I can’t remember when or where I heard the following, and haven’t managed to find a reference to it even ‘by the power of Google’, but I seem to recall the Titanic Principle being…

‘The scale of the failure is in inverse proportion to the belief that it cannot fail’

Well we are certainly seeing that principle playing out in our financial systems at the moment but are we likely to see it with regard to our world and mankind as a whole?

The points I’ve covered in posts so far bring to mind not just this ‘principle’ but also James Cameron’s film Titanic.

You may remember the leisurely build up and scene setting to the iceberg encounter, then the hitting of the iceberg itself – which apart from some shuddering in the handrails above deck seems pretty non-eventful. You may remember people on deck playing football with chunks of ice and continuing on as normal.

Of course, cut to the lower decks and all hell is breaking loose as compartment after compartment starts to flood and people die.

You get a sense from the film though that things are continuing pretty much as normal for quite some period of time on the upper decks while the ship is slowly sinking and heading for an inevitable demise.

When realisation starts to sink in (excuse the pun) they even try to keep the poorer, lower class people off of the upper decks as they start to fill the lifeboats. But as panic starts to set-in and people are determined to save themselves, they break through the barriers and crowd the upper decks.

It’s at this point in the film that the desperation becomes really apparent as it’s clear there aren’t enough lifeboats. Some become resigned to their fate and face it with dignity – others will try and do all they can to survive. But the ship doesn’t just disappear gracefully under the calm sea and the remaining passengers slip quietly into the freezing waters – as it goes down by the bow, the passengers move to higher ground which gets ever more precarious. Then the ship breaks in two, with the stern crashing back to a horizontal position before upending to the vertical and finally plunging beneath the surface. All pretty tumultuous to those still on board and, one imagines, those watching from the relative safety of their lifeboats.

The more I read observations and predictions for this century, the more I think of this Titanic analogy. We hit the iceberg a while back, the party feels like it’s over on a number of levels and the freak weather events and loss of life we have seen with increasing regularity in recent years (hurricanes Katrina etc, wildfires, the 2003 heatwave, extreme flooding) are those scenes below decks as individuals get picked off one by one.

So where will be in 2020? I think perhaps the scenes where those on the lower decks are trying to make their way up top (read those whose livelihoods and survival have been impacted by more heatwaves, droughts, fires, famine making their way to the upper latitudes) and us already in those latitudes trying to safeguard our position and considering finding a lifeboat of some sort and jumping ship if necessary.

Assuming we make it to 2020, what sort of world will it be? Well I’ve made it through 4 decades pretty unscathed so far and while I can still vaguely remember talk of the ‘4 minute warning’, fall-out shelters and nuclear apocalypse as a child, the threat of such an horrific end to mankind certainly seemed to have retreated during the course of my life.

But then, last weekend I read a very stark article in the Times by James Lovelock, a respected scientist now approaching his nineties and the man who formulated the Gaia hypothesis, which proposes that the world on which we live can be thought of as a single organism that takes action to protect itself from harm and repair itself where needed.

Maybe at his age, Mr Lovelock is understandably contemplating the end of his own existence and, despite the advances in medical science, is unlikely to see any of his prophecies for this century come to fruition. But reading his words I couldn’t help feel that he will indeed be heading off to a better place than the one he will be leaving behind.

While estimates and projections for the potentially devastating impact of global warming usually stretch out to the end of this century and beyond, James Lovelock’s hypothesis has Mother Earth ridding itself of much of the human population a lot quicker. In essence he is saying that as us, and the animals we breed to support and sustain us, account for the majority of greenhouse gas production in the world then Gaia will act to reduce our numbers to a sustainable level in order to ensure the Earth’s survival. Sustainable in Mr Lovelock’s assessment means losing 90% of the current human population by the end of the century.

So how will this come about? Primarily because the projected rises in global temperatures will mean that very little of our landmass will be habitable and, more importantly, be able to provide the food we need.

He observes that the events we see in terms of freak weather, melting icecaps, rising sea levels and pressures on resources illustrate that the situation is already unstoppable and the majority of ‘green’ initiatives are deeply flawed and possibly counter-productive in the longer term. He is a long-term advocate of nuclear power as the only real sustainable and practical source of energy for a power hungry world.

Judging by James Lovelock’s timeline, we will be seeing serious and undeniable consequences of global warming by 2020, with the UK increasingly becoming a haven from relentlessly rising temperatures and their devastating effects.