In my previous post I wrote about the possible Triple Whammy of Climate Change, the rise of China as the preeminant economic and political power in the world and the creation of a large number of unemployable people as a result of automation.
One or all of these three situations will occur in the next two or three decades and they will have an impact on the world. That impact could be negative or positive. This post will examine the possible negative impacts. A later post will examine the possible positive impacts.
First and foremost it has now been revealed by climate scientists that we have gone past the point of no return with regard to preventing "hothouse Earth". That is, global warming is going to get worse no matter what we do from now on. The only question is how bad it will be.
The most pessimistic outcome would be runaway global warming which changes oceans currents and completely changes the climate of the planet. In that case the combination of vast areas of the planet becoming uninhabitable and the possibility of the creation of "Canfield Oceans" could lead to a mass extinction that would include the human species.
That is not the most likely outcome but it is possible. A more likely outcome of runaway global warming would be large areas of the planet becoming unproductive and uninhabitable, leading to widespread famine and mass migration, leading to war. That in itself would lead to a mass die off of the human species, although not an extinction level event, with the resultant fall of our modern civilization, which would worsen the die off. The number of humans that would die in this scenario would be in the billions and we would be cast back into the dark ages. All of the progress we have achieved in the past 2000 years would be lost.
However, the human species is resilient and it has a very healthy survival instinct. As such, I do believe that our species will realize the danger with enough time to sufficiently reduce greenhouse gases and to develop effective eco-engineering technologies to prevent the worst effects of global warming and climate change. They will still be disruptive and destructive. Many human will die but our civilization will survive.
So humans will survive but they will still need to face the impacts of automation and the West will need to deal with the impacts on the rise of China.
Taking the pessimistic point of view I can see China changing the way the world economy works once they have achieved economic and political primacy. When the West was running the show all of the Western countries had to integrate their economies in order to create sufficient wealth to keep their populations generally happy and satisfied. The same in not true of China. They have a population of over a billion people and a large number of them are still not part of the Chinese middle class. When China reaches the pinnacle of the world economy it will be able to reach even greater heights just by elevating its own people into the middle class. It will not need to trade with the West in order to create wealth. Further, China is spending over a trillion dollars in Africa and Asia to help countries on those continents of develop. Like all aid this funding is tied to Chinese priorities. So just when they are rising the top of the economic and political heap they will have a further billion or two people beholden to them in Africa and Asia.
It would not be surprising if the Chinese close their economy and demand their client states to only trade with China and themselves when they overtake the US as the largest economy in the world. They will not need the West to generate wealth and the West has a history of abusing China in the past which may motivate the Chinese leadership to attempt to even the score. That would reduce the ability of the West to generate wealth at its current levels. In fact, it would probably cause the Western economies to shrink, if not totally collapse.
Then there is automation. If the Chinese move to freeze out the West from markets in Asia and Africa is combined with the impacts of automation then things would only be worse for the West. Huge numbers of people in the West would be in such dire financial straits that the destruction of the Western democracies would probably be inevitable. Automation will impact China as well but they will be in a better position to absorb those impacts.
I have stated in the space before that I believe a large segment of the ruling classes in the West see the negative impacts of the rise of China and increased automation and that they are preparing for it by concentrating wealth and power so that they will be able to ride out the coming economic and political upheavel in the West. I have also stated that there is another segment of ruling class in the West who believe that the negative impacts of these two events can be mitigated by investing in their societies and peoples and preventing the concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. These two opposing views will inform the political and economic debate in the West for the next couple of decades.
In the pessimistic view of the future those that would concentrate wealth and power into their own hands will prevail.
This is just one possible future that could result from the impacts of climate change, automation and the rise of China. My own opinion is that this future is the more likely one at this time. Those that would concentrate wealth and power into their hands are winning the debate so far. Hell, they are framing the debate, and history has demonstrated that he who frames the debate wins it almost every time. There is still time for the other side to push back but so far they have been completely ineffective. That could change in the next couple of decades but my gut tells me not to hold your brealth waiting for that to happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment