How much can we learn from science fiction authors? From their novels and short stories, sometimes a lot and sometimes a little, depending mostly on how deeply they think and how well they write. But what about from their non-fiction works?
Best-selling SF novelist David Brin (Earth, Kiln People, the Uplift series) may be better known in some circles as the author of The Transparent Society. The prolific genius and multiple Hugo award winner Isaac Asimov also sold scores of non-fiction books and articles. Now we have another successful writer of science fiction who has something important to say, and not through his novels.
The author is Kim Stanley Robinson, creator of the Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars trilogy, among many other fine books. His topic is climate change—but not only that. He relates that issue to rationality, economics, governance, and politics. Actually, anyone who has learned enough about such issues will know that global warming and climate change are inextricably linked with the other topics that Robinson brings in. He does it so economically, though (no pun intended), in just 1300 words, and with such clear reasoning, that I was awed by his achievement:
First, we need to trust our science. We do this every time we fly in a jet or rush to the doctor in hope of relief from illness; but now there is some cherry-picking of science going on in the various kinds of resistance to the news about climate change, and this double standard needs to be called out. The so-called climate change skeptics are now simply in denial. All science is skeptical, and the scientific community has looked at this situation and found compelling evidence for anyone with an open mind.
Science is telling us that if we keep living the way we do, we will trigger an unstoppable and irreversible climate change that may de-ice the planet and acidify the oceans, causing mass extinction. It took tens of millions of years for Earth to recover from previous mass extinctions. It is certain that human beings would be devastated by such an event, despite our intelligence and technological power—and there are instabilities in the climate system that include tipping points that we are closing in on fast.
That’s what our science is telling us. The most rational way to act is to believe that and then to act on that belief.
Okay, trust our science. Check. That’s one of the main tenets of the Enlightenment and one of the major questions that will determine whether the light stays on for the human race or goes out.
So, what’s next? What should we do?
Above all, we need to decarbonize our power and transport systems, and, more generally, to build a carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative civilization as quickly as possible. It’s not a matter of technology. We already have good starter technology for lithium-ion batteries in cars; clean, renewable energy generation; cleaner building methods; and so on. The technical solutions are being improved all the time in research labs.
The main problem is making these changes happen more quickly than they can in the false pricing system that we have created and enforced within our hierarchical power structure. There is conflict over how to pay for decarbonizing, which is deemed “too expensive” to execute quickly. There is both a defense of the destructive carbon burning we are engaged in and a resistance to the most obvious solutions among people who remain frightened of the idea of government-led economic programs. But now we simply must have such programs because the market is not capable of taking action.
This seems like a quandary. On one side we have the irresistible force of science telling us that we must take certain actions to avoid climate chaos, and on the other side we have the immovable object of market fundamentalism that says “no can do.” Whose side should we be on?
Robinson has a ready answer:
Am I saying that capitalism is going to have to change or else we will have an environmental catastrophe? Yes, I am. It should not be shocking to suggest that capitalism has to change. Capitalism evolved out of feudalism. Although the basis of power has changed from land to money and the system has become more mobile, the distribution of power and wealth has not changed that much. It’s still a hierarchical power structure, it was not designed with ecological sustainability in mind, and it won’t achieve that as it is currently constituted.
The main reason I believe capitalism is not up to the challenge is that it improperly and systemically undervalues the future. I’ll give two illustrations of this. First, our commodities and our carbon burning are almost universally underpriced, so we charge less for them than they cost. When this is done deliberately to kill off an economic competitor, it’s called predatory dumping; you could say that the victims of our predation are the generations to come, which are at a decided disadvantage in any competition with the present.
Second, the promise of capitalism was always that of class mobility—the idea that a working-class family could bootstrap their children into the middle class. With the right policies, over time, the whole world could do the same. There’s a problem with this, though. For everyone on Earth to live at Western levels of consumption, we would need two or three Earths. Looking at it this way, capitalism has become a kind of multigenerational Ponzi scheme, in which future generations are left holding the empty bag.
That’s a term that’s been in the news a lot lately: Ponzi scheme. Flim-flam financier Bernie Madoff was given a life sentence for his awful crimes. But in the case of today’s multigenerational climate change Ponzi scheme, it’s our children and their children who will be sentenced to something maybe even worse for a crime they never committed.
Kim Stanley Robinson has a lot more to say, and I hope you’ll read his whole article. But for now, let me finish up with one final idea that he proposes:
Start programs at [all business] schools in postcapitalist studies.
Does the word postcapitalism look odd to you? It should, because you hardly ever see it. We have a blank spot in our vision of the future. Perhaps we think that history has somehow gone away. In fact, history is with us now more than ever, because we are at a crux in the human story.
Choosing not to study a successor system to capitalism is an example of another kind of denial, an ostrich failure on the part of the field of economics and of business schools, I think, but it’s really all of us together, a social aporia or fear. We have persistently ignored and devalued the future—as if our actions are not creating that future for our children, as if things never change. But everything evolves. With a catastrophe bearing down on us, we need to evolve at nearly revolutionary speed. So some study of what could improve and replace our society’s current structure and systems is in order. If we don’t take such steps, the consequences will be intolerable. On the other hand, successfully dealing with this situation could lead to a sustainable civilization that would be truly exciting in its human potential.
Let us hope that enough people are listening and will act accordingly.
Mike Treder is the Managing Director of the IEET, and former Executive Director of the non-profit Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.