The future is a very big place. That's one reason we can't handle it. We can't even deal with the present, and the future is many times bigger than that, because it is comprised of possibilities that fill many presents.
In times when change is quick and apparently unpredictable--as is graphically apparent in Egypt at the moment--we are reminded of this. We see unexpected events with possibly large but utterly unknown effects. We see the conditions of the present changing before our eyes, but we don't know how much, or how little will change, or when, or how.
There's been a fitful but fairly long history of trying to anticipate the future, to help guide present actions. The last time it was a big concern was the 1970s, when there was a wide range of people and organizations convinced that studying the future was the key to managing change so it would be for the better. There was a lot of excitement about applying computers to make sense out of all the myriad possibilities--to enumerate the possibilities, assign probabilities to each, and create scenarios based on how individual possibilities would interact with each other and the given world.
But the number of possibilities and probabilities, their many possible interactions, the range of possible, probable and desirable futures--the future of many possible presents--was too big even for computers. In part, because people had to imagine so much and decide so much in order to instruct the computers on what data to consider and how to handle it, and it was all just dizzily overwhelming.
But one legacy of this period of futures studies was the idea that all kinds of data and many explanations ought to be considered. Today however we cling to single explanations for the present, or at best a few. We like simple and familiar explanations, especially those inculcated by the most powerful influences, the most persistent explainers. Most often it's the explanation overtly and covertly sponsored by the rich and powerful, backed by the dominant religious institutions. In recent centuries, something called science has gotten in on the act, though most successfully when allied with the rich and powerful, which it has been much of the time.
Sooner or later a consensus explanation will emerge for what's happening in Egypt. At the moment that consensus hasn't yet been reached, but one fairly new explanation--or at least contributing factor--is at least in the mix. It is climate: Unrest in the Middle East is emerging in part because of rising food prices, due in part to climate change.
When it's all said and done that's very unlikely to be the consensus explanation, the conventional wisdom. But it might well be true. Is it the whole explanation? Very unlikely. But it may be a strong contributing factor. And it should not be automatically ignored. Food prices are rising faster in some parts of the world, but they are rising everywhere. One big reason is extreme weather affecting crops that supply food for large regions and even the entire world. If those events are increasing in frequency and severity, they could be the result of the Climate Crisis, as scientific models have predicted. Various studies by think tanks, some affiliated with the U.S. military, predict political unrest due to food prices and shortages, among other effects of the Climate Crisis.
Though at the moment climate may be a politically toxic word in the U.S. and elsewhere, the historical role of climate in the rise and fall of civilizations is gaining more credence, most recently in relation to the Roman Empire. It's not a new idea--James Burke made the case in his brilliant television program of the late 1980s, "After the Warming." But it is heard more often these days. It's not that it is the only explanation--though some probably sound like they mean it to be. But centuries of a relatively stable and beneficent climate have blinded us to the possibility. It's not something we automatically consider. But if it was so, and if the extent and length of climate change happening now is caused by greenhouse gases that continue to be spewed in great quantities, then it is a factor shaping the future.
Yet the habits of mind, plus the relentless shaping of opinion by powerful interests with lies, plus how we are currently using our latest communication technologies to fill all available time and space with commercialized trivialities, blinds us even to the evidence of the present. Here in the U.S. we don't know and don't much care about the recent devastating floods in Australia, let alone what scientists are saying about the evident relationship to the Climate Crisis.
The idea that we're vulnerable to climate change, that even seemingly small changes in climate can change everything, is hard to grasp when we're not experiencing its extremes. But many people are, and more will be. The best science predicts that climate change now underway will not end up being small and local. It's going to be big.
What also makes the Climate Crisis so big is that it affects so many other factors, and how they interact. It's as big as the future. Our climate science is good enough to tell us that it's happening (through measurement and observation) and where things seem to be going (through models as well as applying the rules of such sciences as chemistry, physics and biology), as well as basically why it is happening. But it's not good enough to tell us exactly what will happen and when. It can tell us in general what we need to do to prevent the worst and deal with the inevitable effects, but not specifically. A lot of that has yet to be ascertained or at least fully evaluated.
We should at the very least be having those discussions, those arguments, together, all the time. Instead we're ignoring what's likely to be the major determinant of our future. And that future has already begun. We should be applying even our limited knowledge and skills to this problem. Instead we're running from it, although it is clearly gaining on us. You can tell by the relentless ferocity of the opposition (though that is also partly due to the big pots of money supporting the opposition.)
What the history of the future does suggest is that all these possibilities and factors can only begin to be sorted out into whole futures by acts of the imagination. The proper use of the imagination in this sense is to see the possibilities as fearlessly as you can, match them with what you know from experience and instinct about people and the living world, and develop a sense of the future, perhaps as a range of probabilities, or perhaps as a story.
We all have a story about the future that we live by, even if we don't think about it in those terms. I think about the role of climate, and I see it defining conditions of the future, as it is beginning to define conditions of the present. This has led me to think more and more about what characteristics of human beings will help get them through this future, perhaps even about what organized human activity might be like.
But for the moment, this is the point I want to stay with: I look at the present as it unfolds with the climate and the Climate Crisis in mind, as a key to this present and especially, to the future. My sense is that more and more people are doing that, even if they aren't the ones making the most effective noise.
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