Introducing Schema 2020

There's a train coming and we are standing in its way. (video) We need to recognise our problems, establish our goals, and implement a change.  We need Schema 2020.

Schema 2020

  • Comprehensive solutions addressing prerequisites for healthy, secure and happy societies
  • Evaluism, capitalism with value to society and ecology monetised, motivating resource-efficiency & stability
  • Sumucracy, a governing structure motivating knowledgeable decision-making & providing continuous feedback
  • SpaceSolar Power, Reticulus, IntegralFarms and other integrated, highly efficient and environmentally neutral solutions
  • Blueprints to implement the solutions we need and activism to approach governments, public figures and spread the word

Current Events

It is broadly apparent that our world is experiencing major challenges including economic and environmental problems along with resource scarcity, and that these challenges are going to become more severe. Primary economic problems encompass the global financial crisis, high unemployment rates, and major imbalances in trade. Environmental problems include pollution, climate change, species extinction, and the collapse of ecosystems. Resource scarcities include energy, fresh water, and arable land. While politicians offer promises of a better tomorrow, nobody is discussing what has gone wrong, how steps being taken ensure an improvement, or indeed, how any of the problems that everyone can see exist are to be solved.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

Our lives are filled with promises, many of which are delusional. Such promises include the promise to end the credit-rooted financial crisis by issuing more credit, the promise to end wars and terrorism by waging more wars, the promise to meet unsustainable energy requirements by making more energy available for unsustainable purposes, etc. It is clear that such self-contradictory promises can never be delivered and the avoidance of fundamental issues is wasting time and diminishing our remaining chances for success.

The sad truth is that unsustainable living will end when we lose the ability to burn our legacy of fossil carbon for energy. This will happen in the lives of those already living. Promises of solutions to challenges that do not take this into account are empty promises and can never be delivered upon.

It is an inescapable reality that the production of alternatives from less concentrated resources than fossil fuel will take energy too, and if left until it is too late there will not be sufficient energy available to sustain civilization and develop alternatives. Everything else that we need, have and do is dependent upon energy availability, and a failure here will result in deaths on a hitherto unimaginable scale, either through a lack of affordable energy and its consequences or in the form of wars over diminishing resources.

From the Red Queen's Race to A Paradigm Shift

Earth is fixed in its size and resources. Our exponentially growing population, living on this fixed-size planet, the only one we have, requires exponentially increasing resources. We have known for centuries that exponential growth in consumption of fixed resources is not sustainable, and will come to a halt sooner or later, whether we like it or not. Nearly half a century ago we recognized that the human population of Earth had already become unsustainable. Unfortunately, efforts to face these realities stalled and today our population is 3 to 4 times that of the seventies, resources further depleted, and solutions further away than ever.

In order to solve fundamental problems, a major paradigm shift, starting with our value systems, is necessary.

Politicians have a short term outlook, to their next election, which doesn't encourage thinking about the long term. Societies that don't value their common good above the individual good will see their commons overgrazed. When a society can be distracted from insisting on sustainability, it will be. When wealth is perceived as a continuous increase in consumption, yet measured by scarcity, overconsumption will lead to scarcity. With such contradictions at its core, inevitable collisions with reality will devastate our systems and will probably lead to wars that nobody sane wants and yet which we seem incompetent to avoid. Like our unsustainable populations, our unsustainable perceptions need to change. Like any spendthrift, we need to recognise our problems, establish what our goals are and how to achieve them, and implement a program to institute real change designed to prevent repetition of the problem.

Pinning the Tail to the Donkey

Schema 2020 introduces a program enabling individuals to create change by approaching governments with concrete and comprehensive plans. Schema 2020 proposes a strategy which, if implemented urgently as a global coordinated effort, can lead us to a sustainable civilization making it possible, even at this late stage, to stop our headlong slide to destruction. Such change will not only succeed at avoiding the worst consequences for ourselves and our children, but will, for the first time ever, enable children to inherit an Earth in a better condition than their parents received it.

Plans, however comprehensive, are not enough. Books, however clever, are not enough. We need change for the better and we need change for the better now. Schema 2020 can be improved. We know that. Arguments can be made for and against its proposals. Discussion is needed on how best to implement strategies. We know that too. Which is why Schema 2020 is much more than a book. It is also a discussion forum and a challenge to those who object to the proposals made, to improve on them. It is a mechanism to demand that when politicians discuss our money, our families and our future, that they work to ensure that there is a future and that it is a future we would want. It is a measuring tool to evaluate our progress towards a sustainable tomorrow that reduces the likelihood of cheating. Most of all it is a demand that we do better than merely repeat the long sad history of human civilizations: establishment, development, growth and fall, recognizing that war is too dangerous, and resources too strained to be able to leave our descendants a legacy of a scorched earth that they need to rebuild. If we want our descendants to have the opportunity to enjoy a better, happier civilization then we need Schema 2020.

The choice is ours

Schema 2020 enables individuals to create change by approaching governments with concrete and comprehensive plans.

A Fundamental Framework

Schema 2020 is a fundamental framework. It establishes a "big picture" and identifies requirements needed to enable the development of viable solutions. Constraints are determined and described, for example, the requirement for a nett energy return, not just a financial return including subsidies, for any energy solutions; the need to minimize waste in everything we do and the need to minimise and manage harmful side effects and waste products.

Already Identified Solutions

Schema 2020 proposes solutions for major problems. Schema 2020 focuses on viable answers using existing technologies and taking resource and other constraints as well as costs into account. Schema 2020 shows how we can instantiate and pay for solutions and where we should be applying our efforts in order to achieve a long-term future for our children and for mankind. Schema 2020 will be published in 2010 as a book, “Schema 2020 – The Way Out”, and as related web sites.

A World-Wide Community Effort

Schema 2020 brings together a world-wide community of like-minded individuals, intent on establishing a new paradigm of sustainability and seeing it implemented. It provides the community with a platform and methodology for collectively developing already identified solutions, and for co-developing solutions for other problem areas. The first step is the current website “Schema 2020 – The Way Out”.

Our turn

Schema 2020 establishes mechanisms to address immediate needs as well as to instigate programs intended to ensure availability of capital needed to prolong resource availability and ensure the satisfaction of critical needs (water, food and housing), preventing the collapse of social stability.

Focus Areas

“Schema 2020 – The Way Out” focuses attention on solutions to critical problems facing civilization based on a realization of the foundation levels, "Safety" and "Physiological", of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

End the Waste

Over 70% of the electric energy we produce is wasted before it reaches the consumer and another 75% is wasted by the consumer. Over 50% of the food we produce goes directly to waste. Over 50% of the fertilizer we apply is worse than wasted, it contributes to the eutrophication of water resources. And so on. We need to stop waste because every savings we make will reduce the resources we require and the environmental impact of our activities. 

End the Wars

Humanity is much too good at fighting to risk further large scale wars. The greatest threat to global peace and stability is the likelihood of wars over resources, particularly water, food and energy. Even in the absence of wars, military related expenditures yield no return while decreasing resources and thus stability. Even if, resource wars do not engulf the planet, no war in history has ever increased available resources. This means that wars fought over resources increase the probability of subsequent resource wars, establishing a positive feedback loop. At this stage, resource wars are all but inevitable. The sustainable population has been calculated as being less than 2 billion people globally and 200 million people in the United States.

To prevent resource wars we need to persuade people globally that solutions are possible and that it is in their best interests to subscribe to delivering these solutions. People need to be persuaded that we can safely redirect energy and resources away from war and preparations for war, and instead invest in activities increasing per capita resource availability, reducing the impetus to resource wars and so increasing security for everyone. Achieving this goal means: allocating resources fairly; reducing waste, temporarily increasing resources available to mankind; developing resources to replace those depleted or too hazardous to continue exploiting; and, acting voluntarily to reduce human populations to sustainable levels. Persuading people that this must, and is, happening will require the provision of tangible benefits, guarantees of mutual assistance and involvement, and structures intended to guarantee transparency. Schema 2020 provides a blueprint for such structures.

Quick Fixes

Schema 2020 examines problems and solutions in terms of the urgent and the important, prioritizing them such that immediate fixes to urgent problems do not cause greater problems later. Recognizing that the world continues to hover on the verge of a financial catastrophe, Schema 2020 establishes mechanisms to address immediate needs as well as to instigate programs intended to ensure availability of capital needed to prolong resource availability and ensure the satisfaction of critical needs (water, food and housing), preventing the collapse of social stability.

Long-Term Solutions

"Sustainable" means that the human population lives with our planet rather than off our planet. We need to reduce populations to sustainable levels, we need to re-engineer our way of living, cities, suburbs, manufacturing and food production methods and transport systems, to co-exist with the animal and plant populations around us. We need easy access to space and space-based power and an end to wasteful wars. Schema 2020 addresses these challenges in a direct and invigorating style, proposing concrete solutions with detailed justifications, exploding many of the myths driving current investment into perpetuating failed models dependent on scarce resources with limited availability.

Everything is possible...

Schema 2020 is for people who want to take control over their own today in order to create a happy tomorrow for themselves and their children. 

Target Audience

While politicians offer promises of a better tomorrow, nobody is discussing what has gone wrong, how steps being taken ensure an improvement, or indeed, how any of the problems that everyone can see exist, are to be solved.

Schema 2020 is for parents who love their children and grand children, and would like them to have a future worth living. Schema 2020 is for everyone who sees that our world is having problems, and wants to know about real and attainable solutions. Schema 2020 is for everyone who wants a future that is not clouded by resource wars and the potential for the end of our civilization or even extinction, implicit in any widespread war today. Schema 2020 is for those who do not trust that invisible beings or forces will come to rescue us from the mess we have made of our planet. Schema 2020 is for people who want to take control over their own today in order to create a happy tomorrow for themselves and their children. 

Authors

The authors are writting this book primarily because they are fathers and, just like most other fathers, they want their children to have the best possible future. Active in engineering, scientific and economic fields, they have been thinking and working on the Schema 2020 concepts for over forty years. Various events in their lives such as the collapse of Soviet Union and the end of apartheid in South Africa, finally brought many of the pieces together. Schema 2020 has been facilitated by the Internet and virtual world technologies. Schema 2020 is a collaboration of ideas, collected over many dimensions of time and space, and organized into a blueprint to provide everyone with a better future.

Definitely not the simplest of roads...

The name “Schema 2020” is derived from the desire to make our civilization sustainable by 2020 as it is hard to imagine that we could extend our current unsustainable ways much beyond that point in time.

Table of Contents

Summary - Answers in Short

 video: Introduction 

Schema 2020 presented in a concise manner and illustrated graphically for a very quick overview of the rest of the book.

Section 1 - Alternative Futures

This section of the book lays out the pathways that our civilization may take, and what this might mean.

1.1 Anarchy, chaos, and collapseAnarchy, chaos

As resources necessary to sustain modern wasteful civilization dwindle, and society’s organizational structures weaken, people will fight for their own survival with whatever means they have available at any cost to the common good. As there are already insufficient resources to sustain the existing population which is sustained by 3 centuries of fossil fuelled growth, this will be accompanied by a massive and catastrophic loss of life and the destruction of resources required for any kind of future.

1.2 The Planned War of Depopulation

Planned WarPlans to systematically eliminate large portions of human population through deliberate actions have existed since at least the mid 1970s, as modelling shows that this might provide the best possible outcome for survivors as the use of Neutron weapons ("Capitalist bombs") which kill people without destroying materials are intended to cause less destruction of resources than anarchic scenarios..

1.3 Deus Ex MachinaDeus Ex Machina

Abandoning effort in the hope that someone, somewhere, will solve all our problems for us; be it aliens riding on comets, mad scientists experimenting in secluded laboratories, the return of gods, prophets, harvesters of humans, and such forth, proposed by various religions. Should the multiple "prophecies" fail to occur, this will probably accelerate the inevitable collapse into one of the other more aggressive failure modes, anarchy, chaos and collapse; or the planned war of depopulation.

1.4 Schema 2020Schema 2020

A concious, systematic and scientific approach to take our civilization from the current unsustainable path to a sustainable one by 2020 as proposed in this book.

Section 2 - Schema 2020: The Way Out

This section of the book deals with "Schema 2020" exclusively.

2.1 The Main Principles

The fundamental principles of minimum waste, maximum efficiency, life cycle approach, minimum harm, population management are essentially Common Sense, but for one reason or another, have been largely forgotten. We need to re-establish these principles to form a solid basis for all of the following chapters.

2.2 Society, Population Control

Nature no longer has the means to control the size of the burgeoning human population. Our failure to take-up when nature failed has us dying in a cess pool of our own wastes and burning through the resources mankind requires for the future. The size of our planet is fixed, we either need to limit the consuming population via humane methods, or we need to break out of the box and establish ourselves in space. Otherwise, when exponential growth meets a fixed limiter, there's a major problem.

2.3 Governing Structures

The failure of existing systems of governance to optimise human activities and our environment is manifest. The battered environment, rapidly diminishing resources, ever increasing size of long unsustainable populations and tattered shreds of the global economic system bear testimony to the extent of the systematic failure of systems. Even if people have difficulty agreeing on replacements, they can agree that the current systems, from autocracies to kleptocracies via oligarchies and hypocracies have indubitably proved to be less than ideal.

People can also agree that a system whereby decisions are taken by people who know something about the subject and who care about those affected by government would be superior to a system run by know- and care-nothings. Schema 2020 suggests such a system.

2.4 Security Measures, Insurance and Social Safetynets

video: Invalidating War

Global leaders and recognised intellectuals have recognised that the world has become far too dangerous for widespread warfare, yet we have not advanced very far in eliminating the threat of such wars at all. Today the countries of the world still expend vastly more money on so called defense than on any other single budget item. If the threat of war is reduced, these funds would be available for more productive purposes. Schema 2020 examines measures through which this might be achieved.

Insurance is cheapest when it is most widely distributed and the services it provides most standardized. This applies whether it is insurance against natural, human made or medical disasters or social saftey nets for pensioners and the incapacitated. Schema 2020 addresses these and other prerequisites to achieving the kind of change we require in order to have a future.

2.5 Economy and Finance

video: Measuring Sustainability 

Evaluism, as offered by Schema 2020, is an economic system that addresses the shortcoming of traditional Capitalism (the assumption of continuous availability of a supportive environment, including resources) by providing a complete accounting which begins with the total resources relied upon being entered into the ledger and reflected against the project. This model will not only provide a highly accurate method for counting the total resource-usage, and motivating the total resource-efficiency, but will completely eliminate any possibilities for economic bubbles which are possible only when an unlimited resource is assumed.

2.6 Natural Resources

As already mentioned, natural resources on our planet are fixed as the planet is fixed in size. To allow us all to prosper, Evaluism provides an accounting model that motivates resource-efficiency, conservation, and environment-neutrality.

2.7 Farming and Manufacturing

Recycling and integration of systems is the key for sustainable agriculture and manufacturing. If we do not accomplish this soon, we will eliminate ourselves from this planet. Fortunately integrated farming and manufacturing principles have been already introduced, and need to be rolled out on the global scale.

2.8 Medical Systems & Access

 

 

2.9 Housing and Urbanization

Housing and urbanization practices that are dependent on cheap transportation and are not in tune with the environmental hard facts - such as availability of potable water - are already being re-valued. Housing and urbanization need to provide efficient value starting with community layout and ending with simple and durable construction technologies and easy customization possibilities.

2.10 Infrastructure

Currently, over 70% of input energy is wasted before it reaches the end consumer. By increasing infrastructure's efficiency and integrating different services, efficiency can be increased manyfold. This can also distribute the services and eliminate inefficient central monopolies. 

2.11 Energy Production, Transmission, and Efficiency

Current energy production scheme allows monopolies to control the game at the cost of efficiency, resource wastage, and price. Energy production needs to become distributed, and other processes around it need to be able to use the waste heat.  Alternative avenues need to be developed, but need to be energy-positive, not subsidy-positive.

2.12 Communication, Transportation and Commerce

 

2.13 Further Expansion

Appendices

Index

Donation to The Smarter Earth Institute

Support the Institute in its quest to change the planet for the better through developing and promoting a better environment. The Smarter Earth Institute has built many of the proposed solutions in the virtual world of SecondLife on their simulator, SmarterEarth. Donations to The Smarter Earth Institute, a U.S. non-profit organization, are tax-deductible in the USA.

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"Schema 2020 - The Way Out" - donation to obtain

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This item is not yet available. All purchases at this time will be considered donations to The Smarter Earth Institute.  All donators will receive free copies of "Schema 2020 - The Way Out" when it becomes available.

The anticipated publishing date of the hard-covered book is 2010; this book has not yet been published and is currently not yet available.  If you donate-to-obtain to The Smarter Earth Institute now, you will:

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Schema 2020 T-shirt

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White T-shirt with Schema 2020 "Valves" graphics.

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Schema 2020 cup

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A white ceramic coffee cup with the Schema 2020 schematic.

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The Long Emergency

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Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

Although perhaps a bit too pessimistic for the Schema 2020 initiative, "The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century" by J. Kunstler is nevertheless a definite classic in establishing a framework that warrants a global prompt action to avoid the pessimistic outcome for the whole World as implied in the book.  Paperback.

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