Billions of blue blistering barnacles, indeed
A remarkable feature of the world in the wake of Donald Trump's assault on the global trading and security system is the resilience of global interdependence. Beggar-thy-neighbour retaliation has been strikingly absent. What other macro trends would a satellite view reveal? Here're 7 more.
Climate change: It is warming oceans, melting polar ice, pushing up sea levels and submerging small islands, accelerating wind speeds, and filling up clouds with phenomenal quantities of water that pour down on hapless towns, river basins, crops and mountainsides, destroying towns and creating floods, mudslides and landslides, and eroding coastlines. It causes droughts and wildfires.
Prolonged droughts dry up pasture, and herdsmen range far afield with their herds, encroach on settled lands and trigger conflict. Insufficient rains pit upper and lower riparian states against one another. Heatwaves desiccate towns, worsen water shortages and sanitation. Air conditioner-makers might cheer, but rising temperatures sap productivity, shorten lifespans and spawn new vector-borne diseases.
Agroclimatic conditions change. Crops cease to suit their traditional regions and have to find new ones. Food insecurity, livelihood loss and rising commodity prices mark the transition. Missing rains make air pollution worse. Acidic oceans endanger marine life and add to the loss of biodiversity.
Shifting geopolitics: Pax Americana lies buried in a wreckage of the old world order. The world has multiple poles of power. Now that Trump has knocked down Europe's American crutches, Europe finds it can walk on its own, almost. Russia continues to be a centre of global power. China is, of course, the most consequential power after the US.
The US' orphaned East Asian allies, Japan and South Korea, bury their bitter past and build a new alliance on top. Turkiye craves a Turkic sphere of influence, spanning the Central Asian Stans and itself. India stands non- or multi-aligned.
Tech changes: AI makes the most noise, and it feeds into, and augments, other changes. One comprises electrification of most energy; electronification of the grid to maintain stability as it absorbs energy from diverse, often intermittent, sources and sees load-shifting charging of batteries; renewable and nuclear energy; and novel ways to transmit power, including by microwave.
Creation of new materials - metal-organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks, for example - and finding new uses, including as catalysts, for old materials, prove vital. Synthetic diamonds and whisky that can be aged as desired in a jiffy disrupt traditional industries.
Advances in biotech yield new drugs, synthesise ethylene from atmospheric CO2 and revolutionise all of production. Google DeepMind's AlphaFold 2 has forecast the shapes of 220 mn proteins, making for exciting new discoveries. Genetic engineering and stem cell technology pave the way for lab-grown human organs and curing congenital diseases. Ethical and regulatory challenges rise alongside.
China leads in 57 of the 64 technologies that make for strategic dominance, as per Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The US leads in 7. Countries without domestic supplies of R&D talent open up GCCs in India, taking care not to employ flighty IIT grads. Fintech is disrupting traditional payments and currencies, particularly on the blockchain.
Alienation, religious intolerance & revanchism: Technological and associated economic change far outpaces society's ability to adapt. Global interdependence also brings people of diverse cultures in close contact. It is not always fraternity that results. Violent rejection of change, and a desperate search for presumed authenticity trigger schism and conflict. This is evident across the world, including in India. When those who pioneer change neglect those left behind, these elites turn into objects of rejection and hate.
Disinformation: Change without taking the majority along, in turn, contributes to the loss of trust in experts and expertise, feeding disinformation. The rise of social media and curtailed role for professional journalists in curating and mediating information accelerates the trend.
Algorithms corral people into disparate information bubbles, shielding people from facts and opinions that contradict their prejudice. Democracy suffers from deficit of a shared universe of public discourse.
Demographic shift: Rise in women's labour force participation and shifts in tech and social mores that widen women's choice combine to create changes in demography. Earning women with a greater sense of self-worth reject patriarchal subjugation. Men fail to adapt, expect wives to do the heavy lifting in domestic chores and caring for the young and old. Women rebel by refusing to get married.
The number of children a woman can be expected to have - total fertility rate - has dipped to 0.7 in South Korea, and stay significantly below the population replacement level of 2.1 in rich nations. More countries will see shrinking populations, as in Japan and China.
Singlehood: A corollary has been the rise of singlehood. In the US, 41% of women and 50% of men between 25 and 34 were single in 2023, against 25% 50 years ago, according to The Economist. Largish numbers of men blame their involuntary celibacy on women, liberals and disruption of tradition, reinforcing alienation, xenophobia and misogyny.
Back to sober terra firma.
Climate change: It is warming oceans, melting polar ice, pushing up sea levels and submerging small islands, accelerating wind speeds, and filling up clouds with phenomenal quantities of water that pour down on hapless towns, river basins, crops and mountainsides, destroying towns and creating floods, mudslides and landslides, and eroding coastlines. It causes droughts and wildfires.
Prolonged droughts dry up pasture, and herdsmen range far afield with their herds, encroach on settled lands and trigger conflict. Insufficient rains pit upper and lower riparian states against one another. Heatwaves desiccate towns, worsen water shortages and sanitation. Air conditioner-makers might cheer, but rising temperatures sap productivity, shorten lifespans and spawn new vector-borne diseases.
Agroclimatic conditions change. Crops cease to suit their traditional regions and have to find new ones. Food insecurity, livelihood loss and rising commodity prices mark the transition. Missing rains make air pollution worse. Acidic oceans endanger marine life and add to the loss of biodiversity.
Shifting geopolitics: Pax Americana lies buried in a wreckage of the old world order. The world has multiple poles of power. Now that Trump has knocked down Europe's American crutches, Europe finds it can walk on its own, almost. Russia continues to be a centre of global power. China is, of course, the most consequential power after the US.
The US' orphaned East Asian allies, Japan and South Korea, bury their bitter past and build a new alliance on top. Turkiye craves a Turkic sphere of influence, spanning the Central Asian Stans and itself. India stands non- or multi-aligned.
Tech changes: AI makes the most noise, and it feeds into, and augments, other changes. One comprises electrification of most energy; electronification of the grid to maintain stability as it absorbs energy from diverse, often intermittent, sources and sees load-shifting charging of batteries; renewable and nuclear energy; and novel ways to transmit power, including by microwave.
Creation of new materials - metal-organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks, for example - and finding new uses, including as catalysts, for old materials, prove vital. Synthetic diamonds and whisky that can be aged as desired in a jiffy disrupt traditional industries.
Advances in biotech yield new drugs, synthesise ethylene from atmospheric CO2 and revolutionise all of production. Google DeepMind's AlphaFold 2 has forecast the shapes of 220 mn proteins, making for exciting new discoveries. Genetic engineering and stem cell technology pave the way for lab-grown human organs and curing congenital diseases. Ethical and regulatory challenges rise alongside.
China leads in 57 of the 64 technologies that make for strategic dominance, as per Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The US leads in 7. Countries without domestic supplies of R&D talent open up GCCs in India, taking care not to employ flighty IIT grads. Fintech is disrupting traditional payments and currencies, particularly on the blockchain.
Alienation, religious intolerance & revanchism: Technological and associated economic change far outpaces society's ability to adapt. Global interdependence also brings people of diverse cultures in close contact. It is not always fraternity that results. Violent rejection of change, and a desperate search for presumed authenticity trigger schism and conflict. This is evident across the world, including in India. When those who pioneer change neglect those left behind, these elites turn into objects of rejection and hate.
Disinformation: Change without taking the majority along, in turn, contributes to the loss of trust in experts and expertise, feeding disinformation. The rise of social media and curtailed role for professional journalists in curating and mediating information accelerates the trend.
Algorithms corral people into disparate information bubbles, shielding people from facts and opinions that contradict their prejudice. Democracy suffers from deficit of a shared universe of public discourse.
Demographic shift: Rise in women's labour force participation and shifts in tech and social mores that widen women's choice combine to create changes in demography. Earning women with a greater sense of self-worth reject patriarchal subjugation. Men fail to adapt, expect wives to do the heavy lifting in domestic chores and caring for the young and old. Women rebel by refusing to get married.
The number of children a woman can be expected to have - total fertility rate - has dipped to 0.7 in South Korea, and stay significantly below the population replacement level of 2.1 in rich nations. More countries will see shrinking populations, as in Japan and China.
Singlehood: A corollary has been the rise of singlehood. In the US, 41% of women and 50% of men between 25 and 34 were single in 2023, against 25% 50 years ago, according to The Economist. Largish numbers of men blame their involuntary celibacy on women, liberals and disruption of tradition, reinforcing alienation, xenophobia and misogyny.
Back to sober terra firma.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)
TK Arun