Deep Futures
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DEEP FUTURES DOUG COCKS DEEP FUTURES OUR PROSPECTS FOR SURVIVAL McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • Ithaca UNSW PRESS University of New South Wales Press Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny to a very distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped shows that the greater number of species in each genus, and all the species in many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will be the c.ommon and widely spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups within each class, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection … There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having been breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; … from so simple a begin- ning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. CHARLES DARWIN, from the Conclusion to The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle For Life, The Modern Library, New York, 1859, pp. 373–74 Certainly we must be able to project our contemplation ahead a short time, say a hundred million years. By that time our particular species, and all other currently extant mammalian species, will exist only as fossil records. All indications of man’s tenure on earth will have vanished from the surface. Man’s occupation of the earth’s surface leaves no permanent scars, although it certainly upsets local ecological conditions to the extreme. The condi- tions that will eventually prevail, after man’s inevitable extinction, will be very different in detail than they would have been without him. The scars of human occu- pation persist for centuries, perhaps for millennia, depending upon climate conditions and the vigour of the replacing biota. But it is probable that in most areas the passage of a few millennia will eradicate the obvious scars. In time a region will resume its suitable ecological aspect again, even though the component organisms may occur in different proportions or indeed may actual- ly be different. The effect of man’s existence for a few million years, in the last analysis, will not be of any intrinsic consequence. AC SMITH, ‘Systematics and Appreciation of Reality’, Taxon, 1969, 18: 5–19 If you don’t know where you are going, it doesn’t matter which bus you catch. ANON © Doug Cocks 2003 First published 2003 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. A UNSW Press book Published in North America by McGill-Queen’s University Press www.mqup.ca and in the rest of the world by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Cocks, Doug, 1937- Deep futures : our prospects for survival / Doug Cocks. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-2671-4 (bound).—ISBN 0-7735-2672-2 (pbk.) 1. Forecasting. I. Title. CB161.C57 2003 303.49 C2003-902039-8 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Cocks, K. D. (Kenneth Douglas), 1937- . Deep futures : our prospects for survival. Includes index. ISBN 0 86840 493 4. 1. Social evolution. 2. Forecasting. 3.Twenty-first century - Forecasts. I.Title. 303.49 Cover illustration Darren Pryce Printer Kyodo Printing, Singapore CONTENTS Acknowledgments x Preface and introduction xi PART 1: FUTURES WE HAVE GLIMPSED 1 Chapter 1 21C: A difficult century 3 Global springboard to the future 4 Hobsbawm’s coming problems 6 Geopolitical futures 9 Geoeconomic futures 18 World-shaping technologies 27 A growing world population 40 Geosocial futures 42 Global environmental futures 55 Global resource futures 64 Summary: change in the 21st century 68 CHAPTER 2 Deep futures 73 M3:The world of the third millennium 74 The next glacial age 88 Beyond the next glacial age 94 Overview: dungeons and dragons 128 PART 2: UNDERSTANDING THE TASK 133 Chapter 3 What is the question? 135 Why do people think about the future? 135 What do people want of their own futures? 136 What sort of society do people want? 137 viii deep futures Can societies have goals? 138 The process of setting social goals 141 Quality survival as a goal for world society 142 From goals to objectives 144 Can we shape the future? 145 Recapitulation 146 Chapter 4 Understanding how societies change over time 148 Ideas from history 151 Some social psychology 167 Sociology and societal change 169 Systems theory and societal change 174 Ecological theory and societal change 186 Evolutionary theory and societal change 190 Overview:A plurality of frameworks 198 Conclusion 203 PART 3: TAKING CHARGE 205 Chapter 5 A strategy for managing the deep future 207 Picking a metaphor for the deep futures problem 207 Wicked problems 208 Accepting that rationality is bounded 209 A strategy of responding to priority issues 212 Four priority issues 213 Chapter 6 Guidelines I: Nursing the world through endless change 215 Managing the change rate 216 Managing trends 217 Managing fragility and senescence 219 Managing unpredictability 223 A Sisyphean task 231 contents ix Chapter 7 Guidelines II: Learning forever 234 Four pillars of social learning 235 Nurturing social learning 236 Boosting social learning 239 Managing science and technology 243 Managing stocks and flows of knowledge 251 Recapitulation 253 Chapter 8 Guidelines III: Working on perennial issues 256 Managing social relations 257 Managing global governance 272 Managing production and distribution 278 Managing the global ecosystem 284 Chapter overview 293 Chapter 9 Stories to live by 294 Backtracking 294 Style, attitude and role 296 Appendix: Basic properties of dissipative (energy-degrading) systems 300 References 304 Index 321 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks go to my friends Mike Austin and Franzi Poldy who, through numerous stimulating discussions, have shifted and sharpened my thinking on some of the major themes of this book. Cecily Parker has similarly broadened my thinking about the human psy- che, as has John Burton on the nature of conflict and its resolution. Roger Bradbury, Michael Dunlop, Barney Foran, Graham Turner and Sarah Ryan have all read and made helpful comments on various draft chap- ters. Sarah clarified my view of how the book should be written when she suggested a reordering of chapters. Inge Newman, the world’s greatest librarian, has been as competently helpful with this as with my previous books. Steve Morton and Brian Walker, present and former chiefs of the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) Division of Sustainable Ecosystems, have provided the fellowships which have allowed me to work inside the scientific establishment, with all the benefits that brings. Barney Foran has been a generous program leader. Finally, it has again been a pleasure to work with John Elliot, Publishing Manager at UNSW Press. Doug Cocks Canberra PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION I am very curious about how our species will fare over coming ages. Will the human lineage survive, reasonably happily, into the distant future? Indeed, will we survive another millennium in reasonably good shape? Will the next 1000 years be particularly difficult or just ordinarily dif- ficult? Supposing we survive the next 1000 years, will we eventually become extinct as most species do or will we evolve into a new species with which one might empathise? And, supposing we continue to evolve, will that new species or its descendants survive the death of the Sun as an energy and light source in 5 billion or so years? Beyond that, there is the ultimate question as to if, when and how the universe will end and whether, in some sense, life might best that challenge. A question which is almost as big is whether we ourselves can take steps to significantly improve our chances of being part of a long-lasting lineage. It may just be that, given such a choice, we would per- haps not take it. I will ask that question too. I will of course die with my curiosities unsatisfied and, thereafter, I don’t expect to be watching the story unfold from some heavenly vantage point. My only practicable option, in the absence of revelation, is to collect and construct some plausible well-informed stories — optimistic, pessimistic and realistic — about what might happen to the Earth and its inhabitants. In this book I am presenting some of those stories along with the ideas and facts that make them plausible in my eyes. Remember that ‘plausible’ does not mean ‘true’. It means that if things turned out that way, one would not be too surprised. Philosophically,I am a naturalist, meaning that I do not find stories which invoke the supernatural to be plausible. For example, when I find a gap, a lack of causal specificity, at some point in the evolutionary story — for example, what happened before the big bang, the rise of life, the rise of consciousness — I prefer to ‘wait and see’ rather than attribute events to a Creator, a vital principle etc.As an act of faith (and that is precisely what it is), I assume there is always a natural (causal) explanation for what has happened, even if it xii deep futures cannot be accessed.