Honestly, I'm not all that worried about America as I am for the world as a whole. America is a rich, strong and fruitful nation. Governments and people go through changes over time, swinging one way then another, and it's easy to think that now the US is evolving into some super-Orwellian state, or in ten years if we have a president that believes in cut backs that the government is melting away. But in the end I doubt there will be much dramatic change that anyone will notice even in their lifetimes either way.
What does concern me more in the relative short-term (50 to 100 years) are some of the possible implications of climate change, human population and the expenditure of resources.
Personally I don't 100% believe many of the people who talk about global warming's implications, because frankly no one knows enough about it to be sure how something as complex, large and long lasting as our climate works. But between possible sea level changes, lack of glacial melt water, weather pattern changes, deforestation and carbon outputs, I don't doubt that we're hurting, not helping our environment. The end result though will likely be a decrease in arable land as a result of a myriad of changes, as well ad furthering water shortages in some areas.
Combine that with, that as a species we have the big problem that the Earth cannot sustain our population's rate of growth. Many projections tend to project the human population exceeding 9 billion by 2050 and probably further increasing before (hopefully) cresting. Everyone reading this has access to a computer, the Internet, almost surely has eaten at least once today and plans the same for tomorrow. But by the standards of many in the world, that makes you a very rich person, our global population as a whole isn't in that great a shape. But even where it is now at perhaps 60% of it's hypothetical peak, we're really making a mess of things.
And finally, the world's grand mistake of an fossil fuel based economy. It doesn't matter what country you live or what you do, if you live in a developed nation fossil fuels help make your life possible. But aside from what they're doing to our greenish blue sphere, the end run is that demand will continue to increase for them (both because of increased population and increased development) while supplies will not be increasing. The result is that the world economy will get more and more expensive to move along. This will probably have the greatest effect on developing and newly developed nations that have just built or are still building the infrastructure for fuels that are not the 'way of the future'. Some countries will be better off than others with remaining oil reserves or coal reserves (China will likely be pumping coals into furnaces for 250 years or more). But every country on Earth is going to have to tackle this problem.
Those are my biggest worries about the future. The US is rich and can likely adapt to a changing world as is needed, and at worst the US will probably always be able to produce enough food for itself. My worry is mostly for the people, not so much the nations, in many of the larger and less modernized nations of the world. As things change they will find it much harder to adapt, and the risk for famine, drought or unheard of economic calamity becomes very real.
The Earth probably cannot sustain our current population and resource consumption, but I would like to see them reduced through sensible policies and industries, and not by war, famine and disease.
What does concern me more in the relative short-term (50 to 100 years) are some of the possible implications of climate change, human population and the expenditure of resources.
Personally I don't 100% believe many of the people who talk about global warming's implications, because frankly no one knows enough about it to be sure how something as complex, large and long lasting as our climate works. But between possible sea level changes, lack of glacial melt water, weather pattern changes, deforestation and carbon outputs, I don't doubt that we're hurting, not helping our environment. The end result though will likely be a decrease in arable land as a result of a myriad of changes, as well ad furthering water shortages in some areas.
Combine that with, that as a species we have the big problem that the Earth cannot sustain our population's rate of growth. Many projections tend to project the human population exceeding 9 billion by 2050 and probably further increasing before (hopefully) cresting. Everyone reading this has access to a computer, the Internet, almost surely has eaten at least once today and plans the same for tomorrow. But by the standards of many in the world, that makes you a very rich person, our global population as a whole isn't in that great a shape. But even where it is now at perhaps 60% of it's hypothetical peak, we're really making a mess of things.
And finally, the world's grand mistake of an fossil fuel based economy. It doesn't matter what country you live or what you do, if you live in a developed nation fossil fuels help make your life possible. But aside from what they're doing to our greenish blue sphere, the end run is that demand will continue to increase for them (both because of increased population and increased development) while supplies will not be increasing. The result is that the world economy will get more and more expensive to move along. This will probably have the greatest effect on developing and newly developed nations that have just built or are still building the infrastructure for fuels that are not the 'way of the future'. Some countries will be better off than others with remaining oil reserves or coal reserves (China will likely be pumping coals into furnaces for 250 years or more). But every country on Earth is going to have to tackle this problem.
Those are my biggest worries about the future. The US is rich and can likely adapt to a changing world as is needed, and at worst the US will probably always be able to produce enough food for itself. My worry is mostly for the people, not so much the nations, in many of the larger and less modernized nations of the world. As things change they will find it much harder to adapt, and the risk for famine, drought or unheard of economic calamity becomes very real.
The Earth probably cannot sustain our current population and resource consumption, but I would like to see them reduced through sensible policies and industries, and not by war, famine and disease.
