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SCENARIO INCASTING:
Four Environmental Futures for USA, 2008 Background
and instructions: In this context, any one of the four scenarios described is possible. DO NOT DISCUSS ITS RELATIVE PLAUSIBILITY OR PROBABILITY; SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF -- a context exists; simply consider how you would cope most successfully. After reading your scenario, address the following discussion questions:
DESIGNER ENVIRONMENTS Technological innovations have changed not only the way people work, live, and govern themselves, but changed their relationship to the environment as well. Planetwide communication/computer networks enabled fast distribution and access to environmental data, as well as greater public access to policy and planning debates. These networks revitalized national coordination of environmental regulations and policies while enhancing their flexibility vis-a-vis particular local conditions. Unfortunately, they are also prone to “waves” of environmental rumors. The entire political environment is more fluid due to increased information flows and interpersonal connectivity. Bio-engineering, nanotechnologies, and artificial intelligence “experts” have blurred past distinctions between what’s “natural” and what’s “artificial.” For example, landscapers may now choose among various species of decorative plants which fix nitrogen in damaged urban soils, and glow in the dark, marking paths and emergency services. Nanotechnologies -- microscopically small filters, manipulators and robots -- speed up garbage decomposition and materials sorting and re-use in landfills and control weeds and pests, aided by gene-engineered insect species. We have lowered our chemical inputs into the environment, but many people question the long term impacts and risks involved in such pervasive changes to natural systems, and the possibilities of molecular and “virtual” pollution. Nonetheless, many people’s homes are computer controlled, mini-biospheres -- tailored to their personal climate and ecological choices. Communities plan and manage regional ecologies by tailoring and “weeding” plants and animals for local conditions. More and more, people fear the fragility of these complex, synthetic natural systems with potential risk of system shutdown/breakdown, as well as their vulnerability to international terrorism.
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL AUTHORITIES/GREEN SENSIBILITIES The worst ENSO in history, back in 97-98, and its resultant droughts, storms, and floods, was followed by increasingly erratic weather and accelerating symptoms of global warming. Storm surge, subsidence, and sea-level rise brought new health problems on coastlines and in delta areas. Local climate changes encouraged the migration of insect species and brought new disease vectors to communities. Initially, the public demanded --and got -- increased federal spending on environmental disaster initiatives. That, however, represented merely the first barrage in public outrage and backlash over environmental problems: the second round of demands addressed non-point source pollution and contaminants [fed, no doubt, by a bumper outbreak of pfiesteria piscicida]. Increasingly, the public’s perception of the risks was more important than scientific assessments. International impacts also led to international initiatives, by equally outraged non-OECD publics, who felt buffeted by environmental impacts caused by global business activities predating their own industrialization efforts. In the US, the public pressured the government to enact regulations paralleling the Rio Agenda 21 initiatives, and regulations were passed which sharply curtailed business impacts on the environment. Local communities were hit hard by the economic shifts: environments were given a chance to recover at the cost of fewer jobs, as businesses went where countries had carbon emission “rations.” Tree-planting has become a civic duty required of every citizen; Americans have finally faced up to the kind of gas taxes Europe had paid for decades -- and created some new local jobs with innovative mass/rapid transit strategies; and eating habits have shifted radically since the “environmental luxury” tax was levied on beef as well.
ECONOMIC SURVIVAL/LIBERTARIAN REVOLUTION The “four tigers” of Asia’s economy became, in the transition to the 21st century, a veritable herd of economic predators, who were contending more and more often with a revitalized and slowly strengthening European Union. Afraid of any signs of economic weakening, the panicked US government significantly loosened environmental and resource regulatory strictures on business. Impact penalties were lightened, and permitting processes eased for resource use and extraction in parks, preserves, and the coastal zone. The “command and control” regulatory regime was, in essence, dismantled: an era of “business self-regulation” began. It was, in essence, a time of “environmental backlash” mirroring the affirmative action backlash and related regulatory turn-around that occurred in the late 90’s. At the community level, people have become willing to trade off costs to community of business activities -- water use, longer phase-in of emission standards, etc. -- in order to assure job availability. Some businesses have traded off specific community benefits -- playgrounds, new health centers, educational donations -- for less restrictive operating practices. Unions continued their long decline -- most employees were desperate to ensure the continued health of their current employer.
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