The Optimism and Lost Opportunites of 1992 Amount To Thrity Years of Failure

Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Public domain photo Wikimedia.

 

I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as a shocking, surprising, and exciting moment that seemed to be the opening of a new age of optimism. Berlin was the focal point of the Cold War at that time similar to what Taiwan is becoming today, and freedom breaking out there seemed to presage it happening everywhere else. I have always wanted to visit Berlin, that fulcrum of 20th century history, but like the missed opportunities of the passed thirty years, I still haven't done it.

1989 was an inflection point when one era ended, and another began, but, at the time, we saw a different beginning than what was really happening.  In 1992, the optimistic age continued, further seemingly  pointing the way toward the shiny positive future where everything would be fixed. 

 

In retrospect, the thirty years since 1992 look more like an age of hubris and missed opportunities. Looking back, what would we have done if we had only known what today would really be like? Would we do things differently? Looking forward from 1992, it seemed as if we were on the cusp of solving everything. Instead, it was the beginning of problems we failed to solve. How wrong we were.

 

Thirty years ago, I remember being excited about the Rio Earth Summit, the first, and unfortunately last significant event of its kind, and its possibility to remake how we would care for the planet in the future. COP 27 going on right now, is the latest in a line that stretches from the first COP held in Berlin in 1995 and stems from agreements made in Rio.

 

The same year, I remember reading Al Gore's book Earth in the Balance, which laid out a roadmap for a new future caring for the planet. For the first time, politicians were engaging with the environment as a real thing in a holistic way, which was exciting. The same year, Francis Fukuyama published his famous book The End of History, heralding the new optimistic world everyone thought the zeitgeist was moving toward. I never read it, but it is hard not to know that oft-cited book. It was a year of change that capped several previous years of meaningful change around the globe.

 

In my early 20s and just about to graduate from college, I was filled with the optimism of real change being just around the corner that is born of the inexperience imbuing youth with hopefulness. How could I not? The Soviet Union had recently crumbled, following on the heels of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crushing of dictator Saddam Hussein in the Middle East. My generation served in a quick war which had an unambiguous and quick victory. Like pushing Hussein out of Kuwait, it was thought America would use its might as the victorious hegemonic power of the Cold War to nudge history in the right direction and lead by example. 

 

A new, optimistic day seemed to be breaking out everywhere. The optimism of 1992 continued around the globe as China and eastern Europe were opening up to the drumbeat of capitalist freedom. The world seemed to be moving toward a more equitable, democratic and sustainable future. 1992 in music had the youthful Kris Kross and House of Pain release hit jumping songs that seemed a prelude to a new age of frenetic movement. Little did we know that in fact Megadeth had come out with the new theme song of the incipient age that same year: Symphony of Destruction

 

A young Clinton was running for office with the environment minded Gore, and it seemed that they would usher in radical changes in health care, the environment, and American society, forging a new age in the U.S. as well. The expectation of possibility continued with the emergence of NAFTA and Globalization that promised to bring everyone new prosperity at no cost by creating Thomas Friedman's famous "Flat World". In addition, lingering racial and gender disparities would be wiped away, ushering in a new more equitable age. My generation was going to be the agent of a new world of change where we fixed all the problems of modernity and forged a new world. 

 

Thirty years later, we live in a world of failed promise, and I have somehow become part of the middle-aged generation running the world of failed promise. What can we say to the young whose future we sold to subsidize the past thirty years? Much has been written about the failures and lost opportunities, but here we are.

 

Today we face a world that is almost the inverse of those seemingly naively optimistic days of 1992. Today, a resurgent neo-Soviet Russia, allied with a China that has become the perfect Orwellian state, leads a vanguard of rising autocracy that looks more like 1932 than 1992. I learned from friends from the former Soviet Union how what we in insular America thought was people being given freedom in the early 90s rang hollow. For most, it was nothing but freedom to be poor and be exploited under a new kleptocratic system. If the ensuing decades have taught us anything, taking away, dictators doesn't automatically lead to freedom and democracy. Since 1992, Our forays as global policeman, instead of solving problems, has often exacerbated them and created new ones. Instead of leading by example we have led the way as the leader of not leading in too many sectors.

 

 The politics of today has turned from the hopeful new day of my youth to a dark alley where even truth is up for grabs. Clinton looks more like a mixed bag with a semen stain on his shirt, and Gore, sounds like the environmental equivalent of a broken record that nobody listens to anymore. Democrats have moved from the party of working people to insular educated elites, while working people have leaned into Trumpist Republicans grabbing on to post-truth, because the promises of endless prosperity from 1992 have turned to dust. Racial disparities have languished to a breaking point that was always just under the surface like an ignored wound. In this new world, disparities born of the negative promise of globalization that took jobs and hollowed out communities are shaking our nation to its core. Inextricably linked with other disparities, inadequate health care, marginalizes the already marginalized. Health care in America has become a dystopian and byzantine system that defies change causing financial distress to most. All the issues of our world are exacerbated and pushed to extremes because of the elephant in the room we have ignored for too long.

 

Climate realities kicked down the road and denied for thirty years, added to by the rise of countries outside the rich West, whose industrial engines have surged since 1992, are becoming tangible as the weather becomes crazier and is exacerbated by steepening consumption curves and environmental degradation. A cascade of interconnected global crisis have arisen as a result of our overconsumption of the earth. The existential crisis that seemed easily solvable thirty years ago, now threatens the very stability of life on the planet. Half of all anthropogenic carbon emissions since the beginning of the industrial revolution have occurred SINCE 1990 and global temperature has increased 1.1 F since that golden year of 1992 . Had we started in 1992, where would we be now? Today, the very climactic stability that allowed our species to form stable civilizations is coming to an end and so may our civilizations.

 Taking the long view across thirty years of inaction, the future doesn't look good, though there are positive signs coming from the Almighty Market which is what really governs the world anyway. Renewables have become cheaper, but we are still consuming the earth at an unsustainable rate. Pray to the Holy All Seeing Market to save us from ourselves. But then, it was the Holy Market and our own individual self interests and denial that got us into this mess in the first place.

 

From 1992 forward, it seemed like Fukuyama's End of History; all we had to do was hang on for the aromatic ride into the bright Utopia of the future. I rode that optimism. Looking back, we were clueless fools who sold the future to subsidize the movable feast of the present, now past, in a mix of hubris, denial and self interest that has brought us to a world that is breaking in so many ways. The End of History was the beginning of the end of everything and we totally missed it.