Summary
Reading time: 5-10 min
Okay, so I've been struggling with how to formulate my point in this post without sounding over-intellectual or throwing too much stuff at you. Basically it can be boiled down to this:
Humans are horrible at predicting major events. Or predicting just about anything really.
It's not a coincidence that we have tons of cultural jokes and memes around this very problem. Ranging from the more innocent miscalculations of how much time one needs before catching the bus on the way to work/school, to the catastrophic cases with meltdowns in nuclear reactors, financial bubbles etc. If you get anything out of this post or already feel the urge to go and play tennis or something then at least remember this: We need to be extremely careful when we decide on matters that have a time-delay or take place in the future. Especially when major risks are involved. With that said bare with me and join me down the rabbit hole.
Land burnt down for agriculture: Río Urubu, Amazonas, Brazil
Randomness
We usually look at previous data and draw a linear curve into the future or otherwise make linear-oriented conclusions. This tendency amongst our kind irritated the financial trader and erudite Nassim Nicholas Taleb to the point that he released a book trilogy on the nature of randomness. The title of his second book "The Black Swan" has amusing origins. People always thought that ALL swans where white until someone saw a black one in Australia. Notice how all of history until that point showed no signs of black swans and how the existence of one such swan destroyed the whole assumption. That is the nature of randomness, whether something is truly random or just an "unknown unknown", the outcome is still the same: Strong empirical data is not always conclusive AND the nature of reality is fundamentally unpredictable. I.e. shit happens. This can be extremely harmful when we are dealing with critical issues concerning our existence as a species.
Unfortunately, the science on what environmental effects that await us - in case we go along with business as usual as our ecological policy - is clear; massive species extinction (on land and sea), resource scarcity due to over-exploitation, rising sea levels and millions of climate refugees. The list goes on.
What we don't know is way more scary though. It is not reasonable to expect that we can map all of the possible outcomes in the first place. To begin with, there are some effects that are triggered after a certain "tipping point". After which a seemingly massive level of events unfold. For example, 19 % of the Amazon rainforest has been deforested during the last 50 years and might after a certain point not be able to regrow at all, due to erosion and other factors. The decline is not gradual but sudden and extreme. Tipping points are known unknowns: Meaning that the exact date or scale is uncertain, but that it for sure will come. One must therefor always be prepared, or at least not pretend as if major events never will take place. Both in one's personal life but perhaps even more so when choosing a political system on a governmental/global level.
Exponential Growth
Some time ago a lecture on exponential growth by physics professor Albert A. Bartlett became popular on youtube. He set out to teach the effects of nonlinear growth, most importantly a phenomena's doubling time. If something increases by 7 %/year, it will have doubled by 10 years and keep doubling every 10 years. This may sound boring or just unintuitive to you but let's present an example: Let's say that the population of the planet or the combined worldwide use of fossil fuels increases by 3.5 % annually. In that case our planet will inhabit close to 15 billion people and the need for oil will have doubled in 20 years. 20 years ahead is not even that hard to imagine, but those two facts in combination will most likely produce consequences that none of us wants to imagine. My example is not even that extreme, some figures suggest even higher numbers. Still we are living our lives and conducting public policy in the spirit of business as usual. You can insert your favorite example in the exponential growth curve and probably find just as shocking results. The worst part is that a world in which your mathematical forecast becomes reality actually might await us.
Sustainable future?
The normal answer to the above-mentioned facts is that humanity always produces some new technology or a new set of practices to offset these catastrophies. Ironically this goes right against the concept of us not seeing major events before they already have arrived. Just because we in the past could save ourselves from doom by engineering some invention or what have you to get around the problem, it doesn't mean that we always will. This is such an easy thing to understand but our collective plan against our generation's most pressing issues is basically just a hope for that someone somewhere will figure it out. And why not try to make a smooth transition in stead of having the knife against our throats and being forced to do what's necessary? The worst thing is not to wake up and find yourself in a situation of chaos, civil unrest and the complete destruction of life as we know it. The worst thing would be the realization that it could have been avoided...
"If not us, then who? If not now, then when?" - John E. Lewis
Sources:
- The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (on amazon)
- Lecture on exponential growth, Albert A. Bartlett (on youtube)
- Big World, Small Planet, Rockström & Klum (on amazon)
Sunset in the Pantanal, Mato Grosso, Brazil