The China Vortex

Globalization is based on something which doesn’t exist anymore: cheap oil to fuel the global transportation and logistics system.

Guess what? Cheap oil has gone away for good.

Yet another reason to avoid going on an oil-based economy in the waning days of big oil.

If there has been a major problem with the Chinese leadership, it has been its slowness to recognize that the old way of industrialization simply does not work with a population as vast as China’s. Western Europe, then later America and Japan were able to get away with industrialization because they had smaller populations and did not urbanize as quickly as China is now.

Not only does reliance on energy imports crimp China’s foreign policy in the near future, it is crimping the environment now. And the whole problem will only get worse.

This is the problem with the traditional view of industrialization and urbanization.

The tragedy for humanity and for China is that other development models are available. Using computers and virtual teams on service-related projects reduces the need for commutes and polluting transportation. Everyone will have to make some sacrifices in lifestyle, but the sacrifices are not that huge.

The trouble is that we are straddled with a bunch of old thinkers in leadership positions who can’t make the change to a new model fast enough. We are not in control of our own fate.

One of my recurring themes is that Americans have become too good at consuming, down to the point of consuming their children’s futures through deficit spending, and have not done enough to invest in the future. This is an important legacy of the current Bush administration which has repeatedly mortgaged the future in order to achieve their short-term political goals.

China has done a somewhat better job of investing in education and infrastructure; the recent snowstorms and transportation breakdowns in central and southern China have shown that even though large amounts have been spent, there is still a long road to go before China has a modern transport infrastructure which can serve the needs of its 1.3B citizens.

At one time, Americans were respected worldwide for their ability to make things. Now, these capabilities have been largely outsourced. Instead, American politics is much more focused on fractious issues which have little or no substantive meaning, but are manufactured to capture air time on television or on the Internet. The result: an increasingly polarized society where people increasingly talk at each other, instead of to each other.

For this reason, I was very pleased that a group of concerned Americans have set up a website to debate the future of science in the US, and the platforms of the respective presidential candidates on the issue.

If you are concerned about the future of American science, then you should take a look at it.