Today on Earth Day the newspapers have headlines about plastic in the air we breathe. My wife and I recycle religiously – paper, metal, plastic, anything marked recyclable. Our building has a garbage chute that streams recyclables, organic waste and garbage. When we walk through the neighbourhood, homes have green and blue bins out on recycling and garbage days. Much of what is streamed is contaminated by stuff that shouldn’t be in the recycling and organic waste bins. Municipal governments publish materials to educate the public and in our walks, you can see that the effort by many is there. But the result so far is poor.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists responsible for The Doomsday Clock isn’t writing about a pending nuclear holocaust today. Instead, its State of the Earth message is about plastic and the environmental disaster unfolding before our eyes, in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we ingest.

The Bulletin notes the following:

“The plastics industry is expected to double or triple production by 2050 unless global leaders intervene. Even if the rate of plastic production holds steady, the emissions from the plastic sector could account for a fifth of the remaining carbon budget by mid-century.”

The Bulletin isn’t pulling numbers out of a hat. The analysis of plastic and its growing impact comes from a study done at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

Plastic is a manifestation of our fossil fuel addiction. We create it from cracking oil and turn it into packaging from water bottles to beverage containers, clam shells and wrapping materials. The greenhouse gas (GHG) impact of producing all this plastic is enormous. Plastic’s role in the planetary climate change crisis, biodiversity loss and growing pollution is largely underappreciated.

In the Executive summary of the Lawrence Berkeley study it states:

“Proposed efforts to reduce plastic pollution do not yet include any explicit consideration of climate impacts.”

Yet we know that more plastic means more GHGs, the principal cause of atmospheric temperature rise.

The report has been published on the eve of an upcoming meeting of the United Nations’ 4th Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC4) for a global plastics treaty. It starts next week in Canada’s capital, Ottawa.

This report is science-based, technically neutral, and provides information to those attending the meeting to help them formulate a global plastic treaty. It notes the following:

• The plastic industry is experiencing exponential growth with expectations that it will double or triple by 2050.
• In 2019:
  • The manufacture of plastic generated 2.24 Gigatons of pollution, equivalent to the total output of 600 coal-fired thermal power plants.
  • Plastic production accounted for 5% of all global carbon emissions.
  • Plastic production consumed 12% of all the oil and 8.5% of all the natural gas from sources
• Exponential growth from double to triple the amount produced in 2019 means plastic production by 2050 will generate 6.78 Gigatons of pollution or the equivalent of GHG emissions from 1,700 coal-burning thermal power plants.

Describing plastic as a wrecking ball for the planet, therefore, is no understatement.

The Atomic Scientists consider the efforts by national governments to-date to be inconsequential, calling their behaviour an “in denial” state. Instead of legislating supply reductions, the focus has been on curbing consumer demand. The result: the fossil fuel industry keeps pouring 10,000% more money into greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting energy resources than into renewable energy projects.

The only way, state the writers of the editorial appearing in The Bulletin this week, is to create a non-proliferation global agreement similar to those negotiated to reduce atomic weapons. Written by lawyers and climate policy experts, the Atomic Scientists are proposing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The idea is based on nuclear non-proliferation agreements to phase out weapons of mass destruction and reduce existing stockpiles of these weapons while encouraging the peaceful use of the technology. The effectiveness of nuclear non-proliferation reduced weapon stockpiles from almost 65,000 in 1986 to less than 10,000 today.

Just as nuclear weapons represent an existential threat to the planet, so too, argue the proposers of fossil fuel non–proliferation does the continued production and use of fossil fuels.  Instead of mushroom clouds, we will leash upon the planet atmospheric warming that will cause enormous environmental and societal harm.

So far all the efforts by the United Nations to negotiate GHG reductions have failed to produce rapid decarbonization, the key to mitigating global warming. That’s why the Atomic Scientists are calling for an international treaty to address fossil fuel supply. The treaty would be constructed around the same constructs of nuclear non-proliferation.

1. The first stage, equivalent to non-proliferation, would be to prevent any new exploration and production while protecting those communities and workers impacted by the ban.
2. The second stage, equivalent to disarmament, would phase out existing production to align supply with the climate goals of the Paris 2015 agreement.
3. The third stage, equivalent to peaceful use, would create clean, renewable energy for poorer countries while supporting economic diversification for the workers and communities in these fossil-fuel dependent nations.

The money needed for this new non-proliferation agreement would come from a reallocation of the trillions of dollars in subsidies that wealthy nations continue to hand out to the fossil fuel industry. Instead of going into new exploration and development projects, the money would be spent to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

In their editorial, the Atomic Scientists write:

“History shows that rapid, dramatic change is possible when a handful of countries are committed to lead. Imagine if wealthy nations were to step up and provide Ecuador and Peru an alternative to drilling in the heart of the region known as the Amazon’s Sacred Headwaters. This would avoid the release of 60 million tons of carbon while respecting the rights of indigenous nations—and protect a vital organ of the Earth’s biosphere that is key to regulating the climate.”

Through agreement on the non-proliferation of fossil fuels, we can reap the benefits of seeing consumer demand fall dramatically. We, as citizens of the world, would now understand that fossil fuels are a finite resource and that our use of them has to alter. Instead of internal combustion engines driving our transportation options, we will need to find other ways. Instead of fossil fuels being our primary heating source, we will need to find reliable and affordable low-carbon solutions.

The Atomic Scientists write: “Our current path, in which we expand the production of fossil fuels, is akin to the fire department showing up with gasoline to save a planet on fire. This cannot continue.”

They couldn’t be more plain-spoken.

 

In today’s announcement the full statement begins as follows:

“Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode.”

What surprised me is that it didn’t single out the state actors who are the culprits in this escalation of insecurity that the world faces: No mention of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un, the U.S. Republican Party, Mark Zuckerberg, and a few others of notoriety that have proved to be actors in the global drama that is pushing humanity closer to an existential crisis.

The Doomsday Clock announcement pointed to these eight trends:

1. We are moving closer to a nuclear war started by design, blunder, or miscommunication.
2. Climate change is happening and being largely ignored by those with the power to implement the changes in our economies to mitigate it. The 60 or so countries committed to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions represent only 11% of all global emissions. The rest of the world talks but does little to act. And the energy giants continue to explore for and increase fossil fuel use in pursuit of profit while misinforming the public about the urgency of the climate threat.
3. The truth is being subverted by a new media environment that spreads misinformation without challenge from authorities, which creates fake audio and video recordings almost undetectable from the real thing, and that makes it hard to discern truth from fiction. And leadership increasingly manipulates the truth undermining the public’s belief in national institutions and government.
4. The United States has abrogated arms and nuclear control agreements likely setting off a series of new arms races.
5. The relationship between the most powerful countries and blocks is being eroded by populist leadership in several nations.
6. The arms race is moving into outer space creating a new danger from the high ground and moving away from 70 years of principled and peaceful exploration of the cosmos.
7. The unipolar world that followed the fall of the Soviet Union has gone multipolar with China challenging the U.S. for ascendancy creating potential flashpoints that could start a regional war that could soon escalate to a global and nuclear one. The Doomsday Scientists state: “Any belief that the threat of nuclear war has been vanquished is a mirage.”
8. Advances in technology are disrupting economies and society from the rise of artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering, biological weapons, space weapons, hypersonic weapons, autonomous kill drones, and even eugenics.

The anti-science movement in the United States is particularly a problem whether it be anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, or a disdain for facts, what the data shows and the experts in universities and company laboratories. Propaganda, once associated with dictatorships, has now become the means to indulge in prejudice, bias, and ideology, spreading false and manipulative messages to millions.

The twenty-second move toward midnight puts the world nearer to doomsday than at anytime during the Cold War when the United States and Soviet Union faced each other with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.

So what can be done? These are five steps the Atomic Scientists believe need to happen if we are to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock further from midnight:

They were asked to describe what science and technology trends in a variety of fields would dominate in the year 2052. The magazine readership chosen was deliberate because these publications are widely read by those who are active in their respective fields. They are researchers, builders, and business executives. Many have graduate and post-graduate degrees. The business readers were largely executives of companies benefiting from technology to help them succeed in their respective sectors.

So how did these groups differ in their view of what lies ahead?

Futurists saw the areas most impacted by 2052 to be in the following fields in descending order: robotics, biotechnology, and energy.

Readers of Science ordered the same three fields with biotechnology first, energy second, and robotics last.

Readers of Nature put biotechnology first, IT and software second, and energy third.

And readers of the Harvard Business Review put renewable energy first, agriculture and food second, and cancer therapies third.

In addition, all groups saw the next 35 years to experience breakthroughs in biomedicine, computer science, and materials science.

Futurists and business people cited artificial intelligence (AI) followed by runner-ups in healthcare, advanced analytics for big data, robotics, energy technologies, synthetic biology, and genetic engineering.

The business group also had high expectations for space travel, while the scientists expressed greatest confidence in AI and biotechnology.

All the groups saw technological convergence a dominant force for change whether in biomedicine, robotics, analytics, or AI.

The readers of Harvard Business Review were asked about social versus business impacts from advances in technology. They cited for both, food for the world, the curing of cancer, and reversing climate change. Food for the world was fourth on their list, and climate change reversal was fifth. Business readers added renewable energy and a secure Internet. Those citing the social over business technological advances included pandemic preparedness and genetic modification of humans.

What didn’t these readers expect to see happening by 2052?

For Harvard Business Review readers they cited:

• The Singularity (Ray Kurzweil’s prediction of the merging of humans and AI
• Commercial space stations
• Reversing climate change
• A secure Internet

Futurists, scientists, and technologists cited:

• Unified field theory
• Translating quantum state models to help solve technological and behavioural challenges in the larger world
• Cataloging the causes of all forms of cancer
• Anti-gravity technology
• The mapping of genomics to disease prediction
• Proof of sentient life on other planets
• Understanding the unidirectional nature of time
• Reverse-engineering the human brain
• Commercial space stations and off-world human habitats
• Reversing climate change

Whether futurists, scientists, technologists, or business people, none saw the free market as capable of effectively dealing with the social, environmental and technology issues without government involvement. Seen as a priority was a renewed effort to educate humanity in the fields of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics to produce those with both technical and creative skills needed for a sustainable future.