Science Fiction Parallels to Current Reality

• Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem trilogy: divided world unable to fight common alien threat
  • Fear, jingoism, competition for scarce resources fractures world into competing geoeconomic blocks
  • Three powers: United States, China, Europe
  • None succeed in staving off alien invasion with disastrous consequences
• George Orwell's 1984: three super states (Oceania, Eurasia, East Asia) fight perpetually
  • Disputed area mostly around Africa and Middle East
• IMF World Economic Outlook describes ongoing fragmentation into four blocks: US, China, EU, rest

Climate Change Requires Collective Action

• No individual, group, or nation state self-sufficient in resources, finances, manpower needed
• Need collective action to:
  • Invent and deploy technology solutions at scale to reduce greenhouse gases in wealthy high-emitting countries
  • Build adaptation systems in poorer low-emitting countries for changing weather patterns
• Three-part problem structure identified

Technoeconomic Spheres of Innovation

• Innovation around low-carbon technologies concentrated in handful of countries
• World's largest science and technology clusters with highest density of inventors/scientific authors in three regions:
  • North America
  • Europe
  • Asia
• Danger: innovation and diffusion of crucial low-carbon technologies only among exclusive group of allies
  • Excludes non-allies, especially poorer countries
• Global public energy R&D budgets concentrated within these spheres: China, Europe, United States

Consumer Gains and Welfare Prioritization

• Commercialization of climate mitigation/adaptation technologies essential for global equitable deployment at scale
• Mass production benefits:
  • Clean energy hardware, electric vehicles, sustainable building materials
  • Encourages widespread use
  • Access to large export markets = higher quality products + green jobs at home
  • Competition among producer firms pushes down prices for consumers
  • Raises living standards across board, including poorer countries
• Barriers to entry on rival geoeconomic blocks create costs:
  • Inefficiencies in mass production by firms with monopoly power
  • Small but captive markets
  • Neither reduces greenhouse gases nor improves quality of life
• Example: choosing between 2 or 1 brand of highly overpriced electric vehicles/solar panels
  • Restrictions on imports of dozens more affordable options from companies worldwide
  • Current case with cell phones in some countries: restricted to 2 highly overpriced brands or 1

Global Standards for Strategic Materials

• Strategic minerals essential for manufacturing: cobalt, copper, nickel, lithium
• Components for: solar panels, electric vehicles, wind turbines, clean energy/mobility hardware
• Resources are non-renewable, finite supply, high demand
• Projected demand growth by 2040:
  • Lithium: 40-fold increase
  • Graphite: 25-fold increase
  • Copper: 21-fold increase
• Minerals often found in poorer countries:
  • Democratic Republic of Congo (Africa)
  • Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines (Asia)
  • Fragile ecosystems like ocean floors
• Concerns about race to access scarce strategic minerals:
  • Ocean floor mining destroying animal/plant species
  • New space race to strip moon of strategic minerals

Democratic Republic of Congo Historical Context

• Cautionary tale of zero-sum race without guardrails for precious human/natural resources
• Competition among European empires drove transatlantic slave trade (16th-19th centuries)
  • Depopulated vast swaths of Congo
• Shinkobu mine: source of 2/3 of uranium used in atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (1945)
• Today: Congo source of cobalt for refineries in China for battery manufacturing
• Need global standards to prevent destruction of fragile ecosystems: ocean floors, moon, Democratic Republic of Congo

Alternative Scenario and Solutions

• Can reject dystopian future if consciously prioritize collective action on key issues
• Action needed on three fronts:
  • Policy makers: implementing radical protectionist policies for short-term political imperatives
    • Need to think carefully about long-term consequences for people, economies, societies
    • Consequences persist long after political tenures
  • Business leaders: must consider whether atomized and insular markets are preferred future
  • Scholars, intellectuals, activists: must identify and defend values that matter most
    • Advance continued improvements in human well-being
    • Shared prosperity for everyone around world
    • Ecological balance and mutual coexistence