by JOHN SCALES AVERY
H.G. Wells
The enormously prolific English writer, Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), who also wrote novels. short stories, history books, biology textbooks, utopias, and so on, has been called “The Shakespeare of Science Fiction”. During his writing career, he made a number of predictions about the future, many of which were astonishingly accurate. He foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web.
George Orwell and Aldous Huxley
George Orwell’s famous dystopian book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, warned the world of the dangers of totalitarianism. In Orwell’s book, people are terrorized into submission. Orwell had Stalinist Russia in mind when he wrote the book, but sadly, it seems to describe the situation in a large number of countries today.
Aldous Huxley has given us an equally famous and equally dystopian vision of the future, but in Huxley’s Brave New World, the enslaved peoples gladly accept their slavery in exchange for the mood-elevating narcotic, “soma”.
Social critic Neil Postman contrasted the worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He wrote:
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny `failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.’ In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that our fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.”
The Crisis of Civilization
Here are some of the serious linked problems which human civilization is facing today:
THREATS TO THE ENVIRONMENT
The global environment is being destroyed by excessive consumption in the industrialized countries, combined with rapid population growth in developing nations. Climate change threatens to melt glaciers and polar ice. Complete melting of Greenland’s inland ice would result in a 7 meter rise in sea level. Complete melting of the Antarctic ice cap would produce an additional 5 meters of rise. Ultimately, if not avoided, catastrophic climate change could make most of the earth’s surface uninhabitable, and the global population of humans would be correspondingly reduced.
GROWING POPULATION, VANISHING RESOURCES
The fossil fuel era is ending. By 2050, oil and natural gas will be prohibitively expensive. They will no longer be used as fuels, but will be reserved as feedstocks for chemical synthesis. Within a hundred years, the same will be true of coal. The reserve indices for many metals are between 10 and 100 years. Reserve indices are defined as the size of the known reserves of metals divided by the current annual rates of production.
THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS
It is predicted that by 2050, the world’s population of humans will reach 9 billion. This is just the moment when the oil and natural gas, on which modern energy-intensive agriculture depend, will become so expensive that they will no longer be used as fuels. Climate change may also contribute to a global food crisis. Melting of Himalayan glaciers threatens the summer water supplies of both India and China. Rising sea levels threaten to inundate low-lying agricultural land, and aridity will be produced by climate change. Overdrawn, water tables are falling. Topsoil is also being lost. These elements combine to produce a threat of widespread famine by the middle of the 21st century, involving billions of people rather than millions.
INTOLERABLE ECONOMIC INEQUALITY
Today 2.7 billion people live on less than $2 a day – 1.1 billion on less than $1 per day. 18 million of our fellow humans die each year from poverty-related causes. Meanwhile, obesity is becoming a serious health problem in the rich part of the world. In 2006, 1.1 billion people lacked safe drinking water, and waterborne diseases killed an estimated 1.8 million people. The developing countries are also the scene of a resurgence of other infectious diseases, such as malaria, drug-resistant tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Economic inequality, both within nations and between nations, also undermines democracy. Powerful oligarchies control many governments.
THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR
Despite the end of the Cold War, the threat of a nuclear catastrophe remains severe. During the Cold War, the number and power of nuclear weapons reached insane heights – 50,000 nuclear weapons with a total explosive power equivalent to roughly a million Hiroshima bombs. Expressed differently, the total explosive power was equivalent to 20 billion tons of TNT, 4 tons for each person on earth. Today the total number of these weapons has been cut approximately in half, but there are still enough to destroy human civilization many times over. The danger of accidental nuclear war remains severe, since many nuclear missiles are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired within minutes of a warning being received. Continued over a long period of time, the threat of accident will grow to a near certainty. Meanwhile, the number of nations possessing nuclear weapons is growing, and there is a danger that if an unstable government is overthrown (for example, Pakistan’s), the country’s nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of sub-national groups. Against nuclear terrorism there is no effective defense.
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