure that the end of the fossil fuel/nuclear fission age is now in sight, with awesome political and economic consequences, as well as some very desirable ones – such as ending the current threat of global warming and pollution.
2. 2.      Super materials and space elevator: We have already seen the development of super-strength materials which will impact transportation, building construction, and, especially, space travel by reducing the structural mass of space vehicles to a fraction of its present value. First conceived by a Russian engineer named Yuri Artsutanov in 1960, the Space Elevator is based on a simple – yet daring – concept. Today’s communication satellites demonstrate how an object can remain poised over a fixed spot on the equator by matching its speed to the turning earth below. Now imagine a cable, linking the satellite to the ground. Payloads could be hoisted up it by purely mechanical means, reaching orbit without any use of rocket power. The cost of launching payloads into orbit could be reduced to a tiny fraction of today’s costs. What makes the Space Elevator such an attractive idea is its cost effectiveness. A ticket to orbit now costs tens of millions of dollars. But the actual energy required would only add about $100 to your electricity bill. And a round-trip would cost only about one tenth of that, as most of the energy could be recovered on the way back!
3. 3.      New propulsion systems: There are a number of hints in rather far-out physics as to how such a device might operate. When they are perfected, they will open up the solar system, as sailing ships opened up this planet during the first millennium.
4. 4.      Contact/detection of extraterrestrials: This is the wild card: No one can predict when this will happen, but I would be surprised if it does not occur during the next few decades.
5. 5.      Spaceguard: Now here is the Bad News. We now realize (especially after Shoemaker-Levy’s spectacular impact on Jupiter) that we live in a dangerous neighborhood. Ask the dinosaurs, if you can find one. Few would deny that a Near Earth Object (comet or asteroid) will cause catastrophic damage somewhere on this planet. The very least we should do is to initiate a survey of potentially dangerous NEOs. There are now several Spaceguard foundations and projects to keep vigil on hazards from space. What we should do if we see a Big Dumb Rock heading this way is a question that already has dozens of answers; some day, we will have to choose one of them. J.D. Bernal’s The World, the Flesh and the Devil, one of the best books on foreseeing the future ever written, opens with the striking phrase: “There are two futures, the future of Desire and the future of Fate, and man’s reason has never learnt to separate them.” The future of Fate will not be disclosed until it unfolds, but reason, as exposed in this book, tells us that the future of Desire can be crucial to its unfolding. To quote Robert Bridges, successful living depends upon the “masterful administration of the unforeseen.” Such administration is now, at the decision-window leading to a chaos point and the civilizational transformation Laszlo calls “macroshift,” important as never before. We must catch up with the world our technological genius has created – update the way we perceive it, the way we value it, and the way we act in it. As this book clearly shows, the outcome of a transformation of civilization is sensitive to changes and perceptions and behaviors. It is here, at the critical chaos point, that the Future of fate and the Future of Desire intersect – where desire, transformed into the masterful administration of the unforeseen, makes for a selection between a scenario of breakdown and a scenario of breakthrough. I leave the reader with this report of the Club of Budapest founder and president Ervin Laszlo to see how the seeming paradox between unforeseeability and conscious choice can be resolved, how today’s civilizational shift can be purposively and effectively navigated.

 

Prologue: Two Paths to the Future

• A Chinese proverb warns: “If we do not change direction, we are likely to end up exactly where we are headed.” Applied to contemporary humanity, this would be disastrous.
• Without a change in direction, we are on the way to a world of increasing population pressure and poverty; growing potential for social and political conflict; escalating maverick and organized warfare; accelerating climate change; food, water, and energy shortages; worsening industrial, urban, and agricultural pollution; further destruction of the ozone layer; accelerating reduction of biodiversity; and continued loss of atmospheric oxygen.
• We also run the risk of mega-disasters caused by nuclear accidents and leaking nuclear waste, devastating floods and tornadoes due to climate change, and widespread health problems owing to natural catastrophes as well as to such human factors as the accumulation of toxins in soil, air and water.
• Where we are now headed is not where we want to go.

v  There are higher levels of frustration and discontent as wealth and power become more concentrated and the gap increases between the holders of wealth and power and marginalized segments of the population.

v  80% of the world’s domestic product belongs to 1 billion people, and the remaining 20% is shared by 5½ billion people, an imbalance that will only worsen, since the poor countries are paying $38 billion more each year in interest than they are receiving in development aid.

v  One in three urban dwellers in the world live in slums, shantytowns, favelas, and urban ghettos – more than 900 million people are now classified as slum-dwellers. In the poorest countries 78% of the urban population subsists under such life-threatening circumstances.

v  Although more women and girls are being educated, in many parts of the world fewer women have jobs and more are forced to make ends meet in the “informal sector.”

v  There is greater propensity in many parts of the world for resorting to terrorism and other forms of violence to right wrongs, or at least to call attention to the perceived wrongs. There is deepening insecurity in countries both rich and poor.

v  Islamic fundamentalism is spreading throughout the Muslim world, neo-Nazi and other extremist movements are surfacing in Europe, and religious fanaticism is appearing the world over.

v  As some governments seek to contain maverick violence through organized warfare, conflicts heat up in the Middle East, Asia, Central America, and other hot spots.

v  In 2005, world military spending rose for the sixth year running, growing by 5% to $1.04 trillion, with the United States alone accounting for $455 billion or almost half the world figure. The G8 countries together are selling over $12 billion in arms to the poorest countries.

v  There is a drop in food self-sufficiency in the majority of the world’s economies, ominously coupled with the diminution of the internationally available food reserves.

v  There is also a diminution of available fresh water for well over half of the world’s population. More than 6,000 children die every day for lack of clean water.

v  Vital balances are continually degrading in the world’s atmosphere, in the oceans and freshwater systems, and in productive soils. The consequences include the greenhouse effect with attendant climate change, and a reduction of the productivity of seas, lakes, rivers, and agricultural lands. Some processes feed on themselves and are already out of control: As the Arctic ice melts, the sea absorbs more warmth, which makes for more melting; as Siberian permafrost disappears, the methane released from the peat-bog below exacerbates the greenhouse effect and makes for more melting and thus for more methane.

v  There are persistently worrisome trends in the world’s richest country and sole remaining superpower. Poverty and hunger are on the rise. In 2003, 12.5% of the U.S. population lived in poverty; 10 million households – 31 million individuals, of whom 12 million were children – risked hunger or faced food insecurity; and 3.1 million households – including 2 million children – suffered from actual hunger.

v  As the aftermath of hurricane Katrina has shown, the poorest segment of the U.S. population is continually neglected as the Administration assigns funds and gives priority to fighting economic interests abroad. Environmental objectives that could interfere with economic growth are persistently side-stepped.

v  The richest segment of the population has been becoming still richer, but wealth has failed to ensure financial security: a poll of the U.S. Private Bank showed that in the year 2000, 64% of rich Americans with an average wealth of $38 million felt financially insecure.

v  In the name of safeguarding national security, increasing restrictions have been placed on civil liberties, including free speech and freedom of expression in the press and on the Internet, and individuals suspected of being a security threat were detained without trial and at times subjected to torture.

v  There has been a continued withdrawal of funding for media that encourage open questioning of the Administration’s current policies, with a parallel withdrawal  of funding for institutions and programs of public education.

• If such trends continue, we shall be launched on a path not just to national but to global breakdown.

 

A scenario breakdown

• The international community becomes increasingly polarized, with a growing gap and growing resentment between those who benefit from the globalization of the world’s economic, financial, and information systems and those who are locked out of it.
• Terrorist groups, nuclear proliferators, narco-trafickers, and organized crime find a fertile environment for pursuing their goals.
• An accelerating rise in military expenditures diverts money from health and environmental care, aggravating the plight of poor populations and worsening the condition of the environment.
• As unfavourable weather patterns limit harvests and yields are further reduced by a shortage of unpolluted water, hunger and disease spread and migrations occur.
• Governments are under mounting pressure, resorting to military measures to ensure access to resources, and ‘cleanse’ territories of unwanted populations.
• As social, economic, and environmental crises are met with military countermeasures, violence escalates, and the global system is exposed to intolerable stress. Before long, it breaks down.
• Trends are not destiny. They can be changed. Breakdown is just one of the possible futures before us.
• If we wake up to the need to cope with the dangers we face and join a sense of urgency to live and act responsibly with a sense of commitment to each other and to our shared future, we can still shift to a path of breakthrough.

 

The breakthrough scenario

• Faced with growing problems and shared threats, concerned groups of citizens pull together, form associations and networks, and pursue shared objectives of peace and sustainability.
• A new culture of responsibility and solidarity emerges in society. Funds and capital are channelled from military and defense applications to the needs of the people who make up the bulk of society.
• Measures are implemented to safeguard the environment, create an effective system of food and resource distribution, and develop and put to work sustainable energy, transport, and agricultural technologies.
• More and more  people gain access to food, jobs and education. More and more enter on the Internet as active dialogue partners. Their communication reinforces solidarity and uncovers win-win areas where mutual interests can be jointly promoted.
• Decisionmakers in the sphere of national and international economics shift their operating principles from living on ‘natural capital’ to living on ‘natural income.’ (Natural capital consists of the accumulated riches of the earth, used and discarded, as in the burning of fossil fuels. When such capital is depleted, the economic systems based on it go bankrupt – they are unsustainable. Natural income, on the other hand, consists of the almost infinitely available resources of nature – above all, solar radiation – and of efficiently replenishable and recyclable resources. Economic systems living off natural income are intrinsically sustainable.)
• The emerging objective is not to optimise labor-productivity, but to increase the level of resource-productivity.
• Distrust, ethnic conflict, racial oppression, economic inequity, and gender inequality give way to mutual trust and respect.
• Humanity breaks through to a sustainable world of self-reliant but cooperating communities, enterprises, states, and regions.
• Which path will we take in the coming years? The answer is not in yet; we still have a window in time. Our destiny is now in our hands.

 

PART ONE: THE TIDES OF TRANSFORMATION

Chapter 1: New Thinking for a New World