by Ian Mortimer
The problem is, of course, that we only have one planet, and using up a large proportion of its most useful resources in one century was not particularly clever if we wanted to satisfy our needs and live comfortably for ever more. The political thinkers of the past – Hegelians, Marxists and nineteenth-century liberals – never saw the importance of the supply side of the mankind-Earth exchange. They were only interested in what mankind wanted, or, to be more precise, what they wanted for mankind. For Marx, socialism was a matter of who controlled the resources, the means of production and the markets: if these were all controlled by the proletariat, then the proletariat would benefit. However, if the number of people on the planet were to double, sharing all those resources would halve those available to the initial proletarian cohort, and thus population expansion would gradually impoverish the proletariat, whether or not they owned the means of production. Furthermore, even if the population remained stable, not all those proletariat-owned resources would last an equally long time. Some oil-producing countries would run out before others, destroying the economic and social well-being of those who depended on them. Eventually a few countries would be left with the only profitable oil reserves remaining in the world, placing them in an economically dominant position over those whose resources had run dry. Marx’s vision was, like all utopias, a midnight point beyond which, even if the hour hand had reached it, it would have remorselessly ticked past.
Some people still believe that we will never exhaust our resources. When the Reconquista was completed in 1492 and Christendom reached the end of its possible expansion, Columbus promptly crossed the ocean and found Hispaniola. Five years later, Cabot reached Newfoundland. Such a spirit of adventure is not dead, these people say; it will lead us to the stars. Unfortunately, the twentieth century also ended that dream. As this book has shown, the ‘spirit of adventure’ is really a euphemism for fortune-hunting, or the pursuit of profit. Columbus and Cabot were inspired by dreams of wealth. So were the governments that backed them. The exploration of the African coast only proceeded past Cape Bojador because Gil Eanes found gold and slaves there. In the eighteenth century, people did not start improvising with new agricultural techniques in the hope of feeding the world; they did so for profit. But in the twentieth century we came to understand the limits to our expansion: we discovered that it would never be profitable to leave the solar system. It might one day be worthwhile mining the ore of Mars for metals that are rare on Earth. However, I strongly suspect that the multi-billion-dollar price tag on sending missions to barren, freezing, airless Mars will mean it is always cheaper for governments to form an alliance with a resource-rich state, or attack one that is economically or militarily weaker. Beyond Mars there is no hope of expanding in a commercially viable way. The remaining planets in this solar system are not suitable bases for humans to settle and start mining. The next solar system, Epsilon Eridani, is 10.5 light years away, and its planets are not in a habitable zone. The nearest planet after Mars on which we could possibly settle is Gliese 667Cc, 22 light years away. Just getting there would be a huge problem. The fastest we have propelled a manned spacecraft is about 25,000 m.p.h.: at this speed it would take us 589,248 years to make the journey. And then we would need to get back again – a round trip of over a million years. That length of time is never going to excite investors, whatever the promised return. And there is no guarantee there will be a return, in either sense of the word.
To go beyond this is to venture into the realms of science theory, if not science fiction. In April 2010 Stephen Hawking postulated that a gigantic spacecraft containing enough fuel to burn solidly for two years could approach half the speed of light (334,800,000 m.p.h.).16 If it had enough fuel for four years, it could reach 90 per cent of the speed of light (602,640,000 m.p.h.). In this way you could get the return trip to Gliese 667Cc down to about 58.6 years.17 I am quite happy to accept Professor Hawking’s assurances that, due to the properties of space-time, the people on board the craft would only experience half the time elapsing while they are travelling at 90 per cent of the speed of light: 37.3 years instead of the full 58.6. However, I find myself wondering where you would put a fuel tank containing over half a billion tonnes of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen (for the journey there and the journey back again). Indeed, would a craft that heavy be able to take off? Could it be fuelled in space? Clearly, this is why I’m not a rocket scientist. And come to think of it, nor is Stephen Hawking. What I do know is that no profit is going to be gleaned from a voyage to another solar system. It is not the technological limitation that persuades me this will always be true, it is a combination of the sheer distance, the fact that we cannot travel as fast as light, and the cost implications. It will always be commercially more expedient to barter, negotiate or otherwise fight for Earth’s resources than spend trillions of dollars on a desperate attempt to send a few people on a very, very long quest to another solar system.
So space, our so-called ‘final frontier’, does not offer us a solution to the problem. It does, however, focus our attention on the forces that are likely to act upon our nature in the future. Many of the changes discussed in this book have something in common: they are about a breaking of boundaries. Geographical boundaries were smashed by Columbus, Cabot and other early explorers. Boundaries of perception were shattered by the supernova of 1572, and by the microscope and the telescope. Social boundaries were dismantled in the French Revolution and, in the nineteenth century, by reformers throughout the West. The Earth’s atmosphere was breached in the twentieth. Many of these boundary crossings can be understood in terms of the ‘Go West, young man’ paradigm. You go westwards, you find the boundary, you cross it, you discover, you acquire, and you become rich. This paradigm characterised the expansion of the Vikings, Normans, Crusaders and explorers of the New World. It underpinned scientific discoveries, world exploration and economic growth. But with the recognition of the approaching exhaustion of our fossil resources on Earth, this boundary-breaking mentality is out of date. The challenge now is not one of expansion but self-containment: a series of problems with which the all-conquering male is ill-equipped to deal. We, Homo sapiens, have never before had to face the problem of our own instincts threatening our continued existence; they have always been for our benefit, the survival of our genes. The frontiers we face now lie not on the horizon – or even in space – but inside our own minds.
The principal agent of change
The ten chapters of this book have put forward ten very different individuals as the principal agents of change. Indeed, it would make an extraordinary guest list for a dinner party: Pope Gregory VII, Peter Abelard, Pope Innocent III, King Edward III, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther, Galileo Galilei, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler. Four Italians, three Germans (one Austrian-born), two Frenchmen and one king of England whose ancestry was entirely Continental. Which one of these was the major agent of change of the entire millennium? Or was it someone else – someone whose influence affected people over several centuries? Aristotle, perhaps? Or Isaac Newton?
There is no doubt who was the principal agent of change of the millennium. It was God. Personally, I don’t believe in God. However, my personal beliefs are irrelevant here. Even though He does not exist (in my opinion), He had more influence on the Western world than anybody that did. Such is the magnitude of that irony that I have no qualms about preserving the old-fashioned capitalisation for references to Him in this book. It was the Catholic Church’s perception of God’s will that was behind the Peace of God and the Truce of God movements and the discontinuation of slavery in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. God was the sole international agency acting for peace throughout the Middle Ages. It was the Christian community’s worship of God that made the West accept the authority of the papacy. It was Christian monasticism that led to the twelfth-century renaissance and the beginnings of learning and science in the West. Before the thirteenth century, religious men were almost the only guardians
of literacy. After printing was invented, it was the study of God in the Bible that taught common men and women how to read, and thus gave women the chance to express themselves to significant numbers of other women for the first time. Widespread literacy led to better government administration and bureaucracy, which in turn caused the decline in personal violence. It was their understanding that they were exploring God’s Creation that led so many scientists to devote their lives to uncovering the mysteries of the universe and the properties of botanical specimens from around the world. It was the belief that God’s healing power worked through them that gave so many seventeenth-century physicians the confidence to try to help the diseased and infirm. In the nineteenth century it was the understanding that God had made everyone equal that persuaded many people that arguing for the equal rights of men and women, black and white, rich and poor was the only defensible moral standpoint. Only in the twentieth century have the major changes examined in this book not been overtly influenced by God.
Among those who did exist, who deserves the title of the principal agent of change? The point is that no one does. Forced to select someone, I would either go for Columbus, to represent the importance of the expansion of Europe, or Galileo, to represent the victory of the scientific method over religion. But these are both personal selections and largely symbolic; really it doesn’t matter. We’re getting into the parlour game of opinion, and glorifying a historical character was not the reason for the exercise.
There were three purposes underlying the principal agent of change’ section in each chapter. The first was to consider agency: how much difference can one man really make on a large scale over the course of a century? Or, rather, how little. Who in history could have stopped any one of the fifty changes discussed? The second purpose was to show, by way of example, that we only select as important agents of change those people who make things happen. If I had suggested Robert Malthus for the eighteenth century – the only major economist to examine the supply side of the exchange between mankind and the Earth before modern times – you might have laughed at me. He didn’t do anything. We prefer our heroes to do things, not to stop us from doing them. This is why, when it comes to the necessity of changing our nature and giving up on the ‘Go West’ paradigm, our democratically elected leaders are not likely to do us any good. Most of the principal agents of change were not even responsible for the biggest developments in their various centuries. When it comes to socio-economic change, no one is in control. No one ever has been.
The third reason for the exercise builds on this. It will not have escaped your attention that I have not considered a single woman as a principal agent of change. Had I suggested Isabella of Castile, Elizabeth I of England, Mary Wollstonecraft or Marie Curie, everyone would have seen through this as tokenism or political correctness. The influence of these women did not come anywhere near that of Columbus or Luther, Galileo or Hitler. Western society was fundamentally sexist: no woman until modern times had a chance of being the person who most profoundly affected life in the West. In highlighting this absence of truly influential women in the past, I hope to draw attention to the capacity for things to be different in the future. I wrote above: ‘The challenge now is not one of expansion but self-containment: a series of problems with which the all-conquering male is ill-equipped to deal.’ The emphasis on the male in that statement was not accidental. The character traits we commonly associate with women, which are less to do with testosterone-fuelled conquests and more to do with nurturing and protection, are much better suited to lead us into the future. If men change in their nature, then no doubt women will do too – and there is a significant danger in that: there will be no advantage for the world if women simply take on male traits. Nevertheless, if there is to be hope for mankind, we must accept that it may be better for us all if the principal agent of change in the twenty-first century is a woman.
ENVOI
Why it matters
The conclusion of this book leaves a few questions hanging. If Earthrise allows us to be certain that the resources of the Earth are limited, what does that mean for mankind over the next millennium? Can we determine which of these fifty historical changes will be amplified or reversed? If we are not going to enjoy a permanent state of liberal capitalism, beaming at the top of our civilisaton curves for centuries to come, what sort of world are our descendants going to inherit?
The first point I should make is that I don’t believe we can consciously change our nature to suit ourselves. I may be wrong on this; perhaps we could all become docile, modest creatures with tiny egos and appetites, humbly tilling our own small patches of land and easily dissuaded from producing large numbers of children. In his 1985 novel Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut suggested we could evolve into furry aquatic mammals with streamlined heads, smaller, simpler brains and a penchant for fish. But I doubt anything along these lines will happen. For a start, our drive to reproduce in ever-increasing numbers underpins our success as a species; historically it allowed us to rebuild our communities quickly after a famine or a plague. Also, personal ambition is part of our nature. There will always be people who will want to outperform each other and I suspect that a significant proportion of the population will continue to be attracted to them, both sexually and socially, forcing more of us to compete. Even if there was some international political agreement that moderated our behaviour, it would soon be undermined or overturned. The fact is that human beings don’t like being humbled by systems, rules and limitations. We love to hear of those who break free from restriction and oppression. Our passion for freedom is intrinsic to the human spirit. I suspect therefore that we are like the Venetian Republic: doomed because we cannot bear the thought of being something other than we are.
Of all the resources that are set to shrink in availability, oil is perhaps uppermost in people’s minds. It underpins all our lives – from food and transport to law and order, defence and recreation. And it will run out at some point in this current millennium, there is no doubt about that; it is just a matter of when. Proven reserves are currently about fifty times annual world consumption but that ratio is subject to considerable fluctuation. It could extend as more oilfields are found; total proven reserves were significantly greater in 2012 than they were in 2000.1 Alternatively, it could diminish as population expansion and increasing industrialisation drain those reserves more rapidly. However, whether it takes another thirty, fifty or seventy years isn’t important here. Oil supplies will cease to meet world demand at some point – and very probably in the lifetimes of our children. The same is true for natural gas, on which we currently rely to produce fertilisers. At the time of writing, proven gas supplies are roughly sixty times annual world consumption, but total consumption is increasing by 2–3 per cent every year. Shale gas has greatly extended these reserves and will probably extend them still further, but this extra energy is already being sold off cheaply. You would have thought that governments might seek to ration such a windfall, so that it lasts long enough for us to find and produce viable alternatives to fossil fuels. Aesop’s fable The Ant and the Grasshopper’ – in which the ant works hard all summer preparing for the onset of winter while the grasshopper just sings in the sun and has nothing to live on when the season turns – shows what happens to those who fail to guard against future shortages. However, Western governments are, like grasshoppers, very present-centric: politicians sing to those who might vote for them, not to the people of the future. As mentioned in the Introduction, only dictators plan for a thousand years.
In this light, a range of possible eventualities opens up before us. At one end of the spectrum is the Sustainable Future. In this scenario, we discover how to produce all our energy and fertilisers from sustainable sources so that society can carry on more or less as usual. At the other end of the spectrum is the Universal Crisis: a calamity of Black Death proportions, resulting from a worldwide failure to replace fossil fuels before they start to run out. My contention is that both ends of
the spectrum involve society becoming more hierarchical and less liberal.
Let us begin by considering the sweeter type of outcome, the Sustainable Future. Picture every farm with hydroelectric generators on its hillside streams, solar panels in its fields and wind turbines cresting the hills. Imagine all the houses and industrial buildings in every town glittering with photovoltaic cells on their walls and roofs, and every rural house with a biomass boiler. Vast offshore windmills harness the power of sea breezes, and with every wave, huge pistons housed in cliff tunnels pump energy into national grids. Aircraft fly on biofuel. Tractors and farm machinery use biodiesel. Electric vans carry grain and animals to urban markets from which they are transported by electric trains to their points of slaughter and processing. But even in this harmonious state there will be far greater competition for resources. In particular, there will be an uncompromising fight over land.
Take the UK as an example. Suppose that we invest significantly in solar, wind and hydro power over the next few decades so that by 2050 we can produce all our electricity from these sources.2 This is a big supposition; nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let us assume it is possible. In fact, let us go even further and imagine that by the time oil hits a crisis point (whenever that might be), we not only meet all our electricity needs but generate so much electricity from renewable sources that we can cut our oil, gas and coal consumption in half. This would still leave the problem of replacing the remaining half of the energy we derive from fossil fuels. All the forms of biofuel currently being tried – including rapeseed, various nuts, algae, corn and sugar beet – need land. To meet just half of the UK’s current road transport demand for diesel and petrol would require the exclusive use of 11.3 million hectares – almost 87 per cent of the total area of England and more than all the agricultural land available. And that does not include non-road-transport needs, such as manufacturing, plastics production, agricultural machinery and aviation fuel.3 Nor does it account for the increase in demand as the population grows. While some might say that building several dozen more nuclear power stations is the answer, even if that were politically acceptable it would only be a temporary solution. Proven world uranium supplies are currently less than one hundred times annual world consumption, and as coal, gas and oil diminish, the likelihood is that the demand for uranium will dramatically increase, so it will not outlast oil by many decades.4 Thus, in the long term, the Sustainable Future not only requires astronomically high levels of investment in electricity from renewable sources but also an impossibly large amount of farmland to be given over to producing biodiesel, bioethanol or some other new fuel, creating a tension between food and fuel production that is already politically explosive in some hard-pressed countries.