The Danish physicist Niels Bohr is said to have observed that making predictions is difficult, especially about the future. What we can do is get started with scenario planning, based in systems thinking and grounded in reality.
Take some of today’s trends, extrapolate their outcomes for an independent Wales, then consider what strategic decisions are appropriate. This needs to be an interdisciplinary world-building exercise, creating a convincing narrative to be explored in depth.
Trending: the future for oil and sand
It must be emphasised that these scenarios are not predictions of what will happen or what we think should happen. They’re a recognition that the world has no obligation to behave as we want it to, and an exploration of what could happen.
The narratives in different exercises will vary dramatically depending on the starting conditions chosen. Remember, though: emotions aren’t an acceptable basis for policy-making. With that established, let’s take two very real resource-related trends and see where they lead us.
Oil is becoming more difficult and expensive to extract. Global production is falling, but demand is rising. Inevitably, all fossil fuel products will become more expensive, including petrol, diesel, asphalt, plastics, and manmade fabrics.
The world may well run out of usable sand by 2050. This might seem unbelievable, but it’s true. Prices are already rising and, around the world, beaches are literally being stolen, entire islands are vanishing, rivers are being illegally dredged, and organised crime gangs are fighting to establish control over what’s left. The warnings have been coming for years.
Most industrial uses need sand that has been produced by water, from rivers or the sea, and that’s running out fast. Desert sand has the wrong properties and can’t be used. Reading the reports, we won’t have enough sand to make concrete. It may become impossible to make solar panels or computer chips, and perhaps even glass.
This is real. So how might these two trends affect Wales?
Unavoidable consequences
The most obvious consequences are for our roads. I needn’t review the furore over 20mph speed limits – it’s a complete irrelevance.
The rising costs of petrol and diesel will make driving far more expensive. (Electric cars aren’t a solution). Private cars will become unaffordable for many. No more driving for work or leisure. Moving goods by road in diesel lorries will become a higher cost passed on to consumers, and will potentially make the business model of supermarkets financially unsustainable. Plastic packaging will become rare, further transforming the retail sector.
When sand becomes unavailable, there’ll be no concrete and therefore no new buildings of the kinds we’ve become used to. There’ll be no new dams, which will affect our ability to manage our water resources. There’ll be no new seawalls or breakwaters, which will hamper our response to climate change. No new sewers. No new bridges.
Combine this with the rising costs of oil products such as asphalt, and we see the end of affordable tarmacadam. Potholes already mean that roads in England and Wales are “at breaking point”, but the problems today are nothing compared to what’s coming. Forget new roads: maintaining the ones we have now won’t be possible. While authorities will keep key roads going for as long as they can, most will crumble and many will revert to gravel, especially in rural areas – something already widespread in the USA.
So, just as rising sea levels threaten roads, railways, power stations, and the communities where 60% of us live, we aren’t going to have the materials to build new homes, roads, or other infrastructure.
These constraints are inevitable: there’s nothing we can do to change them or avoid the consequences, unless viable alternative materials and processes are developed in the meantime.
A changed way of life
The biggest challenge may be psychological: accepting that our entire way of life, once possible due to easy access to cheap resources, has run into hard limits and cannot continue. There’ll be huge resistance to this, which needs to be addressed. People need to understand the scale of the changes ahead.
Of necessity, we’ll live a lifestyle similar to that of earlier, energy-poor times. If we’re lucky, that may resemble the 1950s; more likely the 1920s and 1930s. The parallel isn’t exact. We’ll still have computers and the internet, better dentistry and medicines, and other advances of recent decades. We won’t have to wear old-timey clothes.
How do we respond? Most people won’t travel much. When they do, it’ll be by rail – if we can get new lines built inland and away from the coast in time. The use of horses will again become viable for farming and the rural economy, so expanding Wales’ stud farms should be a priority.
When roads can’t be maintained, goods and people can be moved by rail, sea, or air. We’ll have to look into building a Welsh merchant fleet, and returning to a logistic model in which goods are shipped by sea to small ports, then distributed inland, as well as from railheads.
We should look into investing in the manufacture of amphibious planes in our current aerospace centre in North East Wales. The Welsh government could become a partner in a revival which is already underway, using them for travel and freight, and making our lakes and reservoirs hubs for economic activity. We might consider the airship. Wales should offer investment to move production of the new generation of airships here from Bedford, to be used in transporting people and cargo around Wales and the world.
Inventing for the future
We need to identify replacement materials for concrete. Fortunately, we have the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth to call upon. Let’s get inventive. Could the spoil tips of the Valleys or the slate waste of North Wales become sources for alternative building materials?
Rising costs for fossil fuels and their by-products will also affect agriculture in Wales. Fuel for tractors and other vehicles will become increasingly unaffordable. So will artificial fertilisers. The current debate over farming will be redundant; regenerative agriculture will become the only possible model. It’ll be lower-tech, employ more people, and revitalise rural Welsh-speaking communities, particularly because most of our food will be locally produced. This will also spur a revival of market gardening, and of fabric and clothing manufacture using locally-produced materials.
This probably doesn’t look like the independent Wales you imagined. Horses, flying boats, and airships? A 1920s lifestyle? It’s easy to scoff.
We shouldn’t, though. These resource constraints are real issues. They’re coming, regardless of our wishes, and we have to prepare one way or another. There are also other important trends that require scenario planning. Develop enough scenarios for different trends, see which themes keep emerging, and we may be able to develop policies for a Wales that lives within its environmental means. And where people can live meaningful lives.
Life will be different. But then, who thought that independence would mean just more of the same?
