2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years

Jorgen Randers -- one of the original authors on The Limits to Growth (my review of LTG) -- wrote this 2012 book to think about the future using similar techniques from the 1972 project. (Contrary to the claims of critics, LTG was pretty accurate in its predictions.)I read this book to learn more of how we might (not) adapt to life in a climate-changed world (the theme of my life plus 2 meters project).I am going to group my comments on this book into several categories rather than focus on details, as I made far too many notes. The book is organized into Why & How 40 Years?, Five Big Issues (capitalism, economic growth, democracy, intergenerational relations and climate), a Global Forecast (population & consumption, energy & co2, food & footprint, non-material "goods" and zeitgeist 2052), and ending with sections on Analysis, Straight Questions, Five Regions, Other Futures, and What to Do.First, consider that Randers makes a forecast rather than a prediction by relying on trends and possibilities rather than probabilities. To oversimplify, Randers focusses on several macro trends in five main regions in the 2012-2052 period. These trends -- based on demographics, economics, engineering and politics -- are used to explain forecast where we humans might find ourselves in 2052.One important interactions is among trends for population, consumption and impact, with the main idea that the footprint will be heavier -- and thus the chance of "run away climate change" (RACC) larger -- if there are more people consuming more stuff. I think that Randers is too optimistic in his forecasts here. He predicts that the world population will peak at 8.1 billion, that 2-3 billion people will stay poor (=low consumption), and that people in the rich world will consume less because they need to invest significant resources in responding to climate change (e.g., recovering from disasters, coping with climate migrants, paying more as supply chains are disrupted and so on.)This path -- in the presence of little or no climate change mitigation -- will leave the world on a knife's edge after 2052, with 2080's global temperatures of 2.8C above pre-industrial levels and a 50/50 chance of triggering RACC in which melting permafrost, wildfires and other natural responses trigger positive feedback loops that accelerate warming and far worse living conditions.Randers does not consider this forecast as good news (he says "global society will have to perform a miracle after 2052 if it is to end the century in a desirable situation" given that the transition to sustainability will only be half-complete by 2052), and he's admirably frank about our political mechanisms being too weak and short-termist to coordinate either mitigation or adaption, but I think that his underlying assumptions on population and consumption are far too optimistic. The UN recently forecast that "the current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100." Turning to consumption, it is hard to see much sign of any government putting the brakes on the cult of GDP growth (e.g., Indonesia converting rainforest to palm oil, China promoting cars and suburbs, or economic refugees fleeing their dysfunctional homelands to go earn some money). Taken together, these "alt-guesses" would put the world in far worse shape in terms of RACC, temperature increases, and so on.(You can download Randers's massive spreadsheet and change details to suit your own preferences, but I am focussing on aggregates. Am I "cheating" rather than "scientific" to say this? Not if a spreadsheet is merely an opinion dressed up as a model.)Second, I want to congratulate Randers for his interesting use of "outside experts" who gave 20+ forecasts on various dimensions of the future (a few are a waste of time). Their contributions and Randers's own commentary really created a useful space for thinking about how systems interact (e.g., "more investment" means "less consumption") in our complex world.There are many interesting, surprising and thoughtful statements in the book:Nations will face climate change only after they give up on a global quota for carbon, tax fossil fuels and force adoption of renewables, energy efficiency, and carbon capture [the story there is grim]. They will only do this when climate damages are a clear and present danger (i.e. probably too late). Global investments will rise from a need to shut down fossil industries early [here's a nice perspective on its collapse in the near future] and cope with climate damages, but productivity will fall due to climate damages, loss of natural capital, more workers in services, etc.There's not much support for "saving ecosystems" among voters who prefer Netflix... and will increasingly experience the world via screen. The impacts will be worse in nations without redistribution or social insurance (poor countries; the US), and especially if "democracy" leads to short-term consumption over long term sustainability.The worst shocks will not be to the poor (who already suffer), but to the Americans who will face the twin-disasters of losing first place to China as well as greater conflict over national and financial resources due to its weak social welfare system.The Chinese government will use its strength to force its people to sustainability.National militaries will be much more occupied with climate-related risks and assaults. The "third flowering of humanity" will arrive via computers that may work for us (or not).Temperature zones (microclimates) will move away from the equator at a pace of 5km per year and up mountains at a pace of 5m per yearDo not acquire a taste for things that will disappear (or give that taste to your children), as you will only be disappointed when your "favorites" are no more. Stick with digital hobbies, etc.Live in a place that's not exposed to CC but where political structures function (NL is -1 and +1 on these!)Third, Randers covers many topics but he is sometimes trapped by "current thinking" on technology or politics, e.g., discussing the impact of greater biofuel production on food prices (not good for the poor) when cheaper oil (via fracking as well as the shift to renewables) is crowding out biofuels.Finally, I now think different on several big topics. For example:Japan's consumption per person rose by 33 percent between 1990 and 2010 because GDP was "flat" while population and investment was falling. (One reason robots are so popular in Japan!)Countries that import food may lack "food security" when times get tough and they cannot afford to buy food on world markets. (The same might be said of energy, manufactured goods, etc.) Thus a country like Pakistan may turn into a failed state with hungry people because it has mismanaged its natural resources ("liquidating natural capital") at an even worse pace than the rest of the world, thereby increasing its relative insecurity. We can see this problem today in Yemen but not in places like Japan or New Zealand that have protected their natural capital.Younger generations will not respect older generations -- they will take part of their pensions to pay for damages. (A strategy that may not work if bitcoin, tax havens and corruption undermine government action.)Bottom Line: I give this book FIVE STARS for helping me think about our (potential) common future, which Randers summarizes as follows [snipped from several places]:It is surprisingly difficult to maintain a happy outlook when you know deep in your heart that the world is on a path toward disaster (reducing age-old biological diversity and man-made cultural diversity in the process).The world of 2052 will be well established on a path that I really fear—the path toward self-reinforcing climate change and climate disaster in the second part of the century. I certainly did not find a world on a well-planned path toward sustainability. I don’t know how to assess this future. It will be much better than a global cataclysm where population and production drop dramatically as a consequence of natural disaster and war. But it will be much worse than the now common expectation of continuing growth in GDP and disposable income. It will be good for me as an old Norwegian living in the New North, which will fare well over the next couple of decades. But it will be surprisingly bad for all my good friends in the United States, who will have to endure gradual and seemingly never-ending stagnation from the peak years of their empire in the twentieth century. And much worse for the two billion earthlings who will remain poor.Even if your personal life is sound and satisfying, it is wearying to know that so much is being done systematically to destroy our common future. Thus my final word of encouragement: Don’t let the possibility of impending disaster crush your spirits. Don’t let the prospect of a suboptimal long-term future kill your hope. Hope for the unlikely! Work for the unlikely! Remember, too, that even if we do not succeed in our fight for a better world, there will still be a future world. And there will still be a world with a future—just less beautiful and less harmonious than it could have been.

Randers' book tries hard to make an objective forecast of what the world will be like in 2052, taking resource limitations into account. He's very good about saying where his data come from, how he interprets them, and how he extrapolates the trends. If you are one of the many economists, journalists, and other pundits out there who are constantly saying that resource shortages are not a problem and that economic growth will solve all problems, this is a great book to get you started on thinking more realistically about the future. For that reason I give the book five stars.Randers freely admits that his forecast has very large uncertainties. He admits that there are many wild cards out there. It's always possible that some huge, new oil or gas discovery might be made. Randers makes the point that this would be good for economic growth in the short-term, but would also make climate change worse and delay efforts to improve energy efficiency, so that it's hard to say how much long-term change this would cause. It's possible that some considerably nastier things might happen, from financial meltdown and nuclear war to epidemic disease and ecological collapse. It's even possible that humanity might wake up and decide to put a serious effort into population control and reducing pollution, which would probably mean a much more pleasant future. But Randers is mainly interested in what he sees as the most likely future based on the scientific data available now. If you are a "doomer," Randers' forecast will probably not please you, because he thinks that everyday life for humanity in 2052 will probably not be wildly different from today. He thinks life will be more unpleasant in 2052 in many ways, with climate change at crisis levels and wild nature almost gone. However, Randers thinks that while it's possible that there will be a spectacular human die-off, it will probably hit after 2052.In my opinion, Randers' forecast has many weaknesses. He's a big fan of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), solar panels, and wind turbines. He sees the transition to sustainability as involving energy efficiency, yes, but also lots of high tech. I simply cannot agree with him here. I think CCS from power plants cannot work on a scale large enough to make any difference to the climate; I'd say it's more of a coal company boondoggle than anything else.As for solar panels, Randers is correct that prices for these have been coming down. However, I don't think this trend can continue through 2052. The low energy density of sunlight puts hard limits on what can be done with solar panels. Large-scale electricity generation using solar panels cannot ever provide electricity in amounts sufficient to do things like running toasters and clothes dryers. I think the transition to sustainability would do far better by focusing on low tech solutions, not high tech. Solar energy comes in the form of photons. Some of these are in the visible range, some in the infrared. The visible light photons work best when used directly to produce light. The visible and infrared photons are also readily converted into diffuse heat. Solar energy also works well when it is used directly to provide diffuse heat--not when used to generate electricity. Think clotheslines for drying clothes, solar hot water heaters on rooftops, and passive solar heating for buildings. Similar hard limits apply for wind turbines. Using a wind turbine to generate electricity, then using the electricity to do something else, necessarily involves losing most of the power in the conversion. We don't often think about the power lost in power generation, lost again when electricity is transmitted through power lines, and lost again when an electrical device is operated. The reason we don't normally think about it is that fossil fuels provide such a dense source of power that such losses don't make a huge difference. This is just not true with solar and wind power. Solar panels and wind turbines are fine for technologies that use only a small amount of electricity--like telephones--but they can't provide enough power to run an industrial society. For more on this, see  The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered . The website lowtechmagazine.com also has great articles on this subject, such as how to build urban areas to maximize the use of direct solar heating in buildings.Randers also thinks that the current trend toward urbanization will continue, with only a small human population working the land. I have to disagree with him here. I think it is much more likely that in the next few years we will see a big increase in unemployment. At the same time, the decline of fossil fuels will mean a big increase in demand for human labor in the fields. Eventually these trends will meet up, and the percentage of people working at farm labor will go up. Jobs formerly done by chemicals or diesel-powered equipment will be increasingly done by people. Long days using a hoe or a pitchfork will be common. The reason for this is simple: in a world where labor was expensive and fuel to build and run machines was cheap, it made sense to run farms using machines. In a world where unemployed and desperate humans are all over the place and fuel for machines is expensive, running farms with mostly human labor will be what makes sense.Overall, though, Randers' book is thought-provoking, and useful in some respects. I recommend it.

Jorgen Randers is one of the authors of the 1972 Limits to Growth (LtG) report and this book marks the 40th anniversary of its publication. After a 20-year and a 30-year update of the report written by the original collective, this is a very personal update of what the world's limits to growth imply for the decades ahead. It is Randers' best guess as what might happen over the next forty years. He has produced a very readable book, spiced by 2-4 page long "glimpses" of the future by guest authors.At the outset, Randers reminds his readers that the aim of LtG was to signal the importance of foresighted action on environmental matter. Only so can the world hope to avoid ecological "overshoot", i.e. using more ecological services than the planet can sustainably provide. Nowadays this is measured in terms of the "ecological footprint". When LtG was published it was close to 1 earth (i.e. borderline sustainable); now it stands at 1.5 (overshoot), and business as usual (BaU) will get us to 3 by 2050. In overshoot, the world draws down natural capital year by year and the situation is literally unsustainable, and just two options exist going forward: "managed decline" towards a footprint that fits the earth, or "uncontrolled collapse induced by nature."Randers, describing himself as a lifelong worrier, has thus seen his and his co-authors' warnings go unheeded for the past forty years. As a consequence, and prior to writing 2052, he was convinced that humanity was heading for collapse. But in making his forecast he says he became less pessimistic. To the uninitiated the book will be a depressing read - but one could say it's about time they did catch up with reality! To those well-versed in environmental and climate change-literature it does contain quite a few interesting and new sparks of hope.So from that vantage point, the story he tells - his forecast - is one of qualified hope: the world will not collapse before mid-century (good for me; of marginal assurance for my kids), but we'll find ourselves in 2052 in a "cliff hanger" situation (Randers' term). Greenhouse gas emissions will be back at their 2012 level, having peaked in 2030, which will induce a global temperature rise of 2 degrees above pre-industrial. It's not all lost, but the future of humanity in the second half of the century will depend on luck and skill. Luck in so far as the 2-3 degree temperature rise will or will not trigger run-away climate change; skill when it comes to our grandchildren's ability to manage the impoverished planet better than we have done. At any rate, the forty years after 2052 will be much more dire than the next forty.What Randers describes is effectively a "soft collision" with the planetary boundaries, much softer than expected in business-as-usual, a path that - if continued - would make "uncontrolled collapse" unavoidable; "managed decline" is still possible.So how does this life-long worrier and sceptic about humanity's ability for foresighted collective action come out with a forecast that pushes ecological Armageddon out towards the far horizon?The answer lies in his view of the development of two prime movers of growth, population and labour productivity over the next decades. For both, his assumption deviate markedly from the usual "median" population and "standard long-term growth" projections:Firstly: low population growth. Randers predicts world population to peak at 8 billion around 2040. This is in his view the consequence of the migrations to cities: where a child in a rural setting is an extra pair of hands, in the city it is one more mouth to feed. The workforce (15-65 year olds) will peak even earlier at around 5.5 billion.Secondly: Low labour productivity growth: Randers extrapolates the steady decline in productivity growth from 1970-2010 out over the next forty years, so that it averages 1.5% per year over the next forty years.Together, this leads to a GDP that in 2052 is 2.2 times today's GDP, as compared to 3.2 times today under business-as-usual with median projections for population and productivity growth. So the planet is saved (at least from imminent ecological disaster) by involuntary forces of the urbanites disinclination to procreate and fizzling out of productivity growth.Based on these two educated guesses and a handful of other guesses at major trends, Randers pieces together his story - his forecast. Having predicted GDP on the basis of demographics and an initial productivity guess, he considers the effects of a social feedback loop in which per capita consumption is the key metric. (Its distribution across the world, across social strata and across generations gets ample attention.) The main feedback to productivity from this social loop is through "social tension", which - when strong - will dampen productivity growth. Randers identifies intergenerational inequity and climate chance as the main causes of social tension in the coming decades. Their likely presence thus further justifies the low productivity growth estimate earlier inferred from the downward trend line of labour productivity."Consumption" is what is left of GDP after "Investments" have been paid. Investments, in Randers definition "includes everything society does in a year in order to maintain high levels of production in future years. Investment includes the construction of buildings, roads, machinery, equipment, power plants, mine shafts, cars, airplanes, trains, and more" and is the sum of both private and public investment. Likewise, consumption is also the sum of private ("a TV or a hamburger") and public ("such as when you enjoy a military parade, receive food vouchers, or are taken to a publicly financed hospital in a state owned ambulance paid for by your taxes"). The investment cycle is the other feedback loop in Randers' model, and this is where the challenges of energy, CO2 and climate change kick in. Future investments will have to go up because of humanity needs ever more energy, it needs to manage the associated CO2 emissions down, and it must deliver all this in a world in which natural resources are perhaps not scarce, but surely more difficult to extract than earlier.The current situation is that the world on average invests 25%, leaving the remaining 75% for consumption, and this split has been remarkably constant over the past 40 years. At the same time there have been regional disparities: in the US the investment share has been under 20% for most time during the past generation; in China it is above 40%. These difference are important for how regions will cope with challenges of the coming decades as we will see in a bit.Based on the explicit assumption that the impact of climate change will be felt in the coming decades already (and that thus climate change will over that time gradually become an uncontested fact), Randers forecasts a mix of "voluntary" and "forced" investments. Voluntary investments are investments in clean tech and low-carbon technologies to gradually reduce fossil fuel dependence and CO2 emissions; forced investments are for climate change adaptation measures and for the increasingly costly repairs and relief operations following extreme weather events. He has both types of investment grow to 6% of GDP by the end of the scenario period. As with other aspects of his work, there is a self-reinforcing logic to this 50/50 mix of forced and voluntary investments: a world that has proven to be hesitant to invest in voluntary measures will over time become more inclined to do them still as forced investments make clear that climate change is real. (This assumption behind this is that adaptation without mitigation is a logical non-starter for without mitigation, adaptation costs will quickly spin out of control.)Most attention in the book goes to China and the US. They are the biggest nations in relevant respects and the story articulates quite different responses. The narrative is not without its problems, but has intuitive appeal and works well as a means of archetyping the spectrum of responses. In brief: China is a fast-growing country with a high investment rate, governed by autocrats; the US is a country with a stagnating economy, a history of more than a generation of underinvested, and with institutions of governance that are mired in factional strife and thereby unable to compromise on, let alone implement, solutions to the big issues it and the world faces. These are the underlying facts and factors that polarize the China/US stories.Randers has a deeply pessimistic view on the ability of democratic nations to stand up to the challenges of the coming decades. This is stated at the outset more or less as an article of faith:"Humanity, as I had feared, will not rise to the occasion, at least not rapidly enough to avoid unnecessary damage. The complex and time-consuming decision making of democratic nation-states will ensure that." [p.6]To counterbalance this pessimism, Randers is rather sanguine about autocratic China's ability to address the same. So China is cast in the heroic role of leading the world on the path towards sustainability. How this is seen to work in practice is illustrated in the following, quoted from the section "Modified Capitalism: A Stronger Role for Wise Government":"By 2052, China will have shown the world how a strong government is much better at solving the type of challenges humanity will face in the twenty-first century. China will easily redirect the 5% of their GDP that is required to solve the oncoming barrage of problems. And they will do so while the market economies are dithering about whether to use another hundred billion US dollars (less than 0.1% of their GDP) to support climate friendly technology." [p.212]It is easy to understand Randers' personal frustration about Western inaction over the years since 1972. Many of us share it. Still, a flight from democracy towards technocratic autocracy, "wise rulers" is not without danger - something that Randers fails to address. Certainly the chequered record of intellectuals' sympathy for autocracy, from Plato to the fellow-travellers, should make us think twice.In conclusion I would say that Randers has written a magnificent book. While overall the tone is sombre, there are elements of hope throughout its 400 pages. The task for humanity as a collective and for humans as individuals will be to build on these and made them stronger. It is in this spirit that Randers writes his parting words: "Please help me make my forecast wrong. Together we could create a much better world."On reflection this is a surprisingly democratic cri de coeur from a man who is a confirmed sceptic on collective action. In the light of his hopeful views on wise leadership he might have ended: "My forecast may well be wrong, because as we have seen so often in history Cometh the hour, cometh the man."

An interesting and challenging read. A personal view of the future by Jorgen Randers, supported by many well informed authors in the included 'Glimpses' of the future. The authors make clear that our current global predicament is very much a human failing, we have the understanding, the technology and the finance to avoid disaster, but will we take the necessary action? The conclusion is: probably no until it's too late. He ends with an appeal to civil society to take action now to prove his predictions wrong by 2052. He and the contributing authors provide plenty of ideas about what needs to be done, they also make clear the outcome if we don't take that action. And that outcome does not make for a comfortable future for any of us.

Jorgen Randers' 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, is a well argued, thoughtfully balanced analysis that delivers a reasonable and credible forecast of the near future of the world. He covers a wide range of topics: economics, environment, population, geopolitics and resources. He avoids extremes and unlikely scenarios.I don't give it a full five stars because I think he avoids some key high impact issues: the 'clash of civilsations', systemic financial risks, nuclear instability and threats to democracy, i.e. the 'fat-tail' of risks that are analytically intractable. Nevertheless, anyone who wishes to understand where the world may be headed must have this book in their library and ready to hand.Bravo, Jorgen!Graham Ford, Managing Partner, Mansion Ecopartners.

Bought as a present. The recipient was absolutely thrilled with it.

Das Thema ist wichtig, doch werden sich nur wirklich Interessierte an dieses Buch wagen. Die Herangehensweise ist klar strukturiert, sie wird begründet und die Methode erläutert. Anhand von 5 "big issues" werden im ersten Teil die Herausforderungen der Menschheit bis 2052 dargestellt: von Kapitalismus über Demokratie bis zum Klima.Im zweiten Teil werden von Experten beschriebene Prognosen behandelt, dies aber noch viel breiter gefächert in 20 Texten. Dazwischen erläutert der Autor das Thema allgemein bzw. seine Herangehensweise zur Vorhersage. Diesen Teil finde ich etwas sperriger zu lesen, vielleicht aufgrund der vielen verschiedenen Themen, vielleicht auch wegen der wechselnden Autoren. Dennoch gibt dieser Teil viele Einsichten und Denkanstöße.Im dritten Teil, der Analyse, wird das bisher gelieferte analysiert und versucht, es auf den Leser herunterzubrechen - ein aus meiner Sicht nicht allzu schlechter Versuch.Für jeden Leser sind aus meiner Sicht genug Denkanstöße vorhanden.