End of the world

[Oberon]

Can't deny it, there have been a lot of earthquakes lately. Heck, there was one off Portsmouth the other day, small one but the first since the 1800s.

I don't think it's some kind of giant buildup to doomsday though, and even if it is, all it will mean is the destruction of a lot of humanity, which is...in the long term...not such a bad thing.

You see, if current trends continue then we are heading for our own doomsday scenario anyway, just as inevitably as night follows day. Most of us here will not see it but we can already see the beginnings of it. Food prices are rising and so is the population, some people are living longer, death rates in LEDCs are decreasing from their rates of say seventy years ago. Oil is being pumped out of the ground at increasing rates as we scramble to find more drilling sites. Eventually it's going to run out, that much is a certainty.

Now, unless someone discovers a way of making fuel and food from nothing for a low price within the next twenty or thirty years, then things are going to start getting ugly, not just between classes (the have and have nots) but also between countries, over food, water and fuel. Some people might argue that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the current campaign in Libya is directly motivated by oil, thus ticking that box.
Eventually there will be a crunch period where we do not produce enough food or water to feed the population, this has already occurred in some countries, Somalia for one, through natural events, and the inhabitants of the Kenyan/Somalian border will tell you that it's having a big effect on their lives, however some aid is able to be given because other nations have food surplus that they are able to donate...now imagine what would happen if there was now food surplus, that charity began at home and aid agencies found themselves increasingly underfunded in terms of money and food donations? Famine on a scale not seen in modern times, LEDCs descending into tribal chaos as they raid neighbouring countries for their food and water. Will this extend upwards? Will MEDCs have to put population controls in place to lower birth rates? Will voluntary euthanasia of the elderly become more common? Attitudes towards life and death will change because they will have to change, but of course, naturally, the rich will reap the benefits of the suffering of the poor...and in some countries this will result in uprisings and civil war, stricter governments will be necessary to enforce unpopular measures, democracy will be a thing for the rich, the poor will just have to get on with their lives with what increasingly little they have.

Now, I could be wrong with that trend extending upwards. It could be that the resumption of high death rates in LEDCs will balance out the longer lifespans in MEDCs, or alternatively a disease could come along and solve the problem naturally, the planet has a habit of doing things like that. Certainly the poor in most MEDCs are better off now than they were a century ago, however our drain on resources is a hundred times greater now than it was a century ago, and our living standards depend on that resource drain, for electricity for our computers, for oil for our plastics, for cheap water for our drinks and bathing. Such drains cannot continue indefinitely from a finite resource, that much is certain, so something will have to give, however I am no soothsayer, I cannot be sure exactly what it is that will give.

Of course, going back to diseases, now that it is a smaller world in terms of transportation and migration, then yes we are going to see an increase of disease, perhaps even to the extent of a new pandemic, however one has to consider that since the bird and swine flu outbreaks of recent years, most governments have become quite acutely aware of the weaknesses of their designs, and with any luck will become a bit more like the President of Madagascar in terms of disease control (SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING).