At the end of July, my Hope for the Future Index stood at -2. Let’s see if things got any better in August. As I did last month, I’ll sort selected posts that talk about positive trends and ideas vs. negative trends, predictions, and risks. Just for fun, I’ll keep a score card and pretend my posts are some kind of indicator of whether things are getting better or worse. I’ll give posts a score from -3 to +3 based on how negative or positive they are.

Negative trends and predictions (-8):

• The Ebola outbreak is very sad and scary. Some people are calling this a “dress rehearsal” for the “big one” that could actually threaten humanity more widely. (-1)
• New research on patents suggests that they have mixed effects, at best, in spurring innovation – they are effective in some industries (like drugs, chemicals, mechanical technology) but actually an impediment to innovation in others (like computers, electronics, medical technology). The former are examples of technologies with very clear “recipes” which can easily be copied, it seems to me, while the latter are complex and knowing how others have made them doesn’t necessarily mean you can make them easily. Another hypothesis would be that the computer industry just moves a lot faster, so knowing how somebody made something yesterday doesn’t help you compete with them, because they have already moved on to the next thing today. But if that is the case, should we be trying to speed up the slow industries rather than giving some players protections that slow or deter their potential competitors? (-0)
• The drought in the western United States is looking worse and worse. Is it the “new normal”, or is it just a really bad drought, as happens from time to time? Unfortunately we can only answer this question in retrospect, but it seems prudent to take action as though it were the new normal. Even if it turns out just to be a bad drought, it is clear that snow packs we used to rely on are melting and that we have mined groundwater unsustainably in many places. These are things that urgently need new management strategies – lack of rain is just adding insult to injury. On a slightly positive note, agricultural has adapted to change in the past and may be able to adapt again. (-1)
• In 1986 Ronald Reagan laid out a bold vision for complete elimination of nuclear weapons…which was interpreted by everyone else as a sign of him losing his mind. (-3)
• A few people are questioning the gospel of shareholder value as the only thing a company, its management and employees have any business caring about. Milton Friedman, if not exactly spinning in his grave, might have rolled over just an inch or two. But most people and companies still take it as…well…gospel. Noam Chomsky can explain pretty well why this is likely to lead our civilization to ruin – because the long-term “externalities” not being considered, which are costs to everyone for the next several generations, are much larger than the short-term financial profits being made by a few shareholders today. (-2)
• Cars – the more I think about it, the more I am coming to believe they are the root of all evil in our society, and they have to go. But a positive way of saying that is that we could really solve an enormous number of thorny, intertwined problems if we come up with better, cleaner, faster, cheaper, safer ways to get around, which really shouldn’t be hard! (-1)

Positive trends and predictions (+11):

• I discovered NetLogo, which is a programming language supposedly even children can learn and use to do dynamic simulations. Educational tools like this are critical if we want to build a new generation of system thinkers with any chance to solve our problems. (+3)
• There is new research on corridors and connectivity for wildlife habitat. This is important because we are not going to have many huge, interrupted reserves in the future and we need the connected patches and smaller reserves that remain, interspersed with the human-dominated landscape, to be as ecologically functional as possible. And it turns out that the human-dominated landscape itself does not have to be an ecological dead zone, but can actually be preferred by some wildlife such as some kinds of birds and bees (+1)
• David Cameron has announced a bold plan to make chemotherapy “a thing of the past” through accelerated genetic research. (+1)
• Elon Musk is trying to put sustainable colonies on Mars longer term as a hedge against human extinction, build cheap batteries for cheap electric cars and houses, build cheap solar panels to charge the batteries, and protect us against killer artificial intelligence. (+1)
• Vermont is adopting the Genuine Progress Indicator, a GDP alternative that adjusts for natural capital depletion. The World Economic Forum also has a nifty GDP alternative index. (+1)
• Grid parity for solar energy appears to be here, seriously for real this time. Economic mayhem for the business-as-usual fossil fueled utilities is likely to follow. (+3)
• Speaking of economic mayhem, cap and trade is going on in California! And looks like it is going to add to the cost of gas…ten cents or so. Just a reminder that consumers can either pay that, or choose to adjust their lifestyle ever so slightly to include ten cents less driving. (+1)
• A couple more fabulous science fiction technologies, which can be used for good or evil or none of the above, are here: virtual reality and remote control moths. (+0)

Hope for the Future Index (July 2014): -2

August 2014 change: -8 + 11 = +3

Hope for the Future Index (August 2014): +1

Wow, we’re in positive territory people!