“Its soul, its
climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people, and manners. My God! How little
do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and
which no other people on earth enjoy!"
- Thomas
Jefferson, letter to James Monroe, June 17, 1785
What
will the world look like and what kind of country will America be in the next
15-20 years at the rate of the fast-paced involuntary and hopeless change that
is aimed at pushing us “forward” to disaster?
The
“unprecedented change” will drive “60 percent of the world’s population to
mega-cities by 2030, and competition for food, water, and energy resources
could increase the possibilities of violent conflict.” (Frederick Kempe,
President and CEO, Atlantic Council)
“The
United States must urgently address its domestic economic and political
dysfunctions.” The Atlantic Council, a think tank, wrote a 57-page report,
“Envisioning 2030: U.S. Leadership in a Post-Western World,” to “help prepare
the Obama Administration and its global partners for unprecedented change.” (http://www.acus.org/publication/envisioning-2030-us-strategy-post-western-world)
The
report predicts a future of “vast economic and political volatility,
environmental catastrophe, and conflicting, inward-looking nationalisms that
would be unlike any period that the United States has seen before.” “President Obama will be setting the tone and
direction for U.S. policy in a post-Western world.” (Atlantic Council,
Executive Summary, p. 5)
As
the powers that be are actively and speedily working to affect this outcome,
the global order champions “predict” that wealth will shift from west to east.
Learning Mandarin may be a good idea - China is recognized in the report as
“the most crucial single factor that will shape the international system in
2030.” (Atlantic Council, Executive Summary, p. 7)
Is
a post-western world a world without the United States as the economic
superpower, benefactor, and military protector of the globe’s ungrateful
nations? The 20th century economic guru of the liberal elites, John
Maynard Keynes, said in 1937, “…the idea of the future being different from the
present is so repugnant to our conventional modes of thought and behavior that
we, most of us, offer a great resistance to acting on it in practice.”
The
National Intelligence Council discusses in its December 2012 166-page paper,
“Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds,” the mega trends, game-changers, Black
Swans, and potential worlds in the next 15-20 years. (http://globaltrends2030.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/global-trends-2030-november2012.pdf)
Food,
water, and energy sources will become problematic due to growing populations in
emerging markets and policies adopted at home that favor expensive green
energy, wind, solar, and biofuels, preventing exploration of existing cheaper
domestic resources of fossil fueled energy. As one commodity becomes an issue,
it will affect the supply and demand of the others. Water needs will grow by a
predicted 40 percent.
Energy
supply may be obtained from fracking. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking),
developed in the 1940s, could extract oil and gas from shales at much lower
cost. However, the environmentalists' objections over the contamination of
water, earth quake generation, and methane emissions, have slowed down the use
of hydraulic fracturing, particularly in Europe. China, with the largest shale
reserves, does not have enough equipment and water to extract gas through
fracking.
The
EPA will set back any logical resolution to addressing human needs as it will
interfere with its myriad of regulations via the Clean Air Act in the misguided
effort to protect some tiny fish to the detriment of humans.
NIC
modeling predicts that prices for agricultural commodities will rise, impacting
poorer countries the worst as they depend on corn which is also used for
biofuel. Crop disease, drought, and bad weather events could compound the
problem. (p. 34)
Genetically
modified crops could be the way to provide sufficient and affordable food and
fuel by using transgenic technologies and precision agriculture via
drought-tolerant, salt-tolerant crops, micro-irrigation, and hydroponic
greenhouses. Pricing water for farmers in order to discourage waste could be
implemented. Currently, farmers pay one-tenth of the price that households and
industry pay for water. (NIC, p. 97)
Poverty
will be reduced as the result of the U.N.’s efforts to re-distribute wealth across
the globe to third world nations, carbon-taxing and punishing developed nations
for their success. In U.N.’s view, the wealth created by the west was achieved
at the expense of the rest of the world. These retrograde totalitarian regimes
bear no responsibility for their endemic corruption and constant religious and
tribal wars.
There
will be a diffusion of power without hegemony, dominated by control of regional
coalitions. China, India, Brazil will be major players. China will become the
largest economy. Europe, Japan, Russia, U.S. will continue to decline.
Countries like Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Turkey will
remain “second-order players.”
Aging
countries like Japan and Western Europe, who are committing demographic suicide
by having less and less babies, below the replacement value of 2.1, will
experience economic decline and loss of national identity. Russia will suffer
population decline. An important factor will be the statistics of Russian men who
die at relatively younger age because of alcohol abuse, tobacco, and related
accidents.
There
are 80 countries currently with a median age of 25 or less. Eighty percent of
all ethnic and armed conflicts come from countries with youthful
populations. By 2030, there will be 50
countries left with youthful populations. Fertility rates in these areas range
from 4-6 children per family. Clusters of projected youthful states are:
-
Equatorial
belt of the Sub-Saharan Africa
-
Middle
East
-
Americas:
Bolivia, Guatemala, Haiti
-
Pacific
Rim: East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands
-
Pakistan,
Afghanistan, southeast Turkey (Kurds)
-
Israel
(Orthodox Jews) (NIC report, p. 23)
Rapid
changes and a shift in power could overwhelm governments. A “governance gap” may evolve that could be
replaced by regional governance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a
rich individual, or a group of powerful elites.
Natural
disasters such as staple crop catastrophes, tsunamis, hurricanes, erosion and
depletion of soils, and solar geomagnetic storms might cause governments to
collapse. (NIC report on Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, p. 52)
NIC’s
models show an augmentation of the global middle class, health care advances,
new technologies, new communication, and poverty reduction. NIC analysis predicts the most rapid growth
of the middle class to occur in Asia - India and China. (NIC report, p. 9)
Pathogens
crossing from animals to humans can and have caused political and economic
turmoil.
Respiratory
pathogens can travel very fast across the globe. Prion disease caused
Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans; a bat corona virus caused SARS in 2002. Black
Death killed one third of the European population; measles and smallpox killed
90 percent of the native populations in the Americas; the 1918 flu pandemic killed
50 million worldwide. HIV/AIDS jumped to humans almost fifty years before it
was recognized. TB, gonorrhea, Staphylococcus Aureus (staph) could re-emerge
with a vengeance. Genetic engineering could release new pathogens in addition
to those occurring naturally. (NIC, p. 14)
Nationalism
is likely to intensify in regions such as East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and
the Middle East based on territorial disputes, religious beliefs, tribal
vendettas, and theocratic ideologies. Although planners expected urbanization
to promote secularization, the opposite occurred in many settings; it
encouraged religious identity, particularly among Muslims.
NIC’s
modeling sees Russia as fighting the battle of “integrating its rapidly growing
ethnic Muslim population in the face of a shrinking ethnic Russian population.”
The changing ethnic mix is already a source of growing social tensions. (p. 83)
The
flow of human capital from the poorest countries, to middle-income, and to rich
countries will cause social disruptions, unrest, and problems for urban
governments. Increased urban population from internal migration and external
immigration will cause food and water shortages. (p. 31)
Patterns
of trade reveal the following major economic clusters: Europe (EU), Asia, North
America (NAFTA), and Latin America.
Two-thirds
of European trade takes place within the EU; NAFTA encompasses 40 percent of
U.S. trade. East Asian intra-regional trade is 53 percent. Latin America
intra-regional trade is 35 percent (excluding Mexico). Latin America is
pursuing EU-type regional governance, the Union of Latin American Nations
(UNISUR). (Atlantic Council report, p. 26)
National
Intelligence Council’s (NIC) modeling for 2030 includes four potential worlds:
-
“Stalled
Engines”
(globalization stalls and interstate conflict grows)
-
“Fusion” (China and U.S. cooperate; it
does not look promising so far)
-
“Ginni-out-of-the-bottle” (U.S. is no
longer the world’s policeman and pocketbook, inequalities explode, no more
international welfare, some countries prosper, some countries fail)
-
“Nonstate World” (NGOs,
multinational businesses, academic institutions, wealthy individuals,
megacities such as those envisioned by U.N. Agenda 21 become the leaders;
“increasing global public opinion consensus among elites form hybrid
coalitions” – a page right out of the U.N. Agenda 21 goals)
The
2030 global modeling points to potential Black Swans such as Euro/EU collapse
due to “unruly Greek exit causing eight times more collateral damage than the
Lehmann Brothers,” nuclear war, WMD, cyber-attacks to the power grid and the
Internet, solar geomagnetic storms, a democratic or collapsed China, a reformed
Iran (wishful thinking), and global anarchy, if U.S. power collapses or
retreats and no other power is willing, capable, or able financially to provide
international order.
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