History shows that as primitive societies gradually coalesced into nation states, their wealth and military power increased along with the well-being of their citizens. Nation states have shaped the geopolitics of the 20th century and are still dominant today, but this constrains equitable global growth. If wars are to be eliminated, growth needs to be accelerated and the economic output should be equitably distributed.
No single nation state or any existing regional group can ensure this, especially in a world threatened like never before by unprecedented environmental and climatic threats. In the conflict-ridden world highly polarised between the global north and global south, between the NATO countries led by the USA and the Russia-China axis, any talk of world government may seem like a bad joke. But so was the possibility of union between European countries in the post-WWII period; they until then were fighting endless wars amongst themselves till such a union became a reality.
In 1957, six European nations ~ France, Germany, Italy and the three Benelux countries signed the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community (EEC) creating a common market for them. Over the next fifty years, EEC added more members, eventually transforming itself to the European Union (EU) by the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993, with three goals: to establish a single, common currency which came into effect in 1999; to set up uniform monetary and fiscal targets for member countries, and a political union, which would include the development of a common foreign and defence policy with common citizenship.
A primary motivation was the need to have a larger trading platform to compete against the USA and the emerging markets of China and India because individually, no European country could ever have the economic power they now have collectively as the EU. In 2009, they signed the Treaty of Lisbon to make the EU more democratic, efficient and transparent, capable of facing global challenges like climate change, security and sustainable development.
Today the 27-member EU has all the elements a sovereign government possesses ~ with the European Council as its political arm, European Parliament and Council of the European Union as the legislative arms, European Commission as the executive arm and the Court of Justice of the EU as the judicial arm. It is one of the finest and sustained examples of regional integration between members who were at loggerheads with each other until the second world war and bled rivers of blood during the preceding centuries.
Usually there are five levels of regional integration starting with the free trade area in which members agree to eliminate trade and tariff barriers, then graduating to customs union with common external tariffs followed by a common market and then economic and monetary union, and finally to political union which implies merging the individual entities into a common organisation while sacrificing individual sovereignties.
The world is yet to see an example of this, but the EU has come the closest to a political union. It has given the EU collective, collaborative political and economic powers to face any challenge and a powerful voice in the affairs of the world. It demonstrates what regional integration can achieve for the welfare of the people. If countries can forget their differences and past conflicts like the EU, their people will prosper, which is the objective of any governance.
Imagine what could happen when a common government can attract ideas from billions of citizens, channel their creativity for innovation and direct their energies for development ~ it could usher in a world beyond the wildest of our imagination. If nations can forge alliances to promote regional integration, scaling it up to be continental integration and finally to a world government, where every country retains their uniqueness yet is guided by a common agenda driven by such a government, we can become what scientists have called a Type-I civilisation.
Economic growth has always been synonymous with the use of energy. Wars in the past century have been fought only for controlling the sources of energy, and future wars would also be fought only for this purpose. Civilisational advances only mean increasing the use of energy to feed increasingly sophisticated machines that will continue to be invented to improve the conditions for humanity and also, as population grows, its energy demands would grow.
Advanced technology demands higher energy use, which makes it environmentally unsustainable, putting a limit to growth. In 1964, the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev, while looking for signs of extraterrestrial life, devised what is called the Kardashev Scale to classify civilisations according to energy use.
The more energy a civilisation is able to generate, the more power it has over its surroundings. The scale has 3 base classes ~ Type I, Type II, and Type III ~ each with an energy level a billion times more than the previous one. The energy threshold of the Type I civilisation is 10000 trillion watts, which is equivalent to the entire energy of the Sun falling on the Earth ~ currently we use not even 4 per cent of it.
Humanity is not even on this scale yet; with our energies drawn mostly from dead plants and animals, we are a lowly and immature Type-0 civilization, which according to physicist Michio Kaku would take 100- 200 years before becoming a Type-I civilization, that is, if we survive our self-destructive impulses. We are still haunted by hatreds and brutalities inherited from our immature past and remain divided along the deep fissures created by our history. As Kaku says, any intelligent civilization in the galaxy will discover two things: element number 92, that is, uranium, and a chemical industry.
Uranium has the potential of annihilating a civilisation with nuclear weapons, and chemical industry has the potential of polluting the environment with toxins, thereby destroying it. Maybe that is why astrobiologists, despite decades of relentless searches into the farthest corners of our galaxy with their immensely powerful telescopes, many of which are placed in space, have not been successful in detecting another life-harbouring world. Maybe our galaxy is replete with the ruins of many Type-0 civilizations which have self-destroyed themselves.
To navigate the transition to a Type-I civilisation, the kind of wisdom that is needed is still way beyond the reach of humanity. But if, somehow, we can avert these twin disasters, if science can indeed unlock the secrets of life, conquer hunger and poverty, resolve disease and death with the help of artificial intelligence, quantum computers and nanoscience, and most of all, if nations learn to live in harmony with each other, then it can usher in a global civilisation in which all humans will be linked through powerful communication networks to harness the creative energies of billions of minds.
It will then be a planetary or global civilisation that alone can direct the planetary flow of energy and resources, like harnessing the energy of entire oceans, or being able to modify weather, or even harness the energy of cyclones which today are distant dreams. But most importantly, for managing the climate and controlling environmental pollution, only a planetary civilisation can have the authority to frame and enforce the necessary laws which would require the cooperation of the entire world. Only a planetary communication system, planetary culture, planetary entertainment, planetary economics and planetary government can ensure such cooperation. Some elements of this architecture are already in place and evolving further. Beyond Type I, it is still pure science fiction.
A Type II civilisation is one that can harness the entire energy radiated by the Sun and Type III civilisation will be able to harness the energy of the entire galaxy. Kardashev did not go beyond Type III civilisation in his scale, but his scale has undergone multiple revisions with other astronomers adding new features. Some have allowed their imagination to run wild in conceiving a Type IV civilisation capable of harnessing the energy of the entire universe including the energy of the supermassive black holes, and capable of accelerating or slowing down the expansion of space.
There is also the idea of a Type-V civilisation, in which humans will be capable of manipulating space-time geometry of the universe, of course if they survive that long. Astronomer Carl Sagan had updated the scale in a more realistic manner, by introducing decimal points between different types and placing humanity at around 0.72. On this scale, 1.0 would harness all the solar energy striking the earth’s surface ~ some 173,000 trillion watts, which is 10,000 times more than the total energy we use today.
Every time we build a new power plant and increase our total energy supply by 26 per cent, which takes about 5 years, we move up the scale by 0.01. At this rate, we may reach a type 1.0 stage towards the end of the century. But we have to learn to do it without damaging the environment, and without annihilating ourselves, which would again require a planetary government. Type 1 civilisation may be within our reach, but transition to it will be crucial.
To be able to reach there, we need first to form continental governments, ensure that all continents achieve the same rate of growth, a necessary condition for their union in a global governance framework. Though our present does not give us much hope, history is a testament to the resilience of humanity and its ability to learn from mistakes.