Technology | Humanity | 21st Century World, Felipe Artis de Cevallos | Comment

For its annual conference, CIES heard a keynote address from Lord Anthony Giddens. The 85-year-old English sociologist, an adviser to Tony Blair’s government, noted the enormous possibilities and challenges facing the world in this era of the Anthropocene, characterized by humanity’s impact on terrestrial ecosystems alongside unprecedented technological change. precedents. COP28 is taking place these days. In 2015, the Paris Agreement proposed a 1.5°C limit on global warming. A recent Financial Times report estimates that there is only a 14% chance of eventually achieving this goal. To do this, carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to net zero by 2050. However, these are expected to reach 36 billion tonnes by 2021.

The “third way” used by Blair in his government (1997-2007) was recommended by Lord Giddens. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was the first time that an English Labor government recognized the need for a free market economy and the importance of private enterprise in creating wealth. Marxist leftists have been critical of abandoning the concept of class struggle as the main historical force for social change.

For Kittens, our world is one that faces unprecedented and unparalleled opportunities and dangers. Traditional institutions – the nuclear family, political parties, many elements of the state – are in crisis today. In the traditional world, people’s actions often follow customs. It was a very predictable society. Now, individuals have a wide range of options and wide flexibility for many of their activities. For Gittens, modernity is characterized by the alienation of time and space. Virtual reality emerges.

In premodern societies, knowledge was simplified by elders, recognizable figures, and village shamans. On the other hand, modern societies must rely on expert systems, which are often absent and need to be trusted. This distance heightens the awareness of danger and intensifies the feeling of uncertainty. Because social science is imprecise, there are always explanations; And as science progresses, more explanations arise. Uncertainty increases and there is little tolerance for it.

For Kittens, modern society is “high-opportunity-high-risk”. Climate change is obviously one of those big risks. In his book “The Politics of Climate Change” (2009), he analyzes the particular complexity of this threat and gives some reasons why, until now, not enough has been done to properly address it.

Giddens has repeatedly noted the increasingly transformative impact of the digital revolution on our lives and the future of humanity. The breakthroughs that could be achieved – for example in medicine – are hard to even imagine. Military drones are already disrupting combat tactics. In the private sector, what recently happened with Sam Altman at OpenAI reveals that amid such powerful and unusual innovations, a serious debate is taking place between the bottom line and profit as the primary objective at the most advanced technology companies.

Giddens repeatedly said that we do not have enough information to confirm the validity of the possibilities to be optimistic or pessimistic about the future of humanity. One reads scientific or technical journals and is amazed by the latest developments. You look at the headlines in the daily papers and believe that the world will end tomorrow. Perhaps today’s youth are forced to choose what is truly sustainable first or what is last.