Introduction

"A map of the world which doesn't include Utopia isn't even worth glancing at." —Oscar Wilde

“You can no longer save your family, tribe or nation. You can only save the whole world.”
—Margaret Mead, anthropologist

A World of Abundance for All: Scene 1
What would it look like?

All of humanity—every child, woman, and man in every country in the world—has, on a sustainable basis, abundant supplies of nutritious and culturally appropriate food and clean water. All live in more than adequate housing complete with sanitation facilities and clean running water. Energy is abundant in supply, as well as clean, safe, and affordable. Each person has access to local comprehensive health care and the latest advances of medical science. Literacy is universal, as are opportunities for advanced—college level—education, and access to the Internet. Communication and transportation facilities are readily available and affordable, so that anyone can communicate with anyone else on Earth who wants to be communicated with, and people can travel anywhere they want to go. Employment opportunities and fulfilling work—including vocational alternatives, re-training, and on-the-job-training—are available to all.

Borders are open, free of trade and emigration restrictions, subsidies, and other barriers to market-driven economies. All public negotiations (for example, labor contracts, legislation, and government contracts), accounting practices, and elections are transparent and open to inspection by anyone at anytime. All citizens have a significant role in decision-making processes that affect their lives, and each lives in a peaceful, democratic, secure world that is free from terror, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and from crime and health-damaging illegal drugs. Human beings and other living things inhabit a clean, healthy environment that is free of toxic wastes, pollution of all kinds, soil erosion, and damaging industrial and agricultural practices. The biosphere and its resources are self-regenerating, with humans cooperating to ensure this. Biodiversity is increasing throughout the world.

Around the globe, strong social incentives foster democracy, personal initiative, trust, cooperation, respect, and love—and discourage all forms of torture, degrading treatment, and punishment. Each person is entitled, on an equal basis, to plead before an independent and impartial tribunal; each has the right to nationality and to perform public service in one's own country. Rest and leisure are available to all, and mothers and children receive special protection, care, and assistance.

Freedoms of speech, of the press, and of religion are the rule everywhere. All forms of prejudice—against another’s ethnicity, race, religion, origins, gender, age, sexual preference, or income level—are gone. Every culture and nation respects and celebrates the unique value of all others, and provides strong social supports for individuals, families, and communities. The arts in all forms are widely appreciated and cultivated. Spiritual growth and fulfillment is the norm for all humanss. [1]

This description of an Abundance for All future is not the fruit of an individual’s delusions, an overindulged imagination, or wishful thinking. As described in the Preface, it was synthesized over a twenty-year period from work with over one thousand groups, each anywhere from 30 to 250 people in size.

Still, I realize the vision sketched here may seem impossible to attain or naïve to many. That’s understandable, given its ambitious scope: haven’t governments, civil society, philanthropies and citizens been attacking these vast problems for generations, with limited success? Don’t news reports daily, even hourly, remind us of our myriad failures? The pessimist could cite countless failed attempts at resolving the world’s problems, from the Middle East and failed nation states, to the continuing presence of hunger (and homelessness, illiteracy, etc.) in the world despite our best intentions, to the economic crash and the ongoing destruction of the environment.

The most specious of these arguments usually cites a flawed “human nature” as the cause of all our ills—that it is our fate for some us to always starve to death while the rest of us get to watch it on color television. This view looks at the inkblot of the state of the world and technology and sees reflected their fears and an excuse for fatalistic inaction. Human nature isn’t flawed, our vision of it is. Using our fears as a foundation for a definition of human nature is like using the 1950’s state of technology to say we cannot go to the moon. Some people see human nature reflected in the technology surrounding them and confuse present capability with future capacity and potential.

It is all too easy to see the glass as half-empty. The world’s tank is running on empty, our efforts are empty-headed, and we’re doomed to live with our worst problems for all time.

But a lack of vision doesn’t mean something doesn’t exist, only that some people can’t see it. Can the glass, in fact, be half full? My conviction is that the glass is both more than half empty and more than half full. It all has to do with the angle at which you view the world. For example, there were 850 million malnourished people in the world in 2007. As bad as this outrage is, it is mitigated by the “glass half full” information that this is 100 million fewer than were hungry in 1970 (despite the addition of 2.3 billion people to the world), and that the world has progressed from 24 percent of our population malnourished to 13 percent in this time period. (See Positive Long-term Trends, below.) “Half full” information emerges when you look at the big picture, and when you include time in the equation—when, instead of focusing on the single-frame snapshot of the right now, you watch the movie— and see where things are coming from and heading towards.

Vast problems can’t be solved with half-vast solutions— and neither can local solutions be a match for global problems. Our gasoline tanks indeed may be at or approaching half empty, but the gauges monitoring the sun and our other sources of energy (and creativity) still indicate “Full.”

The prospects for bringing the Abundance for All vision into reality are closer than you might think, and this book will explain why. The following chapters describe a series of technologically feasible, resource-efficient, cost effective, and environmentally sound strategies for achieving this abundance for all future—and even more. (See “Price of Peace: Abundance for All, Scene II” in Conclusions 1 for what the “more” might look like.) On both a local and global scale, there exist opportunities for abundance that if pursued will transform our world. Revealing those opportunities is this book’s task.

I do not confidently predict that the future as envisioned here will come to be—indeed, there are enormous obstacles to its realization in the form of entrenched political, cultural, corporate, and special interests. I would argue, however, that in seeking solutions on any level, it is imperative to begin with a big picture view, to try to grasp how systems interact and how their synergy can move the whole forward. To understand our local, regional and national problems we need to understand the global system they fit into. To understand the behavior of our hometown, our children, our local economy, our corporation, our nation, our problems, our criminals, and our diseases, we need to understand the system that interconnects them all and that contains them. The world is the relevant unit of analysis and problem solving. I also contend that a pragmatic vision coupled with a strong economic argument can move mountains.

Change Model
At the core of any judgments you might make about this book’s vision for the future and the strategies for getting there is the model for social, economic, and political change that you use. For example, is the world like a 250,000 ton oil tanker moving over the ocean at 20 miles per hour, whose huge mass and momentum mean that it will take three to four miles to turn and nearly ten miles to stop? (And therefore any change will take a long time to bring about.) Or should the world be viewed as delicately balanced on a fulcrum, so that the addition of just a little bit to one side will bring about a “tipping point” — and a rapid and massive shift? [4]

Personally, I think it is at least both. Some things are teetering on the tipping point, others are entrenched with their mass and momentum in slow and inexorable change. What history tells us is that distinguishing between tipping point and oil tanker models is near impossible, except in hindsight.

Buckminster Fuller anticipated the tipping point theory with a metaphor he used in describing the shifting balance between the world’s “haves” and “have-nots." [5] In the 1960s he calculated that about 45 percent of the world could be classified as “haves” and 55 percent as “have-nots,” and he contended that when 50 percent of the world became haves we would reach a critical, and dangerous, transition point. He noted that the most dangerous times for an airplane were at take-off and landing—when making the transition from a land-based craft to an aircraft and vice-versa. At some point the plane successfully takes off, runs out of runway, or lifts off only to crash back to the earth. Similarly, the time when 48 percent to 60 percent of the world were haves and 52 percent to 40 percent were have-nots would be a critical and dangerous transition period for the world. Fuller’s thesis was that once more than 50 percent of the world reached the “have” stage, it would become quickly apparent that we needed to bring all of humanity along to this stage—or else risk crashing the craft.

There is also the added danger that the tipping point can work in both directions and with other systems. Without attending to the foundations of our civilization— our environmental life support systems— our successes, if any, will be fleeting, our increased well-being and peace insecure, our future, in doubt and with less hope. If the environment is undermined, damaged, or overloaded enough, it too can tip, and tip rapidly in directions that will have dire consequences for humans. For example, according to a Pentagon study “global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to the tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world’s climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade…” [6] Such possibilities reinforce the need for positive visions and actions that move the world, both our human made and natural worlds, in the directions that support, nourish and regenerate life.

Although I can’t predict the future, my conviction that the Abundance for All vision can be realized is based a number of premises. These grew out of my work with Buckminster Fuller; my somewhat fanatical accumulation and analysis of global socio-economic and environmental data from the UN and all its various branches, the World Bank, governmental agencies, and nearly every think tank and research institute I could unearth; my work in developing, testing, and running the global simulation World Game® for hundreds of clients around the world, including many of the world’s largest corporations, as well as governments, universities and organizations; my work in Tanzania on regenerative food systems; and my long term study of what I call “BigPicture” trends and economics. On top of this, I have a strong bias towards grounding my statements in hard numbers that can turn the qualitative speculation into quantitative reality. I have based much of the book on the following premises, from which I argue for a rationally optimistic, reasonably hopeful, more-than-half-full view of what is possible:

1. The pace of change is accelerating and the world is moving quickly toward a number of major tipping points. The world is changing and changing fairly rapidly. I contend that many, if not most, of the strategies for change proposed in this book are tipping point changes—and that once some of these changes are taking place, they will, like falling dominos, bring about the critical tipping points of the other proposed changes. Some things are changing very rapidly while others are going even faster. History and historical process is loaded with examples of profound technological, economic and social change brought about by new opportunities—even in the face of deeply entrenched opposition. In fact, in some instances it is the opposition to change that helps make such non-zero sum or cooperative outcomes come about. [3] The more some changes are resisted, the faster and bigger is the ultimate breakthrough that comes crashing in— as in the former Soviet Union’s resistance to democratic and market forces that crashed their system with such breathtaking speed in 1989.

It is also my conviction that these cascading tipping points will not be without some disasters, as at least a few 250,000 ton, 20 mph tankers of entrenched power and special interest collide with known but tragically unseen icebergs of global economics and culture. As a less disastrous consequence, the entrenched oligarchies and power structures that are resistant to change that they perceive as a threat to their position will get swept away (sooner or later)— like IBM almost was in the face of the PC revolution, like centralized command and control economic systems in the face of decentralized open market economies, or the buggy whip manufacturer in light of the horseless carriage.. [2]

2. What the world wants, the world will get. Anything that enough people want has an overwhelming tendency to happen. Whether it is a “throw the bums out” election, the passing of environmental legislation, or the ending of a genocidal war, the more people who want the end result, the greater are the chances of it happening. Billions of informed people will get what they need and want, no matter what their governments do or don’t do to help or thwart their efforts. Understanding what the people of the world want will help in predicting where the world is heading better than any prognostication, crystal ball gazing, scenario planning or trend extrapolation. What the world wants is the most powerful forecasting tool available to the futurist, economist, political theorist, policy analyst or global/local citizen. As will be seen in Chapter 1, what the world wants is the Abundance for All vision of the future made real.

3. Economics is on the side of making the world work for everyone. The least-cost, most profitable path to the future goes right through the core of thee Abundance for All vision. As Conclusion 1
demonstrates, there are enormous opportunities (and straightforward methods and business models) for corporations to get involved in meeting the needs of the developing world in sustainable and profitable ways. The four billion people at the base of the global economic pyramid spend over $2 trillion per year. Seen properly, the problems of the world are actually markets waiting to be satisfied, and the corporations that survive in the intensely competitive world of the future will be those who figure out how to expand into these emerging markets.

4. Present day technology and known resources can meet the world’s needs. The world doesn’t need the invention of a fantasy fusion power device or the discovery of a Saudi Arabian-size oil field under Philadelphia to meet our energy needs. Present day renewable energy sources coupled with off the shelf energy conservation technologies and techniques can do the job. The same goes for meeting our food, water, materials and other needs. As enjoyable as science fiction is, science and technological fact will get us where we want to be.

5. Long-term trends are positive. Although the snapshot view of the world is filled with bad news, even horror, there are longer-range trends showing that things are getting better on many fronts. They rarely show up in our news media, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real. In addition to the malnutrition example noted above, the accompanying sidebar details many improvements in areas of health (especially), nutrition, education, and the environment.

6. Globalization, and what it is becoming, is perhaps the most profound and influential phenomenon of our age. It will shape the future world and all our strategies for making that world better. Globally, as more and more people become literate and better educated, and as the means for these people to be better informed about the world and simultaneously in touch with each other grows, the prospects for getting what the world wants goes up. Globalization should be understood as more than just a global economy to be exploited by the fastest, smartest, or most powerful. It encompasses and balances the needs and capacities of the global economy with environmental factors, local cultures, values, and visions; these interactions produce a synergy that drives the world closer to what it wants.

6. As humankind grows in number, both our capacities and our essential humanity grow along with it. Quantitative increases can lead to qualitative transformations. We must learn to regard each new human added to the planet as a creative resource rather than a burden. And one of the consequences of an emerging global society is an increase in empathy for our fellow humans. As we become more aware of our entwined fates, our knowledge and sense of kinship with others of our species is on the rise.

“Ethics is knowledge of interdependence.” —Aldo Leopold

The greater premise overarching all these is the world’s capacities can be greatly enlarged through the interaction of forces and systems within the big picture. Without a good understanding of the system the local, regional and national system fits into, the problems and opportunities facing each leader will not be understood from a perspective that makes these problems solvable or the opportunities realizable. The future for these people will be defined by the problems and limitations of the present rather than by its own possibilities and capacities. They will continue to muddle towards a future clouded by lack of vision, hamstrung by limited options, constrained to a status quo that considers fundamental inadequacy is an acceptable way of life. Most dangerously, they will continue to deal with global problems with local solutions that treat symptoms rather than expand capacities.

We need a better vision, a better way. The increasing humanity of the world— the increase in the number of humans in the world, our inter-linkages, connections, and growing empathy for each other— plus what we collectively want for ourselves and our loved ones is a good guide for this vision. Increasing the world’s capacity to provide ever-higher standards of living for all its inhabitants while simultaneously regenerating the environment are good clues as to where we need to be going. Those who recognize and act on the vision of what the world wants will be in tune with the larger system, the big picture; they can avoid the dangers and take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the inexorable flows of globalization.

Whether it is through design or disaster, reaching a tipping point or colliding with an iceberg, decision or avoidance, change is going to happen; if we are smart we will choose how we want to control or respond to it. In the parlance of change theory, avoiding the decision or choice is itself a choice. On a more fundamental and personal level, we can’t avoid getting involved with the transformation of the world. Everything we choose to do, every dollar we spend, is a “vote” for what we purchased and against what we did not; it is a vote for some form of lifestyle, resource use, technology, and moral vision.

As more ever more people in the world become better educated (something that is happening rapidly [7] ), the more informed will be our personal and collective decisions. With the increasing intelligence and access to information and communications is where I put my money and my hope. As we collectively become more informed about what is possible, we approach the point where what we all want tips the world in that direction.

The vision that began this Introduction could happen, and the following chapters describe how it could be implemented with present day technology and known resources. I want it to happen—but I am neither delusionally enamored with it to the extent that I exclude the logical probabilities of our present day world, nor am I expecting a miracle.

The abundance for all vision will be realized only when we make it happen. Unless a critical number of people reach a general understanding, the tipping point won’t be reached. Unless enough intelligent, motivated, energetic, impatient, and persistent people recognize the vision as immensely desirable, understand what is needed to bring it about, and most importantly act accordingly, then nothing other than the trees used for the paper to make this book will be impacted. Unless enough people, acting alone and in concert, get involved with local, state, and national political and social change processes, international agencies, civil societies, corporate enterprise, personal diplomacy, sustainable lifestyle choices, as well as taking other steps yet to be invented, we will not make it to the desired future, but to some other spot defined by a default of moral vision, intelligent design, and compassionate action. In other words, we need to get involved with creating our future and make it happen. Anything less and we choose to let the future belong to the status quo.

 

Positive Long Term Trends

     • Life Expectancy up nearly 40%: Life expectancy has gone up in every country in the world.  Global life expectancy has gone up 35% since 1950.  From 48 years in 1950 to 66.7 in 2001. [1]   Such an awesome increase is unprecedented since life began on this planet. (China's life expectancy increase has been even more dramatic: In 1930, life expectancy in China was 24; in 2000 it is close to 70— a three-fold increase in two generations.)

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