Do you want to make the world a better place? Inequality, the slow pace of scientific discovery, and the lack of action on climate change are some of the things that you can affect if you have enough resources. But how do you do it? Enter How to Spend a Trillion Dollars, the ultimate thought experiment that is also a call to arms to what we could we do if we put our minds to it — and our money. For the author Rowan Hooper, it all started as a bit of fun until it wasn’t. What began as a flight of fancy quickly started to seem real as he researched the book and came up with ten mega projects to address global problems we can actually fix. “If this was a trillion-dollar version of Brewster’s Millions where I had to pick one of my ten options, what would I do?” he asks himself and his readers. Keep reading to learn the answer to this question.
1. Level up humans
AIM: To eradicate world poverty. Specifically, to lift the global millions living in extreme poverty above the poverty line, to break them free of the poverty trap and set them up for a lifetime at a level above $2 per day subsistence.
During the book’s research, only one of the dozens of people whom Hooper spoke to — a Harvard professor — refused to play along with the premise to spend the money on things. “You should give the money to the poor,” he said. “Yes, but it’s a thought experiment,” Hooper countered. “What if we couldn’t give it away and had to spend the money on, say, a science project.” “No, it’s morally wrong and you should give it to the poor,” the professor insisted. Keep reading in the book.
2. Cure all diseases
AIM: To protect humanity from the next pandemic, create a new field of human biology, transform the human experience by curing, preventing or treating all known diseases (not entirely excluding death). To avoid, if possible, splitting the human race into two species.
Hooper notes that the year 2020 turned out to be pivotal for humanity — but not in the way many of us had hoped. “There was an expectation that it was going to be the year we got serious about climate change, pulled together and rode a wave of changes that would build to a revolution in economics, agriculture and energy; a civilizational upheaval that would lead to a better world,” he adds. “Instead, we got the pandemic that many scientists had been fearing for years.” Learn more in the book.
3. Go carbon zero
AIM: To massively cut our emissions of carbon dioxide and wean the world of fossil fuel. To transition to renewable energy, as fast as possible, and rebuild the power grids across the world. To move to zero-carbon transport and industry, to massively boost energy efficiency, and to change our housing. This is a big one.
“On Mars, it drifts down through the thin atmosphere as snow, forming a frozen ice cap on the South Pole,” Hooper writes. “On Venus, it makes up almost the entire composition of the atmosphere, pushing the surface temperature above 450° C, hotter than the melting point of lead.” he continues. “On Earth, it is a trace gas, making up a mere 0.4 per cent of the atmosphere. But boy is it a player. … For more than 150 years, scientists have known that dioxide in the air warms the planet.” Learn more in the book.
4. Save life on Earth
AIM: To halt the human-driven erosion of life on Earth in order to maintain the habitability of the planet and protect biodiversity. To save endangered species and catalogue their genetic material. To protect rainforests, wetlands, coral reefs and all areas of key biodiversity value. To reduce the current catastrophic rate of species extinction while at the same time reframing our relationship with the natural world.
“The naked mole rat is spectacularly ugly,” Hooper writes. “Hairless and wrinkled, it has a giant pair of incisors growing through its lips. It is not an obvious choice to start a chapter celebrating the wonder and diversity of life on Earth, but it truly is one of the most fascinating of all mammals,” he continues. “They’re also immune to cancer and pain, and are the only non-human mammal to bury their dead.” Learn more in the book.
5. Settle off-planet
AIM: To establish a lasting human settlement on the Moon. To open up the rest of the solar system to greater exploration, to eventually relieve ecological pressure on Earth, and to begin the next stage of the human journey. We will create an international organisation, the Terran Alliance, aimed at building an inclusive community on the lunar surface that adheres to the sentiment of the Moon Treaty of 1979: the Moon is for everyone, not just billionaires and mining companies.
“When I was a child, I had a poster in my bedroom of a Space Shuttle piggybacking on a Boeing 747,” Hooper writes. “I liked it because it was a spaceship, and spaceships are inherently cool. They are about the future,” he continues. “Unfortunately, that was getting on for 40 years ago and human spacecraft of the kind I dreamed of remains the future.” Learn more in the book.
6. Find some aliens
AIM: To cure our cosmic loneliness through the discovery of extraterrestrial life. To answer fundamental questions about what even constitutes life. To learn more about our cosmic neighbourhood through the construction of new telescopes in space, on the Moon and on Earth, and through robot missions to Venus, Mars and the interesting moons of the outer solar system.
“If we ever discover extraterrestrial life, the Vatican, at least, will be ready,” Hooper writes. “In 2018, following the discovery of transiently liquid water on Mars, Guy Consolmagno, the Pope’s chief astronomer, wrote in the Vatican newspaper: ‘We now know that there is liquid water and we have evidence that may not prove there’s life but is certainly consistent with some kinds of life forms.'” Learn more in the book.
7. Redesign our planet
AIM: To remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere such that we eventually return to a safer concentration of 350 parts per million. To buy us time to decarbonise the global economy and keep global heating to less-than-catastrophic levels.
“I used to think that The Scream by Edvard Munch represented a person overwhelmed by some internal mental horror. Probably it does,” Hooper writes. “But now it makes me think of climate change.” Learn more in the book.
8. Turn the world vegan
AIM: To transform global farming and initiate a genuinely green revolution that will slash the amount of greenhouse gases produced by agriculture. To intensify sustainable farming practices in order to avoid mass famine by the end of the century. To incentivise farmers and the public to change food production and consumption such that the use of animals products is minmised.
“So many of the issues tackled in this book are interrelated: poverty and global health; biodiversity and climate change,” Hooper writes. “So too with the food we eat,” he continues. “Our system of agriculture is shockingly polluting: in the UK, agriculture accounts for 70 per cent of the country’s land use but only about 0.7 per cent of GDP, and its measured carbon emissions are 11 per cent of the country’s total.” Learn more in the book.
9. Discover a new reality
AIM: To break, or fill the gaps in, the standard model of particle physics. To understand the missing 95 per cent of reality. To build a theory of quantum gravity. To map the cosmic neutrino background left one second after the Big Bang. To move our knowledge of reality.
“Each time we find a way to look more deeply, we seem to find new things,” Hooper adds. Learn more in the book.
10. Second genesis
AIM: To develop a machine with human-level intelligence, a machine we would agree is as conscious as you and I. To create a new life form by assembling an organism with a genome of entirely synthetic genetic material, and endowing it with functions not seen in the natural world.
“Hephaestus is not the most famous of the ancient Greek gods, but he is surely the most modern,” Hooper writes. “Though shunned by other gods, he was revered for his unparalleled skill in manufacturing. You’ll have heard of the winged helmet and sandals of Hermes, the bow and arrow of Eros and the armour of Achilles,” he continues. “He also made a replacement shoulder blade for Pelops, the king of Pisa.” Learn more in the book.
Complement these ten mega projects to improve our life from How to Spend a Trillion Dollars with Mother Teresa on the meaning of life and Ecknath Easwaran on why your life is your biggest message.
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