How often do we stop to consider the lifecycle of the products we purchase?  We may think about acquiring an object and its usefulness in our lives, but rarely do we stop to reflect upon the item’s “life” before it arrives in our possession, and where it goes when its time with us ends. Can new levels of reuse be employed, thus limiting the impact of our current resource usage upon future generations? The role of designers as the creative spark in transforming production may be the key to unlocking new levels of product reuse and recycling.

Investigating the Role of Design in the Circular Economy from the Royal Society of the Arts Action and Research Centre [1], explores The Great Recovery Project, an initiative launched in 2012 to build a cross-disciplinary community that is equipped to support the development of an economy based on resource-efficient principles.  In the circular economy, products are developed in a cyclical manner, with consideration of the past, present, and future of the fabricated object.  Through tear down and build up workshops, exposures to waste management and recycling facilities, and increased dialogue and networking across disciplines, The Great Recovery Project seeks to move production, use, and disposal to a new cyclical structure, embracing the circular economy to lessen our footprint upon the planet.

How can we move to circular thinking with products built upon simple, straightforward means of appropriate second-lives, deconstruction, or discarding?  Presently, the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimates that around 540m tonnes of products and materials enter the UK economy each year but only 117m tonnes of this gets recycled. If an equivalent of a mere one-fifth of that which enters the UK economy is recycled, can this hurdle be overcome?  Without thinking more holistically about how elements and components can be reused, we face an uncertain future in which valuable waste may be lost to us where it could otherwise be reused.

Are we creating an insurmountable amount of waste? 90 percent of the raw materials which go into making durable products become waste even before the product leaves the factory, and about 80 percent of what is made is discarded within the first 6 months of life. When about 80 percent of a product’s environmental impact is ‘locked in’ at the concept design state, can we shift to thinking about design as a starting point for thinking circularly?  Designing products from a circular perspective empowers all levels, from early raw states to post-life break down for reuse.  Limiting the product’s impact in the early phases will ultimately save our resources in the long term.

If we stop to consider the life-cycle of a product from early design through to disposal, we can reduce our resource footprint, lessening our impact upon the planet. It is likely that we may need to do so in the decades to come, and that could become the enduring legacy that we pass on to our children.

Kate Burgess-Mac Intosh
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

References:

[1] The full report can be accessed through the following link, along with further information about the RSA Great Recovery Project:  http://www.thersa.org/action-research-centre/enterprise-and-design/design/the-great-recovery2

Earlier this summer, I had a piece published about wild cards [1]. It was an academic piece that appeared in an academic journal, which, at times, can be a fairly dry read. What would liven up the issue would be a good practical example of wild card futuring at work.

Recently, a colleague of mine - Lloyd Walker, to whom I am indebted - brought to my attention a page of 40 maps that might interest a futurist [2]. The accompanying map was one of them. Apparently, a cargo of rubber dolls was lost into the Pacific in 1992, and this map charts where they made landfall, and in what volumes. It charts not only the route of the flotsam, but also an idea of the time scale used in reaching the eventual destination.

So what, you might say? Wild card thinking involves the connecting of apparently disparate data points so that we are not surprised by apparently unlinked events which combine to give us a nasty shock. A recent story about Fukushima caught my attention, and as I read it, I thought of this map [3]. Apparently, the highly radioactive and highly toxic water that has been used to cool the reactors at Fukushima has been leaking into the Pacific Ocean. The water is so toxic that can deliver a 5 year dose of radiation to casual bystanders. 400,000 tons of water are held at the site, 300 tons of which have leaked into the Pacific Ocean.

Much of the radioactive waste will initially stay close to the coast of Japan. However, over a period of time, a combination of wind and tides will disperse it, but to where and when? The model provided in the map gives us a clue about the eventual destination - initially back around the Pacific via the west coast of the US and Canada as early as this year, then eventually the Great Barrier Reef, the Spice Islands, then perhaps the east coast of the US and Canada by the end of this decade, before eventually arriving off the coast of Europe from 2025 onwards.

This is a nightmare scenario in itself, but it could get a lot worse. There is minimal earthquake protection afforded to the tanks holding the water. Another round of seismic activity in their area could well spill a much larger volume of the toxic water into the Pacific Ocean. That would make things a lot worse. At the moment this remains a remote possibility, but that is the core territory of the wild card scenario. The consequences of this happening would be so bad that surely we would want to protect ourselves from it happening?

If so, we could start by bullying the Japanese government into acting to make the water tanks resilient to further seismic activity. We could also act to create an international framework through which the eventual clean up of the toxic waste, when it makes landfall, is paid for by the Japanese authorities. Much harm will be done to marine life in the intervening period as the waste makes its way around the globe, and that ought to be compensated as well. We live in a highly interconnected world and these small events in far off places can have profound consequences upon us. That is what defines wild card events.


Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

References:

[1] http://www.eufo.org/uploads/1/4/4/4/14444650/wfr_june_2013_aguilar-millan.pdf for my article 'Playing The Wild Card'.

[2] http://twistedsifter.com/2013/08/maps-that-will-help-you-make-sense-of-the-world/ for the set of 40 maps. We have used Map #19.

[3]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/radiation-crisis-at-japans-fukushima-nuclear-plant-deepens-as-threat-level-raised-to-serious-8778137.html for the background story about the leakages from Fukushima.

Shell’s New Lens Scenarios mark the company’s 40th year of working with scenarios that anticipate the future.  Their newest set of scenarios seek to consider what the world may look like in the year 2100. In honor of their 40th year of crafting scenarios, it would be worthwhile to review just what Shell anticipates for the future.

According to Shell, “The world in the future will be defined by how people and governments meet the challenges posed by institutions, inequality, and insecurity in relation to the paradoxes of prosperity, leadership, and connectivity.”  Keeping this statement in mind, New Lens uses two very different scenarios to explore the future: Mountains, and Oceans.

In “Mountains”, Shell sees a world where those in power seek to maintain and promote the status quo. Economic development is moderate, while environmental and energy policy transforms our global transportation network to create cities that are more compact. Shell sees natural gas as the foundation for the world’s energy, with demand in oil peaking around the year 2035. Towards the end of the century hydrogen and electricity will be the energy source of choice to run automobiles.

Shell sees the world not achieving the goal of limiting global warming by 2°C, despite a decline in green house gas emissions beginning after 2030.

In “Oceans”, influence and power are more diffused. The world is more prosperous, but also more volatile. Market forces and society shape the world’s energy system, much more than government policy. Both oil and coal continue to play a major role, while natural gas and nuclear power, hampered by public resistance, slow technology adoption, and policy inertia, experiences limited growth. High energy prices and demand cause oil resources to be developed in hard to reach places, but demand plateaus around 2040. In the 2060s, solar becomes the largest primary source of energy, spurred on by the high prices which helped to encourage increased efficiency.

Shell’s glimpses into the future are intriguing, and Shell certainly puts much rigor into New Lens. Their outlook on the balance of power is very interesting, though there are a few things left that need resolution. Both shifts to alternative energy sources take place after peaks in demand. In making the transition to the next energy source in both scenarios, one can wonder how that transition will play out in the energy markets. Another observation is that presenting only two visions of the future, over a very long time horizon and with a very broad remit, seem a little limiting. The future may turn out to be more pluralistic than two scenarios on their own suggest.

In the end, 40 years of exploring the future is very admirable. Shell has set an example for other companies to follow in their ongoing efforts of studying the future. While there are some minor issues with the New Lens scenarios, both Mountains and Oceans present interesting views of the future and equally interesting implications. As a Futurist, but more importantly as a human being, I wonder which of these two futures we shall actually enjoy?

Jason Swanson
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

Resources:

The scenarios can be accessed at: http://www.shell.com/global/future-energy/scenarios/new-lens-scenarios.html

When futurists ply their wares they usually make a lot of assumptions about the future. This is very much the case for those futurists who undertake single point forecasting of future events. The concept of the Singularity - a point in time where accelerating change is occurring so fast that we are unable to keep up with events - is of the single point forecast variety. At some single point in the future, it is argued, it will happen.

Once we start to unbundle some of the assumptions n that position, we come across some interesting and surprising futures that normally don't enter into the discussion about the Singularity. For example, there is often an assumption that we will continue to enjoy an abundance of cheap and readily available electricity. Much of the argument about accelerating change assumes this as a base assumption.

Some time ago, we wrote about how that assumption could be called into question, and pointed to the potential of an energy gap in the UK in this decade [1]. This piece, from 2008, talked about the lights going out and the vulnerability of our information networks. We put together potential brown outs with the operation of the Internet, and found that we had a problem looming in this decade. It now appears that the problem is closer than ever [2]. According to Ofgem, we are on the brink of an energy crisis.

Of course, those organisations that exercise a degree of foresight will not have the problems suggested by Ofgem. They will have an array of back-up generators. They will probably be able to tap into the electricity generation of renewable sources - particularly solar and wind. They will have a contingency plan for when the lights go out and the Internet goes down. They will also be part of a miniscule number of organisations that have exercised basic foresight. The truth is that this development will engulf many organisations, if it were to occur, as so few are ready for this possibility.

One of the consequences of the lights going out is that the pace of accelerating change will slow. Indeed, it may slow the the point where we have decelerating change. If that were to occur, then the single point estimate of when the Singularity will occur will have to be put back. In that respect, the Singularity will be postponed. This could have the beneficial effect of allowing our social infrastructure, such as the legal system or business models, to keep pace with technological changes.

The Singularity won't, however, be cancelled. The prospect of intense energy shortages is likely to stimulate all sorts of new technologies around the issue of energy storage and conservation. It will create a problem that human ingenuity will want to solve. This process has occurred since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and there is no reason to suggest that it will not continue into the future [3].


Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

References:

[1] http://eufo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/when-lights-went-out.html

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9879442/Britain-on-the-brink-of-energy-crisis-warns-regulator.html?fb

[3] http://www.eufo.org/uploads/1/4/4/4/14444650/surfing_the_sixth_wave.pdf

One of the main objections to modern capitalism that is levied by the Occupiers is that it generates a situation that is manifestly unfair. The unfairness of the situation are the large disparities in wealth that have come about during the years of the 'Washington Consensus' (free market economics combined with a minimalist approach to state intervention and regulation). The Washington Consensus has given rise to an unparalleled increase in prosperity across the planet, but one has to ask whether this is  sustainable in the longer term. If the increasing disparities in income and wealth were to lead to increasing levels of social unrest, then the gains to prosperity that have been achieved in recent decades could well be called into question.

An important point raised in Will Hutton's book 'Them and Us' [1] is that for a society to prosper, there needs to be a broad consensus within that society that the distribution of income has been reached through a fair process. Indeed, we have previously argued that the perceived unfairness of our current social arrangements is the result of many of our institutions that are no longer 'fit for purpose' [2]. It has always been argued that, for a harmonious society to occur, an appropriate balance has to be reached between economic efficiency - which normally involves the operation of unfettered markets - and social justice - which normally involves some form of re-distribution  of wealth and income. This point has recently been made by Jerry Muller [3], and is at the heart of the demands of the Occupy movement.

There is, however, more to the issue of inequality than fairness alone. Economists have a concept called the marginal propensity to consume. This is a simple device, which answers the question: if you were given an extra £1, how much of that would you spend? One of the answers that has been consistent over decades is that poorer people in the income distribution will spend more of that £1 than richer people in the income distribution. They have a higher marginal propensity to consume. If we find ourselves in a recession that is typified by a lack of demand in the economy - as we do now - then one of the more effective ways in which to get the economy moving again would be to re-distribute to the lower end of the income scale rather than providing benefits at the higher end. Which seems close to what is asked by the Occupy movement.

The Occupy movement does not speak with a single voice, so it is difficult to characterise exactly what their proposals are. Indeed, I had an interesting afternoon at the Tent City University at Occupy London discussing economic futures, listening to why I was wrong. However, there are those who argue that the present distribution of income is wrong and inefficient. In an interesting Special Report, The Economist reviews various aspects of what reform might look like and argues that institutional reform is more likely to generate more sustainable results than yet more tax, spend, and regulate [4]. This is an interesting idea and has some merit.

Does inequality matter? Yes it does. Inequality produces an feeling of unfairness within society which undermines the social cohesion that we all rely upon. It also prolongs a period of idleness in the economy, when productive resources - especially labour resources - remain under-utilised, which further erodes the social capital that has been built up. We live at a point in time where the root cause of this situation is structural, which means that the most effective remedies are likely to be structural in nature. We are likely to achieve more by attacking crony capitalism than by relying upon the traditional policies of income re-distribution, which is very close to what the Occupiers have been saying.


Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

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References:

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/26/them-and-us-will-hutton

[2] http://www.eufo.org/uploads/1/4/4/4/14444650/the_new_enlightenment.pdf

[3] http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138844/jerry-z-muller/capitalism-and-inequality

[4] http://www.economist.com/node/21564414

The period between now and Easter should be an interesting one. As the Eurozone settles down and no immediate crisis looms, attention is likely to turn to the United States. Just to recap, the US has public finances that are, in many respects, worse than those of the Eurozone. It also doesn't really have a credible deficit reduction plan. By virtue of its global reserve currency, America has been spared the need to resort to the types of austerity programme that are now common elsewhere in the OECD. That may start to change soon.

At the beginning of 2013, a compromise of sorts about the US Federal deficit was reached. Modest tax rises were agreed, accompanied by a postponement of spending cuts to the end of February. In addition to this, the debt ceiling - an overdraft limit, if you like, managed by Congress - is likely to be reached in February as well. Far from reaching a consensus about the shape of American public finances, the matter was simply kicked into the long grass. We will be in the long grass in a week or two, and no real progress seems to have been made in finding a solution to the longer term problem of American deficits.

Is there a problem? There is the question of how long a government can run a perpetual deficit before it encounters a major problem. Most public debt is simply rolled forward from one generation to another. The example of France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries suggests that public debt could be rolled forward for over 150 years. But then, it did end rather unfortunately for the French monarchy during the French Revolution. In modern times, the ability to roll forward a perpetual deficit is rather questionable because the bond markets may test this ability somewhat sooner. This is what the Eurozone found to its cost in 2012.

On the assumption that the government wishes to address the issue of US Federal debt, what are its options? There are only really two - increase taxes or reduce spending - or a combination of both. There are a number of possible areas where taxes could be raised. For example, the US is one of the few developed nations that does not have a national sales tax. Other governments find it convenient to use the tax system to nudge behaviour away from goods they disapprove of, such as tobacco and alcohol. From an outsiders perspective, this might seem like a useful way to enforce gun control. Americans have the right to bear arms, but that right does not extend to making ammunition affordable. If each round were to carry a $100 sales tax, then firing off a clip of ammunition would become a very expensive hobby! The problem is that there is a very deep resistance to tax increases amongst a significant part of US society.

The other option would be to reduce spending. But spending on what? Once again, there are a number of alternatives that could be possible. One such possibility would be to reap a peace dividend. As US troops are withdrawn from the parts of the world in which they serve, the current force establishments could be reviewed. Are so many ships, tanks, and aeroplanes absolutely necessary? If so, to do what? Alternatively, as other OECD nations are doing, there could be a review of welfare spending. Could it be possible to increase the state retirement age to, say, 70? Such a move would lessen the fiscal impact of an ageing society. However, entitlement reduction is very unpopular with another part of American society.

And so we reach the impasse that we have today. American society, from the perspective of an outsider, seems very fragmented and divided. These divisions handicap the public debate about effective deficit reduction programmes. In those economies where the questions of austerity are being successfully handled, such as the UK, the issue is not one of austerity or not austerity, but of how much austerity. One side of the political divide (Labour) argues for a slower path, whilst the other side (the Coalition) argues for a quicker path. One side (Labour) argues for a mix of 66% spending cuts and 34% tax rises, whilst the other (the Coalition) argues for 80% spending cuts and 20% tax rises. The consensus is that there must be deficit reduction and it must be a blend of spending cuts and tax rises. In the US, that broad political consensus does not exist.

This is a shame because America faces a number of long term difficulties that will need some form of cross-party consensus to address. Two problems stand out above the others. The first is an ageing population. If things continue as they are, then the long term commitments to healthcare and retirement benefits are likely to bankrupt the public finances. A resolution to this problem will need a strong political consensus to find the right blend of reductions in entitlements and increases in taxes just to keep the system afloat. Equally, the US infrastructure is in desperate need of renewal. The US stands out as one of the few nations within the OECD to have a national high speed rail network on the drawing board. This will have an impact on the long term competitiveness of the US economy. To address this issue will take a long term perspective of public infrastructure that will not work without a strong political consensus.

And there we reach, in our view, the most significant problem facing American society - an inability to conduct grown up politics. This child like nature of US politics has given rise to the problem of the US Federal deficit in the first place, and its resolution is a pre-condition to the solution of that problem. This places the responsibility squarely back at the feet of the American public. You get the politicians you vote for. Why don't Americans vote for adults for a change?


Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

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There is a wonderful moment in the folklore of economics when the Queen, on a visit to the LSE, asked why it was that so many eminent and distinguished scholars of economics had not foreseen the length and severity of the economic downturn that we continue to suffer. Of course, some had seen the crisis in advance, forewarned of it, and were ignored. Such is the fate of Cassandra! However, it is a point well made, and one that hit home.

What the Queen touched upon was a more fundamental question: is economics fit for purpose? Up to 2007, we would have said 'yes'. The free-market neo-classical economics had delivered decades of rising prosperity and improved living standards. It was only when that particular strain of economics was tested that it was found wanting. It was found that the fundamental principles of the free-market neo-classical economics had a significant flaw - the theory was too divorced from reality. It represented a fiction of human behaviour that was overly influenced by one narrow political stripe. Under pressure, the fiction evaporated.

One response to this was to argue that the theory was right, but that it had not been followed properly. This view doesn't have many supporters now. Another view was that the theory was wrong, and that a new economics was needed, one that gave as much prominence to social contribution as was formerly given to personal enrichment. This is a theme that the Occupy movement has taken up, where social justice is seen as just as important as rising prosperity. Added to that is the growing agenda of sustainability - a world in which there is little economic growth - which helps to form the shape of the new economics.

This indicates two things. First, a growing belief that the days of relentless economic growth are numbered. If we are to see slow, or no, growth, then the issue of the distribution of income - the social justice agenda - is likely to rise in importance. Second, whereas the free-market neo-classical economics had a very restricted role for government, collective social action takes a more prominent role in defining and delivering an outcome that is more socially just. To that extend, the Occupiers are right. And they need a new economics to help them deliver that outcome.


Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

Debate this issue further on the Deliberator site.

Occupy Wall Street may best be described as a meta-protest. The Occupy Movement, which spread from Wall Street to Occupy movements throughout the world all shared a common theme. People from different walks of life have come together to voice their displeasure at a wide range of things: bank bailouts, student loan debt, lack of healthcare, to name a few. The list is as diverse as the people involved in the Occupy movements. However, at the heart of it all, the Occupiers’ main critique is a protest against the rise of economic inequality, with much of their ire focused on the big banks, or “banksters” according to many in the Occupy movement. This is personified in their signature “we are the 99%”.

The banks have come to represent a system that has potentially failed. Bankers were given huge incentives to create complex financial products and extend cheap lines of credit, in many cases to people who normally would not qualify for loans. The bankers were making vast sums as of money when things were going well, but  when things began to unravel, these very same banks - who were engaged in a high risk / high reward game - suddenly became “too big too fail” and had to be bailed out with public funds. This incited the Occupiers’ sense of unfairness. Looking into the future, does the failure and bailout of the banks represent a turning point? Has Western style capitalism failed? If so, do the Occupiers give us any signals of what may replace it?

While the Occupy movement’s critique is accurate, they fall short in terms of any substantive solutions. The Occupiers have made a good start, but have seemingly reached the natural limits to where they could go. A solution for this could be that the Occupy movement widens its scope to help with constructing an alternative form of banking, one that can address the issues of economic equality. By joining with other groups, the Occupiers can move from being a loud voice that is too vague, to become a group working with the banks against which they protest. The purpose of this would be to create a banking system in the future that is socially useful for everyone. A banking system that contains regulatory and operational reforms, as well as dealing with the issues of equity that form the basis of the Occupy Movement. To devise a system of solidarity and reciprocity that meets the needs of our communities, not a system that divides the world into the ultra wealthy 1% and the other 99%.

Were the Occupiers right? They were. In highlighting the rise of inequality they helped to bring into light and popularize the problems of the global financial system. In coming up short in terms of solutions, the Occupiers may have reached their limits, and it may be necessary for them to reach out to other groups in order to craft a new financial system in the future, one that serves everyone, and not just the 1%.

Jason Swanson
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

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Resources:

A Leaf Being Turned: A speech given by Andrew Haldane (Bank of England) to Occupy Economics, 29 Oct 2012.

A Blueprint For Better Business?: A speech given by Archbishop Vincent Nichols at conference 18 Sept 2012.

www.blueprintforbusiness.org : Making the case for the need for change.

Rudolphe Durand & Jean-Philippe Vergne
(Harvard Business Review Press 2012; ISBN 978-1-4221-8318-2)

How do futurists ply their trade? One method is to take a large number of observations of the world, join the dots to form an hypothesis about its workings, develop a model of the underlying causality of those workings, and then use the model to explain the past and speculate about the future. In terms of that process, this book represents an important work that has joined up quite a few dots.

When we think about piracy, we normally have in mind a vision of piracy on the high seas in the Eighteenth Century. This is historically inaccurate. The golden age of piracy was two hundred years earlier – in the Sixteenth Century – at the point where the European nations were starting to colonise and develop the freshly acquired lands in the New World. It was more Drake and Hawkins than Long John Silver. This is an important distinction that becomes evident when we consider what piracy is about.

It is best to view piracy as a process by which property rights are established in an environment where it is unclear to whom they belong. It is the mechanism by which public goods – in the economic sense, where nobody and everybody owns those goods – are made private. The golden age of piracy helped to develop the rule set by which behaviour was conducted on the high seas. The later brigandage on the high seas in the Eighteenth Century was about the enforcement of that rule set rather than its development.

This has resonance for us today in those areas where property rights are not fully developed. For example, one could argue that we are still in the process of shaking out the rule set that governs the digital world. Here we have a public good (cyberspace), which has been fairly unregulated in the recent past, where social norms and rule sets are still being developed, and where ‘deviant’ behaviour is categorised as piracy. From the perspective of a futurist, this is an uninteresting area because the governing rule set is now largely developed. If you doubt this point, try defaming Lord McAlpine using Twitter to see how fast and how hard the law can come down upon you. Digital piracy has moved from the rule making phase to the much later enforcement phase.

The authors do, however, point to an area that ought to excite the futurist – our genetic make-up. We are currently at the early stages of determining who ‘owns’ our DNA, and the uses to which it can be put. If the model suggested by the authors is correct, then we can anticipate a good deal of genetic piracy in the next decade or two. At the microscopic and nanoscopic scale, there are still vast uncharted areas that present the opportunity for commercial advantage. The conditions are right for all sorts of skulduggery until the rule set governing this area is determined.

This hints at the importance of this book. Central to the argument is the assertion that capitalism, as a form of social organisation, is constantly evolving. However, that evolution is dominated by leaps in both hard and social technologies. It is a bit like the movement of tectonic plates – gradual, but with dramatic earthquakes when there is movement. Piracy represents the earthquakes when the tectonic plates of capitalism move. In this respect, the onset of piracy in a given area acts as an early warning signal of an emergent future. The containment of piracy represents a more settled period of social and economic relations.

If - as many believe today – there has been a breakdown of the Washington Consensus and that a new capitalism is emerging, then the model suggested by the authors would indicate a period of piracy is about to emerge. We have already pointed to genetic piracy as one strong candidate for an emerging future. There are others. For example, one aspect of piracy is a lack of respect for established forms of authority. One could argue that this creates an opportunity for new ‘piratical’ forms of government – varying from the producer collectives of La Mancha in Spain to the rise of the ‘Occupy Movement’ around the world. They all indicate an unsettled prospect where the established rule set will come under pressure.

It should be said that this book represents an important first step towards understanding how capitalism evolves and changes. The model is only suggested and not developed, and could do with more historical instances of pirate organisations. For example, the English Enclosure Movement of the Seventeenth Century would make a good example of how a public good (common land) was captured and turned into private property. From a long term perspective, this proved to be beneficial (it allowed for the development of the capital surpluses that funded the Industrial Revolution), even though it was an unmitigated disaster at the time (it gave rise to rural impoverishment, destitution, and vagrancy). A more complete work would start to capture these different dimensions of piracy.

It should also be said that this is a book written by two French academics and is written in an academic style. It is not an easy read and the reader will have to work at taking away some of the points made. Is the effort worth it? Yes, this is an important book that adds to our understanding of the transition between different phases of capitalism. For that reason, we recommend it.

Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2013

Are we entering an Age of Scarcity? For a number of years, our stock answer to this question is that we are. This answer was formed, in part, by the view that Peak Oil - the point at which 50% of the oil resources of the planet were out of the ground - had been passed. A recent report by the International Energy Association suggests that this assumption could be mistaken. According to the IEA, the production of oil in the United States is growing at a pace that will make it the worlds largest oil producer by 2020, and which will leave the US self-sufficient in energy by 2035. The IEA report also suggests that American production of oil will outstrip that of the current oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia, by 2020. This forecast is shown in the graph, which originates from The Economist, using IEA data.

There is a bit more to the story than just the changing patterns of energy production. There is also an appreciation of the impact of water resources upon energy production. This is a point made in a piece in the Daily Telegraph, that modern energy production tends to be rather water intensive. It highlights that our future potential energy abundance could be curtailed by water shortages. A different approach was taken in the New York Times, which highlighted some of the assumptions made by the IEA about energy usage in the US. It would appear that the forecast relies heavily on the introduction and widespread use of energy saving technologies in the US, to place something of a cap upon the consumption of oil derived products.

Where does that leave the scarcity agenda? In one respect, we could take the view that the whole issue of Peak Oil has been something of an alarmist position, and that the worst aspects of Peak Oil were never going to happen. There is an element of truth in this view. The concept of Peak Oil, as used by futurists, served as something of a warning of an unpleasant future for which there was time to avoid. We could take the view that this is happening.

In many respects, this reinforces the scarcity agenda. One could argue that, in the face of an impending shortage of oil, the price mechanism has worked to ensure that technologies have been developed to secure a new supply of oil, and are currently working to improve a more efficient use of the oil which we do have. This was always going to be the path out of scarcity, in which case, we could say, the whole scarcity agenda has had an effect.

We are caught between the two positions. The development of new production methods for extracting oil are not cost free. They tend to have a large environmental footprint, the externalities of which are nowhere near being covered in the current market price of oil. It is almost a position where we can continue to drive our cars, but at the costs of the environment. There is also a case to say that we are moving a key scarcity from one area (oil) to another (water). In doing so, we are fudging the problem rather than solving it.

There is a case to say that we have seen the end of Peak Oil - for the moment - but that does not mean that we have grounds to rejoice. We have yet to see the full bill for this development.

Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2012