NEAR-TERM GLOBAL PROBLEMS

The future is a tricky, uncertain subject. Comments on it risk saying nothing concrete. The future is especially troublesome to foresee when life is involved, in part, again, since living systems are more complex than those non-living. As a case in point, predicting the destiny of our civilization is actually harder than predicting the destiny of the Universe. It may sound ludicrous that we can know more about the future of the Universe in bulk than about the future of life on our own planet. But the behavior of human beings weigh heavily on civilization, while not at all on the whole Universe. And while the Universe obeys the laws of physics, civilizations legislate their own laws.

The fate of the Universe depends mostly on one factor—its energy (or mass) density, a term that astronomers are struggling to understand better and whose value we are now trying to estimate (including the role played by dark energy that apparently pushes the cosmos ever outward). The destiny of our civilization also seems to depend heavily on a single term. But that term is humanity, a very general expression surprisingly hard to specify and nearly impossible to quantify. Even humanity’s definition is difficult to grasp; Webster’s dictionary says tautologically “the condition of being human, quality of being humane; the kind feelings, dispositions, and sympathies of humankind.”

Here’s another way of perceiving the riddle of the future. As noted especially in the PARTICLE EPOCH, the business of a classical physicist is to comprehend Nature well enough to predict the response of matter to a variety of circumstances. The route of a baseball moving through air, for example, is now precisely understood. Knowing the mass of the ball and of the Earth, the gravitational forces between them, the air's pressure and resistance, the ball’s momentum and spin, and a few other physical factors affecting a ball's flight, scientists can model with great accuracy the future trajectory of this piece of matter through space. By contrast, to predict the “trajectory” of life through time is a much tougher puzzle. Too many non-physical causes—individual and group sociology, national and international affairs, biological and cultural attitudes, among a host of other unquantifiable parameters, not least politics and religion—will doubtlessly affect the future of civilization.

Claiming knowledge of the pathways along which cosmic evolution will proceed henceforth is akin to dabbling in science fiction—it's hardly more than informed "guesstimation." Nonetheless, it is possible to examine certain boundary conditions that will likely influence, some of them adversely so, the future of life on Earth. These boundaries largely represent hazards of a global nature—environmental factors, political decisions, economic sanctions, technological aftereffects, among a plethora of other limitations and ailments destined to impact the future of our ever-shrinking world.

Here are two examples of issues that we must solve or circumvent, in the near-term future, in order to survive as a viable civilization:

  • Overpopulation, along with its attendant plights of food and energy shortages, is sure to have a negative effect if it continues even at reduced growth rates. This is an example of a problem caused by the actions of many people and one that gradually increases in severity.
  • Self-destruction, as distinct from natural calamity, could result in severe suppression or even extermination of life on Earth. This type of problem conceivably results from the actions of only a few people and, in the form of nuclear holocaust, for instance, could befall us nearly instantaneously.

These boundary conditions are unlikely to be peculiar to planet Earth. Some, perhaps all, of these problems will be encountered by any emergent civilization elsewhere in the Universe. Frankly, our failure thus far to find extraterrestrial intelligent life may be an indication that advanced civilizations generally do not manage to survive for long durations, as discussed later in this FUTURE EPOCH. Flatfootedly stated, it may be the natural route of cosmic evolution for technological civilizations to destroy themselves one way or another.

Putting aside the "final question" of our own prospects for ultimate survival, for this does depend largely on the slippery, unsure nature of our human selves and society, we examine below the implications of each of these potential crises, together with some changes seemingly required to overcome them.

Overpopulation This is often a tough issue to appreciate, especially for those of us living in the “developed” countries. We all know that numerous people inhabitant Earth, ~7 billion at present. Surely, that’s a large number, but the planet is also a large place. So what’s the problem? The problem is that the world population is not stable. Like everything else, population changes, and it’s currently changing toward increasing numbers a lot faster than most people realize or than Earth can tolerate.

Since it’s impossible for us even to count to 1 billion in a single human lifetime, there’s no easy way to appreciate the full magnitude of such a throng of people, let alone the multitude of other life forms on planet Earth. Still, some awareness of the population problem can be gained by considering the population density. Since we’ve specified the density of virtually everything else in the Universe, why not compute the density of human life as well? Here, the population density is defined as the total number of people residing in a given area of space.

For example, in Australia and Canada, with their vast tracts of uninhabited land, ~2 individuals occupy every square kilometer (or ~5 people per square mile). In Russia, the largest nation on Earth, that density is ~12 people/km2. The United States and Europe average nearly 40 and 120 people/km2, respectively. And in some Asian countries, India and Japan for example, the population density soars to ~250 and ~400 people/km2, respectively.

But these are average numbers and, as such, not terribly informative. After all, people aren’t spread evenly across the globe. Like all types of matter, including galaxies, stars, and planets, life forms tend to cluster. On Earth, ¾ of all human beings are concentrated within only ~2% of our planet's land. There, in cities, the population density is much higher—and growing as people worldwide are now generally migrating into cities. For example, in Boston proper, the five boroughs of New York City, and Manhattan at noon, there are ~5500, ~11,000, and ~40,000 people/km2, respectively.

These numbers impart some feeling for the concentration of the human species on Earth today. In and of themselves, they don’t represent a real threat; Earth seems able to support us. The problem, as noted earlier, is that the world’s population isn’t nearly stabilized. Each year, we currently produce a net increase of almost 80 million people. This estimate takes into account both the current birth and death rates, and is no small number. It’s equivalent to about a quarter of the entire population of the United States being added to Earth each year.

A total world population of ~7 billion, and a yearly addition of 80 million newcomers, implies an annual growth rate of almost 1.5%. The fact that the rate of growth has decreased in recent years in the U.S., Canada, and several western European nations has little effect on the global overpopulation problem; North America and Western Europe together house hardly more than 15% of the world’s population. The growth rate remains high throughout the Southern Hemisphere and much of Asia.

FIGURE 8.1 FIGURE 8.1 – Various rates of world population growth are mapped here, showing how much more dramatic that growth is in the Southern Hemisphere. (United Nations)

What are the implications for continued growth of the world’s population? Examined broadly and noting the uneven growth rates among the world’s major continents as shown in Figure 8.1, several scenarios are possible:

If the annual growth remains constant, world population would increase uniformly, producing a linear rise in numbers so that, for example, 5 centuries hence the world population would have reached ~50 billion persons. This nearly tenfold increase in population would cause current population densities to increase by almost a factor of 10, with averages separations among neighbors decreasing accordingly. Some 500 years sounds like a long time, and indeed it is much greater than any human lifetime, but it’s a mere wink of an eye when compared to the timescales considered on this Web site, even the most recent timescales regarding the cultural evolution of Homo sapiens.

Note that constant growth doesn’t mean a constant population, a common misconception. It means just what’s stated: constant growth. Only zero growth guarantees a completely stabilized world population, where the number of births equals the number of deaths.

Population increase quicker than linear growth is also possible. For example, as Figure 8.2 illustrates, an exponential increase starts out slowly, eventually overtaking linear growth, and then rising substantially faster than any linear projection. Exponential growth is often alternatively labeled “explosive growth.” It rises ever so gradually for a long time, then surges while numbers increase dramatically and quickly. In the case of population, change of this sort means a slow and steady rise in the numbers of world inhabitants over the course of thousands of years, followed by a rapid, even phenomenal increase over the course of only centuries or even merely decades—a veritable population "explosion." For example, 1.5% exponential growth predicts a population of >10 trillion people after 5 centuries, a great deal more than that predicted by the linear growth analysis noted above.

FIGURE 8.2 FIGURE 8.2 – Growth can take 3 different paths: zero, when totals remain constant; linear, when growth rises steadily; and exponential, when it dramatically ramps up in numbers. The numerical axis at right tallies 3 possible outcomes for human population over the next century. (Lola Chaisson)

These, then, are 3 general cases for the increase of anything, population or otherwise: zero, linear, or exponential growth. Surprisingly, actual demographic data seem to obey none of these possibilities. Study of the real situation on Earth shows human population to have increased at a rate even faster than exponential growth!

A big-picture view of census data for the past several thousand years (Figure 8.3) shows that humans are now within the domain of catastrophic population increase. (Christian persecution and the black plague represent the only downward deviations in world population growth during all of recorded history.) The culprit is again the annual growth rate. When examined over thousands of years, the annual growth rate has neither remained constant nor increased linearly; the growth rate itself has risen dramatically during the past century or so. For example, in the past several thousand years, the population has doubled many times, though each time it doubled more quickly. Human population roughly doubled to ~200 million people from 5000 B.C. to 1 A.D., a time period spanning 50 centuries. The next doubling time then shortened to ~14 centuries. And by 1800 A.D., only 4 centuries later, the population had doubled once more. Succeeding doubling times have continued to decrease, reaching ~100 years by the start of the 20th century, ~60 years by mid-20th century, and a current value of ~40 years, or less than half a century. Such dramatic decreases in the population doubling times indicate nothing less than truly explosive growth.

FIGURE 8.3 FIGURE 8.3 – Data estimates taken from the world’s census tabulations show that global human population has grown dramatically during the past 10,000 years, roughly since the start of agricultural practices. The curve plotted here is actually faster than exponential—but its rapid rise in recent years now seems to be slowing as the top of the curve begins turning over. (United Nations)

Yet another way to appreciate recent population growth is to note that, of all the humans who ever lived on Earth, ~5% are now alive. Within a couple of decades, this percentage will have doubled.

Given the finite size of our planet, there’s no escaping the fact that this extraordinarily rapid population growth is unhealthy for life, and not just human life. No stretch of the imagination can visualize anything short of disaster, should this proliferation of humans continue unchecked. But will it continue? Many analysts routinely answer no, it can’t. Yet what makes them smugly sure that this problem will not become absolutely unmanageable?

Two points are worth noting. First, some demographers maintain that the prospects for overpopulation are not as grim as presented here. They claim that the annual growth rate has now peaked and that the problem is under control. Some indicators do in fact suggest that the worldwide growth rate is now on the decline. It’s hard to know for sure, since census figures are often inaccurate for many of the heavily populated Southern Hemisphere countries where the problem is most severe.

Population statistics often seem riddled with confusion; some are even distorted by political agendas. For instance, substantial declines in the rate of growth have been reported in the last couple of decades for Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Fiji, Indonesia, Panama, Columbia, the Dominican Republic, Malaysia, and Thailand. Many people take this to mean that the population problem is behind us, despite all these countries housing hardly more than 5% of the planet’s inhabitants. In fact, most news releases, such as that for a recent United Nations’ study that ran under the headline “World Population Decline Documented,” are nonsense, for population hasn’t decreased in the world at all. Nor has it decreased in these particular countries. It hasn’t even stabilized. World population is still increasing, even if not at its previously fast clip.

Mathematically, the rising population curve is now beginning to "turn over"— that is, slow its rate of growth into what looks like an "S-curve," namely one that slowly increases, then rapidly rises, and finally slowly increases again. But consider these numerical facts: In 2012, >3 billion people on the planet are <25 years old. Even if this largest generation in human history elects to have smaller families than their parents, world population will still rise. U.N. estimates now predict ~9.5 billion by the year 2050; and, although the U.N. is reluctant to predict more than 50 years into the future, it concedes at least >10 billion by 2100. Note that the increase from the present 7 billion to a projected 9.5 billion just a few decades hence is equivalent to adding another India and China to the world.

A decreased growth rate still means growth; it merely postpones problems. For example, an annual growth rate of 1.5% predicts a doubling of the population every 47 years. Even a growth rate of only 2/3 of 1% would cause world population to double every century. Again, these timescales aren’t long compared to other durations encountered on this Web site. To avert an overpopulation problem in our species' future, the growth rate must be decreased substantially, permanently, and soon.

A second point: It’s easy to be fooled by slick presentations of demographic data, or of any statistical data when plotted badly. When census figures are examined over the course of only a few years or even a few decades, the population problem seems to disappear. This “little picture,” shown to the left of Figure 8.4—sometimes known as the “politician’s plot” because of the one-term foresightedness of nearly all elected officials—shows a steady but not drastic rise in world population. The very same trend in data, when plotted over the course of several centuries as on the right of Figure 8.4, shows the full magnitude of the problem. This “big picture” gives a completely different impression, forecasting a population that would skyrocket to unbelievable numbers only a few centuries hence.

FIGURE 8.4 FIGURE 8.4 – The growth of world population (or any quantity) looks much different when plotted over short periods of time, such as a decade or so at left, than over longer periods of time, such as several centuries at right. (Lola Chaisson)

Always seek the big picture. Don’t let statisticians proffer the trees for the forest. Small-term trends offer little information, especially in the cosmic scheme of things. Regardless of the quantity considered, always demand a full history of its change over as much time as possible. There’s nothing to lose and possibly much to gain by exploring a more comprehensive, long-term view. It’s the only way to envisage the panoramic drift of matter through time.

The implications for continued growth at exponential rates are simple. All prognoses point toward catastrophe. Only madmen and some economists think otherwise. Prolonged growth along the “explosive” portion of a steeply rising curve—that part of the curve at which we now find ourselves—predicts that world population would theoretically approach infinity within 1,000 years. Of course, an infinite population makes no sense, given that the planet has a finite size. It’s impossible even to imagine an infinite population for the same reason that it’s impossible to appreciate infinite densities within a black hole or an infinite volume for an open Universe. Infinities are unattainable.

When encountering physical quantities that theoretically approach infinity, scientists really mean that we’re currently incapable of explaining the properties characterizing infinite density, infinite volume, or infinite whatever. When faced with infinitely small or large values, the laws of physics, as we know them, break down. In the case of population growth, something is indeed going to break, but it will not be the laws of physics. Long before the world population even approaches infinity, it’s more likely that humanity itself will collapse.

The upshot is that a genuine decrease in world population growth is now needed if our civilization is to avert a monumental problem not too far in the future. There’s little doubt that such a change will occur; the concern is how it will transpire. We shall either orchestrate the change with Machiavellian effort, or it will happen to us with Malthusian suffering.

Emphasis should be on change and now. Change is required and it’s required now. Because of our position on the explosive part of the population curve, the present time is pivotal. Our generation—not the next one—must effect planned change, lest that change occur by means of war, pestilence, and famine. Such change can be best achieved by viewing the big picture, recognizing the problem, and then altering the attitudes of governments, religions, society.

Interstellar Emigration It’s natural to wonder, given our newly acquired technological expertise in the Space Age, if emigration to space could help alleviate the world’s population problem. If overpopulation results from Earth’s limited size, then why on Earth stay here? After all, Renaissance seafarers relieved European overcrowding by discovering the Americas, Australia, and other new lands. Now that the entire planet seems headed toward a worldwide glut of people, why can’t modern spacefarers just identify some stars having nice new planetary abodes for Earthlings to emigrate and settle?

Though advocated by some, this approach is nonsense. Interstellar expansion is acutely more difficult than most people realize. Despite a rash of recent discoveries of exoplanets around stars beyond our Sun as noted in the PLANETARY EPOCH, astronomers are presently aware of very few planets that resemble Earth. Even if we did know of such a star system with homelike abodes, and even if that system were among the closest to us, it would still be far too distant to explore with our current technological skills. The idea of trucking hordes of people toward other planets to relieve crowding on Earth is another problem altogether. The most advanced nations now have trouble keeping just a few astronauts in space for a few months at a time. Interstellar emigration is surely out of the question now, and realistic studies of futuristic spaceflight based on the known laws of physics suggest that it might never become feasible.

In the absence of readily available planets, some researchers have urged the construction of large space colonies in orbit around Earth. Their on-paper designs grant such colonies a wide variety of geometrical structures, featuring tubes, rings, spheres, and sundry polyhedrons—all of them essentially large steel and glass "bottles" usually spanning 2 – 30 km (or ~1 – 20 miles). Set into spinning motion, these huge cylinders experience centrifugal force much like that discussed earlier in the GALACTIC and STELLAR epochs for young galaxies and protostars. Because the inhabitants would reside on the inside walls of such colonies, this outward push would naturally pin them to the inner walls, thus simulating gravity and enabling them to overcome the weightlessness normally encountered in outer space. Various proposals now on the drawing boards, such as the one sketched in Figure 8.5, envision upwards of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people inhabiting a single colony. There they would reside for their entire lives in a controlled environment that would ostensibly provide for their every need.

FIGURE 8.5 FIGURE 8.5 – This artist conception depicts a totally enclosed space colony where whole communities of people would live on the inside of a huge rotating cylinder extending tens of kilometers long. The three large, external “fins” are solar collectors designed to reflect sunlight through vast windows comprising half of the cylinder's surface. The other half is metal covered with soil on the inside, where people would live while confined to its inside walls. (G. O’Neil)

Numerous “visionaries,” including some leading scientists, have become excited by the idea of assembling and inhabiting fleets of space colonies in the neighborhood of Earth and beyond. Alas, significant issues of an engineering, sociological, and even philosophical nature might doom such structures, and with them the whole idea of exporting large numbers of people off Earth and into space.

Construction alone would be overwhelmingly difficult. Aluminum and silicon ore for a colony’s metal and glass walls could conceivably be mined from the Moon. But it’s unclear how much raw material would be needed to fabricate even one colony, especially in view of the structural integrity needed to maintain an airtight environment and thick walls to protect the inhabitants from lethal cosmic radiation. Some engineers suggest that nearly 1012 kg (~billion tons) of materials are needed for a typical colony; this is a greater tonnage than that of all the ships of the world’s combined navies. If correct, then given the abundance of aluminum, silicon, and oxygen embedded in lunar soil (let alone the herculean, energy-intensive task needed to extract them), the amount of raw material needed to assemble a single colony would require strip mining much of the Moon’s maria to a depth of nearly 1 meter. Space colonization would be, to put it mildly, an absolutely colossal engineering task.

Nor would life in a space colony, once built, be easy. Some designs stipulate so many people housed in a typical colony that the population density might exceed that of Hong Kong. Even with lesser crowding, who knows what might be the psychological and physiological consequences for people cooped up in a spinning metal can for their entire lives. Seasoned travelers are often bothered while confined on commercial aircraft for more than a few hours. Even trained professionals of naval submarine crews find it troublesome being isolated for a few weeks in an artificially enclosed environment that provides for almost every need. A 70-year hitch in a gigantic space colony would require a helluva lot of adaptation.

The need for structural rigidity leads to additional sociological problems, absolute security being foremost among them. Aside from external threats arising from sabotage or intercolonial conflict (let alone meteoritic debris), ever-present internal dangers might make space colonies highly vulnerable. For example, the torsional stress on a spinning colony’s outside walls would likely create huge structural stress—so great, in fact, that any projectile could conceivably crack a glass wall upon even slight impact, potentially unzipping the colony along its full kilometer-length, thus allowing the pressurized environment to escape—and with it, presumably, the people. The upshot might well be a genuine population explosion, or at least a rapid evacuation of the populace! Accordingly, projectiles of all sorts would likely be banned in space colonies. No baseball and not much other activity could be tolerated, and certainly no guns or bombs either, the latter not a bad idea in and of itself. But to ensure the absolute elimination of explosives of any kind, which could render a colony helpless, space societies would be forced to ban the practice of chemistry. And to prohibit chemistry implies banning books. Opponents view space colonies as “Huxley hives,” “Bradbury boxes,” “Orwellian outhouses,” or just plain totalitarian tubes.

As blueprinted now in their early design stages, space colonies are, depending upon the beholder, either novel life boats or luxurious death traps. Is there a compromise position between these two extreme attitudes? Probably not, for space colonies present a basic philosophical dilemma as well.

Space colonies demand a completely untried venture in living: They require us to put something where there is naturally nothing. They are designed to confine a breathable and warm environment, with people living within a fully enclosed structure. It’s not the colony itself that’s foreign to space as much as the attempt to create a permanent environment where there naturally exists no such thing. Outer space is nearly a perfect vacuum, yet it harbors sparse but lethal radiation. Construction of a habitat where virtually nothing at all exists is wholly novel and fundamentally unique to any of our living routines on Earth. Our air is not tightly bottled, our environment not artificially warmed. We inhabit the outside of a rock whose environment is kept naturally intact by Nature’s gravity. Planets are not without problems, but their environments are based on natural foundations—solid bases provided by Nature. In fact, planets (and some of their biggest moons) may be the only objects capable of supporting permanent, safe, and livable environments.

These criticisms don’t apply to all types of construction in outer space. Space is perfectly good for flimsy structures—giant antennas for efficient communications, solar collectors to power modern society, astronomical observatories to improve our perception of the Universe. Suspended in the weak-gravity environment of space, such man-made structures require little rigidity, since there are no net forces aside from the steady breeze of particles emanating from the Sun. Literally fabricated from aluminum foil and other flimsy material, such tenuous structures would be relatively cheap, expendable, and most of all realistic.

We explore the oceans, but we don’t live in them. We research the polar caps, but no permanent, self-sustaining commune is lodged there. We travel in the upper atmosphere, but no one inhabits it. Let’s explore space and move through it, but we best postpone, perhaps permanently, attempts to colonize it.

One thing is certain: Space colonies cannot possibly solve the population glut or any other problem now facing our civilization. Though some proponents of space colonization actually argue that interstellar emigration could alleviate the problem of Earth’s growing population, a simple calculation proves this viewpoint foolish. The current annual increase of ~80 million people can also be expressed as a daily increase of ~220,000 people—which is roughly the projected capacity of a typical space colony now on the drawing board. Just to neutralize the current growth of world population would require, then, not only building one of these giant habitats every day, but also arranging for the daily launch of hundreds of thousands of people from the surface of Earth.

It’s of little help if human society, perhaps aided by smart machines, someday in the future miraculously gains the advanced technology to construct fleets of space colonies overnight. To make any impact on world population, such colonies would have to be built and ready for occupancy before we reach the steeply rising part of the population curve. We don’t have space colonies now yet we need them now. It seems unlikely that the required technology and resources will ever be secured to export even a fraction of the world’s population beyond our parent planet.

Note that overcrowding is unlikely to be a problem peculiar to intelligent life on Earth. The underlying reasons for a burgeoning population are probably universal, implying that any intelligent life on any planet would also experience a similar predicament at our level of development. Biologically speaking, no life forms could likely increase their intelligence faster than their number, thus leaving all of them unprepared to emigrate to outer space when the overcrowding begins. How can we be sure of this without knowing anything about the sociology of galactic aliens? The reason is that the root cause of a population explosion has little to do with sociology.

Overcrowding results from the way matter is structured, or, more precisely, by the sequence of scientific discoveries by which any intelligent life forms will presumably unravel that structure. Dramatic growth in population results largely from the discovery and harnessing of bacteria—in Earth’s case, through the suppression of disease. Ability to construct large space colonies and especially to travel to distant star systems, on the other hand, depend on the discovery and utilization of atomic nuclei. Since bacteria on Earth are invariably larger than atoms, and since we can presume matter to be structured similarly elsewhere, cells will always be discovered before nuclei and hence the invention of medicine will always precede that of nuclear technology. Thus, intelligent life on any planet seems destined to encounter overcrowding before gaining the ability to solve it via interstellar emigration.

Food, Energy, Resources Overcrowding is an issue, not only because it leaves less room for everyone on Earth, but also because it taxes our planet’s supply of non-renewable and even renewable resources. It spawns a host of other burdens, the need for food foremost among them. Indeed, some biologists argue that food shortage is a natural way to check population growth of any species, much as a limited supply of nutrients does cause the reproductive growth of microorganisms in a test tube to stabilize after a brisk period of exponential increase. True enough, but are restrictions on the food supply the intelligent way to go about it? Malnutrition and even cannibalism might work for bacteria in the lab, but these are unacceptable solutions to the problem of human crowding. Theoretically at least, humans should be intelligent enough to better Nature’s solution of death by starvation—or predation. In practice, we must do better than bacteria, since countries that have both hunger and weaponry aren’t going to remain idle. Let’s hope that those who advocate famine or warfare as a natural solution to our looming overpopulation predicament aren’t thereby demonstrating an essential feature of that elusive quality, humanity.

The severity of today’s food shortage can be appreciated by noting that nearly ¾ of Earth’s population currently inhabits underdeveloped countries where pockets of periodic famine occur regularly. Despite starvation in an appalling number of locales on our globe, the present food production of all the world’s countries is actually sufficient to feed everyone now on the planet. The problem at hand results from ~20% of all processed food being lost to poor storage or sheer waste. Present famine could thus be alleviated immediately by efficient distribution of foodstuffs around the world. But famine locally (including water shortages) isn’t now nearly the problem it will soon become globally, for even increased food production will unlikely keep pace with the rapidly growing population.

Most people capable of using this Web site ignore the food problem, first because they themselves are well fed, and second by claiming that synthetic food will rescue us from worldwide starvation. But there’s no getting around the fact that some people are starving now. We don’t have synthetic food now and we need it now. Furthermore, to manufacture artificial food in the future will inevitably require more energy, that other, even more fundamental, quantity that is exacerbated by our burgeoning population.

Energy is perhaps the most ubiquitous common denominator among all increasingly complex entities in the Universe, including technological societies, much as stressed in the CHEMICAL and CULTURAL epochs. Throughout all aspects of modern civilization, energy is needed to operate automobiles, trains, aircraft, and other machines that aid movement on our planet; to enjoy telephones, radios, and televisions that permit us to supplement face-to-face exchanges; to fabricate clothing and houses that augment our body’s thermostat and enable us to reside in terrestrial (and someday extraterrestrial) sites normally unsuited for humans; to practice medicine and nutrition that make possible longer and healthier lives; to create books and computers that help us remember all that we know. All of industrial production, not only the synthesis of foodstuffs but also the extraction of resources and the manufacture of daily goods, requires the use of energy. Most human activity has come to rely on it.

It would seem that a central predicament now confronting us is that there’s simply not enough energy for our power-hungry society on Earth. But that’s only a superficial concern, expressed by selfish groups that happen to be alive today and that mainly worry about filling their automobile gas tanks tomorrow. When we step back and examine the big energy picture—from a large perspective and over long duration—the real problem seems just the opposite: Our civilization may soon be producing too much energy.

Although <30% of the world’s estimated oil capacity is now gone, the current rate of oil usage will ensure depletion of the remaining supplies in a few decades. Within a single human generation, our planet will be mostly oilless—for all practical purposes devoid of a rich resource that is essentially unrenewable. Over the course of merely a century, our civilization will have thoroughly exhausted a fossil fuel that took Nature hundreds of millions of years to stockpile.

This is one of the legacies we are destined to leave to posterity. Looking back at us historically, our great-grandchildren and all those who succeed them will recognize that it was those 21st-century humans who used all the oil reserves that Nature provided our planet. Indeed, the large view of world oil consumption, as Figure 8.6 dramatically illustrates, resembles a thin flame in a long, dark night.

FIGURE 8.6 FIGURE 8.6– World oil consumption, when plotted as a big-picture graph over a long time duration, resembles a mere blip starting in early-20th century and ending by mid-21st century. (CIA)

What are we to do, then? How can we reasonably and indefinitely fuel our technological civilization? Some propose nuclear fission, the current method used in nuclear power plants to produce energy. But fission also produces radioactive wastes highly toxic to our environment and possibly to our genes, though just right for thermonuclear weaponry. By contrast, some propose nuclear fusion, the very same process that yields energy in stars (noted at length in the STELLAR EPOCH) and which leaves far less radioactive waste. But fusion isn’t yet mastered by humankind and it’s likely to be many more decades before it’s ready to use safely, if then.

Others propose coal, another non-renewable resource naturally created within planet Earth by the decay of biological systems over eons of time. But potentially grave pollution problems accompany the overt burning of coal; what we burn up as coal will almost surely come back down as acid rain. Furthermore, most of the world’s coal supplies lie in America’s Midwest, where the land will have to be stripped naked. Proven reserves will last a few centuries, but after that, they too will be gone. And then what?

Even advocates of that newly discovered resource, conservation, recognize their suggestion to be only a temporary stopgap. Surely, meaningful conservation of unrenewable resources offers the best attack on the world energy crunch to be experienced by all nations midway into the 21st century. However, conservation doesn’t address the crux of the long-term energy issue, namely the insatiable desire for more energy per capita going forward.

Last, some suggest that any energy scheme utilizing non-renewable resources is ridiculous. Indeed, it would seem rather foolish for any intelligent civilization to ransack its own planet for sources of energy, when unlimited amounts of it can be captured from its parent star—in our case, the Sun. Though solar power is economically infeasible at present (it's still too expensive), its development does seem to be the wisest direction in which to invest capital funds. If dumb plants can harness solar energy, then smart animals ought to be able to do as well.

Current shortfalls of energy aside, many people lack the foresight needed to appreciate the heart of the energy dilemma. The real problem before us isn’t which of these energy alternatives to embrace as our civilization moves toward the future. The fundamental issue here concerns our incessant increase in the production of energy from any non-renewable source and by any technique. Why? Because an unavoidable by-product of energy is heat—a direct consequence of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, perhaps the most inviolable principle in all of science.

Heat results when energy is extracted from wood, coal, oil, gas, nuclear, geothermal, and any other unrenewable source. Regardless of the source of energy, Earth is constantly subjected to heat generated by our industrial society. We already experience it in the big cities that are warmer than their suburbs, and near nuclear reactors that warm their nearby waterways. While, admittedly, this waste heat is currently an imperceptible burden on the environment, it’s now on the rise, obeying a classic exponential curve like that for population, and thus destined to become troublesome almost after it’s too late to do anything about it. Significant heating will disrupt the delicate balance between energy arriving from the Sun and that reradiated by the Earth, possibly destroying the natural thermal balance that keeps our planet reasonably comfortable. Though few people know it, we are polluting the air directly with heat (in addition to gases that trap the heat and worsen the problem).

Several estimates of planetary heating imply, should Earth’s average surface temperature increase by as much as ~3oC (or ~6oF), that serious environmental consequences can be expected. Melting of the polar ice caps is the foremost concern. The northern Arctic region is nothing more than a large iceberg, the disintegration of which wouldn’t raise the world’s sea level, just as the melting of floating ice cubes doesn’t affect the liquid level in a glass. But decay of the southern Antarctic region, a huge ice-covered landmass that isn’t afloat (as with Greenland), could raise the sea level by as much as 70 m (or ~200 feet), inundating coastal cities that house large segments of the world’s population. We’re not talking about flooding beach resorts and marshlands, but major residential and commercial centers built up over centuries because of a reliance on sea and river trade. How many of the world’s great cities can you name that are not perched on the banks of waterways?

Not only would oceanic waters rise, but atmospheric water vapor would increase as well. This translates as increased cloud cover, which would still allow the long-wavelength solar radio radiation to reach Earth’s surface, but prevent a good deal more of the re-emitted, shorter-wave infrared radiation from escaping into space. Nor would much of the industrially produced infrared radiation (heat) be able to penetrate the clouds. The trapped radiation would bounce around in the lower atmosphere, heating it even more and thereby causing more melting, more flooding, more air moisture, and still more cloud cover. If Earth were to warm enough to initiate ice-cap melting, nothing short of a technological miracle could halt a whole chain of environmental effects from running out of control until our entire planet was shrouded in clouds, seethingly hot, and a most unlikely abode for any kind of life we know. Such a greenhouse process warms the interior of glass-enclosed hothouses during winter and the insides of automobiles on hot days; the same process operates full blast on cloud-cloaked Venus, heating its surface to a hellish temperature sufficient to melt lead.

Could the excesses of technological society really trigger such dire ramifications? How much energy can all our technological gadgets—cars, stoves, factories, whatever—utilize before Earth’s surface temperature rises to the brink of starting this runaway process? With the total incidence of solar radiation on planet Earth known, a simple calculation shows that our average surface temperature would increase by ~3oC whenever the total power emitted from within reached ~3x1015, or a few thousand trillion, watts. Since the power now used by all of Earth’s inhabitants totals ~18 trillion watts, a couple hundred times more energy production could be expected to seriously melt the polar ice caps. That’s only 8 doubling times in economic terms. Given that energy consumption is currently increasing exponentially at a global annual rate of ~2%, a straightforward calculation implies that within only a few centuries industrial production will have approached the level of threatening to harm life on Earth by heat and heat alone (even if greenhouse gases are sequestered.)

This heating of the biosphere on planet Earth will be exacerbated if large amounts of coal are burned, as is now being advocated by mostly uninformed bureaucrats. The trouble with coal is that it pollutes the air with colorless, odorless, carbon-dioxide (CO2) gas that acts as a one-way mirror, trapping even more heat in the atmosphere. If coal should become Earth's prime energy source once oil is depleted, the global heating fiasco could be frying our descendants within less than a century.

As if burning coal weren’t bad enough, humans also directly pollute the air with CO2. Every time we breathe, this gas exhales from chemical reactions within our bodies, the result being that a growing populace itself contributes to global heating. Plants, even forests, can absorb only so much CO2. And with logging operations increasing to provide the housing and packaging needs of a mushrooming population—yes, the use of paper products are still on the rise in our digital society—vast forestry absorbers are steadily falling by the wayside. In fact, the CO2 content has been measured to be increasing in Earth’s atmosphere. There’s no argument about it.

After millions of years of being subjected to the whims of the environment, humans are now gaining the ability to change that environment. But heating it is not the way to do it.

Two further notes: First, some industrialists argue that human-induced heating might be offset, ironically enough, by further degrading the quality of the air. In theory, microscopic debris that is light in color tends to reflect sunlight, thus cooling the biosphere. In practice, however, the bulk of the debris naturally released as by-products of industrial production is soot or smog. Instead of reflecting solar radiation, dark and dirty soot absorbs much of it, further heating the biosphere. So it would be a mistake to grant big business a license to pollute liberally under the guise of quenching atmospheric heating. Likewise, intentionally seeding our atmosphere with light-colored, microscopic particles would also likely be a mistake, as these and other vast geoengineering projects would almost surely create other debilitating ramifications. Do we really want to experiment with Earth’s global atmosphere? Dare we muck around with the very air we breathe?

Secondly, it would be unwise to embrace more exotic arguments that claim, for example, that biospheric heating will be countered by natural cooling as our planet oscillates back toward an ice age. This isn’t a valid argument since the timescales aren’t even approximately comparable. The next ice age isn’t expected for many thousands of years. Over the course of the next several centuries, or even the next millennium, Earth’s temperature will not likely decrease appreciably owing to natural causes. The astronomical alignment that triggers planetwide cooling, as noted in the CULTURAL EPOCH, is too far in the future. Let’s not rely on the long-coming ice age to bail us out of this near-term thermal pollution problem.

There is one way to avoid, or at least diminish, the heating of Earth by civilization’s use of energy. Renewable energy sources, mainly solar and its derivatives of wind, water and waves, would not additionally heat Earth’s environment. That's because energy normally landing as sunlight on Earth is already accounted for in the thermal balance of our planet. Solar energy is clean, abundant and free, and if humankind could learn to harvest it economically——as do the plants already via photosynthesis——then we could indefinitely power our civilization without heating the biosphere. However, if we did embrace huge geoengineering projects designed to capture additional amounts of sunlight that normally bypass Earth——with large orbiting collectors in space that would then beam extra energy to the surface——then our biosphere would again be subject to enhanced heating. Passive solar energy that merely lands here naturally is surely advantageous; active solar energy that is unnaturally diverted here is more likely to be problematic.

The bottom line is that it would be a fatal delusion to think that we can generate unlimited amounts of energy to support the daily needs of a rapidly multiplying population. Being bullish on economic growth is not a solution to global problems; bullishness itself will likely create new problems. The simplest way to avoid the unhealthy heating of our environment is to curb the growth of non-renewable energy usage——which can best be done by checking the growth of population——or to switch to an exclusively solar economy (including wind, water, and waves), thus powering civilization by the light of our parent star.

Change or perish.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Aside from problems caused by large numbers of people on Earth, potentially grave troubles also lie ahead because of the actions of just a few individuals. Artificial (i.e., non-natural) self-destruction is a case in point—humans could conceivably obliterate intelligent life on our planet.

Modern warfare is an especially germane example of unnatural self-destruction. Military organizations are constantly developing new ways to kill people and destroy all manner of things. The United Nations recently announced that the nations of the world spend more than a million American dollars per minute on weaponry. Nuclear explosives, laser-guided weapons, robotic drones, mobile missiles, lethal chemicals, and a growing arsenal of other destructive devices have become permanent ingredients of our civilization. These aren’t just popgun fare, capable of maiming individuals; they are global munitions, able to mangle whole nations. Consider nuclear bombs (Figure 8.7), which, despite the end of the Cold War, are still very much a threat to the survival of humankind.

FIGURE 8.7 FIGURE 8.7 – Cone-shaped reentry vehicles house nuclear bombs packing enormous destructive powers. While the U.S. has pioneered smaller, multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs) shown at left, the Russians and others are content with gross, 1-Megaton nuclear warheads such as the one at right. (U.S. Defense Dept.)

The world supply of nuclear weaponry is currently equivalent to ~20 billion tons of TNT, a highly explosive chemical used in the production of dynamite. Numbers in the billions no longer faze readers of earlier epochs of this Web site, but an analysis of weapons density is guaranteed to shock anyone. Dividing the world's arsenal by the number of people now on the planet, we find to our astonishment a sum total of nearly 3 tons of TNT per person. This is neither 3 bullets, nor 3 sticks of dynamite, but the nuclear equivalent of ~3 tons of explosives for every man, woman, and child on Earth. No wonder nuclear bombs are considered overkill!

Further reflection reveals the extent of our disgrace, not just because we pay for all these armaments, but especially because we tolerate them. We are members of a society that permits the unchecked escalation of nuclear arms that can be used for only one thing—to wage nuclear war. And, contrary to popular belief, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the 1980s or the warming of east-west relations of the 1990s didn’t much reduce this weaponry. At best, this bilateral lip service acts only to regulate the expansion of worldly destructive powers.

What sort of damage does a typical 1-Megaton nuclear blast guarantee? Nearly 100 times more destructive than the Hiroshima atomic bomb of World War II, the detonation of the equivalent of 106 tons of TNT creates a brilliant fireball, the center of which attains temperatures of ~107 K, comparable to the Sun’s core. Such rapid heating causes sudden expansion of the air around the point of explosion, as measured during tests shown in Figure 8.8, which in turn gives rise to shock waves and severe winds where pressures reach values ~3000 times that of Earth’s normal air; this is sufficient to flatten ordinary brick houses ~4 km away from the point of impact. One such typical nuclear warhead, of which thousands now stand alert in the arsenals of about a dozen countries, would be absolutely fatal to all life within a ~50 km2 area surrounding ground zero. Not only would the blast itself annihilate virtually everything within this inner zone, but the heat released by a 1-Megaton nuclear explosion can also cause paper to ignite as far away as ~15 km (or across an area of >200 km2), ensuring widespread firestorms throughout the region. The destruction of life and property would be so immense, regardless of where in a city such a weapon detonated, that missile accuracy isn’t even required.

FIGURE 8.8 FIGURE 8.8– A mushroom cloud from a 1-Megaton nuclear blast billows up from an obliterated Pacific Island shortly after detonation in the 1950s, before the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty prohibited such above-ground tests. For scale, huge battleships (mothballed, expendable, and thankfully vacant) are shown being enveloped by the onrushing debris moments after detonation. (U.S. Defense Dept.)

This description isn’t offered to elicit hysteria. These are facts—bold, stark facts. Construction of nuclear bombs is based on the laws of physics, and the destructive aftermath of their use is also dictated by those same laws. Furthermore, it’s important to realize that nuclear bombs aren’t just scaled-up versions of conventional armaments. The radioactive particles produced during the explosion itself, as well as those destined to fall from the atmosphere far beyond the impact point, would cause nearly irreparable damage, rendering widespread parcels of land useless for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Clearly, a major nuclear war would leave the face of our planet drastically changed, perhaps uninhabited. It’s likely that everything we cherish as great and beautiful would be lost.

In a world of such enormous firepower, there can be no true defense. America and Russia still harbor terrible destructive forces and each side knows the other side has them. The outcome is supposedly a “stable” situation where neither country would dare attack—an equilibrium called by some a balance of power, and by others, peace by fear. The catchphrase in the language of Pentagonese is “mutually assured destruction,” the Strangelovian acronym for which is MAD.

That said, the real state of affairs isn’t complete stability. Every so often instabilities arise to enhance the chance for war. Such an instability might result from an international crisis, perhaps directly involving the U.S. and some other nuclear state, or perhaps initially engaging less powerful countries yet eventually escalating to the point of threatening military conflict between the nuclear states. Instabilities could take the form of short-term confrontations like the two-week-long Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and the thirty-day Gulf War in 1990, or be caused by long-term hostilities like the protracted Vietnam War (1954-75) and the lingering troubles throughout the Middle East. Though unexpected international crises don’t make outright war a certainty, they surely don’t increase the probability for peace, either.

More predictably, instabilities in the balance of power regularly occur as major weapons systems either are newly deployed or become obsolete. For a certain period of time, one side of a conflict has or thinks it might have a slight advantage. Upgraded weaponry might even grant one side a first-strike capability, whereby a nuclear power could launch an attack so devastating that the other government wouldn’t be able to respond offensively. For example, construction and deployment of “smart” cruise missiles, submarine-launched nuclear bombs, or multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (Figure 8.7) are thought by some to give the U.S. a decided advantage, at least until such time that other nuclear powers can neutralize these sophisticated weapons with countermeasures of their own. Likewise, the introduction of a whole new class of Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles having enormous thrust, or the development of killer satellites as part of China’s growing armory, is often regarded as giving the opposition a net advantage—at least until such time as the U.S. unveils yet other new weapons sufficient to reestablish the power balance. Even defensive measures such as those enacted by the Soviets at the height of the Cold War to build massive underground shelters, which serve to protect key elements of their civilian and industrial centers from nuclear conflagration, tends to upset international politics. The USSR civil-defense program was often viewed as a Soviet advantage or at least an instability, since the United States might no longer have been able to hold the Russian populace hostage, as the Soviets had the American population in the absence of a significant U.S. civil-defense program.

Numerous other examples of periodic international crises and weapons manufacture come to mind, especially those triggered by terrorist activities well into the 21st century, all of which serve to enhance the probability for war simply because the power scales among nation-states often become slightly imbalanced. These are among the main issues at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in Geneva and at the United Nations disarmament sessions in New York City. Yet, arms proliferation continues virtually unabated and ugly international confrontations flash repeatedly across our globe.

What effect will a recurrent series of instabilities have on the future of our civilization? Sadly, the outlook seems to be inevitable nuclear holocaust in the Northern Hemisphere. To see this, consider the following analysis. Suppose, on average, that an instability emerges every half-dozen years. This is roughly the frequency of major rifts in the balance of power since World War II. Suppose furthermore that there is a 95% probability for peace during any one period of instability. That still leaves the odds at 1 chance in 20, or 5% probability, for the outbreak of full-scale war. Then inquire about the degree to which the compound probability for war increases as civilization navigates through several periods of such instability. In other words, how many episodes of instability can a technological civilization withstand before the total probability for war exceeds the total probability for peace? The answer is ~17 such instabilities, or ~100 years.

Self-destruction via modern warfare is, of course, always possible at any time, even when the nuclear powers are evenly balanced. No one really knows the exact chance for war during stable times, though it's likely very small. Computations like the one above imply that the probability for war not only increases a little during any one period of instability, but also grows steadily throughout the course of time, each chink in the power balance not being entirely independent. If, according to the above estimate, global instabilities raise the chance for war to 5% at any given time, then the compound probability for nuclear holocaust becomes higher than that for peace—namely, 51% —after only 10 decades. Should this sterilized examination of war and peace approximate reality, then we’re roughly half way to Armageddon.

Should the average probability for war during periods of instability be greater, then this type of analysis suggests that nuclear war could be imminent. Conversely, a lower probability for war during individual instabilities means that the nuclear powers might be able to avoid war for a longer time. Only if war’s probability in these circumstances is <1% can we hope to postpone nuclear catastrophe for more than a few centuries, a time interval still small in the cosmic scheme of things. Regardless of how minute the chance, though, the compound probability for war will sooner or later exceed that for peace, making full-fledged nuclear war better than a 50-50 shot.

The crux of any (admittedly simplified) statistical analysis like this one revolves about the average probability for war during any one instability. No one, of course, knows this value for sure. Subjective factors abound, including the nature of humanity, which doubtlessly influences in complex ways the response of governments either to trigger or to avoid nuclear warfare. Numerous sociopolitical factors play integral roles, but none of them can be quantified, and yet at any rate, in a rapidly advancing technological society these factors may be nearly irrelevant. Alas, humanity true nature might not come to the fore and play a role even in times of global crises. If not, then the argument is clear solely on the basis of probability theory, and it is this: Though the probability for nuclear war might be small during any single period of instability, a civilization can withstand only so many instabilities before the compound probability for war begins to exceed that for peace.

Naturally, there are always opponents of this type of sterile analysis. Nor are they necessarily those permanently equipped with rose-colored glasses. They argue, for example, that our leaders wouldn’t actually retaliate, even knowing that some other government’s nuclear arsenal was due to arrive within the ~20 minutes that intercontinental ballistic missiles need to travel from one point on the globe to any other. But how can we trust any leader of a government to sacrifice its people for the good of civilization? Retaliation has become so mechanized—and fast—that the engagement of humanity is nearly minimized, perhaps lost. If certain parts of the “Defense” Department have their way, America’s response will soon be triggered only by radar-computing machines, not by the President. This elected official can override the computers by vetoing the machines’ commands, but in the event that he or she hesitates, our missiles will be up and away—automatically. We live at a time when command and control decisions are being transferred to robots. And, for better or worse, words like “humaneness,” “civilized,” and “survivability” don’t compute.

Others maintain that nuclear weapons will never be used. Retaliation, they claim, isn’t an issue because no one will be foolish enough to unleash nuclear weapons in the first place. But how can we afford to believe this viewpoint? That’s all it is—a belief. Warring nations have seemingly never failed to utilize the most potent weapon available to them. Since early history, the buildup of weapons and the prospect of war have been closely allied; the invention of arms has nearly always precipitated their use in warfare. With few exceptions, each new and deadlier weapon, from crossbow to guns to dynamite to poison gas to tanks to atomic bombs, has eventually been deployed on the field of battle. Historically, once humans build a new weapon, they apparently commit to use it. Those who say that nuclear weaponry is different deserve a cold response: How can we be so sure that the goodness, the rationality of humanity, will surface in the nick of time?

Still others argue that, despite a full-scale nuclear holocaust, all inhabitants of Earth will not necessarily perish—a claim tantamount to saying that nuclear war is winnable. But the very concept of mutually assured destruction is designed to make this impossible. With so much overkill now stored in our nuclear depots, it’s equally likely that any humans surviving the targeted blasts would succumb to the postwar aftermath of radioactive fallout, economic chaos, ozone depletion, and climatic cooling. The cumulative effects of all-out nuclear war would be so catastrophic that they render any notion of “victory” meaningless. Winnable-nuclear war arguments are totally specious, offered by irresponsible people—the type, unfortunately, who have thus far generally overseen the design and effect of nuclear-weapons policy. Let’s once again hope that pronouncements like these aren’t true reflections of the real nature of humanity.

The currently misleading concept of mutual destruction must be reframed in more realistic terms to reflect the full magnitude of the cataclysm that a nuclear war would bring. Then, we can plan, not to limit nuclear weapons, but to ban them altogether. So, let’s change the philosophy of approach: Instead of arguing for mutually assured destruction, we should strive to reach a loftier goal of mutually assured survival.

All the above near-term, alas global, problems are surely a good deal more complex than here sketched, largely because several of them are interrelated. For example, should current sociopolitical attitudes remain unaltered, the chances that someone will unleash nuclear bombs—that’s the self-destruction problem—will surely increase as the number of inhabitants grows—that’s the population problem—if only because there will be fewer natural resources to go around.

Current conflicts are destined to become further inflamed as people, perhaps whole nations, become desperate for food, energy, and resources. Wars waged solely to redistribute wealth may be the only way that poor countries, which feel they have nothing to lose, can hope to remedy their deteriorating status. Water, so plentiful in the oceans and to give but one example, will likely trigger wars regionally, then perhaps escalating internationally, as freshwater dwindles in the 21st century. The prospect that developing nations might catalytically induce nuclear war between the nuclear powers grows steadily. Even the specter of masked terrorists conducting nuclear blackmail with clandestine plutonium devices looms large on the horizon. Doubters should keep in mind that significant amounts of plutonium and enriched uranium, produced in American nuclear plants, are currently missing. Furthermore, at least one major U.S. city has already seriously considered capitulating to a multimillion-dollar demand to a threat that the city would be leveled by a hydrogen bomb, a hoax which, at the time, neither the Atomic Energy Commission nor the FBI could discredit.

The continued growth of world population and the incessant threat of nuclear detonation are foremost problems confronting our civilization today. Change or be doomed.


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