The Shape of Things to Come

What will follow the exhaustion of global fossil-fuel reserves?

Joseph George Caldwell

31 August 2022

This note paints a high-level picture of the fate of human society and the biosphere in the near future, as global fossil-fuel reserves are depleted.

The approach used to construct this picture is a “systems” or “causal-modeling” approach, in which basic causal factors affecting the state of human society and the biosphere are identified and their relationships to outcomes of interest are assessed. The model is used to predict the future state of human society and the biosphere associated with changes in the causal factors. This note is a qualitative discussion of general concepts, not a technical presentation.

The note consists of three parts. The first part is a general discussion of the present state of humanity and the biosphere and factors affecting them. The second part presents descriptions of alternative futures for humanity and the biosphere under three sets of assumptions. The third part is a summary discussion.

Background Discussion

This background discussion identifies major factors that affect the quality of life for people and the condition of the biosphere. These factors are discussed under the following major headings:

· The Present State of the Biosphere and Human Society

· Of What Use Is a Large Human Population?

· What Size Human Population Can Exist in Harmony with the Rest of the Biosphere?

· High Levels of Human Population and Industrial Activity Are Destroying the Biosphere

· World Leaders Are Committed to Economic Growth, and Are Not Going to Reduce Economic Activity, No Matter What the Consequences to the Biosphere or to Future Generations of Mankind

· After Societal Collapse, Human Society Almost Always Rebuilds

· The Global Industrial System Runs on Fossil Fuel, Which World Leaders Will Continue to Use until It Runs Out

· Energy Alternatives to Fossil Fuel

· To Save the Biosphere, the Global Economic System Must Be Steady-State Economics, Not Growth-Based Economics

The Present State of the Biosphere and Human Society

At present, humankind faces a dual-faceted existential crisis: the destruction of the biosphere in which human beings evolved and depend on for their continued existence; and the evolution of human society to one that condemns billions of people to misery. The root cause of this social and ecological crisis is the large size of the human population and the high level of industrial activity in which it engages.

The high levels of human population and industrial activity have caused a myriad of problems to manifest, including global pollution of land, air and sea; natural habitat destruction and mass species extinction; climate change; and human misery on a grand scale. Attempting to solve these problems without addressing the root cause of high human population and industrial activity has been futile.

In addition to using a prodigious amount of fossil fuel, humankind uses a very substantial portion of the solar energy that continuously impinges on the planet. It has diverted this recurrent solar energy from use by nature for biological processes to use by mankind for industrial activity.

The diversion of much solar energy from support of natural biological processes to support of industrial processes has significantly altered the biosphere. To address this issue, it is necessary for mankind to use substantially less energy for industrial processes, not more.

Of What Use Is a Large Human Population?

Of what use (to humanity) is a large human population? There appear to be three major uses. Before identifying these, however, two fundamental characteristics of the natural world will be noted. The first is that nature is self-organizing; that is, given a source of energy, there is a tendency for natural systems to evolve from less complex to more complex configurations. (In other words, given an energy source, the entropy (level of disorder) of a system decreases. Without an energy source, the entropy of a system cannot decrease (the Second Law of Thermodynamics).)

Examples abound of the phenomenon of self-organization. Following the “Big Bang,” the Universe did not remain a large cloud of matter, but coalesced into star-filled galaxies. The ponds and lakes of the world are not all homogeneous and algae-filled, but teeming with an incredible variety of life.

A second characteristic of the natural world is that biological populations have evolved to grow to the limit of their environment (space and other resources). With respect to population size, they are not self-regulating.

Now, back to the issue of the three major uses of a large human population. First, when the population becomes very large, dense relative to its environment, resources become scarce and problems arise. Without challenges and stress, little or no innovation (discovery, invention) usually occurs. Necessity is the mother of invention. In response to challenges and stress, solutions are sought and obtained. Examples of this are the development of improved steam engines to remove water from coal mines, and an accurate clock to enable measurement of longitude.

Although necessity is a strong motivator of invention, it is not essential. Curiosity is a natural desire. It inspired Kepler to develop laws of planetary motion, Newton to develop a theory of gravity, Maxwell to develop the theory of electricity and magnetism, and Einstein to develop a theory of relativity, even though there was no immediate application requiring these theories.

The implication of this use of large population size – that it generates problems – is that it is a driver for increasing the complexity of the system, i.e., for self-organization, for evolution.

The second use of large population size is that it generates an economic surplus of a magnitude sufficient to support significant scientific and technological development. It is highly unlikely that any significant technological development would occur on a tropical island containing but a few hundred people. With large populations, societies were able to support many scientists and engineers, leading to the development of the telegraph, telephone, automobile, airplane, rockets, X-ray imaging, nuclear energy, radio, television, computers, cellular telephones, vaccines, antibiotics and genetic engineering. With a population of over one-hundred million people, the United States possessed the wherewithal to develop the atomic bomb. History shows that such technological developments do not occur in small human populations, but in large ones.

The third use of a large population is that, simply for statistical reasons, it contains many more people of every kind, and many more extreme values. In particular, a large population is likely to contain more geniuses and more super geniuses than a small population.

To summarize, in order for humankind to make substantial technological progress, beyond primitive metallurgical and mechanical engineering, it is necessary to have human populations sufficiently large that environmental limitations generate significant social stress; sufficiently large to generate the economic surplus required to support substantial research and development activity; and sufficiently large to have a good chance of containing geniuses capable of significant discovery.

Since the invention of the electronic digital computer in the late 1940s, it can be argued that very little scientific progress has occurred of a “breakthrough” nature, such as the developments listed earlier, with respect to its impact on human society. At this point of human development, human society is destroying the biosphere in which it exists, and causing misery to billions of people. It would appear either that there is little additional need to expand scientific knowledge, since human society is destroying its habitat, or that there is a tremendous need, to save it from annihilation.

Despite a century of concerted effort, humankind has not been able to stop or even slow its destruction of the biosphere. This situation begs the question: given the current situation, of what useful purpose (to mankind) is a large human population and industrial society? The large population has served its evident evolutionary purpose – science and technology have blossomed – and it would seem that there is no longer any use for a large human population.

When autumn arrives and an oak tree no longer needs its thousands of leaves, it sloughs them off, without hesitation or regret, in a brief moment of time. Now that advanced technological society has been achieved, the large human population that was necessary to bring it about – to motivate it and to enable its development – is no longer needed. Nature is impersonal and efficient. It does not waste energy and other resources on activities of no value for survival or gratification. Since there is no longer an apparent use for a large human population, and it in fact now poses a serious threat to mankind’s quality of life and perhaps even existence, it would appear that its days are numbered.

What Size Human Population Can Exist in Harmony with the Rest of the Biosphere?

It has been estimated that for hundreds of thousands of years, prior to modern times (civilization), the size of the global human population was on the order of about five million people. That estimate is obtained by taking into account the amount of time and energy that primitive man could invest in searching for food. That size population existed in harmony with the rest of the biosphere. The size varied, of course, over time. At one point, based on mitochondrial evidence, it is estimated that the global human population was as low as 12,000 people. (By the word “harmony” is meant that the presence of the human population has little impact on the rest of the biosphere – that the state of the biosphere would be about the same with or without the human population.)

As technology gradually developed, the human population began to grow. The first major development was the introduction of agriculture, about 12,000 years ago. At the time of the Roman Empire, global population was about 200 million. By 1000 CE, the population had grown to about 300 million. At that point, human activity started making macroscopic changes to the biosphere. Large forests were destroyed to obtain lumber for ships.

The amount of environmental damage caused by human presence is roughly proportional to the amount of energy utilized by the population, i.e., to the population size multiplied by the per-capita energy use. People in technologically developed countries use from about ten to one-hundred times as much energy per person as people in undeveloped countries. What this implies is that the environmental impact of a high-technology population can be about 100 times that of a low-technology population. If a low-tech population of size 300 million is of a size that begins to make substantial changes to the biosphere, then it may be reasoned that the size of a high-tech population that would cause similar impact might be on the order of one-hundredth that size, or about 300 million / 100 = 3 million. If the high-tech people used just 50 times as much energy as the low-tech people (instead of 100 times), then this number would be 300 million / 50 = 6 million.

The preceding reasoning suggests that the size of a human population that can live in harmony with a species-rich biosphere over a long period of time could be of size up to several hundred million low-tech people, or up to about 3-6 million high-tech people, or some combination of both.

To promote achievement of the goal of a high quality of life for humanity in a species-rich biosphere, note that it is desirable to seek a small population, not a large one. A large one increases the risk of damage to the biosphere, and causes stresses that diminish the quality of human life. Trying to maximize the number of people on Earth courts disaster. To keep the risk of extinction of the human species low, it is desirable that the population size not be extremely small, and be geographically dispersed (i.e., not located in a single or small number of locations, so that it would be vulnerable to extinction from a local catastrophic event).

Although it seems necessary to have a large, environment-stressing population (such as billions of people on Earth) to advance to high technology, it does not appear to be necessary to have a large population in order to maintain it. Many self-sufficient high-technology nations, such as Sweden, manage quite well with populations of several million people. Given that the evolutionary milestone of achieving advanced technology has been achieved, and given that continuation of the large population will destroy the biosphere in which the human species evolved and is totally dependent upon for its continued existence, it seems that Earth’s large human population is now redundant.

Earth’s large human population has served an evident evolutionary use (of achieving advanced technology), but now poses an existential threat to the human species and is an impediment to achieving a high quality of life for humanity. Nature is efficient. Characteristics that serve no evolutionary purpose – that are unnecessary for survival, comfort, expression, or advancement of complexity – atrophy and disappear. It is difficult to see that human population will continue to exist at a large size. Its large size is no longer an evolutionary advantage to it, as a species, or to other species.

High Levels of Human Population and Industrial Activity Are Destroying the Biosphere

Technological advancement gave the human species a strong competitive advantage to the human species, H. sapiens, over other species, and to subspecies of it over other subspecies.

The technological advancement that provided an evolutionary advantage of the human species over other species has turned out, however, to be a double-edged sword, since the large human numbers and industry that it enabled are now destroying the biosphere. With each passing day, global pollution, habitat destruction and mass species extinction continue. The production of greenhouse gasses continues, and climate change continues. Billions of human beings live in crowded conditions, misery, poverty, squalor, disease, hunger, deprivation, confinement, want, lack of meaningful interaction with the natural world, hopelessness and oppression.

The root cause of this low quality of life for humanity is the high level of human population and industrial activity.

A “demographic transition” to level off human population to ten or so billion people, or to reduce it somewhat, will not stop the continued destruction of the biosphere. Human numbers and industrial activity began to cause significant destruction to the biosphere when the population reached about 300 million low-technology people. As discussed, for humankind to live in a species-rich biosphere such as the one that it evolved in and lived in for hundreds of thousands of years, population levels must decline to on the order of five million high-tech people and a few hundred million low-tech people.

World Leaders Are Committed to Economic Growth, and Are Not Going to Reduce Economic Activity, No Matter What the Consequences to the Biosphere or to Future Generations of Mankind

In order to address the current global ecological crisis, it is necessary for global human population size to reduce to about one one-thousandth of the current level, immediately. It is evident that such a population reduction will not occur voluntarily. The leaders of all of the world’s nations are calling for more economic growth, not less. They are not about to take any measures that will significantly lower the rate of economic growth, or human population levels, or industrial activity.

A prime example of the situation was the action of US President Joe Biden after the 2021UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November, 2021. After pledging to take action to address climate change at the Conference, Biden returned to the US and authorized the release of 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). On March 31, 2022, he announced that his administration would release one million barrels of oil per day from the SPR for the next 180 days. (As of June 10, 2022, the SPR inventory was 511.6 million barrels.) If the government were serious about addressing climate change, it would be reducing consumption of fossil fuels, not increasing it.

The US government provides massive incentives for installation of solar energy panels. Manufacture of these panels is very destructive of the environment and uses much fossil-fuel energy. They divert current solar energy from use by biological processes to use as industrial energy. Their manufacture and use cause substantial harm to the environment and the biosphere, yet the government actively and aggressively promotes their production and use.

Governments are not going to take meaningful actions to reduce the level of destruction to the biosphere, since that would require decreases in economic activity, which they are not about to do. The philosophy to which they are beholden is growth-based economics. (Economics is the branch of science concerned with management of scarce resources.)

World Leaders Have No Concern for Future Generations of Humanity

As is the case with other species, the human species does not exhibit much concern for other species, or even for members of its own species who are distant in time or space. This characteristic is referred to as “discounting in time and space.” The present leaders of the world take actions that are likely to provide immediate benefits to them, with little or no regard to effects on their children, or on other people, or on future generations.

The phenomenon of discounting in time and space is evident not just for world leaders, but for ordinary individuals as well. It is a reflection of the fact that an individual may influence the situation in his immediate time and space, but has little influence on situations that are distant in time or space. Evidently, concern for others who are not in one’s immediate time and space offers little evolutionary advantage.

What Motivates Political Leaders?

In his Nobel Lecture of 1950, “What Desires are Politically Important?”, Bertrand Russell identified the major desires of political leaders. They include acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, love of power and love of excitement. Russell discusses altruism (concern for others), and does not include it as politically important.

After Societal Collapse, Human Society Almost Always Rebuilds

The global economic system is very productive, but it is also very volatile. It is characterized by a sequence of booms and busts lasting about a decade or so, and by some major collapses, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession that began in 2007. Despite economic downturns and major social upheavals such as pandemics and wars, the global economic system is resilient. It bounces back for two main reasons. First, it is a system under conscious control. The system rebounds because it is useful to society’s controllers. It is driven by growth-based economics. Failures for some produce opportunities for others, and economic activity continues. The second reason why the economy has always bounced back, up to the present time, is that the system has not encountered resource constraints that impede its growth.

The Global Industrial System Runs on Fossil Fuel, Which World Leaders Will Continue to Use until It Runs Out

Until now, the global industrial system has had access to massive amounts of fossil-fuel energy. The level of economic activity of the system is proportional to the amount of energy available to it. Up to the present time, access to commercial-grade energy has not been a constraint on the system. Each year, global industrial energy consumption continues to grow at about 1-2 percent per year.

Scientists have known and pointed out for at least 100 years that the carbon dioxide introduced into the atmosphere by the burning of large amounts of fossil fuel causes a “greenhouse” effect that would gradually warm the planet. Over the past century, human society has dramatically increased the production of greenhouse gasses. Since 1880, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by at least 1.1° Celsius (1.9° Fahrenheit). In recent decades and years, the effects of climate change have become very evident, e.g., increase in global temperature, the melting of glaciers, recession of sea ice, heat waves, droughts and floods, and wildfires. Despite this knowledge and tangible evidence, human society remains committed to a high level of economic activity and industrial production, and the burning of large amounts of fossil fuel.

It is now very evident that world leaders will endeavor to consume every last bit of fossil fuel, no matter what the consequences to mankind or the biosphere.

Energy Alternatives to Fossil Fuel

With respect to utilization of other sources of energy, the situation is as follows. As fossil fuel reserves deplete, world leaders will strive to replace that energy source by other sources, such as solar electric, wind and nuclear power. Many governments provide substantial subsidies for investment in solar electric and wind, and are considering construction of new nuclear power plants. A number of countries are conducting research and development on the development of small nuclear reactors. One such reactor is operational in Russia. It is a floating nuclear power station that is used to provide heat and electric power to the Arctic port town of Pevek. The US government recently announced plans for a project (Project Pele) to complete development of such a reactor within a couple of years.

The construction of solar energy installations requires the use of much fossil fuel and causes the destruction of natural habitat for mining of minerals needed for their construction. The percentage of global industrial power provided by solar electric is quite small – on the order of five percent of the total. Solar electric will never replace the large amount of energy provided by fossil fuel. Diversion of current solar energy from use by the biosphere, and using it for human purposes, denies the biosphere the use of that energy for biological and geophysical processes.

The people who benefit from solar electric are the users who take advantage of the subsidies, and the companies that manufacture and install the equipment. The rest of the human population bears both the economic and ecological burden of tapping this energy source.

Despite the fact that solar electric will never replace fossil fuels, and the fact that its construction and operation are detrimental to the biosphere, world leaders are committed to further development and use of solar electric. They promote it for several reasons: (1) it makes it appear that they are doing something about the energy / environment problem; (2) it generates economic activity; and (3) it generates profits for the solar-energy sector, a powerful lobby.

Nuclear power can replace the power currently provided by fossil fuel. Nuclear power provides economic benefits to society, but imposes a substantial burden on the environment, both in terms of the energy use and environmental destruction associated with the construction of nuclear power plants, and in terms of the use of the energy provided by the plants to produce industrial products and enable activities that impose a burden on the biosphere.

The biosphere does not benefit from the use of additional energy by mankind. To save the biosphere, it is necessary for humanity to use less energy, not more!

To Save the Biosphere, the Global Economic System Must Be Steady-State Economics, Not Growth-Based Economics

Economic activity is destructive of nature whenever it consumes natural resources at a rate greater than that at which they can be restored. Some types of consumption, such as destruction of natural habitat that causes species to become extinct, cannot be restored.

For a long-term sustainable society, economic activity cannot cause significant long-term or permanent changes to the biosphere that cause extinction of other species. This implies that all of the products produced by the economic system must eventually be returned to natural materials that can be utilized by the rest of the biosphere, either by further industrial processing or by natural processing. This goal cannot be achieved for a large human population that is engaged in high levels of industrial production. The present global industrial system is producing products of such a kind and in such quantity that they cannot be assimilated by the biosphere at the rate at which they are being produced. The human species, like the yeast in fermenting ale, is in the process of drowning in its own waste.

A human population size that enables a high quality of life in a species-rich biosphere must be sufficiently small that its presence has a negligible effect on the biosphere. As discussed earlier, a population on the order of five million low-tech people lived in harmony with the biosphere for hundreds of thousands of years. It is not known whether any high-tech population can live in harmony with the biosphere for very long, but if it is possible, the size of the population would be very small.

The preceding discussion has identified major factors affecting the global ecological crisis. Given the preceding background, we shall now sketch three possible futures for human society and the biosphere. These alternative futures are scenarios corresponding to different assumptions about how long the present global industrial system continues to operate, and what type of economic system is used to replace it after its collapse.

Alternative Futures

Alternative Future 1: The Current Global Industrial System Continues for As Long As It Can

For this alternative future, the global human society continues to operate as it does at present, under a system of growth-based economics. This is a realistic scenario, since it is simply a continuation of the present system.

At present, almost all of the food consumed by mankind is produced by industrial agriculture, using fossil fuels. As fossil fuels deplete, food production will decline. The energy from fossil fuels will not be replaced by solar electric and wind, because the total amount of energy these sources can produce is very small compared to the amount of present fossil-fuel production.

Although nuclear energy could replace all of the energy now obtained from fossil fuel, that is unlikely to happen, in the long term. Nuclear energy is not likely to replace fossil-fuel energy because large nuclear power plants and electrical distribution systems are quite vulnerable to destruction in war. As global fossil-fuel reserved deplete, the level of global warfare among nations will increase, for two main reasons. First, because of competition for dwindling energy supplies (“resource wars”); and second, to reduce aggregate demand for energy, by reducing the size of the human population.

As the amount of fossil fuel decreases, a variety of steps will be taken to adjust, including lowering the trophic level of food consumed by human beings (less meat and fish, more grains and vegetables, insects). As the availability of fossil-fuel energy decreases, less food will be produced for the economic reason that investment of the energy yields higher returns to corporations when invested in production of products other than food.

The primary use of people for the global industrial system is as generators of demand. (Most of the human population is unskilled labor, and of little value in operating the global industrial system.) In a world of dramatically declining energy, the marginal value of human beings to the profit system decreases. The profit returns to corporations may be increased by reducing their numbers, i.e., by keeping fewer of them alive, i.e., by producing less food.

As discussed earlier, a large human population was necessary to provide both the motivation and the means for developing advanced technology, and those goals have been achieved. Most of the global human population is comprised of low-tech poor people. In a high-tech world of limited energy, a large population of low-tech poor people does not generate increased profits, but lower profits (since, as energy becomes more expensive, the value they contribute to the system controllers eventually becomes less than the value of the food they consume). Global human population will shrink, along with shrinking fossil-fuel production.

In today’s world, virtually all people depend on the global industrial system for food. Obtaining food from natural sources outside of the global food production system is no longer an option. As global fossil-fuel reserves deplete, global human population will decline back to the levels that can be supported by solar energy using primitive agriculture. The human population will shrink to a few tens of millions of people, worldwide.

This process may take some time. As long as the global industrial system continues, destruction of nature will continue. Mass species extinction will continue. Global warming will continue to worsen, as all economically recoverable fossil fuels are burned and greenhouse gasses are added to the atmosphere. The biosphere as we know it will be largely destroyed.

The quality of life for most human beings will be low. The quality of the natural environment, measured primarily by species diversity, will be greatly diminished. Since the global industrial system continues, although at a lower level of operation, the system will continue to provide a high-quality life for the few controllers of the system, while most of the people will endure lives of low quality, encumbered by debt, interest and rents.

Alternative Future 2: The Current Global Industrial System Is Severely Damaged, Immediately

For this alternative future, some sort of transformative and disruptive event occurs to bring the global industrial system to an immediate halt. Examples of such an event include the following:

· Global revolution

· Massive failure of food crops from climate change or disease

· Global war

· Global nuclear war (which could cause collapse of the system either because it is highly interdependent and brittle, or by causing nuclear winter (considered unlikely by many scientists))

· A global pandemic of a highly infectious, high-mortality disease

· A natural catastrophe (e.g., a massive volcanic eruption, followed by several years of cold; termination of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), leading to massive and immediate climate change)

· Emergence of a world dictator who takes actions that directly or indirectly reduce human population size

· Albedo modification: Detonation of an “aerosol bomb” or “dust bomb” of highly reflective particles to increase the planet’s albedo (reflectivity), precipitating an ice age

· A worldwide spiritual awakening

Like Alternative Future 1, this alternative is also realistic. It is simply a continuation of the present system until some sort of major event occurs to end it. While some of the events listed above may seem unlikely, some of them, such as global nuclear war, are considered likely by informed individuals and organizations.

Under this alternative, production of greenhouse gasses would terminate immediately. Subsequent climate change would correspond to the present levels of these gasses.

Because the global industrial system produces the human food supply, the human population would fall, precipitously, to levels that could be supported by solar energy. The situation would vary according to local conditions.

Although the present global industrial system collapses, remnants of it would continue to operate in some places. For example, if the collapse were caused by the detonation of nuclear weapons on two hundred of the world’s largest cities, many countries would incur no physical destruction. Whether they could continue to operate to produce food for their populations would depend on whether fossil-fuel reserves and refining facilities were located there, along with sufficient arable land and water.

Under this scenario, technological civilization continues. Following disasters, mankind almost always rebuilds. Now that technology has developed, it will always be available. All that is needed to make use of it is energy. In those areas of the planet where fossil fuel reserves remain, humanity would continue to tap them. Perhaps not with such high-tech processes as fracking, but to the extent that available technology and resources permitted.

The point here is that, although the present global industrial system may be destroyed, human beings will rebuild, to the extent that energy availability permits. Once known, technology does not disappear. Under this alternative future, pollution and destruction of the environment would continue, but at a slower pace than under the present global system. Because the residual society would consume fossil fuels at a lower rate than the present system, global warming and climate change would likely be less than under Alternative Future 1. In any event, mankind will proceed to consume all accessible fossil fuels and continue to destroy the environment, simply at a slower pace.

The end result of this alternative future is eventually the same as for Alternative Future 1: A much-damaged biosphere and a human population on the order of tens of millions, living in oppression under the thrall of the planet’s controllers.

Alternative Future 3: A Long-Term-Sustainable System of Planetary Management to Provide a High Quality of Life for Human Society in a Species-Rich Biosphere

This alternative assumes a transition from a global system of planetary management based on growth-based economics, capitalism and a large global population to one based on eco-socialism and a small global population. This system would be implemented in the wake of a collapse of the present global industrial system, as described in Alternative Future 2.

While Alternative Futures 1 and 2 represented realistic scenarios, Alternative Future 3 represents a utopian one. The system is an example of what is referred to a “steady-state” economic system (in the sense of Herman Daly). It is considered utopian since all world leaders call for economic growth, not economic steady-state.

There are several reasons why an economy may grow. Three primary reasons are (1) increase in population; (2) charging of interest; and (3) charging of rents. Under Alternative Future 3, the size of the global industrial population is restricted to a low level, and the economic system does not permit charging of interest or rents.

A summary description of the major features of this alternative is as follows:

1. Government: A unitary system of government, based on representative democracy and eco-socialism.

2. Global organizational structure: The world is divided into approximately 100 city-states based on the concept of bioregionalism, with maximum population of eight million per city-state. Industrial activity is permitted only within the cities. (This includes agriculture.)

3. Economic features: No capitalism. No private ownership of means of production. No property income (rents, interest-bearing loans, profits). Fiat money. (Economics is the science of the management of scarcity, of efficient allocation of limited resources. The proposed system will be designed to operate in harmony with the biosphere, so that natural resource limits will not impose global constraints on human activity. There will be no scarcity and no poverty. Economics may be used to accomplish efficient allocation of renewable resources, but not to allocate nonrenewable resources. To this extent, the economic system may be characterized as steady-state economics in the tradition of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Herman Daly, Leopold Kohr and Ernst Friedrich Schumacher.)

4. Welfare: Guaranteed employment, basic income. No poverty.

5. Health care: Free basic health-care.

6. Education: Universal; mandatory eight years; free merit-based beyond eight years.

7. Judicial: Roman law (civil law). No prisons. If violate laws, then reeducate. If reeducation is not successful, must live outside the city.

8. Rights: All human beings are full citizens of the unitary state. Basically, human rights are the same as specified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but with “symmetry” so that the cost to society of providing the benefit of the right is reasonable. All people have a right to travel anywhere on the planet. No right to own land or fixed property (land, buildings). No right to own other human beings (slaves) or living creatures. No factory farming. No battery production of animals.

9. Ethics: Consequential and symmetric, à la Nicholas Taleb.

10. Energy: All industrial energy is from renewable biomass. No fossil fuels. No solar (solar electric, hydro, wind, tides). No nuclear.

11. Defense / security: Not described here.

This alternative is similar to one presented in the following article, except for the proscription of nuclear power:

http://www.foundationwebsite.org/ANewWorldOrder.htm.

An example of a possible implementation of the system described in this alternative is presented in the novel:

http://www.foundationwebsite.org/ThePlanetMastersBook2Transition.htm.

In sharp contrast to Alternative Futures 1 and 2, this alternative future describes a framework that can provide a high-quality life for human beings living in a species-rich biosphere.

It might be argued that the social system on which Alternative 3 is based is unacceptably restrictive, since it forbids industrial activity outside of cities. The political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville observed that people are in general willing to accept constraints on big things if they have considerable freedom in little things. Under this alternative, people are pretty much free to do whatever they want, subject to the requirement that they do not engage in industrial activity outside of cities. Since the human population is so small that it has an insignificant effect on the environment, there is little need for conservation practices. Nature can assimilate all of the products produced by mankind at a rate commensurate with their production. The situation is analogous to the environmental practices of the American Plains Indians – after trashing one area, they simply moved on to another, and Mother Nature was quite able to clean up the mess left behind. That approach works for small human populations.

Discussion

The point to presenting the preceding alternative futures is to drive home the message that, if the world continues to operate on the basis of growth-based economics, annihilation of the biosphere is assured. The only way to save what remains of the biosphere is for economic growth to cease and for the human population to decline to a level where its presence has little effect on the rest of the biosphere. History makes it very clear, however, that this is very unlikely to happen, because the present controllers of the planet – the corporatists – do not want it to happen. They wish to continue the present system, which keeps them fabulously wealthy, no matter what the cost to their descendants, to other people, to future generations of mankind, or to the other species of the biosphere.

It is interesting to note that all three of the major Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, forbid the charging of interest.

The present system of planetary operation – rule by many competing nations – has led to a planetary-wide version of what Garrett Hardin called the “tragedy of the commons.” Given historical experience, it would appear that the world’s ecological problem will not be solved unless there is a single authority in charge.

The nature of the ecological crisis is well understood, and it is easy to identify system of planetary management that enables a high quality of human life in a species-rich biosphere. The problem is not in identifying such a system, but in implementing it, when those in charge do not want it.

In the novel cited above, such a system is implemented after Russia initiates a global nuclear war that causes the collapse of the present global economic / industrial system. The controller of the global system is a single world political power – Russia. (In the novel, Russia incurs much damage from the global nuclear war, and Canada, largely intact, plays a major role in implementing the new planetary management system.)

According to Bertrand Russell, it is not possible to have a single world political power because, without an external threat, it would lack cohesion (this is referred to as “Russell’s Theorem”). But it could be reasoned that the necessary external threat need not be another world power, but the threat of biospheric destruction, as is happening under the present system of many competing nations.

A thesis of this note is that a planetary management system that provides a high quality of life for mankind in a species-rich biosphere must be a small, steady-state system. While that requirement may be necessary, it is by no means sufficient. A small, steady-state system could assure the continued existence of mankind in a species-rich biosphere, but there is no guarantee that such a system would provide a high quality of life for mankind. A small human population could be oppressed and live in misery, just as a large one, depending on the whims of those in control. As long as mankind does not go extinct, and the biosphere is not further damaged, however, the issue of the quality of human life may be addressed at any time.

There is no urgency in establishing a system that assures a high quality of life for humankind. What is urgent is the termination of the present biosphere-destroying system, so that what is left of the biosphere can be saved. Having accomplished that objective, the issue of quality of human life can then be addressed. First, it is necessary for humanity and the biosphere to survive. Then, the issue of human quality of life can be addressed.

Destroying the biosphere in which we evolved and are totally dependent for our existence and quality of life is insane! Will no one bring an end to this madness?