To escape this eco/geo political mess, the world will need to do more than lower the voltage of lightbulbs. The inevitable transition to a post-carbon economy and the peaking of oil will transform lifestyles, and not everyone looks forward to the adventure. Every week a new kind of policing or military device is unveiled. Neutron weapons, which destroy living organs but not buildings, could be a "weapon of choice ... for ethnic cleansing in turbulent world", notes a UK Defence scenario.
"Lethal force without human intervention", we are told, will deliver chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear mayhem.
Major Ralph Peters, a respected military futurist, foresees a world where the "have-nots will hate and strive to attack the haves". Nations will "struggle for advantage or revenge as their societies boil", requiring the US to intervene. "We will win militarily whenever we have the guts for it. There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe.
The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing. We are building an information-based military to do that killing.
So there you have it - tomorrow's world - your world?... in a nutshell, as envisaged by the warrior class. Forget about sustainability, except as an eve-of-election double speak. Never mind the hard mathematics of climate control, the need for rich countries to reduce emissions by 90 percent by 2030. Yes, it sounds impossible, but according to George Monbiot, this is what the science dictates. [ HEAT: How to Stop the Planet Burning, Penguin Books.] Australia's strategy is to beef up its military, burn more coal and go nuclear, even as our lakes and rivers dry up. No worries! We can drain vast areas of wetlands to supply towns, even if it ruins farmers and crops. Plan B, according to our Prime Minister, is "pray for rain". Plans are afoot to export uranium to Putin's Russia for "peaceful purposes".
Okay, where do we go from here? At least public awareness is rising faster than sea levels and TV is starting to promote sustainability in the suburbs. Still, all this is small beer compared to the killing field scenarios trotted out by today's military industrial futurists. Maybe protest power will work again, as in days gone by: universal suffrage, abolition of slavery, civil rights ... It will take zero emissions, borderless collaboration, and a spark of illumination. It will also take a global mind shift.
Did it happen, dear citizen of 2057, or are you extinct?
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