What kind of world?—2
What kind of world does the oil and gas industry want?
The question appeared here last week with an elaboration: What kind of better world is the industry and its specialist workforce willing to envision in partnership with people in general and to help make real? It’s an idealistic question with practical implications. A world of corruption and chronic poverty, constantly at war with itself, is much less conducive to profitable business than a peaceful world oriented to economic progress and motivated by hope. No single industry can make either vision real by itself, of course. But actions have consequences. Actions inevitably flow from decisions grounded in some set of expectations about the world. Humanity benefits to the extent that essential institutions, including major industries, raise expectation about the world into ambition.
2020 Project
Wisdom lies somewhere between those boundaries, in a comparison between what is expected and what is desired. A comprehensive expression of the former appeared last December. The US Central Intelligence Agency’s Report of the National Intelligence Council’s 2020 Project describes major forces shaping the world over the next decade and a half. In a useful distillation of its complex findings, the report lists as “relative certainties” the irreversibility of globalization, which is likely to become less Westernized, and substantial growth of the world economy. It says the number of global companies will grow, helping the spread of new technology.
Also relatively certain are the rise of Asia and the advent of “possible new economic middleweights,” along with the aging of populations in established powers, especially Europe and Japan. The report calls energy supplies “in the ground” sufficient to meet global demand, which it sees as rising by 50% during the next 2 decades. It says nonstate actors, including companies and nongovernmental organizations, will grow in power, political Islam will remain a potent force, and some states will improve their capabilities with weapons of mass destruction. The Middle East, Asia, and Africa will remain an “arc of instability,” the CIA report says. Escalation of a great-power conflict into total war is unlikely. Environmental and ethical issues will increase in influence. And the US will retain its economic, technological, and military prominence.
The report balances those projections with what it calls “key uncertainties,” such as whether globalization vitalizes lagging economies, how new economic powers such as China and India manage growth, adaptations Europe and Japan make to their aging populations, the degree of instability in energy-producing countries, and the extent to which jihadist ideology accompanies the political potency of Islam. There are others. The full report appears on the CIA’s web site: www.cia.gov. From such diverse and unpredictable variables, of course, no single picture of the world in 2020 can be drawn. The report instead extrapolates the trends it describes into four scenarios:
• Davos World, which illustrates how robust economic growth, led by China and India, might reshape globalization, “giving it a more non-Western face and transforming the political playing field as well.”
• Pax Americana, under which “US predominance may survive the radical changes to the global political landscape and serve to fashion a new and inclusive global order.”
• A New Caliphate, illustrating “how a global movement fueled by radical religious identity politics could constitute a challenge to Western norms and values as the foundation of the global system.”
• Cycle of Fear, in which concerns about proliferating security threats “might increase to the point that large-scale intrusive security measures are taken to prevent outbreaks of deadly attacks, possibly introducing an Orwellian world.”
Increased flux
The report points out that other scenarios are possible and that two or three of the ones it describes might unfold at the same time. Central to its outlook is the expectation for “increased flux, especially in contrast to the relative stasis of the Cold War era.” The oil and gas industry will conduct its business in the fluid and uncertain world the CIA report describes. It will provide energy essential to economic growth, create wealth, and propagate culture and know-how. That it does its work is obviously crucial. How it does its work is even more so. And how it works will show what kind of world it wants.
