The Hames Report

When the Storms Came

Hi Jez. This is papa again. This is the last time you will hear my voice. As your life can only be activated after my passing we will never actually know each other. Yet these days, with so much time on my hands, I think of you constantly, wondering whether you will take after your mother or myself and imagining how your life is likely to unfold in conditions that are so utterly different from when I was born in 2011.

For the past few years I have been recording my own life’s journey to your mindbank just in case you want to know more about me as you grow up, especially the mistakes I made and the valuable lessons I learned along the way. As today is my final birthday it is an appropriate moment to add a concluding message to the imprint you will have access to at the moment of your birth.

As I mentioned to you in earlier chronicles I studied biocultural anthropology at Wisdom University and have been a biocultural ethnographer most of my professional life. Each month I work my allocated ten hours (about the current average for elders like myself) for the FinanceLab hubbed here in Moscow – a “resilient” city with a populace approaching 25 million, many of them environmental evacuees. I hope you are able to visit Moscow at some stage to see the city I experience every day and which has become my unlikely sanctuary.

To be employed by FinanceLab is a great honour. This enterprise has managed all non-peer-2-peer transactions and financial flows for our zone since the global banking meltdown mid-century. Such trades amount to almost CNY 80 trillion each week which makes us the leading monetary facilitator in the region. Naturally all data is teleported instantly these days. Even so my job is pretty cool. My only regret is that I would love to be able to meet more people and listen to their stories, like in the old days, than be interacting with them via my webscreen all the time.

Because of the extreme heat and lawlessness it’s simply too dangerous to travel much these days – unless one is very wealthy of course, which I am not. So apart from an occasional trip to Beijing to visit your aunt and her family (and a vacation on Mars Station two years ago which I found overhyped, especially in terms of its so-called “luxurious” amenities) I tend to stay put. My friends still teasingly refer to me as a homey.

My devoted companion is DAO. As a fifth generation personalised android, DAO is able to access the totality of documented human knowledge, answer any question I pose and tend to all my requests. But she’s not really into hugging or intimacy, which I miss. You will meet DAO quite soon of course as she has agreed to care for you when I am gone. I still pine for your mama who loved me and looked after me so selflessly. Its sad that you will never have the opportunity to hear her voice the way you are listening to mine now, but the imprinting mindbank technology simply wasn't available back then.

These days I grow my own food using permaculture techniques I learned from your grandma after grandpa died. Because of the resources rationing I always recycle my waste. Choosing to be off-the-grid for water and energy I can at least ensure my diet doesn’t contain unwanted additives, which is a luxury few people can afford. I value my health. Besides, tending to my small indoor wall bioshelter is deeply satisfying.

Even after all these years, I still occasionally crave some grilled chicken or a pork green curry – what person born Asian would not? But after the great contagion of 2038 which killed over two billion people in a matter of weeks, including your mama, most meat production was banned. Even the Americas are totally vegetarian these days - or so it is claimed. Frankly I don't put much faith in local markets as you can never quite be sure what ingredients are used in those so-called "organic" products. Just last night an entire community was quarantined for consuming illegally acquired organic pork meat capsules from the market just around the corner. Nor do I fancy the artificial equivalents, though they often look and taste authentic enough.The local supermarket has become far more trustworthy of late, expecially as product labelling is strictly standardised these days. I suppose they had to do something to survive. But I'm just not into genetically modified food, so it is pointless my shopping there.

Being born of a Thai mother and an Australian father I grew up in what seemed to me at the time to be the most sublime if chaotic cosmopolitan city in the world. Like most old coastal cities, Bangkok has been submerged for the past quarter of a century. Unless you take one of the many underwater tours on offer from the coastal city of Ayyuthaya you will never see the glorious temples I visited in my youth. Most of the tropics are just too hot to inhabit now. As the default capital of South East Asia, Singapore still exists of course in what is undoubtedly an extraordinary feat of acqua-engineering. But I can’t imagine enjoying life in such a tightly regulated enclave where all residential dwellings are required to be submerged by at least 10 metres. I need to feel free and to breathe fresh air, even if that is an illusion and my movements are somewhat constrained.

I often wonder what might have happened had the scientists’ warnings about climate change been heeded. When the storms came it was far too late. It all happened so quickly. Wealthy people simply moved to the resilient cities. The poor suffered. So many people died from lack of water, disease and starvation. Recent rumours suggest almost 4.7 billion people perished within a decade - although ordinary citizens like me are still denied access to the official figures that are hidden somewhere within the vaults of the Planetary Social Records Unit.

After many relationships I now live alone – the unintended consequence of my generation being instructed not to parent children or to make too many friends on iWeb for fear of identity theft. Not that I mind. I feel no attachment or loyalty to this place. Almost everything your grandparents valued about life on this planet has vanished - including the strong sense of community that pervaded our culture, the local dialects, the scent of frangipani in the evenings, and the sheer diversity of life. But now all of those have gone, driven out by unbridled urbanisation as well as the callous nature of corporations and the tribal conflicts that erupted once the storms came.

And so today, as I record this message for you Jez, I celebrate my 89^th birthday. It is Saturday 12^th June. The year is 2100. Although I still take my daily does of Aprovel my geneticist tells me to expect death in about four months from now, probably from a stroke. I am ready. I have seen so much and lived through some astonishing changes. I have few regrets. My clone is already shadowing me in FinanceLab. My passing will hardly be noticed.

But I still have one small glimmer of hope: that as you listen to my voice recounting my story you will pause and wonder who your papa really was. I would like to think that you know and appreciate what I tried to do to make your life easier. Hopefully you will regard me fondly from the messages I have recorded over the past few years and that have been captured for you in this imprint.

Take care and be good!

Love from Papa.

The fictional author of this fictional letter is the same age as my youngest son Nico who was born on 12th June 2011. In composing this extreme picture of life at the turn of the 21st Century I hope I am wrong about most things. I would like to believe that Nico will enjoy everthing about living on this Earth that has made my own life's journey so precious and miraculous. My suspicion is that most of what is implied in this scenario may actually come to pass in one way or another and that such circumstances will make it much harder for him to make such a statement at the end of his life.

 

Feeding Frenzy: Clues to the Future of Food

Today's industrial agribusiness and animal husbandry practices, together with the extensive value chains and investment habits that maintain them, have created a paradigm that originated almost a century ago in the US and Europe. Facilitated by the convergence of petrol-based machinery, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, advanced refrigerated storage and conveyance methods, broadacre farming (and its oceanic equivalent of seabed trawling) this market system exploits the planet’s resources for the benefit of an affluent minority of the world’s citizens who mostly live in large cities in Europe, the US, Japan and parts of Asia such as Singapore.

It is also a system under extreme stress. The actual amount of food we produce is theoretically sufficient for possibly 12 billion people. But in spite of assertions to the contrary, the system as currently configured cannot feed a population of seven billion without causing a further decline in the planet’s productive capacity and putting the health of the community at risk - through e-coli outbreaks, for example, as well as swine and avian flu pandemics. Transfixed by the need to double food production over the next fifty years in order to sustain a population in excess of nine billion, (with less water, less land, depleted soils, fewer fertilisers and no fossil fuels) the industrial agricultural system has shifted way beyond its generative capability to function effectively. In spite of its apparent benefits it is becoming a lethal killer.

Originally each of the innovations mentioned above appeared to be ingenious responses to one of our most critical issues: how to safely grow and manufacture sufficient food for a burgeoning human population and deliver it to where it is most needed. The obvious answer was to increase production and to process large quantities of food in ways that preserved nutritional value, even whilst being transported over considerable distances.

Beginning with the Haber-Bosch process (a method of geo-engineering ammonia which can then be used in the oxidation of nitrates and nitrites for fertiliser) this is precisely what we did. And for a while it seemed to work. Crop yields increased remarkably as traditional landscapes comprising small fields, copses and forests were converted into vast plains better suited to the new agricultural machinery.

Unfortunately there were other costs that were either ignored or not seen at the time. We are only just beginning to come to terms with the overall effects of a process that precipitated the detonation of a population time bomb, the collapse of natural ecosystems, and soil and water degradation on a massive scale. 

Only belatedly have we come to grasp the negative impacts of discrete solutions on such intricate complexity. Misgivings had been around for decades but were mostly disregarded or disparaged. In 1962, for example, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring cast doubts on the indiscriminate release of large quantities of chemicals into the environment without full knowledge concerning the potential effects on human health and ecology. Carson’s logic effectively launched the environmental consciousness movement. The unintentional consequences of the industrial paradigm, however, were not seriously considered prior to 2004, the year in which the Stockholm Convention eventually outlawed several persistent organic pollutants and restricted the use of DDT.

And so we allow the industrial paradigm to persist even as it implodes. Grounded in widespread impulses and anecdotal beliefs, such as those arising from a belief that greater yields are generated by economies of scale rather than by economies of flow, for example, strategies calculated to maintain this system are ingrained in every part of the supply chain - from research, production and processing right through to packaging, distribution and consumption.

Inequities and process flaws are unavoidable of course. Farmers and fishermen toil to survive but are manipulated by large corporate intermediaries who profit from their struggle. Loss and waste is prevalent and getting far worse. Bio-diversity has been drastically diminished. Arable land is being degraded and developed for urban use, yet huge tracts are also given over to the production of biofuels. Grain harvests are failing leading to famine, malnutrition and starvation. Less healthy foods are directly marketed to children and to those on lower incomes.

In the meantime the rising cost of staples such as wheat, corn and rice nudges even greater numbers of people into poverty. This is a cruel paradox given that we actually produce sufficient food to feed and nourish the entire human family. The problem can be reduced to a few very simple elements:

• In the developed world:
  • we eat too much – most of which is processed
  • what we choose to eat causes obesity, aggravates illnesses like diabetes and leads to further environmental degradation
  • most of our food is produced at a distance from where it is eaten
  • much food is allowed to go to waste and is thrown away.

• In the developing world:
  • too few of us eat enough food that is wholesome and nutritious
  • what we do eat causes malnutrition and a range of other diseases
  • local farming practices cannot keep up with demand
  • the impacts of climate change are already making matters worse.

Given such unacceptable outcomes one might have expected the need for a substantial and urgent redesign of the food system to have been self-evident. But that is not the case. Protectionist policies combined with corporate interests still wield sufficient clout, both economically and politically, to stymie any attempt to invoke wide-ranging change. Indeed over the past decade alternative proposals, ranging from organic and biodynamic produce, food hubs and growers markets to large-scale hydroponics and permaculture, have been contemptuously and systematically scorned by agribusiness and its powerful industry lobbyists. At the same time, propositions in the same mould as the Haber-Bosch process (such as genetically modified plants and geoengineered manipulation of the climate) have been pushed by some scientists and large multinational corporations, causing outrage amongst most thinking people.

Meanwhile key assumptions underlying the viability and security of the food system go largely unchallenged and significant alternatives stall or occur only at the periphery, quarantined from the broader market system, which then continues on its suicidal path.

Which brings us to our current situation. Today it is evident that modern industrial agriculture is in crisis - unsustainable in its current form. There are three main reasons for this:

1. The industrial agricultural system is both chemical and petroleum intensive which exacerbates the risks from climate change
2. Industrial agriculture is a monoculture and the lack of diversity in crops contributes to the destruction of Earth’s natural cycles and ecosystems
3. We are facing a convergence of water, land, energy, technology and knowledge shortages - combined with an increased demand for food created by population and economic growth.

Recent estimates from several leading authorities on the subject indicate a need to double food production by 2065. In view of volatility in other parts of the ecosystem, particularly instability in the two critical variables of temperature and precipitation, that target cannot be achieved. Take temperature for example. An increase of just 2 degrees celsius has the potential to wreak all kinds of havoc on the food system. Rising temperatures and unpredictable levels of precipitation are already impacting food production in some arid parts of the world. As the problem worsens considerable damage is being done to agricultural yields and food security.

Most propaganda from agribusiness predictably claims that the industrial model remains the best way to feed the world. Advocates for the current paradigm are well entrenched. A recent report on food security from an independent group of eminent scientists from 13 countries, funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food, stops short of mentioning the need for transformation of the current system. Instead it puts forward a detailed set of recommendations to policy makers in which a number of outmoded assumptions are taken for granted.

Politically correct reports such as these avoid the real issue: namely that we must transform the paradigm of industrial production and its inherently toxic practices. Anything else is a recipe for species extinction. But is resorting to a bankrupt paradigm really the best or only way to arrive at a viable solution? Are there alternatives?

Yes of course there are. Better education would possibly encourage us to eat less. Efficiencies in flow lower costs and reduce waste. Permaculture deployed at scale can conjure arable land out of wasteland. Biomimicry methods could increase the growth rate and resilience of plants. Enlightened approaches to diet can eradicate obesity and help reduce heart disease and diabetes. Greater crop diversity could eventually restore the capacity of soils to produce more. Smart irrigation methods could drastically reduce the amount of water required to produce crops. Better use of local resources could see the majority of a community’s food grown within that community. And so on….

My conclusion, shared by many, is that any enduring, universally acceptable resolution of the various dilemmas, flaws and failures inherent within the current food system, will only come from a reimagining of the system’s high level intent, design criteria and foundation principles.

Paradigmatic renewal sounds very grand and philosophical but it is important to appreciate why a high level design is the starting point. It is a fact that systems only ever deliver what their architectures have been designed to deliver. Change the intent and the key design principles, in addition to any explicit factors causing the system’s state to behave as it does, and we change the outcome. So devising an entirely different conception could shift the entire food system into a resilient and viable future, transforming the relationship we have with each other and with nature in the process. If we do not start with high level design we run the risk of repeating many of our current mistakes and sticking with fallacies that no longer make sense.

This is an audacious and exciting proposition in which there will be no losers. A strategically relevant high level design would not merely metamorphose every critical assumption underpinning a range of deficient structures, mechanisms and relationships, enabling innovation at the same time as relieving current stress points, but would generate an entirely new paradigm for health and wellbeing. A paradigm more in keeping with our true circumstances. One linked to the broader problem of environmental sustainability. One in which waste is reconceptualised. An equitable and just system capable of ensuring abundant supplies of affordable, wholesome food for every inhabitant on the planet and offering an adequate and secure living for all and sundry - from primary producers to retailers.

So what might a fresh, strategically relevant, globally integrated and sustainable system of agriculture and acquaculture actually look like? How would it assure positive outcomes for all without the usual trade-offs and inequities to which we have become so uncritically accepting?

Futurists are fond of proclaiming the future is never the same as the present. That is mostly correct when we look at technology and how everyday practices are transformed by new applications – touching everything from travel to health care, education, finances, trade, marketing and manufacturing. This is because the speed of new knowledge creation and innovation have become astonishingly exponential. Deep-seated elements, however, like ingrained cultural mores and ethics, move slowly by comparison, although even these are accelerating with the development of real-time, interactive communcations technologies that can be used to interact with anyone, at any time, for any reason. Although such instant connectivity provides many social benefits (e.g. the time it takes for paramedics to get to a cardiac arrest patient for example) it is also one of the reasons some people feel their lives are spinning out of their control.

Of course there is always a slim chance that the future food system will continue to feature much of what exists today; the same players, the same production and consumption traits, value chains, policies, pressures and failures… But that is increasingly unlikely when (i) the necessity for massive change is accepted by influential agents within the food system and when (ii) this acceptance accords with a spontaneous community awakening to the damage being done by current practices. In fact when these two prime factors align the only other things in dispute concern (i) the speed at which we choose to shift to a new paradigm (including how different potential pathways available within that shift are expressed and communicated) and (ii) the economic imperatives of the transition. A third factor is the political will to lead, or the lack of it. But this is becoming less relevant in an age of democratic activism.

Personally I am confident that the future story of food will be one in which we recognise the importance of provisioning for the entire human family in ways that do not harm the capacity of the Earth to harvest sufficient, nutritious food for future generations. Of necessity this will require changes to some of our most basic patterns of production and consumption. Any number of positive alternative scenarios can be crafted, with critical pathways duly mapped, to illustrate and assist in either the improvement, transformation or transcendence of that which currently exists, as we are hoping the establishment of a Sustainable Food Lab in Australia will amply demonstrate.

But while future narratives are important, of far greater signficance initially are:

• The choice of design criteria that together proclaim a manifesto for a system that benefits the greatest numbers of people, regardless of circumstances or geographical location. It is essential that such criteria are made explicit in all stories related to the future of food for they embody the ethical foundation upon which a viable, secure and morally defensible food system will evolve and endure.
• The selection of systemic acupuncture points that, once agreed and enacted with wisdom and empathy, can trigger a radically new purposeful energy across the entire system.

Let me deal with both of these here in as concise manner as possible.

1. Design Criteria

As indicated previously, I believe the intent of a viable future food system, within the additional complexity of the intertwined environmental, economic and energy issues facing us over the coming dacdes, must be to make adequate provisions for the entire human family in ways that (a) ensure people everywhere have access to sufficient nourishing food, (b) increase the health and wellbeing of the human family, (c) does not harm the capacity of the Earth to provide for future generations, and (d) secures a fair living for everybody involved in the supply chain, especially primary producers. In-built resilience must be generative.

Given that different design principles reflect different priorities, a single story is sufficient to illustrate a number of sustainable design principles I find relevant to these ideals.

Most market economists trust that a resource without a private property regime is destined for misuse. Yet for centuries, on the Indonesian island of Bali, rice farmers have coordinated their use of scarce water through collaborative social networks. The system is centered around what anthropologists refer to as “water temples” which enfold the water sharing within a context of traditional religious beliefs. In effect the networks function through a form of bottom-up cooperation in which the temples provide a channel through which producers can coordinate their water use. Modern computer analysis has found that the resulting allocation is close to ideal in terms of the productivity of the local farms. It defeats pests naturally and uses the available water to maximum effect.

Bali’s water sharing is an example of commons management. In the late 1960s the government decided to push rice farmers into the modern age. New laws bypassed the water temples. Hydrologists were hired to install modern irrigation systems and government bureaucrats pushed Green Revolution techniques, complete with heavy pesticides, upon the farmers. The result was a disaster. Insects soon developed resistance to the chemical pesticides. Crop yields plummeted. In the end the government relented. Farming communities returned to the social productivity arrangements experts had deemed relics of a bygone and unlightened era.

Principle 1 – Stewardship for future generations

We acknowledge that economies are held within ecologies (not vice versa) and that it is our responsibility to hold the inheritable gifts of the Earth in trust and pass them on, undiminished, to future generations. Economically these gifts are irreplacable and invaluable capital. Protection of these common assets must trump individual and corporate gain. This principle must be enshrined into our economic operating system and enforced by the world’s courts.

Principle 2 – Putting human knowledge to better use

Valuable wisdom is contained within all heritable knowledge. A food system capable of feeding a population in the billions while preserving nature’s gifts for future generations must learn to adapt and utilise a variety of methods for food production based upon indigenous intelligence as well as Western science and modern ingenuity. Inventions like permaculture, for example, can be scaled up and used to return waste and degraded land to agriculture. Urban spaces can be developed into community gardens. Innovations that are out of patent protection can be used in situations where patented products are beyond the means of the community to access because of their cost. In all these situations a revitalised commons management can assure our most valued resources are impossible to privatise.

Principle 3 – Moving from scarcity to abundance

The global market is only one mode of economic production and value exchange. Others, including collaboration and reciprocity, continue to exist in many cultures. Our food system will become more resilient by encouraging these modes to function alongside each other. While the global market is still likely to be shaped by corporate competitive interests, other modes could lead to the expansion of local economies and barter systems, comprising food hubs and growers markets where fresh locally produced goods are exchanged and primary producers retain more of their products’ true value.

Principle 4 – Stimulating sustainable lifestyles

The global economy depends upon nature for raw materials, energy stocks and ecological services (such as clean water, air purification and soil fertility) that are indispensable to life. But materials flows in the global economy have become excessively large relative to their host, the natural environment. Further growth will merely make current problems, like global warming, far worse. Instead of growth we need to move to an economy of ecological sufficiency and wellbeing where food is produced, sold and consumed in closer proximity, healthy eating is encouraged, and waste is eliminated through process efficiencies.

Principle 5 – Insisting markets tell the truth

Many environmental costs often go unrecognised by markets, as when costs created by carbon emissions are not factored into the price of gasoline or electricity. These costs are invariably transferred to the poor which is a classic failure of markets. New policies must shift levies and taxes away from things valued by society (like employment, fresh food produced by renewable energy and the bolstering of community life) to undesirable things like pollution and urban traffic congestion.

Principle 6 – Accounting for nature’s contributions

Nature is a plentiful storehouse of the raw materials needed by our civilisation. The collective annual value of assets like plants, fibre, fuel, fish, water, soil and minerals can be valued in the trillions. But the global ecosystem also provides, other services (including purification, mitigation, seed dispersal, pest control, pollination, stabilisation, nutrient cycling, detoxification and biodiversity maintenance for example) that are an indispensible substrate of economies. These contributions must be factored into economic decision making by both administrative and economic means.

Some people may argue that these six design principles are either too idealistic or too far-removed from our current situation as to be unworkable. But that is the point surely? The future of food is about transformation of the current paradigm. Transformation entails boldly imagining what has been impossible until now, yet is most desirable, then finding ways to bring that new vision to life.

Take the 4^th principle, for example. Few people known to me personally would want to argue against the urgent need for a system based upon trust and cooperation where variety and diversity (of resources, products, channels and access points) is utilised for the common good. Variety can manifest anywhere and should be encouraged. Surprisingly a city like New York has around 650 or more permanent community gardens and there are now over 4,000 farmers markets across the country. So whereas sixty years ago the US national highway network heralded the collapse of local markets offering wholesome, affordable, locally grown, seasonal produce, these commercial commons are now being re-established with great enthusiasm.

Or take the 5^th principle, which also happens to double as an acupuncture point for whole-system change. When markets tell the truth it is pretty certain that long distance transport costs will rise. Manufacturers will react by shifting from global to local production. Clean and abundant energy from the sun and the wind will enable widespread organic farming, which will be competitive because the prices of fossil fuels and agricultural chemicals will have risen steeply as the sun sets on those industries. In that new world farmers will begin to cut out intermediaries and keep more of their products’ value. That cannot be a bad thing.

It matters little where our gaze falls, it is obvious that it would be silly to persist with the current system. Take farmers for example. There are around 1.8 billion of them worldwide, but more than a billion are likely to be thrown out of work if food supply channels continue to contract. What about international trade? Approximately 26 per cent of the world's food is traded internationally. At least half of that is controlled by a virtual monopoly of around two dozen companies - commodity traders such as Glencore-Viterra, seed industry firms like Dupont and Monsanto, food processors such as Nestle, and the massive supermarket chains of Carrefour, Walmart, Tesco and China’s Bailian Group. With power consolidated in such a small number of commercial entities, developing countries are being forced to f ollow agendas that best suit these multinational corporations rather than the needs of their own people or the local environment. Or perhaps we should hold labelling and standards up as an example of what is working reasonably? Well no actually. Strict bureaucratic specifications in developed countries like the US, EU and Australia, result in mountains of rejected product that would otherwise feed the victims of drought or those who are simply less fortunate because of where they live.

Clearly the current system is fatally flawed in almost every dimension demanding sustainability or equity. Furthermore its performance is becoming more untenable each year. In that situation a newly defined intent as well as strategically aligned, relevant, robust design criteria, are the path to a future system with a generative capacity to respond and adapt to changing conditions.

2. Acupuncture points

There is just one further set of ideas we need to articulate before launching into possible future narratives. Indispensible tools for transformation of any system they concern the array of constraints within the current system that can be targeted for change in ways flip the system into a more desirable condition - effectively, cheaply and relatively unobtrusively. I call these constraints acupuncture points for reasons that are probably obvious. They are the key causal factors regulating the actual performance of any system’s architecture.

In terms of the global food system I have identified four acupuncture points, although I am sure there are probably others. These are the loci where we need to focus our attention if we are serious about nudging the current system into one that is ecologically responsible, socially desirable, ethically valid and economically realistic. Aligned with the six design criteria each acupuncture point is a catalyst in its own right. Some may be more appropriately applied to specific regions or countries. But collectively they facilitate a new and purposeful energy that will enable us to transcend most of the flaws we have been studying in the current system.

  i.     Establishing eco-efficient production

Current production processes founded upon economies of scale are extremely wasteful and toxic, threatening every ecosystem on the planet. Instead we need to adopt economies of flow to ensure: finite resources including water, fertiliser and pesticides are used sparingly and with far greater precision; we mimic nature in the design of distributed processes and products that have negligible ecological impact; and we use the notion of industrial ecology to ensure that our plants, farms, factories and supermarkets are restorative of human and natural capital.

  ii.     Investing in sustainability

Surges of innovation, where new technologies and means of communication come together to revolutionise production processes, accelerate the rate at which natural capital can be turned into sustainable value. Investments and forays by ventures capitalists into green chemistry, clean-tech, biomimcry and industrial ecology promise startling breakthroughs in using natural wealth more efficiently, prudently and fairly. At the same time governments need to be persuaded to enact policies that democratise the economy, thus changing the way capitalism functions. They can best do this by encouraging energy and eco-efficiencies, removing subsidies from fossil fuels, and exploiting peer-to-peer networks in the creation of a distributed, post-carbon industrial infrastructure.

  iii.     Using social media

In the 1920s Edward Bernays used the new power of broadcast propaganda based upon crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to help the tobacco industry overcome one of the biggest social taboos of the time. He used these methods to persuade women that smoking in public was not just acceptable but the cool thing to do. Over time corporations elevated "public relations" based upon Bernays's techniques into a new artform, blatantly manipulating public opinion for commercial gain. Now is the time to fight back, using new social media to inject different, more ethical and beneficial, messages into public forums. Today the power and persuasion of new social media and crowd-sourced feedback mechanisms can be harnessed to advocate the purchasing of fresh wholefoods, to support local producers, and to promote healthier eating habits. 

  iv.     Liberating women

This may seem counterintuitive to many of us living in Western countries but is vitally important to global food production. A 1994 UN report noted that most poor people are women and most women are poor. Yet almost all low-income women are economically active. Even in many wealthy countries gender bias dampens economic activity. Women also lack access to land and credit. In developing countries they own only 15 per cent of the land. In spite of that women are responsible for between 60-80 per cent of the world’s food production. By empowering women on the land we stand to increase productive economic activity and also the amount of embedded productive knowledge in the economy.

Having recommended a renewed purpose for the food system, suggested a few simple principles that should inform the high level design of that system, and identified a number of strategic acupuncture points where we can focus resources to flip current conditions into a more desirable state, we can now look more deeply into what is already working at a local level, throw in some imagination and creative thinking, and begin to craft some compelling stories describing what our preferred futures within that new paradigm would actually look and feel like.

These stories might illustrate the growing number of networked ecovillages, transition towns, and other sustainable communities that are already flourishing around the world. We might choose to focus on farmers cooperatives as a way of keeping today’s agribusiness consolidation (that concentrates market power in an ever smaller number of multinational corporations, who then influence the food choices available to consumers) in check. We could point to new ways of preserving the biocultural diversity of crops (meeting the expectations of the land) by using a combination of smart breeding, soil preservation and growing perennial rather than annual plants. For the more technically minded, especially those who are willing to go out on a limb, we might resurrect the contentious issue of genetically modified crops or the chemical engineering of new products, suggest scaling fish farming into tight urban spaces, establishing native seed banks and niche markets for heritage breeds. And for good measure we can throw in “paddock-to-plate” informatics, grow-your own movements, single-course restaurants and memory-enhancing fruit and vegetables for senior citizens. We might even re-conceptualise food as preventative healthcare. 

Whatever the nature of our scenarios we must remember three important tenets: inclusion, collaboration and diversity. Transforming something as complex as the food system might be regarded as a fool’s errand. Fortunately it does not come down to the decision of one individual or company for this is a choice point that affects the entire human population. It demands the active engagement of those whose lives are bound up with the system. Collaboration in purposeful change is essential. Diversity of opinion is welcome. Everyone needs to be included in the conversation if everyone is ultimately to benefit.

Given this complexity it is also highly probable that a wide range of scenarios will unfold, driven by different needs in different communities. Allowing “many flowers to bloom” is one way we can overcome the dominance of the present (corporate and agricultural) monoculture. Large supermarket chains may well continue to offer selected brands at a discounted price but that does not stop a plethora of niche alternatives from also emerging and flourishing.

It is also vital not to demonise certain sectors if that can be avoided. Multinational corporations (like Tyson, Cargill and Nestle) and large supermarket chains (like Walmart, Carrefour and Sainsbury) are easy targets compared with television coverage of a fifth generation farming family evicted from their land - especially given the emotive and manipulative nature of the relationship between primary producers and large corporations within the current system. Setting pride, anger and personal circumstances aside we must reach out to all stakeholders in the system. In that way we stand a good chance of preserving the best of what we have while encouraging a more sustainable and just future to emerge that benefits us all. Of course it is a distinct possibility that large corporations will be the last to change as they are driven by legal requirements, particularly in terms of putting their shareholders first, over which they have no control. But that should not prevent us from inviting them into the conversation.

I recently attended and contributed to the 2nd National Sustainable Food Summit in Sydney, Australia promoted by NetBalance and organised by 3 Pillars Network. This extended philosophical statement tries to bring together some of the key themes presented during the summit in addition to creating a framework to provoke further dialogue and alternative narratives concerning a preferred global food system. I have not attempted to summarise all of the topics discussed during the two days, but rather to define a philosophical space that can be used to identify strategic imperatives and actionable pathways into the future. My views are entirely personal and do not represent an official point of view or endorsement of any kind.

The Third Industrial Revolution

Our industrial civilization is at a crossroads. Oil and the other fossil fuel energies that make up the industrial way of life are sunsetting, and the technologies made from and propelled by these energies are antiquated. The entire industrial infrastructure built off of fossil fuels is aging and in disrepair. The result is that unemployment is rising to dangerous levels all over the world. Governments, businesses and consumers are awash in debt and living standards are declining everywhere. A record one billion human beings - nearly one seventh of the human race - face hunger and starvation. Worse, climate change from fossil fuel-based industrial activity looms on the horizon, imperiling our own species’ very ability to survive.

Since the beginning of the Great Recession in the summer of 2008, governments, the business community, and civil society have been embroiled in a fierce debate over how to restart the global economy. While austerity measures and fiscal, labor, and market reforms will all be necessary, they are not sufficient to re-grow the economy. Let me explain by way of an anecdote. Just months after arriving in office, the new Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, asked me to come to Berlin to help her administration address the question of how to create new jobs and grow the German economy in the twenty-first century. I began my remarks by asking the chancellor, “How do you grow the German economy, the EU economy, or, for that matter, the global economy, in the last stages of a great energy era and an industrial revolution built on it?”

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Second Industrial Revolution is dying and that industrial induced CO2 emissions are threatening the viability of life on Earth. What we need now is a bold new economic narrative that can take us into a sustainable post-carbon future. Finding that new vision requires an understanding of the technological forces that precipitate the profound transformations in society.

A New Economic Narrative

The great economic revolutions in history occur when new communication technologies converge with new energy systems. New energy revolutions make possible more expansive and integrated trade. Accompanying communication revolutions manage the new complex commercial activities made possible by the new energy flows. In the 19th century, cheap steam powered print technology and the introduction of public schools gave rise to a print-literate work force with the communication skills to manage the increased flow of commercial activity made possible by coal and steam power technology, ushering in the First Industrial Revolution. In the 20th century, centralized electricity communication - the telephone, and later radio and television - became the communication medium to manage a more complex and dispersed oil, auto, and suburban era, and the mass consumer culture of the Second Industrial Revolution.

Today, Internet technology and renewable energies are beginning to merge to create a new infrastructure for a Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) that will change the way power is distributed in the 21st century. In the coming era, hundreds of millions of people will produce their own renewable energy in their homes, offices, and factories and share green electricity with each other in an “Energy Internet” just like we now generate and share information online.

The establishment of a Third Industrial Revolution [TIR] infrastructure will create thousands of new businesses and millions of jobs and lay the basis for a sustainable global economy in the 21st century. However, let me add a cautionary note. Like every other communication and energy infrastructure in history, the various pillars of a Third Industrial Revolution must be laid down simultaneously or the foundation will not hold. That’s because each pillar can only function in relationship to the others.

The five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution are (1) shifting to renewable energy; (2) transforming the building stock of every continent into micro–power plants to collect renewable energies on-site; (3) deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies; (4) using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy internet that acts just like the Internet (when millions of buildings are generating a small amount of renewable energy locally, on-site, they can sell surplus green electricity back to the grid and share it with their continental neighbors); and (5) transitioning the transport fleet to electric plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell green electricity on a smart, continental, interactive power grid.

The creation of a renewable energy regime, loaded by buildings, partially stored in the form of hydrogen, distributed via a green electricity Internet, and connected to plug-in, zero-emission transport, opens the door to a Third Industrial Revolution. The entire system is interactive, integrated, and seamless. When these five pillars come together, they make up an indivisible technological platform—an emergent system whose properties and functions are qualitatively different from the sum of its parts. In other words, the synergies between the pillars create a new economic paradigm that can transform the world.

The public/private financing of the Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure build-out across the world will be at the very top of the agenda for the international banking and financial community in the first half of the 21st century.

The Shift To Lateral Power

The Third Industrial Revolution is the last of the great Industrial Revolutions and will lay the foundational infrastructure for an emerging collaborative age. Its completion will signal the end of a two-hundred-year commercial saga characterized by industrious thinking, entrepreneurial markets, and mass labor workforces and the beginning of a new era marked by collaborative behavior, social networks and professional and technical workforces. In the coming half century, the conventional, centralized business operations of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions will increasingly be subsumed by the distributed business practices of the Third Industrial Revolution; and the traditional, hierarchical organization of economic and political power will give way to lateral power organized nodally across society.

Lateral power is a new force in the world. Steve Jobs and the other innovators of his generation took us from expensive centralized main-frame computers, owned and controlled by a handful of global companies, to cheap desktop computers and cell phones, allowing billions of people to connect up with one another in peer-to-peer networks in the social spaces of the internet. The democratization of communications has enabled nearly one third of the human population on earth to share music, knowledge, news and social life on an open playing field, marking one of the great evolutionary advances in the history of our species.

But as impressive as this accomplishment is, it is only half of the story. The new, green energy industries are improving performance and reducing costs at an ever accelerating rate. And just as the generation and distribution of information is becoming nearly free, renewable energies will also. The sun, wind, biomass, geothermal heat and hydropower are available to everyone and, like information, are never used up.

When Internet communications manage green energy, every human being on earth becomes his or her own source of power, both literally and figuratively. Billions of human beings sharing their renewable energy laterally on a continental green electricity internet creates the foundation for the democratization of the global economy and a more just society.

Distributed Capitalism

Energy regimes shape the nature of civilizations - how they are organized, how the fruits of commerce and trade are distributed, how political power is exercised, and how social relations are conducted. To understand how the new Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure is likely to dramatically change the distribution of economic power in the twenty-first century, it is helpful to step back and examine how the fossil fuel–based First and Second Industrial Revolutions reordered power relations over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Fossil fuels - coal, oil, and natural gas - are elite energies for the simple reason that they are found only in select places. They require a significant military investment to secure their access and continual geopolitical management to assure their availability. They also require top down command and control systems and massive concentrations of capital to move them from underground to the end users. The ability to centralize production and distribution - the essence of modern capitalism - is critical to the effective performance of the system as a whole. The centralized energy infrastructure, in turn, sets the conditions for the rest of the economy, encouraging similar business models across every sector.

Virtually all of the other critical industries that emerged from the oil culture - modern finance, telecommunications, automotive, power and utilities, and commercial construction - and that feed off of the fossil fuel spigot were similarly predisposed to bigness in order to achieve their own economies of scale. And, like the oil industry, they require huge sums of capital to operate and are organized in a centralized fashion.

Three of the four largest companies in the world today are oil companies - Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, and BP. Underneath these giant energy companies are some five hundred global companies representing every sector and industry - with a combined revenue of $22.5 trillion, which is the equivalent of one-third of the world’s $62 trillion GDP - that are inseparably connected to and dependent on fossil fuels for their very survival.

The emerging Third Industrial Revolution, by contrast, is organized around distributed renewable energies that are found everywhere and are, for the most part, free - sun, wind, hydro, geothermal heat, biomass, and ocean waves and tides. These dispersed energies will be collected at millions of local sites and then bundled and shared with others over a continental green electricity internet to achieve optimum energy levels and maintain a high-performing, sustainable economy. The distributed nature of renewable energies necessitates collaborative rather than hierarchical command and control mechanisms.

This new lateral energy regime establishes the organizational model for the countless economic activities that multiply from it. A more distributed and collaborative industrial revolution, in turn, invariably leads to a more distributed sharing of the wealth generated.

The extraordinary capital costs of owning and operating giant centralized telephone, radio, and television communications technology and fossil fuel and nuclear power plants in markets is giving way to the new “distributed capitalism,” in which the low entry costs in lateral networks make it possible for virtually everyone to become a potential entrepreneur and collaborator, creating and sharing information and energy in open commons. Witness twenty something young men creating Google, Facebook, and other global information networks, literally in their college dorm rooms and thousands of small businesses converting their buildings to green micro power plants and connecting with one another in regional electricity networks.

What I am describing is a fundamental change in the way capitalism functions that is now unfolding across the economy and reshaping how companies conduct business. The shrinking of transaction costs in the music business and publishing field with the emergence of file sharing of music, eBooks, and news blogs, is wreaking havoc on these traditional industries. We can expect similar disruptive impacts as the diminishing transaction costs of green energy allow manufacturers, service industries, and retailers to produce and share goods and services in vast economic networks with very little outlay of financial capital.

Democratizing Manufacturing

For example, consider manufacturing. Nothing is more suggestive of the industrial way of life than highly capitalized, giant, centralized factories equipped with heavy machines and attended by blue-collar workforces, churning out mass-produced products on assembly lines. But what if millions of people could manufacture batches or even single manufactured items in their own homes or businesses, cheaper, quicker, and with the same quality control as the most advanced state-of the-art factories on earth?

While the TIR economy allows millions of people to produce their own virtual information and energy, a new digital manufacturing revolution now opens up the possibility of following suit in the production of durable goods. In the new era, everyone can potentially be their own manufacturer as well as their own internet site and power company. The process is called 3-D printing; and although it sounds like science fiction, it is already coming online, and promises to change the entire way we think of industrial production. Think about pushing the print button on your computer and sending a digital file to an inkjet printer, except, with 3-D printing, the machine runs off a three-dimensional product. Using computer aided design, software directs the 3-D printer to build successive layers of the product using powder, molten plastic, or metals to create the material scaffolding. The 3-D printer can produce multiple copies just like a photocopy machine. All sorts of goods, from jewelry to mobile phones, auto and aircraft parts, medical implants, and batteries are being “printed out” in what is being termed “additive manufacturing,” distinguishing it from the “subtractive manufacturing,” which involves cutting down and pairing off materials and then attaching them together.

3-D entrepreneurs are particularly bullish about additive manufacturing, because the process requires as little as 10 percent of the raw material expended in traditional manufacturing and uses less energy than conventional factory production, thus greatly reducing the cost.

In the same way that the Internet radically reduced entry costs in generating and disseminating information, giving rise to new businesses like Google and Facebook, additive manufacturing has the potential to greatly reduce the cost of producing hard goods, making entry costs sufficiently lower to encourage hundreds of thousands of mini manufacturers—small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) - to challenge and potentially outcompete the giant manufacturing companies that were at the center of the First and Second Industrial Revolution economies.

Already, a spate of new start-up companies are entering the 3-D printing market with names like Within Technologies, Digital Forming, Shape Ways, Rapid Quality Manufacturing, Stratasys, Bespoke Innovations, 3D Systems, MakerBot Industries, Freedom of Creation, LGM, and Contour Crafting and are determined to reinvent the very idea of manufacturing in the Third Industrial era.

The energy saved at every step of the digital manufacturing process, from reduction in materials used, to less energy expended in making the product, when applied across the global economy, adds up to a qualitative increase in energy efficiency beyond anything imaginable in the First and Second Industrial Revolutions. When the energy used to power the production process is renewable and also generated on site, the full impact of a lateral Third Industrial Revolution becomes strikingly apparent. Since approximately 84 percent of the productivity gains in the manufacturing and service industries are attributable to increases in thermodynamic efficiencies - only 14 percent of productivity gains are the result of capital invested per worker - we begin to grasp the significance of the enormous surge in productivity that will accompany the Third Industrial Revolution and what it will mean for society.

Near Zero Cost Marketing and Logistics

The democratization of manufacturing is being accompanied by the tumbling costs of marketing. Because of the centralized nature of the communication technologies of the first and second industrial revolutions - newspapers, magazines, radio, and television - marketing costs were high and favored giant firms who could afford to devote substantial funds to market their products and services. The internet has transformed marketing from a significant expense to a negligible cost, allowing start ups and small and medium size enterprises to market their goods and services on internet sites that stretch over virtual space, enabling them to compete and even out compete many of the giant business enterprises of the 21st century.

Consider Etsy, a brash, web start-up company that has taken off in the past seven years. Etsy was founded by a young New York University graduate, Rob Kalin, who made furniture in his apartment. Frustrated that he had no way to connect with potential buyers interested in hand-crafted furniture, Kalin teamed up with a few friends and put up a website designed to bring individual craftsmen of all kinds, from around the world, together with prospective buyers. The site has become a global virtual showroom, where millions of buyers and thousands of sellers from more than fifty countries are connecting, breathing new life into craft production—an art that had largely disappeared with the advent of modern industrial capitalism.

Connecting multitudes of sellers and buyers in virtual space is almost free. By replacing all of the middlemen - from wholesalers to retailers - with a distributed virtual network of sellers and buyers and eliminating the transaction costs that are marked up at every stage in the marketing process, Etsy has created a new global craft bazaar that scales laterally rather than hierarchically, and markets goods collaboratively rather than top-down.

Etsy brings another dimension to the market - the personalization of relationships between seller and buyer. The website hosts chat rooms, coordinates online craft shows, and conducts seminars, allowing sellers and buyers to interact, exchange ideas, customize products, and create social bonds that can last a lifetime. Giant, global companies mass-producing standardized products on assembly lines operated by anonymous workforces can’t compete with the kind of intimate one-to-one relationship between artisan and patron.

Although still in its infancy, Etsy is a quickly growing enterprise. In 2011, Etsy’s sales topped nearly $500 million. In a recent conversation, Kalin told me that his mission is to help foster “empathic consciousness” in the global economic arena and lay the foundation for a more inclusive society. His vision of connecting up “millions of local living economies that will create a sense of community in the economy again” is the essence of the Third Industrial Revolution model. Etsy is only one of hundreds of global Internet companies that are bringing together producers and consumers in virtual marketing spaces and, in the process, democratizing marketing costs across the global economy.

As the new 3-D technology becomes more widespread, on site, just in time customized manufacturing of products will also reduce logistics costs with the possibility of huge energy savings. The cost of transporting products will plummet in the coming decades because an increasing array of goods will be produced locally in thousands of micro-manufacturing plants and transported regionally by trucks powered by green electricity and hydrogen generated on site.

The lateral scaling of the Third Industrial Revolution allows small and medium size enterprises to flourish. Still, global companies will not disappear. Rather, they will increasingly metamorphose from primary producers and distributers to aggregators. In the new economic era, their role will be to coordinate and manage the multiple networks that move commerce and trade across the value chain.

New Business Models and Jobs in the 21st Century

Germany is leading the way into the new economic era. The Federal Government has teamed up with six regions across Germany to test the introduction of an energy internet that will allow tens of thousands of German businesses and millions of home owners to collect renewable energies on site, store them in the form of hydrogen, and share green electricity across Germany in a smart energy internet. Entire communities are transforming their commercial and residential buildings into green micro-power plants. To date, more than 1 million buildings in Germany have been converted into partial green micro power plants. Companies like Siemens, Bosch and Daimler are creating sophisticated new IT software, hardware, appliances and vehicles, that will merge distributed Internet communication with distributed energy, to create smart buildings, infrastructure, and green mobility for the cities of the future.

The transition to the Third Industrial Revolution will require a wholesale reconfiguration of the entire economic infrastructure of each country, creating millions of jobs and countless new goods and services. Nations will need to invest in renewable energy technology on a massive scale; convert millions of buildings into green micro power plants; embed hydrogen and other storage technology throughout the national infrastructure; lay down a green energy internet; and transform the automobile from the internal combustion engine to electric plug-in and fuel cell cars.

The remaking of each nation’s infrastructure and the retooling of industries is going to require a massive retraining of workers on a scale matching the professional and vocational training at the onset of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions. The new high tech workforce of the Third Industrial Revolution will need to be skilled in renewable energy technologies, green construction, IT and embedded computing, nanotechnology, sustainable chemistry, fuel-cell development, digital power grid management, hybrid electric and hydrogen-powered transport and hundreds of other technical fields.

Entrepreneurs and managers will need to be educated to take advantage of cutting edge business models, including distributed and collaborative research and development strategies, open source and networked commerce, performance contracting, shared savings agreements, and sustainable low-carbon logistics and supply chain management. The skill levels and managerial styles of the Third Industrial Revolution workforce will be qualitatively different from those of the workforce of the Second Industrial Revolution.

The lateral scaling of the Third Industrial Revolution shifts the fulcrum of power from centralized global companies to distributed small and medium size enterprise networks. The rapid decline in transaction costs brought on by The Third Industrial Revolution are leading to the democratization of information, energy, manufacturing, marketing, and logistics, and the ushering in of a new era of distributed capitalism that is likely to change the very way we think of commercial life. The Third Industrial Revolution offers the hope that we can arrive at a sustainable post-carbon era by mid-century. We have the science, the technology, and the game plan to make it happen. Now it is a question of whether we will recognize the economic possibilities that lie ahead and muster the will to get there in time.

This article was written by Jeremy Rifkin and is reprinted here with his permission. Jeremy is the author of The New York Times best selling book, The Third Industrial Revolution, How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World. He is an adviser to the European Union and to heads of state around the world. He is a senior lecturer at the Wharton School’s Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania and the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C.

Thinking for a Change

The dilemmas facing humanity have become so complex they can only be resolved by comprehending the situation from a higher level of collective consciousness. Once that new state of awareness has been reached, however, we will be able to choose a profoundly different evolutionary path to that recently pursued with such self-interest and short-sighted enthusiasm.

Disruptions to the way planet Earth works, particularly those induced by the ingrained habits of seven billion people all aspiring to similar levels of affluence, can no longer be ignored. At some stage myths must give way to truths if disaster is to be averted.

As Paul Gilding points out so eloquently in his recent book The Great Disruption there is plenty to be positive about. But only if we think differently and more deeply about the human condition and rise above those beliefs and practices that have become an impediment to genuine progress.

Three priorities have surfaced from the fog of scientific evidence, propaganda (and sheer mischief) surrounding issues like climate change. First, policies aimed at putting a stop to unsustainable activities must be scaled up. Second, smart technologies must be applied to the underlying causes of our problems rather than to their symptoms. Third, we must reframe our thinking to embody entirely new possibilities for reimagining what we do (that is both socially desirable and economically feasible) and how we do it.

These priorities are as relevant for business as they are for governments and civil society. The time has long since passed when business could simply mind its own business. Indeed many of the institutions and practices conceived within the 19^th century model of industrial economism, a model that initially brought such affluence to so many, appear now to be steering us down a path to ruin. I am aware that it is impossible to prove such a thesis. But nor do I intend waiting until I have evidence I am correct.

There are many alternatives available to us, ranging from cleaner, adaptive industries and smarter, benign practices to fewer toxic raw materials and biomimicry as a model for organizing and innovating. Most of these alternatives are preferable to what currently exists. However we need to let go of old prejudices and fears that the future will inevitably be worse than the past if such new options are to be implemented quickly. This is the prime lesson informing Gilding’s thesis.

All of which is easier said than done of course. Tackling any one of these imperatives would be difficult enough. Finding ways to adopt all three presents a formidable challenge, not least because the customary ways for administering human affairs have shifted responsibilities to others. Deliberately reframing our thinking to escape the gravitational pull of the past will demand an expansive emancipation of mind, liberation from obsolete ideologies and dogma, and a collective, progressive and audacious awakening to higher levels of consciousness concerning our shared purpose.

Changing behavioural patterns is relatively easy. We do it all the time. Government policies, corporate marketing and public relations campaigns all effectively play on our desires or fears in order to manipulate how we behave. But whereas most present-day marketing efforts are commercially orientated, using psychology to escalate consumerism - even where prosperity without economic growth would be a more sane goal in today’s circumstances - we are failing to use those same mechanisms to endorse the reduction, re-use and recycling of our most precious resources. Clearly much has still to be done even in that regard. But changing our underlying beliefs is far more difficult.

Ultimately though, permanent behavioural change will stem from the structural redesign of our most life-critical systems – particularly those in which human beings interface with nature and with each other. It is often forgotten that all systems are perfectly designed to get the results they get. That is why natural systems remain so resilient.

The problem is that none of our social systems have been designed to consciously evolve. We are, quite literally, trapped in the past. That is precisely why our thinking has to change. In effect we must become architects of our own evolution rather than pawns in a game we assume to be controlled by others.

The inevitable transition to cleaner, low-carbon sources of energy (like solar and hydrogen for example) together with the use of smarter, more efficient, distributed networks that reduce the amount of energy we use, will eventually enable the complete eradication of toxic fuels. At the same time the industries spawned from this transition will generate untold wealth. Designing a sustainable and secure food system capable of providing nourishment for seven billion people or more is also desirable – and readily achievable. Re-engineering the fundamentals of the global economy to eradicate waste, promote equity and protect the resources we all share is also realistic.

But there is a catch. Before the trapeze artist leaps into space he must step off the platform on which he is standing. Systemic reinventions of this nature requires a strategic, emotional and “transcendent” commitment to the new story in addition to an appreciation of systemic design that is rare, so devoid of integral intelligence has our conditioning become.

In terms of systemic design and renewal there are two crucial keys to success. Both rely on our capacity and willingness to reframe our notions about what really matters, to boldly step into new ways of knowing and being, and to openly engage with others in that metamorphosis.

The first key is the ability to imagine and communicate an alternative social “meme” (together with compelling narratives) that supersedes more utilitarian goals – at least encompassing happiness, love and compassion in healthier balance with material wealth and well-being. This key unlocks hope and restores fairness. The second key is the ability to elude the curse of knowledge that traps us in an industrial past and allows us to make significantly different choices about the future. This key unlocks a sense of new possibilities and restores trust.

Unfettering an economy based on value exchange in the context of abundance (rather than one of compounding debt in a framework of financial scarcity, for example) could emancipate new forms of enterprise employing many more people than today’s sunset industries. Using renewable sources of energy to establish industrial ecologies that transform and adapt to a warming planet is far wiser than defending the past in an attempt to protect that which could destroy us. [Industry lobbyists take note!] Likewise, accessing peer-to-peer digital media to invite the collective expression of policies and even constitutions (instead of putting our faith in the increasingly detached whims of a few elected representatives) might provide a platform for a far more democratic and empathic society. And so on…

Such strategic choices become possible because of the most fundamental shift in human history: the emergence of a mode of inventiveness (comprising intelligence, foresight and wisdom) that allows new ways of being, thinking and doing to be envisaged and, through cooperation and invention, to be attained.

No doubt humanity can flourish. But only if we learn to transcend obsolete beliefs and fears to engage in deeper conversations that (i) include all salient features of the system we desire to create, (ii) anticipate the intended and unintended consequences of those desires, and (iii) lift the human spirit out of the mire of believing the past cannot be surpassed and that our situation is dire and will only get worse.

In facing a range of complex dilemmas it does us no good to continue to deny the truth. The global outlook is tense. Natural disasters, the spiraling cost of food, geo-political conflict and the collapse of natural systems all seem to herald an end-game in which the extinction of our species is conceivable. We are witness to cascading failures in the systems that support life. Family incomes are being squeezed. We try to do more with less. Politicians focus on trivia. Simple things seem not to work as well as they once did. We fret about how best to survive the present even though we care passionately about the planet and our children’s future.

Yet the solution is in our own hands. Burying our heads in the sand and ignoring reality will not help. Quarantining ourselves from reality we begin to lose the thread of affiliation that otherwise nourishes and sustains us. We cannot isolate ourselves from the truth however hard we might try. It only aggravates our anxieties.

Over a century ago an ambitious geo-engineering project was implemented. Responding to a major planetary issue of the time two German scientists, Haber and Bosch, made nitrogen-rich fertilizer available to farmers, thus significantly increasing the annual amount of nitrogen fixed on land. The unintended consequences were catastrophic: the human population mushroomed exponentially.

But having created the problem we must live with it. By participating in the actuality of our predicament we can restore hope while exploring practical pathways into the future. Our starting point is not the changing of a light bulb nor the purchasing of a more fuel-efficient car. On the contrary renewal begins with a sense of responsibility to each other and to the planet. Re-envisaging a new purpose for humanity must now become our prime goal. We must think big for a change.

Science Friction

Today we welcome to the program, Dr Nick Mitchell, founding director of the Integral Science Academy, Nobel Prize winner and Australia’s Chief Scientist to hear about his life, ideas and concerns. Welcome to the program Nick. Your team has just made a breakthrough in solving one of our major environmental problems. You’ve been partying I hear?

You bet. Even scientists let their hair down occasionally you know. I mean, in a six-way race against Europe’s affluent Monsanto empire, a Chinese conglomerate funded by that zany billionaire guy who recently acquired Glaxo Smith-Kline, and three boutique global alliances, it was our team that cracked the jackpot! Yes, of course we celebrated.

It’s meant a lot of hard work and plenty of travel for you and your associates.

Yes indeed. Professor Lin Lynn, one of our most eminent hydrologists and the former chair of the Cooperative Research Centre in Water Futures at Tehran University, and I have spent most of our time during the past three years coordinating the work of our various team leaders - Hiromi in Tokyo, Bob here in Canberra, Vivek in Mumbai, June and Tammy in Boston. I still hate travelling, as Lin would have told you, so I work from Canberra whenever possible, using the resources of the Decision Theater at ANU where I also have a Chair. The air hammocks on Singapore Airworld are quite comfortable I suppose but, unlike Lin, I’ve never been able to sleep in an upright position. I also avoid taking any melatonin you see, so when the lid closes I get this awful sense of claustrophobia. Anyway it’s been a race against time. Our funds were fast drying up. But now we’re on the verge of announcing a solution to one of the world’s most formidable ecological problems.

Nick, before you tell us about that perhaps I should explain to our listeners that we’re talking about salinity. Your desalination process has been successfully tested on some of the world’s most hypersaline areas with unprecedented success.

Yes. Actually the desalination process is only part of the solution. The real breakthrough arose when we married our nano-membrane desalinator (the technology) with “keyline” design principles (the philosophy) and applied this to specific tracts of land identified with the help of detailed intelligence from NRI in Canberra. It was the combination of these things that allowed us to achieve quite extraordinary results.

The success will mean massive profits for your sponsors, Nippon Chemicals & Chemnet and incalculable kudos for you and your team. 

That’s correct. Also Vivek’s Research Institute in India and CSIRO here in Australia are likely to reap a bonanza in funding through their strategic partnership with Hoechst. In fact it’s probably the difference between surviving or not for Vivek. So he is over the moon, as you can imagine. Our sponsors are looking at a return on their original investment of something approaching 800% over the next decade.

For a while there it looked as though salinity was the one environmental problem we would not be able to solve. By 2025, dry land salinity had claimed almost 18 per cent of our cultivated land. Salt in Adelaide’s drinking water, where my parents still live, had reached the World Health Organization’s maximum safety levels. It was shocking.  

There have been many costly attempts to remedy salinity of course. Possibly the biggest disappointment was the massive and costly Wonthaggi plant that started up in 2012 which was supposed to have had an initial capacity of 410 megalitres a day. Successive governments, as you know, have ploughed more and more money into promising initiatives. I guess they’ve all helped to some extent. Who knows what proportion of our land would be lost without these efforts? But you are correct in that none of them have really cracked the problem in the long-term - until now.

Why do you think that was Nick? What is it in our thinking that focuses on short-term expediency rather than the long-term future?  

Oh, hold on. You’re putting words into my mouth. And I can’t accept the proposition that we ignore the long view. Today’s science is a fast moving body of knowledge and we are always finding new ways of combining different aspects of science to create more viable solutions to problems. You’ve only to look at history. It doesn’t matter how tough the problem, science always finds a way of dealing with it. It is this scientific capability that is so beneficial to society.

Can you give our listeners some concrete examples?

Sure. Remember 2008 when we decided to de-stock much of the interior of sheep and cattle on advice from CSIRO researchers? That worked very well in the region and it certainly allowed the recovery of some arid-zone ecosystems and increased organic matter in soils.  

As I recall Nick, the social impact on the families who had farmed these lands for generations was calamitous.

Well it’s true we really hadn’t given that side of things much thought. But we’re scientists, not sociologists. We can’t be held accountable for non-scientific problems. And solve scientific problems we do. Take the “daughterless” project for example. In 2010, the introduction of the latest research from leading gene technologists in the UK enabled Aussie farmers to use various anti-fertility techniques, including an immunosterilisation technique known as “daughterless”, to control pests ranging from mice to cane toads.  You must remember that? It created quite a hullabaloo in the press. It was very successful.

I do remember that Nick.  But I also seem to recall that, although the situation improved for a while, there were some problems associated with these techniques spreading to domestic animals.

Well, yes that was a surprise for us. All of the experimental research indicated that the cross-species transference would be within tolerable limits and would not have a widespread impact on total populations. We are learning that the application of controlled research on a wide scale can have unforeseen impacts. But we always find a solution – just as we did through the development and application of hormone implants in the females of reproductive age. This also helped overcome normal sterility. So I think you’ll agree that the benefits in this case have far outweighed the costs, and produced a valuable new industry for Australia. The sale of implants and implant expertise has reinvigorated several country towns and created a budding new Australian export industry. And there are many other new experiments continuing to show similar promise for the sustainability of the Australian rural sector.

Why don’t we hear much about these experiments? Surely the community has a right to engage in serious debate about such issues, just as scientists have an obligation to explain to us the options we have as a society – especially when it comes to new technologies? How can we the public trust the experts if we aren’t included in the conversation?

It is a challenge for science – to hold back research and implementation when we know there are benefits because we need to engage the community first. I guess scientists are more interested in the science and solving problems than in trying to market our work to the community. There is so much to be done.  Spending precious time persuading government and commercial sponsors to put money up for research is bad enough. They certainly won’t entertain the funding of pure research nowadays. There always has to be a commercial outcome to raise any interest at all. So I guess we’ve learned to keep our business out of the public eye until we’re certain it works. 

Surely you run a great risk in not including non-scientists in the process?

There are calculated risks in everything we do. I don’t see how including non-scientists can really achieve much other than slowing the process down. Science is difficult for some people to understand. Scientific research is complex work. That is why we have experts. What good does it do to try to explain this to ordinary people? Aren’t we better to find the solutions and then present them to people? Overall I believe the community is interested in our results and the benefits from scientific research. All of our technological developments, scientific breakthroughs, health and aging...  All of these are due to the work of our scientists. I’ll agree that we need to communicate better. But it is a perennial dilemma I’m afraid, and one that our commercial backers are not really prepared to fund. Its solutions they demand - not public relations. Look, scientists have tried hundreds of things that you won’t necessarily have heard about. Take feral pests for instance. Wild cats, rabbits, cane toads…  Now there’s a problem. We’ve trying everything we know to combat that one. Your airwaves would be clogged if we talked about every approach that we’ve ever tried!

But in spite of all these efforts, the cane toad problem today is far worse than it’s ever been!  

Indeed. It is proving to be a diabolical problem. But there are promising research indications that the borscevits strain of blood sucking insects imported from Antigua might combat the growing plague.  There are a number of other promising approaches each looking at specific aspects such as diet, predators and habitat. It is a difficult issue but I’m optimistic that we will find an answer sooner or later. You must remember that we’ve achieved an enormous amount during the past 25 years. I’m thinking of organic fertilisers, satellite resource intelligence, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy... The public recognises the value of robust science, and when provided with good evidence will support it. They will even change their minds about some things.  Remember the public outcry in the first decade of the new millennium over genetically modified foods! Most fresh produce and processed foods are genetically modified now. The initial public outcry was just because people were misinformed – they didn’t have all the facts. Greenies on a mission, I always said! We have to be realistic. People can rely on science to provide huge benefits for society. For example, we’ve enriched oilseed with omega-3 fatty acids to ward off cardiovascular disease and created drought-resistant cereals. It’s all environmentally benign agriculture naturally. What’s more Australia is now recognised as one of the most efficient producers of GM foods in the world. Where would we be without those exports!  

I’ve always understood that the shift away from intensive farming techniques in 2005, coupled with the complete ban on the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in livestock, was really just following the lead set by the EU in 2004?

That is partly true. This policy actually came about as a result of pressure from the EU. They asked the WTO to examine the legality of Australia’s strict quarantine regulations, claiming the process was nothing more than disguised protectionism. That was a difficult one for the Minister as she had to squeeze free trade and Australia’s “clean and green” image into the same quarantine bottle!  Then there was the BSE outbreak in the EU, you’ll recall.  All was well for a time, although it was a bit of a balancing act. But there were good scientific reasons for the use of antibiotics, as was proven by the particularly nasty outbreak of Salmonella poisoning that led to the collapse of the Australian pork industry. Now everyone is eating GM soybean that looks and tastes like pork. So it has found public acceptance now – thanks to another scientific discovery that created another Australian industry and saved a whole community.

Now that everything in our lives is so commercial (even scientific research and technology is motivated by short-term profit) how does your Institute find funding to work on those projects that may be less commercial, but socially desirable? How do you fund the work you are doing in Africa, for example.

As I said before, there is no such thing as pure scientific research these days.  There are simply no resources available for things like that, unless you can find a private benefactor of course. The people who get the grants are those that large corporations will back. So we are forced to focus on the more commercial outcomes of our work. This becomes a barrier when commercial profit is finite. Our African project is a good example. We’ve been using a combination of gene cloning and biomimicry techniques to try and find solutions to some of Africa’s most scary health problems. This is leading-edge stuff. Historically there has been no money available for this kind of thing because those people most in need, African peasants, can’t afford to pay for the solution. When profit is the only motive it is inevitable that society as a whole suffers.  And they demand profits – they don’t sense a responsibility to provide health care for Africans. These days the only way to work on these problems is when political will bows to the pragmatic entrepreneur – in this case the Gates-Buffet Foundation, which has a record of assisting the world’s poor.

And yet, isn’t it ironic that if account were taken of our rampant use of polluting fossil fuels, industrialized countries would have totted up an environmental debt of around one thousand billion dollars to the highly indebted poor nations, such as those in Africa.

Yes indeed, it doesn’t make sense does it? But on a more positive note, those countries have also benefited from the science. Increasingly, globalization has brought new industry, new crops and new water technologies to poorer countries. So they are benefiting too. And the salinity project will eventually have spin-offs for the drought stricken countries of the third world. Now that we have a commercial solution and are in production, the technology will become more widely available. I understand negotiations are currently underway to begin production of the nanomembrane in several developing countries.

Nick, now that the salinity project is coming to a conclusion, at least from a research point of view, can you tell us what is next in the pipeline?

I feel an obligation to help reverse the decision that was made way back in 2015 when a meeting of some of the world’s leading scientists in Luxembourg voted to abandon the so-called “precautionary principle” that has guided scientific endeavor for the past couple of centuries. 

Why did they take this risk?  

At the time most scientists, and politicians for that matter, felt a need to focus all available resources and energy on a massive effort to overcome the planet’s worst environmental and health problems. We needed solutions and we needed them fast. Remember global warming and pollution had become a real threat by then. In Australia we’d already lost the battle to save the Great Barrier Reef and salinity was considered a lost cause. So there was nothing to lose and everything to gain.  

Was there any single factor informing that decision?

It depends upon your point of view. It’s true that from around 2030 the various forms of human cloning and stem cell farming being practiced precipitated a few problems we hadn’t foreseen. One of these was a new family of mutant viruses. As usual, the alarmist media hype backed the scientific community into a corner and I think it was the reaction of some prominent scientists to that issue which resulted in the Luxembourg decision. A few skeptics warned of dire consequences. But scientists have always had immense confidence in robust science. We know that science can solve most of the world’s problems - sooner or later. And at the time I think we genuinely thought that these few instances arose from a small number of research projects that turned out not to be as sound as we had thought. If the science is sound, then the risk is small. Unfortunately though, it seems that many of the solutions adopted, especially by some small commercially minded labs in the Eastern European Union and the US, weren’t adequately tested before being brought into use. The commercial pressure to get to market, together with the releasing of controls…  Well, as you can see I think it was a bad decision. As a result a few chronic ailments have emerged that we don’t fully understand. And there are some outbreaks of old diseases, like hepatitis C, for example, that have come back to haunt us in new guises. But there are numerous research projects focusing on these issues and I am confident that we will crack them very shortly.

Doesn’t that mean that abandoning the “precautionary principle” was rather reckless?

I don’t know that it was reckless. I think at the time that we thought it was an acceptable risk. The need for the solutions was so great - remember we were faced with very big environmental and health problems. And initial research findings were so promising. You’re right that there were instances where we were proven wrong. But you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.  

I’m not sure that Janine Field, the Fox News journalist who contracted a new form of hepatitis, despite being inoculated before an assignment in Afghanistan, would agree with you – or the thousands of people who took the same Merck vaccine in good faith.

Yes this was an unfortunate instance, but I don’t think you can blame science for this one. I understand that Ms Field has sued Merck & Co, who made the vaccine and that they recalled batches of ineffective hepatitis in pre-filled syringes in March. You’ll recall that the suit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, claims Merck "negligently manufactured, distributed and sold the recalled vaccine which provided absolutely no protection against the disease"..  So let’s be quite clear, this is obviously the result of poor manufacturing and quality control, not poor science.  That said, I do believe that the commercial pressure on science now to get to market quickly, and the removal of controls over production and distribution of scientific products, allows for less than desirable practices. I would like to see some control over those things, to put the brakes on just a little so that situations like this don’t happen.

And on the environmental front we are still left with impending ecological disaster if we don’t act quickly?

Yes. Things do go in cycles don’t they? 

So what’s the answer?

The attack on scientific expertise is insidious as it is an attack on excellence and rational thinking per se. We must remember that science is impartial and objective. It is the only logical basis we have for decision-making. So attacking science gets us nowhere. I guess I would advocate a more rational approach and a return to the past in terms of the “precautionary principle”. Now is the time to be providing the time and the frameworks for sound scientific research, reinforcing the need for robust thinking, and sufficient testing. We need to ensure good science, not undermine all science.

But do we have the luxury of time to be so cautious?

Possibly not. But I really know of no better way.

Dr Nick Mitchell, thanks so much for your time today. And as for your exotic viruses project, I’m sure our listeners empathize with your efforts to help the world’s poor in ways that contribute to their quality of life. Good luck.  

Next week on this program we will be talking to NASA scientist James Goode about his work on the self-repairing chemical lasers currently deployed in the Earth’s atmosphere to protect us from the terrorist activities of rogue states. This is Harry Drummond signing off for today. Take care and stay happy…

 

 

Garden Under Glass

Do you remember how it felt?

How could I ever forget? I felt such sheer disbelief that it was actually happening. I breathed in the deepest breath and watched intently as the skin covering the first sector of my Earth Dome peeled away, exposing real air and natural sky. I recall wondering if things would now return to how they used to be – the way my grandmother used to describe her life “outside”.

You must remember that most of my thirty-seven years have been spent in the Lithgow Earth Dome just west of Sydney’s Blue Mountains. So, like you, I’ve been isolated from the real world by a thin film of plastic for most of my adult life. I do vaguely recall playing with my friends on Coogee beach and how good the sand felt between my toes. That was before the Domes spread like wild mushrooms in the decade from 2020 and the environment became increasingly more hostile to life as temperatures soared and sea levels rose by up to 85 centimeters. 

In the years following the Johannesburg Convention on Sustainability, which my grandma had attended in her capacity as a senior manager with the Australian Conservation Foundation, scientists’ inability to make significant inroads into the unrelenting environmental damage meant that a new approach was badly needed.  Faced with such evidence, the global scientific community persuaded an alliance of 100 multinational corporations and 128 countries to sign the landmark Beijing Earth Monitor Convention in 2015. This Convention established a program to map the socio-ecological systems at work on the planet and to convene joint action in using that knowledge to intervene appropriately in the global environmental system. 

As with earlier multilateral accords and treaties, signing it was one thing, getting underway another. Turning international agreement into international action was not a speedy process. There was no real infrastructure, no common understanding of systemic methodologies and they were pitted against the inevitable interference from individual vested interests. Companies still had to make a profit; nations still needed the support of their citizens…  What’s that saying about nothing changing the more change there is?

Creating a giant computerized earth model to enable this understanding and provide a certain degree of predictability didn’t come cheap, even then. For a long time it didn’t look like it would get off the ground, especially after the scandals surrounding the collapse of the Japanese-based Earth Simulator 1.2 in 2008. I mean, where is the profit in that kind of scientific endeavor? Who would be likely to fund the future of the Earth? 

As a kid growing up in Australia I felt lucky in many respects. I know it sounds crazy but we were far better placed than most as we were among the first to experience total environmental collapse. Being located directly under the massive breach in the ozone layer meant that our environment was one of the first to feel the pain of climatic volatility and therefore one of the first to take action. I can still feel the scorching heat of the sun on my back to this day. That’s something I can never forget.

How did you get involved in the Pandora Project?

That’s a long story. Let’s go back a few steps. In spite of the optimism surrounding the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which had focused on reducing the consumption of chlorofluorocarbons, the actual impact on the atmosphere was too slow. Most people were distracted by the global warming debate. But while that was certainly serious most people hadn’t spotted the other danger. Combined with a build-up of sulphuric acid droplets emanating from a succession of unexpected volcanic eruptions from Japan in the north to Antarctica in the south in the early years of the century the ozone layer all but disappeared over vast tracts of the southern hemisphere when I was growing up. That, combined with surging melanoma cases arising from greatly increased levels of ultraviolet radiation, the longest drought in Australian history, 25 per cent of our most valuable agricultural land lost to salinity and the devastating bush fires, floods, hurricanes and violent storms that characterized the first two decades of the new millennium, meant there was more pain, more urgency for a solution on this part of the planet.

Traumatized, federal and state governments refused to change deeply flawed policy settings. Funding for scientific agencies continued to decline as a proportion of national spending. Desperate to get their message across, scientists forged an alliance across agencies and took the issue to the corporate sector. Surprisingly, the response was positive. At last scientists realized they were not alone. 

My own involvement was more personal. It arose out of my mum’s death from melanoma, from my apprenticeship as a cinematographer working with James Cameron in Santa Monica after I graduated from the Australian Film, Television & Radio School, and from a chance meeting with members of The Constellation. I’d better explain. 

At the turn of the century just across the Tasman a burgeoning new industry was catalzsing public action like nothing before it. Filmmaker Peter Jackson had chosen New Zealand’s magnificent scenery as the backdrop for his Lord of the Rings trilogy. This inadvertently spawned a “back to nature” movement as filmmakers and audiences alike escaped into the grandeur of these ancient landscapes.

Then came along Avatar in 2010. James Cameron’s use of three-dimensional digital imaging combined with his mythic story-telling capacity and concern for nature and humanity, created a new sensitivity focused on our mutual responsibilities to each other and to all living beings. As more and more people started taking the precarious future and timeless beauty of our planet personally, scientists and artists joined ranks, determined to guide the rest of us into a future characterized by abundance and well-being. Meanwhile Jim Cameron had already started working with The Constellation, a global community of thought leaders, systems practitioners and institutions committed to evolving the art, science and craft of leadership. Using his expertise in visualizing complex information, Cameron joined forces with The Constellation to build the initial web of highly networked immersive “decision theaters” in Tempe, Chennai, Johannesburg, Tokyo, Canberra, Beijing and the Hague. These early locations were deliberately chosen so as to capture different cultural inflections and attitudes within the shared knowledge base. From this unlikely genesis blossomed the Pandora Project, the first authentically global quest aimed at environmental and social renewal.

As you will recall the arts industry worldwide swung into action. Musicians, DJs, filmmakers, performance artists, multimedia production, PR and merchandising departments now had dual imperatives: to make money and to conserve nature. What had been altruistic before now achieved a legitimacy that altered everything.

Inexplicably, the environment became the cause célèbre once again for a groundswell of international passion. Back home, national interest was clear. Not only were these ancient landscapes beautiful, they were vital to our future economic and social development. As an idealistic 18 year old I was certainly intent on doing what I could to change people’s notions of what was possible. That is when I was invited to become a systems modeller with the Australian decision theater at the ANU in Canberra. I leaped at the chance naturally.

With burgeoning public and corporate support for environmental action and money forthcoming from the arts and entertainment industry, the way was clear for some creative thinking about the future of our planet. In Australia and New Zealand the Social and Environmental Systems Trust [ANZSEST] was formed and I was invited into their youth network. We worked together in the decision theater, always sharing our thinking and progress with colleagues in the other centres. Armed with AI-enhanced systems thinking tools, sophisticated virtual reality depictions of a range of alternative futures, and a great deal of focused energy, ANZEST worked with The Constellation to commission action-research projects that would lead to alternative environmental knowledge. Some of these paid off handsomely. And of course it all made for great cinema as both the landscapes and the human and scientific processes of understanding and conserving them for future generations now grabbed the public’s attention. It was the new form of “reality TV” – not quite documentary, not quite fiction. Voyeurism with a lesson…

Our first program, which was also our first success, exemplified new thinking on a small scale. Taking a radically different “integral” approach to salinity (by mapping the interconnected social, aesthetic, spiritual, economic and environmental factors that had given rise to both predictable and emergent consequences) our eco-engineers were able to design alternative strategies to address what was previously thought to be beyond human capability to solve. From this extraordinary initiative, the notion of integral sustainability was born, complete with patented products and processes. At last there was real money to be made by conserving natural resources. 

Having confirmed the validity of the whole-of-system approach in agriculture, ANZEST turned its attention to industrial and urban development. Using design criteria derived from industrial ecology, EcoPark (Australia’s first eco-industrial park) was established in the new bush lands around Canberra. This first no-waste industrial and community development provided the focus, capital and a working model for other projects. Another new industry, Whole Systems Eco-Design, had been invented which went on, as you know, to work hand-in-glove with the Carbon War Room in Washington.

By that stage you had become a member of ANZEST’s Youth Board?

Yes. I was eighteen years old and the youngest member by far! ANZEST realized it was still only tinkering at the edges of what was possible. Decision theater processes and technologies gave us insights into altogether different realities. It was an amazing adventure. These early programs in the Pandora Project were powerful examples of strategic invention but they still didn’t address the deepening problems associated with climatic volatility and global warming. Sea levels continued to rise and by 2030 scientists were battling it on two fronts – one dealing with the present (through the Earth Domes) the second working at a global level as part of the Whole Earth Model Consortium, aimed at mapping, understanding and modelling the planet as a single living system.

Of these two initiatives the Earth Domes was straightforward enough, at least from a scientific viewpoint. Learning from the Eden Project, a dome large enough for a whole city of around two million people was designed and constructed outside Hamilton. The still larger Lithgow Dome followed soon after and the stage was set for the ANZSEST Dome Construction Consortium’s international expansion. Managing the microclimate within each of the Domes was simple. Lessons from Earth Simulator 3.5 enabled reliable cybernetic modelling at this small scale.

It didn’t take long for the gloss to wear off did it? 

I guess managing the social interactions of people is beyond current scientific understanding. More so than, say, technology. People just aren’t as predictable. So sometimes it worked. But mostly it didn’t. Even so for most Domies it became a whole lot better than living rough outside on the planet’s unprotected surface. Much of the earth had become far too parched to sustain human life in those days.

And that created another set of issues. 

Yes. Those unable to afford a Domicile weren’t particularly happy. They thought it aggressively elitist in an otherwise egalitarian society. Security for the Domies became a huge issue. At first it was only a minor inconvenience, but as life on the “outside” became more uncomfortable, antagonism toward the Domies grew. At Lithgow we needed constant surveillance to ensure the integrity of the Dome. Inside, too, where the melting pot of different cultures and values all existing under the same roof caused one hassle after another!

Life in other parts of the planet was even worse of course, especially in Africa and South America where people still had no choice but to cope with the lack of drinking water and plummeting oxygen levels in the large cities. Sadly the social volatility in these regions rivals environmental issues in their complexity. The swine-flu pandemic of 2025, followed closely by widespread famine from the dumping of inert GM seed stock, greatly exacerbated already fragile political and social systems across Africa. The push to connect Africa into the global telenet in the 2030’s as a way of improving education and keeping teenagers in their home countries also had unintended consequences. 

People were now able to see even more clearly the inequality that existed between different communities. It’s difficult to live with such obvious social injustices. Yet nobody could hope to deliver on the demands for greater material wealth increasingly heard from those poor people. Not even today, using the most sophisticated systemic modelling mechanisms are we able to solve such ingrained problems. What we really need is a whole-of-system solution for Africa. Sadly, we have wiped our hands and walked away. Our only answer has been to quarantine the whole continent. In so doing, the developed world has knowingly condemned its inhabitants to isolation and ultimate ruin. But we cannot seem to find the reverse gear!

The gap between the rich and the poor gave rise to the age of terror ecology?

Yes. As if all of this wasn’t chaotic enough, a new brand of horror surfaced. Frustrated by years of ineffective pro-environmental activism and armed with a new systemic awareness, Greenwar, a breakaway group from within Greenpeace, began to employ a new form of activism - terror ecology. Devotees of Stuart Kauffman’s philosophy, that networks near the edge of chaos have the flexibility to adjust at an accelerated rate and trigger cascades of change, they took radical action to shift the environment into a state of chaos.

Their mantra “chaos for the planet” became a powerful attractor. 

It certainly did. The movement grew quickly, attracting not only other true believers, including many of my closest friends, but also systemic misfits looking for a home.  Here was a purpose that appeared to resonate strongly with the depressive death cults so common amongst disaffected young people at the time. For others I suppose it was just another opportunity to indulge in the latest “extreme sport” and live their life on the edge.

Greenwar’s opening gambit had been to nuke a number of oil fields in the Gulf of Thailand. Following that early success, more ambitious targets were identified.  Within days a number of major oil refineries across the globe had been bombed. The devastation wreaked was terrible. But the real shock was how slowly political systems responded. After half a century of non-violent activism, it was difficult for politicians to come to terms with the fact that this new wave of terrorism emanated from within the environmental movement itself.

Market reaction was much faster of course, as it always has been. Although solar had become the main source of powering the cities, oil, coal and gas was still in plentiful supply for those who could afford it. Suddenly the use of fossil fuels dropped by 80 per cent almost overnight as supplies dried up and people rapidly moved to adopt the substitute alternatives that had been waiting in the wings for over half a century.  Thankfully most manufacturers were still profit driven and were able to gear up production relatively quickly. 

Overall, the impact was to create further instability in the system. This provided yet another powerful reason to “go under glass” into an environment that was safer and more secure. Construction of Earth Domes accelerated apace. Within ten years, thirty domes had been completed on high ground in Australia and New Zealand alone, offering a safe alternative to chaotic environments and a new social life as the promotional material so compellingly claimed.

Social disruption didn’t disappear though.

No, in fact it was probably aggravated further if the truth were known. For a start, the Domes couldn’t house everyone so security became a continuing issue. Life inside the Domes wasn’t so easy either. Many became a hotbed of frustration and elitism rather than the safe cocoon we had originally envisaged. Soon strict regulations governed who could live in the Dome, and what happened inside them.  Even then it was still much better than living “outside”.

What was the biggest challenge for you?

Undoubtedly tackling the Whole Earth Model. For all of us in the Pandora Project this was the really big issue and it was an altogether different ball game. It was too big, too complex and too chaotic for humans to fully understand. Many of our envoys genuinely believed we would need to postpone work until super humans could address the challenge. Seriously!

The creation of a hybrid species of superhuman was becoming a force to be reckoned with. In laboratories all over China competing environmental programs were well underway...

Absolutely. One such program entailed the harnessing of Artificial Intelligence and materials science to create super-intelligent beings. In this way, or so it was thought, we would come to understand the universe differently and develop a new appreciation of the world that might transcend our current, limited beliefs. 

Another program in competition with ours entailed the establishment of a Living Earth Model by a Chinese-Indian-Pakistani consortium. A designated regional system was marked out in economically depressed north western China, including Tibet and stretching down into the Punjab region that had been inundated by the floods of 2010, using its people and ecosystems as a giant real-time systems laboratory. While viewed sceptically by many of my more rationally minded colleagues, the aim was to monitor and test large system events, trends and interventions within a designated area and map the resulting causal loops to gain a greater understanding of cause and consequence.

My close friend Zhou Huiching was a Causal Mapper for the project. She claimed it was more accurate than the computer modelling of our Whole Earth Model and I tend to agree with her. What she began to notice was that serendipitous and watershed events weren’t coincidence. They appeared to have a mappable pattern and sequence to them, based on the levels of connectivity and behaviors in the region.

What Huiching still couldn’t get her head around, though, were the outcomes of behavior or action past about the fourth order of consequence. Her analytical tools just couldn’t hold that level of complexity and variability. This is where our machine models had it over her team. By that stage, though, we were all really just guessing what was going to happen, without much basis in fact.

You’ve been quite sceptical about American science.

Since the US started its decline at the beginning of the century, the vibrancy of innovation in science and technology has diminished considerably. The US still spends far too much on military protectionism and “selfish” science and very little on the environment. It’s so macho, such a wank! It’s all been funded by the conservative baby boomers, after all. They’ve put significant scientific effort into extending life, maintaining youth, cheating death...  Many aging baby boomers were even making deposits to Genetic Savings & Clone and spending their money on re-creating their pets. It’s all quite bizarre. Only in America, as they say!

So ANZSEST persevered against these odds? 

We couldn’t just give up. In the race to find workable solutions, the consortium deployed millions of nanosensors across Australia and New Zealand designed to measure every aspect of the biosphere. This provided the indispensable data needed to run simulations through the Whole Earth Model. The Grid – a third generation Internet system designed specifically to handle large amounts of data at phenomenal speeds – was requisitioned to connect interested non-aligned agencies all over the world. Gradually, clues as to a sustainable working model began to surface. It was an exciting time.

Yet, even at this stage, the project was plagued by uncertainties. 

Unfortunately that’s right. Competing views on what systems methodology to use, problems with Google’s Earth Monitor software, and escalating pressure on the consortium due to increasingly frequent environmental disasters, conspired to undermine effective decision-making. We also had scalability and interoperability problems with the data we were using. Our monitors were placed over a relatively small test area and it was impossible to create boundaries sufficient to remove systemic interference from the rest of the planet.

Progress slowed as we became bogged down in bureaucratic trivia. At times it seemed as though we were getting even further away from creating a really systemic appreciation of interacting human systems. Each time the Consortium’s lead scientists thought they had a viable solution within their grasp, something else (like Greenwar atrocities, for example) popped up to hinder our work and perturb the system further.  Was it chaos at work, or just too complex for us to understand just yet?  None of us could really say.

But we persisted. By 2040 a working model was up and running. Incomplete, but robust enough... Or so we thought. What we had not envisaged was the impact on our project from jettisoning other forms of knowledge. Remember we had started in an integral space. But by 2045 a global model was developed in which rationality and science prevailed. We had come to know how the world’s environmental system actually worked. We had the proof we needed. It was now clear what needed to be done in order to manage the system. The evidence was irrefutable and our scientists were euphoric. I remember the Board meeting…

But that’s when things started to go badly wrong?

Yes, at the height of our elation. Ironically, no sooner had the new policies been deployed than glitches started appearing in the system. The temperature started to fall.  The ice caps began to re-form. Huge numbers of the nanosensors began to “drop out” of the satellite navigation grid for no rational reason. Others showed up in the strangest of places.

What was happening? Had Greenwar finally inspired a systemic snapback? Had we reached a new equilibrium? Or was this the lull before the storm, the beginning of the end for the Whole Earth Model? The conversations in our network went haywire! Decision theaters all around the world were being used 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Nothing in the model could explain the wild fluctuations that were now occurring at an increasingly inexplicable rate. Even with the sophistication of the model, the ubiquitous nature of the biosensors, and the vast amounts of technological and logistics support, we still couldn’t quite manage it all.

Who first realized what was happening?

Actually it was a few activists, members of the arts community, like myself, who first grasped the unintended consequences - a few ordinary citizens saw what was actually happening. I well remember Amanda Lucas, George Lucas’s daughter, pointing out that there were so many nanosensors that they were like dust clouds forming a UV shield reflecting the sun’s rays back into space. And she was right! Originally, you see, the scientists assumed they’d only need the sensors for around ten years, so they programmed and powered them for this lifespan. But as the nanobots aged they decommissioned, and without adequate propelling and locating sensors they swarmed, gluing together forming vapor clouds in the atmosphere that blocked out the sunlight.

Once the scientists understood what was happening, they just packed up and prepared for Armageddon. They could manage global warming. But this? The planet, many believed, would just “cook”. Fortunately the decline in fossil fuel consumption was actually reducing the total amount of heat generated on the planet. The Earth Domes and EcoParks were containing a significant amount of the heat generated. Far from creating an insulating blanket, the “nanoclouds” were acting as a heat regulator, transferring heat away from the atmosphere and acting as a kind of planetary thermostat. It was uncanny – something nobody could have predicted.

We’ve now come full circle almost.  The Domes are being dismantled even as we speak.

Yes. As the environment began to stabilize, pressure mounted on councils to remove the Domes. For many Domies, the need for the Earth Domes became not so great.  They had served their purpose after all. For some, the sanitized environments are simply too safe a haven to leave. They still cannot bring themselves to trust living in the open air again.  For still others, it is all they have ever known especially now that there is such social control within some Domes. There is safety in the scientifically controlled environments and they do not want to envisage anything else.

Any regrets?

No, not as far as I’m concerned. Oh, I would love to have seen my grandma’s face as we removed the skins at Lithgow. But for me, for my partner and for our children, the adventure is just beginning.  We can breathe fresh air again. And I can’t wait to feel the sand between my toes.

Days of Miracles and Wonders

Are you quite sure you don’t mind giving this interview? 

I turned my attention to the monitor, or more precisely, to the young woman on it. She was new to Al Jazirra and had obviously been told I rarely gave interviews.  Following the Great Crisis of 2037, all unnecessary media contact by Academicians had been tacitly discouraged. 

I smiled. 

No, of course not. 

The young woman glanced down at her notes and cleared her throat. The red studio light blinked ON AIR.

Today we are pleased to welcome to the program one of our most eminent integral philosophers, Kazim Khalili.  Kazim, your mother sought asylum in Australia in 1999 having fled the Taliban. You never knew your father who was shot by the regime for adhering to liberal ideals. You were born, and spent your early years, in a detention centre in South Australia. Your release from detention came just before Christmas 2004 in a widely-publicised effort by the federal government to assuage growing concern in the community about conditions in those centres. Traumatised, you hadn’t spoken a single word while captive. Your first words were, ‘Wire not here. Is Kazim here?’  You were four. Your face, dubbed the ‘Face of Hope’ by journalists, became known to millions around the world.

Forty six years later and your life still remains something of a mystery.  Last year you were Time Magazine’s ‘Face of the Future’ - yet most people probably wouldn’t recognise you if they saw you in the street. Yasmin, your Vietnamese-born life partner, is a widely-published ethicist and former actress who also happens to be one of the most glamorous women in the world – yet the two of you seldom appear in public. You are a moral philosopher to some of the most powerful corporations on the planet and one of only 20 elected Sages of the Gaian Academy – yet you eschew political power, which could be yours for the taking. How can this be?

What a question!  I cast my mind back to those early days… 

After my father’s death, my mother, five months pregnant, gambled her life’s savings on securing safe passage to Australia. Like all politicians at the time, Australia’s political leaders were too egocentric, too taken up with their own self-importance and petty differences, to care much about refugees. All my mother wanted was freedom. Even this basic human right these, so-called civilized, people denied her. Dismayed and depressed she eventually set herself ablaze in full view of visiting dignitaries. Her suicide was an excruciating cry for the plight of all refugees; the kind of protest that causes even the most powerful to shudder. How could I not live my life wisely after such sacrifice?

How did you find growing up in Australia?

Oh, I can’t deny it was tough – just ask any immigrant from that time. My foster family, though kind, were not affluent. I wore clothes bought at the local market and because I spoke with an accent I was bullied unmercifully at school. Most Muslims were pilloried, receiving the kind of treatment dished out to greedy and corrupt officials today. I worked my way through college doing jobs nobody else would do. Cleaning public toilets, driving taxis, sweeping the streets…  Whatever was available. 

You studied philosophy and bioethics at University?

I did. I devoured every book I could get my hands on. It was a revelation.  Today we accept the idea that human purpose is bound up with experiencing and respecting all life, learning to grow and take responsibility for stewardship of the whole Earth and for each other. But we simply didn’t know that then. Indeed, such views ran counter to almost everything we took for granted and assumed about reality. Back then, for instance, it was widely assumed that biological control came about through dissecting life down to the minutest particle. By the end of the 20^th century James Lovelock’s Gaian hypothesis was more or less accepted by a majority of scientists.  But other significant thinkers, like Lipton, Sheldrake, Buchanan, Watts, Strogatz and Wolfram, for example, were considered wackos by many mainstream scientists. Bruce Lipton’s thinking, in addition to the pioneering ideas proposed by Roy Madron and John Jopling in their book The Gaian Democracies, provided the tipping point for Australia’s venture into a new form of "Gaian" democracy. It was Lipton, you recall, who first showed genes did not control biological expression and were but a small part of the equation. That was an amazing discovery. It was Lipton, too, who insisted long before anyone else, that by looking at the physical world through reductionist eyes, we had ended up viewing the world and human beings as though matter and the material world were the only things that – well, matter. Then there were remarkable breakthroughs in economics with the establishment of the first Commons Trusts, derived from the thinking of people like James Quilligan and Ken Wilber.

Today, we openly admit that all knowledge and all ways of knowing contribute to our comprehension of who we are; that understanding arises from perceiving both the material and immaterial worlds. We accept that love and joy promote growth, while fear and stress lead to breakdown of the system as easily as we accept constructs in quantum physics. This is why the Gaian Academy, which arose out of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and has become the key advisory body on global affairs, is necessarily based on a philosophy of wholeness. 

So the noetic sciences are more important to you than philosophy?

On the contrary. Both are absolutely integral to the Gaian worldview.  Noetic science brings emotions, aesthetics and spirituality into the ambit of science. But it is philosophy that shows us how to maintain a viable civic society. A love of philosophy helped me to understand how I might live my life with greater wisdom; how I might tread more lightly on this Earth. In terms of a career, though, it was a disastrous choice. Employers sought accountants, engineers and lawyers back then. Everything had become focused on individual and material progress, you see. Greed, competition, prejudice, ignorance and fear were rife. You can’t begin to imagine what it was like unless you’d lived through it.

The Great Awakening changed that didn’t it?  In fact it seemed to impact most things.

It certainly did. Oh, we’d had more or less ongoing ‘red alerts’ regarding issues such as climate change, the impact of pollution on the biosphere, terrorism, corruption in business and politics, and the dangers of genetically modified foods, for example. But in spite of the fear propagated by governments and activists alike, enthusiastically aided and abetted by the media it must be said, society had become complacent. We trusted that money, or smart technologies created by even smarter brains, would fix all our problems. The Great Awakening really forced us to come to terms with the stark reality of the human condition. After the collapse of the climate negotiations in Mexico in 2010 it became clear to most people that we couldn’t go on as before. But what to do?  In essence, we needed to find a different way to live our lives, and quickly too. The fallout from global climate change happened far faster than anyone had predicted you see. The Great Awakening also allowed us to develop new kinds of governance that moved beyond classic parliamentary models – what we now refer to as Gaian democracies.  Old governance and political models had long outlived their usefulness, it’s just that we hadn’t realised it.

What was it like living through the Great Awakening? How did it feel?

It felt…  Actually it felt as though the end of the world had come – like all those old science fiction films you see about Armageddon. Really, nothing can do justice to the sense of sheer dread shared by the community at that moment. The most damage occurred between 2020 and 2028. Scorching summers, protracted droughts and severe storms, cyclones and bushfires gripped the country. There were crippling water shortages. Power blackouts lasted days rather than hours. Entire National Parks were destroyed. Corals in the World-Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef were bleached white by the warm acid waters. Tourism collapsed completely. Almost 68 per cent of farmers went bankrupt – especially those that were still reliant on European-style crops and farming methods. It really did feel like the end had come. But without those disasters I doubt that significant change could have occurred. Mind you, we were fortunate in having Gaian principles and noetic sciences available to us. This knowledge, once considered heretical, now made perfect sense – even to those who had been sceptical about its unorthodox scientific pedigree. Severe problems we’d never imagined we could figure out, like soil erosion and desalination, for example, seemed suddenly possible to resolve. Our knowledge and our technologies had both shifted. As science assumed genuine systemicity, so researchers started incorporating diverse topics, relationships and methods in their work. One discovery followed another in quick succession. The innovation commons enabled ordinary people and small communities everywhere to start using low-cost democratic technologies bypassing any involvement from massive and uncaring corporations. It was so liberating you see...

What kinds of problems are you talking about here? Can you give us some examples?

By all means. One of the first things we did was to completely redesign and rebuild local energy systems so that they drastically reduced carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions. Breakthroughs occurred in the generation and distribution of solar, wind, hydrogen, and other forms of energy, together with new policies and financial instruments to accelerate the transformation process. The implications of this were staggering, especially in urban conurbations where every internal combustion engine, every coal-fired power plant, every methane-emitting landfill was transformed or replaced with an alternative that was climate-neutral and environmentally benign. At the same time we developed a globally- coordinated system for managing the global carbon balance at scientifically determined acceptable levels.

That system marked the beginnings of the Academy and its subsequent influence on global geopolitics, if I’m not mistaken?

Correct. That degree of global cooperation was simply unprecedented. The only way we could have started to deal with some of these problems was through agreed global policy settings. It worked. Indeed, it worked so well that the Academy is now the most influential global institution as far as applied holistic science and governance is concerned.

What other early Gaian policies emanated from the Academy?

Oh, far too many to list during this interview. But I can give you a feel for the scope of new policies back then. International efforts shifted from the previous focus on emissions (which was never going to succeed) to scalable and actions relevant to different situations and locales. The production and use of chemicals was completely overhauled so that no known toxins could accumulate in the biosphere. A tax was levied on carbon. Then there was a concerted effort to completely eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons and materials from escaping into the biosphere by finding new ways to transform highly radioactive and long-lasting materials like plutonium into more benign materials. The fact that nuclear energy is once again one of the most common forms of energy on the planet is a testimony to the innovations that have been achieved there. 

But not in the UK, US and Canada surely? Wave-power generators now produce most of their electricity?

That’s correct. Unhappily Australia had no mandated green-power targets at the time. Legislation still favoured fossil fuel polluters. So yet another Australian invention was commercialised overseas for lack of local investment capital.

Sorry Kazim, I interrupted you.  You were talking about the new policies emanating from the Academy…

I suppose the most important dual issues were the elimination of global poverty (largely through the application of sufficiency economy principles) as well as the threat of war. We shouldn’t underestimate the efforts that went into this – even though politicians only started taking it in earnest once they’d realised that poverty was creating all kinds of ecological destruction while increasing social instability and diminishing our humanity. War is far too dangerous in an era of globally destructive weaponry. In the first assembly of the Academy we agreed that nothing less than the full elimination of these two scourges would be sufficient to attain sustainability and establish the full proof of our maturity as a species.

And the physical environment, which is also an area close to your heart?

Because I’m an Australian, the physical landscape is a potent part of my personal identity and consciousness. Landscapes have both a tactile and an aesthetic beauty that is almost spiritually palpable, for me as for most other Australians, I suspect. My inaugural address as a Sage included policies designed to protect absolutely the integrity of the Earth's natural and agricultural systems. In Australia and New Zealand, hard boundaries were drawn around biodiversity preserves, critical ecosystems, and places of awe and wonder like Kakadu and Uluru, for example. I proposed that farmlands and food production should be protected from displacement by urban sprawl and colonization by overzealous profiteers. And I called for human habitations to become completely self-sufficient, no longer drawing down resources at unsustainable rates or destroying places of living mystery with thoughtless extraction, pollution, or overuse. All of which is now government policy I’m pleased to say.

But what of the Australian landscape itself. Does it look any different today?

Superficially speaking, probably not too much. Urban environments are designed far more elegantly. Most buildings are extremely energy efficient and look more sculptural than in the past. I suppose visitors from the 20^th century might be surprised by the lack of green in our inner cities. We no longer try to mimic European landscapes as we did then. Even our Botanic Gardens are full of native species. New legislation and methods of farming as well as broad acre permaculture projects have ensured the survival of critical ecosystems. The rivers are clean and the oceans have abundant fish.  There are probably more forests today than there were even 20 years ago.  The main difference is the fact that we’ve been able to produce a system whereby native and introduced species of flora and fauna can coexist. We haven’t had to opt for one or the other.

Kazim, can you say a little about how all of this has been achieved?

There were perhaps four critical elements, without which none of this could possibly have worked. First was the platform for change provided by the Great Awakening itself. Second was the new Gaian paradigm which balanced individual wealth with new commons and trusts and futures banks (designed to protect the rights of all people to things like fresh air and potable water) and repositioned the role of governments in that regard. The third had more to do with a critical mass of people from all walks of life, change agents if you like, who dared to take seriously the challenge of personal life-style transformation: the activists who called our attention to those issues about which society was in denial; the artists who helped us feel the gravity of our predicament and inspired us to strive for better things; the scientists and technologists who found breakthrough ideas to rapidly transform our way of life; the designers who fused beauty and functionality in a transformed world; and the business people who re-imagined and redirected capital flows, investment and talent in ways that recreated the world while enhancing global prosperity. Fourth, and perhaps most important, was the introduction of third-generation, people-powered, political systems as well as the establishment of participative processes and collaborative global institutions, such as the Academy. I doubt very much whether we would be here today if we were still enmeshed in the ego-based, corrupt political systems of the late 20^th century.

Kazim, thank you so much for your time. It’s been fascinating to talk to such a distinguished Sage about the evolution of Gaian society. In today’s world of preferential networks, collaborative communities and the tendency to downplay ego as a natural response to the 20^th century’s individualistic excesses, it’s not often we have access to such fascinating and inspirational personal insights. Is there anything you would like to say in conclusion?

Only that our journey continues still. So many dreams have been realised over the past half century. Humanity’s impact on nature has declined dramatically. We have learned to live as stewards of the biosphere rather than as ravagers of it. Wealth is being created in ways that were simply unimaginable barely 25 years ago and poverty is almost a thing of the past.  Society is transformed and it enriches us – spiritually, socially, economically. There is still much to be done though. Perhaps we will never completely understand why we are here. But what we’ve discovered already is quite profound and we are living together more compassionately and developing wealth more equitably as a result.

Kazim Khalili, thank you so very much for your time.  Namaste.

Namaste.

 

 

New Life for Sale

As Lily and Bart enter the polling station to cast their votes for the bioregional council elections of Gippsland they are assailed by a plethora of party volunteers. A throng of partisan hands clamour to re-program their hologram ‘how-to-vote’ cards – a necessary aide given that there are a total of 247 candidates standing for election. Bloody politicians, muses Bart. It’s no different from the days of the old state-based ballots.

In Australia State governments were abolished in 2024 following a national referendum held early in Gemma Pinnell’s term as the nation’s first “green” Prime Minister. With hindsight, their demise was inevitable. One fiasco had followed another in rapid succession, particularly in NSW, Victoria and Queensland. Besides, most important political agreements were now hammered out either by the expanded Asia-Pacific Regional Council (APRC) located in Beijing or by the World Forum in Abu Dhabi.

Public anger was originally sparked by the deteriorating state of public health care. An inability to address problems related to paramedic services and the costs of acute hospital care came to a head in 2013 when an emergency meeting of the States’ health ministers led to the closure of several major hospitals, including Melbourne’s Austin & Repatriation Hospital and Sydney’s Royal North Shore. An estimated 172 people died during the crisis from ‘inadequate or unavailable’ treatment.

Then the ongoing debacle over water allocation and pricing, sewage outfalls, desalination issues, environmental flows and the apparent inability of State politicians to stem the profligate use of water in the cities - particularly in more affluent suburbs. This led to widespread agreement about the importance of the “green” agenda and contributed to the final demise of the States. The new laws had outlawed the automatic sprinkling of garden lawns in the hot summer months, for example, and made it illegal for city residents to own top-loading washing machines or to use non-recycled water for flushing toilets. But such strategies were largely viewed by an increasingly sceptical community as too little, too late. Australian cities were still running out of water.

The resulting erosion of public confidence, the continued decline of the tax base, and the handing up by Federal Parliament of many of its powers (including economic regulation and the various Commons Trusts) to the World Forum and the APRC, meant that the bioregional community councils were now the primary stamping ground for political aspirants.

Lily and Bart are third generation members of an intentional community on 500 acres just outside the town of Sale, in what was previously called Victoria, now the Gippsland Bioregion. Such communities proliferated on the coastal fringes of Australia at the start of the twenty-first century in response to a growing dissatisfaction with urban sprawl, transport gridlock, pollution levels and the indiscriminate verbal and physical abuse immediately categorised by psychologists as “city-rage”.

New Life, Lily and Bart’s community, is one of a growing number of self-governing, sustainable social ecosystems around the world. Around 130 New Life communities exist in areas that were previously in need of economic revitalisation, including Gippsland, Tasmania, Sicily, Ecuador, New Zealand, Brunei, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Zimbabwe. New Life members are responsible for developing their own infrastructure needs, including health care, aged care, education and technical support, while food and energy comes from a combination of permaculture and concentrated solar power energy production.

Unemployment is a thing of the past in these communities. ‘Reciprocal contributions’ between residents and the community are agreed before the Community Residence Contract is signed. Once accepted into the New Life fraternity, each member receives support by the community for life, while the community continues to benefit from the member’s trade, knowledge and life experience. Income is typically generated from the sale of ceramics and other crafts to visitors (these communities are still a source of curiosity for many city dwellers), local barter schemes, currently administered (and taxed) by bioregional councils, as well as global on-line consulting projects. Consulting work is paid for in World-Credits, whose transfer, like all financial flows in the global financial system, are taxed by the World Forum at a rate of 1 per cent.

The New Life community in the Gippsland Bioregion was recently profiled in the e-zine ‘Grassroots’ for their innovative use of lunar and planetary phases to increase crop yields, using data collected by World Forum funded satellites operating around Earth’s moon and at the edge of the solar system. Lily and Bart were delighted that this initiative was receiving so much attention, particularly as they had both played such a significant role in its development. They were now preparing to fly to the New Life community in Sicily where the Council had requested an urgent inter-community knowledge transfer.

Lily’s brother, Jack, was nothing like his younger sister. He had never been particularly drawn to community life. In fact the Sale community had always considered him to be quite a recluse. For his part, Jack had always hankered to live in the city and leaped at the opportunity to start a course in entrepreneurial metabonomics at the Asia-Pacific University of Medical Technology a few days after his 38th birthday. He now lives in a high security apartment suburb in inner city Sydney that, like all five-star energy rated developments, is protected from toxic pollution levels by an atmospheric dome.

Jack and the 2,000 other residents of this suburb-complex (typically single or childless couples aged between 35 and 70 ) are mainly global professionals working for the diplomatic, trading or civil society divisions of global corporations. He earns enough to pay for his studies by working evenings as a specialist ‘hawk’ for Urban Seed, an organization funded by private corporations who’s mission is to keep track of some 50,000 ‘crakes’ (destitute adolescents inhabiting the city fringes) by means of radio frequency ID tags. ‘Hawking’ is fairly dull and routine work for Jack, but at least he can visit live concerts from the comfort of his media-cocoon while scanning the radio waves for delinquent crakes.

Jack’s apartment, his pride and joy, is part of a fully self-contained neighbourhood with restaurants, bars, cafes, lifestyle stores and parklands clustered around a central ‘village-square’. Jack tends to avoid the village square on Friday evenings when holographic street entertainers, meticulously restored in every detail from actual clowns and buskers of the late 20th century, draw huge crowds – crowds that once attended sports events in their thousands before apathy turned to indifference and cocooning became so popular.

Basic commodities, such as toiletries and educational services, are purchased on-line using virtual supermarket walk-throughs. Like most residents in the complex, Jack has no need for a kitchen, eating out in the conveniently located café’s within the complex or “ordering in” one of the 5000 synthesised meals programmed into the nano-café that replaced kitchens in most Australian homes in the mid-21st century.

Jack rarely leaves the complex – he has no real need as his community provides everything he could want or need. There is still the odd occasion when he hankers for contact with ‘reality’ even if it is sanitised somewhat and viewed through the safety of the electrically powered smart car supplied by the Body Corporate. He does, however, take full advantage of the luxurious health and fitness facilities available free of charge to all residents.

Energy to his complex is sourced from the global energy grid that, under a World Trade Organisation agreement in 2012, allows China, India and a few South American countries to continue to produce coal-generated power until 2080. This was only possible due to the advances in sequestering technology and the collocation of associated industries into energy eco-parks based around the waste from energy production. While Australia has four of these parks (located at Bowen, Lithgow, Moe and Jaranderup) most domestic energy contribution to the global grid is from Desertec Ltd's massive concentrated solar power complexes located in strategic hot spots around the world.

In Australia, the largest Desertec facility is located in the Great Sandy Desert. It supplies around 80 per cent of Australia's total energy needs and also exports under licence to New Zealand and several countries in the APRC bloc. The remaining 20 per cent is supplied by the conspicuous kilometre-high solar towers dotted across the landscape. These towers are built, owned and operated by Enviromission Ltd. Located in some of the most arid parts of Australia, these futuristic structures overcame early protests to become something of a tourist attraction - if still something of an eyesore for local residents.

While Jack’s complex no longer produces any non-recyclable or non-reusable waste products, there still remain many communities in remote Australia who continue to live off the proceeds of waste-storage contracts with such inner-urban communities. These agreements were entered into earlier in the century after pilot waste dumps on the Moon proved too costly.

Jack sees little of his partner, Rani, who spends most of her time away from home. While the Holonet enables techno-touch, it somehow isn’t as real as the real thing. A graduate in food technology, Rani is a senior food production adviser to the World Forum, which was established in 2030 as a result of a merger of the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation and The World Social Forum. Rani moves between serviced diplomatic-communes operated by the Forum throughout the world. Her work mostly entails inspecting production processes to ensure compliance with the detailed regulations established by the World Forum.

Currently, Rani is working on a contentious plan to set enforceable production limits on local communities producing organic food stocks in an attempt to provide a stimulus to the synthetic food industry, which is suffering after a major world-wide recall of synthetically produced noodles, soybeans and rice. Tensions between local bioregional and urban communities and the World Forum have escalated recently as global companies seek to lobby the Forum for increased limits on the autonomous production of energy, food and water resources by local bioregions and communities. The Forum has also had to intervene recently in countries such as Australia, where the Federal Legislature of Twelve failed to successfully meditate between bioregions in Southern and Western Australia over water rights.

The Blue Mountains Bioregional Council for example, is moving to implement the result of a citizens initiated referendum requiring the decommissioning of reservoirs in the region, now that it is entirely self-sufficient in water through rainwater collection, water recycling and moisture farming schemes. Naturally, the Federation of Sydney Suburban-Complexes is fiercely opposed to the plan, as they rely heavily on such external water sources.

While external relations between communities are often fraught, well-defined communities such as New Life are, on the inside, remarkably cohesive. A recent plan to regenerate the remaining grape crops of the loss making wineries of the Barossa Valley Bioregion into eco-parks and establish small-scale manufacturing plants for the now pervasive e-beverages (which provide the same psychophysical response as alcohol, at half the cost and without the side-affects) was developed by a broad cross-section of Barossa Valley community members, with generous assistance to those wineries and workers who will be disadvantaged.

The singularly passionate (and at times parochial) nature of many communities has become a headache for organisations like the World Forum whose mandate is to create equality across communities in basic human needs such as food, water, housing, education, opportunity and spiritual development through the administration of the various Commons Trusts designed to protect and maintain the wealth of the commons. The Forum also seeks to promote mutual respect and tolerance of different worldviews.

One instance of such provincial thinking occurred recently when a World Forum initiative to promote understanding of the diverse spiritual traditions practiced throughout the world was opposed by traditional religious groups who felt that the promotion of some of the smaller, more controversial sects was an attack on the validity of their own beliefs. Likewise, communities such as those of Lily and Bart, while incredibly knowledgeable about their own domains of interest such as astrodynamic agriculture, Wiccan-Islam and community capacity building, tend towards over-simplification and generalisation when it comes down to issues and people outside their direct sphere of influence.

The breakdown of filial bonds between Lily and Jack over lifestyle choices is mirrored from family to family and community to community. While some, like the New Life communities, are geographically congregated, others are credo-based, connecting only in cyberspace. No one foresaw the potential in the launch of the Holonet in 2020 for the emerging electronically connected communities to close out any perspective but their own – thus isolating themselves into a perpetually self-reinforcing worldview. With security the key issue at the turn of the millennium, the lock-out and lock-in cybergates meant it was keep taps on what goes on in these holo-communities, or to connect with them in any meaningful way.

A recent protest held by the civil society division of the global company British Hydrogen in support of a World Forum proposal to prohibit all forms of personal transportation vehicles requiring a dedicated energy source in favour of public transport modes, was portrayed by Bart as another case of those bloody hydros wanting to take us back to the dark ages.

Bart suspects that this is a view shared by many of his neighbours in the Gippsland Bioregion. Irrespective of how he might vote in the forthcoming election, he is convinced the coalition government (comprising the Community First Party, the World Forum Disarmament Party and two “Our Way is the Best Way” independents) will be returned. The more things change, the more they stay the same Bart muses as he leaves the polling station. I often wonder why I even bother to focus on anything but New Life for Sale.

The World After Copenhagen

Throughout my 35 years in sustainability it has always seemed odd that while so-called economic rationalism reigned over our political, economic and business worlds, rational thought wasn’t applied to issues like climate change.

The risks were always clear, as defined by rational science, while a logical analysis of the economics showed acting early was cheaper than acting late. Yet a strange kind of religious and ideological zealotry took hold, as otherwise sensible, educated people ignored rational thought. It was a failure of reason.

While Copenhagen failed to deliver any agreement however, it may well mark a return to rational thought and with it some profound shifts in markets, politics and our approach to sustainability. Perhaps historians will mark this point and refer to the world BC and AC – Before Copenhagen and After Copenhagen.

What will historians say changed at the end of 2009? And if we could read their conclusions now, would it change our present responses – not as historians but as the creators of that history? Perhaps they will write something like this:

The old world ended at Copenhagen. It was the moment a critical mass of people came to accept that the old way of doing things was finished. They started to prepare for a new world, and for the shift to the war footing that would deliver it.

While Copenhagen failed to deliver action on reducing emissions, it delivered a very clear outcome. It shattered assumptions that had previously framed the debate and so provided an historic shift in the approach to the issue.

For a start it was the end of the debate about the science. Copenhagen marked the victory of reason over ideological and religious zealotry. The debates continued on the detail and that was of course a healthy part of the process. There is always uncertainty in science and such debates test the strength of assumptions. But After Copenhagen there was a critical mass of powerful and influential people who accepted that despite the uncertainties, it was time to act.

They kept debating 1 vs 2 degrees of warming and levels of CO2 at 350 vs 450ppm but they stopped debating the rules of physics and chemistry. They knew if you increase the thickness of the atmosphere’s blanket the world gets warmer. While many remained frustrated at the lack of action despite this acceptance, this was a critical turning point because the mathematics of what accepting the science meant for the economy were profound.

It was also the end of any chance of a measured and careful transition. That moment probably passed in 2000 but it was firmly dead and buried with the lack of an agreement in 2009. With actual emissions reduction now years away, the lags in the climate system dictated that a crisis driven, war like response was now inevitable, even with the high 2 degree target. As a result, assumptions about the pace of change and the process by which it would be delivered were finished.

It was clear After Copenhagen that when the change came, the pace would be rapid, the process chaotic and the transformation radical. This meant the level of national economic and company business risk posed by delay was now much greater than the risk posed by the change itself. As a result, business came on board at Copenhagen, now seriously worried that delay would lead to such rapid change, their companies faced catastrophic commercial risk.

Perhaps the shift of greatest historical significance was that it was now clear the pursuit of global consensus was an illusion. The major powers had played along with the UN process because the complexity of reaching consensus gave them an excuse to avoid action. They could profess support for a global deal, knowing it wouldn’t happen. But once there was a danger of it becoming real, they dropped that idea like a hot potato. There was nothing in history to suggest they were ever going to let large numbers of small, poor countries help determine the rules. As history shows, those with power don’t give it up lightly.

Instead they started the process of forming what was to become the Coalition of the Cooling, a group of powerful nations and their friends who had sufficient economic and political muscle to define the inevitable economic transition. If power was going to shift away from the sole superpower, it was in the interests of both the US and the group of large emerging powers to form a new club to guide the future. With the addition of their various allies, the future could then be negotiated with 10 people in the room. China had arrived.

What those in power missed until much later though was the strength of public concern and as a result the rising influence of civil society. Tens of thousands of advocates had gone to Copenhagen, assuming their intellectual and political contribution would help leaders get the right outcome. They left angry at the failure of world leaders but determined to force change from the bottom up.

The combination of civil society, particularly the youth movement, along with the simple mathematics of climate science, led to what most investors missed completely until it was too late. After Copenhagen, coal was finished. It was surprising so many missed this because the data was clear for all to see. Investment in clean energy outstripped investments in fossil fuel energy every year from 2008 on. More importantly, once 2 degrees was accepted as the maximum target, it was all over for coal. There just wasn’t any room in the remaining carbon budget for coal to keep growing. So once the world’s powers decided the science was in, coal was out.

This was the case anyway and would have unfolded over the decades to come, but when civil society decided to give up on the direct political process and focus all of its attention on coal, sentiment shifted quite rapidly.

It was of course technically illogical to focus just on coal, after all it was only 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it was already clear the market would kill off oil, with electric cars and / or peak oil. All the alternative NGO campaign targets were too complex and missed the key ingredients : a powerful enemy that can be demonized, a simple NO campaign and definable physical targets to focus on. The movement had learnt the dangers of diffusion by putting so much into Copenhagen for so little tangible result.

So the group with nothing to lose, the Angry Islanders joined with the youth driven movement Our Climate Our Time and directed its powerful emotional message entirely onto coal.

Campaigns erupted everywhere – targeting every coal mine, every coal company and every coal train and ship. It was a market smart campaign with investors targeted as owners, banks as lenders and coal executives as climate criminals. It took a few years to build momentum but once the US and China jointly announced a ban on new coal plants, the house of cards came tumbling down.

The valuation of coal companies collapsed, under the combined weight of public disdain, regulatory threat and shrinking market, with alternative technologies now competing on price. With investors running scared having seen their coal investments drop 75% in value over a month of carnage, the industry went into terminal decline, confined to the margins thereafter.

The litigation against directors and fund managers however, carried on for a decade more. Regulators took action against directors who hadn’t explained the key risks to investors. Shareholders asked why these risks weren’t obvious to directors given the science and why they were misled about the commercial potential of CCS.

So back to the present as we head into 2010.

Who knows how the future will actually unfold, but some parts of the above are clear. The focus on Copenhagen failed to deliver for the global climate movement. It was always going to, as I argued in my last column, but even I didn’t think it would fail quite so spectacularly. So a shift in focus is inevitable for climate campaigners. We don’t know where it will shift to, but we’ll find out in 2010.

The business community are the biggest losers from Copenhagen. Despite their really serious focus and coordinated calls for action leading up to Copenhagen, they now face heightened risk of discontinuous change.

The lack of a regulatory result, combined with the political acceptance of the need for even stronger action than before, creates a huge gulf between present reality and the inevitable future. That gap will close at some point and do so suddenly. For companies determining their business strategies this poses massive risk. It makes the coal scenario painted above far from fanciful. Markets are driven by sentiment and sudden sentiment shifts are now inevitable. The challenge is working out where and when they will strike. I’d certainly be nervous if I was a coal executive or investor.

For policy makers it’s back to the drawing board. With no genuine global agreement anytime soon, perhaps they will abandon trading schemes and revert to the much simpler approach of national carbon taxes and bilateral deals, following the trade model. Meanwhile all but the lowest carbon economies now face ever increasing risk from delay. When the global market shift gets momentum, being stranded with high per capita carbon emissions could be competitive disaster for nations that are slow to act.

On a personal level, part of the challenge is dealing with despair and frustration. Community activists, corporate leaders, policy makers and scientists have put so much effort into action on climate change, for little result. Sure we’ve seen great progress in understanding and have many new allies on board but negligible action to even delay the now inevitable crisis. The climate responds to emissions not to political accords.

So take a moment to grieve for the lost opportunity, shed a tear like Bill McKibben did and say thanks to all those who have thrown their all at it. We have led the horse to water but it’s not yet thirsty enough to drink.

But don’t stay there. We don’t have time for despair. We now have to move on to the new world, the one After Copenhagen. So after some Christmas rest and reflection, decide what you’re going to do and get back to work. We have a civilisation to save.

This guest post was written by Paul Gilding and is reprinted here with his permission. The post was first published in The Cockatoo Chronicles on 23rd December 2009.

Not In My Backyard

“It’s great to be back home, even if it is only for a few days”. Finn had just arrived back from Shanghai, recently awarded the prestigious World’s Greenest City prize by the World Forum over previous winner Sorokovka, Chelyabinsk in Russia. Finn’s draft policy for boosting synthetic food production had been well received by most delegates to the Forum - at least from the Core, or what her mentor insists on referring to as the “orderly” nations.

“If I can just get this bio-industrial bill accepted, we’ll be able to bypass agriculture entirely. We’ll see how those organic food luddites like that!” Finn seemed delighted at the thought that most essential foodstuffs would now be grown in steel vats. “It’s far less destructive to animals and the environment… But I bet the diehard activists come up with the same old grounds for opposing it. ‘Save our Farms’. ‘Feed The World’. I can smell protest in the air even now.” 

“News on please Sarit” she instructed their wrist-based personal digital avatar. The flexible-filament wall screen lit up instantly. “Sarit, can you find out what the weather conditions will be in Jakarta next Friday”. If it’s too hot I’ll need to take my sensacoat. Jack, do you really think they’ll be another Islamic rebellion in Indonesia? Speaking at the annual Bioterror Conference is one thing; becoming a victim of the topic under discussion is something I’d really like to avoid!” 

She slumped wearily onto the couch next to Jack. The flight from Shanghai on the Boeing-Airbus 9e9 was only 4 hours but Finn was worn out from the accumulated effects of weeks of travel. She'd welcomed the excuse to return home for a few days. Jack just listened. He hadn’t said a word. Oh, he was happy to see Finn, of course, but couldn’t stop thinking about the bombing of the Three Gorges Dam in China. And the summons. The summons that had curtailed Finn’s trip and brought her home prematurely. The summons that had put his own life on hold. He had even been suspended from hawking. It was all so petty. And now he would need yet another retinal scan. Or a new retina implant, he mused, sarcastically! 

Unsurprisingly, WNN coverage was all about the bombing. Even in the US where the story was taking precedence over the continuing drugs wars in Mexico. “The latest estimate is 2 million people dead from the downstream floods and they’re expecting that to double in the next few days. Chinese delegates at the Forum were so distraught not knowing what had become of their friends and relatives.” 

Finn was relieved to be out of harm’s way for the time being. Working for the World Forum had become quite dangerous lately, even for an Australian in Australia. Jack’s life was leisurely in comparison. After all, he hardly ever stepped outside the apartment these days, except when he had to put in a show by attending the campus for some reason. She sighed deeply, wondering whether she should downshift now before it was too late. 

“OK. Let’s talk about this writ. Tell me again, what happened exactly?”Jack shifted uneasily. “I’d been tracking these two crakes. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just two young kids chroming by the side of the dome. I decided to kvetch them. Then, without any warning, I lost visuals. I’d assumed the interference was some glitch in the crake’s ID tags. We’ve been getting a lot of those recently as the smarter of them realize they can tweak the software to disguise their actual whereabouts. Sarit, insisting it was a militant hacking from some other community, shut down the communications hub. The next thing I knew, an ES patrol appeared at the door. They claimed they’d been monitoring me for hours and had proof I’d dishonored my pass by attempting to sabotage the microbionic recycling facilities in the Lower Murray and Gippsland. My knowledge access account at AUMT showed an unauthorised payment of $4,200 and… Well you know the rest. Someone either wants my identity badly or is trying to discredit me. The worst thing is the ES report source was from Sale. When I rang Lily to see if she knew who’d reported me she refused even to talk to me. She obviously knows something, but she’s not letting on.” 

Finn was lost in thought. In truth, she hadn’t heard a word Jack said. She loved Gippsland. In spite of increased ecotourism (brought by the high-speed Maglev train that stopped at Sale en route to Sydney) the intrusive spectacle of the odd wind farm, and the regimented artificiality of new-growth forests, this area had retained much of its former beauty. 

The World Forum’s Conservation Orders of 2018 (a momentous political victory for global grey power, which had provoked outrage from Australian youths domiciled in the bioregions) at least ensured the area maintained its priceless heritage value. Rainfall was now programmed to fall only at night, soil quality was excellent and air-borne toxins non-existent. Local flora and fauna had been nurtured to the extent that rare species of fern, once close to extinction, now grew abundantly. 

A handful of traditional farms, carefully air-insulated to avoid the spread of harmful diseases, tinted the land a deep, lush green, broken only by the occasional ironbark and herds of grazing cattle. In truth, to the casual observer at least, it looked much as it had fifty years ago. 

At one stage Finn had thought about moving to Gippsland so that Jack could be closer to his sister. But he adored city life. There was also the allopathic medicine ideology to put up with. Sale had a reputation for being reactionary, especially in comparison with the Lower Murray bioregion, for example, where regenerative medicine was practiced by every community. Besides, they were all so emotional about astrodynamic crops at Sale. Their NIMBY politics frowned upon any new forms of genetic science. 

Still, the thought of reviving her earlier interest in advanced molecular food blueprints was appealing to them both. Especially now that unique designer molecules could splice ingestible microsensors onto protein-enriched plants and program them to seek out and remedy malignancies in the human body. There would be quite a market for that surely? Nor would she exactly object to living in one of the fashionable nanotube yurts that changed colour, texture and shape to suit one’s mood. They were fast becoming a feature of the Sale community. And she was quite fashion-conscious, after all. For a scientist. 

“You haven’t been listening to a thing I’ve been saying, have you?” Jack was more agitated than she’d ever known him. “If someone steals my identity for this kind of bullshit they can just as easily use it for more serious stuff. That old nuclear plant in Richmond for example…” 

“What’s that got to do with anything?” 

“I mean the pebble-bed they’ve got there. It’s just asking for trouble. Any bloody cyber terrorist could hack their way into those primitive computer systems they still use. Stealing my ID is bad enough but if they had been clever enough to use cloning technology I’d have been well and truly stuffed. Especially if they were able to re-code my movements to prove I was doing something that I wasn’t! Not even the Citizen’s Monitoring Program would be of any use to me. You know their evidence doesn’t stand up in court. The courts just rely on the state-based monitoring systems these days and they’re as unreliable as my grandfather’s weather predictions. Finn, I’d be in permanent detention. I could even end up in Tasmania of all places.” 

“Calm down Jack. We don’t know the real situation yet. It’s probably just a temporary security glitch... Anyway, you told me on the Holonet just the other day that the Richmond bioregion had decided to decommission the pebble-bed so they could get a tax break on the use of new fusion power technology?” 

“There, that’s exactly what I mean. They’re only interested in their own selfish ends. Fancy installing an untried system like magnetic fusion in such a built-up area! They’re seriously unhinged, these politicians.” 

“At least you agree with Bart and Lily there.” By now Finn was getting a little annoyed by Jack’s heated outburst. She’d seen it all before, of course, and knew that arguing with him wouldn’t help once he started on one of his hobby horses. Besides, she shared this particular conviction with a passion. She understood the need to improve material environmental affluence across the country, not least in Aboriginal settlements still denied the kind of amenities enjoyed by the rest of the population. 

She recognised, too, the futility of imposing economic and political demarcations on physical phenomena. The natural environment certainly couldn’t be partitioned in this fashion. Landscapes didn’t just change when you crossed from one region into another – or at least, not without substantive human intervention. Why would the community at Albury for example, decide on a particular policy for maintaining optimum irrigation practices and clean rivers when neighbouring Rutherglen’s community implemented an opposing one? Wasn’t this a form of local lunacy? Surely landscapes needed systemic planning and management? 

It was this holistic belief that compelled Finn to work for the World Forum, just as it put her at odds with the majority of Australian citizens who accepted bioregional autonomy as a matter of fact. Jack and Finn also resented communities that appeared hell bent on behaving as if bioengineering went against “God’s will” – especially when they were quite comfortable for anyone in possession of an ownership license, whether tenant or land owner, to do as they liked with scarce natural resources. “What stupidity is that?” Jack would often rave at such obvious double standards. 

"Take those farmers in the Uluru bioregion. Do you realise that 85 per cent of the water supply there goes to agriculture? They’re still using traditional European methods to grow high-hydration crops like cotton and rice, squandering vast amounts of the stuff to create a swampland in the middle of the bloody desert. All paid for by federal farm subsidies. I tell you, our politicians just don’t have a clue. After last year’s outbreak of cholera there you’d think they’d know better.” 

“Now you’re even beginning to sound like Bart! In any case the cholera outbreak was three years ago and I can’t imagine it ever happening again. Besides, some of the uniquely Australian agricultural developments up there have seen some remarkable breakthroughs. They’ve benefited people in arid environments all around the world, especially in New Mesopotamia and Africa. We’re leaders in new agricultural practices Jack. You know that. You can’t halt progress.” 

“Yes, and the rest of the world still think we’re theirs for the taking, don’t they? Look at the thousands of immigrants who arrive on our doorstep every month just to escape the ice storms that are making life a misery in the Democratic States of Europe. We’ve got more Europeans than Asians in the country these days!” 

“You’re such a racist Jack. Here, drink this kiwi-cooler. That should help calm you down.” 

Jack frowned. “They could use my ID up there too, you know Finn. You’ve only to look at how they treat convicted bioterrorists these days. What if…” 

Jack’s words trailed into stammers then silence as he sipped the drink Finn had prepared. He sunk into the well-worn comfort of his couch. 

“In order to prove my innocence we’ve got to find out who’s behind this ES report. If it’s Lily I want to know why. What could I have done that my own sister would want to frame me?”

“Oh come on Jack. Get real. For one thing, she can’t see past New Life. That article in Grassroots made all of them really arrogant. And the request for help from Sicily hasn’t helped. Your relationship has been none too good ever since you openly declared your opposition to astrodynamic crops. She’d do anything to make you recant – even if it meant convincing the Sydney community to buy all its food from Sale. I wouldn’t trust Lily as far as I can spit!” 

Finn was not usually as forthright as this. Jack was taken aback by her dismissive remarks about Lily. But she was right. Their relationship was indeed strained. 

“Well if it is her that’s causing me this pain I’m not going to take it lying down. New Life members are welcome to practice their voodoo if that’s what they really want. But not in my backyard, they don’t! 

Holonet on please Satri. Get me Lily. I want to speak with her again.”