Dr. Michio Kaku

The Most Important Generation in History is the One Now Alive

When trying to save the world, it helps to put things into a larger perspective by thinking about civilizations that may have already confronted these problems. In particular, astrophysicists, when we try to find evidence for life in outer space, rank possible civilizations that are more advanced than ours according to their energy consumption:

A. A Type I civilization is truly planetary, using up all the energy from their sun which lands on their planet. They might, for example, be able to control all forms of planetary energy, such as controlling the weather and the power of hurricanes and volcanoes.

B. A Type II civilization has mastered stellar power, using up all the energy released from their mother star. They use up 10 billion times more energy than a Type I civilization. A typical example might be the Federation of Planets in Star Trek, which has harnessed the energy from only a tiny sliver of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

C. A Type III civilization is galactic, harnessing 10 billions more energy than a Type II civilization. They roam freely across the galactic space lanes. A typical example might be the Borg on Star Trek, or the Empire of the Star Wars series, or the Empire of Asimov’s Foundation Series.

By comparison, what are we? Do we control the weather, play with stars, or harness the power of an entire galaxy? We are, sadly, a Type 0 civilization. We don’t even appear on the radar screen. We get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal.

But we can calculate how long it will take to slowly work our way up this energy scale. Assume that the world’s energy consumption grows at roughly 3% per year. At this rate, we are about 100 years from attaining Type I status, about several thousand years from attaining Type II status, and perhaps 100,000 years or so from attaining Type III status.

For example, I see evidence of this in every newspaper I read. To me, every headline points to the birth pangs of the emerging Type I planetary civilization:
The language of this future Type I planetary civilization will be English, which is already the language of the elites around the world.

The EU, NAFTA, and global trade blocks represent the seeds of a Type I economy.
The internet is the beginning of a Type I telephone system.
Rock music, youth culture, high fashion, the movies, etc. all represent the beginning of a Type I culture.
But some people instinctively hate this emerging Type I civilization, because it will be multi-cultural, progressive, and scientific. These are the terrorists.

How stable are these civilizations? By the time a civilization reaches Type II status, they are immortal. Nothing known to science can destroy these civilizations. Ice ages can be controlled, meteor or comets can be deflected, and they can even survive the death of their mother star by moving their planet or re-igniting their star.

But of all these transitions, the most dangerous of all is the transition between Type 0 and Type I. We still have all the savagery, sectarianism, racism, fundamentalist, etc. that typified our rise from the swamp. So it is not clear at all whether we will rise to a Type I civilization. I think it’s a race against time. On one hand, we have the march towards a planetary civilization, perhaps the greatest transition in human history. On the other hand, we have urgent problems like nuclear proliferation, global warming, designer germ warfare, pollution, over population, etc. that threatened the very survival of the planet.

It’s not clear which trend will win. But there is a lesson here. By rights, our galaxy should be teeming with intelligent life forms, yet we see no evidence of any so far, perhaps because they never successfully made the transition to Type I. One day, perhaps if ever visit these planets, we might find dead civilizations with an atmosphere too hot to bear life, or an atmosphere too radioactive for life.

But one thing is certain. The generation now alive is the most important generation that has ever walked the earth. This is because we will decide whether we will truly become a Type I civilization, or will descend into chaos and disorder. There have been about 5,000 generations of humans since we emerged from Africa about 100,000 years ago, and the most important generation is the one now alive, since we hold the destiny of civilization in our hands.

Author: Dr. Michio Kaku

Source: http://howyoucansavetheworld.com/2008/07/the-most-important-generation.php