The World in 2050

The World in 2050, Laurence C. Smith

This book is written by a professor at UCLA – the same college as Jared Diamond who has written the classics – Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse.  Taking up the need to analyze the civilizations of the world and the reaction of culture, economics, geography, and environment like Diamond, Smith chooses to look forward instead of backward and tries to project a possible future – one that is within the range of many of the potential readers.

His projections are based on four criteria:

·       Demography – both change in population numbers and population distribution

·       Demand upon our natural resources, services, and gene pool of the planet

·       Globalization of the economy, as well as, political and cultural ideas

·       Climate change

He then makes us accept that for the projections we must anticipate that the models are correct, that these four issues will continue on the path that they are currently on, and a few other basic assumptions that are necessary to limit the possible scenarios this book might find.

This book also does not engage in the pseudo-science debate about climate change, it is a fact and science and facts, not politics and religion are the basis for his writing.

"From Spittlebugs in California to butterflies in Spain and treees in New Zealand, it is a broad pattern that biologists are discovering. By 2003 a global inventory of this penomenon found that on average, plants and animals are shifting their ranges about six kilometers towards then poles and six meters higher in elevation every decade."

That is equivalent to having your lawn move north 5 1/2 feet a day or your birthday coming 10 hours earlier each year.

Population is not judged good or bad, the growth of population and the leveling of population in various parts of the planet are accepted statistics:

“For the last two decades, cities in the developing world have been growing by about three million people per week.  That is equivalent to adding one more Seattle to the planet every day.”

“The modern city survives upon constant resupply from the outer natural world, from faraway fields, forests, mines, streams, and wells.  We scour the planet for hydrocarbons and deliver them to power plants to zap electricity over miles of metal wire.  We take water from flowing rivers with distant headwaters of snow and ice.  Plants and animals are grown someplace else, killed, and delivered for us to eat. Without this constant flow of nature pouring into our cities, we would all have to disperse or die.”

The limit of natural resources is analyzed, along with the new opportunities that ice free Arctic Ocean and a warmed northern region represent.

“After the US oil peaked in 1970 at 10 million barrels per day. “American oil comp”anies launched an epic search to find new domestic reserves.  Within ten years the United States was drilling four times as many wells as during the peak, but its production still dropped anyway to 8.5 million barrels per day and falling.  By December 2009 it was down to just 5.3 million barrels per day.  So much for ‘drill baby drill’ as the solution for energy supply problems.”

"Tar sands are an environmentalist's nightmare. The extraction process gobbles enormous quantities of energy and water. Migratory birds land in the tailing ponds and die. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulates are released into the air alongside up to three times more greenhouse gas than released by conventional oil drilling. Depending on the technology, it takes 2 - 4 cubic meters of water, and 125 - 214 cubic meters of natural gas to produce a single cubic meter of synthetic oil."

"The tar sands are one of the biggest reasons why Canada not only failed to meet her pledged reduction in carbon dioxide emissions under the Kyoto Protocol (to -6% below 1990 levels), but actually grew them +27% instead."

He has plenty of personal travel and research as he projects his ideas to 2050.  He admits that regional wars, regional economic agreements can change the outlook and that there will be a disparity in the benefit and damage of the climate change.  While islands will disappear and some places will become deserts his research says that from 45 degrees north upward there will actually be an increase in water resources – more rain, more thawing and thus more disparity between the water haves and have nots.  He sees the nations bordering the Arctic having a potential boom and interestingly in Canada where there has been the creation of native run subdivisions of the tundra created as political entities over the last few decades, those indigenous people could be winners, if there cities and homes do not disappear into the thawing permafrost. 

It is a chaotic projection and one to fear, even for those potential winners.  As I write this review today I have just read a NYT article on the research related to the permafrost and the release of more greenhouse gases:

“Experts have long known that northern lands were a storehouse of frozen carbon, locked up in the form of leaves, roots and other organic matter trapped in icy soil — a mix that, when thawed, can produce methane and carbon dioxide, gases that trap heat and warm the planet. But they have been stunned in recent years to realize just how much organic debris is there.

“A recent estimate suggests that the perennially frozen ground known as permafrost, which underlies nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere.

“Temperatures are warming across much of that region, primarily, scientists believe, because of the rapid human release of greenhouse gases. Permafrost is warming, too. Some has already thawed, and other signs are emerging that the frozen carbon may be becoming unstable.”