Thought of the month ...

October 2009: On September 28, 2009, the International Herald Tribune published a commentary by Thomas L. Friedman titled "The new Sputnik" (read it ...). Friedman notes that China has just decide to go green, and he considers this to be the 21-st century equivalent of the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik: similar to the stunning launch of Sputnik, the decision of China to go green is a challenge for the rest of the world. I agree with him, but I believe the challenge is much greater than most authors, commentaries, and politicians seem to realize.

Lester R. Brown, in a speech at the University of Berkeley in 2008 pointed out that if current trends continue then the average salary in China would equal that in the U.S. in 2032. He continues to point out that if Chinese would aspire to the same standard of living that U.S. residents have today, then they would have, among many other changes, to pave an area the size of Texas, and the number of cars worldwide would have to be tripled from currently some 900 million to nearly 2.7 billion. He stresses that everybody can understand that all this is not possible - unsustainable. But he fails to consider and discuss what that means for our global civilization.

During most of our history, humanity has always been close to meeting severe constraints: food supply was very often a severe limitation, and so was access to agricultural land, water, and other key resources, including energy - and these limitations kept changing over time, but nevertheless, limitations remained. Conflicts and wars have often centered around access to resources. There is no basis for assuming that this will be different in the future.

What could this mean for our future? More and more human beings will have the economic resources to compete for the increasingly limited resources on Earth. Why should Chinese, as their economic power, both on national and individual levels increases, not want to live a life style comparable to contemporary Americans? China will be a key economical power in this contest or combat for resources. China's position will benefit from the fact that China already today owns some of debt, infrastructure, and companies of the U.S. But the major advantage will result from China's investment in the technology of the future: green energy. This race for a sustainable energy supply is comparable to the race for the Moon started by the launch of Sputnik.

Our past history shows that countries seldom hesitated to take, if necessary with wars, what they deemed necessary for their welfare. The last 100 years of U.S. history are just one more example of a country satisfying its demands on the costs of others. So, why should we then assume that China, or any other emerging economic power, would not do the same, if they are in the position to do so?

Considering the scenario of the main economic powers, one of them being the economically rapidly growing China with the largest population in a single country, competing for the world's insufficient and increasingly scarce resources in order to satisfy increasing demands signals a dire future. Based on our history, I dare to predict that in this future, conflicts and wars are unavoidable. It surprises me that nobody seems to realize that we are on a trajectory towards severe, worldwide conflicts for resources. A few days ago, Barack Obama in his speech to the United Nations Plenary focused on climate change as the major threat to humanity. I do not think that climate change is the main challenge. Yes, climate change will challenge humanity. But the key challenge to humanity comes from ourselves: unsatisfiable demands, greed and the resulting fight for resources.