In this last and final installment, I shall propose a model of our future development that ensures sustainable environment.
Following are the links to the first two posts:
Peak Oil and Future of Humanity - Part 1
Peak Oil and Future of Humanity - Part 2
First, let me summarize the previous two posts.
1. We stated that there is an impending oil crisis that has very huge implications on our existence as a species. We postulated that our dependence on oil may lead to our extinction as a species.
2. We looked at the progress of the humanity as a species – its real achievements, and areas of weakness.
3. We examined the current economic model, and made a sweeping conclusion that from an evolutionary point of view – humanity produces only garbage and toxins. We confuse consumption with productivity.
4. Our real progress can be summarized in a very short statement: - we learned how to preserve our experiences and knowledge and pass it on to our future generations. We learned how to coexist together as a species.
In the last post, I made a very brief comment about the current economic model and the gross domestic consumption and gross domestic production.
Our current productivity definitions are based on how fast and how much natural resources we consume. From a planetary ecology perspective, consumption is not productivity at all. What do we give in return for what we take from the environment? Except for humanity, all other species keep the harmony and balance. The plant species, consume very little resources, but they give back a lot in return – oxygen, food for other species, shelter and they provide the basic framework for other species to survive and develop themselves. This is true of all other species. Only human beings corrupt the environment – we give back only garbage and toxic waste in return, and we grow at the expense of other species. Jared Diamond in his seminal book Guns, Germs and Steel argued beautifully how many species are eradicated by man kind. This book is an excellent source for anyone who wants to understand our history from an evolutionary biology perspective. Not only do we produce anything of real value, but also we disturb the ecological balance.
This tendency in human beings is very counter intuitive. We are just like any other species. And, the biological and genetic makeup of any species must be to preserve the balance and harmony of the larger environment in which it is only but a small part. Preserving the balance of the environment must be one of the primary motivational drivers of any species, primarily because every species wants to preserve itself and for its own sake, the harmony and balance of the environment are mandatory. Why did human beings choose to pursue a contradictory, self destructive course of action?
I am not an anthropologist, nor am I an evolutionary biologist – therefore, I cannot provide a scientific answer to this question. I can only provide some philosophical arguments supported by empirical evidence.
Most of us have a memory of only a couple of generations. We assume that the way we are is the way we have always been. This is not true. The self destructive, consumption driven tendency in human beings is very recent – the way humans lived even until a few hundred years ago (before the industrial revolution) was by and large very harmonious and in balance with the Nature. There are exceptions of course – the entire
Humans tried many different large scale organization schemes – starting from small groups of families, villages, small cities supported by a local economy, religions, nations and finally group of nations by and large working together. The industrial revolution helped human beings to come together as a much diversified community.
The second accomplishment of the industrial revolution is the tremendous increase in the average life time of a human being. In the last century, the average life time of humans more than doubled.
But, we did not make the necessary changes that are required of the accomplishments of these two goals. We still live as if our life time is still 40 years – which is where the real trouble is.
It is probably not a coincidence that Peak Oil date is some where in the beginning of the 21st century – it will herald the end of Consumption and will bring in the beginning of real productivity.
Let me provide empirical evidence in support of these observations. Today, the whole of humanity has one prayer. Every one – all around the globe – is tired of the rate race that we are all caught up in. Every one is asking the question – what the hell am I doing? Why do we live in a stressful, meaningless environment, is there a way for us to get out of the mad rush that all us are in.
All genuine prayers will be answered. Peak Oil may be the answer. Some doomsday theorists claim that third world war is around the corner. But, another world war seems highly unlikely. On what basis the world will split itself into two groups? The world today is interconnected and every country is interdependent on each other in so many complex ways, there is no way to cleanly divide the world into two groups.
With the globalization, we all know each other so well – and we realize we are all so alike, and there is no widespread, deep rooted hatred in the humanity any more. Many people may disagree with me on this claim, but compare ourselves with our ancestors– there was so much hatred, cultural, racial superiority even in the last century that does not exist any more. There is always some amount of insanity in any community – that is not an indication of the entire community.
So, what is the solution?
Extraordinary problems have extraordinarily simple solutions. We need a new design of the world. The new design must keep the advancements we made as a species, and eliminate the unnecessary processes.
Russell Aukcoff – the father of modern systems thinking, once stated that once a design is successful, and all slack in the design is removed, we cannot optimize the design any more. It is time to re-design.
Christopher Alexander in his celebrated series of books – Nature of Order – explored the question of harmony, beauty and came up with a model of creating harmonious surroundings.
Dijkstra – the master computing designer – once gave a beautiful design principle. He said that we should never design programs in isolation, but always think of a program as a collection of programs, including the one that will replace it.
Putting all this together, let’s restate what we want to keep, what we want to throw away, and what new parameters we should take into account in the new design:
• We have to keep the democracy. We cannot take away the individual freedom of people. This means that the new world cannot be a communistic model. There cannot be rations, controls and gun-point dictatorships. No society can ration how much people should eat, what they should do, how much travel can they do, what thoughts they can think, and what goals they should pursue. We worked really hard to create a global, interdependent culture – this is our real treasure, and we must protect it for our own sake.
• The current industrial model of economy served its purpose – nobody wants the life style that comes with it any more. We are all tired of working in a complex, automated, mechanistic model of the world.
• We must include the new service oriented economy – where knowledge and information are freely and equally accessible to everyone, and an average corporation can be a small team – not thousands of people, in a complex, greedy model that serves the interests of a few individuals.
• We have double the life time compared to our ancestors – there is no need for us to be in a rush. We have to make the best of our increased life span.
Putting all this together, I propose that a solution is no more complex than just to slow down the clock.
Instead of working five days a week, if everyone in the world works for two days a week that will solve our current problem. First it will bring down our consumption by half, and therefore it will bring down the amount of pollution and garbage we generate by half, it will bring down our dependency on Oil by half.
In other words, if we ‘do’ in two years what we currently do in one year – that should solve all our problems and herald a new economic model.
I am not a futurologist like Alvin Toffler, but I can guess some of the fundamental shifts that may take place:
If colleges, schools and universities work for 2 days a week – then it will take double the time to complete the education. This would mean that the average graduation age will be probably around 30 years instead of present 20 years. This will probably enable some real learning and education to take place. More importantly, we will have more matured people. It may also slow down the population growth rates significantly across the world
Since everyone will have double the free time – they have more leisure, but the current consumerist avenues to spend the leisure will not be available at the same rate as they are today (because the entire world has slowed down – you will have half the number of flights, half the movie halls, half the TV channels, half the junk food, half the shopping malls) – they have to use the leisure time ‘productively’ – they may pick up some crafts, hobbies, develop friendships, work in the community, or tend to their back yard gardens. If the society also provides some avenues of ‘non-consumption work’ – like cleaning up the environment, train the young people, learn new crafts, help the forests grow etc., this may lead to real productivity.
National Geographic Magazine recently published an article about what makes people of certain communities live for a very long, healthy lives. They studied three communities – one in Japan, one in Italy and another in US – where the average life time was close to 100 years, and all members live a healthy life till they die. The characteristics of all these three communities are very similar – all the people in these communities have very harmonious and integrated families, long lasting friendships, they all practice their religion and most of them are farmers and work hard in their fields. More importantly, since all of them know that they will live for a long time – they are never in a hurry, they are not impatient. And, that allows them to be contented, happy people. They help the nature around them survive and they derive the benefit of doing this – long, contended lives.
All we have to learn is to be patient, rest for a while, take care of our families and friends, and that rose plant in our garden.
The solution is simple, and effective.
Acknowledgements: The idea of slowing down the clock was originally provided by Prof T V Prabhakar of IIT-Kanpur. Like many of Prof Prabhakar’s ideas – it appeared initially as ludicrously simple, but very enchanting. It took me more than three years to discover its real potential.
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