Dirty Secrets and Wicked Problems

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Apr 24, 2014

It’s generally considered taboo to talk about the end of industrial civilization, whether in academic circles or informal gatherings over drinks. It’s only slightly less taboo to talk about the end of capitalism (even here at The New School). I won’t even begin to mention overpopulation, which makes the two earlier taboos pale in comparison. Raising these issues immediately gets you labeled a climate extremist, or worse. Yet it’s precisely our collective unwillingness to seriously discuss the wicked problem of climate that is ensuring a future scenario of global catastrophes.

Over the past months I have been in numerous discussions about climate change at The New School, with topics ranging from fossil fuel divestment and extreme weather to melting Himalayan glaciers and the latest climate mitigation strategies. But in none of these discussions are folks talking about the real root problem, which is industrial civilization. I’m not sure if people can’t imagine such a scenario or instead reject the basic premise that industrial civilizations could fail, but either way we are in denial. Whatever the cause, the result is the same—we refuse to openly discuss the magnitude of climate change risks in the coming years and our complete inability to adapt to this coming future.

Let’s break down a few basics of industrial civilization. First there is our reliance on fossil fuels. According to the Department of Energy’s Annual Energy Outlook 2014 (AEO2014), projections for 2040 show “natural gas accounts for 35 percent of total electricity generation, while coal accounts for 32%.” The report also projects overall energy production and generation in 2040 to be from 80% fossil fuel and other non-renewables. In other words, the future involves continued fossil fuel reliance, with no meaningful alternatives in the works.

Second is our reliance on fossil fuels for food. Most people don’t realize this, but without massive chemical inputs, global food systems would collapse. As the Department of Agriculture (USDA) noted, “nitrogen, phosphate, and potash are essential in the production of crops used for food, feed, fiber, and fuel,” many of which come from fossil fuels (e.g., natural gas). According to recent USDA data on fertilizer use in US agriculture between 1960-2011, total chemical inputs for agriculture went from 7.5 million short tons in 1960 to 21.8 million in 2011, and there was a huge price jump in 2007-08 caused by the economic crash driving up energy prices. And don’t forget, most of the world relies on fossil fuels to get food from farms to markets. That includes the Green Markets here in New York.

Third, oceans levels are rising, weather patterns are changing, arable land zones are shifting, glaciers are melting and fresh water reserves are drying up, which will lead to major livelihood disruptions and increasing global insecurity. We’ve seen this in the Americas, with record droughts and wildfires across the US Southwest, hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and typhoon Haiyan wreaking massive human and economic damages we are still recovering from, and Arctic waterways becoming ice free for the first time in human memory.

The stories in other parts of the world are no better. From Bangladesh to Pacific nations like Tuvalu, rising seas threaten human livelihoods. Reports by security think tanks and defense agencies say the same thing: climate risk is the single greatest threat to peace and stability. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) author Jeffrey Mazo notes in Climate Conflict that “climate change will be nothing less than disastrous for the global community,” going so far as to suggest that it “could even pose an existential threat to industrial civilisation.” These are not wild speculations, but empirical facts.

Industrial civilization is built on one critical and necessary assumption: humans can continue to increase our population, produce more food and generate more energy, which will drive the economy and usher in a high-tech future for 9 billion people. This original myth of unlimited growth is what we don’t talk about, because we fear the alternative. The impact of this wicked problem should be motivation for personal and institutional change, yet The New School community is stuck in this same business-as-usual model. If we seriously believe in the idea of design as future-making, than making a carbon free endowment, constructing closed-loop waste systems (food, water, waste), and moving off the power grid are a few actions we can do today.

Chris Crews

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Chris Crews is a PhD student in Politics at the New School for Social Research. He is also the student co-chair of the university Social Justice Committee.

4 responses

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Apr 26, 2014

Hi Jean-Daniel,

Thanks for the interesting thoughts. I’ll admit I am a bit skeptical of most futurists, mostly because of the tendency of many of them to think only in terms of new fangled, high-technology as the solution–stuff like geoengineering and biotechnology as the salvation for 1.0 mankind–which in my mind is a non-starter. The transhumanist, human 2.0 movement is just as misguided in their solutions as the current capitalism models they project into the future to drive their so-called solutions.

But at the same time, there are already lots of efforts to create cooperative living and working arrangements, to setup transition towns and re-establish bioregional food and economic systems, that strike me as far more realistic and viable. In my mind, that is the closest we have right now to marginally viable future scenarios, because if it doesn’t involve the local community where people already live, the likelihood of anyone embracing an alternative vision is slim to null.

But sure, why not ask a bunch of futurists or others to give us some future scenarios and see what the public thinks. There’s nothing to lost for sure. How exactly you would go about doing this would be the trickier part, short of taking out full page ads in some major papers and magazine and radio, I’m not sure how much actual reach this would be able to have. But sounds like an interesting idea either way!
Jean-Daniel Cusin

Apr 26, 2014

Chris, Yes, I agree with what you are saying. There is an elephant in the room.

The paradigm of the industrial age is so ingrained that it is hard to not see through its lens when imagining a different future, hence the denial. That’s the elephant.

Individuals and organizations both have enormous difficulty abstracting themselves and whatever they are doing out of the picture when imagining a desirable future. For instance, when schools imagine the future of education, it is virtually impossible for them to conceive of education without schools, and that obviously limits the possible options.

That means that any individual or organizational strategy embarked on today would likely end up reinforcing the extant paradigm somehow. That’s the problem with “design as future-making” – it extrapolates from, and is soiled by, the paradigms that pervade the present. What we need is “designing from an emergent future”.

Here’s an idea:
It would be interesting to ask a dozen or two futurists to each come up with a description of the world they expect to see in 2050. The business of futurists is to think about the future extrapolating current trends but without being tied to them. They are artists, as well, drawing connections not obvious to people stuck in local paradigms.

These futurists would come up with a variety of possible futures, and we could do a social media polling about which one, as a significant subset of mankind, we would collectively prefer.

Then the challenge will be to answer this question: What will it take to make this desired future the probable future? What pathways do we need to engage now to get there?

We have an online process called e-Deliberation that could support the latter deliberative piece. We could hold several dozen (hundreds, even) summits around the globe to discover emergent next-step possibilities on this trajectory to a desired future. These multiple summits could inform a world event that extracts the ideas from the regional summits that require a world focus or across the board investment. People could now hold their elected representatives accountable to something more than ephemeral electoral platform promises.

I’m sure we could find the minimal funding this would require to get going. I’d like to see massively more options becoming available beyond “moving off the power grid” – options that make sense regardless of where one lives and what personal resources are available.

I know. It’s a crazy “let’s change the world” idea. It might just be crazy enough to work.

The thing is, neither governments nor corporations are going to get serious about this any time soon, otherwise we would be seeing some real action. They’re stuck in “taboo” mode because of their short term interests. Yet, outside of corporate and government agendas, there is incredible wisdom and knowledge in the world that can be brought to bear on what it would take to achieve this desirable future.

Protesting in the streets is a failed strategy because there is no strategy. That’s my point. Lets get one together.