100s of millions of heat deaths, 100s of trillions in economic losses, and the frog begins to twitch

During the first year of Covid I traced out why the world was taking 250 times longer to respond than “best in world”. Why solutions did not emerge, but only institutions grew, ones aimed at hoped-for future disasters, in a continuing spiral.

I did not think the forests would be burning at continental scale. A dry hot year usually has seasons. What happens when dry and hot is permanent on continental and regional scale too long for a forest or ecosystem to survive? A year or two of global winter was enough for dinosaurs?

Heat deaths in the tens of millions and economic losses in the hundreds of trillions is where the frog will start noticing. Since the poor, weak and elderly, children and women will be more affected most groups will not care and simply say “more for us”. Wars and armed conflicts, crime, inflation and scarcity “more for us”. Depression and distress at that scale means still more giving up. Lack of resources, famine, no water, no electricity, no hope more wars. Confusion and panic, more cults and false promises, more lies and takings. Power systems fail during hot summers, imagine where every city can only serve a few. Where the regional networks are prioritized by a few who makes choices themselves for themselves?

The Internet is power hungry, imagine global breakdowns in communication, collaboration, air conditioning, manufacturing, distribution, education, critical parts and everything needed for research and development. Funding agencies will spend more on their old favorites. Politicians will simply keep doing what they always do “for us only”.

Sorry, that is what comes to mind. If you remember the Manhattan project, remember that world was working with old methods of killing and doing business, surviving and death. The few, no matter heroic methods, mostly did not create anything near “too cheap to meter”. It was blunt and mostly mindless – in the large.  It was not aimed at “creating solutions for all humans”.

Covid response was greed in one of the largest transfers of wealth in peacetime.  Humans in their hundreds of millions, milling around and just “responding”. Each person and group in power, only working to keep what they have, or make as much as possible, taking from the ones who do not survive or might not survive. Growing systems whose incomes grow with more disasters. No incentive or controls to moderate and correct organizational and economic spiraling. Health systems maximizing profits because now everyone is finally sick or dying.

I spent the last 26 years, every day, with the Internet Foundation. Mostly looking at “all humans, all systems, all models, all data”.  And I try to focus on why things like “fusion” or “clean atomic energy” or “education” or “health care” never converge to solutions for all. It mostly all benefits a few. Because there is no way to gather and use the information at the level required, and too few controlling any efforts to gather and process.

When William “Bill” Trayfors (USAID Africa Bureau end of 1985), came to me and asked me to set up the Famine Early Warning System (to prevent famines by looking at “all data”), he told me that delays in making critical decisions caused hundreds of thousands (“a million”) to die – from many causes. Many of them because of slow organizational systems built on information stored only in human memories and on paper. No way to verify the process, no way to improve it. No way to work in real time. Letting humans make all decisions, no matter how complex or how new or dependent the decision maker. Nothing traceable, nothing open so the world could see and help, or learn.

Many people at USAID, the State Department, World Bank, IMF, USDA, FAO, PAHO, NIH, and other organizations who might have met me at the modeling seminar series I sponsored then on quantitative methods for modeling large scale systems (countries, industries, cities, networks, social and economic systems, projects, programs, natural systems) probably do not know that after I set up FEWS, I moved to Oklahoma and worked for a few years with Phillips Petroleum. First on GIS and 3D systems for geophysical data on microcomputers, then the Business Intelligence group – global climate change, alternative fuels, clean air emissions models, MTBE, ozone, CFCs, hydrogen economy, even cold fusion, integrated long range models for the corporation, and more. Then I spent 4 years getting the Air Force Association (now Air and Space Forces Association) computers and business processes onto the Internet and membership systems and services integrated. I mention that because I never stop working on global and systemic issues. I was focusing on organizations affecting many people, where each person could be treated individually.

I did not start the Internet Foundation until 23 Jul 1998.  But I did monitor the global Y2K and worked to make sure it was covered properly. I even reviewed the Y2K scenarios for the Joint Chiefs staff as they prepared their Tabletop Exercise on Y2K. Besides USAID and State, the Joint Chiefs was the only group I know got copies of the Economic and Social Database, but I do not remember them joining the seminars. There were usually about 30 people at each brown bag presentation. I tried to talk to every one individually beforehand, so after we ate and listened to new methods, we could take an hour and discuss what each organization or group might do.

One of the bigger winners in Covid was the organizations meant to solve the problem having control over the information needed to solve and respond to it. Single points of failure are also single points of control, manipulation, corruption. When problems go outside the norm, contraction limits options, it does not expand them. Options are not explored, only vetted options from the past, based on old methods and institutions are chosen.  It does massively destroy pathways, so human decision makers only have fewer choices.

The frog will never act in time. The emperor will dither. The bureaucrat will delay. The manager will shade the truth. The suppliers will ask for fees and incentives. The experts will obfuscate and fill the air with words they barely understand.

No person or organization can be smart enough, no silver bullets specific and broad enough, no groups fast enough, no one strong enough. Only chance and mostly no choices.  Prey might outsmart the predators once in while and celebrate their intelligence and skills. But storms and heat, floods, forest fires, die offs, crop failures, more CO2 and smoke, “less green” seems one spiral where the response takes more effort and coordination than human groups, all aiming for their own benefit and survival, can manage.

Humans are smart and resourceful, but who makes the decisions and choices for the many? Those closed legacy systems that were so slow in Covid, they will not learn and adapt fast enough.

How many people are needed to deal with global climate change? I think it is 8.2 Billion humans, using global open, verifiable, accessible methods where the systems cannot be gamed and manipulated by a few. In a truly open system, nothing is lost, no thought or idea is lost and “continuous improvement” is based on global open methods as well.

I have monitored and studied the UN systems for 4 decades now, including covid and climate change. They cannot do it, more they will not do it, because they are built on closed methods from the core.

Filed as (100s of millions of heat deaths, 100s of trillions in economic losses, and the frog begins to twitch)

Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation