Yesterday I posted an actually-serious diary How To Save The World, where by "saving the world" I meant "preventing humanity's extinction". Briefly, there I reviewed the threats to our very survival which we face over the next century or so. (The scary part: these threats are not very unlikely.)
Here, I want to go back over what I suspect are the main threats (biological pandemics, AI, nuclear winter, climate change) in order to discuss what government response might help, including both legislation and action on the Executive Branch side. I'm interested in how we as citizens can positively and productively engage our government to make a difference, and I'm hoping yinz can help me learn of what's out there or what could be out there, since I imagine yinz know more about this than I do.
Note: This is an ongoing project. Drop me a line if you would like to try to help and we'll see how we can collaborate.
Update: Changing title from "Saving The World" to "Human Extinction". More clear, to the point. -July 7, 2007
First, I apologize for not having more info to present here. I must admit I've been reading more on the academic side of things than on the political side. I'm trying to avoid getting trapped in ye ole Ivory Tower, but I can't always get out as much as I'd like.
Copying from the original post, the biggest threats (as far as I can tell) are (in no particular order):
- Biological pandemic, whether human-engineered or not. This is perhaps the biggest immediate threat.
- Poorly designed artificial intelligence with capabilities surpassing ours, leaving us in the dust. Some suspect this may become an issue as soon as the 2020's. SIAI is working on this now to increase the odds of nothing tragic happening here. Given the trends, this may actually be the biggest concern.
- Nuclear winter. I sure hope we're unlikely to go that route, but it strikes me as at least possible.
- Runaway climate change. My impression of the state-of-the-art climate science is that we don't expect climate change to be so severe that we'd go extinct, but that we cannot yet rule this possibility out, especially given certain positive feedback mechanisms in the climate system. However, we may also be able to engage in geoengineering to avoid the worst consequences.
Biological pandemics: I imagine there should be some legislation out there, but I wouldn't know what. I'm also guessing that this is something addressed by one or more agencies under the Executive Branch (CDC, etc). Does anyone here know? If so, how's the legislation going and are the agencies doing a good job? ...I'm reminded of the bird flu matter or the recent TB scare. Any good evaluations of our response to these out there? This DK post on the HHS Bird Flu Blog is an interesting one. I hope to see similar such projects in the future, as I imagine they can be quite effective.
Artificial intelligence: There was a brief hearing in 2003 with Congressman Brad Sherman (link) but that's all I know of. Legislation here is very difficult because it remains a very speculative threat (the mainstream AI community generally avoids the matter). On the Executive side, it's probably somewhere in the defense/national security side of things, maybe DARPA, which we're probably pretty disconnected from, perhaps appropriately so. (See discussion of secrecy below.)
Nuclear winter: I'm loosely aware of various recent instances of nuclear proliferation, but I don't know as much of the details as I'd like. I believe the Federation of American Scientists are among if not the leaders on this issue. Newsweek had a nice graphic Where The Nukes Are Now in its recent edition. Also, this diary had some useful info and perspective. But is there any legislation currently on the table? The Quakers may have a good running list. This is of course a very delicate diplomatic matter and so, while we may be able to convey to our elected officials that we do not want wide-scale nuclear war (duh!), the best we can do may be to elect good diplomats and let them do their thing. Or am I wrong on this- are there further ways of being productively engaged?
Climate change: This is much more my area of expertise. I'm a big advocate for a carbon tax- see for example HR 2069, and I imagine cap-and-trade schemes would also work quite well. This is one area where I think "market-based solutions" can be very effective. Simply raising the cost of emissions will trigger a whole host of responses. (Of course, we'll have to watch for abuse- see for example the Planktos Controversy.) However, I wouldn't rely exclusively on such measures. While I'm not intimately familiar with the details, I'm generally impressed with what I see coming out of the Energize America effort. Also, while I haven't been able to follow the Farm Bill debates, I can only guess that the capacity exists to build in climate-friendly measures, given the huge role that agriculture plays in climate change. Anyone know more about that? Other legislation that can indirectly help mitigate climate change on a fairly large scale includes raising standards for livestock animal treatment and smart growth initiatives (although the latter is typically a local matter).
Last but not least, there are the "insurance policies", i.e. things we can do to prevent extinction from happening even if something really, really bad happened here. The Lifeboat Foundation plays off this idea, although their scope is more broad. Ideas include creating a refuge on Earth or even a colony in space for enough people to ensure sufficient genetic variability. For more on the Earth refuge idea, see p.10 of Robin Hanson's Catastrophe, Social Collapse, and Human Extinction (pdf). The space colonization scheme has been proposed by, among others, Stephen Hawking. Over the short-term (decades to centuries), the Earth refuge is likely the better option in both cost and feasibility; over the long-term (centuries and beyond), space colonization may be our best insurance, and also have some pretty sweet benefits- Dyson spheres, anyone? I don't know of any government action regarding such "insurance policies" other than the basic continuity of our space program. We should probably do more.
In the end, the best thing we may be able to do to help our government help prevent our extinction is to educate ourselves on the matter so that we can help pass word on to our elected officials, including by electing the right ones in the first place. The original post included a good recommended reading list at the end. Also in that spirit, anything we can do to improve education (including by focusing it on our important problems) may also be a big help. Lastly here, creating an agency, whether American or global, to study and act on these further would probably be great. I believe Posner proposed this idea in his book.
Also, I want to emphasize that certain matters here might do better if kept relatively secret. We're probably better off, for example, not having our nuclear secrets plastered online. I've thought twice about what I've written here and concluded that this sort of basic awareness is most likely helpful, but I would refrain from posting more delicate content if I had any (I don't) and I hope you would too. This does go somewhat against the spirit of open democracy and of scientific progress in knowledge, but if there was ever an instance where some secrecy would be beneficial, this would be it. Loosely-related: The DK secrets tag has some interesting posts.
So, that's all I've got on government response for saving the world/preventing humanity's extinction. I'll enjoy hearing your ideas, questions, and pointers to other happenings.