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Towards an Initiative for a Human Future DRAFT 1.8- NOT FOR Towards an Initiative for a Human Future- Outline Draft 1.8 Towards an Initiative for a Human Future Expanded Whitepaper Outline and Supporting Materials Richard Hayes October 2015 DRAFT 1.8- NOT FOR CITATION OR CIRCULATION 1 Towards an Initiative for a Human Future- Outline Draft 1.8 Towards an Initiative for a Human Future is the working title of a white paper that addresses selected major challenges facing the human community over the coming century and beyond. The whitepaper gives special attention to the ways in which these challenges bear upon one another and to a range of possible responses. A final draft of the whitepaper will be used as a reference document for a series of invitational working sessions in~ended to explore the topics addressed in more detail and from different perspectives. Following these sessions the final whitepaper will be prepared, published and distributed. The present document, Draft 1.8, is an expanded outline of topics to be addressed in the whitepaper, along with discussion notes, attachments providing background and supporting material, and bibliography. Material in the discussion notes and attachments will be incorporated into the main text of the whitepaper, kept as notes or attachments, used in other documents, or deleted. The final whitepaper will not necessarily follow the order of topics presented in this draft. Richard Hayes 329 Irving St. San Francisco, CA 94122 [email protected] land: 415-566-0849 mobile: 510-332-1769 2 Towards an Initiative for a Human Future- Outline Draft 1.8 Towards an Initiative for a Human Future Richard Hayes - October 2015 EXPANDED OUTLINE OF TOPICS I. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW II. KEY CHALLENGES Economic Justice Ecological Integrity Technological Responsibility Ill. ARCHETYPAL SCENARIOS Techno-Progressive World Balanced Equitable World Green Sustainability World I Discussion I Selected Topics I Fundamental Conundra A Framework for Evaluating the Scenarios IV. POLITICAL ECONOMY, GEOPOLITICS, CIVILIZATIONS, IDEOLOGY, FOUNDATIONAL WORLDVIEWS Political Economy: Alternatives for the. Long Run Geopolitical Structure: Power and Allegiance over Space and Time Civilizational Communities and Identities: Who are we? Ideology: Beyond the Left-Right Divide Foundational Worldviews: God, Nature, History V. SUMMARY DISPLAY AND COMMENTS VI. CONCLUDING NOTE: WHAT IS TO BE DONE? DISCUSSION NOTES ATIACHMENTS A. Definitions of Growth, Well-Being and Related Key Concepts B. Scenarios of Global Development B.1- Review of Past Quantitative Scenarios B.2- Model A and the Archetypal Scenarios B.3- Review of Past Narrative Scenarios C. Economic Justice C.1- Ideology, Wealth and Income C.2- Proposals to Reduce Economic Inequality: Review and Assessment C.3- How Much is Enough and What is Fair? D. Ecological Integrity D.1- Climate Change D.2- Energy Regimes D.3- Assessing Global Catastrophic Risk E. Steady-State Political Economy: Review and Assessment F. Geopolitical Structures G. Ideology: Beyond the Left-Right Divide H. Acknowledgments BIBLIOGRAPHY 3 Towards an Initiative for a Human Future- Outline Draft 1.8 Towards an Exploratory Initiative on the Human Future I. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW Humanity is facing three inter-related challenges that together constitute an unprecedented civilizational crisis. These are the growth of economic inequality, the continuing threats to global ecological integrity, and the development of profoundly powerful and destabilizing new technologies. These challenges reinforce one another in ways that undermine the conditions necessary for human life to flourish. The good news is that we likely have at least a century, and perhaps as long as two centuries, during which to effect a transition to a new mode of sustainable civilization. The bad news is that given the magnitude of the transition required, 100-200 years is not a long period of time. Further, at present we have no credible, compelling vision of what a truly equitable, sustainable and technologically responsible human future could look like. The absence of such a vision leaves us with no good guidelines as to how we should lead our lives today and how we should best prepare our children to lead their own lives tomorrow. Further still, it will be difficult for us to develop such a vision. The mentality that we bring to the task of confronting the contradictions of our current trajectory developed over the past 300 years in part as a function of those same contradictions. It is imperative that we come to an honest understanding of the nature and magnitude of the challenges we face; that we begin laying the groundwork for a shared understanding of the human future that addresses those challenges; and that we begin taking collective action and leading our personal lives in ways that we believe are consistent with that understanding. An important part of this work will need to focus on minimizing or transcending social, political and ideological divides, and tensions among foundational worldviews, that have characterized human societies for decades, centuries and millennia. We will also need to focus on achieving a new understanding of the relation between material wealth and human well-being. None of this will be easy. We need a new story of the human past, present and future compelling enough to guide us in new directions both individually and collectively, yet patient and generous enough to accommodate uncertainties, disagreements and mistakes along the way. 4 Towards an Initiative for a Human Future- Outline Draft 1.8 II. KEY CHALLENGES Economic justice, ecological integrity and the responsible use of powerful new technologies are widely regarded as important and even necessary features of a desirable human future. However, the challenges we face in seeking to realize these are greater than is commonly acknowledged. Economic Justice • Economic inequality within countries is growing and is socially and politically destabilizing. The growth of economic inequality is an inherent property of industrial economies that depend heavily upon technological innovation, free markets and globalization. Policies intended to address growing within­ country inequality are unlikely to make a significant difference so long as people aspire to having greater income and wealth than others have. 1 2 • Economic inequality between countries is decreasing, as developing countries acquire levels of technological, human and institutional capital comparable to those of developed countries. However, at projected rates the wealth and income gap between developed and developing countries won't close for 300-400 years. During this period global economic output and energy use will have grown well beyond sustainable levels, even given optimistic estimates regarding improvements in resource productivity and energy intensity. But developing countries can't be expected to reduce growth rates so long as wealth and income gaps remain. 3 • Since 2008 economic growth rates worldwide have been slower than they were during the previous half-century. Most analysts believe that technological innovation will eventually allow a return to pre- 2008 growth rates. Some analysts believe that at least developed economies have entered an era of permanently much slower rates of economic growth. Many environmentalists advocate policies and practices whose outcomes would entail permanently much slower rates of economic growth. Permanently much slower rates of economic growth would be a political hydrogen bomb. For 200 years the implicit bargain of both capitalist and socialist industrial societies has been that so long as most people are experiencing some level of absolute income growth, economic and/or political disparities would be tolerated. If such growth can no longer be expected, and especially if at the same time disparities are growing, modern political economies will likely suffer crises of legitimacy.4 5 [We include a side box on definitions of economic output, growth, well-being and other key terms. See ATTACHMENT A for preliminary notes.] Ecological Integrity • Continued economic growth inevitably threatens the integrity of natural ecological systems. It's true that environmentalists have underestimated the ability of technological innovation to significantly help address many conventional environmental concerns over the short and middle term. It's true as well that environmentalists have overstated the likelihood of "catastrophic" impacts of continued economic growth over this same time period. And it's true that wealthier countries can better avoid or remediate many local and particular environmental disamenities than can poor countries. But if we extend our period of focal concern from, say, the next 20-40 years to the next 100-150 years, and if our concern is global rather than strictly local, the environmentalist critique of economic growth becomes more robust, and if we extend our concern to the next 200-300 years it becomes effectively irrefutable.6 7 5 Towards an Initiative for a Human Future- Outline Draft 1.8 • Continued economic growth threatens ecological integrity primarily because it requires continual and continually more profound technological modification of the fundamental processes and properties of the natural world. As such modification continues, nature becomes predominantly, and eventually fully, artifactual. Although a fully artifactual environment may at least in theory allow economic growth to continue indefinitely, ecological integrity will have been forfeited. The new fully artifactual environment
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