xA lot is going wrong in the world today. We are still in the middle of a climate paralysis, where we know what’s wrong, but there’s no great way to fix it. Some of the great Asian economies that were expected to inherit the 21st Century — Japan, South Korea, and China — all appear to have contracting populations, which will likely be a huge constraint on their future growth. The last few years have also seen an at least perceived increase in military aggression between large groups of people, with attempted and successful coups, civil wars, invasions and large terror attacks happening on the back of the worst pandemic in living memory. There is some unease, panic, and even dehumanization of those regarded as being on the opposing side.
In the face of these challenges, it is easy to succumb to a sense of hopelessness and despair. Governments appear to face gridlocks, impeding their efficiency in implementing solutions to the challenges we face. A great example of this is the issue of climate change, for which many governments around the world have set policy targets, like achieving carbon neutrality by a certain date. Despite this, they often take steps in the opposite direction, like the decommissioning of the last few nuclear power plants in Germany, leaving them dependent on the high-carbon-emitting coal power plants, or the US leaving the Paris accords in 2020, only to rejoin them later.
To survive, civilization must fix past mistakes, rethink freedom as a responsibility, and enable people to pursue good. To bring back trust in our institutions, we will need leaders on all levels who hold themselves accountable to the ideals they claim to hold. Rightly ordered, this could form a positive feedback loop — leaders are incentivized to be accountable, which makes them even more respected. We will also need to strengthen our social institutions; this will require us to answer tough questions about our economic values and the trade-offs we’re willing to make. Answering those questions will only strengthen us.
In our right concern for the state of our world, we tend to forget that we are not past a point of no return. Perhaps our most powerful tool is in the knowledge and techniques that modern science provides, which gives us great hope that there is a technological solution to our circumstances. Regarding climate change, the ongoing revolution in large-scale manufacturing of photovoltaic solar panels has already made them an unprecedentedly cheap source of energy in many places around the world, with trends expected to make them the cheapest source of energy almost universally.
We are about to experience an era of energy abundance, opening up the possibility for real economic and productivity growth. Electric vehicles will play a key role in the transition to carbon neutrality, and they are already showing impressive gains in market share, something that is likely to continue as the technology matures and they become more affordable. Cheap energy will allow the possibility of universal material abundance, where the comfortable lives of some will not have to be subsidized by cheaper labor on the other side of the world; all this too without any degrowth or austerity. Perhaps we will then be able to make peace for ourselves.
The recent unintended reverse experiment in sulfur dioxide-based oceanic cloud seeding gives hope that reversible climate control efforts could yield significant effects. While atmospheric interventions to counter the effects of climate change should be approached with great care, they also could form the basis for a legitimate technological solution for warming waters. This is especially so when they are localized and otherwise benign. For example, the cooling effect of the sulfur dioxide emitted by cargo ships before 2020 could potentially be replicated by salt water sprayed into the air behind them.
It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the problems we face in the world today. But it is also important to remember that humans have always faced challenges, and always found ways to overcome them. We have the ingenuity and the determination to solve the problems we face today, if we only have the courage to try. The tools we have today enable a level of positive intervention in the world to a degree hitherto unimaginable. Perhaps the real danger is hesitating to move onwards.