Those of you who think climate change will only bring violent storms, flooding, droughts and reduced agricultural productivity may need to think again. Many countries north of 45° latitude are set to witness significant benefits as the planet warms, or so forecasts Laurence C. Smith in his book The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future.
“Many stresses will be less apparent or not apparent at all in some of the northern countries,” says Smith, a professor of earth and space sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. “There will even be quite a few positive ones, such as increase in shipping access.”
Smith is under no illusion that the positive impact of global climate change, one of the four forces of the book’s title, could even come close to the negative impact. He does convincingly show, however, that climate change and the other three forces — population demographics, the distribution of natural resources and global trade — will help northern rim countries (NORC), as he dubs the US, Canada, Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia, become regions of increasing economic and strategic importance.
Photo courtesy of Lung Yingtai Cultural Foundation
Smith will deliver a talk titled The Last Frontier: The Scramble for the Arctic and Its Implications on Saturday as part of the Lung Yingtai Cultural Foundation’s MediaTek lectures series. Sun Wei-hsin (孫維新), director general of the National Museum of National Sciences, will moderate the lecture.
The Taipei Times caught up with Smith via Skype in Dalian, China, where he was invited to give a speech at the World Economic Forum.
Taipei Times: Of the four forces mentioned in your book, which are unstoppable and which do we have control over?
Photo courtesy of Lung Yingtai Cultural Foundation
Laurence C. Smith: None of them is unstoppable, but some sure have a lot of inertia [laughs]. I don’t want these forces to be taken so much as a prediction, but as a projection. The truth is our future in 2050 is not set in stone. There are many possible scenarios and where we end up depends largely on human choices and what we decide to do as a collective society.
So there is an array of outcomes under our control and the projection of this book is [to show] where current trends are taking us if we do nothing, if we more or less continue our current behaviors. Take population demographics for example. It’s almost impossible to see how we can avoid the aging trend. But the only way for that to be ameliorated is if we start having more babies, which seems unlikely, or the doors to immigration are opened even more widely than they are now.
And the demand for natural resources: Again, it’s hard to see that declining when you look at the projected economic growth and urbanization in the developing world. Look at the hubbub over rare earth that is happening right now. With regards to climate change, we are locked into a certain amount of climate change no matter what we do. That said, how warm we get depends upon how serious we get about curbing our global carbon cycle. There’s a big difference between plus 2°C warming and plus 4°C warming. It’s calamitous, but that’s very much [within our power to control]. Of all of them, globalization is the least uncertain and the least wired in. It could collapse at any moment.
TT: You mention in the book a fifth force, that of technology. Is this perhaps a wild card with regards to the interaction of the other four trends?
LS: It could be. To keep the book in the realm of science rather than science fiction, I typically exclude the wild card consideration, you know the truly amazing technological breakthroughs like nuclear-cold fusion, which would change everything. If that happens great, wonderful, rip up the book and go on to a better life. But I don’t entertain the possibility of the true outliers.
The truth of the matter is, particularly in regard to energy technology, which is to my mind the crux of the problem looking forward, it’s hard to see anything on the horizon that will radically change everything. Under no reasonable scenario, barring some wild card technology for example, is it plausible that we will completely be done with fossil fuels in the next few decades. It’s just realistically unlikely to happen — sadly I should add.
TT: You write that the ice caps are melting even faster than the most pessimistic models predicted. In another part of the book you state that roughly 25 percent of Bangladesh will be under water by the end of the century. Needless to say, these are frightening prospects for island nations such as Taiwan, which has low-lying regions. Should Taiwanese be buying up plots of land above a sea level of 500m or making plans to emigrate?
LS: I’ll start off by saying that the academic study of climate refugees is small, though it’s growing. The research is suggesting that yes there are reasons for local concern, but on balance the prospect of mass migrations of people evacuating China to swarm Siberia or leave the US to flock to Canada is just not likely. It’s an overblown fear. In all likelihood no matter what climate we have, the big drivers of migration will be the same ones they are now, which are jobs and economic opportunities and so forth.
That said, there definitely will be risks and it will be interesting to see at what point the insurance companies will give up and stop insuring some of these coast lines for example, or the premiums rise so much that it becomes less economic to build on. Time will tell.
TT: Taiwan doesn’t benefit as, for example, Canada does from having vast amounts of natural resources, but does benefit from tremendous human capital. How can Taiwan use its high-tech industry, for example solar power, to address some of the more negative trends such as energy stress?
LS: Taiwan is in a good position because ... human capital and technology are leading the way forward and a lot of the benefits of northern countries — the bulk of them actually — come from flows of smart, talented, technologically savvy people to places like Canada. It is not about opening more oil wells.
There is little doubt, and I sensed this at the World Economic Forum, that there is a lot of talk and a lot of interest in pursuing these low-carbon technologies. I just keep waiting for the politicians to get serious about imposing a regulatory regime that really makes it happen and make it competitive because they still aren’t economical.
TT: So renewable energies certainly aren’t the silver bullet, at least right now.
LS: There are people who say, “Yes we can go fully solar in the next 20 years,” but if you look at the projections, to my mind they are a little unrealistic.
I think if the projected rise in demand for energy weren’t so formidable, maybe we would have a better shot. But at the same time demand is going up really fast. I think the more realistic hope is that we can resist coal in favor of natural gas as a stopgap just because it’s quite a bit cleaner than coal. And in the meantime we can ramp up these solar and renewables as fast as we can. But it is hard to imagine a world in the near future where hydrocarbons are not still a dominant provider of our energy.
TT: What about nuclear energy?
LS: Ah, I knew you were going to ask that. When I wrote the book I was very torn on nuclear. I’ve always been torn on it and the waste storage problems are so incredible — you have to keep the stuff safe for 10,000 years. We haven’t solved this problem. On the other hand, nuclear is really about the only, or one of the few, truly carbon-free energy sources where the technology exists right now in hand and we could ramp it up.
I was torn before but because of the carbon benefits I was leaning towards pro-nuclear. But I will say realistically from a political point of view, the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident has killed the nuclear renaissance and it’s going to be years before it recovers in my opinion.
TT: What choices can Taiwan’s citizens, government and industry make in the near term to adapt to the changes outlined in the book? Perhaps a carbon tax?
LS: You took the words right out of my mouth: carbon tax. I can see no simpler, more direct solution that addresses a wide host of these problems and issues and you don’t even need to believe in climate change or anything else.
TT: A reviewer writing in the Seattle Times said of your book: “As I read it, one thought I never had before kept reoccurring: Thank goodness I’m old.” This implies that the future looks grim. Is this the message you want the book to impart? Do you feel optimistic or pessimistic about the next 40 years?
LS: I’m optimistic. I was rather bemused by that review. The reviewer must have only read the first four chapters, because it does start off with a grim view but then becomes more positive and optimistic as it moves on.
There are a lot of reasons for optimism. If you take the macro view, things are better than they have ever been. If we step out of this current financial recession, which is tremendous, and take a decades-long view people are rising out of poverty as never before and human conflict and violence are dropping.
That being said, looking at climate change I am actually quite pessimistic. There is a lot to be concerned about and a handful of modest benefits for a tiny cluster of countries around the North Pole, where a fraction of the world population lives, is nothing to rejoice in given the overwhelmingly negative impacts that will happen on balance to the world’s ecosystems and human beings. But when you look at all these forces put together on the human race and these other factors, overall I’m optimistic.
TT: You are currently in Dalian, China, where you just gave a talk as part of the World Economic Forum. Do you fear that issues such as financial instability in the EU will overshadow what you have said in your book?
LS: Unfortunately it’s not a fear. It’s an expectation. It’s very hard to convince people to be worried about these societal trends. Our democracy works on two-year to four-year cycles, our businesses work on quarterly cycles and yet climate change, demographic change, long-term demand for natural resources, these are decades-long and in the case of climate change centuries-long problems and our institutions are not well set up to deal with those decades-long and centuries-long problems. So, I’m not fearing that my message will be slipped beneath the waves in this audience. I expect that it will.
The Last Frontier: The Scramble for the Arctic and Its Implications will be held on Saturday from 2pm to 4pm at Zhongshan Hall (台北市中山堂), 98 Yanping S Rd, Taipei City (台北市延平南路98號). The lecture will be conducted in English with simultaneous interpretation in Mandarin. Admission is free, but those attending must pre-register online at www.civictaipei.org or by calling (02) 3322-4907
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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