We are presently facing the immanent onset of a series of inter-related crises of such magnitude as to potentially bring about the rapid collapse of our planetary civilization. These include accelerating global climate change, energy resource depletion (“peak oil”), growing water shortages, food production shortfalls and more. Doing nothing is not an option. Do nothing and worldwide chaos and collapse ensue. I have made the case in my Infinity’s Rainbow book series that such crisis-driven collapse is imminent.

Because the US is currently central to the global political economy, its choices as to how to address these crises will likely determine how effectively the world deals with them. Therefore, the 2008 US Presidential election represents a choice between historical trajectories for humanity and the planet.

The sum of our global civilization’s web of interactions represents a fitness landscape for humanity. Think of it as a landscape with flat plains, rugged mountains, hills, valleys and so on. Think of the valleys as attractors towards which a system is drawn once it rolls over an edge. Depending upon the steepness of the decline, it can be difficult or impossible to climb out of such a depression once one has fallen into it.

The combination of energy, climate, and food crises represents such a peril for our civilization. And we created it ourselves.

We based the energy foundations of civilization on hydrocarbons, and assumed that these would be available indefinitely in limitless supply. We used our environment, our biosphere, as both a limitless source of raw materials and an infinite sink for our waste products (pollution), which has made the problems of global climate change inevitable once hydrocarbon powered industrial civilization became planetary.

Growing human populations, fed by industrial agriculture dependent upon petroleum and upon mining fossil water in underground aquifers, inevitably meant food and water shortages are going to happen. Industrial agriculture requires about 10 calories of hydrocarbons for each calorie of food produced, meaning that famine is inevitable after oil production has peaked.

Industrial agriculture inevitably depletes fertile topsoil far faster than it can replenish itself. Climate change fundamentally alters rainfall patterns, which intensifies the stress on food production and the provisioning of water. Conversion of food to biofuels to deal with oil scarcity just makes the whole thing worse.

Given increasing population growth (to seven billion in the next few years), increasing urbanization (very recently, for the first time ever, the majority of humanity became urban/suburban dwellers), and increasing industrialization (China and India most especially), oil consumption is increasing, while water depletion, soil depletion, and of course the resulting CO2  increase in the planetary atmosphere drives global climate into a very different configuration than the one in which human civilization developed. 

Further, the people do not control their governments any longer. Global multi-national corporations, whose sole goal is profit maximization in the least possible time, effectively rule everywhere in one or another symbiotic arrangement with government.  These entities could not exist without the existing political economy which is the cause of all of the other crises I’ve just described.

I could go on and on and on. However, this is sufficient to sketch out the crises, their magnitude, and their inter-dependent nature.
 
The onset of these crises represents a precipitous drop, a cliff plunging down into a gaping chasm on our fitness landscape. Simply stated, our existing global political economy is unsustainable. It CANNOT endure.
With such a bleak analysis, it may seem that the choice of Obama or McCain is irrelevant. This is reinforced by the stark reality that neither has espoused a desire for fundamental systemic change—Obama’s vague rhetoric about change notwithstanding. Both are beholden to portions of the existing ruling corporatocracy and so to the maintenance of the overall status quo—which is doomed.

All of this said why would I then propose that the choice of historical trajectories offered by Obama versus McCain is significant?!

My answer to this is based upon close inspection of our looming chasm in the fitness landscape. It initially slopes downwards gradually, perhaps with the appearance of small shortages of oil supply with respect to demand; but lowered demand can accommodate these shortages, and so few will see any need to respond with drastic action. But increasing climatic instability—droughts in some areas, floods in others—will begin to decrease agricultural yields. And so on, with one crisis after another. These issues will stress the existing political economy but do not lead to its collapse—yet. And this is the area of the fitness landscape we have recently entered.

Our civilizational trajectory possesses immense inertia, or resistance to change in its present trajectory. Our civilization is based on hydrocarbon energy, corporate production of wealth, etc., and we can’t just wave a magic wand and fundamentally change these realities overnight. The planet’s billion or so internal combustion engine vehicles can’t be changed into pollution free machines overnight even if such technology were available—which it isn’t. So we must approach our crises-attractor. It’s simply too late to fundamentally alter our trajectory away from it.

That said, we need to keep several things in mind:

1) We are at the initial down slope of a rapidly declining chasm or valley. From such a position, even though we can’t go back, many divergent trajectories are still possible. Think of arrows radiating out from a point across say, 120 degrees. All of these trajectories represent moving into the basin of attraction for the crisis attractor, however, they lead to totally different outcomes. If trajectories between 1 and 120 degrees are allowed at this point, then setting off in the direction represented by 2 degrees leads very quickly to a totally different historical trajectory than the one represented by 115 degrees. Very quickly, given the increasing down slope, such choices become locked in—you can’t go back and re-choose. The historical trajectory or world line of the civilization that chose the 2 degree trajectory becomes ever more different from that of the one that chose the 115 degree trajectory. This means that right now is the last opportunity we shall have to—within the constraints imposed upon us by the crises—to choose a more desirable future over less desirable ones.

2) A fitness landscape is not preexisting and unchanging. Rather, as it represents the sum total of all human choices and interactions, as they interact with the natural world within which civilization is nested, it is ever changing and malleable. If we change say, how we produce food and energy, if we change the degree of cooperation towards a common goal which exists across the whole world, then we significantly alter the lay of the land, the terrain of our civilization’s fitness landscape.  Not only can we choose a more desirable trajectory, but we can also consciously alter the very contours of the landscape over which we travel. Some limits apply—resource constraints, the capacity of the biosphere to absorb our externalities are the most critical ones.

3) Human civilization represents a system. As such it is characterized by three fundamental properties:

a) Interconnectedness

b) Emergence

c) Boundedness

All systems consist of some number of elements. These elements interact together with one another such that collective, group properties emerge. These collective properties are properties of the whole system; they cannot be reduced to the properties of the elements comprising the system. For a very simple example, water possesses the property of…call it wetness. Wetness is a collective property of an H2O molecule. It cannot be reduced to the properties of hydrogen or oxygen atoms. Thus it “emerges” from the interaction of its constituent parts—two hydrogen atoms along with an oxygen atom. All systems possess a boundary between the system and its surrounding environment. “Inside” this boundary is the system. “Outside” of it is the environment.

Emergence is a very real, scientific miracle of nature. It is also, potentially a powerful force which we can harness to change the world as I shall describe soon.

The Earth’s biosphere, human civilization, and our global economy, are each examples of complex systems. As is typical of complex systems, each of the three systems I’ve named just above is nested within the preceding one. Simple systems can be, in at least some cases, modeled using equations. Complex systems cannot be. Computer simulation is required to research this class of system. Complex systems are also referred to as complex adaptive systems.

The emergent properties of a civilization are very different depending upon how that civilization is put together. The ability of a globally integrated, environmentally rational civilization would be both different from and greater than those of our present one. We can increase our ability to respond to crisis by fundamentally reconfiguring our political economy in a very brief period of time.

Now, let’s put 1-3 above together:
 

• We still have a range of choices about our future available (1).
• We have some ability to consciously alter our fitness landscape and so shape our future (2).
• Because of emergence, we potentially can become much more capable in almost no time, by fundamental systemic reconfiguration (3).
  

Absent life and death universal crisis affecting all humanity fundamental change with respect to items 2 and 3 above are improbable, though item 1 is still in play even absent crisis.

Now consider the power configurations forming around McCain and Obama:

Obama is studiously vague about policy. However he has made the need for change into a mantra. His speeches invariably involve the need for “coming together”—both within the US and across the planet—why: To deal with some never quite articulated existential threat that affects us all and required all of us to deal with effectively.  Obama’s speech in Berlin is a perfect example of this.

I believe that Obama himself has no clear idea of what he is actually talking about. It just feels right to say and is somehow effective politically. But how to explain the huge crowds who are drawn, enthralled to hear him speak? Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans know that we are fundamentally off course as a society and as a planet. They don’t quite know how or why or what to do, but they know something’s wrong. As the crowd of hundreds of thousands of Germans in Berlin clearly showed, so too do people around the world. What they all sense is the rapid approach of the crisis-attractor.

Obama channels this angst. He appears to tap into our collective unconscious for his inspiration. Put another way, since we are all part of a single world system, the particular pattern of that system at a given moment has something like resonances built into its structure. Touch those and you touch everyone. This ability to go deep is the source of Obama’s power.

To get elected, he makes the usual alliances, kisses the usual power players’ asses, and so on. Yet, because these gatekeepers are not the source of Obama’s power, their control over him is limited. If fundamental crises of existence were to manifest during an Obama’s presidency he would have the potential for acting decisively while brushing aside all of the gatekeepers. He represents the point of emergence for the deep wants, needs and fears of people everywhere.

It’s like a volcano. Subterranean magma under pressure has to come up somewhere. Because it comes up at on particular point does not mean that these is something intrinsically special about that point. Pressure must be released somewhere. This is true for magma and also for pent up pressure for the emergence of a new systemic configuration. Because now is the very last moment at which such an option is possible, we can expect an eruption to occur.

As to McCain, he embodies the inertia of our world system. If Obama is change, McCain is “more of the same.” For McCain, only fear can serve to make people quiescent and obedient to the continued rule of our corporatocracy. Unsurprisingly, people and groups such as Lieberman, Hagee, Christian Dominionists of all stripes, Neocons, oil companies, are all tightly clustered around McCain. War and rumors of war must be their agenda simply because nothing else can keep them in power. Sensing impending crisis, they will lash out with force to attempt to preserve their self-serving status quo.

Like Obama, McCain probably does not know what his role is. He just wants to be President and he has sold his soul to the gatekeepers for the opportunity. However, the configuration of systemic forces arranged to preserve the status quo is intensifying in response to the growing desire of humanity for deep change.

Ultimately both McCain and Obama represent points of emergence—metaphorically like the volcanoes I mentioned above—for opposed deep systemic trends. It is not really about McCain or Obama as persons at all.
If McCain wins the election, we will have selected a trajectory which leads to the most rapid descent into the basin of the crisis-attractor possible, for the United States and for Western civilization. War, famine, and the flaming wreck of human civilization, in conjunction with the destruction of much of the biosphere, are the very probable outcome of making this trajectory choice.

With Obama we have a chance at a much better future. We can build on this choice by choosing an incrementally better trajectory by opting for Gore’s climate change proposals in conjunction with rapid research and development of renewable energy sources. Tax credits to homeowners to install solar and wind power and heating could have nearly instant results. Geosynchronous orbiting microwave reflectors (see both of my Infinity’s Rainbow books for details) could easily facilitate the creation of a global power grid based upon the sharing of renewable energy resources. This eliminates the need for inefficient energy storage by allowing for energy sharing, and greatly facilitates and planetary cooperation in the face of impending existential threat.

This political economy is irrevocably doomed. And in 2012 it will be too late to meaningfully alter our systemic trajectory. Once the crises hit—and they will—in the next few years, Obama will be in position to become a unifying leader for the planet leading to deep systemic reconfiguration, and the emergence of new capabilities to respond to the crises. Emergence and its increase in adaptiveness is the miracle which offers hope for a future.

This is why I believe that it is critically important to elect Obama despite his clear shortcomings.