Abstract
The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change
Al Gore
New York: Random House, 2013; 558 pp. ISBN: 978-0753540480 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Roy Boyne
Looking at the general message, and at its constituent themes, this book is inescapably a product of the United States. The positives and negatives – his discussion of the genome revolution, of global renewables heading towards becoming the second largest source of power, of the development of brain pattern recognition research, of the potential 3-D printing of body parts, of nano-engineering and the war against harmful bacteria, against his judgement that the dominance of the US, Russia, China, and Europe is less assured because of the continuing growth of the internet – are all dwarfed by the elusive case for serious decline at a world-wide level.
He discusses the US distribution of wealth, in which 400 US citizens own more than the bottom 50 per cent of the remaining US population. He notes alongside this that middle-income jobs are in what appears to be irreversible decline (although a case can be made that the decline of middle-level incomes is part of a cyclical process, and they will recover). The GDP of the developing world is now larger than that of the advanced economies, with outsourcing and robo-sourcing increasingly dominant among the causes and consequences of this alteration in balance. Derivative trading is 23 times larger than world GDP, and it is largely unregulated: a significant example of the short-termism which has become rampant, with, for example, an estimated 70 per cent of business leaders admitting that their quarterly figures are more important than the overall financial health of their companies. The assumption of unlimited growth remains key for all national governments, and the fact that the market for illegal narcotics exceeds all but the largest 21 national economies has some sort of part to play in this.
Although the internet is presented at times as a mechanism for reducing the power of nation-states, the book is generally concerned to emphasize the threats that emanate from it. Networked artificial intelligence is threatening to reduce the labour pool, at the same time that micro-information about populations is gathered unceasingly, so that privacy is becoming an endangered concept (as the case of Angela Merkel shows, all internet and mobile phone users are vulnerable, and it is questionable whether that is going to change), with security benefits accruing to governments rather than individuals. Yet these same governments are increasingly susceptible to cyber-threats. The global struggle between a free internet versus internet control and exploitation is tilted alarmingly toward the latter.
In China, 90 per cent of shallow ground water is polluted, and many rivers no longer meet the sea. Without serious intervention (of which there are few signs), most of the world’s topsoil will have disappeared by the end of the current century. Deserts are merging and expanding, and water is a huge issue, with Turkey diverting some of the water from the Euphrates and the Tigris, causing Iraq and other areas to suffer because of this. China, India and the US are also involved in parallel situations. The disfunctionality of the US political system, where laws cannot be passed without the support of corporate business, is echoed at the level of the global system where no agreement can be found on the major dangers and the ways in which they must be combated. We also added a billion people to the population of our planet in just the first 13 years of the current century.
Much of what Gore argues is seen as hyperventilation. While Hazel Henderson produced a clear review of The Future, which is understandable since she has spent her career dealing with socio-environmental issues and interdisciplinary political economy, the tweets to The Daily Telegraph following its review of Gore’s book were largely dismissive of his work, The Guardian presented a set of responses which were mostly critical, although not damning, and on its translation and publication in French in late 2013 there was some support, but not a great deal of reaction. Overall, these reviews show the general reaction to the book. Vocal supporters appear to be in the minority.
For readers of Theory, Culture & Society there is at least one chapter and one idea which deserve attention. Chapter 5, ‘The Reinvention of Life and Death’, concerns the currently rapid development of bio-science, and it deserves to be read. Among the developments discussed in this chapter, four can be singled out. First, a non-invasive method of determining the full genetic code of an embryo became available in 2012. It is hard to see any way that this will not become routine, and the questions that will be produced are immense. For example, if sickle-cell anaemia is diagnosed, or Down’s syndrome, what is to be done? Who will make the decisions that will be – literally – vital. This is not at all straightforward. The second case which merits some thought concerns people in a vegetative state. Adrian Owen recorded the brain activity of people who were in a state of complete and apparently permanent unconsciousness. He then asked each of them to imagine that they were playing tennis. Then he asked them to imagine that they were simply walking through their house. He followed this by asking his subjects about their lives, recording their brain wave patterns all the way through. He then did the same three-part test with a group of normally functioning people. When this was completed he and his team compared the two groups, and concluded that at least 20 per cent of his non-communicating subjects were aware. The work continues. The third development concerns 3-D printing, and a Dutch team’s fabrication of a complete lower jaw out of titanium powder. The computer design matched exactly with channels to allow for the new growth of nerves, and hollows to match the muscle anatomy. The printer made 33 passes per millimetre and after each one a laser fused each layer in place. According to Dr Jules Poukens, the patient could use the jaw on waking after the anaesthetic, and she could eat the next day. The last example I take from Gore’s chapter concerns spider silk, which stretches but has five times the strength, weight for weight, of steel. Genetic scientists have successfully introduced the relevant spider genes into goats, which now excrete the silk with their milk.
The final chapter of The Future needed to be more powerful, but the key question is whether it could be. Many will accept his verdict on climate change, which agrees with the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, but those that are against it – especially in the US – do not have to do anything differently. Sheila Jasanoff’s (2010: 237) words cannot be bettered: Climate science cuts against the grain of ordinary human experience, the basis for our social arrangements and ethical instincts, at four inter-related levels: communal, political, spatial and temporal. As the boundaries of states dissolve in the post-bipolar, globalizing world, and new civil society groups compete to represent nature on their own terms, climate change too risks dissolving and losing solidity. Politically, climate change cannot be subsumed within the knowledge-making routines of even the most scientifically advanced nation-states or validated in accordance with any single nation’s sovereign administrative practices. Climate, moreover, is spatially unbounded. It is everywhere and nowhere, hence not easily accessible to imaginations rooted in specific places. And, unlike the weather, climate change occurs over spans of time that are not easily assimilated to circadian or seasonal rhythms: it is not perceptible or provable as a day or year of human life shades into the next.
It is important to note that Al Gore is not an analyst of his own political position. If he were, he would ask how he relates to the neoliberal times in which he lives. At present the state appears to be subordinated to the economy, with its policymakers continuing to reproduce that situation. However, pressures are building. In late October 2013, Gore authored a piece in the Wall Street Journal with David Blood (Senior Partner of Generation Investment Management) in which he argued that the sub-prime carbon asset bubble is due to explode. The argument was simple: the International Energy Agency has said that only one-third of existing known oil reserves can be used if the planet is to keep global temperature rise in this century down to two degrees. This, Gore and Blood argued, would remove two-thirds of existing oil and gas reserves from the market. Unless we substantially increase the investment in alternative energy sources, and simultaneously reduce planetary consumption of hydrocarbons – starting now – we will not be certain to survive in our present form. Warren Buffett’s response was typical: he put nearly $4 billion into Exxon, and is making profits on his investment – right now. So the lure of the short-term investment remains very strong. Forbes labelled Gore’s position on global energy as ‘high-flying fantasy’. Among the ‘fantasists’ we find the state of California, which has committed to an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050, and which is linked to Oregon, Washington state, and British Columbia, about which the New York Times Editorial Board noted: ‘Unlike Congress and Parliament in Canada, this regional coalition rightly sees the task of limiting climate change not as an economic threat but an economic opportunity, a chance to create new jobs and new industries’ (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/opinion/a-new-alliance-on-climate-change.html?_r=2&).
Gore is just possibly going to face a showdown with the US Congress. Currently economic principles and established corporate interests control certainly the House of Representatives and, to a lesser degree, the Senate. But as the scholars of neoliberalism say, the balance between politics and economics in neoliberal societies is not given. We have reached a point where the political has to intervene more vigorously because, on the balance of probabilities, the future of the planet may be at stake. What will make the difference? The key principle may well be fear of the climate.
Al Gore did not spend very much time in The Future describing desperate weather conditions. They are likely, however, to get worse. In November 2013, the strongest winds ever recorded devastated areas of The Philippines, and just a few days later dozens of tornadoes arrived in the mid-west of the US: ‘Illinois Governor Pat Quinn on Monday declared state disaster areas across seven counties, saying hundreds of homes and businesses have been damaged or destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people were without power and numerous roads throughout the state have been closed by fallen trees and downed power lines’ (Chicago Tribune, 18 November 2013). This latter event occurred in a month when tornadoes were not generally a problem. If the weather events develop into a trend, this will make a huge difference.
When Gore decided not to challenge the Supreme Court’s decision in 2000 to halt the electoral recount in Florida, he handed George Bush the keys to the White House. He did this for the right reasons. He is now under some pressure to stand again. Gore’s image stayed strong until it was alleged that he had sexually assaulted Molly Hagerty, a 54-year-old masseuse, about whom The Washington Post suggested she asked $1 million for the story. The police dropped the case for lack of evidence, although it was briefly re-opened by senior officers who had not been consulted, and then dropped again. It would be completely understandable if Gore did not want to go over this again, and almost certainly he will not run. However, if the two weather events in November 2013 were just the beginning of a series of catastrophes, then The Future could play a significant role in the 2016 presidential election. As Steven Sherwood et al. (2014) suggest, having examined the evidence drawn from 43 climate models, warming over the current century will probably exceed 3° C, and the consequences of this are enormous.