Several trends are now in place that portend the need for wide, intensive, and dramatic action along several fronts faced by humanity now and increasingly more so during the next 50 years. The need for action now is real, it is supported by science, and it cannot be dismissed by anyone who examines the evidence rationally.

[graph: infocenteroboni.net]

Crisis Management

Those of us who fiddle around with numbers, algorithms, and such soon learn about projections, predictions, and forecasts—all different, by the way—plus their robustness and their limitations. I have been a fiddler of numbers for more than 50 years so there is little about peeking at the future that startles me. Not many of these prognostications currently point to Utopia, but many of them can and do portend disasters on a grand scale. Global warming is one, population growth is another, and wealth accumulation is a third. Convergence lines for all three now show disasters on a scale that startles me, and I really am a difficult old bird to startle.

One limitation to most projections is that some unknown (exogenous) event could be looming somewhere in the future that corrects our gloomy projection and puts us back on course to survivability, perhaps even to prosperity. More such unknowns turn out to be negative rather than positive. The British economist Thomas Malthus, for example, made some dire predictions about population growth and the underlying economic factors that constrain it In 1798 he published an essay (The Principle of Population Growth) in which he argued correctly that a population that grew exponentially could not forever be fed by an agricultural system that was constrained by linear yields and finite arable land use. In short he projected a food shortage on a population that was growing too fast to feed itself. He was a bit too pessimistic about our ability to enhance yields via a number of tools and techniques that were not known to him at the time. Although humanity sidestepped disaster for a couple of hundred years, Malthus’s warnings were wise and justified. We can learn a lot from near misses.

Today we have a similar set of conditions developing in agriculture, population growth, and global warming. Unlike the tools for analysis in Mathus’s time, however, today we are better prepared to make more accurate forecasts about future outcomes. A forecast, by the way, is not a prediction of what will happen, rather it is a revelation of what is possible. The prudent course of action when such outcomes arise from a large number of scientific sources is to listen, learn, and take measured actions as they become warranted. We take measured actions in steps when 100 computer models all tell us that a hurricane is bearing down and its projected path has 5 major cities and 100 million residents in its path. With each succeeding update, the need for decisive actions becomes acute because the time to react gets shorter while the costs become greater.

The wisdom in taking early action is apparent when our actions become increasingly more apparent, increasingly more costly, and increasingly more disastrous if we should choose to avoid taking action. As in the case of an approaching hurricane, or a meteor that is bearing down on us, inaction can assure disaster,

It is also important to assess the accuracy, the reliability, and the motives of those who make the forecasts, as well as doing the same about those who stand in opposition to those forecasts, and for taking no action at all.

With that said, we have a problem. It is this: Agriculture generates 25 percent of our global warming pollutants, while it must be increased to feed a growing population. We are thus exacerbating the ingredients to global warming from our actions that are intended to assure our survival. Concurrently, those who stand to lose profits (mainly the oil producers) are doing their best to keep us on course to disaster by trying to discredit the scientists who are making the forecasts. Even those of us who are using fossil fuels at an increasing rate are contributing to the problem whether we know it or not.

One reliable predictor of future events is the U.S. Census Bureau. They have a clock that predicts Earth’s population will increase by 50 percent in 43 years. This is a prediction rather than a forecast. A prediction is something that science tells us will happen in the absence of a catastrophic event (e.g. wars, meteors, or pandemics). Their clock is demonstrably accurate, reliable. and its output is valid for its intended purpose. Those are the three conditions that science puts on any important measuring device.

But the rub is we must increase our global warming pollutants by 50 percent in order to feed our growing population. That is not a good outcome. Alternatively, we could find a lot more nutrition from methods and sources that are a lot less polluting. And we would need to develop an efficient worldwide transportation and allocation system that can and will get these nutritious foods to the world’s growing population.

I cannot say if we are or are not on course to solving the food/nutrition/pollution issues. I have no factual basis, however, on which to be optimistic about any of these issues. All are outside my domain of expertise. All are within my abilities to understand, however, when examining the numbers surrounding them.

And the numbers also tell me that the world’s wealth is growing at a rate that could easily pay for all the advances necessary to solve these issues. That forecast is mine. I understand the numbers, their sources, the methodology, and the reliability of my forecasts. And all that I know about human behavior tells me this: The top one percent of wealth holders are not in any mood whatsoever to pay to solve the issues that their greed has created.

Personally, I will be long gone before these projections and forecasts reach the point of no return. To my more youthful readers—good luck. Your work is decided for you even though you did not create the circumstances that gave rise to the need to solve them.