East and west converge on a problem

飞雪寒冰

How is the “great convergence” – the topic of last week’s column – going to shape the world in the 21st century? Happily, in tackling this huge question, I have a guide: Ian Morris of Stanford, who has written a brilliant analysis of where we are, how we got here and where we might be going in a book that covers 16,000 years of human history.*
“大趋同”(great convergence)——上周本专栏的主题——将如何塑造21世纪的全球格局？在研究这个宏大的问题时，我有幸找到了一位“向导”：斯坦福大学(Stanford)教授伊安•莫里斯(Ian Morris)。莫里斯在他那本辉煌的著作中，探究了一万六千年的人类历史，分析了我们目前的局势、我们是如何走到这一步的以及未来会通向何方。*

According to Professor Morris, social development is driven by “greedy, lazy, frightened people” who “seek their own preferred balance among being comfortable, working as little as possible, and being safe”. Since human beings are clever and highly social, they invent technologies and create institutions to achieve these aims. Yet what any group of human beings is able to achieve is determined by geography. The impact of a given geography also changes: 1,000 years ago, the oceans were a barrier; 500 years ago, they were a highway.
莫里斯教授表示，推动社会发展的是那些“贪婪、懒惰、怕这怕那的人”，他们“在安逸自在、尽可能少地工作和安全之间寻求自己喜欢的平衡”。由于人类既聪明，又具有高度的社会性，他们通过科技发明和创建制度，来实现这些目标。但一个人类群体能够取得什么样的成就，是由地理条件决定的。而特定地理环境的影响也在改变：1000年前，大洋还是一道屏障；而到了500年前，已变成通途。

飞雪寒冰

Prof Morris also provides a fascinating account of the progress of two poles of civilisation. These are the “west”, the civilisations that descended from the agricultural revolution in the so-called “fertile crescent” in today’s Middle East, and the “east”, the civilisations that descended from an independent revolution in a part of what is now China. His conclusion is that the west was somewhat more advanced than the east until the fall of the western Roman empire, behind it from then until the 18th century, and then ahead. Eastern exploitation of the “advantages of backwardness”, a recurring theme, suggests another reversal in the 21st century.
莫里斯教授还为文明两极的发展提出了一个颇具吸引力的解释。文明的两极分别是源自两河流域（即当今的中东地区）农业革命的“西方”文明，以及源自当今中国版图内农业革命的“东方”文明。他得出的结论是：在西罗马帝国灭亡之前，西方要略微领先于东方；此后至18世纪之间，西方一直落后于东方；而18世纪后西方再次反超。东方对“后发优势”——这是一个反复出现的主题——的利用，意味着21世纪将再次出现逆转。

For Prof Morris, “social development” is an amalgam of four factors: energy use; urbanisation; military capacity; and information technology. The first is fundamental: the capture of energy is a necessary condition for existence; the more complex and advanced the society the more energy it captures. This is why “industrial revolution” is a misnomer for what happened two centuries ago. It was an energy revolution: we learnt how to exploit fossilised sunlight. Energy and ideas are the twin bases of our civilisation.
对于莫里斯教授而言，“社会发展”是四种因素的混合体：能源使用、城市化、军事能力和信息技术。第一个因素是基础：获取能源是生存的一个必要条件；社会越复杂先进，获取的能源就越多。正因如此，用“工业革命”来概括两个世纪前的社会变迁不太恰当。那其实是一场能源革命：我们知道了如何开采变成化石的阳光。能源和思想是我们文明的两大基石。

飞雪寒冰

Prof Morris’s measures of social development and “energy capture” match each other (see the charts for the past 4,000 years). We can notice three other things. First, western energy capture was the same in 1700 of the common era as it had been in 100, while China’s reached its pre-modern apogee in the 12th century. Second, energy capture and social development have exploded over the past two centuries. Finally, the east’s use has been rising very rapidly.
莫里斯对社会发展和“能源获取”的考量结果彼此相符（参见图表中过去4000年的数据）。我们还可以发现其它三点。首先，公元1700年时，西方获取的能源与公元100年时几乎持平，而中国是在12世纪达到了现代化之前的巅峰水平。其次，能源获取和社会发展在过去两个世纪呈爆炸式增长。第三，东方对能源的利用一直增长得十分迅速。




An analysis, from the development centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, argues that convergence has been changing the global balance of supply and demand for resources.** This is shown in recent rises in the real prices of metals and energy. The International Energy Agency points out that global primary energy demand could rise by another 50 per cent by 2035. Without a big change in the energy intensity of production, that is what the economic convergence we see has to mean: if all of humanity used the same energy per head as the rich countries do today, consumption of commercial energy would be three times what it is now (see charts).
来自经合组织(OECD)发展中心的一份分析报告称，趋同正改变着全球资源的供求平衡。**这体现在了近来钢铁和能源实际价格的上涨上。国际能源机构(International Energy Agency)指出，到2035年，全球初级能源需求可能还会再增长50%。如果能源生产密度不发生重大改变，这就是我们目前看到的经济趋同的必然结果：如果所有人的能源消耗都达到目前富国的人均水平，商业能源消耗将是当前水平的三倍