Thoughts 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 around the North Atlantic seldom hesitated to take, if necessary with wars, what they deemed necessary for their welfare. Romans did this, and so did the Spanish, French, British, and Germans. The last 100 years of U.S. history are just one more example of a country satisfying its demands on the costs of others.

China, on the other hand, has extended imperialistic past. We may be save to assume not being imperialistic is deeply ingrained in Chinese mentality. But they will compete for the World's resources with increasingly more economic power. How will the imperialistic countries around the North Atlantic act in this competition, if they are loosing on the economic battlefield? Will China again be forced to build a "wall" to fend of the aggressors? How would this modern "wall" be constructed? Or would China, for the first time, have to actually invade the aggressors to keep them out of China and away from the resources this country will need in order to achieve a lifestyle demonstrated by the North Atlantic culture?

Considering a scenario in which the main economic powers, one of them being a economically rapidly growing China with the largest population in a single country, compete 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.

May 2009: Reading the article For leader of Maldives, it's not just sink or swim (see IHT, May 10, 2009; or the local copy), which reports on the proposal of Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives, to save enough of the money earned through tourism to be able to buy a new country when the Maldives disappear under a rising sea level, which I think is a very wise adaptation strategy, I came across the mentioning of the British film "The Age of Stupid", a film I had not noticed so far. Is there any better description of our time? We really seem to be living in "The Age of Stupid." So many signs are there showing that the planet is changing rapidly, and not for the better. In order to provide for the needs of a rapidly growing and increasingly more demanding population, we have reengineered the planet. And we have very well documented the magnitude and details of the changes we made to a once healthy planet: the forests that we have cut down at a speed unparalleled by any natural changes in forests; the rivers and lakes that we have polluted to a level unknown in Earth history; the atmosphere that we have changed at a rate seldom achieved by natural processes; the number of species that we have extinct or brought close to extinction to an extent associated in Earth's history only with the end of a geological epoch and a transition to a radically changed planet. And humanity has never been as precarious as it is today socially and economically: 1 billion people suffering from a lack of sufficient access to clean drinking water; 1 billion people suffering from insufficient or inappropriate food; the most powerful weapons in the hands of potentially irrational political leaders; an economy that allows a few individuals to bring the global economy on the brink of collapse; many of us without basic rights and access to education, information, and in denial of a dream for a more prosperous future; and most of us, except very, very few, struggling economically either barely able to make ends meet or living in poverty. Today we have an abundance of information about the state of the Earth and the trends to the worse. Looking back from 2050, which is the perspective taken in the film "The Age of Stupid", people will say: "They cannot claim they could not know."

Paul Hawken argues that if you are trying to do something to revert the unsustainable development, you are not alone: "there are over one - and maybe even two - million organizations working toward ecological sustainability and social justice" (Hawken in the preface of his book "Blessed Unrest"). Our leaders are also increasingly acknowledging the need for sustainability and have expressed the will to make progress towards sustainable development. The United Nations' Millennium Development Goals are just one expression of this awareness and the will to change. But despite the largest and fastest growing social movement in history seen by Hawken, and despite the political will expressed in the Millennium Development Goals and in many other documents, the first decade of the 21st Century has not resulted in any visible improvements and not brought us much closer to sustainability. Why is this so?

Too many of our scientists, decision makers, and politicians seem to set their personal fate above the fate of the local, regional, and global community. As parents, workers, shoppers, tourists, voters and in many other roles that most of us take on at various levels we all seem to value our personal instantaneous advantage higher than the broader societal advantages, particularly the more long-term ones. And most of us do not even want to know what the full impact of our way of life on humanity and the planet is. But many, many of us are at the same time diffusely worried and full of fear of an uncertain future, both for them individually and for their country or the Earth as a whole. And, as pointed out already, we cannot claim that we could not know.

Meanwhile, do we have to join the President of Maldives and look for a new country, a new Earth, to be ready when our own disappears or becomes uninhabitable? Recently, a taxi driver in the U.S. told me that he is prepared for the worst, when society drifts into revolution: "I have riffles, I can make my own ammunition, and I have a place to go and hide when society falls apart." What is needed so that we do not try to prepare ourselves individually (like the taxi driver) or as small groups (like proposed by the President of the Maldives) for the worst, but as a whole species, as humanity, take on the challenge of stewardship for a planet in a precarious dynamic equilibrium?

The President of the Maldives argues that as sea level rises, millions will have to relocate, and he rightly fears that in such a situation, nobody will care about 300,000 Maldivians. The taxi driver rightly fears that in an unstable social situation, if not prepared he may end up as a homeless person, disregarded and thrown away as social garbage. As long as these fears prevail, rightly prevail, I must say, many will focus on individual adaptation instead of mitigation that can only be achieved if all stand together. To overcome the fears, the President of the Maldives needs to be assured that the 300,000 Maldivians will not be overlooked. The taxi driver needs to be assured that he will not be left behind. Only if a believe in a basic security can be instilled in many will we overcome the fears that block us from looking at the evidence (and thus make the step from 'we could have known' to 'we know') and from addressing the origin of the fears.

Concerning the Maldives, see also NYT, March 16, 2009, NYT, March 16, 2009, NYT, Nov. 11, 2008 (or the local copy).

For more about Paul Hawken, visit paulhawken.com or the Paul Hawken Wiki.

April 2009: Albert Einstein said "No problem can be solved with the same consciousness that created it." Can we solve the problem of a global economic, environmental and societal crisis with the same consciousness that created this problem? The mere goal of "recovery," that is postulated by many seems to indicate that we have not understood the scale of the crisis. Recovery to what? The same consciousness and state that brought humanity into this self-inflicted global crisis that appears to challenge the existence of humanity?

A fundamentally flawed economy, which does not respect and support the importance of a healthy and sustainable planet as our home; which is not tailored for a prosperous humanity but rather the prosperity of a few; which needs constant growth in order to thrive and thus contradicts the basic conditions on a finite planet; this flawed economy brought us into an environmental and social crisis that now threatens economy itself. There is no separate "economic" crisis, or "climate" crisis, or "extinction of species" crisis, or "social" crisis. There is only one pandemic crisis impacting all economic, environmental, and social aspects, and this crisis is rooted in a flawed and fundamentally unsustainable economy of pathological cancerous growth and poor practices.

Already today one billion people are without access to sufficient clean drinking water and more have to drink water that has lost its naturally beautiful taste; one billion people are undernourished and many more do not have a choice between the poor and unhealthy food they can afford and the tasty products that are out of their reach; many millions of women are without equal rights, and many are negated even the most basic rights; at any time, millions of people are suffering from wars, and many minorities of different colors, ethnic origin, religion, or sexual orientation in different places on the planet are suppressed and deprived of their right to pursue happiness; and many people exceeding billions by number, have to live in poverty in malfunctioning and often sickening urban environments deprived of the inherent beauty our planet had to, and still has to, offer in so many places. Despite the UN's Millennium Development Goals, it stands to fear that most of these numbers will continue to grow, in a worst case scenario catastrophically.

In the film "Independence Day", the U.S. president, in his speech before the last battle against the intruders, has the vision that this external crises of an alien attach, which is challenging the survival of humanity on Earth, will transform humanity in its roots: "Mankind - that word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests." The current slowly developing, self-inflicted global crisis is of a scale comparable to the one in "Independence Day", although yet to be illustrated with effects as dramatic as the special effects in the film. But we see already signs that the final words of the President's speech may set the course of humanity in dealing with this crisis: "We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive!" We can only hope that this universal crisis may in fact alter humanity as a whole and enable us to develop the new consciousness that according to Albert Einstein is required to solve the problem.

March 2009: How proud should people be in a society in which at least 2% of the kids experience homelessness? A society, where the number of kids left out in this way, innocent victims with little chance to built a prosperous future for themselves, is steadily increasing? A society, where the failure of the system to keep greedy bankers and credit sharks in reasonable bounds puts millions of families at risk of loosing their homes and ending up in homelessness and poverty with their kids?

Would you be proud of living in a society that manages to give 2% or more of the kids the chance to experience homelessness first hand and live? I guess, we all agree, there is very little reason for the people in such a society to be proud of their achievements in taking care of their kids.

You ask where in the Third World this society is? Well, surprise, the report of the U.S. National Center on Family Homelessness released on March 10, 2009 (see the article in MSN ...) tells the story that this society is the United States of America.

February 2009: Watching CNN in a small hotel room in Brussels, where a show on new science was going on, I was shocked by the statement that the Greek "Poseidon" Project is studying the impact of global warming on tsunamis. First, I laughed, but then I was stunned. Can it get more crazy? We know that, taken everything together, the effect of global warming on ocean tides almost everywhere is negligible, if detectable at all. Why then should there be an impact on tsunamis, which are dominated by the same physics as tides? In many cases, I encounter scientists who, ignoring basic knowledge, make statements that are pure nonsense but attractive to public media because they are reportable with a few busswords. Why do we, on the one hand, bother to go through a very resource-demanding reviewing process before scientific results can be published in scientific journals, while, on the other hand, the public media do not care to consult the peer-reviewed journals but prefer to listen to and report unqualified statements of individual scientists? But what can we expect after eight years in the "Bushes", where a past President of the United States could generally ignored peer-reviewed scientific results agreed upon by a larger fraction of the science community, and even classify them as not policy-relevant, without any significant reaction from the scientific community as a whole? Most of us (including me) seem to prefer making life difficult for each other, instead of fighting to "restore science to its rightful place," as the new President put it in his inauguration speech.

One more thought for February 2009 that I just had: Human fears are an amazingly poor indicator of reality, of the challenges and dangers we are facing. Both as individuals and as society, we have fears in the safest moments and places, and we are not afraid in moments of great danger. I remember one autumn evening, many years ago, when I was still a fear-ridden individual, and on one of my solitary hikes in the Norwegian mountains: I was resting in front of my tent, and in the slowly fading light and the increasing fog, large boulders on the gentle slope beneath me turned into wisents (or European bison), and, as the evening progressed, into frightening trolls. I was in one of the safest places on Earth, but full of fear. But I am normally not afraid when I am driving at 200 km/h (125 miles/h) on a German motorway, where the smallest mistake means death. When I came to the U.S. for the first time in 1972, the TV was promoting fears in the population by broadcasting the show "The Russians are coming," with as little relation to reality as my fears of wisents and trolls on that misty evening on the slope between the two peaks of Trollhetta. Climate change, which is threatening the well-being of humanity, does not seem to create substantial fears in the U.S. society. Even the fears induced by the economic crisis are out of scale towards the lower end, considering the real dangers and challenges. No TV show titled "The bad bankers are coming" is broadcast, and bad bankers in fact do well personally, even if they are transforming what we believed to be good banks into bad ones. There is no TV show making the point that "The bad CEOs are here", although we have too many of them who make their personal fortune by bringing the companies they are supposed to lead to success into great peril. Unlike the unreal fear of socialism that propelled TV shows in the '70ties, no well-founded fear of the current lemon socialism in the U.S. is fuelling new TV shows. The U.S. society is like me: driving at 200 km/h on the autobahn and not afraid! Let's hope that shows like 'Boston Legal', 'Gray's anatomy', or even 'Brothers and Sisters' soon pick up the most urgent challenges our society is facing, and make us realize that what we need to fear are climate change, bad bankers, bad CEOs, and lemon socialism. Or that we get a new show called "The bad CEOs and banker are here," which for a change would be addressing a fear based in reality ...

January 2009: Maya Angelou wrote in one of her books "... beneath the skin, beyond the differing features and into the true heart of being, fundamentally, we are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike." True! We all are part of humanity, we all are human beings, and we share the same fears, pains, hopes, joys, and loves. In this we are fundamentally alike: each of us a member of the same species. Differences are on the outside, the skin, the language, the culture, the way we are embedded in our environment. Somebody said the other day that through the election of Barack Obama to the President of the United States, the differences have become smaller. But aren't the difference in skin, the ways we look, the ways we behave, the cultures we develop, the thoughts we think; aren't it these difference that make life on Earth so rich and fulfilling? Like the multitude of features on the surface of the Earth: we travel long distances to see spectacular landscapes, experience different environmental settings, and expose ourselves to different climate conditions. Like the biosphere and biodiversity: we love to see different flowers and trees; we love to watch different animals and some of us take great effort to track and watch them in their natural environment. And we like to go abroad, engulf ourselves in other cultures, taste the food of other peoples. And some of us like to watch foreign films and theatre plays, or read foreign books and encounter thoughts that were thought in other cultures.

Why then are so many of us afraid when the rich diversity of the world comes to visit us? When immigrants, who are more alike to us than unalike, knock at our door and want to share life with us? Why can't we be more curious and welcome them when some of our fellow human beings are relocating, bringing their skin, their culture, their thoughts to us? All experience shows that immigrants enrich our own life, culture, food, and they increase our well being.

Let's therefore hope that the election of President Obama will not make the differences smaller but rather make us respect the differences, love the differences, and understand that the great potential of humanity to prosper is not in homogeneity but in diversity.

December 2008: At the UNESCO Conference on Water Scarcity, a scientist from Nigeria pointed out that there is a lot of electronic waste in the Niger Delta, polluting the water and endangering the supply of sufficient drinking water for the local population. This is an example of the global links of individual and company behavior to environmental and life conditions of people far away: The fact that a software company has chosen to produce software with rapidly increasing demands for more computational power turns laptops and PCs into valueless wast after only a years or so creating a huge amount of electronic waste because other company have chosen to produce laptops and PC that are a complicated mix of partly toxic materials that hard to disentangle, reuse, and recycle. Again other companies turn this toxic waste mountain into business by exporting it to countries like Nigeria and dumping it illegally and irresponsibly in a sensitive area affecting the life and health of many. Everybody involved in this long chain of actions shares in the responsibility for the water pollution in the Niger River Delta: The CEO of the software company, for whom a software developing strategy that would not turn computer useless at every new release was not a priority as a contribution to sustainability; the CEO of the hardware company, for whom responsible use of material in the production of laptops and PC that would allow the reuse or recycling of the hardware after a long-time use was not an asset of the company; the individual who did not make a responsible choice of software supporting the long-term use of hardware, and of hardware allowing reuse or recycling at the end of the life-cycle of the product; and the CEOs of companies involved in the often illegal export of the electronic waste to developing countries and the definitely illegal dumping of the waste in an area providing drinking water for many; the governments of the countries involved who do not enforce the laws that are in place and could be used to break up this evil chain.

After I made a comment at the conference reflecting the above thoughts, another scientist stated that a water footprint, similar to the ecological footprint could be used to emphasized the many water chains in which we all are involved in and that such a footprint would illustrate to us the impacts of our daily choices on the life and health of others. For me, another thought of the month.

Comments or questions? Send mail to Hans-Peter Plag.