Reading "The World in 2007" from Economist on last of 8 flights for this week and it's a nice, sensible collection of articles:
--In economics, things are humming but there's continued fear of America's slowing economy harming the roaring global economy
--In politics, there's the danger of no global leadership and a damaged Bush, but Micklethwait hopes he doesn't just go into hibernation and instead tries to become some green leader in Friedman's dream.
--Then we're told climate change will be a big political focus and I realize why I never latch onto it much in my work: there's no "flow" to identify. Like technology (another key change agent I resisted making a flow because it seems everywhere), I just can't find the angle on it: everyone will suffer and everyone will pay and adjust and change will need to be universal. Intriguing, yes. Powerful, yes. But differential? That's where I still come up short
I do think this, though: the global response is tied to the rise of the New Core, so my favorite long-term scenario (one I developed for a wargame atop the World Trade Center back in 2001: we had the head of the IPCC at the game) is some big killer event in China/India that's clearly linked--perceptually or causally--to climate change, and at that point the affected New Core pillar feels the need to stand up. Obviously, one's tempted to think of China (my cast victim in the wargame), but who knows?
Still, until the "Deep Impact" moment hits, the scenario still feels like discovering life in space: great, nifty, but what do you do with it in the hear and now?
The best and--I believe--most likely scenario is evidence continues to pile up, more and more pain is attributed, and eventually you see a youth-led bottom-swell push on efficiencies that makes everyone happy and more resilient. The driver? Car advances centered in the Chinese auto market due to skyrocketing fleet and associated pollution.
Did I mention that Enterra Strategies, parent of Enterra Solutions, is getting deeply involved with shaping the future Chinese auto industry?
Okay, so I'm biased, but that's only because Steve and I are so ambitious.
Seriously though, it's hard to imagine a better partner in global change than Steve. The man can't come upon any historic opportunity without trying to create some new company to deal with it in some imaginative manner.
Tell me what a vision hamster like myself could want more?
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Comments (3)
My guess it will be, as the old saying goes, location, location, location. especially when nanotechnology gets going where the quantity of resources will not be as important as where they are used.
Perhaps not only politics will be local but manufacturing and economics also, with technology (mostly technology information) global.
Of course that technological information will be about politics, manufacturing, and economics, so the divide will be between and about a virtual global perspective and a local reality, and those who can dwell in both domains.
Posted by Larry Dunbar | February 3, 2007 12:15 PM
You want a "flow" tied to climate change?
Let me get out my drum and beat it again. Ethanol. Carbon neutral ethanol.
Right now in the US, all of the growth in energy consumption is being satisfied by increases in ethanol production. Almost all of the ethanol used as motor fuel in the US is produced here from domestic feed stock, however current law allows the importation of 7% of last year's domestic ethanol fuel consumption from Caribbean Basin Initiative countries without the $0.51 per gallon import tax. Since ethanol can be made from sugar cane more economically than it can be made from corn, it would seem that we ought to be experiencing FDI flows into the Caribbean nations to build ethanol plants and to upgrade the farm infrastructure that feeds those plants and that we should also be seeing a flow of energy from our nearest Gap neighbors into our gas tanks.
We are already seeing Japanese investment in ethanol production in the Philippines. There is some European investment in Africa, although not as much as you would expect to see if the Europeans really took all this global warming stuff seriously.
Posted by Mark in Texas | February 3, 2007 1:10 PM
Mark: that is a fascinating bit of analysis there.
But notice how it gets expressed in one of the flows?
Thanks a lot. I will definitely watch that one.
When I started reading your comment, I thought to myself: here comes the pitch on corn. But then you zag to FDI and it makes perfect sense: that staring-you-in-the-face obviousness that always gets my attention (for if it isn't that obvious, why would it work?).
So definitely one worth watching.
Can I assume, by your analysis, that some soil-climate function drives the sugar cane-centric FDI?
Or do we grow sugar cane across the Plains (sounds implausible, but I must ask)?
Posted by Tom Barnett | February 3, 2007 11:03 PM