crisis with a summary of what could happen going forward:
The new world brought another period of peace and prosperity, perhaps the greatest 5 decades the world has ever seen. Now the two superpowers of that era both have uncertain futures. The world sinks into a severe recession. Beyond that new challenges await.
- Peak Oil
- Climate change
- The shift of power from west to east
- The second demographic transition, aging populations and perhaps extinction for some major cultures.
Perhaps the new world will be even better than we can dream. It’s up to us.
A commenter there leaps on the climate change item. Fabius leaps back:
Fabius Maximus replies: The climate has never been static, but the changes have often been bad news. Like the little ice age. I suggest you study that period, as there are tentative indications we may be entering another cooling cycle. Not necessarily as long or cold, but even a few years of cold would be unpleasant with world grain inventories (per capita, or days demand) at 50-year lows.
He makes a good point. I might be a an "AGW denier", but I do worry about
climate change. Here in Italy it's much colder than I'm used to and it makes
me see that without heat it would be pretty hard to live through the winter.
If it is several degrees colder it would be much worse, going from 3 degrees above
freezing to zero would mean snow every day instead of just rain every day.
If it is just warmer then things might suck, we might be sitting under ceiling
fans stirring barely moving air as we sweat like a scene from In the Heat of the
Night, but we won't die. We need to be spending money to mitigate current problems
now, and not wasting trillions to prevent a potential one or two degrees
temperature rise in 100 years. Problems #1 is my real worry.
If we have energy, we can survive heat or cold. If we don't have energy, then
instead of surfing the internet while watching my new 40" LCD I'd be in
bed with 2 comforters on top of me.
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