Partnerships & Visioning the Future

Question 1

What are Costanza’s Four Futures Scenarios?

Answer 1

1) STAR TREK
2) Mad Max
3) Big Government
4) Ecotopia

Question 2

What is the STAR TREK scenario?

Answer 2

• Technology is capable of eventually solving all current and future social and environmental problems
• Believe we will find some clean, unlimited energy source
• Life in space will provide an outlet to pressures on earth
• Food production and manufacturing will become automated and powered by cheap warm-fusion energy; Only 10% of the population will actually need to work for a living
• Biodiversity in nature will be displaced by the support structure

Question 3

How will outright extinction be averted in the STAR TREK scenario?

Answer 3

1) Cryopreservation
2) Cloning
3) Ecological engineering
4) Virtual reality

Question 4

What is the Mad Max scenario?

Answer 4

• Technology will fail us
• No energy source cheaper than oil is found
• Climate continues to warm and coastal regions flood
• Staggering pollution ensues with escalating human population
• Stock market crashes when natural resource base disintegrates
• “Airbola” strikes (airborne ebola) regularly, killing large fractions of a world population of 20 billion
• National governments become weak and ineffective
• World is run by transnational corporations in cutthroat competition for the dwindling resources
• People devote their lives completely to their work, often working 90-100 hour weeks and taking no vacation at all
• Constant social upheavals and revolutions are put down with brutal efficiency by the corporate sercurity forces
• Biodiversity reduced largely to a few non-edible, ruderal species (rats, roaches, weeds)

Question 5

What is the Big Government scenario?

Answer 5

• Companies keep prices of “green technology” unreasonably high; U.S. Federal Government revokes charters of major corporations for failing to pursue the public interest
• Warm fusion energy (“too cheap to meter”) discovered by government scientists and released once safety issues had been carefully resolved
• Major climate-change related impacts averted
• Government population policies emphasize female education, universal access to contraception, and family planning
• Manage to stabilize the global human population at around 8 billion
• Governments explicitly advocate slow or no-growth policies
• Concentrate on assuring ecological sustainability and more equitable distribution of wealth
• The total number of species on Earth declines to a low of about 2 million, then stabilizes
• Science of ecological restoration perfected
• Value of biodiversity is finally recognized and internalized

Question 6

What is the Ecotopia scenario?

Answer 6

• Fossil fuels become much more expensive, forcing the use of renewable alternative energies
• QLI (Quality of Life Index) comes to replace the GNP and resource inequities evaporate
• Unemployment is obsolete; distinction between work and leisure no longer evident
• Reduction in consumption and waste creates only a moderate need for paid labor and monetary income, so the work week shortens to 20 hours
• Physical travel decreased, but people began to communicate electronically over a much wider web
• Biodiversity thrives as its biophilic connection to human welfare and spiritual well-being becomes widely valued and recognized
• Land freed from pressures of maniacal “Afluenza” reverts to natural areas