Future Perfect

by Robyn Williams

  It is little wonder that we have had a corresponding efflorescence in Tehran and other Muslim capitals of similarly tub-thumping evangelicals. But the extent of the operation in Washington is still not fully appreciated.

  Wills goes on:

  It is common knowledge that the White House let lobbyists have a say in the drafting of economic legislation in matters like oil production, pharmaceutical regulation, medical insurance and corporate taxes. It is less known that for social services, evangelical organizations were given the same right to draft bills and install the officials who implement them. Karl Rove [George W. Bush’s senior adviser] had cultivated the extensive network of religious-right organizations, and they were consulted at every step of the way as the administration set up its policies on gays, AIDS, condoms, abstinence programs, creationism, and other matters that concerned the evangelicals. All the evangelicals’ resentments… were now being addressed.

  The evangelicals knew which positions could affect their agenda, whom to replace, and whom they wanted appointed. This was true for the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and Health and Human Services-agencies that would rule on or administer matters dear to the evangelical cause.

  Despite this comprehensive takeover, the Christian right would complain that the President had not gone far enough.

  * * * *

  When I was in my teens I met the Rev. Michael Scott. He was a delightful and unostentatious figure, often dressed more like a gardener on his way to the allotment than like a priest. Scott spent his time sailing boats directly into the intended sites of nuclear bomb tests. His bravery and commitment were astounding.

  Bishop Trevor Huddleston I saw briefly. His stand in South Africa fighting apartheid was legendary. Huddleston persevered through the worst of the brutality and when it was unfashionable to be against the system. The Rev. Dr David Millikan, a former head of ABC Religion, has spent decades trying to understand why our children join cults and helping them recover from the experience. These men represent the heart of what the Church does best. Many women have done the same; many non-Christian religions as well.

  Occasionally, however, I do a thought experiment. I wonder how many of the policies coming out of Washington, London and Canberra in the last ten years would have lapsed if put through the filter of the teachings of Jesus on love and forgiveness. If George W. Bush is a good example of a thoroughgoing Christian, then Heaven help us.

  I draw several lessons from all this about the future of God and of ourselves.

  The first is, inevitably, about education. Science may be imperfect and may have produced harm, but it is by a cosmic mile more reliable and potentially less hazardous than most human institutions. It is also the key to our survival. The relativism that demeans our times should not be allowed to go unchallenged. We are not in a knowledge supermarket, where the choice is up to the customer; we need critical thinking to help us dispose of the dross. Our schools and universities should be the front lines of this, not dupes of snake-oil merchants.

  Second, we need to know other cultures better than we do. The war in Iraq has been a shocking disaster because the invaders had not a clue about how to behave in a foreign land. Terry Eagleton is half right when he asks that we should at least try to know something about the human values we are rejecting.

  Thirdly, we need to grow up. Religion may have had its place in the forest and during medieval plagues. Today it is either a faint remnant in the hands of apologetic bishops or a rallying cry for rampaging crowds shouting vile loathings. A private conviction, politely held, is one thing. A national policy putting millions at risk is another.

  As for God-he can look after his own future.

  * * * *

  Postscript 1

  Danny Wallace, 30, a comedian, took out a newspaper advert inviting everyone to join a new cult. It had no message. Despite this, people signed up. Danny started a website saying only ‘Join me’, still with no statement of purpose. People kept joining. They started calling Danny ‘Leader’.

  Somewhat freaked, Danny, being a good bloke, decided to turn the cult’s raison d’être into random good works, like sending peanuts to pensioners. After five years this accidental organisation has 16,000 members Europe-wide. People are such keen joiners… and followers.

  True story!

  * * * *

  Postscript 2

  I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed-I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any of them. Mine is not a religion of the prison house. It has room for the least among God’s creations. But it is proof against the insolent pride of race, religion or colour.

  – Mahatma Gandhi

  * * * *

  The Hunches of Nostradamus

  2008 All US presidential candidates say they know God personally-’He’s my senior adviser.’

  2009 President of Iran promises to wipe out all infidels- non Muslims-’God willing!’ Darwin anniversary celebrations cancelled in US.

  2010 Richard Dawkins publishes Why God Stinks; insists it is not meant to be provocative.

  2010 Discovery Institute in Seattle says it can prove all humans were ‘intelligently designed’- with the exception of Richard Dawkins.

  2011 Archbishop of Canterbury admits being an atheist. Says this is no impediment to doing his job.

  2012 Terrorists blow up all kindergartens and school buses in Israel and southern England ‘in the name of Allah’.

  2013 Lesbian becomes Archbishop of York.

  2014 Degrees in intelligent design offered at Australian universities-because ‘they are so very well funded’, says Vice-Chancellors Committee.

  2015 Israel bombs Iran with nuclear devices.

  2016 Membership of Pentecostalists and other churches recruiting mainly young people reaches several billion worldwide. They denounce evolutionary biology.

  2017 George Pell becomes Pope. Condemns condoms.

  2018 Middle East wiped out.

  2019 Pope George offers prayers for world peace.

  2020 God announces (via ABC Radio National) he is giving up in disgust, leaving this universe and going off to start another one.

  4. The Future of Transport - 2027: Full Speed Ahead

  The delays caused by traffic congestion are officially estimated to cost America $100 billion a year.

  – The Economist, 29 April 1995. The figure is now much greater.

  I am hurrying through the city streets to pick up a car. It’s a typically turbulent spring day in 2027, the weather far less calm and predictable than in the twentieth century. No vehicles are standing kerbside, not even in the suburbs: few people own cars now, as fuel has become too expensive and we cannot afford the space to park them. I come to a CarPool. It offers two choices. One is a nifty two-seater, even smaller than the abbreviated carlets which appeared twenty years ago, driving around town as if their rear ends have been chopped off. The other choice is a six-seater with ample carrying space for family or goods. I take out a smart card-actually an electronic prong (a Hypertel) attached to my mobile phone-which registers both my account and my sobriety. The card opens the car and automatically charges my bank, and off I go.

  The traffic is slight. Most commuters now take mass transit. I am driving because I want to go somewhere not served by buses or trains, to make a few detours and end up in Canberra, where I’ll simply leave my carlet in another CarPool and walk away. This system has several advantages. The vehicles have 92 per cent usage (instead of the 97 per cent idleness of old); they are well maintained and run on state-of-the-art alcohol batteries weighing a trifle. Parking fees are nonexistent, and my only other direct cost is the road charge, now automatic and universal and graded electronically from expensive motorways to cheaper suburban streets.

  Few miss the cars they used to own. It just became too difficult to run them and to put up with the ever-increasing restrictions. N
ow, in 2027, if we do want to drive occasionally, we have all the luxury of a hire car with the accessories of our choice (GPS, pods, child seats). CarPools are as abundant as post offices once were.

  Fantasy? Of course! Would Australians (or Americans, or the newly affluent Chinese) put up with no car ownership? Not unless some shock makes us reassess our mad, 50-year-old affair with the private car. My parents did not own one (not so unusual in the mid-twentieth century), and in 2005 between 20 per cent and 24 per cent of households in Sydney and Melbourne did without. Only about three generations have taken car dependence for granted, so it would not be strange to see some change as circumstances alter-as they must.

  The car is an odd piece of engineering. Unlike the bicycle, which converts energy into momentum with 95 per cent efficiency, with the car, as Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute likes to point out, ‘only 13 per cent of its fuel energy even reaches the wheels’. Most energy disappears in the form of heat or noise, or is dissipated by accessories like airconditioning and windscreen wipers. After warming the tyres, says Lovins, ‘just 6 per cent of the fuel energy actually accelerates the car’. Nearly two tonnes of machinery to shift less than 0.08 tonnes of you.

  The possibilities for improvement of my carlets are enormous. Polymers will make much lighter bodies; hydrogen fuel cells and long-awaited lithium-ion batteries will offer independence from oil. All will combine to make the hypercar Lovins has been enthusing about for the past decade a real possibility.

  Electric cars are already performing mechanical miracles, as Arnold Schwarzenegger discovered recently when he drove the monster from Tesla Motors in California. ‘Faster than a Ferrari’, it reaches 100 kph ‘in just four seconds’; travels 400 km after being charged from your wall socket and, according to the Economist, is greener than a petrol-powered car.

  Tesla’s electric sports car has lithium-ion batteries and a carbon-fibre body and is about four times more efficient in terms of fuel equivalence than the average American vehicle. With such a performance standard in 2007, it should not be hard to make it even more impressive by 2027.

  But what about the downside of cars? They will kill two people every minute, worldwide, by 2027 if present trends continue; they already kill five people in Australia every day. A study done by Professor Barry Bloom of Harvard University and WHO (the World Health Organization) shows that, by 2020, ‘road traffic accidents would be the third biggest cause of death or permanent injury in the world’. Already they are the second biggest cause of deaths of young men after AIDS! Bigger than warfare.

  They eat up 40 per cent of the surface of cities such as Sydney and Los Angeles and produce 8 per cent of our greenhouse gases. ‘Transportation consumes 70 per cent of US oil and generates a third of its carbon emissions,’ notes Lovins in Scientific American. And, to add one of my favourite horror statistics: traffic jams cost America $US100 billion per annum ($A13.8 billion for Australia), which rises to $US170 billion if you add the cost of accidents.

  The odd thing about the car, as the British conservative magazine The Spectator once pointed out in an editorial, is that it is the last bastion of socialism. While masquerading as the ultimate symbol of free-enterprise individualism, it requires a colossal subsidy from taxes in the form of infrastructure (about $6.2 billion a year in Australia). Congestion charges in cities and widespread electronically tagged prices for using roads must follow, and will drastically diminish freelance motoring.

  But will nations such as China catch up with our own bad example? Not yet, says Professor Peter Newman, of Murdoch University in Perth. He calculates that ‘the 200 million Chinese who moved into cities over the last ten years use around 2 gigajoules of transport per person’. This compares with 30 GJ for a Sydney dweller and 103 GJ for someone in Atlanta (USA). ‘Thus the 200 million Chinese use less fuel than one Atlanta or four Sydneys.’ This despite each of these two cities boasting only around four million people!

  What is the secret? One obvious factor is that the Chinese are opting to live in high-rise towers while the Atlantans spread themselves over the lowest urban density in the world, courtesy of cars. Yet the average car trip in Australia (over 55 per cent of them) is less than 5 km- which, as Sally Campbell, of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) Sustainability Institute, notes, is a bike ride of about twenty minutes, just the amount recommended to keep the typical Australian fit and healthy.

  But there is another side to the Chinese ‘miracle’. Here is Kirsty Needham in her book, A Season in Red: My great leap forward into the new China : ‘One of the most confronting aspects of daily life was the complete disregard for rules, or human mortality, on the roads. A nation of novice drivers had been let loose en masse as car ownership suddenly became within reach of the middle class.’ On one bus trip she passed three ‘horrific accidents as brake failures sent coaches smashing into cars… When we finally passed the crumpled shell of the bus, it was a sickening sight. The bodies of the dead were trapped inside… I saw a woman who looked like she was sleeping, but with the eyes open, slumped against the window. An empty face staring through the glass.’

  Red lights in Beijing are ignored, even on pedestrian crossings. ‘Humans were expected to leap out of the way’ And she gives figures for the experiment with car ownership in China that we can expect to see matched across Asia: ‘Traffic was now the leading cause of death for Chinese aged fifteen to forty-five. The WHO estimated 45,000 people were maimed and 600 died every day on the roads in China. Thousands were caught driving without licences or driving drunk in Beijing each year. In Shanghai, a third of traffic accidents were found to be caused by newly licensed drivers.’

  And our kids are dying, too.

  * * * *

  What if cheap oil runs out? Yes, we can exploit relatively expensive sources like shale and liquefied coal. But costs will be enormous. Planes can’t fly on much other than jet fuel (kerosene) and use vast quantities of it. What will be their prospects twenty or thirty years from now, especially with real concerns about the greenhouse contribution of jets (about 3 per cent of the total, according to the industry)? After the present boom in cheap international travel, could there be a major slump? Could that be why Boeing has invested in the smaller, more versatile 7E7? Could the giant Airbus double-decker, with its 550 seats, prove to be a size commitment too far?

  I sat in Boeing’s mock-up of the 7E7 at one of their labs in Seattle. The first thing you notice is the deliberate effort to make you feel that you are really flying in the sky, instead of trying to pretend you are merely in a cramped, earthbound canteen-cum-dormitory. Arched cabin ceilings painted in blue and designed to give an impression of celestial height take away the enclosed, life-in-a-tube sensation, and even the windows are elongated, connecting you to the horizon. It’s more serene and even more natural than our customary flying cattle enclosures. Even the air is clean: ‘As pure as that you’d get from an operating theatre,’ I was told by the smooth-talking Boeing lab chief, who looked like a cross between Clark Gable and Biggies.

  But what about those aircraft emissions? While they are only 3 per cent of the carbon total (compared with 22 per cent for ground transport), the effect of these gases is substantial-enhancing greenhouse problems and changing the chemistry of the upper atmosphere. There is already discussion of changing the preferred altitude of planes to reduce the damage caused by ‘N-trails’, the oxides of nitrogen that pour from their exhausts. There is also talk of ways to reduce delays at take off and landing, both responsible for substantial emissions

  So what does the future hold for a means of transport that has determinedly and successfully wooed the budget traveller? The costs of the new draconian security measures and rocketing fuel prices could return air travel to the exclusive option it was 30 years ago. I now approach an international flight with all the enthusiasm I would bring to 24-hour root-canal therapy. I suspect others feel the same, especially with the prospect of having to eschew their books and laptops as on-board restrictio
ns get worse.

  There isn’t any other quick option for Australians who want to go overseas, so stoicism may have to go up yet another few notches. But surely fast trains would be a good inter-city alternative, if only governments were prepared to invest in infrastructure? As for the supersonic flying revolution, it now seems further away than ever. Concorde is grounded, and the experiments at the University of Queensland with the Scramjet (at upwards of eight times the speed of sound), though successful, are unlikely to have anybody other than daredevils such as Richard Branson (in vigorous old age) hopping on the promised three-hour flight from Sydney to London.

  Private space travel appears more likely. SpaceShipOne has had successful trials in America and two Australians, Wilson da Silva and Alan Finkel of Cosmos magazine, have already booked to be the first Australians to make the seven-hour frolic.

  Going to Mars will take much longer, and is likely to be preceded by the landing of an expandable base made from the fuel casings of the spaceship. It is likely that the first venturers will be asked to stay there. Who would want to take a one-way ticket to another planet? Well, Lord Rees, for one. The President of the Royal Society of London told me that making only one journey is safer. Besides, he added, in the old days of exploration, folk were sanguine about not coming home!

  Back on Earth: trains first carried passengers in South Wales just over 200 years ago. They flourished in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries; but in Australia and Britain, they’ve since gone backwards. Visitors who come to see us on the South Coast of New South Wales and take the trundler from Sydney cannot believe the time it takes to grind through the short distance. Has no one noticed France ’s TGVs (trains à grande vitesse) or Japan ’s bullet trains, which travel on time, CBD to CBD, and make the plane alternative look ridiculous?