Immortality in a Dust Bowl

Party Like its 2099

Imagine you are living in the 22^nd century and you are exceedingly wealthy. So wealthy in fact, that you are now immortal. You have purchased the ultimate health and insurance package and you cannot die except if you have a serious accident. What an awesome opportunity! You are free from the shackles of finite choices and limited time.

You can travel and enjoy the sights and sounds of an amazing future world of epic cities, landscapes and cultures for all of eternity. You will never age. You can party at every festival in the world, sample every dish created, learn any skill, have multiple long (or short) term relationships and do whatever you want when you want.

Except there is a small problem… There isn’t much world left to enjoy. You see, there is an area of desert that straddles the middle of the Earth from London to Barcelona to Cape Town. Most of the world is now a dry, dead, uninhabitable dust bowl.

Just as all your hard work got you VIP access to paradise, the dust bowl came along and seriously spoiled your perma-party. How did this happen?

Where Was the Catch?

The climate crisis that caused the “dust bowl” was a slow burning problem at first. Super storms and water shortages caused millions of refugees to flee to cooler countries. The wealthy like you had already moved further north or south. This was also around the time that you sold the company you built for a fortune and became one of the first customers for an immortality total body make-over.

Then the climate catastrophe struck in the mid of 21^st century. Without warning, global temperature tipping points were hit in rapid succession and the planet heated up in sudden spurts. Ecosystems instantly collapsed as millions of plants, animals and marine life were wiped out in the unbearable heat.

This was swiftly followed by disruption to food supply chains and mass dehydration and starvation. Billions died and the global economy collapsed. A few million people survived and the vast majority are now living in a post-apocalyptic world as scavengers in the rubble on the fringe of extreme poverty.

Who are the Immortals & How Did It Happen?

You are one of a handful of super elites who live in mansion enclaves sealed from the outside world in a bubble. You have food tech and your immortality machines and each other. There is enough energy and material for this small number of people to live in the bubble for some time. But the world and most natural resources have been poisoned or destroyed. There isn’t enough for the population to expand. Most human knowledge was also lost in the collapse, – locked in servers the world over, and in the minds of the legions of dead scientists, philosophers, business leaders, writers, creatives, politicians and artists. Even if the knowledge could be accessed there are not enough people to use it effectively.

You are a bored, unhappy and ironically fragile immortal living in a bubble in a dying world that has no future. You live in fear of your bubble breaking down and making you mortal again.

This scenario may sound completely crazy and far-fetched to you. Can we really become immortal? Can climate change really cause such destruction? The answer is unequivocally yes and yes. Technology is the common thread.

It Started with the Prevention of All Disease

Back to early 2019. Hospitals around the world are struggling to provide a basic healthcare service, so the idea of immortality may sound ridiculous given our current circumstances. But consider how fast medical technology has developed in the past 40 years. MRI and CT scans enable us to look deep inside a living body non-invasively. We can place stents to reopen blocked blood vessels in the heart with just a small incision in the wrist. New cancer cures that use genetically engineered immune drugs to target cancer cells and leave healthy cells intact are becoming available. This is just the beginning.

Technology is advancing faster than ever before. The first 15 years of the 21^st century has already produced more innovation than the entire 20^th century. Waves of technological advances are coalescing together to create technology that once belonged solely to science fiction. Artificial intelligence and cars are combining to create autonomous vehicles. In the medical sector – sensors, digital health software and big data intelligence are combining to shift healthcare from a reactive system that treats disease to a proactive system that prevents disease. Projecting this system into the future we can see a day when every aspect of your health is monitored daily and treatment for potentially dangerous illnesses is administered before you are even aware of a problem.

Genetically altered foetuses at the point of conception free of all disease carrying gene mutations will set longevity to a standard 110 years to achieve the first stage of life extension. Let’s add genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and 3D printing into the mix and now you have the ability to print replacement organs, augmented cybernetic implants, and swarms of nanobots that patrol your bloodstream to provide an artificially created backup immune system with super powers.

Continuous scanning and sensing technology combined with hyper-fast quantum processors and abundant data storage will make it possible to track every one of the cells in your body and enable the nanobots to carry out additional repair work to slow or halt the ageing process.

According to renowned physicists such as David Deutsch and Michio Kaku, all that is needed is more energy and more knowledge and any problem – including immortality – can be solved. The application of knowledge always requires energy and materials.

Therefore, all that is needed to solve any problem is more energy and more materials. Immortality is coming closer to our ape-like grasp. The exact time depends solely on the accumulated amount of time and dedication from the humanity.

The Global Economy is Eating the Natural World

In our quest to create immortality we now have a glimpse as to why technological advancement is also producing the climate crisis. The global economy has increased in size exponentially since the industrial revolution from $100 billion in 1700 (1990 US dollars) to $80 trillion in 2018. Technology has enabled us to generate more wealth in a shorter space of time to enable this phenomenal pace of change.

By solving problems using technology to generate wealth, we have also increased our use of energy and materials. On the energy side, the entire industrial revolution was made possible by burning fossil fuels. Most of the economy today is still dependent on fossil fuels. Unfortunately, burning fossils releases greenhouse gases and the world heats up.

On the materials side, our quest for more has led us to destroy large areas of the natural world. We are cutting down trees to rear animals to feed us, digging holes in the ground to mine minerals and polluting the land and oceans with our wastes. The wild untouched natural world is shrinking faster than ever before, and plants, animals and marine life are going extinct at an accelerating pace. In our quest to build new technology and new wealth we are destroying the same natural systems we depend on to survive. The global economy is eating the natural world. Technology powered by fossil fuels will lead us to immortality in a dust bowl.

Technology can make us into gods. Unhappy gods doomed to eternal oblivion, or worse – to be rendered mere mortals once again by the total destruction of their environment and the very world that created them.

Is Socialism a Solution?

Many people blame capitalism and greed as the source of the problem and point to a socialist approach as the solution. Their logic is if we stop buying and consuming, then we can stop environmental destruction. This is only a half-solution, and it is doomed to fail for two simple reasons:

1. Human beings are programmed to desire progression: Voluntary suppression of all consumption goes against our biological desires. We are hard wired to want more, and we feel good when we get it. We like buying new clothes, having new cars, travelling to new places and upgrading our houses. Consumption is also a powerful way to signal social status and gain entry to higher status social circles. It feels good because it makes us look good to others.
2. Socialism doesn’t reward innovation: Capitalism rewards the pioneers who take the risk to develop new ideas. Entrepreneurs give sweat and tears to bring their new creations into the market. Successful innovation is then rewarded with shares in a new company or a share of new profits. If this wealth generating incentive is removed, a lot of the incentive to be an entrepreneur evaporates and innovation slows down. If innovation slows, then we slow down our problem-solving capabilities. This also feeds into point number one.

If we are all hard-wired to desire progression, and rewards are required for technological advancement to solve problems, it seems we are stuck with relentless economic growth that destroys the environment and ourselves in the process!

Fortunately, this is not the case. We can build a better story using what we already know, and the technologies we have already developed, without shutting down our human desire for growth. We are ingenious beings and we can solve any problem if we put our minds to it. This is how.

Green Capitalism Is the Answer

There are two main problems we must solve: The Climate Crisis & the Mass Extinction of Species. In order to solve these problems we have the following solutions:

Moving to Kardashev Civilization Type I

The Climate Crisis will kill us in the 21^st century if it is allowed to go out of control. The solution is ‘simple’. We must generate 100% of our energy from sources that don’t release greenhouse gases. Our electric grids, transport, heating and cooling systems, and industrial power must all come from 100% renewable sources of energy that emit zero carbon. Therefore, we must shut down all fossil fuel energy systems, and switch to solar, wind, and water with some nuclear power legacy stations as a stop-gap. We must do this as soon as humanly possible. This is the biggest challenge we have ever faced as species.

To do this we must use the enormous power of the capitalist system (instead of fighting it) and the trillions of dollars that flow through our financial systems and redirect them. Pension funds are already divesting from fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuel subsidies can be transitioned to green energy subsidies. Governments can set ambitious net zero goals using carbon taxes or low carbon incentives to push business to decarbonise faster. Every single day that we are emitting carbon into the atmosphere takes us closer to a dangerous global heating tipping point.

The pioneers of Green Energy will be rewarded: countries and companies that decarbonise first will reap great financial benefits in the long run because they will be able to sell their solutions to others.

Creation of a Circular Ecosystem & Nano Biosphere

In our quest for materials, we must switch to circular systems that enable us to reuse the materials we already have to reduce our direct damage on wildlife and nature. Inorganic materials must be recycled where possible. Waste should be reduced to near zero by creating a natural circular process. We have to restore natural habitats and build new ones.

New forests can be planted with the right incentives. We already have amazing new technologies that can get us to a circular economy. Mushrooms can be used to manufacture biodegradable packaging that dissolve in weeks instead of harmful plastics that pollute for centuries. Innovators are experimenting with pop-up buildings made of sand that can be formed and then dissolved away and rebuilt elsewhere.

In the future, there is no reason why we cannot create living buildings made of organic materials with embedded intelligence that can repair themselves and integrate seamlessly into the natural world. Buildings that live and breathe. For now, cities can be filled with greenery by building walls of plants and creating rooftop gardens to integrate nature with the urban jungle, instead of pushing it out to the margins.

With a combination of 100% clean, renewable energy and circular material systems we will drastically slow down our destructive pace and buy time to solve the tougher problems.

It is possible for the global economy to double in size by the middle of the 21^st century according to Jorgen Randers in the excellent book 2052. In order for this to happen without causing massive environmental damage, the majority of this growth has to come from the green economy. According to the European Business Review, the sustainable economy may be the biggest wealth creation opportunity in all of human history. The world needs an army of eco-entrepreneurs to realize this value creation.

Environmental entrepreneurs building new products and services based on clean energy and circular materials will be at the forefront of innovation and wealth creation in the new world.

Consumers can influence business by buying low carbon goods and services. Green capitalism and smarter consumption will buy us extra time.

A Sustainable Economy Needs a Higher Level of Human Consciousness

The seeming paradox of making money and doing good at the same time requires sustainability entrepreneurs to adopt a new mindset and elevate their consciousness. It turns out that making money out of protecting the environment is often intricately bound with protecting people and respecting their rights. Sustainability requires us to elevate our economic, environmental and social performance to a higher level.  This higher level of consciousness is a key ingredient for governments, companies and individuals to build a sustainable society.

We must get rid of the notion that inequality and pollution are inevitable by-products of wealth creation.

We can continue our technological development and wealth development to pull every human being out of extreme poverty and we can reduce inequality and pollution at the same time.

What about the problem of population growth? Well, by increasing average wealth using green capitalism, the global population will also naturally plateau as people with advanced lifestyles typically want fewer children. This is the trend observed in the developed world, and now being seen in the developing world.

A stable human population powered by green technology and clean circular material systems will have a much lesser impact on the environment than a growing population powered by dirty fossil fuels and linear material systems that pump poisons into the environment. We can build wealth, achieve a near steady-state, and live in harmony with the natural world to deliver us safely into the 22^nd century.

Transhumanism As A New Economic and Social Order for the 22^nd Century

On a finite planet there is a logical limit to economic growth. It cannot continue forever. Therefore, as we learn how to slow down our damage on the world with green capitalism and technology, we must also learn how to evolve and transform capitalism and create a new global system that causes zero damage and restores the environment.

This new system will be based on a combination of both wealth and human well-being with a much bigger focus on the latter. This may sound like it goes against our hard-wiring to desire progress as we discussed earlier. But our desire for progress does not have to be in the form of ownership of material possessions. We are already moving to a sharing economy for cars, clothes, consumer goods, and housing. The latest research on well-being reveals that epic shared experiences with others creates more lasting happiness than buying a new car or a big house.

The philosophy of the good life will be changed to focus more on the things that truly make us happy – experiences, connections, relationships, kindness, and fun rather than blatant material consumption. Wealth can be built on non-material assets.

Social status in the new world will be based on your economic ability to create epic shared experiences, or to utilize the most advanced forms of shared transport. We can and will curb our ugliest most destructive consumption habits, without stopping the activities that make us happy.

Autonomous air taxis powered by sunlight are already in the testing phases. In the near future it will be possible to fly across Los Angeles or Delhi in less than 10 minutes with zero carbon emissions to get to your party on time.

Happy Gods

The choice is ours to make: to continue on the same selfish winner-takes-all path to false lonely immortality trapped in a “dust bowl”, or to evolve our consciousness to a higher level for the benefit of all of us. It is clear that the only way to protect the earth is if we take care of everyone.

This is how we will become immortal happy gods in a clean, green playground.

Only then we will be truly ready and unshackled to embark on our next epic challenge to explore the universe, with mother earth as our base. Which path would you choose for your grandchildren?

In looking to protect our future let us not forget our ancestors. In the ancient epic, Gilgamesh strives for immortality. Though he fails in his quest, he realises that mere mortals can attain a kind of immortality through lasting contributions to human society, and in this way he can defy fate. Our generation has the opportunity now to protect the environment and secure an immortal legacy that will reverberate for centuries throughout the future of human history. This is our chance to become immortal.

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