Quoting O’Bama is a cheap trick this week, but it is a good headline to address the issue of the plethora of campaigns for reform that have spring up as a result of our current economic woes. Most focus on constitutional reform, or on fixing our banking laws, in the hope that we can find language for our laws which will make our society better. Without a long-term vision, textual editing of laws is deceptive and useless. Back when I was young, we were offered a vision of a brave new world driven by technology which would make all our lives better in the year 2000. Well, that was 11 years ago, and I still don’t have my personal jetpack. It seems to me that we need to improve our foresight process as we look towards 2050
The “reform” debate aims mainly at short-term changes in governance – how many TD’s should we have, what rules can we introduce to control banks, will the EU have a common corporate tax rate and pays little attention to creating a medium to long term vision for Ireland and the world which will help us to chart a path to the future.
If you think about the challenges  we face in the next 41 years – peak oil, global climate change, feeding 9 billion people, religious fundamentalism – debating whether we should have 150 or 120 TDs fades into insignificance. And it should – without a vision of what we want our world to be in 2050, any short term plan will be no more than a patch. Vision 2050 must come before Plan 2025. Equally, unless we have some clarity about Vision 2050, we are going to have problems framing changes in the short term plans to respond to the changing circumstances which we will face on the way to 2050.
Part of developing “Vision 2050” requires us to think the range of scenarios that are possible – the good the bad and the ugly, and work out how we can tilt the odds to favour the positive outcomes and avoid the negative.
We are hopeless at foresight.
We have shown since we walked in this current economic mess that we are completely unable to avoid disaster when it comes rushing at us with flashing lights and sirens, which makes one wonder how we will factor in enough leeway to deal with unanticipated disasters like Icelandic volcanoes shutting down our tourism for extended periods.
The only people offering scenarios for the future are prophets of doom, mostly sandal-wearing tree huggers, who predict  the collapse of civilization as we know it because of environmental disaster and the end of cheap energy. These scenarios are rejected by the majority, not because they are unlikely, but because they are unpalatable and many people hope that if we don’t think about them, they won’t happen.
We are also not doing very well at dealing with the mundane things which we take for granted. We presume that when we flick the switch, there will be power, and “someone” will make sure it is there. If there is a problem with energy supply, like the end of cheap oil, then “someone” will find a solution and “someone” will make sure it is deployed in time, and it certainly isn’t our responsibility. Who exactly will do this? The same officials and politicians who regulated our banks? The bankers  who couldn’t plan beyond this quarters targets? The German and Swiss bankers who invested in our banks?
So before we can have a plan, we need a vision, and that vision requires us to explicitly lay out the things we regard as  important.  There won’t be a single plan, there will have to be many plans, in different time-scales and with revisions to meet changing circumstances, but unless we have some clarity of vision and values, those plans will be an incoherent muddle.
My vision for 2050 – all I want is two simple things  – cheap clean energy and liberal democracy.
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