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- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
In the last one hundred years, the world population has grown at an impressive rate and societies are facing deep changes. New global scenarios must deal with inevitable migrations of peoples, climate changes, economic and production fluctuations, a radical digital revolution, and the global management of available resources.
Can science and technology solve all our problems and ensure a high standard of living for everyone on this planet?
The author argues that scientific and technological innovation must be combined with new social models to build a sustainable future.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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Cover
Begin reading
About
The Author
Index of cited names
Table of Contents
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First English digital edition: August 2017
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title page
Colophon
About
The author
Citizenship and sustainability
Premise
The future is no longer what it once was
The ecological budget
Beyond consumerism: a new social model
Cities as test centers for innovative paradigms
The right to security
The human population on Earth
The Planet’s resources
Agricultural resources
Energy resources
Forests and soil
Water
Metals and other elements
Waste and the «ecological footprint»
Science and technology as tools
The revolution of global communication
The internet of everything: the evolution of the web
Zettaflood: the evolution of traffic
Cloud: the evolution of computing
Next Network: the evolution of the network
The world is really flat: fewer and fewer obstacles to communication
Energy: evolution of the production and management of communication
A new society
Conclusions
Man’s technical nature
The revolution we are facing
Index of cited names
About
In the last one hundred years, the world population has grown at an impressive rate and societies are facing deep changes. New global scenarios must deal with inevitable migrations of peoples, climate changes, economic and production fluctuations, a radical digital revolution, and the global management of available resources.
Can science and technology solve all our problems and ensure a high standard of living for everyone on this planet? The author argues that scientific and technological innovation must be combined with new social models to build a sustainable future.
* * *
Fiorenzo Galli – These notes were inspired by my over 16 years spent as General Director of the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. They are, more specifically, a development of the reflections outlined in my paper «Citizenship for sustainability» prepared in 2013 to go with my lecture «The Supporting Network: Technologies and People Toward New Paradigms» presented at the «Energy for Sustainable Science» workshop at cern in Geneva. This booklet is far from being comprehensive and is simply intended to contribute to public reflection. It awes a lot to the quoted authors and data sources. Please forgive any inaccuracies that might be found: I am ready to correct all information that might have been omitted involuntarily or that is insufficiently precise.
The author
Born in Milan into a family of entrepreneurs and married with two children. An officer in the Mountain Army division (Alpini) and with a sporting past, he served as General Secretary of the Foundation Milano per la Scala (where he initiated Digital Asset Management and the first website for the Milan theatre). He was then appointed Director General of the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, which he turned into a European excellence (the Toti submarine arrived in Milan under his direction). He is very popular in Europe for his activities in favor of a permanent development of the relationships between culture, business, and innovation. For several years he has been a member of the Board of ecsite(a European association of over 450 science centers and museums). More recently, he has become a member of the ceo think tank comprising the four major technical-scientific museums in Europe (Deutsches Museum in Munich, Universcience in Paris, Science Museum in London, and National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in Milan). He is a member of the Kuratorium of the Deutsches Museum in Munich and has a strong relationship with the usa, Cuba, Korea, Japan, South Africa, and Iran. He received the «Culture + Enterprise» award in 2015.
This book was awarded the Premio Nazionale di Divulgazione Scientifica 2016 (National Award for Science Dissemination) in the «law, economy, and society» area.
Citizenship and sustainability
Premise
We live in puzzling times with interconnected scenarios, both of which are strongly influenced by a number of fundamental factors that determine the quality of our present and future.
In the last one hundred years, the world population has grown at an impressive rate: from 2 billion individuals in 1927 to 7.5 billion in 2017. By the end of the century the planet will host more than 11 billion people and the population in Africa will have increased by 270%. Will this pose a problem of space? No, it won’t.
The problem is and will be that of resources. 80% of the world population consumes only 20% of the available resources, and more than 1.3 billion people have no access to electricity.
Even though such a large part of humanity lives in poverty, in 2016 the Overshoot Day (the date on which Earth finishes its Ecological Budget for the year) was calculated to be August 8.
What will happen when a growing number of human beings decide they want to consume more and have a better quality of life?
Can science and technology provide solutions for these scenarios? Yes, to a large extent they can, but not everything can be left to the work of research and innovation.
The underlying concept of our democracies is that a good quality of life is connected with an increase in our consumption capacity. The escalating attacks on Western governments are perhaps predictably connected to the political inability to promise new consumption scenarios.
Modern technologies (such as those in Industry 4.0) require rare raw materials. Europe, for example, is totally dependent on external supplies in this sector. How should we face these new and disturbing scenarios?
Can we afford to continue in the belief that our quality of life depends on the possession and consumption of material goods? Or are we approaching a necessary cultural revolution in which the quality of life will be determined by how much time we have and how we spend it? This would call for an epic revolution in the agenda of policymakers and public investment priorities. And what about security issues? We are facing a real and profound change: we need new social models to ensure a sustainable future.
The future is no longer what it once was
Once we acknowledge that the human population on the planet is growing at a striking rate, we must accept the fact that the future is different from what it once looked like. The first chapter presents statistics and considerations related to this issue.
We must also consider the fact that population growth is not homogeneous and that it is often strongly connected to overpopulation in areas of extreme poverty.
A relative but insufficient development of the quality of life, health, and nutrition has generated demographic conditions that are unsustainable in today’s complex environmental, economic, and social scenery. This situation has given rise to mass migrations, which is a structural feature of this century.
The ecological budget
A second reflection addresses the fact that 20% of the human population consumes 80% of the planet’s total resources, while countries that are under major demographic pressure live in poverty (2.6 million human beings use biomass for cooking and heating and, among these, 1.3 million have no access to electricity). This situation is connected to the issue of resources, which is examined in the second chapter.
Even though such a large part of humanity lives in poverty, in 2015 the Overshoot Day (the date on which Earth finishes its Ecological Budget for the year) was calculated to be August 13. It was September 22 in 2003 and October 21 in 1993: a notable regression.
We must also take into account that, according to the United Nations, despite a slowdown in growth compared to recent trends, the world population will have reached 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100.
Africa is expected to register the fastest birth rate, with potential population growth of 270% by the end of this century. How do we plan to address the issue of resources, and of lifestyle and quality of life?
Will scientific research and technological applications offer effective solutions in a suitable timeframe?
Beyond consumerism: a new social model
We must not slip into the pitfall already experienced by the «Club of Rome», which predicted there would be an energy catastrophe, wrongly estimating the oil-exhaustion date and without taking into account the developments of technology in the organization of human society. The third chapter presents several examples, data, and considerations regarding this issue. We must assume that, even with the aid of new technologies, we will not be able to sustain the consumerist lifestyle that currently characterizes Western societies.
If we were all to live by us standards, we would need five planets to fulfil our need for natural resources, as one planet would provide resources for only 1.5 billion people. In Europe, we consume half of this amount: still too much.
When we look at societies that strive to reduce the consumption of resources, whilst maintaining a good quality of life, we see countries like Israel that combine the opportunities offered by science and its applications with effective social organization, that use cutting-edge technology solutions such as the recovery of 80% of greywaters from inhabited centers, irrigation techniques, and drop technologies that distribute water to the plant roots with little dispersion in the ground, and microchips that recognize the biochemical signals of plants.
We need to consider, both for reasons of necessity and of solidarity, the pressing urgency to develop a new social model: supportive not selfish, inclusive not exclusive, where respect for the environment is associated with the enjoyment of the opportunities generated by the progress of human knowledge.
The prospects brought to us by digital communication technologies are extraordinary: growing amounts of data, increased flow-speed, computing power, the number of dedicated applications, shared knowledge repositories, apparatuses, and communication networks. A revolution within the revolution, which has changed the social dynamics of entire communities (in which users have become producers), but also the worlds of communication, energy production, and so on.
Cities as test centers for innovative paradigms
Hardly controllable migratory flows, the risk of exhausting natural resources, the need to protect the environment, climate change, fascinating and innovative technologies: all these elements call for reflections that point towards the need for so-called smart cities (as more and more people will be living in large technologically optimized cities), but also towards the need to develop new cultural paradigms.
The current perspective – which is shaping our economic and organizational systems – that the quality of our lives depends on material possessions should gradually be replaced by an awareness that our standards of life in the future could actually depend on the way we use and spend our time. This scenario is connected to issues of attractiveness, safety, work, mobility.
The paradigm shift entails a political conception of culture, not as a vague nebula of micro interests representing small communities that do not dialogue with each other and that pursue trivial interests but as a strategic element for the development of a renewed society that protects the environment, infuses people with a sense of life, and supports itself financially. How?
Cities should become increasingly polycentric, with pleasant suburbs enhanced by spaces and services dedicated to culture, education, entertainment, and sports. Non-exclusive cities are places that guarantee a better quality of life for their inhabitants. Moreover, they attract visitors, tourists, and generate new business and jobs, especially when supported by a public system (which guarantees the quality of transportation, cleaning, housing organization, essential and well managed services) and a private system (which, in turn, in a favorable humus and in agreement with the public world, can generate businesses, services, job opportunities, for example with new Industry 4.0 structures with different sizes and characteristics supported by micro credit).
The right to security
In this scenario, there is also space for the topic of security. One should consider that, along with the skills and professional responsibility of the police force, the occupation of a territory by residents is the first and essential condition for local control. This does not mean turning citizens into vigilantes, quite the opposite. It means creating conditions in neighborhoods (or in new municipalities) where people can live well: on the one hand by using security technologies (which enable us to estimate and monitor where small and large-scale crimes might take place); on the other hand by avoiding the establishment of «ghettos» where severe dissociations may breed and undermine civil coexistence.
We need spaces and ways of life where solidarity (the quality of a society is measured by the quality of life of the weakest, not of the strongest) harmonizes with the necessary respect for the law.
Security is based on principles, values and actions that rely on practical security, which is obtained through constant attention to people and places, as well as through well-balanced attitudes (in choices, logic of financing, within the timeframe of implementation).
We can quickly move from a global scenario to the landscape that lies just outside our window. The world is now globally connected. We can no longer consider ourselves separate from the rest of society; we need to propose a model of plausible coexistence that will help preserve our freedoms: the freedom to protect the environment and nature as well as the freedom to enjoy the wonderful results of the evolution of knowledge and technological applications that can improve our lives, our health systems, our nutrition, our time. Of course, for our desire and will to be free we must pay a price, i.e. the development of a sense of commitment and responsibility. Without ever giving up in the face of obstacles or difficulties (and taking into account failures along the way), we can help society to face the great challenges that lie ahead with serene determination.
