What Should We Do Now?
Yoshiaki FUJII and Sayaka ISHIMOTO
Rock Mechanics Laboratory, Hokkaido Univ., JAPAN
ABSTRACT
The next peak of the glacier period will come in 50,000 years. Air temperature will drop by 10 degrees centigrade and sea level will become as low as the continental shelves. North Europe and Canada will be covered by ice sheets and parts of people living in there, if human is not so significantly evolved and is not so different from the present one, will have to move to warmer regions. Some nations, if they are almost maintained as present, will completely be corrupted and become meaningless. The author can't imagine how human life would be after the next glacier period. So let's consider how to maintain the human society as comfortably as present only until the peak of the next glacier period.
There are such many potential problems for human as population increase, water shortage, food crisis, exhaustion of resources, global warming, economic crisis, comet impaction, giant earthquakes, catastrophic eruptions, HIV, malaria, avian (bird) flu, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), poverty, religion wars, nuclear wars, etc. Space and time scales, and characteristics of them are different from each other and they are influencing with each other. Let's pick the first 5 problems up and consider the relationships between them.
Water shortage will accelerate food crisis and decelerate population increase. Food crisis will decelerate population increase. Exhaustion of resources will accelerate food crisis since agricultural machines, chemicals, fertilizers, irrigation, transportation etc. strongly depend on energy resources. Global warming will accelerate water shortage and decelerates food crisis according to the fourth assessment report by IPCC but will be vanished when fossil energy resources are exhausted. Lastly, population increase will accelerate all 4 problems. It is therefore very easy to say that population increase is the origin of the 5 problems even without computer simulations as shown in "Limits to Growth".
Population in the developed countries is almost converged but it in the developing countries is significantly increasing. Apparently the population in the developing countries should be stabilized. The ethical way would be financial aids to developing countries for education of women. This will urge women to work and finally lead to decrease in birth rate and population stabilization. Education of birth control and free distribution of contraceptive devices should simultaneously be carried out in the developing countries. This also leads to reduce HIV infection. Two-child policy will be a very effective way if it is adapted by United Nations.
There are also some eccentric ways. One would be making human smaller instead to stabilize population. This is possible without any technical problems by using the same method as we made Chihuahua, Pony, etc. For example, let's prohibit makingchildren for people who are taller than 160 cm. Let's wait for 10 years and then change the limit to 150 cm. The author is not sure how small human can be and the author understand that this method is practically impossible. However, it would be not bad to know that there is no technical problem to make people smaller. Encouraging homosexuality is another way. Recently prohibiting homosexuality is rather problematic from the humanity viewpoint. Human will also be able to move to other planets in 10,000 years.
Let's consider other 4 problems. Water shortage is already serious and will be more serious with population increase and global warming. Population should be stabilized as soon as possible. The amount of food in the world is not short. Food crisis is one of the political problems and will not be worse under stabilized population. Energy resources are simply OK for 74 years by the conventional petroleum, coal, natural gas and uranium under stabilized population. Such new fossil energies as oil sand, shale gas, methane hydrate, coal bed methane etc. will postpone the exhaustion of energy resources for several ten years. Thorium and sea uranium can be used for the world after 100 years. The former is for 140 years and the latter is for one million years to supply all primary energy (based on 2008 data). Sea uranium can be used for 100 million years if Fast Breeder Reactor is employed. Mineral resources have never exhausted and will not be easily exhausted by the following reasons; (1) mining companies explore resources only for several ten years, (2) resources will increase and recycling will be eagerly carried out as price increases and (4) substitutes will be developed.
Some people thinks that global warming is the most serious problems for human future and is trying to stop it by reducing anthropogenic CO2 emission. According to the Fourth Assessment Report by IPCC, global-mean surface temperature would rise by 2.3 degrees centigrade from 2000 to 2050 if we continue to emit the same amount of CO2. The report predicts that reducing the CO2 emission by 50% would mitigate the global warming by 0.6 degrees centigrade with economic loss of more than 5.5%. The world GDP loss by Lehman shock was 1.5% because before Lehman shock it was predicted that the world GDP would increase by 2% but actual increase was 0.5%. The author does not think that the world can bear four Lehman shocks for global warming mitigation of just 0.6 degrees centigrade.
The author's different opinion from IPCC is that most attempts to reduce CO2 actually increase CO2 emission because those environmental businesses apparently increase GDP. CO2 emission apparently increases with GDP increases because they have a positive correlation. Increase in CO2 emission means increase in fossil energy consumption. This logic was not fully proven but partly proven by such apparent examples as electric vehicle charged by coal generated electricity, oxygen combustion for carbon dioxide capture and storage, and bio-ethanol. The best way would be trying not to increase CO2. This can be attained by population stabilization, quitting unreasonable attempts to reduce CO2 and improving efficiency of coal power plants in US, India and China to Japanese level (more than 40%). The author also began to investigate the possibility to inject fine limestone powder into the stratosphere to mitigate global warming instead to reduce CO2.
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