Here is the full transcript of Zainab Usman’s talk titled “How Sci-Fi Informs Our Climate Future — and What to Do Next” at TED conference.
Political economist Zainab Usman’s talk, titled “How Sci-Fi Informs Our Climate Future — and What to Do Next,” delves into the intriguing parallels between science fiction narratives and current global challenges in combating climate change. Usman highlights how science fiction authors, despite their diverse backgrounds and traditions, converge on a common theme: a fragmented world struggling to unite against a universal threat.
Drawing examples from Cixin Liu’s “The Three-Body Problem” and George Orwell’s “1984,” she illustrates how these fictional worlds reflect our own geopolitical divisions, which could hinder collective action against climate change. Usman argues that the innovation and deployment of low-carbon technologies are concentrated in a few technologically advanced regions, exacerbating global inequalities.
She emphasizes the necessity of global cooperation, not only in technology transfer but also in establishing equitable commercial practices and global standards for sourcing strategic minerals. The talk concludes with a call to action for policymakers, business leaders, and intellectuals to prioritize long-term ecological balance and shared prosperity over short-term political and economic gains. Usman’s persuasive argument underscores the importance of collective action and global standards in addressing the multifaceted challenges of climate change.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
We don’t have to look far to see how humanity’s fight against climate change might play out. Science fiction authors from around the world, writing from different traditions, coalesce on one point: a divided world, unable to fight the common threat. In Cixin Liu’s “The Three-Body Problem” trilogy, the threat of aliens from a dying planet invading to conquer Earth does not bring humanity together.
Instead, a potent combination of fear, jingoism, and competition for scarce resources among countries fractures the world into competing geoeconomic blocs centered around three powers: the United States, China, and Europe. And none of these blocs succeed in staving off the alien invasion, with, as you can imagine, disastrous consequences for the survival of humanity. Sorry for the spoilers about the books.
The Realm of Fiction and Global Currents
In George Orwell’s “1984,” the world’s three superstates—Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia—fight each other in perpetuity in a disputed area located mostly around parts of Africa and the Middle East, where “the rest” reside. The realm of fiction is years ahead in anticipating important global currents. The International Monetary Fund’s “World Economic Outlook” describes an ongoing fragmentation of our global economy around four blocs: The United States, China, the European Union, and the rest. This geoeconomic fragmentation may seriously hinder our ability to fight climate change by affecting the collective will to fight it.
Because no individual, no group, and certainly no nation state is self-sufficient in all of the resources, the finances, and the manpower needed to reduce the rapid warming of our planet. We need collective action to invent and deploy at scale the technology solutions needed to reduce greenhouse gases in wealthy, high-emitting countries and to build systems in poorer, low-emitting countries to help them adapt to changing weather patterns. This is a three-part problem. Let us start with the technoeconomic spheres of innovation.
Innovation and Deployment
OK, I have to confess, even that is a mouthful for me. So let’s rephrase this a bit. Where in the world is innovation around low-carbon technologies happening? To slow down the speed of global warming, we need to deploy clean technology solutions around battery storage, renewable energy generation, etc., at scale in all reaches of the world. But the innovation around these crucial low-carbon technologies is happening in only a handful of countries. The world’s largest science and technology clusters, with the highest density of inventors and scientific authors, are concentrated in just three regions: North America, Europe, and Asia.
There is a danger here that the innovation and diffusion of these crucial low-carbon technologies will only happen among an exclusive group of allies, while excluding non-allies, especially the poorer countries. We are already seeing a trend of global public energy research and development budgets concentrated within these technoeconomic spheres of innovation: China, Europe, and the United States.
A second part of the problem is that we need to prioritize consumer gains and welfare. The commercialization of climate mitigation and adaptation technologies is essential for their global equitable deployment at scale.
Global Standards and Strategic Minerals
The mass production of clean energy hardware, electric vehicles, sustainable building materials, and so on will encourage their widespread use. Access to large export markets will result in higher quality products and the creation of green jobs at home. Competition among producer firms will help push down prices for consumers and help raise living standards across the board, including in poorer countries.
But if strict barriers to entry are placed on firms from rival geoeconomic blocs, there will be a cost to this lack of competition that is borne by ordinary people. Inefficiencies in the mass production of green technologies by firms with monopoly power in small but captive markets will neither reduce greenhouse gases nor improve people’s quality of life.
Imagine having to choose between maybe two or even one brand of highly overpriced electric vehicles or solar panels, when restrictions are placed on the imports of dozens of more affordable options from companies from around the world. This is the case currently with cell phones in some countries, where consumers are restricted to just two highly overpriced brands, or maybe even one.
A third issue is that we need global standards to govern the sourcing of strategic materials. Strategic minerals, such as cobalt, copper, nickel, and lithium, are essential components for the manufacturing of solar panels, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and other such clean energy, clean mobility hardware. These resources are nonrenewable. They are in finite supply and they are in high demand. By 2040, for instance, the demand for lithium is projected to grow 40-fold.