Nightmare Scenario

Ignorance is Bliss.

That's what they say, but in reality, proceeding along in ignorance leads to anything but bliss. I heard about a study recently that was centered around the phenomenon of deception and one of the conclusions they came to was that some of the happiest people are people that lie to themselves. Those that tell themselves that they are fine and everything is fine and manage to convince themselves of this despite all evidence to the contrary are rewarded with not only happiness, but success. It's just another variation on the old Ignorance is Bliss adage.

I've always been a big fan of Science Fiction, so I've read a lot of it over the years. Many Science Fiction writers are engineers or scientists by training that went into writing because they spend a lot of time thinking about why things are the way they are and now things should be if we could just plan an orderly transition into the future. I like history, too, and I always thought that History and Science Fiction were perfect wings spreading out from the present. They answer the important questions of where have we been and where we are going. So many of the authors look at all the elements of what led up to this point and project a future based on what they know. That future is sometimes quite rosy, but often is the result of some really nasty times. The scary part of knowing a lot of these tales is that many of the story elements used in them are coming true.

A lot of storylines center around a crisis where the carrying capacity of the planet becomes outstripped by rising population. The scenarios differ in severity. Some hint at belt tightening, or new laws restricting freedoms in order to conserve food or energy or space. Others take the dire route and outline food riots and all-out war for survival. Technology plays various roles in future dramas, sometimes riding in to save the day, other times riding in as the pale horse of the apocalypse.

The stories I'm specifically thinking about while I write about this are Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, The Stand by Stephen King, Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge, the Foundation series by Arthur C. Clark, the ancient history outlined by the Dune series by Brian Herbert, the backstory for the Terminator series, and the "history" of our upcoming times outlined by Star Trek (mostly Next Generation, but Enterprise too). Numerous short stories and other books touch on the subject, too.

I've been watching the Ethanol Boom over the past few years and noticed the unpleasant effect of unintended consequences. Due to high energy prices and instability in the world, it finally makes sense to start trying to make our own energy out of mostly corn. Half way through the "boom" of dozens of plants going up everywhere, people started talking about the downside of the scheme to grow our energy. Corn prices started to rise dramatically. But what the heck, it's not a boom without something exploding, right? So suddenly the profit numbers for ethanol production start to drop. These plants were not put up with efficiency in mind, they were constructed with low capital cost in mind. Not only is it so expensive to produce a gallon of ethanol, but no one wants to distribute it or use it because it's not a lot less expensive than gasoline (especially when you look at cost per mile you can drive). Then people start realizing that these plants use a lot of water and water is not something that is in such abundant supply that you can use it indiscriminately and not worry. Next, you start to hear about corn that used to go into food production drying up and people having a hard time feeding their cattle. Food prices start to rise. The reports say the food prices are rising a lot, but it's hard to tell unless you actually watch what you pay for things. The program that used to pay farmers not to try to farm marginally croplands and put them to rest for wildlife buffers has seen farmers withdrawing land and putting it back into production at an incredible rate. Recent rises in corn prices have caused land equal to the area of Rhode Island and Delaware to be brought out of this idling program and into production.

I heard that some countries are cutting off any export of food since they are finding food scarce all of the sudden. I've also heard that food prices are rising even faster in some parts of the world, cutting poor people off from a large portion of their daily intake. There is talk about food riots, so far just talk. Asia & Africa are supposedly the worst place to be right now in that respect, but Mexico, surprisingly, was listed as a place where food prices have really outstripped people's buying power and shortages are being felt. Some reports say the cost of food has doubled in some areas of the world.

Gasoline prices, in the mean time, keep going up and people are starting to personally feel the pinch. I grew up in the late 70s and up until just recently, they have been saying that gasoline is not as expensive now when you adjust for inflation. That is no longer true. Now gas is more expensive than it has ever been. This is starting to alter people's behaviors somewhat. It's not making people drive less, it's making them buy less of other things in order to feed their hungry gas tanks.

After energy and food, Water is due to become the next crisis. It already is in some parts of the world. I've heard for years that water will be the next spark to set off war in the Middle East. Fixed supplies of water and an ever increasing population make this a certainty. We're starting to see much more desalination plants going in around the world. This is a great solution except for the fact that it uses a huge amount of energy. And looking to the oceans has its limits, too. You may have heard about collapsing fish stocks due to overfishing, increasing dead zones near river deltas, and growing amounts of trash in our oceans.

So there are all these warning signs that a rough road is ahead of us. We've managed to curb widespread wars and learned to beat back many diseases, so our population isn't getting thinned out like it used to. We recognize a need for population control when it comes to deer, and justify hunting as a necessary thinning of the herd. There is no season on humans.

One thing is sure, if you ignore all this, life is sweet. For some reason, I can look at all this and not feel despair. I think there is a point past being realistic where it stops being depressing. One thing certain about human society, it doesn't make any fundamental changes until it is forced to. I think all these things coming to a head are just a wake up call that will force us to act. What we really need is a combination of solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, and fusion energy to power our growing energy needs. All these sources will have the added benefit of being clean as well as being renewable There is a place for biofuels, but more in the form of algae grown from our own wastewater than crops like corn. We'll have to learn to recycle our own waste back into drinking water. They have to do it in space, because space is a closed system, and Earth is too. We could afford to ignore that fact when our numbers were small, but there are enough of us now that there's no frontier or open space for us to move into. The days of the nomad or frontiersman are over. We'll have to learn to preserve the plants and animals of the world, because many of our solutions will come from them, their genetic tricks designed by nature and hundreds of millions of years of evolution. And their health and prosperity will be an indicator of our success. So rather than being bummed out by these prospects, I'm encouraged. We have a job to do and a sense of purpose to spur us on. What more could you ask from life?