The State of the World’s Understanding - A Speech for the New Century

?by Michael Ricciardi?

December 30th, 2100 – It is almost the dawn of the 22nd Century and here I am, an ordinary ‘universal curriculum teacher’ (that means I’m qualified to teach grades 1st through 12th, including college prep and AP), about to give a speech on ‘The State of the World’s Understanding’. It had been decided by a global survey that a teacher was to address the world (and each New Year’s Eve from now on); this was now my duty as both teacher and ‘citizen of Earth’ -- my name having been drawn at random from a pool of thousands of other educators from two hundred or so countries.

And I’m still writing notes…Adding and subtracting this part or that in what seems like an endless process. But, of course, my speech must end somewhere as I have only 20 minutes, maximum, to speak. I confess to being not a little nervous; speaking in front of a class (whether in-person, remotely, or both) is one thing, but speaking in front of the entire world – including those residing on board all three of the planet’s space stations – is quite another (and the space stations would be relaying my speech to our several Moon bases, and, eventually, on to Mars base…a ‘universal teacher’, indeed!)

How do I start such a momentous speech? I was thinking about mentioning how remarkable it was (and is) that the human race survived so many calamities, catastrophes, and crises over the past 80 years (a good number of which occurred before I was born) with many coming on the heels of each other, or, frequently, over-lapping. Our initially uneven successes in meeting these crises and challenges (like the Great Crop Failures of 2030, or, the hyper-expanded oceanic ‘dead zone’ that caused the almost complete collapse of the Western Pacific fishing industry) were not without great pain and suffering. And these crises were made worse by retaliatory actions by smaller nations against wealthier, larger ones, who responded with cutting economic aid and restricting immigration. But this form of nationalistic reactionism would prove to be counter-productive for all parties.

Despite these disasters and the sometimes shameful, nationalistic reactions to them, there was much to be positive about, to be sure. Humanity had emerged – after a series of ‘crash courses’ – with what could only be called a growing planetary consciousness. It was not like we had much of a choice there. Nature is a relentless teacher and the world’s diverse cultures and peoples eventually came to learn that, when it comes to the ecology and environment, all disasters are global (it was, in truth, a re-formalizing of an old way of knowing – attributed to the indigenous peoples of the Americas – sometimes known as the ‘Web of Life’). And so, the mid-21st Century arrived with a ‘New Realization’…one focused on ecological awareness, balance, and the restoring of the planet’s sustaining macro-ecosystems (somewhat surprisingly, this ushered in a new economic revolution as well).

But all this realizing didn’t happen overnight. There were the looming questions of Climate Justice and Climate Debt that had to be resolved: Who owed a debt (for climate disruption and the severe ecological/economic impacts that resulted) to whom? What did this ‘Justice’ look like and how would it be administered? The twin issues of Climate Debt and Climate Justice had been kicked around for years but like the can that was kicked down the proverbial road, never fully addressed.

And then the bill came due. Not all at once, but successively and repeatedly, starting with the massive migration of equatorial peoples towards the North (which had itself already begun feeling the manifold impacts of climate change). This global migration was unstoppable, and, like so much else that was warned about, totally foreseeable. But steadily, after having exhausted traditional responses of border enforcement and criminalization of arrivals, the wealthy, developed Northern States – especially in the Western Hemisphere -- came to realize two critical things: immigration could be compassionately and wisely managed (for example, through matching refugees populations with adequately resourced regions, instead of concentrating them at the under-resourced borders), and secondly, that ‘climate resilience’ investment in the still developing Southern Nations should be dramatically increased (‘Money, Materials, and Machines’ was the slogan). This both moderated the waves of climate refugees, and also built-up those severely climate-impacted States’ economies (the failure of which was a major factor in climate-induced emigration). These new realizations also happened to dove-tail with the Climate Debt/Justice issues which the young peoples’ movement called YouthCAN – for ‘Youth Climate Action Now’ – had picked up and pushed forward with great ferocity (as it was their future at stake). One can never know for sure, but many have speculated that this and other youth-organized climate action movements (many having started on Social Media, in the beginning) helped avert a global war.

And just in time, for there was, at that perilous point in our Earth System’s evolution, an enormous amount of work to do – and everyone’s help was needed.

Hmmm. I’m thinking that maybe I should avoid pointing out too much of the bad stuff.

I should probably keep it positive and ‘forward looking’, as they say. But the good and the bad were deeply entangled. How to talk of each proportionately and honestly?

And, how could I simply ignore or gloss over the fact that Humanity avoided a third World War not once, but twice? The first time, the conflict raged over ‘old energy’ control and usage (and the mandated and taxed transitions away from Carbon energy); the second time, over planet-wide water and food shortages (the first ‘close call’ came about over stopping the altering of the Earth’s climate; the second was caused largely by the altered climate).

Nor could I omit the three great pandemics that swept over the globe (the first occurring in 2020, well before my time). It took that many increasingly lethal, zoonotic contagions to finally force complete cessation of deforestation and wildlife trafficking (and thus also human encroachment on wild spaces); the old REDD policies of the earlier years had proven to be insufficient and subject to sporadic politically-motivated violations. And this momentous change was largely facilitated by what was called ‘The Great Hand Over’ or ‘The Rightful Return’: the handing over of large sections of the world’s tropical rain forests to their remaining indigenous tribes and traditional forest ‘stakeholders’ – from the storied Congo Basin to the furthest stretches of the mighty Amazon to the lush, ‘bio hot spot’ island of Borneo -- a policy that grew from a mere suggestion in the early 20-teens to an international binding agreement over the course of some 30 years. And to keep all participants honest, every hectare of forest was mapped and tracked from space. These traditional stakeholders soon began refining and implementing their own hybrid science; forms of what the Northern Canadian Mi’kmaw culture terms etuaptmumk, or, ‘two-eyed seeing’ – a combination of Western ecological science and traditional tribal knowledge, accrued over millennia.

As a teacher, I am always looking for the essential lesson in everything. Perhaps I should commence my speech with one general lesson, like: From great catastrophe may come great creative opportunity (and transformation).

For, as harrowing, heart-breaking, and economically disruptive as these global diseases were, each pandemic incrementally improved our global health infrastructure; our ability to rapidly produce vaccines in massive quantities, and, our ability to equitably distribute these vaccines among all nations, developed or developing. In fact, it was the succession of pandemics that provided much of the impetus to change our ways. Well, that and the climate, of course; the two being fundamentally interconnected. What had driven so many people into the forests in the first place was the search for food and basic resources -- simple survival. And this drive was propelled by ever-widening crop failures due to drought, ecosystem collapse, and massive infestations of ravenous insects and other plant pathogens -- all caused, or intensified, by an increasingly chaotic climate. The world was becoming caught in a ‘positive feedback cycle’ that, at times, seemed inexorable. But some of these impacts – like the massive insect infestations – also provided new opportunities; the huge volumes of insects provided a protein-rich food source (‘buzz food’) for both livestock and people, easing some strains and demands on local food production.?Yes, from great catastrophe…?

OK, maybe that’s a bit too glib. I don’t what to mislead by painting such significant and pivotal changes with so broad a brush.

For, not all had adapted easily, or creatively, to the dramatic, often radical, shifting of priorities, values, and emergent economic forces. But in truth, the New Realization was inevitable (if slow, at first) in a world of near instantaneous transmission of news and information (note: access to the Internet and high bandwidth had, at last, by mid-century, become truly planet-wide). The failure of a staple crop half-way around the world was felt the next day here at home; people had to adapt by changing what they purchased and consumed – almost on a weekly basis. This adaptive pressure underpinned the various ‘Green Local’ climate resilience movements that buffered many millions from the loss of food security due to climate change-induced food shortages.

This movement was most pronounced in densely populated cities, where today, hardly any city over five hundred thousand was without an urban farming infrastructure: a combination of new and old tech, of hydroponic and aeroponic growing systems, and, when needed, plant nanobionics (this enabled communication of each plant’s trophic levels to any computational device). All water left unused was conserved, cleaned (by filtering it through graphene oxide ‘sieve stacks’), and recycled for other purposes. Those rural regions that could not sustain this advanced infrastructure were provided with genetically robust/resilient crop species (native ‘landraces’) procured through a global ‘seed bank’ exchange network that had been established, rather presciently, in the first decade of this century. Ideal planting, fertilizing, and harvesting information was provided free via satellite data feeds to any farmer’s cellular visualization app.

Ok, I don’t want to get off track. It was this compiling of ecological crises and environmental catastrophes that forced awareness and recognition on the world’s collective consciousness that all these problems were, in fact, interconnected (like warming, soil desiccation, drought, then wide-spread and massive wildfires). But this understanding of how Nature and the planet’s biosphere worked (and, the obvious fact that one nation’s boundaries did not prevent its environmental policies and practices from escaping to the rest of the world) also brought the world precipitously close to global conflict. But, after several ‘low level’ regional conflicts ensued, it quickly became clear that warfare, at any scale, did not make the mounting challenges go away – it only made things worse – environmentally, ecologically, and economically -- even for the wealthiest nations whose collective, centuries-long, industrial growth stages were primarily responsible for global climate disruption in the first place. War, in effect, became too costly to everyone – especially for the ‘victor’ (this spelled doom, of course, for the global weapons industry).

OK, I’m letting my thoughts get a bit unfocused and tangential. Got to keep the speech tight and flowing.

I stopped my historical review and note-making for a moment to just breathe and take in my surroundings: a bevy of small birds – adamantly occupying the dozen or so fruit trees encircling me -- were chirping their mating songs, a number of pollen-burdened bees buzzed through the wild grass, going about their business, and a gurgling of water flowing steadily over blue-gray slate stones accompanied all of this. I could feel the soothing touch of cooled air that the shaded water produced as I inhaled the rich, oxygenated air perfumed by a dozen species of wildflower -- all pollinated by the very same stamen-hopping insects. I reached out and plucked a leaf off a nearby lamb’s quarter plant and popped it into my mouth, enjoying the fresh, succulent texture and taste. One could feed oneself easily just walking through this free space and trying out this or that plant or fruit (nearly everything was edible). One had to try really hard to go hungry.

How idyllic and wonderful to be contemplating the ‘state of the worlds understanding’ in the midst of this designed ecosystem! It was all the more wonderful given the fact that I was sitting in a cooperative ‘free space’ in the middle of a once ‘blighted’ urban core occupied by hundreds of thousands of my fellow citizens…with millions more in the surrounding neighborhoods, each encased in its own unique ’eco-zone’ (and each a matter of local pride and friendly competition amongst the revivified urban neighborhoods) -- each with its own micro-economy to fortify itself against random macro-economic shocks (which still happened from time to time).

Even the faint background hum of thousands of all-electric, self-driving vehicles (both ground-based and aerial) barely impinged on this space (thanks, in part, to smart materials that absorbed certain frequencies of urban noise). If I didn’t know otherwise, I could readily imagine myself quite alone in some bucolic country setting untouched by time or industrial-technological progress. These spaces also had a profoundly positive effect on personal mental health and stress reduction -- a fact that had been known as far back as the 1960’s, and probably, intuitively, long before then.

Ah, yes, technology…How could I just skim over so much advancement and innovative application of technology – especially artificial intelligence? Perhaps because the newest generation of ecotech was ubiquitous and invisible, so embedded into the physical environment – and so tiny – as to be rendered invisible. At its heart was a ‘smart field’ comprised of nano-sensors that continuously monitored the ecosystem and fed its data via tuned optical oscillations to a distributed ‘neural network’ (brain) that adaptively and continuously regulated the temperature, humidity, and air quality and circulation.

Take the flowing stream at my feet as an example: the stream, supplied by recycled rain water, was sporadically perfused with excess CO2 that the plants and trees couldn’t utilize (as their biomass growth was limited by stoma uptake and water loss, along with limited soil nitrogen) and flowing over slate-like ‘synth stones’ comprised of dense composites of carbon nanotubes (made from captured atmospheric CO2) and Magnesium Oxide ‘frameworks’ which chemically pulled the dissolved CO2 from the water flow. Every couple of years, the stones would be removed, buried in designated ‘sequestration beds’, and replaced with newer ones. This carbon-capturing system was scaled up or down, as needed, for nearly every neighborhood in the city. It was fashionable to have similar systems running right through the middle of many corporate work spaces. Its underlying technology was actually a form of geo-engineering tech, just scaled down and locally distributed. Macro-scale versions of Carbon Capture and Sequestering (CCS) technology were, of course, already implemented to varying degrees while some other types of geoengineering – like giant space mirrors – were rejected, being deemed too costly and too disruptive to the Earth’s energy balance and precipitation cycles.

This almost ritualistic ‘replacement of the stones’ was vital to the local micro and meso-scale economies, both as a source of well-paying temporary jobs, and, by providing urbanites a chance to ‘get out to the country’ and explore unregulated Nature and to purchase rural grown produce and specialty goods, like honey, maple syrup, and fruit preserves.

Ok, I need to refocus…I could easily elaborate more on the ubiquitous ecotech system that most of us still living in cities lived with, or within, but I have a big speech to get back to. And it wasn’t all about technology; it was as much about people deciding to do the difficult work, together. So, despite the fecklessness and failures of their political leadership, people everywhere adopted, or returned to, ‘deliberative democratic councils’ to resolve their local disputes, problems and challenges. Yes, it was equally about ordinary people, in large, insuppressible numbers, doing the extraordinary.

That’s good…keep it centered on people. Maybe I should open with some autobiographical details, and segue into my educational message, something like:

I was born in a bustling village some 100 kilometers outside of Nairobi, Kenya. My father was a well-known artisan specializing in drum-making and my mother was a respected doctor (of people and animals). Both were teachers, in their own right. I have three siblings – two sisters and a brother – all college graduates…something that was unthinkable, I’m told, prior to 2030. But thanks to the Open CourseWare (OCW) movement -- initiated by MIT (yes, that MIT) in the earlier years of the past century – this new reality of free, high-level education eventually spread throughout the world, such that many more millions in the developing world were receiving quality, college level instruction and critical technical knowledge. If they chose to, a learner could take a free ‘knowledge acquisition exam’ to gain entry to an academy, usually of their choice (including study on one of the Moon bases). This innovation in education has become the foundation of the global phenomenon known as the ‘Great Learning and Education Era’ (GLEE), supported by the OCW Consortium-funded system of mobile cyber-schools, portable satellite down-links, virtual reality modules, and instructional AI avatars.

OK, that’s sounding good. I don’t want to get caught up too much in the technical ‘weeds’ again; I’ve got to keep it crisp and focused. I’ll keep the personal biographical details to a minimum, too. Maybe I should start with a humorous anecdote? Maybe offering a recap of ‘Humanity’s greatest hits’ (and near misses) was not the way to go; most people, young and old, had learned, at least in part, all about the early and mid-century travails and triumphs that opened the door to the world we now live in. Still, sometimes a reminder or two of where we have been – of what we have come through – is necessary, so that we understand how we came to this point in our evolution as a species, so that we do not repeat the tragically wasteful mistakes of the past. Yes, reminders are important.

Ok, maybe that’s the way to start a speech: A short recap of the past century including the emergence of the new Earth Consciousness (an outgrowth of the ‘New Realization’)…Then, a bit of personal history (punctuated with a humorous anecdote from my childhood, maybe one of my mother’s funny ‘day-in-the-life’ of a rural doctor stories)…Then, I could add a few examples of humanity’s major technological achievements like the global distribution of portable, molecular synthesis machines and automated, modular farmasias in the early 2030s; machines that provided all peoples with no/low cost essential medicines, preventing countless diseases and premature deaths -- ‘health equalizing the world’ (the press called it)…OK, then what?

Remember: forward looking! Right, I need to end the speech looking towards the next and coming decades. That leaves me some space for speculation and wonderment. But now I realize that I face the same rhetorical problem as before; it’s not all rosy and clear sailing…The future is tenuous, always potentiated with uncertainty. I feel that I must point out the challenges and difficulties that remain, or that lie ahead. There is the continuing, over-arching challenge of mitigating Climate disruption and keeping the average global surface temperature below 3.25 Kelvin (the median value of the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, as it is known). As we now have learned, for human civilization, being ‘carbon neutral’ or ‘carbon negative’ was and is no easy feat. Initially, the imposing of new carbon standards on everyone had exacerbated long-standing inequalities between nations and regions, and had created some new ones. We are not yet existing in anything like a ‘perfect’ balance with Nature. And, despite much successful ‘sky scrubbing’ (as CCS efforts are called by young folks), and other ‘geo-engineering’ efforts, the greenhouse gas emissions (primarily CO2, CH4, and N2O) that had been released or emitted long ago were still making their climate impacts felt in this time. Although we have nearly perfected the 14-day weather forecast, the unpredictability of macro-scale climate fluctuations – the swings and lurches between extremes – still dogs us, still disrupts us. Consequently, large and diverse segments of the world’s population are now semi-mobile, some being permanently mobile. Most such people are what used to be referred to as ‘climate refugees’ (now simply called ‘mobile pops’). This climate reality has created on-going challenges for local resource allocation, including medical and healthcare resources.

Yes, always uncertainties there are. (Note: avoid sounding like Yoda.)

Again, I am treading on that borderline between hard realism and honest optimism. I want to avoid slipping into any ‘fear-of-the-future’ imagery. I know: I’ll couple each mention of a current or future challenge with a hopeful, promising note -- ‘paired messaging’, they call it.

Yes, that’s the way to do it!

And using this rhetorical technique would not be a dishonest thing. For, there was much to be hopeful about and there were indeed promising developments happening everywhere. Take the example of these mobile populations: scientists and mathematicians are continuously fashioning newer algorithms for resource locating, allocating, and transporting (‘bringing the resources to the refugees’) and using satellite monitoring of the planet’s natural resources to guide and support them whenever they need to mobilize again. People were actively educating themselves, too, everywhere. The Citizen Science movement – another trend begun in the early decade of this century -- was decidedly global now and its discoveries nearly constant (and its data accumulating, massively). The new innovators and thinkers guiding a given society’s path were as likely to be ‘home grown’ amateurs as much as Western-educated professionals. The old promises of equality and parity amongst all peoples had bloomed into a growing imminent reality; The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the bedrock of the emergent World Legal System (an expansion of the World Court). Human conflicts and inequalities still emerged, yes, but now over shorter time frames, and with faster resolutions. It had become nearly impossible to justify or rationalize any inequity, to anyone, anywhere.

That sounds fine, but I’ve got to keep it honest, clear-eyed.

There will always be uncertainties in Nature – ‘rogue planets’ -- as my 10-year-old niece likes to remind me (“We have to keep our eyes open, uncle.”), there will always be those events or developments that we don’t see coming (like a massive solar flare that knocks out our satellites and power grids, though we’re getting better at predicting such solar eruptions). The trick is in minimizing the harmful impacts of what we cannot know or predict (those ‘unknown unknowns’) by continuously expanding our awareness, keeping our eyes open (perhaps using that ‘two-eyed seeing’) and actively building a just world in which learning and progress is not just possible, but obligatory. These are the keys to real global security.

There, now I sound like a teacher!

I find myself smiling, just a bit. The speech is starting to crystallize and formalize in my mind. I‘ve been working on this draft for 12 hours now, with just a few more hours left until New Year’s Eve morning arrives. The speech is scheduled for 3pm (Eastern Africa Time) that day (presumably followed by the usual world-wide festivities). But each time I think about ‘delivering’ the speech, I grow more nervous. I don’t want to appear overly didactic nor lacking in sensitivity, but I have to be confident and knowledgeable, too.

OK, I need to ‘hit pause’ for a bit…need to rest my brain.

Several moments of slow, deep breathing must have passed. I must have slipped into a slight hypnogogic state. I sense a gentle, vibratory tone in my bio-plastic ear piece. Someone is calling me. Just as well, I can’t let myself fall asleep for too long. “Hello?”

“It’s me, uncle, how is the speech going?” My niece’s playful voice prompted me fully awake; she had a habit of calling me just before my class lectures, or some important event.

“Oh, it’s working out, I’m nearly done…there’s so much to cover in a short time! Thanks for checking in with me.” I could tell she wanted to say something more.

“Everyone is very proud of you, uncle.”

My eyes start to water up a bit. “Thank you. Is there something else you want to tell me, my dear niece?” There was a slight pause. Then:

“Just keep it real, uncle. Remember the rogues!” And with that, she ended the call. How did my niece turn out to be so prescient and wise beyond her years? I’d like to think, selfishly perhaps, it was partly due to having good teachers.

Back to the speech. I’ve decided to take a break from writing it and to start practicing speaking it. I should begin with a greeting…But how should I greet billions of viewers and listeners?

From some more mischievous part of my brain comes: “Greetings, inhabitants of Earth!”

Oh, no, that will just not do. I might as well say Klaatu barada nikto – who knows how people would react to that!

I clear my throat. “Hello, fellow Earth citizens…” Hmmm. Well, I’ve still got several hours until speech time.

I’ll just keep working on it.

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