In Defense of High-Speed Passenger Rail

On July 23, two bullet trains collided in Wenzhou, China, killing at least 40 people. This tragedy prompted a rare apology from the governing Chinese Communist Party, and drew international criticism of high speed rail as a whole. For some observers, China’s high speed rail system symbolized the overreach of a nation in an unsustainable economic bubble, and the bureaucracy that has made the system both expensive and dangerous.

Others have questioned the economic feasibility of passenger rail in general, noting that in the United States, only the Amtrak line from Boston to Washington is profitable. According to this criticism, the United States – unlike Europe, Japan, and China – is very sparsely populated, which means that there will simply never be enough passengers to make the system profitable. In recent months, the prospect of a high speed rail network in the United States has been pilloried from the right and left alike. In California, the only serious high-speed rail project in the country has been criticized as wasteful spending by a state that is already in dire fiscal straits.

In a scathing review, The Economist claims that high-speed passenger rail could ruin America’s envy-of-the-world freight train system, with which it would most likely share its tracks. Having worked in logistics myself, I am sympathetic to The Economist’s concerns. But this isn’t a good argument against high-speed passenger rail; on the contrary, it is a reason to invest more, in order to build a separate network for passenger trains which can travel at much higher speeds.

What of the argument that the United States is too sparsely populated for passenger trains to ever be a profitable mode of transportation? After all, it’s undeniably true that large cities in the United States are much farther apart than large cities elsewhere, and therefore fewer people will want to use the trains. My response to these arguments is that the critics are using the wrong metric. Why must high-speed passenger rail systems be profitable in the first place? We have a terrific Interstate Highway System which, with the exception of a few toll roads, generates no revenue whatsoever. Yet almost no one suggests that the Interstate Highway System was a bad investment for the United States.

Fine, say the critics, but since we have such a great highway system why do we need trains? America is a nation that loves to drive. But a passenger rail system would not be in competition with highways, if it is designed correctly. Relatively few people choose to use highways for long-distance travel between major cities anyway, opting for air travel. Some critics point to the slow passenger lines that currently exist and how unpopular they are, suggesting that high-speed passenger lines would be an even bigger waste of money. But this criticism loses sight of what makes such a system appealing in the first place: Slow passenger rail systems are disliked by travelers precisely because they are slow; they offer neither the speed of air travel nor the independence of highways.

Finally we come to the standard libertarian criticism of public expenditures: Why should the government invest in a high-speed rail system at all? Airport congestion imposes economic costs on society: wasted time in airport terminals, delayed business meetings, and people choosing to drive instead of fly (which causes more highway congestion and traffic fatalities). Since the public is indirectly footing the bill for these problems anyway, why not redirect the money to high-speed rail, which would actually relieve some of the airport congestion by taking some of the customers?

The United States needs a high-speed passenger rail system. After years of neglect, America’s infrastructure is rated only the 16th best in the world. As air travel becomes evermore unpleasant and congested, high speed rail will become a necessity for traveling between cities. By the middle of this century, the United States can have an incredibly efficient three-tier travel system: For short-distance travel (less than 50 miles), we would have our Interstate Highway System complemented by a network of intelligent self-driving cars. For medium-distance travel (50-500 miles), we would have a network of high-speed rail, which would pick up and drop off passengers near the center of large cities. For long-distance travel (more than 500 miles), we would have our airports, which would be much more efficient due to the fact that there would be fewer passengers clogging the system with short-haul flights that would be better addressed by trains.

High-speed rail is not some trivial boondoggle to be mocked for its unprofitability; it is the central public transit challenge of the 21st century. If the United States begins the undertaking now with the same commitment which President Dwight Eisenhower brought to the Interstate Highway System 55 years ago, it can have a state of the art network of passenger trains by the middle of the century. Neither technology nor economics is an obstacle; only the political will stands in the way.

How to Eradicate Malaria

On April 25, 2011, the United Nations observed World Malaria Day by setting an ambitious goal: zero malaria deaths by 2015. Few diseases have contributed more to the misery of mankind than malaria has. At its apex in the 19^th century, malaria was responsible for over half of all deaths in some of the hardest hit nations like India, and was endemic to temperate and tropical zones alike. Over the last 150 years, dramatic progress has been made. Malaria has been completely vanquished in the United States and Europe, and sharply reduced in Latin America and South Asia. But Sub-Saharan Africa remains a problem, as it tragically does for many infectious diseases. Today, malaria still kills nearly a million people per year. It is responsible for 20% of all child fatalities in Africa, making it the second-biggest killer in Africa behind HIV/AIDS. Even these high figures probably underestimate malaria’s true consequences, because one of the symptoms of malaria is to weaken the immune system and increase the viral load of diseases such as HIV/AIDS. The disease also makes it difficult for nations to escape poverty; developmental economists John Gallup and Jeffrey Sachs estimate that economic growth is reduced by 1.3% per year in countries with widespread malaria.

Why has malaria remained so troublesome in Africa, even while declining elsewhere? Malaria has always been a disease of poverty. In impoverished countries, many makeshift homes do not have screens, doors, or windows to keep mosquitoes out. Additionally, poor people are often unable to afford malaria treatment, which can cost the equivalent of several months of income in some African nations. If it is left untreated, malaria does not simply run its course and disappear from the body like many diseases do. Instead, it goes into dormancy and can strike again months later. Malaria can become a chronic, lifelong problem for some of its victims who do not have access to treatment. In societies in which a large fraction of the population carries malaria (even if it is dormant), mosquitoes are more likely to acquire the disease each time they bite, and therefore more likely to transmit the affliction to new victims.

In spite of the depressing facts surrounding malaria, there is good reason to believe that malaria can be eradicated in the near future. The UN’s goal is probably overly ambitious, but perhaps only by a few years. A number of trends are converging to make it possible to eliminate the disease. The use of mosquito bed nets has become much more common in many African nations. In Rwanda, 56% of young children now sleep under a bed net, compared to just 4% a decade ago. In Kenya, 46% do so, up from just 3% a decade ago. The mosquitoes which carry malaria tend to be nocturnal and prefer to bite indoors, which is why insecticide-coated bed nets are so effective. Those who use bed nets are only half as likely to get malaria as those who do not. It is likely that within the next couple years, many African nations will have enough bed nets to cover their entire at-risk population.

In 2007, the World Health Organization announced its intentions to resume spraying DDT in malaria-endemic countries. Once the scourge of environmentalists, the chemical was banned in the late 1960s. However, it is still the most potent known insecticide. Many scientists now believe that DDT’s harmful effects may have been overstated, and in any case, eradicating malaria is a higher priority. The spraying of DDT to fight malaria is now supported by many prominent green groups, including the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense.

The cost of treating malaria victims is quickly dropping, offering hope that soon medication will be affordable to people in Sub-Saharan Africa. An initiative by European governments, called the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria, aims to reduce the cost of treatment through a combination of concessions and price reductions from pharmaceutical companies, subsidies from European governments, and donations from the private sector to reduce the cost of antimalarial medication to just 5 cents. The effort is already paying off; production of antimalarial medicine has risen from 5 million doses in 2004 to 160 million doses in 2009. Curing people quickly helps the victim and society alike; if people are quickly treated, mosquitoes will be less likely to acquire the malaria parasite each time they bite, and therefore less likely to transmit the disease to others.

Additionally, the search may finally be drawing to a close for the elusive malaria vaccine. In 2009 and 2010, scientists tested a vaccine among several hundred children in Mali. It proved to be effective at preventing malaria for at least one year, although additional tests will need to be conducted before the vaccine can be manufactured for public use.

The widespread use of bed nets, the resumption of DDT spraying, the increasing availability of treatment for victims, and the emergence of a possible vaccine are all coming together simultaneously to make it possible to rid the world of malaria once and for all.

Although the overall prevalence of malaria remains high, these figures mask an important insight: efforts to eradicate malaria are subject to a positive feedback loop. Once the number of infected people (or infected mosquitoes) drops below a certain threshold, it will be more difficult for additional people to become infected, which will reduce the number of infected people and infected mosquitoes even more. This will cause the malaria parasite population to crash, and can occur very quickly. The history of malaria in the United States is a good example of this. In the 1940s, malaria was still common in much of the southern United States, especially in the Mississippi Valley. In 1946, the Center for Disease Control was established with the explicit goal of eradicating malaria. A mere five years later, the disease was gone.

Will the World Health Organization be able to replicate this achievement in Africa, and meet the UN's goal of zero malaria deaths by 2015? I think that's a few years too optimistic. But due to the rapid reduction in malaria and the positive feedback loop which will aid eradication efforts, it isn't implausible. In 2005, the World Health Organization estimated that there were 350-500 million cases of malaria, but just a year later the number of cases had fallen to 247 million. By 2009, there were only 82 million cases. Such a rapid dropoff indicates that malaria is indeed in terminal decline. By the end of this decade, malaria can be rare or extinct, rather than the scourge that it is today.

PREDICTIONS:

By 2020 - There are fewer than 5 million cases of malaria annually, and fewer than 15,000 deaths.

Space Travel: Science Fiction's Biggest Underachiever

In 1968, futurist Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, which quickly became one of the most popular science fiction novels of the 20^th century. In Clarke’s vision of tomorrow, mankind in 2001 would have ring-shaped space stations that rotate to provide gravity, permanent lunar colonies which people routinely visit for business meetings, and fully-functional (if evil) artificial intelligence. The zeitgeist of the late 1960s, at the height of the space race, was one of unbridled optimism in the future of space travel. Just two years before Clarke’s novel was published, Star Trek had first premiered. It seemed inevitable that we were destined for the stars.

Looking at the world around us, it is easy to be disappointed at how space travel has progressed. The world today looks nothing like Star Trek, or even 2001: A Space Odyssey. After the Apollo missions ended in 1972, something strange happened that few futurists anticipated: mankind stopped exploring space, and turned inward to focus on problems at home. NASA’s budget was slashed. To the extent that space exploration progressed, it was done almost exclusively by robots rather than manned missions. If we were able to go back in time to the late 1960s and tell people that we would indeed have a permanent space settlement today, they would almost certainly envision something far grander than the International Space Station.

Why were the space enthusiasts wrong? The biggest obstacle has been political, not technological. In my opinion, political trends are much more difficult to predict than technological trends. From a 1968 perspective, the US and USSR were locked in a Cold War that would soon extend far above the earth’s surface. It was much easier to forecast the trends in space technology than to predict that the USSR would throw in the towel on the space race by the mid-1970s, and cease to exist at all soon thereafter. With the collapse of the USSR, the impetus for a space race has disappeared. No nation is willing to spend large sums of money exploring space without the threat of a rival beating them to it.

In light of this political reality, the exploration of other worlds seems to be permanently on hold. I do not envision this changing any time in the next couple decades. Although President George W. Bush called for the United States to return to the moon by 2020 and NASA stated that a permanent manned lunar base would be operational by 2024, it is highly unlikely that these goals will be fulfilled. The US is simply not motivated to do so.

Additionally, the economics of space travel have changed significantly since the Apollo missions. Due to advances in computer technology, it is now much cheaper to send robots to explore other worlds than it is to send human astronauts. Robots don’t need food, water, and air to keep them alive, and don’t need a return trip to earth. They can do almost everything a human astronaut can do, and can wirelessly transmit the data back home. Indeed, NASA has had some great achievements exploring our solar system, but the pioneers have all been robots.

It is possible that the private sector will be able to pick up part of the slack left by governments. SpaceShipOne, the first privately-owned spacecraft, claimed the Ansari X Prize in 2004. However, private space travel will never progress beyond orbital missions for super-rich adventure-seekers until there are some fundamental breakthroughs in rocketry. It currently costs $10,000 to send one pound into orbit, because rocket fuel itself is responsible for 90% of the weight of a rocket. As long as fossil fuels are the standard propulsion technology, human space travel will continue to be unaffordable for most people. Futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku suggests that rockets could be powered by lasers instead of by fuel. Lasers on earth could fire at a water tank, vaporizing the water and propelling a rocket upward. Since the thrust would come from the ground instead of the rocket itself, it would eliminate the need for fuel and make rocketry 10 times more efficient.

Although this technique has been demonstrated to work in prototypes, it will be a long time before it can be applied to something as large as a rocket. Although many emerging technologies few people have imagined will suddenly take us by surprise, I think that space travel is something that will continue to disappoint us for many years.

PREDICTIONS:

As of 2025 – No human being has set foot on the moon since the Apollo missions.

As of 2035 – No human being has ever set foot on Mars.

State of the Union Analysis

President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address was one of the most future-oriented addresses to Congress in recent memory, despite proposing relatively few new ideas. Although the speech consisted mostly of the same policy recommendations that could have been given by any Democratic politician of the last two decades, the things the president chose to emphasize offer some hints to the direction the United States is heading.

I felt that the first half of the speech dealing with domestic policy was far stronger than the foreign policy section. President Obama hit most of the key policy ideas that will dominate American politics in the coming decades, referring several times to “investing in the future.” As America’s infrastructure crumbles and its education system falls behind that of other nations, viewing this type of spending as an investment rather than an expense is absolutely essential for our future wellbeing. President Obama mentioned his National Broadband Plan for the second year in a row. Although it is a welcome step in the right direction, it is woefully inadequate at meeting the needs of a 21^st century economy. If the goals are met, broadband coverage in the United States in 2020 will be about the same as South Korea has today. Additionally, President Obama failed to take a firm stand on net neutrality or wireless carrier oligopolies, which have made the United States one of the least efficient countries in the developed world in telecommunications.

The President touched on our need for a new energy policy, referring to it as our “Sputnik moment” which is absolutely essential for the long-term success of the United States. I was pleased to hear him voice support for nuclear power, and continued subsidies of solar and wind power. The biggest flub from this section was his continued advocacy of biofuels, which have largely been discredited as an economical, environmentally-friendly form of energy. Biofuels sound to me more like an excuse for agricultural subsidies than a serious energy proposal.

President Obama hit a positive note on education, where he signaled a willingness to break with the teachers' unions, which have begun to fall out of favor with many Democrats. He touted the success of his Race to the Top Initiative, which has been the most progressive piece of education legislation in decades, and urged Congress to replace No Child Left Behind with an initiative that encouraged educational innovation. There were a couple areas of education policy that I would have liked to hear the president mention: online schools and charter schools. Although both are in their infancy and have problems which will need to be solved, mentioning them would have fit quite nicely with his theme of investing in the future, which will certainly not be dominated by traditional brick-and-mortar schools giving students standardized curricula.

President Obama’s calls for bipartisan deficit reduction were a bit difficult to take seriously, since neither political party has shown any real interest in the subject. The US structural deficit is only a problem inasmuch as it is larger than our rate of economic growth. President Obama proposed an ill-advised five-year discretionary spending freeze (which doesn’t square very well with his “investing in the future” theme, or the fact that we still have extremely high unemployment) but did not offer any substantial cuts to entitlements. He called for modest income tax increases after 2012, which will certainly be opposed by Republican members of Congress. President Obama’s deficit reduction commission offered a series of centrist proposals and compromises to reduce the size of the deficit, but the president mentioned almost none of them. I think that Obama's deficit reduction pledge was one of those promises that presidents make during State of the Union addresses that are forgotten a few weeks later...and perhaps that is for the best.

The foreign policy section of the speech was mostly boilerplate rhetoric, and provided a very odd contrast to the high-flying futuristic vision of the domestic policy section. The president could have continued the theme of investing in the future (for example, by offering more humanitarian assistance to African and South Asian nations) but instead chose to focus primarily on the same trouble spots that have dominated US foreign policy for a decade: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Although he offered nothing substantively different from his previous policies, he did have the foresight to point out that the real danger of terrorist groups comes not from a repeat of 9/11 or isolated bombings, but from weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear proliferation poses the greatest short-term threat from terrorists, by far.

It was disappointing to hear the president utter not a single word about the chronic crisis in Israel and Palestine, indicating that he has given up on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a potential peacemaker. To make matters worse, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has no legitimacy in the eyes of his people, and lacks the political ability to agree to a compromise. It is time for some creative thinking on the subject. Efforts are afoot at the United Nations to establish a unilateral peace agreement which could be imposed on all parties in the conflict. Although this certainly would not bring about peace in the Middle East immediately, it would change the dialog from prodding both nations to compromise (which they have been unable to do for nearly 50 years), to instead urging them to adhere to the UN-imposed peace plan. Unfortunately, such an effort has no chance of success without at least the tacit approval of the United States. If the next 50 years in the Middle East are to be brighter than the past 50 years, President Obama will need to think outside the box about how to help the region establish peace.

Perhaps the most outside-the-box foreign policy idea the president mentioned was his statement that the United States “supports the democratic aspirations of all people,” in reference to the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia. Although this notion has been well-established for some time in theory, it has not always been the case in practice, and under the circumstances I was surprised to hear it in the State of the Union address. But supporting democracy in an inconsequential global backwater is one thing. As the Tunisian unrest spreads to key US-aligned countries like Egypt and Yemen, it remains to be seen if the president will support the democrats, although the early signs are encouraging.

Overall, the policy prescriptions in the State of the Union were mostly good ideas that can potentially garner the bipartisan support they will need to become law. The speech itself, while very progressive and futuristic, was somewhat uninspiring. The biggest disappointments came not in what Obama said, but in what he didn’t say. Perhaps the State of the Union address is not the ideal forum for floating trial balloons of creative new ideas, but if Obama is serious about investing in the future at home and abroad, he will need to develop more innovative solutions of his own than what he offered on Tuesday night.

Political Issues on the Horizon, Part 2

In my last entry, I explored two political issues that I expect to grow in importance in the United States over the next decade: privacy and bioethics. Today the focus is on two issues which already have a firm hold on the political landscape, but will nevertheless continue to evolve and grow in importance.

Terrorism. Ever since 9/11, American political discussions about terrorism have tended to boil down to two main components: Airport security and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that either component has actually done anything to prevent terrorism. Changes in airport security have been less about improving safety than creating the illusion of heightened security for travelers. And the grossly mismanaged wars have succeeded only in pushing terrorism across an arbitrary national border (in the case of Afghanistan) or actively creating terrorists where they were not previously a problem (in the case of Iraq). With these issues so completely dominating the discussion of how to fight terrorism, little attention has been given to important questions, such as how to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists, and how to quickly respond to a WMD terrorist attack to minimize the devastation.

In the future, the United States will not have the luxury of being able to ignore these questions. Today’s terrorists typically have access to only the crudest weapons: bombs capable of killing, at most, a few hundred people. Spectacular attacks like 9/11 are vanishingly rare, making the current level of funding, military commitment, and political capital spent on terrorism vastly disproportionate to the actual problem. But it remains to be seen how long that will be the case. Weapons of mass destruction may soon be available to terrorists, which could pose a much more serious danger than traditional terrorist attacks. The most worrying threat in the near future is nuclear proliferation, as a growing number of unstable regimes acquire nuclear weapons. In the slightly more distant future, biological weapons may pose an even greater danger to the world, as the necessary ingredients and know-how will be available to nearly any university student. Governments need to begin developing serious plans for how to minimize the spread of weapons of mass destruction, or failing that, rapid response plans after a massive terror attack. To date, the United States has done neither.

As a political issue, I worry that debates over terrorism will continue to be dominated by those seeking to eliminate "terrorism" as a concept, with conservatives favoring an aggressive foreign policy to combat known terrorist havens, and liberals preferring more targeted nation-building efforts to eliminate the conditions in which terrorists typically arise (e.g. poverty and lawlessness). While this debate is not entirely unproductive, it is of secondary importance since terrorist attacks are relatively rare anyway. My hope is that the debate will shift from how to prevent "terrorism" as a whole, to how to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. This is a much more focused and achievable goal. But regardless of how the debate evolves, terrorism does not seem likely to disappear from the political landscape anytime soon.

Globalization. 20 years after the end of the Cold War and 15 years after the birth of e-commerce, it is almost a cliché to say that the world is becoming more interconnected. The nations of the world depend on one another more than ever. Wars between national governments are on a terminal decline, as the cost of waging these wars (in terms of being cut off from neighboring markets) continues to grow relative to the benefits. Many developing countries have found that globalization is the quickest path to economic development, with many hundreds of millions of Indians and Chinese escaping poverty in the last 20 years.

Many nations are seeing strong political backlashes against globalization. In the United States, this has manifested itself in debates over immigration and outsourcing. There does not seem to be any clear-cut ideological division on globalization. Traditionally, the Democratic Party has been friendlier toward immigration, and the Republican Party has been more receptive toward free trade, despite the fact that these policies are two sides of the same coin, pitting globalists against nationalists. However, even within these policies, the partisan lines are blurry: some Democratic politicians have been staunch supporters of free trade (including President Bill Clinton) and some Republican politicians have been ardent defenders of open immigration (including President George W. Bush).

As developing countries open up their markets and continue to grow richer, and rich countries become more dependent on economic rivals like China, the debate over globalization will continue to grow louder. The specific objections will vary depending on the specific policy: In some cases the opposition will be fueled by concerns over environmentalism, and other times by fears of rising income inequality. In some cases, nations may not like the fact that their economic well-being is so dependent upon their trading partners' policies, with economic problems in one nation spilling over to others. In 1999, labor activists in Seattle successfully disrupted a meeting of the World Trade Organization, largely motivated by fears that their jobs would be outsourced.

As globalization grows in importance as a political issue, it is likely that the advocates and opponents of globalization will firmly drag the political parties toward opposing viewpoints. One party will probably come to represent open immigration and trade, while the other becomes more nationalistic and inward-looking. At the present time, it is difficult to determine which party will be which.

In my next entry, I will look at two political issues which I think will fade in importance over the next decade.

The Future of Energy: Solar Power Is Coming

The amount of energy the earth receives from the sun each year is more than 10,000 times the total energy needs of all humans on earth. We cannot effectively harness even such a paltry fraction of the sun’s energy yet. In 2008, less than 0.02% of the global energy supply came from solar energy. In most parts of the world, solar energy is simply too expensive. Carbon-based energy such as oil and coal still provide a cheaper alternative, even while harming our environment. Solar energy currently costs about 38 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with only 5 cents per kWh for oil and less than 1 cent per kWh for coal. Government taxes and subsidies typically reduce this cost disparity slightly, but not enough to make solar energy viable for most people.

Fortunately, this will soon change. Photovoltaic solar cells are typically made of silicon: the same material in computer chips. Engineers cannot shrink the solar panels in the same way that they can shrink transistors, because solar panels need to have a large surface area to absorb as much sunlight as possible. However, they can make the panels themselves more efficient and shrink the thickness of the panels. As a result, solar energy appears to be on a Moore’s Law-like trajectory of its own. Approximately every 18 months, the total solar capacity doubles and the cost falls by 20%. Up until now, this hasn’t been noticeable because it is such a small portion of our overall energy supply. Doubling a small number is still a small number.

However, if this trend continues, solar energy will be able to supply virtually 100% of the earth’s energy needs by 2035. Some observers are even more optimistic, predicting that solar energy will cost about the same as carbon-based energy by 2015. They theorize that after 2015, the capacity of solar energy could increase much more quickly, as consumer demand for solar energy makes it very lucrative and the industry explodes. Other observers are more skeptical; some question whether solar energy is really on Moore’s Law-like pattern of exponential growth at all, suggesting that this recent trend could be caused by other factors.

I think it’s quite clear that solar power will continue to grow at an exponential rate, since manufacturing solar panels requires many of the same techniques that drive the reduction in cost of computer chips. But I wouldn’t count on the industry suddenly exploding in popularity as soon as solar energy becomes slightly cheaper than oil and coal. It’s important to remember that solar energy is not a commodity like oil that can be traded globally. The costs will be much lower in deserts and other sunny areas. By the end of this decade, we may see the American Southwest and Southern Europe starting to switch to solar power, while other regions lag behind, using oil and coal for much longer.

Moving away from fossil fuels will be the single most important step we can take to stop making climate change worse (although much of the damage will already be done, and will continue to accumulate for decades after the switch). An international economy that was not reliant on oil would be much more stable for global security. Many of the biggest potential threats to international stability come from oil-rich regimes, where money from oil exports often funds extremist groups or large militaries that destabilize the region. Furthermore, solar energy prices would be much more predictable than oil. Unlike oil, there would be no maximum amount of energy available; new solar panels could always be added and older panels could be improved, ensuring that the price continued to drop. They would drop at a roughly consistent rate, rather than fluctuating wildly from one year to the next as oil does. Eventually, the energy cost in nearly all products will be virtually eliminated, as solar energy becomes cheaper and cheaper.

Most people look back over recent history and find it difficult to imagine that energy prices will ever go down - just look at gas prices today compared to a decade ago! But in reality, the past decade is an exception, caused by the rapid development of China and India just as we reached peak oil production. In the long term, the broad trend has been for energy costs to decline. Solar energy will ensure that that trend continues for decades to come.

PREDICTIONS:
By 2025 – In the United States, solar energy is cheaper than oil on average, on a per kilowatt-hour basis.
By 2035 – The global oil trade is less than 25% the size that it is in 2010 (approximately $2.1 trillion), adjusted for inflation.

The Future of Education: Effective Distance Learning

The year is 2025. Moseka, a 5^th grade Congolese girl living in Kinshasa, uses her tablet computer to access her interactive learning software from the cloud. It is capable of accessing any book in the world, watching high-definition videos of her instructors, and tracking her progress. Her tablet is a lower-end model – only a thousand times more powerful than the iPads of 2010. She doesn’t worry about it breaking; they are as cheap as scrap paper, and only slightly thicker.

Although Moseka is fluent in French and English as a result of her lessons, she still prefers to learn in her native Lingala. There is an entire library of online courses available in Lingala, complete with ratings from previous students and parents. Unlike the online classes in the United States of the late 1990s and 2000s, which were largely inferior to in-person education, Moseka’s classes are among the best of the best. Many of the best educators in the Congo (as well as everywhere else in the world) have become celebrities in their country, reaching thousands of pupils at a time. The old model of online education, which was mainly confined to reading text on a desktop computer screen and submitting homework assignments digitally, has mostly been replaced by interactive software and tablet computers which make the classes much more productive and engaging. Moseka doesn't have any physical textbooks; she can easily access them from the cloud on her tablet whenever she needs them. These e-books are not merely electronic copies of books that exist in the physical world. They are full of video clips, learning games, and customization.

Like most of her friends, Moseka has only ever seen schools in old American cartoons. This is not because of her location; she has lots of friends in the United States and Europe who have never set foot in a school either. What is the point of going to an old building to learn from a local teacher, she wonders, when she can learn whatever she wants to learn, whenever she wants, from some of the best instructors in the world? Her parents and friends all seem to agree, as do the governments of most nations. Nearly everyone has access to a good education now. Ubiquitous computing has eliminated the need to waste money on school buildings, and created the economies of scale necessary for the cost per pupil to drop to nearly nothing.

However, Moseka’s education is not impersonal just because her instructor has many students. Large class sizes are mostly irrelevant now that brick-and-mortar schools are a thing of the past; in fact, Moseka likes having a huge network of classmates whom she can turn to for help. Whenever she gets stuck on her lessons, she first turns to some older girls to help her (and likewise, she helps her younger brother with his schoolwork). If she is still confused, she can ask her class for help. With so many classmates, someone else is almost always having the same problem…and someone almost always knows the answer. Intelligent software can easily match these students with one another.

Moseka is excited about her future. In much of the developing world, her generation will be the first that has the opportunity to use their abilities to change the world. She wants to be a teacher, confident that she’ll be just as successful as the teaching superstars who instruct her today. And due to the new education paradigm, she very well might be.

PREDICTIONS:
By 2025 - Youth literacy rates exceed 90% in both Sub-Saharan Africa (up from 72% in 2008) and South Asia (up from 79% in 2008). Gender disparities in literacy have mostly disappeared; the global female youth literacy rate is no less than 98% of the male youth literacy rate (up from 94% in 2008).
By 2025 - Fewer than 75% of students in the United States physically attend a school on a daily basis.

The Economics of Happiness

The underlying assumption of modern economics has always been the notion that having more things makes people better off. Economists of all ideologies - from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, from John Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman - have implicitly accepted this assumption, even while arguing with one another over the best way to optimize the production or distribution of things. In the last few years, an emerging field of economic theory, Happiness Economics, is finally challenging that assumption. By asking people in many different nations, economic conditions, and social groups if they are happy with their lives, economists are yielding some very interesting results.

Can money buy happiness? It turns out that it can, but only up to a point. In the United States, the poor are far less happy than everyone else, but there is no significant difference in self-reported happiness between the middle-class and the wealthy. Although the American economy is vastly larger today than it was immediately after World War II, self-reported happiness levels have remained stagnant. This pattern is observed on a global scale as well. The least happy places on earth are typically impoverished, war-torn nations, but the wealthiest nations are not necessarily any happier than middle-income nations. Once a nation is economically developed enough to meet the basic needs of its citizens, the relationship between national income and national happiness ceases to exist. (EDIT: Some researchers disagree, claiming that more income does indeed tend to result in more happiness.)

The happiest nation in the world is Costa Rica, which has a GDP per capita that is less than one-fourth that of the United States, and an average life expectancy that is roughly the same as the United States’. This pattern is widespread in Latin America. Although most Latin American nations are middle-income nations, the region as a whole is extremely happy. The opposite pattern manifests itself in Eastern Europe and Russia. These nations are upper-middle income, but report extremely low levels of subjective happiness.

So if money can’t buy happiness, what causes people to be happy or unhappy? Research indicates that married people are happier than single people, religious people are happier than non-religious people, and those with more leisure time are happier than workaholics. People who donate their time and money to charity are happier than those who don’t.

On the national level, there does not appear to be any relationship between political freedom and happiness, once income is controlled for. Some of the happiest nations – such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia – are hardly poster children for democracy and human rights. National happiness seems to be driven primarily by the same factors that drive individual happiness: Happy marriages, active religions, workers who have leisure time, a culture of charity, and enough income to avoid poverty.

In 1972, the King of Bhutan coined the term “Gross National Happiness” as his preferred metric for judging his nation’s progress. Although it was ridiculed at the time, tiny Bhutan is now one of the happiest nations on earth: an enclave of happiness nestled between much less happy nations like China, India, and Bangladesh. Many other nations are now investigating “Gross National Happiness” metrics of their own, including Brazil, Italy, and Canada. Maybe the economics of happiness is an idea whose time has finally come. Perhaps future economists can focus less on what maximizes our wealth, and more on what maximizes our well-being.

The Satisfaction with Life Index. Blue countries are the happiest, red countries are the least happy.

Black Swan Events: Nuclear War and Nuclear Terrorism

In my new Black Swan series of blog posts, I will be looking at a few of the potential surprises that history could have in store for us. Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines a Black Swan as an event that is very difficult to predict in advance, but radically changes the course of history. Some examples in the last 50 years include 9/11, the sudden collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War, the AIDS pandemic, and the invention of the birth control pill. It would have been very difficult for a futurist to predict any of those events in advance based on trends, and yet they have had a very large impact on the world. A Black Swan Event could throw a wrench into predictions for the future, which tend to be based on analyzing trends rather than anticipating surprises.

All of the predictions I have made about the future of technology, especially those in the more distant future, should have the following disclaimer: “Provided that we do not destroy ourselves.” Today I’ll be examining a Black Swan event that has been hanging over humanity like a Sword of Damocles for 65 years. A nuclear war has been widely viewed as the ultimate catastrophe. Very few things could set back the progress we have made in improving the quality of life in the past two centuries more than a nuclear war could. Where is the greatest threat of a nuclear war, and where is the greatest potential for destruction? Could a sovereign nation launch a nuclear first-strike against its foes, or are nuclear-armed terrorists the greater threat?

Let’s first examine the potential sources of an international nuclear war. While less likely than a nuclear terrorist attack, it has far more destructive capability. I think there are three main global flash points to consider: India-Pakistan, North Korea-United States, and Israel-Iran.

As with any Black Swan Events, we need to evaluate scenarios based upon both their likelihood and their destructive potential. The India-Pakistan flash point is very high on both measures, making it of supreme importance. This region has the greatest potential for an international nuclear war in my opinion. The two foes have 60-80 nuclear weapons each, and neither seems to have many qualms about nuclear brinkmanship. The extreme population density in this part of the world means that even a single nuclear volley could have enormous destructive potential. Despite (or perhaps because of) the instability of the Pakistani government, the two nations remain as suspicious of each other as ever.

North Korea is another source of a potential nuclear war. The nation makes a habit of antagonizing nearly every other country in the world, projecting an irrational image, and seems to perpetually be on the verge of either a power transfer or total collapse. In my opinion, the greater danger is an accidental nuclear launch against South Korea or Japan, rather than a directive from North Korea’s leadership. Little is known about North Korea’s nuclear weaponry, but it is unlikely that such an impoverished nation has adequate safeguards in place to prevent a Dr. Strangelove-style strike ordered by a rogue commander. If a North Korean weapon was used on South Korea or Japan, the United States would almost certainly respond with nuclear force of its own.

Another potential source of international conflict is between Israel and Iran. If Iran eventually gains nuclear weapons (as I think it will), either Iran or Israel may be tempted to strike the other first to solidify its position as the preeminent nuclear power in the Middle East. However, in my opinion conflict is unlikely, because neither Israel nor Iran would truly gain much from a nuclear exchange. It is far more likely that the two nations would come to an uneasy truce than fight a nuclear war.

But the greater danger comes from nuclear terrorism, rather than nuclear war. While far less destructive, it is also far more likely. Warren Buffett stated in 2002 that he believed an eventual nuclear attack on US soil was a “virtual certainty.” While I am not quite that pessimistic, it is hardly unthinkable.

Where could terrorists obtain nuclear weapons? Three nuclear powers – Russia, Pakistan, and North Korea – have had difficulty maintaining control of their stockpile, thus allowing the possibility of a nuclear black market. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the nuclear material was spread amongst four nations (Russia, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, and Belarus). A small amount of it has never been accounted for. It may still be changing hands on the black market. North Korea and Pakistan pose even greater threats. North Korea may be on the verge of total state collapse. If the nation collapses and the neighboring powers do not take immediate action to secure its nuclear supplies, it is plausible that terrorists could eventually gain access to this material. The Pakistani government is increasingly unstable, and many elements of the military are sympathetic to terrorist groups. Many parts of the nation are not controlled by the central government. Furthermore, Pakistani nuclear officials under A.Q. Khan have a history of selling nuclear material on the black market.

While the end of the Cold War greatly reduced the threat of a nuclear conflict, the trend has now reversed as nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, especially in unstable regimes. The use of nuclear weapons is becoming more likely with each passing year. While I doubt that any terrorist groups have access to nuclear weapons yet, I think the day is coming in the near future unless the world takes immediate action to reverse the trend.

BLACK SWAN EVENTS:
A nuclear weapon is detonated in a major world city by 2030 – Probability: 50%
A nuclear war (defined as a nuclear attack and counterattack) occurs by 2030 – Probability: 30%