How we take care of the earth is how we take care of ourselves.
7 Best-Case Scenarios for the Future of Humanity
Most science fictional and futurist visions of the future tend towards the negative — and for good reason. Our environment is a mess, we have a nasty tendency to misuse technologies, and we're becoming increasingly capable of destroying ourselves. But civilizational demise is by no means guaranteed. Should we find a way to manage the risks and avoid dystopic outcomes, our far future looks astonishingly bright. Here are seven best-case scenarios for the future of humanity.
Above image courtesy Gary Tonge.
Before we get started it's worth noting that many of the scenarios listed here are not mutually exclusive. If things go really well, our civilization will continue to evolve and diversify, leading to many different types of futures.
1. Status quo
While this is hardly the most exciting outcome for humanity, it is still an outcome. Given the dire warnings of Sir Martin Rees, Nick Bostrom, Stephen Hawking, and many others, we may not be around to see the next century. Our ongoing survival — even if it's under our current state of technological development — could be considered a positive outcome. Many have suggested that we've already reached our pinnacle as a species.
Back in 1992, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History and the Last Man in which he argued that our current political, technological, and economic mode was the final stop on our journey. He was wrong, of course; Fukuyama's book will forever be remembered as a neoconservative's wet dream written in reaction to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the so-called New World Order. More realistically, however, the call for a kind of self-imposed status quo has been articulated by Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy. Writing in his seminal 2004 article, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," Joy warned of the catastrophic potential for 21st century technologies like robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech. Subsequently, he called for technological relinquishment — a kind of neo-Luddism intended to prevent dystopic outcomes and outright human extinction. The prudent thing to do now, argued Joy, is to make do with what we have in hopes of ensuring a long and prosperous future.
2. A bright green Earth
Visions of the far future tend to conjure images of a Cybertron-like Earth, covered from pole-to-pole in steel and oil. It's an environmentalist's worst nightmare — one in which nature has been completely swept aside by the onslaught of technology and the ravages of environmental exploitation. Yet it doesn't have to be this way; the future of our planet could be far more green and verdant than we ever imagined. Emerging branches of futurism, including technogaianism and bright green environmentalism, suggest that we can use technologies to clean up the Earth and create sustainable energy models, and even to transform the planet itself.
An early version of this sentiment was presented via Bruce Sterling's Viridian Design Movement, an aesthetic ideal that advocated for innovative and technological solutions to environmental problems. Looking to the far future, the ultimate expression of these ideas could result in a planet far more lush and ecologically diverse than at any other point in its geological history. In such a future, humans could be re-engineered to live in harmony with the environment. All our energy needs would be completely met (a true and sustainable Kardashev I civilization). Using advanced models as our guide, we could also redesign and overhaul the Earth's ecosystem (including the elimination of predation and animal suffering), There's also the possibility for weather control. And we might finally be able to implement defensive measures to counter the effects of natural disasters (like asteroid impacts, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions). Given an Earth like this, why would anyone want to leave?
Image: Thomas Cole's The Arcadian or Pastoral State, 1834.
3. Watched over by machines of loving grace
Regrettably, it's very possible that the technological Singularity will be an extinction event. The onset of radically advanced machine intelligence — perhaps as early as 30 years from now — will be so beyond our control and understanding that it will likely do us in, whether it happens deliberately, accidentally, or by our own mismanagement of the process. But the same awesome power that could destroy us could also result in the exact opposite. It's this possibility — that a machine intelligence could create a veritable utopia for humanity — that has given rise to the Singularitarian movement.
If future AI designers can guide and mould the direction of these advanced systems — and most importantly their goal orientation — it's conceivable that we could give rise to what's called ‘friendly AI' — a kind of Asimovian intelligence that's incapable of inflicting any harm. And in fact, it could also serve as a supremely powerful overseer and protector. It's a vision that was best expressed by Richard Brautigan in his poem, "Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace."
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
4. To boldly go where no one has gone before...
We need to get off this rock and start colonizing other solar systems — there's no question about it. Not only does our ongoing survival depend on it (the ‘all our eggs in one basket problem'), it's also in our nature as a species to move on. Indeed, by venturing beyond our borders and blowing past our biological limitations we have continually pushed our society forward — what has resulted in ongoing technological, social, political, and economic progress. Even today, our limited ventures into space have reaped countless benefits, including satellite technologies, an improved understanding of science — and even the sheer thrill of seeing a high-definition image streamed back from the surface of Mars.
Should our civilization ever be capable of embarking upon interstellar colonization — whether it be through generation ships, self-replicating Von Neumann probes, or an outwardly expanding bubble of digital intelligence, it would represent a remarkable milestone, possibly for all life in the Milky Way. As it stands, we appear to live in a Galaxy devoid of interstellar travelers — a troubling sign that has given rise to the Fermi Paradox. So assuming we can start planet hopping, it might just turn out that we are the first and only civilization to embark upon such a journey. It's something that we must try; the future of life in our Galaxy could depend on it. But more to the point, interstellar colonization would also allow our species to expand into the cosmos and flourish.
5. Inner space, not outer space
Alternatively (or in conjunction with space travel), we could attain an ideal existential mode by uploading ourselves into massive supercomputers. It's an idea that makes a lot of sense; given the computational capacity of a megascale computer, like a Matrioshka Brain (in which the matter of entire planet is utilized for the purpose of computation) or Dyson Sphere (which can capture the energy output of the sun), there would be more to experience in a simulated universe than in the real one itself. According to Robert Bradbury, a single multi-layer Matrioshka Brain could perform about 1042 operations per second, while Seth Lloyd has theorized about a quantum system that could conceivably calculate 5x1050 logical operations per second carried out on ~1031 bits. Given the kinds of simulated worlds, minds, and experiences this kind of power could generate, the analog world would likely appear agonizingly slow, primitive, and exceptionally boring.
6. Eternal bliss
Virtually every religion fantasizes about a utopian afterlife. This only makes sense given the imperfections and dangers of the real world; religion gives people the opportunity to express their wildest projections of an ideal state of existence. Given our modern materialist proclivities, many of us no longer believe in heaven or anything else awaiting us in some supposed afterlife. But that doesn't mean we can't create a virtual heaven on Earth using our technologies.
This is what the British philosopher David Pearce refers to as the Hedonistic Imperative — the elimination of all suffering and the onset of perpetual pleasure. This could be as simple as eliminating pain and negative emotional states, or something far more dramatic and profound, like maximizing the amount of psychological, emotional, and physical pleasure that a single consciousness can experience. Given that we live in a hostile universe with no meaning other than what we ascribe to it, who's to say that entering into a permanent state of bliss is somehow wrong or immoral? While it may be offensive to our Puritan sensibilities, it most certainly appeals to our spiritual and metaphysical longings. A strong case can be made that maximizing the human capacity for pleasure is as valid a purpose as any other.
7. Cosmological transcension
This is basically a placeholder for those far-off future states we can't possibly imagine — but are desirable nonetheless. While this line of speculation tends to venture into the realms of philosophy and metaphysics (not that many of the other items on this list haven't done the same), it's still interesting and worthwhile to consider some super-speculative possibilities. For example, futurist John Smart has suggested that human civilization is increasingly migrating into smaller and smaller increments of matter, energy, space, and time (MEST). Eventually, he argues, we'll take our collective intelligence into a cosmological realm with the same efficiency and density as a black hole — where we'll essentially escape the universe.
Alternatively, forward-looking thinkers like Robert Lanza and James Gardner have speculated about a universe that's meant to work in tandem with the intelligence it generates. This idea, called biocentrism, suggests that the universe is still in an immature phase, and that at some future point, all the advanced intelligent life within it will guide its ongoing development. This would result in a Universe dramatically different from what we live in today. And then there are other possibilities such as time travel and the exploitation of quantum effects. Indeed, given just how much we don't know about what we don't know, the future may be full of even more radical possibilities than we're currently capable of imagining.
After writing my essay “Radioactive Hell on Earth”—actually I wanted to change that title to “Fukushima on Steroids”—I see Christina Consolo’s essay “Fukushima is Falling Apart”: Are you ready—it is becoming clear that we, our children and our entire civilization is hanging by a thread. It is a very sorry thing to report that we have literally shot ourselves in the foot with a big nuclear shotgun full of radioactive particles of the worst conceivable kind.It has taken a year but finally “a U.S. Senator finally got off his ass and went to Japan to see what is going on over there. What he saw was horrific. Reactor No. 4 building is on the verge of collapsing. Seismicity standards rate the building at a zero, meaning even a small earthquake could send it into a heap of rubble. And sitting at the top of the building, in a pool that is cracked, leaking, and precarious even without an earthquake, are 1,565 fuel rods.” If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain, this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire that could wipe out most of the northern hemisphere; certainly it would be a massive civilization-breaking event.
After an onsite tour of what remains of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear facilities, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a senior member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, sent a letter to Japanese Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki saying, “The scope of damage to the plants and to the surrounding area was far beyond what I expected. The precarious status of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear units and the risk presented by the enormous inventory of radioactive materials and spent fuel in the event of further earthquake threats should be of concern to all and a focus of greater international support and assistance.”
Fukushima Daiichi Reactor building 4 and exposed fuel pool
Image source: Asahi Shimbun
1,565 fuel rods translates into 460 tons of nuclear fuel stored in pool in a barely intact building on its third and fourth floors. If the storage pool breaks and runs dry, the nuclear fuel inside will overheat and explode. The worst-case scenario drawn up by the government includes not only the collapse of the No. 4 reactor pool, but also the disintegration of spent-fuel rods from all the plant’s other reactors. The wall of the south side is falling apart at reactor No. 4 and Dr. Helen Caldicott said she would evacuate her family from Boston if it did.
Consolo says, “If this pool collapses, as Senator Wyden is now saying too, we would face a mass extinction event from the release of radiation in those rods. This may be the most important thing you ever pay attention to for the sake of your family, friends, your neighbors, every one you know and meet, all of humanity.”
“Preliminary reports of soil contamination are starting to come in from the USGS, who has seemed reluctant to share this information. Los Angeles, California, Portland, Oregon and Boulder, Colorado so far have the highest radioactive particle contamination out of the entire U.S. Iodine, cesium, strontium, plutonium, uranium, and a host of other fission products have been coming directly from Japan to the west coast for thirteen months. Reports in the past week indicate the pollen in southern California is radioactive now too, and it is flying around, and if you live there and go outside, you are breathing it in. And so are your children,” continued Consolo.
Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming reconstruction effort and will involve charting in unknown waters. Reports indicate that things are so hopeless at the plant that workers are not even working on weekends and certainly governments around the world have not gotten together in a desperate Manhattan Project[1] (in reverse) to save humanity.
Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear power industry executive, is claiming that the Fukushima nuclear disaster is already 10 times worse than the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown in the former Soviet Union. If that is true it’s already taps for a whole lot of men, women and children in the northern hemisphere with the absolute promise that the radiation will continue relentlessly through the coming years. It is sounding like nuclear hell coming to earth to teach us something about our arrogance, massive stupidity and pathetic weakness.
While our government would love us all to believe that the nuclear problems in Japan are under control, nothing could be farther from the truth. Engineers for Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) say readings of airborne radiation inside reactor No. 2 showed almost 73 sieverts per hour this week. To put that into perspective, exposure to that amount of radiation would kill a normal person within minutes. These levels are some of the highest readings since the beginning of the disaster and there is no one telling us that this nuclear contamination will lessen.
MOX Plutonium Fuel
The mixed oxide fuel (MOX) reactor[2], which burns with plutonium/uranium, is more deadly than those burning on uranium-enriched fuel, according to nuclear experts. The half-life of plutonium-239 in MOX is 24,000 years and just a few milligrams of P-239 escaping in a smoke plume will contaminate soil for tens of thousands of years. A single milligram (mg) of MOX is as deadly as 2,000,000 mg of normal enriched uranium meaning that one mg of MOX is basically two million times more powerful than one mg of uranium. If even a small amount of this potent substance escapes from the plant in a smoke plume, the particles will travel with the wind and contaminate soil for tens of thousands of years.
Ray Guilmette of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements said that plutonium “is thousands of times more radioactive than uranium,” if absorbed into the body.
Donald Olander, professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, said that because plutonium decays quickly, it produces radiation that can kill cells in the body more quickly. But the plutonium itself would pose a severe threat only if it was involved in a violent reaction that turned it into dust particles that could be inhaled. No one knows the exact number but plenty of the fuel rods at risk are MOX, thus containing deadly plutonium. If that blows up then we might end up wishing we had had a nuclear war instead.
Limited Nuclear Exchange
If you want to know what this means from mainstream sources, tune into what International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and its U.S. affiliate,Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) are saying would happen from just a limited nuclear war—forget about a full-scale meltdown of thousands of dirty nuclear fuel rods.
More than a billion people around the world would face starvation following a limited regional nuclear weapons exchange (such as a clash between India and Pakistan) that would cause major worldwide climate disruption, driving down food production in China, the U.S. and other nations, according to a major new report released by Dr. Ira Helfand, the author of Nuclear Famine: A Billion People at Risk. Helfand said, “The needless and preventable deaths of one billion people over a decade would be a disaster unprecedented in human history. It would not cause the extinction of the human race, but it would bring an end to modern civilization as we know it.”
The Dalai Lama summaries the situation saying, “We have degenerated into an insane society, unconsciously committing mass suicide by ecocide. Unrestrained corporate capitalism coercively and insidiously exploits vulnerable people and myopically plunders, depletes and corrupts finite planetary resources that sustain life. Billions of people suffer needless poverty, starvation and avoidable disease, while obscenely privileged corporate, political and religious plutocrats greedily acquire power and excessive material wealth far beyond their conceivable needs.”
Special Note: These subjects are covered in my Nuclear Toxicity Syndrome book as well as the second edition of my Iodine book (both published in 2011), which dive deeply into the issue and threat of radioactive iodine. Having lots of sulfur on hand as well as sodium bicarbonate, iodine, clay and magnesium is a good start for a radiation survival home pharmacy.
Dr. Mark Allan Sircus, Ac., OMD, DM (P)
Director International Medical Veritas Association
Doctor of Oriental and Pastoral Medicine
http://publications.imva.info
http://blog.imva.info
[1] The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II with intent to end the war.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project
[2] www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/03/15/mox-the-toxic-fuel-inside-japans-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant.html
March 24, 2011
It must be very obvious to the people who have been carefully following the news of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant accident. There is a very close relationship between water and radiation. Through water, radiation spreads out, at the same time, water is the matter that can prevent the spread of radiation.
Now, they are pumping sea water and clear water to the plants in order to prevent the spread of radioactive substances, risking the lives of self defense personnel and firefighters who have to get very close to the site. However, they already detected radioactive matters in the water of water treatment plant in Tokyo. I think water molecules underground and in the atmosphere quickly carried the information of radiation. I don’t know the mechanism of it since I’m not a specialist and I have never studied nuclear theory. However as a person who has been studying hado I had an intuition. I thought the reason why these two are connected was because they both exist based on hado characteristics.
Reviewed by Eleanor Stonhamathor of "Wounded Healer
I'm not sure why they do that....This is what Commander Eileen Collins, the
first woman to lead a United States Shuttle mission, said when she looked
back to the earth in 2005 and saw some of the deep wounds of the earth, in
the man made environmental devastation of central Africa. But it is not only
Africa that is affected. The problem is global.
From the David Icke Newsletter, June 27th 2010
'AND THE SEA SHALL TURN TO BLOOD' ...... A 'BIBLICAL' CATASTROPHE THAT WILL AFFECT US ALL
THE 'SPILL' (UNCONTROLLED GUSH) WILL DEVASTATE AMERICA?
YES, BUT THAT'S THE IDEA
Hello all ...
Posted on Jun. 21, 2010The gulf oil spill is bad but it could become much, much worse and soon. The threat is a hurricane moving over the spill. If a hurricane’s violent winds track over the spill, we could witness a natural and economic calamity that history has never recorded anywhere or anytime. We will literally be in oil-soaked waters. We will have witnessed the first oilicane.
A category one hurricane (on a scale of 1 to 5) has maximum sustained winds of 74 to 95 miles per hour near the eye. A category five hurricane has maximum sustained winds of 156 to 200 miles per hour. The difference between the two storms is gigantic and non-linear. The latter hurricane may cause 250 times more damage than the former.
Today, the Grandmothers woke me with this message and told me to send it out:
"We ask you to cast, anchor, and hold the Net of Light stead for the Gulf of Mexico. This crisis is affecting the entire world, and humanity is asleep. Wake up! Animals are dying; plants are dying and your Mother is writhing in agony. If you hold the Net of Light steady at this time, you will help stave off further catastrophe. You have been lulled into a false sleep, told that others (BP) will take care of this problem. This is not so. And this is not the time for you to fall into oblivion.
Over the past few days, whilst enjoying the sunshine on Hampstead Heath, I have been very aware of the sheer number planes crossing the sky, and their loud intrusive roar.
For five days or so last week, London was blessed with silent skies. A wondrous stillness was apparent from the lack of activity up there, that filled me with joy. Its not until all that noise stops that one realises the impact of it. And its not just the noise, it’s the whole energy of the planes and of air travel as we currently put up with it. The huge airports, the pollution, the extreme busyness up there, and the general sense of the overwhelming need to be somewhere else, fast.
I fly quite a lot, and I am probably not going to stop, although when the planes were all grounded, I realised I would also be fine, to never fly anywhere, ever again. I was loving it, grateful for that volcano in Iceland, which seemed to me a cheeky move by mother earth to give us humans another lesson about how powerless we are in the face of her magnificence. She merely clears her throat and sends clouds of ash into the sky to disrupt our mistaken belief that we are in control.
Anyway, those magical still days came to an end, and the planes took up residence in the skies again as if it is their divine right.
All this got me thinking as to how much we put up with, how much we take for granted as just being the way things are. Let’s face it, airplanes are a crappy design. They seem so crude and clunky and polluting, and I don’t want them cluttering up the sky. Like cars, they have hardly changed since they appeared on the planet, just modified. Its now time for a complete rethink and redesign of how we move around. I don’t think we are ready for teleportation yet, we are still too stuck in space-time materiality, although I perceive this to be gradually getting looser, less fixed. I am convinced however that technologies probably already exist that could move us about speedily, silently, cleanly. I envision aircraft that can lift directly up from the ground, so no need for huge concrete runways. These new planes would be silent, and almost transparently invisible in the sky, and would not leave jet trails.
The development of such new technologies has been severely handicapped and at times strangled by the oil industry over the years. And funding to realise radically new projects is hard to find. But the oil era is coming to an end, and its time for some fresh ideas…….. let’s all envision this together and not just settle for less…… if a fraction of the money spent on military research was put into this we could soon be living in the era of silent clean fast transport.
I did a quick google search and found that there is some research in this area…… check these out for some inspiration…..
This project for silent aircraft is really just upgrade of present aircraft technology. It made a buzz in 2006, and I can’t find any progress on it since then…..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6120132.stm
http://silentaircraft.org/
Solar planes are an area of development, but so far can only carry one or two passengers
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8607149.stm
http://www.solarimpulse.com/
Here is a list of other ideas out there, some of which are quite “out there”……
http://greenupgrader.com/2583/on-the-horizon-of-green-air-travel/
The most likely of these new technologies to come into usage any time soon are probably in hypersonic flight – these aircraft will fly so high that they would not be visible or audible except on take off and landing. The flight time from europe to australia would be around 4 hours, for the same cost as a current business class ticket. Not sure how fuel-efficient it is though? Most likely quite a gas-guzzler.
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/lapcat.html
Visionary Jacque Fresco has some ideas for future transportation on his Venus Project site…
http://www.thevenusproject.com/technology/transportation
The maglev train is the future of ground transportation and could possibly also travel across oceans through large tubes on the seabed. Check out the Vactrain, which could travel from New York to London in an hour!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev_(transport)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain
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