How (and Why) to Predict the Future
Octavia Butler and the conservation horizon.
Twenty-five years ago, the science-fiction writer Octavia Butler published an essay in Essence titled “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future.” She advised her readers to learn from the past (“to try to foretell the future without studying history is like trying to learn to read without bothering to learn the alphabet”); to respect the law of consequences (“I don’t believe we can do anything at all without side effects”); be aware of their perspective (“where we stand determines what we’re able to see”); and count on surprises.
Butler, who died in 2006, was better at the prediction business than she would ever know. Her novel Parable of the Talents, released in 1998, foresees the election of an autocratic U.S. President who campaigns on the slogan “Make America Great Again.” The exploitative policies of his administration usher in a violent movement determined to “purify” the nation.
The near-future California of Parable of the Talents is hair-raisingly familiar in other ways, too, beset by wildfires, drought, and fake news. But Butler was no magician. “All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now,” she wrote in her Essence essay, “and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.” Doing so allowed her to imagine, correctly, that a future leader would repurpose Ronald Reagan’s “Let’s Make America Great Again” slogan for even darker ends; that climate change would make our daily lives a lot less comfortable and much more dangerous.
I thought about Butler’s advice while reading this year’s “horizon scan” of emerging issues in conservation. The scan, published annually in Trends in Ecology and Evolution since its start in 2009, aims to identify issues that are largely unknown within conservation but likely to have a significant impact on the field within the next five to 10 years. Two dozen or so conservation scientists, practitioners and policymakers participate in the selection process, ranking submitted issues by their novelty, the likelihood of their future influence on conservation, and the probable importance of that influence.
This year’s list, like its predecessors, includes new threats emerging from neglected problems (saltier seas are speeding up Antarctic ice melt); side effects (the fiber-optic cable deployed by drones in war zones is damaging wildlife habitat; GLP-1 drugs may reduce the amount of land deforested for beef production); shifts in perspective (the new Tropical Forests Forever Facility is a conservation finance mechanism led by, rather than imposed on, the Global South); and warnings of unpleasant surprises (look out for mirror life). Butler would approve.
Conservationists, understandably, tend to be preoccupied with current emergencies: the habitat about to be lost, the imminent extinctions. Few spend much time predicting threats five, 10, or 30 years away, much less preparing for them. As Butler argued, though, “prediction is a useful way of pointing out safer, wiser courses.” She was uncannily good at seeing the future, but all her futures were warnings, not inevitabilities. We ignored her once; let’s learn from the past, and keep an eye on the horizon.
Conservation at Work
“These days, I am often unhappy, but I am filled with hope,” writes Cory Doctorow, another remarkably prescient science-fiction novelist (who hastens to say that he does not predict the future). Doctorow argues that while optimism “is the belief that things will get better no matter what we do,” hope is a method, a stepwise approach to progress: “If I do something about this situation, I might change it enough that I can do something else about this situation.” I’ve long been wary of hope as a prerequisite for action, but I like this definition of hope as action.
For a defense of optimism, see Nora McInerny on Victor Frankl’s concept of “tragic optimism,” which counsels action even when the horizon is darkest. No matter what you call it, positive action without expectation is the order of the day — in conservation and otherwise.
Last week, the global High Seas Treaty entered into force after more than 20 years of planning and negotiations. The treaty, officially known as the United Nations Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement or BBNJ, is designed to protect life in the high seas — the two-thirds of the ocean that lie beyond national control. Eighty-three countries have now ratified the treaty; though the the United States signed in 2023, support from the 67 Senators required for ratification is still a long way off. For more on what the BBNJ could mean for marine life, see Rhett Ayers Butler in Mongabay and Callum Roberts in Oceanographic.
The debut of the High Seas Treaty was especially heartening during a month when the Trump administration withdrew the U.S. from 66 international organizations including the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The move, announced on January 7, was overshadowed by the news of the killing of Renée Good by an ICE agent in Minnesota; now, Nature has an in-depth look at the implications [registration required for full access].
“Although conservation has evolved substantially to be more inclusive, the path trajectories of the racist European colonial past create patterns of marginalization and othering that inform the present.” This important paper about the legacies of colonial conservation, authored by Moreangels Mbizah and colleagues, is … paywalled. Come on, Nature!
Mia Keady, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, finds evidence that the conservation of perennial prairies requires a perennial approach to conservation: “In a time of intense environmental degradation, society desperately needs to support agricultural transitions to perennial systems that maintain soil carbon, produce food, and protect critical ecosystem services,” she writes. “Supporting well-trained and inspired conservation staff is critical to this equation.”
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Finally, a question for the ages from Katie Hill. What do you do, exactly?
Thanks, Michelle, for bring Octavia Butler's work to the fore, because, she was surely prescient! (Dammit.) I think Joanna Macy would agree that hope is action, and her book Active Hope, which is based on her Great Work method for acknowledging what is, looking widely at what resources are available and charting a path in achievable steps, certainly bears that out. As for Katie Hill's excellent question, it seems to me that local action is where we shine: find a spot to take a stand, protect a species, restore a native plant community, teach kids about nature, report the news.... Whatever we can do, we need to be doing it now.
Well isn't this an incredibly nice surprise! Love the literary connection, Michelle. I've been hearing references to the idea lately that "all fiction is nonfiction." We can always mine truth from the make-believe.
I think conservationists of all stripes can sometimes get bogged down with the sanctity of the broader environmental past -- "I miss how this place/activity/community used to be" -- which is oftentimes either a false or heavily edited version of history. This is probably to the detriment of how energized and imaginative we are about the future. But I'm also typing in broad strokes here.