Quote:
Originally Posted by Oberon
I had it at around 2050 myself 
There's a lot of factors between here and there that if not addressed will lead to a rather catastrophic meltdown. Population growth, food prices, oil reserves, security vs freedoms, ethnic tensions, etc.
It's all the same problems that we had a hundred years ago, but on a planet which is half the size and with double (if not quadruple) the amount of people. |
Estimates of global population size around 1900 range around 1 - 1.5 billion, so the factor is in the range of not just 2 - 3, but 5 - 7 . In 2050, the factor will be around 6 - 9.
The current populaiton size in 2011/2012, 7 billion, is estimated to represent 6% of all individuals of modenr mankind that have ever been born since the species "arrived" in the stone age.
The pressure on resources is hard to be estimated in growth, but usually high-rating two digit numbers and low three digit numbers are given.
What I mean is your description I quoted is quite euphemistic.
I recommended it before repeatedly, but do it again, a good reading on what could be waiting for us behind the next corner is this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Fail-Survive/dp/0140279512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333719627&sr=8-1
If a society has chosen the path towards collapse, then often it goes that way quite quickly, and faster than everybody expected. There is a decision point apparently which to pass means that from there on the inner dynamic of the process accelerates to previously unexpected levels. On local levels, we have been there so many times, in all regions of the world. It seems we have nothing learned from that. Today is the first time that our fate is at stake not on a local, regional scale, but on a global scale. And it seems to me that genetic programs of mours that in the past served us well, in the overcrowded present are working against us, and seem to be impossible to overcome.
People do not change.
Not really.
I'm currently reading this one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Die-Stunde-Dilettanten-verschaukeln-lassen/dp/3552055541/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333720000&sr=1-1
A German review of the book here:
http://www.welt.de/kultur/literarischewelt/article13946313/Die-Dilettanten-sind-die-Heroen-unserer-Tage.html
A brilliantly written description of how a culture in which the self-exposers have taken over once again is doomed to constantly decline and falling apart. The dilettant is a person that must not be competent in anything but only in giving a good shine, giving the impression of being capable to be what he/her wants to be, but cannot be by ability. The facade however already is enough to guarantee his/her career, his showacting and his performance is evidence of his competence.
With such a culture that both applauds such narcissistic actors and encourages them, while at the same time really qualified people get locked out or do not dare to take on something because they indeed realise the problem in full and see no solution at an acceptable risk, you cannot hope to "save the world". And the voters, they reward the dilettantism you see on every level, everywhere, they demand the stage show, they want to get entertzained that way.
We amuse ourselves to death, and get drowned in the most shallow of all possible entertainments.
Serves us right, I am tempted to think.