Four facts from the future

 

Thereis no production growth – just increasing consumption

NeitherNorway nor the world has seen real production growth for many years. We have had steadily increasing consumption, and financed thisconsumption by using up an ever-increasing portion of our capital,i.e. natural resources. In Norway, we have long been doing what wecall oil production. But oil production ended 145 million years ago.We are pumping up our capital, the values on the seabed, and usingthem up, and we call this production. It is the same as withdrawingmoney from your savings account, spending it, and calling it‘income’. Accountants will, rightly, be accused of fraud if they convert savings to income in this manner.

In 2014, a report was published that calculatedthe annual value of ecosystem services worldwide at 145 trillion 2007dollars. (Costanza et al.: ‘Changes in the global value ofecosystem services’, Global Environmental Change 26 ). Based onthese calculations, the annual loss of ecosystem values due to landuse changes alone was estimated at between 4.3 and 20.2 trilliondollars per year.

Earth Overshoot Day in 2025 is estimated tofall on 25 July. By then, we will need 1.75 Earths for the extractionof natural resources to be in balance with nature's productioncapacity. This date is coming earlier every year. Norway's OvershootDay fell on 16 April, so if everyone in the world consumed as much aswe do, we would need 3.5 Earths to be in balance.

Thereis no ‘advanced civilisation’ out there

Theterms ‘advanced’, “intelligent” and ‘civilisation’ areanthropocentric: they are words of praise that we use to describe(what we perceive to be) our own best qualities. And then we assumethat our (supposedly best) qualities are universally valid andapplicable.

Thefly agaric mushroom gathers information from its surroundings throughlong root threads. It uses this information to regulate growth. Thespruce communicates with its surroundings through its roots (via rootfungi) and by releasing aerosols. In this way, it warns otherindividuals of bark beetle attacks so that they can prepare adefence. The spruce also subsidises its closest relatives by feedingthem through its roots via the root fungi: Is all this an expressionof ‘intelligence’? Corn has many more active genes than you and Ihave. Does that make corn more advanced? If you represented one ofthe 2,400 known species of termites, would you ask: Will we findcreatures in space that build mounds as intelligently designed asours, with equally advanced cooling and ventilation systems?

Theidea that life evolves ‘forward’ is a late Victorian notion ofdevelopment and progress. The world was constantly improving thanksto the blessings of civilisation – such as the steam engine and FiveO'clock Tea. But evolution, unlike the English colonists, has nodestination in mind: not forward, not backward – just here andthere in fits and starts. In this way, it ensures that life forms areconstantly changing in line with changing conditions. The houseflyhas evolved through many more generations than you and I: does thatmake it more ‘advanced’?

Ifwe find something similar to multicellular life out there, it will bemuch more different from you and me than the fly fungus, the spruce,the corn or the termite. It will share no common ancestors with us.Why would they build what we call ‘civilisation’? Not even thehedgehog has come up with anything like that, and the hedgehog is oneof our closest relatives.

Two astronomers. (Tom Westby andChristopher Conselice: ‘The Astrobiological Copernican Weak andStrong Limits for Intelligent Life’, ‘The Astrophysical Journal’,June 2020) have used Drake's equation to calculate that there are atleast 36 civilisations in the galaxy capable of communicating acrossinterstellar distances.

But 97% of stars are older than theSun. Most of these civilisations should have been here millions ofyears ago – but there is no trace of them. If I set even stricterrequirements, the same calculation leaves only 0.58 such planets inthe galaxy.

Homo habilis imperceptibly transitioned into (akind of) human: it developed culture as a survival strategy. Macaquesand chimpanzees also have culture, you say: Of course. Both Putin andyour neighbour Fredrik have weapons: Putin has nuclear weapons, andFredrik has a slingshot.

Language,culture and technology are based on a genetic adaptation that isunique to us. There was no reason why language skills had to emergein any of the many hominids that roamed Africa two and a half millionyears ago. If we suddenly disappeared, it would not be chimpanzeesthat would take over after us, as in Planet of the Apes. It wouldprobably be the cockroaches.

IfI don't use Drake's equation, but instead use the probability that 10critical events that have been necessary for human evolution wouldalso occur on another planet that is a twin of Earth, I get acombined probability that beings like us would arise of 1.125 x10-10. And then there are probably many other random but necessaryevents in the evolution of life that I have overlooked.

Howwe can travel to the stars

Givea spaceship a steady acceleration of 1 G, i.e. the same gravity as onEarth. After two and a half years, the spaceship is travelling at 99%of the speed of light. You will then have travelled 6 light years! Ina ‘stationary’ coordinate system, 6.8 years will have passed. Nowyou start to slow down with 1 G. After another 2.5 years (on thespaceship), you will have travelled a total of 12 light years. Youthen land on one of the planets of Tau Ceti and start your new life,five years older than when you left. ‘At the same time’, 13.6years have passed according to how your friends back home measuretime.

Inorder to reach a solar system 12 light years away as quickly as wewould like, a 100,000-tonne spacecraft must be supplied with a totalof 30.4*1018 kWt. Every year, the Sun delivers more than 100 milliontimes as much energy as these 30.4*1018 kWt. Our hyper-intelligentdescendants, the AIs, can use solar power to produce antimatter. Thiswould enable them to reach the edge of the universe within a humanlifetime. But they cannot travel home again: if they do, they willdiscover that the Earth has aged 27 billion years while they havebeen away.

Howlong can consumption growth continue?

Humansare like bacteria in a Petri dish: We increase our consumptionexponentially, until the dish is full. Unlike bacteria, we havealways been able to find larger dishes, once the one we are in isfull. Let us see how long this can go on.

Fromthe Industrial Revolution to the present day, humanity's energyconsumption has increased by 1.7% per year. In 2015, our consumptionreached 1.6*1014 kWt – approximately 1/10,000th of the amount ofenergy that the Sun shines down on Earth.

Let'sassume we continue with a modest annual growth rate of 1.4%. Thatmeans we double our consumption every 50 years. In practice, we onlymanage to use 50% of the solar energy that hits the planet. Thatmeans growth here on Earth will come to an end in the year 2630. But:

We can build a Dyson sphere and utilise half of all solarenergy. Then we have another 1550 years.

The Sun is a fairlyaverage star, so roughly speaking, we can assume that the galaxyproduces 300 billion times as much energy as the Sun. If we continueto double our consumption every 50 years, we will have used up allthe available energy in the entire galaxy after 1906 years. In theyear 6086, it will be full.

But the universe has about 100billion galaxies, according to cosmologists. We will be able to fillthem up in 1827 new years. So in the year 7913, growth will come toan end. Completely. We therefore have approximately 5900 years ofexponential growth ahead of us before the laws of nature, theuniverse and the exponential function pull the plug. Then the largestof all Petri dishes, the universe, will be full. We will have to findmore universes.