First, C4C did result in an increase in the fleet’s average fuel economy, and therefore resulted in a savings in terms of expected gasoline consumed in the US. The following chart displays the level of gasoline savings as compared to doing nothing (or business as usual (BAU). The business as usual assumption also produces a savings in gasoline as current vehicles are more efficient than older vehicles, but not as significant as the C4C program.

Next, considering financial benefit to individual consumers we have to examine which vehicle they may be trading in and which vehicle they might purchase. This part of the analysis considers only the top 10 vehicles traded in and purchased under the program. As might be expected, loan interest, fuel costs, insurance costs, and vehicle purchase costs, along with miles expected to be driven, and length of time the car will be owned, in addition to resale costs, all affect the consumer’s bottom line. The following matrix displays the net present value (NPV) to the consumer for a 100 different trade in and purchase combinations assuming 20,000 miles driven per year and a time horizon of 5 years between purchase and resale of the new car.

As seen from this high mileage scenario, only 60 of the 100 options provide a positive financial return to the consumer. Driving only 12,000 miles per year or less would mean than all of the vehicle trade options would provide a negative return to the consumer.

The main caveat to this analysis is that maintenance costs were not considered, due to a lack of data available. This would be expected to be a benefit (perhaps slight or significant) to the purchase of a new vehicle over retaining the old one, although, I would anticipate only a slight to moderate benefit in that direction.

In summary, while specific trades of certain older cars for newer one’s was financially in the consumer’s interest, especially if they were high mileage drivers and expected to keep the new vehicles for a long period of time, as a whole the program was not cost effective in reducing gasoline consumption or emissions on the national level. Those goals, in fact, would be better accomplished by subsidized efficiency and emissions regulations levied on all new vehicles sold in the market, since older vehicles naturally are removed from the vehicle fleet without any intervention.

In conclusion, I believe that a certain skepticism has to be entertained regarding the stated goals of the program (which have to be politically justified) and the actual unspoken goals of the program–which in this case was to push a lot of capital into the economy in a timely and popular fashion. This unspoken goal was clearly accomplished, although perhaps at a greater benefit to foreign corporations than anticipated.

*Jose Alfredo Galvan, Mohd Nor Azman Hasan, Rebecca Mayer, and myself conducted equal portions of this analysis. Full report available here (pdf).

Low Energy Desalinization

The most plentiful resource on the Earth is salty water. In addition to the oceans, many aquifers around the globe also contain salt water, not fresh, at various depths, making it nearly ubiquitous. Fresh water is needed for industrial resources as well as agriculture and personal consumption and so is widely expected to be civilization’s limiting resource of the next century.

This salt water can be made fresh by the use of desalinization techniques, but today’s methods are often very energy intensive, suitable only for energy-rich and water-poor nations in the middle east and some island communities, who have no alternatives.

Low energy desalinization techniques (also here and here) with sufficiently low capital costs could instigate an explosion of increased agricultural productivity, industrial productivity, and improved public health all around the world. Without this achievement, increased national conflicts, and persistent health and agricultural problems will likely persist throughout the next century.

Increasing Agricultural Yields of High Quality Foods

The “green revolution” of the last century ushered in by the use of petroleum-based fertilizers, and simple but effective pesticides and herbicides caused a great increase in the productivity of agricultural around the world, especially basic grains. Instead of the population boom causing millions to starve as some expected, we have arrived in today’s world where there are regular global food surpluses (even if not evenly distributed) and obesity has become one of the dominant health issues of our time.

Creating the agricultural systems that produce the right kind of nutrients human need in the right quantities at the lowest cost of labor and resources will result in a healthier society with more productivity to focus on other developments. Many of today’s problems of malnutrition and obesity both partially result from imbalances in the food supply against what is actually required by the population. To solve both those problems, the proper incentives and system designs need to be implemented in the agriculture market.

Growth of Computational Power (Science of Prediction)

The power of computers in terms of memory and performing calculations has been increasing on a rapid exponential track for some time, and is expected to do so for the next several decades, and possibly even beyond that as engineers find methods to circumvent the current limits miniaturization, or barring that, computers will simply increase in size and power consumption to keep pace. These developments are now normally expected events by the culture at large, and have incrementally had great effect in the continually increasing productivity of the West, and the increasing societal and economic integration around the world.

None of those potential developments would necessarily lead to their inclusion in this list were it not for the now possible development of a nearly new field of science and engineering: the science of prediction and the closely related science of quantitative risk assessment. Humanity has been attempting to predict weather, economic developments, wars, disease outbreaks, and other problems for a long time, with little repeatable success. The greatly increased computational power, however, has allowed the tools available for prediction to catch up with the complex mathematics required to perform prediction. It is now a possibility that we soon can develop capabilities to anticipate and predict future problems before they cause catastrophic harm. Accurately predicting earthquakes, severe weather, future environmental problems, wars, and resource depletion can be accomplished this century with properly directed effort. The effects on future society will be profound.

Increasing Efficiency and the Supply of Sustainable Energy

Contrary to some of the other points mentioned in this article, this objective does realize its proper level of importance in the media regarding the projection of the course of the next century. The growth in demand for power that can be transmitted or carried from one place to another will continue to grow at a rapid pace, as the benefits we all obtain from that power to our health, our productivity, our social relationships, and other things, is steadily growing as well.

There is no progress to be achieved from turning our back on all these developments. However, by changing from depletable to renewable forms of energy generation and from inefficient to efficient forms of energy consumption, we can increase the benefit and reduce the potential harm and disruption caused by our increasing energy appetites.

Given the amount of other information available on this topic, I don’t need to elaborate much here in this article, but suffice it to say that the next century with either see a transformation of the world’s energy system leading to continued progress for civilization, or a practical collapse of that system as some of the sources of energy currently available become depleted.

Eradication of Infectious Diseases that Kill and Disable

Every year, up to 17 million people, many of them children, die from infectious diseases. In fact, outside of chronic conditions that are the most likely causes of death in the aged, these infectious diseases account directly and indirectly for more than one third of all deaths in the world each year, and a majority of the deaths of adults and young people. Adding in the effects from disability, both temporary and permanent, would likely triple the impact of these diseases on our society.

So great a loss of those who we expect to contribute their productivity and creativity to the world is a substantial drag to potential achievements in the next century. It is within our capability to not just control, but to eradicate most of these perennial diseases in the next century. The effect on global society towards increased investment in the future and away from a culture of fatalism would be incredible. The effect of 17 million more individuals every year working towards the good of their families and their communities would quickly lead to realized gains against all kinds of problems we face on this planet.

Increasing the Effectiveness of Education

Often overlooked or taken for granted, whether or not our civilization is prepared and capable of achieving progress depends on a more skilled and knowledgeable society. The proper functioning of representative governments depends on it, as well as the beneficial functioning of all kinds of organizations. If science is to find the answers to these challenges listed above, there must be a great number of highly trained scientists and engineers to produce those solutions and a highly educated population to consent and implement them. Societies that remain closed to or fearful of new theories, ideas, or foreign cultures will find significant improvement difficult if not impossible. Education is the key to creating the kind of fertile ground for progress that is required.

While there are numerous good models of highly effective education in different places, there are very few places that function highly in all areas. Even nations, cities, or schools with high reputations in one subject area rarely excel in all areas, even though the models are visible and available for all to duplicate. As such, even the highly educated from the best schools in the best nations, have wasted time in many courses for many years over the course of their academic training. When considering that those who have been lightly trained at sub-standard schools have likely wasted more time, there is considerable room for improvement worldwide. As the methods of education begin to be subjected to more scientific scrutiny, as the facts have already been, the way education is conducted will surely change. If that change is transformative on the world level utilizing best practices from wherever they are found, multiplicative dividends to global society can result.

Conclusion

These are transformative steps to progress. Whether our civilization takes these steps and to what degree will determine how much progress is made in the next century. Without these some incremental progress is still to be expected, but why should we settle for that, when we are on the cusp of so much more? I expect one way or another civilization will continue on through the next century, but realizing these six opportunities would truly make it a century of progress.

Asteroids inhabit the space near to Earth and contain high percentages of metals and other minerals that are more rare on Earth. Mineral- and metal-rich asteroids require less energy to visit than the surfaces of moons or other planets, while the amounts of the resources they hold are readily determinable from telescope observation from Earth.

This image of the Gaspra asteroid from JPL.

As this article makes clear, the value of these minerals for different purposes are high, but not yet high enough to offset the costs to utilize them. What this interesting study makes clear, however, is that we have the means to predict economically when real space exploration, in terms of a more permanent human presence in space will begin.

Just looking at our world’s consumption of important metals, we can see from the graphs below that steel and gold are all increasing at a fairly rapid rate over time, not to mention the many other valuable metals like nickel, magnesium, platinum, etc. Increases in consumption drives increases in price as the easy to reach supplies on Earth are depleted. Unless we were to completely or drastically reduce our need for metals in buildings, vehicles, and consumer goods, it is inevitable that these commodities will reach the point that these asteroids become profitable ventures for courageous individuals.

Steel production data from here and here. Gold production data from here.

The other side of this equation is reduction in cost of access to space. Launch vehicle prices have been decreasing over time, as more competition between national government space programs and commercial corporations has developed. This data shows that as of 2000, the real price of access to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) had fallen to $22,000 per kilogram, while access to Geosychronous Orbit (GSO) has fallen to about $25,000 per kilogram. These values demonstrate a reduction of around 40% from the prior decade for GSO, and a reduction of around 15% for LEO. These costs would be directly applied to the capital costs of developing a mine in space.

While launch costs are surely one of the most significant at the moment, return costs not to mention engineering costs required to develop the necessary equipment will also be substantial at least at first.

So, the balance between the value of the minerals and the costs to retrieving them will determine when this equation becomes positive in favor of pulling or pushing us off the planet. Until then, as the world economy develops over time, demand will be increasing pushing the prices of these commodities up as more of the world approaches the lifestyle of the rich countries.

Environmental issues such as conservation and biodiversity are often seen as peripheral to our lives or the problems we face, but nothing could be further than the truth. This world is habitable because of the weathering of rocks and the death and recycling of organisms, because of the filtration, oxygenation, and water capturing functions that plants carry out, because of consumers’ roles in suppressing the populations of plants and other animals and producers’ conversion of solar energy to chemical energy. All of that happens within the Earth’s ecosphere and the ecosystems that comprise it, and all of it is self-sustaining and self-maintaining. Or, at least, it is until we start interfering with it.

We always will have an effect on the Earth, and that’s to be expected, since we’re part of the system; there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem has been that we don’t really consider the long-term effects of our actions on our descendants, other organisms, or the Earth, and we’re just beginning to get the bill for all the damage we’ve done. Some say that nothing is happening, but they are wrong. Even if climate change is a complete hoax (extremely unlikely, given how hard it is to get scientists to come to a consensus on something this controversial), looking at the fossil record, the current rate of biodiversity loss is serious enough to qualify as a mass extinction event. If both problems are happening at the same time, I find that far more troubling. If these problems aren’t enough to give us pause, nothing is. Consider this- if we change our ways and nothing happens, we pay a price by decreasing our consumption but benefit in terms of increased efficiency, better quality of life, and decreased need to replicate “ecosystem services” such as water filtration, erosion control, climate moderation, and the like. If we change and the worst does happen, the changes we carry out might just save us from the worst effects of a changing world.

Conservation of mass and energy are not just quaint suggestions; they’re the law, and the human population is finally becoming large enough to push against those laws on a planetary scale. They won’t give- we will, and we won’t like it if we have to find that out the hard way. “Victory shines upon those who anticipate the changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur.” We have an opportunity if we’re willing to lead the change to a sustainable world. If we’re not willing, then I’m sure that there are plenty of other parties willing to do so, even if they lack the resources that we have at our disposal.

Everything is interconnected, and, as Miyamoto Musashi might point out, we need to learn to see the great in the small as well as the small in the great, and we need to cultivate the skills that we will need, not only those that we do need. We also need to learn to appreciate the flower for being a flower and a magnificent example of biology, chemistry, and physics, rather than needing to find a bottom line. Sometimes, that bottom line is extremely thin and we don’t notice it until it is too late. The price currently being paid by nature in the coin of extinct species is one that can never be reversed; we owe it to Nature and ourselves to minimize that cost.

Space exploration and, indeed exploration of extreme environments in general, may be seen as an unnecessary luxury, but such could not be further from the truth. To the extent that such exploration expands our scientific knowledge, it also holds the potential to enhance our technological base, as well. While one may be able to scuba dive, the requirements to do so, to temporarily push back our human limitations, are significantly less than the requirements to successfully dwell in an underwater environment. To dwell in an environment not only requires an understanding of that environment, but of ourselves and our relationship to our native environment, as well. Take the International Space Station, for instance. One of the major challenges of living in the ISS is the perpetual maintenance required to keep it functioning and providing a life-sustaining environment for its occupants; the Earth does this for free through natural processes that, as simple as they may seem at first glance, elegantly provide critical “ecosystem services” day in and day out. Just as something absent is often something better appreciated, having to artificially mimic or replace our natural environment can help us to better understand and appreciate our own.

Such exploration is not simply a matter of short-term scientific or technological gains. Such gains form the foundation of tomorrow’s science and technology, just as today’s great minds in science and technology stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before. I want our descendants to have the choice to explore space or the oceans, to improve upon what we have accomplished so far. If they’re to be able to do that, then we need to establish a foundation for them to build upon. If we want ourselves to have greater knowledge and capability fifty years from now, we need to put in place today the policies, research the disciplines and technologies, and nurture the minds that will accomplish that. A not insignificant part of that challenge is the need to change the public perception of education from a field “for those who can’t do” to a field for those who can, but choose to serve instead. That may well require an increase in compensation in order to attract talent, but, speaking for myself, monetary gain has never been all that significant a motivation. I think a far more significant attractor is a coherent vision and the access to the tools and the means to make it a reality.

One such issue is the nature of American democracy. I have nothing but respect for the framers of the Constitution, but, as an outgrowth of that, I feel that Americans have a responsibility to assess whether the system we have still addresses the realities of American life and allows people to actively participate in government, if they so desire. Our system should reflect the changes that have happened over the years as well as take advantage of the technologies that have come out of the Information Revolution. I think that there are a number of such technologies (blogs, social networking websites, and web-capable handheld devices, to name a few) that could potentially increase the degree of involvement in governance at all levels. My wife proposed the idea of allowing people to choose to vote on specific issues by interest, and I think that step would not be so far away from where we are (except, perhaps, for a desired shift away from instances of voting on an issue because it’s on the ballot, regardless of the level of knowledge of the issue) as it looks. Like her, I, too, believe that part of the key is, as I learned in AmeriCorps, to allow people to volunteer or, in this case, participate based on their interests and expertise. I can imagine a world where people sign up for RSS feeds that give them regular updates on the policy issues that matter most to them. I know that the technology is capable of far more, but we need to start a discussion on this topic before we can figure out just how far it can go. We would also need to improve technological literacy before we can get there, since it would be unacceptable for citizens to be left out because they lack the skills or the technology to fully participate. Still, using the available technology to inform citizens in an effective and timely way seems like a good place to start. In the long run, I would hope that such participation would eventually allow citizens to participate on an equal footing with special interest groups- not because “special interests” are inherently bad, but because citizens should not have to participate in such groups for their voices to be heard.

Progress in how we participate in democracy, however significant, will mean very little if the yoked issues of energy policy, environmental stewardship, and scientific exploration are not addressed effectively. In order to do so, however, we need to, as Steven Covey puts it, “begin with the end in mind”. We need to decide what kind of world we want to bequeath to the next generation, or, preferably, even farther than that. We need to decide how we want to be remembered and what is truly important. I know that, personally, I want the next generation to be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water. I want them to be able to go out into nature and see functioning ecosystems, and I want the diversity of nature to remain as intact as possible, given the changes taking place in our world. I want our society to be one that thinks about the “big picture” and designs their cities and towns accordingly, one that lives in and among nature instead of outside of it. I want as many people as possible to have access to food, shelter, energy, and technology. I want humans to have the tools to explore the entire cosmos, starting with ourselves and the planet Earth, in far greater detail than we can imagine today, and I want them to use that knowledge to improve their quality of life and enrich their own understanding.

Though energy prices have been trending downwards of late, energy policy is something that we desperately need to address. It’s not just about becoming carbon-neutral or reducing emissions by a set amount. To do that is to do no more than study to pass the test. We need to understand how efficiency and renewable energy sources serve the best long term interests of our world and ourselves. It does no good for higher education to nurture technologically-competent graduates if those graduates cannot then find high-quality jobs; strengthened efforts in these areas hold the promise of creating such jobs not only for recent graduates, but those already in the job market, as well. Given global energy trends, there is a real opportunity for America if we choose to lead the way in developing and adopting alternative energy sources and improved resource efficiency, energy and otherwise. The advantage of globalization in our current situation is that, if we lead, others will be compelled to follow, and I believe the job of the federal government in this case is to overcome industry’s “static friction” and get it rolling en masse towards doing more with less. Once it gets rolling and the benefits start to accrue, I don’t think there will be nearly as much questioning of whether it was worth it.

To Be Continued…

In the same way that economics experiences cycles, booms, and busts, innovation and progress when considered as a market of ideas also experiences those things. This earlier article on regulation explains some of this, but we are going to take this idea a few steps further.

Many of us, especially those of us too young to remember anything earlier than the ’60s or ’70s, usually think of progress and innovation as some collective force that always continues pushing upwards albeit with greater or lesser rates depending on the circumstances. But taking a longer view shows that is not the case. Technologies like concrete and many civil engineering skills were known and regularly employed by the Roman Empire during a period of several centuries before the empire fell apart starting around the 5th century. Over the next several centuries known as the Dark Ages in Europe, many of those Roman skills were lost, totally forgotten for long periods of time, such that even by the time of the beginning of the Renaissance in the 15th century, engineers and builders still did not know how to make concrete.

So, while other civilizations had different experiences around this same point in history, we can at least say that it is completely possible for a society to experience a long term decline in innovation and progress even to the point of losing the ability to do many things that were once routine.

But, back to our question, how do we regulate ideas? Although many people may not be aware, inventions are more often planned and predicted than they are spontaneous and unexpected. Government and corporations often make innovation a requirement like saying “build a 50% more energy efficient refrigerator” [also see this article on efficiency and conservation], knowing that the technology does not already exist to achieve that capability. These kinds of requirements are useful to teams of engineers as they help focus the direction of invention, and enable trade offs between different possibilities. Society overall could respond to this innovation in different ways, either by using twice as many refrigerators (doubling the amount of food that can be stored), or by using half the energy to store the same amount of food, or something in between.

But consider the possibility that there may exist another solution to efficient food storage not known to corporate or government rule makers (or not understood) that is not related to refrigeration. In this situation the 50% more efficient refrigerator requirement could be stifling progress, directing the people available to work on innovation away from the best solution to the most easily understood solution. So, while innovation is continuing, societal progress is slowing.

On the other hand, a rule that increased the cost of energy used for food storage by 50% would allow all solutions to the problem a more equal footing in the marketplace of ideas, whether refrigeration or some other possibility. This kind of rule, would even permit another unrelated and inefficient process to be cleaned up and come to the aid of food storage by freeing up the equivalent amount of power needed, thus resulting in the same overall costs to society with increased capability.

So, look around at how our governments try to encourage the direction of innovation. Do they set the right kinds of rules? Or do we allow them (and ourselves) to jump to conclusions?