The (Narrow) Window of Opportunity
8th March 2008

I have good news: we can save the world and ourselves. This is the message from a group of Very Brainy People at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They recently put their pointy heads together and considered all the major problems facing humanity and the globe: energy supply, terrorist threats, natural disasters, pandemic diseases. Voila! They came up with answers.

Take energy, for example. How do we secure a supply of clean, renewable energy for all? Simple: all we need to do is capture one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the planet and we’ll have all the energy we could hope for. Solution: “this will become feasible with nanoengineered solar panels and and nanoengineered fuel cells.” To think we’ve been angsting about peak oil and nuclear waste and these guys solve the entire problem with one slick move off the back of the scrum.

But that’s only the entrée. The idea that really made me sit up and take notice was their forecast for personal health. They claim advances in genetic technology mean that “within one or two decades, we will be in a position to stop and reverse the progression of disease and ageing, resulting in dramatic gains in health and longevity.”

Now there’s a thought to conjure with. If I was ten years older I’d be trying to pin them down on whether it would be one decade or two – that would be uppermost in my mind. But I’m 50 - only 50 - so I figure even at the conservative end of the projection, two decades, I’m in the zone. Like the boy racer aiming for the gap in the traffic I just have to stay straight, keep my foot down, hold my nerve and I’ll be through and into the wide blue yonder. If I can keep ahead of cancer and coronaries until I’m 70 I can look forward to, what? another 50 years? another 100?

It’s a dizzying prospect. Imagine what I could do with another 50 years of healthy living. I could travel endlessly, write and read books, be entertained with movies and TV programmes made by people not even born yet. I could enjoy the company of several generations of descendants, becoming a great-great-great-grandad. The window of opportunity opens wide.

But wait, there’s a downside to a world peopled with millions of modern-day Methuselahs. For a start, who’s going to support us? Like the man who is assured by his doctor he has 30 more years only to be told by his accountant he has just 20 there is a gap between vision and reality.

I have a beautiful financial plan, as finely balanced as a trimble. I accumulate capital for another 10 to 15 years then use it up over a similar period. That takes me to 80 – beyond that is blue sky. So, if technology is going to allow me to live until 120 do I plan to remain in the work force until, say, 90 or 100? Do I have to keep getting up early and going to the office for another 40-50 years?

And what about all the stuff we haul through life with us? Do I have to maintain a home and garden for another half century or more? That’s a lot of painting and lawn-mowing. Do I have to get used to the idea of working my way through another 10 or 12 motor vehicles?

Maybe not. Perhaps the scientific wonderland of the future will include self-painting houses and cars that never wear out.

And then there’s the simple human need for company. Will my spouse and my friends also make it through the window of opportunity? Or will my long twilight see me shuffling around Tinwald as a lonely remnant of a lost age, the butt of jokes from middle aged octogenarians.

I don’t blame the scientists for the flaws in their plan. The job of scientists is to conjure visions of perfection. Where my window of opportunity narrows is at that point where perfect science rubs up against human nature.

Individuals and societies are a tangle of half-grasped opportunities, of false starts and blind alleys. We’ve had 35 years since the oil crises of the 70s to solve the problem of clean energy, yet the world’s major economies continue to be run by a self-serving oilocracy. We could have solved world poverty a hundred times over but we made the mistaken of relying on the market to do it. Gene therapy could be a reality today except the medical research companies are competing instead of co-operating.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll finish reading The Guardian, then step out into my day and simply enjoy myself. Why don’t you do the same.