On the Future: Prospects for Humanity

by Martin Rees Narrated by Martin Rees, Samuel West

Overview

A provocative and inspiring look at the future of humanity and science from world-renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees

Humanity has reached a critical moment. Our world is unsettled and rapidly changing, and we face existential risks over the next century. Various outcomes¿good and bad¿are possible. Yet our approach to the future is characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism. In this short, exhilarating book, renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees argues that humanity¿s prospects depend on our taking a very different approach to planning for tomorrow.

The future of humanity is bound to the future of science and hinges on how successfully we harness technological advances to address our challenges. If we are to use science to solve our problems while avoiding its dystopian risks, we must think rationally, globally, collectively, and optimistically about the long term. Advances in biotechnology, cybertechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence¿if pursued and applied wisely¿could empower us to boost the developing and developed world and overcome the threats humanity faces on Earth, from climate change to nuclear war. At the same time, further advances in space science will allow humans to explore the solar system and beyond with robots and AI. But there is no ¿Plan B¿ for Earth¿no viable alternative within reach if we do not care for our home planet.

Rich with fascinating insights into cutting-edge science and technology, this accessible book will captivate anyone who wants to understand the critical issues that will define the future of humanity on Earth and beyond.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

06/04/2018
The latest work from Rees (From Here to Infinity), who has served as the U.K.’s astronomer royal since 1995, offers forecasts of impending technological developments and words of hope for the human ability to use science to repair a wounded planet and improve lives. Rees begins with a look at how “clean” technology can help reduce carbon emissions and diminish the immediate problems of climate change. He proceeds to the provocative changes coming with improvements in genetic analysis and gene-editing technology. Rees also examines how a workforce largely replaced by automation and artificial intelligence could find itself freed to pursue lifelong learning and even space exploration, eventually choosing to abandon human shape for “post human” bodies modified through genetic and cyborg technologies to be better suited to hostile new environments. Reaching far ahead, Rees even considers how contact with alien life might change the human race. This far-ranging but easily understood collection of ideas shares and communicates the enthusiasm of Rees’s “techno-optimist” view of the prospects for humanity. (Oct.)

Foreword Reviews

"It would be easy for a book about the future to turn gloomy, but this one balances concerns with hopeful prospects."

The Economist

"The importance of science in society has no greater spokesperson than Lord Martin Rees."

From the Publisher

One of the Financial Times' Best Books of 2018: Science

Mayday

"Lord Rees is the source on all things future-of-humanity."

Nature Astronomy

"With the authority that only someone of his calibre could command, Martin Rees presents his vision of the future of mankind."

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2018-06-12
A renowned astronomer offers a cautiously optimistic take on the future of Earth and humanity—so long as we are willing to wisely use science and technology to protect the planet and its people.Experts estimate that by 2050, the world will be host to 9 billion people, and "even by 2030 Lagos, Sao Paulo and Delhi will have populations above 30 million." In these next few decades, we will also see advances in powerful technologies such as geoengineering, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and cybertech. These technologies have the potential to create enormous good for populations across the globe—and yet they also have the power for destruction on massive scales. In his measured and cleareyed analysis, Rees (From Here to Infinity: Scientific Horizons, 2011, etc.), who has served as the Astronomer Royal, a senior post in the U.K., since 1995, argues that both technological acceleration and restraint are needed for humanity to flourish in the long term. He pulls no punches in his criticism of the short-term thinking and localized politics that are common in today's discourse. Moreover, he asserts that scientists and thought leaders must collaborate across disciplines and actively seek to engage members of the public. Only an expansive and inclusive plan can ensure that sustainable options exist for food and energy production. On the other hand, the author fears that without forward-thinking, sensible, and international initiatives to combat global threats such as climate change, nuclear weapons, and biological warfare, future generations may be left with "a depleted and hazardous world." Rees is hardly the first to issue a stern warning about what lies ahead if complacency and consumerism rule, but his lucid, well-reasoned explanation of the stakes and inimitable prose lift this manifesto above the rest.An impassioned call to action from one of the world's foremost scientists. A book to be read by anyone on Earth who cares about its future.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177388106
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/23/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

DEEP IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

1.1. PERILS AND PROSPECTS

A few years ago, I met a well-known tycoon from India. Knowing I had the English title of 'Astronomer Royal', he asked, 'Do you do the Queen's horoscopes'? I responded, with a straight face: 'If she wanted one, I'm the person she'd ask'. He seemed eager to hear my predictions. I told him that stocks would fluctuate, there would be new tensions in the Middle East, and so forth. He paid rapt attention to these 'insights'. But then I came clean. I said I was just an astronomer — not an astrologer. He abruptly lost all interest in my predictions. And rightly so: scientists are rotten forecasters — almost as bad as economists. For instance, in the 1950s an earlier Astronomer Royal said that space travel was 'utter bilge'.

Nor do politicians and lawyers have a sure touch. One rather surprising futurologist was F. E. Smith, Earl of Birkenhead, crony of Churchill and the UK's Lord Chancellor in the 1920s. In 1930 he wrote a book titled The World in 2030. He'd read the futurologists of his era; he envisaged babies incubated in flasks, flying cars, and such fantasies. In contrast, he foresaw social stagnation. Here's a quote: 'In 2030 women will still, by their wit and charms, inspire the most able men towards heights that they could never themselves achieve'.

Enough said!

* * *

Back in 2003 I wrote a book which I titled Our Final Century? My UK publisher deleted the question mark. The American publishers changed the title to Our Final Hour. My theme was this: Our Earth is forty-five million centuries old. But this century is the first in which one species — ours — can determine the biosphere's fate. I didn't think we'd wipe ourselves out. But I did think we'd be lucky to avoid devastating breakdowns. That's because of unsustainable stresses on ecosystems; there are more of us (world population is higher) and we're all more demanding of resources. And — even more scary — technology empowers us more and more, and thereby exposes us to novel vulnerabilities.

I was inspired by, among others, a great sage of the early twentieth century. In 1902 the young H. G. Wells gave a celebrated lecture at the Royal Institution in London. 'Humanity', he proclaimed,

has come some way, and the distance we have travelled gives us some insight of the way we have to go. ... It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has accomplished is but the dream before the awakening; out of our lineage, minds will spring that will reach back to us in our littleness to know us better than we know ourselves. A day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars.

His rather purple prose still resonates more than a hundred years later — he realised that we humans aren't the culmination of emergent life.

But Wells wasn't an optimist. He also highlighted the risk of global disaster:

It is impossible to show why certain things should not utterly destroy and end the human story ... and make all our efforts vain ... something from space, or pestilence, or some great disease of the atmosphere, some trailing cometary poison, some great emanation of vapour from the interior of the Earth, or new animals to prey on us, or some drug or wrecking madness in the mind of man.

I quote Wells because he reflects the mix of optimism and anxiety — and of speculation and science — which I will try to convey in this book. Were he writing today he would be elated by our expanded vision of life and the cosmos, but he would be even more anxious about the perils we face. The stakes are indeed getting higher; new science offers huge opportunities, but its consequences could jeopardise our survival. Many are concerned that it is 'running away' so fast that neither politicians nor the lay public can assimilate or cope with it.

* * *

You may guess that, being an astronomer, anxiety about asteroid collisions keeps me awake at night. Not so. Indeed, this is one of the few threats that we can quantify — and be confident is unlikely. Every ten million years or so, a body a few kilometres across will hit the Earth, causing global catastrophe — so there are a few chances in a million that such an impact occurs within a human lifetime. There are larger numbers of smaller asteroids that could cause regional or local devastation. The 1908 Tunguska event, which flattened hundreds of square kilometres of (fortunately unpopulated) forests in Siberia, released energy equivalent to several hundred Hiroshima bombs.

Can we be forewarned of these crash landings? The answer is yes. Plans are afoot to create a data set of the one million potential Earth-crossing asteroids larger than 50 metres and track their orbits precisely enough to identify those that might come dangerously close. With the forewarning of an impact, the most vulnerable areas could be evacuated. Even better news is that we could feasibly develop spacecraft that could protect us. A 'nudge', imparted in space several years before the threatened impact, would only need to change an asteroid's velocity by a few centimetres per second to deflect it from a collision course with the Earth.

If you calculate an insurance premium in the usual way, by multiplying probability by consequences, it turns out to be worth spending a few hundred million dollars a year to reduce the asteroid risk.

Other natural threats — earthquakes and volcanoes — are less predictable. So far there is no credible way to prevent them (or even predict them reliably). But there's one reassuring thing about these events, just as there is about asteroids: their rate isn't increasing. It's about the same for us as it was for Neanderthals — or indeed for dinosaurs. But the consequences of such events depend on the vulnerability and value of the infrastructure that's at risk, which is much greater in today's urbanised world. There are, moreover, cosmic phenomena to which the Neanderthals (and indeed all pre-nineteenth-century humans) would have been oblivious: giant flares from the Sun. These trigger magnetic storms that could disrupt electricity grids and electronic communications worldwide.

Despite these natural threats, the hazards that should make us most anxious are those that humans themselves engender. These now loom far larger, and they are becoming more probable, and potentially more catastrophic, with each decade that passes.

We've had one lucky escape already.

1.2. NUCLEAR THREATS

In the Cold War era — when armament levels escalated beyond all reason — the superpowers could have stumbled towards Armageddon through muddle and miscalculation. It was the era of 'fallout shelters'. During the Cuban missile crisis, my fellow students and I participated in vigils and demonstrations — our mood lightened only by the 'protest songs', such as Tom Lehrer's lyrics: 'We'll all go together when we go, all suffused with an incandescent glow'. But we would have been even more scared had we truly realised just how close we were to catastrophe. President Kennedy was later quoted as having said that the odds were 'somewhere between one out of three and even'. And only when he was long retired did Robert McNamara state frankly that 'we came within a hairbreadth of nuclear war without realizing it. It's no credit to us that we escaped — Khrushchev and Kennedy were lucky as well as wise'.

We now know more details of one of the tensest moments. Vasili Arkhipov, a highly respected and decorated officer in Russia's navy, was serving as number two on a submarine carrying nuclear missiles. When the United States attacked the submarine with depth charges, the captain inferred that war had broken out and wanted the crew to launch the missiles. Protocol required the top three officers on board to agree. Arkhipov held out against such action — and thereby avoided triggering a nuclear exchange that could have escalated catastrophically.

Post-Cuba assessments suggest that the annual risk of thermonuclear destruction during the Cold War was about ten thousand times higher than the mean death rate from asteroid impact. And indeed, there were other 'near misses' when catastrophe was only avoided by a thread. In 1983 Stanislav Petrov, a Russian Air Force officer, was monitoring a screen when an 'alert' indicated that five Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched by the United States towards the Soviet Union. Petrov's instructions, when this happened, were to alert his superior (who could, within minutes, trigger nuclear retaliation). He decided, on no more than a hunch, to ignore what he'd seen on the screen, guessing it was a malfunction in the early warning system. And so it was; the system had mistaken the reflection of the Sun's rays off the tops of clouds for a missile launch.

Many now assert that nuclear deterrence worked. In a sense, it did. But that doesn't mean it was a wise policy. If you play Russian roulette with one or two bullets in the cylinder, you are more likely to survive than not, but the stakes would need to be astonishingly high — or the value you place on your life inordinately low — for this to be a wise gamble. We were dragooned into just such a gamble throughout the Cold War era. It would be interesting to know what level of risk other leaders thought they were exposing us to, and what odds most European citizens would have accepted, if they'd been asked to give informed consent. For my part, I would not have chosen to risk a one in three — or even a one in six — chance of a catastrophe that would have killed hundreds of millions and shattered the historic fabric of all European cities, even if the alternative were certain Soviet dominance of Western Europe. And, of course, the devastating consequences of thermonuclear war would have spread far beyond the countries that faced a direct threat, especially if a 'nuclear winter' were triggered.

Nuclear annihilation still looms over us: the only consolation is that, thanks to arms control efforts between the superpowers, there are about five times fewer weapons than during the Cold War — Russia and the United States each have about seven thousand — and fewer are on 'hair trigger' alert. However, there are now nine nuclear powers, and a higher chance than ever before that smaller nuclear arsenals might be used regionally, or even by terrorists. Moreover, we can't rule out, later in the century, a geopolitical realignment leading to a standoff between new superpowers. A new generation may face its own 'Cuba'— and one that could be handled less well (or less luckily) than the 1962 crisis was. A near-existential nuclear threat is merely in abeyance.

Chapter 2 will address the twenty-first-century sciences — bio, cyber, and AI — and what they might portend. Their misuse looms as an increasing risk. The techniques and expertise for bio- or cyberattacks will be accessible to millions — they do not require large special-purpose facilities like nuclear weapons do. Cybersabotage efforts like 'Stuxnet' (which destroyed the centrifuges used in the Iranian nuclear weapons programme), and frequent hacking of financial institutions, have already bumped these concerns up the political agenda. A report from the Pentagon's Science Board claimed that the impact of cyberattack (shutting down, for instance, the US electricity grid) could be catastrophic enough to justify a nuclear response.

But before that let's focus on the potential devastation that could be wrought by human-induced environmental degradation, and by climate change. These interlinked threats are long-term and insidious. They stem from humanity's ever-heavier collective 'footprint'. Unless future generations tread more softly (or unless population levels fall) our finite planet's ecology will be stressed beyond sustainable limits.

1.3. ECO-THREATS AND TIPPING POINTS

Fifty years ago, the world's population was about 3.5 billion. It is now estimated to be 7.6 billion. But the growth is slowing. Indeed, the number of births per year, worldwide, peaked a few years ago and is now decreasing. Nonetheless, the world's population is forecast to rise to around nine billion, or even higher, by 2050. This is because most people in the developing world are still young and have not had children, and because they will live longer; the age histogram for the developing world will come to look more like it does for Europe. The largest current growth is in East Asia, where the world's human and financial resources will become concentrated — ending four centuries of North Atlantic hegemony.

Demographers predict continuing urbanisation, with 70 percent of people living in cities by 2050. Even by 2030, Lagos, São Paulo, and Delhi will have populations greater than thirty million. Preventing megacities from becoming turbulent dystopias will be a major challenge to governance.

Population growth is currently underdiscussed. This may be partly because doom-laden forecasts of mass starvation — in, for instance, Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book The Population Bomb and the pronouncements of the Club of Rome — have proved off the mark. Also, some deem population growth to be a taboo subject — tainted by association with eugenics in the 1920s and '30s, with Indian policies under Indira Gandhi, and more recently with China's hard-line one-child policy. As it turns out, food production and resource extraction have kept pace with rising population; famines still occur, but they are due to conflict or maldistribution, not overall scarcity.

We can't specify an 'optimum population' for the world because we can't confidently conceive what people's lifestyles, diet, travel patterns, and energy needs will be beyond 2050. The world couldn't sustain anywhere near its present population if everyone lived as profligately — each using as much energy and eating as much beef — as the better-off Americans do today. On the other hand, twenty billion could live sustainably, with a tolerable (albeit ascetic) quality of life, if all adopted a vegan diet, travelled little, lived in small high-density apartments, and interacted via super-internet and virtual reality. This latter scenario is plainly improbable, and certainly not alluring. But the spread between these extremes highlights how naive it is to quote an unqualified headline figure for the world's 'carrying capacity'.

A world with nine billion people, a number that could be reached (or indeed somewhat exceeded) by 2050, needn't signal catastrophe. Modern agriculture — low-till, water-conserving, and perhaps involving genetically modified (GM) crops, together with better engineering to reduce waste, improve irrigation, and so forth — could plausibly feed that number. The buzz phrase is 'sustainable intensification'. But there will be constraints on energy — and in some regions severe pressure on water supplies. The quoted figures are remarkable. To grow one kilogram of wheat takes 1,500 litres of water and several megajoules of energy. But a kilogram of beef takes ten times as much water and twenty times as much energy. Food production uses 30 percent of the world's energy production and 70 percent of water withdrawals.

Agricultural techniques using GM organisms can be beneficial. To take one specific instance, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 40 percent of children under the age of five in the developing world suffer from vitamin A deficiency; this is the leading cause of childhood blindness globally, affecting hundreds of thousands of children each year. So-called golden rice, first developed in the 1990s and subsequently improved, delivers beta-carotene, the precursor of vitamin A, and alleviates vitamin-A deficiency. Regrettably, campaigning organisations, Greenpeace in particular, have impeded the cultivation of golden rice. Of course, there is concern about 'tampering with nature', but in this instance, new techniques could have enhanced 'sustainable intensification'. Moreover, there are hopes that a more drastic modification of the rice genome (the so-called C4 pathway) could enhance the efficiency of photosynthesis, thus allowing faster and more intensive growth of the world's number one staple crop.

Two potential dietary innovations do not confront a high technical barrier: converting insects — highly nutritious and protein rich — into palatable food; and making artificial meat from vegetable protein. As for the latter, 'beef' burgers (made mainly of wheat, coconut, and potato) have been sold since 2015 by a California company called Impossible Foods. It will be a while, though, before these burgers will satisfy carnivorous gourmands for whom beetroot juice is a poor substitute for blood. But biochemists are on the case, exploring more sophisticated techniques. In principle, it is possible to 'grow' meat by taking a few cells from an animal and then stimulating growth with appropriate nutrients. Another method, called acellular agriculture, uses genetically modified bacteria, yeast, fungi, or algae to produce the proteins and fats that are found in (for instance) milk and eggs. There is a clear financial incentive as well as an ecological imperative to develop acceptable meat substitutes, so one can be optimistic of rapid progress.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "On the Future"
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Copyright © 2018 Princeton University Press.
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