Expert interview interview with Ray Hammond
Europe’s leading futurologist
Part 2
Posted on November 22, 2007 - Filed Under Expert Interviews | 1 Comment
5. With regard to the present frightening global warming discussions, what do you think about climate change and the impact of technology on businesses related to the future of energy?
Climate change (don’t call it global warming because the extreme weather effects produced by the carbon emission are not always warm) is the greatest threat we face. As a result the future for businesses that are concerned with delivering renewable and sustainable forms of energy and wind power, solar power, geothermal power, wave power, tidal power, hydrogen power and, to a lesser extent, energy from biomass, have a really wonderful future. The technology exists today to deliver our energy needs from renewable resources. What is lacking is the political will to overcome the lobbying of the entrenched interests (e.g. the fossil fuel suppliers) and for governments to provide real incentives for both the producers of sustainable and renewable energy and for the consumers to switch to energy derived from such sources.
6. You say you study “current trends in human affairs in the hope of divining which may affect the future most powerfully, using your writing as a lab. What are those current trends in business?
There are six key drivers of the future. These are:
1. World Population Growth And Changing Demographics
There are currently almost seven billion people on the planet. By 2050 there will be at least nine billion. How are we to feed these many people and, even more pressingly, how are we to find fresh water for them?
One factor that will have a major impact on food production methods to feed so many people is climate change, but the impact of this is hard to predict and will vary from region to region. Suffice to say that technological advances in food production methods will continue to have the potential to feed the Earth`s enormously expanded population even if, in some of the world`s poorest regions, poverty, corruption, bad politics and conflict (and, in some areas, severe climate change) will continue to cause widespread famine. Drinking water, on the other hand, is often forecast to be in very short supply in some parts of the world (fresh water accounts for only 3 per cent of all the water in the world).
2. Climate Change
Unless we act urgently and radically to reduce our carbon emissions extreme weather patterns will create millions of dispossessed people who will become global refugees. If storms worsen, sea levels rise, flooding increases, droughts lengthen and heat waves intensify, millions of humans will be killed, millions will be displaced and society will begin to break down. There will be refugees at all of our doors. We may even become refugees ourselves.
Because there are so many variables in the science of climate change, and because human response to the problem is a matter of social and political will, it is impossible for any futurologist to predict how the climate itself will be behaving in the medium- and long-term future. However, it is possible to predict that climate change will still be one of the most pressing problems facing humankind in thirty years` time and even further into the future (no matter how efficacious global political response to the issue is over the next twenty-five years) because there is a time delay built in to our atmosphere`s responses to heating. The heat and carbon currently being released into the atmosphere from our oceans was emitted into the 1970s. In 2030-2040 the heat entering our atmosphere from the oceans will be the heat we are producing today. Even if we magically stopped our carbon emissions and heat trapping activities today, the world will still continue to warm up for the next thirty to forty years.
3. The Looming Energy Crisis
Little in our world is as politically charged as energy generation and energy supply. Perhaps only national defence is regarded by governments as having more strategic importance. Just as individual humans must consume energy each day to survive, so must our modern high-tech societies. Politicians know that if there is a sustained failure in energy supply, or a long-term shortage of gasoline, citizens will take to the streets.
Nations go to war to secure their long-term supplies of energy and in 2007 alarm bells have started to sound in many countries because projections suggest that the world is going to demand much more energy between now and 2030. And in that time-frame global oil reserves will start to run out.
Estimates for future energy consumption vary widely, but at a minimum it is suggested that world energy consumption will increase by 50 per cent by 2030 and the maximum projected increase is put at 100 per cent. These nice round figures indicate just how “approximate“ some of the future projections are but they also illustrate a grave problem; in an era in which we have to cut our carbon emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2030 (and at the very least 60 per cent by 2050), how are we going to find sufficient energy of the right kind to meet our enlarged needs?
Consumer education, political thinking and cultural attitudes play a large part in shaping how we consume energy and how much energy we consume. The United States has a population equal to only 5 per cent of the global total but the nation consumes 25 per cent of the world`s energy. Europe has a far lower consumption of energy but the standard of living is just as high as in the USA
In the light of the need for urgent action on climate change, a looming shortage of oil and predictions that suggest that the world will consume up to double the amount of energy by 2030, governments around the world are rising to the challenge in various ways and with varying degrees of commitment.
I think it likely, almost certain, that energy from renewable and sustainable sources will be well on the way to providing the world with the majority of its ever expanding energy needs by the 2020s; after all, the energy is all around us in the wind, the waves, the rocks and the sun. Enough energy falls on the Earth`s surface from the sun in a single hour to meet the world`s current energy needs for a year.
The 6 Key drivers for the Future continue in part 3 of our interview with Ray Hammond
Contact Ray Hammond:
To enquire about Ray Hammond’s availability to speak at your corporate event, please fill in the enquiry form here
Comments
One Response to “Expert interview interview with Ray Hammond
Europe’s leading futurologist
Part 2”
Leave a Reply
[...] Welcome to the Intellecta Srl Innovation marketing blog! If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! To your innovative marketing success!In part 2 Ray Hammond outlined the following Key Dreivers of the future: 1. World Population Growth And Changing Demographics 2. Climate Change 3. The Looming Energy Crisis To read the entire part 2 of the interview, please click here. [...]