The Future

by Al Gore

  It is important to note that H. pylori has been found to play a role in both gastritis and ulcers; the Australian biologist who won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering H. pylori, Dr. Barry Marshall, noted, “People have been killed who didn’t get antibiotics to get rid of it.” Still, several studies have found strong evidence that people who lack H. pylori “are more likely to develop asthma, hay fever or skin allergies in childhood.” Its absence is also associated with increased acid reflux and esophageal cancer. Scientists in Germany and Switzerland have found that the introduction of H. pylori into the guts of mice serves to protect them against asthma. Among people, for reasons that are not yet fully understood, asthma has increased by approximately 160 percent throughout the world in the last two decades.

  One of the hormones regulated by H. pylori, ghrelin, is one of the keys to appetite. Normally, the levels of ghrelin fall significantly after someone eats a meal, thus signaling to the brain that it’s time to stop eating. However, in people missing H. pylori in their guts, the ghrelin levels do not fall after a meal—so the signal to stop eating is not sent. In the laboratory run by Martin Blaser, mice given antibiotics sufficient to kill the H. pylori gained significant body fat on an unchanged diet. Interestingly, while scientists have long said that they cannot explain the reason why subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics in livestock feed increase the animals’ weight gain, there is now new evidence that it may be due to changes in their microbiome.

  The replacement of beneficial bacteria wiped out by antibiotics has been shown to be an effective treatment for some diseases and conditions caused by harmful microbes normally kept in check by beneficial microbes. Probiotics, as they are called, are not new, but some doctors are now treating patients infected with a harmful bacterium known as Clostridium difficile by administering a suppository to accomplish a “fecal transplant.”

  Although the very idea triggers a feeling of repugnance in many, the procedure has been found to be both safe and extremely effective. Scientists at the University of Alberta, after reviewing 124 fecal transplants, found that 83 percent of patients experienced immediate improvement when the balance of their internal microbiome was restored. Other scientists are now hard at work developing probiotic remedies designed to restore specific beneficial bacteria when it is missing from a patient’s microbiome.

  Just as we are connected to and depend upon the 100 trillion microbes that live in and on each one of us from birth to death, we are also connected to and depend upon the life-forms all around us that live on and in the Earth itself. They provide life-giving services to us just as the microbes in and on our bodies do. Just as the artificial disruption of the microbial communities inside us can create an imbalance in the ecology of the microbiome that directly harms our health, the disruption of the Earth’s ecological system—which we live inside—can also create an imbalance that threatens us.

  The consequences for human beings of the large-scale disruption of the Earth’s ecological system—and what we can do to prevent it—is the subject of the next chapter.

  * * *

  * Olaf Sporns, a professor of computational cognitive neuroscience at Indiana University, was the first to coin the word “connectome.” The National Institutes of Health now have a Human Connectome Project.

  † The first effective polio vaccine was developed by Jonas Salk in 1952 and licensed for the public in 1955. A team led by Albert Sabin developed the first oral polio vaccine, which was licensed for the public in 1962.

  ‡ Historians date the introduction of Hammurabi’s Code to around 1780 BC.

  § Other scientists have mimicked the molecular design of spider silk by synthesizing their own from a commercially available substance (polyurethane elastomer) treated with clay platelets only one nanometer (a billionth of a meter) thick and only 25 nanometers across, then carefully processing the mixture. This work has been funded by the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT because the military applications are considered of such high importance.

  For a larger version of the following image, click here.

  6

  THE EDGE

  THE EMERGENT POWER AND ACCELERATING MOMENTUM OF EARTH Inc., the rapid growth of destructive resource-consumption patterns, the absence of global leadership, and the dysfunctional governance in the community of nations have all combined to produce flows of pollution that are seriously damaging the integrity of the planetary climate balance that is essential to the survival of civilization.

  We have been slow to recognize the extreme danger we are creating, in part because of the suddenness with which the underlying relationship between humankind and the ecological system of the Earth has been radically transformed by the relatively recent confluence of three basic factors. First, our numbers have quadrupled in less than a century and are still increasing; second, our way of thinking—both individually and collectively—is dominated by short-term horizons and distorted by habits of thought inherited from our prehistoric ancestors, who had to survive threats very different from the ones we face today; and third, the technologies now in common use are far more powerful than those available even a few generations ago.

  In particular, our continued burning of carbon-rich fossil fuels for 85 percent of the energy that powers Earth Inc. spews 90 million extra tons of heat-trapping global warming pollution every twenty-four hours into the extraordinarily thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it is an open sewer. That means we are adding the equivalent by weight of more than 5,000 Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spills every day to the dangerous concentrations that started accumulating with the Industrial Revolution at a rate that picked up speed dramatically throughout the last half century and is still accelerating.

  As a result, human civilization is colliding with the natural world and causing grave harm to important natural systems on which our continued thriving as a species depends. There are multiple manifestations of this collision: the prospective extinction of 20 to 50 percent of all the living species on Earth within this century; the assault on the largest and most important forests in the world; the acidification of the oceans, depletion of important fish species, and imminent loss of coral reefs; the buildup of long-lived toxic chemical wastes that pose a persistent threat to people and other forms of life; the depletion of topsoil and groundwater resources at unsustainable rates; and more.

  But the single most important and threatening manifestation of this collision is the climate crisis. Because the atmosphere surrounding our planet is so thin, it is highly vulnerable to the drastic change in its chemical composition brought about when we recklessly and constantly pollute it with such prodigious volumes of gaseous chemical waste. This growing blanket of pollution is smothering the atmosphere’s ability to mediate the radiative balance between the Earth and the sun, trapping more extra heat energy each day in the lower atmosphere than would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. In the process, we are profoundly altering the water cycle of the Earth, destroying crucial ecological balances, and compounding all of the other injuries we are inflicting on nature, including the plants and animals upon which we depend.

  The good news is that we do have the capacity to begin solving the climate crisis—if we awaken to the reality of our circumstances and decide that saving the future of human civilization is a priority. That means recognizing not only the danger but also the opportunity inherent in this crisis. It means abandoning the illusion that there may be some clever technological quick fix for a planetary emergency that requires a multipronged global strategy to convert our energy systems—particularly electricity generation—manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, building technologies, transportation, mining, and other sectors of the world’s economy to a low-carbon, highly efficient pattern.

  And yes, when you lay out the complexity and magnitude of the response needed, it can sound daunting. But there have been recent stunning improvements in the technologies enabling us to succeed. They’re increasing in efficie
ncy and being deployed much faster than predicted. The scale of renewable energy markets has led to much sharper cost reductions than anyone predicted. The price of electricity from solar and wind has dropped so rapidly that in some areas of the world, both are already competitive with the average grid price for electricity. Globally, renewables will be the second-largest source of power generation by 2015.

  REAL ALTERNATIVES

  The more energy we produce from solar and wind, the cheaper it gets; the more energy we get from oil and coal, the more expensive it gets. And of course, the “fuel” for solar and wind is effectively limitless. For example, more potentially usable energy is received by the Earth from sunlight each and every hour than would be needed for all of the world’s energy consumption in a full year. The potential for wind energy also exceeds the world’s total energy demand several times over.

  In the summer of 2012, there were periods when Germany received more than half its electricity from renewable energy sources. Some skilled investment experts are now projecting that on a global basis, even a conservative estimate of continued cost reductions for photovoltaic (PV) electricity will lead to a meteoric rise in its market share for new generating capacity over the next few years—to the point where almost half of the entire world’s additional electricity generation will come from PV by midway through the next decade.

  In 2010, for the first time in history, global investments in renewable energy exceeded those in fossil fuels ($187 billion, compared to $157 billion). The same year, solar photovoltaic installations in the United States rose 102 percent over those installed just one year earlier. Also, during the previous decade, 166 proposed new U.S. coal-fired generating plants were canceled, in large part due to public opposition.

  Architects and builders are incorporating new designs and technologies that reduce energy consumption and the operating cost of buildings. This is particularly important because approximately 30 percent of all CO2 emissions come from buildings, and of all buildings needed by 2050, two thirds have yet to be built. According to an EPA report, “On average, 30 percent of the energy consumed in commercial buildings is wasted. Energy efficiency is the single largest way to eliminate this waste, reduce emissions, and save money.”

  Hundreds of millions of people have already made changes in their purchasing decisions in order to seek out lower-carbon goods and services. In response, many businesses and industries have demonstrated leadership in accelerating carbon reductions and shifting to profitable strategies based on sustainability and a switch to renewable energy. Energy efficiency improvements are being implemented on a large scale. In the aggregate, however, greenhouse gas emissions will continue their steep rise until and unless government policies are enacted that accelerate the transition to a low-carbon world.

  In order to move forward with this transition much faster, at a pace that is necessary to begin solving the climate crisis, we must first build a global political consensus—starting with a consensus in the United States—strong enough to support the policy changes that will solve the crisis: we have to put an adequate market price on the emissions of global warming pollution with a carbon tax, a steadily declining limit on emissions, and market mechanisms that promote maximum efficiency in the allocation of expenditures to achieve overall reductions.

  Leaders in civic society must also place a political and social price on the dishonest distribution of false information about this existential crisis by cynical global warming deniers, many of whom know better but are trying to preserve destructive yet highly profitable business models by sowing confusion, false doubt, and political discord to delay the recognition of reality and prevent the congealing of a consensus.

  Ultimately, here is the choice we face: we can either make the solution to the climate crisis the central organizing principle of global civilization—or the hostile conditions we are creating will grow rapidly worse, thickening the smothering blanket of global warming pollution surrounding our planet and destroy the viability of civilization as we know it.

  For all of recorded history, we have configured the patterns of our lives and the design of our civilization to fit precisely into a relatively narrow envelope of familiar variations in temperatures, winds and rains, shorelines, river flows, frost lines, and snowfalls. We have built our communities in the places we call home—near reliable sources of the water we drink and the productive fields that give us food—in a world whose natural contours have varied little for more than 300 generations.

  Since the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, not long before the first cities were built and the invention of writing preserved the memory of man, we have taken for granted the enduring and relatively stable pattern of jet streams and ocean currents, warm spells and cold snaps, rainy seasons and dry seasons, spring planting and fall harvesting, tadpoles and butterflies, and the other enduring natural phenomena that have characterized our world for almost ten millennia. Just as the proverbial fish doesn’t know it is in water—because it knows nothing but water—we have never known anything other than the planetary conditions that have given rise to the flourishing of humankind.

  All of those who preceded us added their contributions to the elaborate legacy of the human enterprise bequeathed to us in our time. And each generation in turn has been sustained by gifts from nature itself: the pollination of crops and wild plants by insects and other animals, the natural purification of water by soils, and numerous other ecological benefits that modern economists call “ecosystem services.”

  All of this and more we take for granted. All of this and more we are putting at risk. Very large human-caused changes in the long predictable climate pattern we have always known could so radically reorder the nature of nature that it is difficult for us to imagine the challenges our species would confront. When a fish is taken out of the water, it cannot survive. By the same token, if we completely disrupt the conditions on which our civilization is based—not just for a few years, but for many thousands of years—it too would be unlikely to survive in anything resembling its current form.

  SECURITY AND STABILITY

  One of the many consequences of huge disruptions in the climate pattern we have always known would be a much higher risk of political instability. In fact, this risk is one of the principal reasons why military and national security experts in the United States have long expressed more concern about global warming than most elected officials. In many regions of the world, governance is already under tremendous stress with several failed states—Somalia, Yemen, and Zimbabwe, for example—creating difficult challenges for their regional neighbors. The increased stress that would accompany large alterations in climate patterns could push many other countries to the breaking point.

  After a war game run by the National Defense University in the U.S. to simulate the geopolitical consequences of a mass migration of climate refugees from low-lying areas of Bangladesh, the head of the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies, Major General A. N. M. Muniruzzaman, said, “By 2050, millions of displaced people will overwhelm not just our limited land and resources but our government, our institutions and our borders.”

  The few exceptions to the relative climate stability we have always enjoyed prove the rule. A recent study by David Zhang and others of the relationship between relatively small climate fluctuations in the past and civil conflict, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported, “Climate-driven economic downturn was the direct cause of large-scale human crises in pre-industrial Europe and the northern hemisphere.” Indeed, our histories record the disruptive effects of comparatively small variations in the prevailing conditions in which we have thrived:

  • The medieval warm period was connected to the disappearance of the Mayan civilization in Central America and the temporary colonization of southern Greenland by farmers from Scandinavia;

  • During the Little Ice Age, Eskimos wrapped in fur paddled their kayaks to Scotland; farther south, mill
ions died in a European famine centered in France;

  • The huge downpours in fourteenth-century China triggered a chain of events leading to the Black Death that wiped out one quarter of the population of Europe;

  • The unusually large eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia in 1815 filled the Earth’s atmosphere with particulates and led to the “year without a summer” in 1816 that caused widespread crop failures around the world, a wave of revolutions in Europe, and mass migrations in many regions by people searching for food and warmth.

  All of these events were rare extremes that nevertheless fell within the natural boundaries of variations consistent with the same overarching climate pattern we have always known. And as terrible as the resulting catastrophes were, they were mostly temporary and relatively short-lived. By contrast, the much larger climate disruptions we are now causing threaten to create a planetary emergency lasting for time periods beyond the scope of human imagination. An estimated 25 percent of the CO2 we put into the atmosphere this year will still be contributing to higher temperatures at least 10,000 years from now. If we force the melting of giant ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, they are not likely to return on a timescale that has any relevance whatsoever to our species.