![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Rest of This Century
Oct. 23rd, 2008 09:45 amI was going to talk about Sarah Palin dropping $150 large* of donated money on her wardrobe but I decided not to. That's a shame, since I had a nice rant ready, but it doesn't move the needle. If you think McCain's campaign can't pour piss out of a boot, (they ever hear of hiring a consultant to make these buys?) well, this is more proof. If you think McCain is the only thing standing between us and the Socialist Republic of America, you've got an excuse. Instead, I decided to take a science fiction spin, and discuss what I think the rest of this century will (or at least could, for my writing's sake) look like.
History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes, and I think our future century will rhyme with the one experienced by Great Britain starting in 1815. Here's a thumbnail of where Britain stood in 1815: They were the premier military power, but not omniscient. Regional powers could, with great effort, block them in their regions, but the homeland was safe. Britain was the leading economic power, but struggling with the internal issues of democracy and the adverse effects of industrialization. Britain was also struggling with a problem we don't really think about now - sanitation. Cholera and dysentery, diseases now only seen in the Third World, were rampant in British cities.
Militarily and economically, I would argue that the US is in the same spot. Yes, we've managed to shoot ourselves in the foot twice - once with the housing bubble and once with the ham-fisted "War on Terror," but being shot in the foot doesn't have to be fatal. Thanks to technology, our homeland is somewhat more vulnerable to attack, although a crippling blow is almost out of the reach of our enemies.
The problem we're struggling with, the one that rhymes (historically speaking) with sanitation is global warming. So here's my first prediction - we'll deal with global warming like the Victorians dealt with decease. Victorian medicine didn't cure deceases. Instead, they built sewers and mosquito nets and stopped bleeding people to cure a fever. In other words, prevention and not doing dumb things.
Thus with global warming. Various scientists are talking about geo-engineering Earth to reduce the impact of carbon emissions. The solutions proposed appear to be feasible at a fairly low cost, at least for a governmental level. Also, we will reduce our dependence on at least one fossil fuel, oil, as the price resets to a higher level.
My second prediction is that we'll still have wars, but that, at least until mid-century, they will relatively low-scale affairs like the Iraq War. Simply put, mid-century is the earliest that emerging powers India or China could pose a credible threat, and Russia's demographics are running the wrong way.
Even mid-century is an aggressive timeline for the emerging powers to get up to a US level. Both the emerging powers are going to have economic downturns, as nothing goes up linearly forever. (Ask your local real-estate broker or investment adviser about that.)
I do think we'll have some serious disruptions around mid-century if not sooner. The Saudi government is a couple of old men away from a constitutional crisis, and as the world transitions away from burning oil, they will get zapped economically. But, their problems will be more of a civil war in nature then a "let's conquer the world."
In world history, the period 1815 - 1870 was relatively peaceful, and after 1870, the next major war was 1914. I suspect that we could have something similar in the period 2008-2050. My hope (and my fiction assumes) that we use that period to go from space exploration to space exploitation.
* "Large" = thousands. She dumped $150,000 of money donated to McCain and/or the RNC.
History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes, and I think our future century will rhyme with the one experienced by Great Britain starting in 1815. Here's a thumbnail of where Britain stood in 1815: They were the premier military power, but not omniscient. Regional powers could, with great effort, block them in their regions, but the homeland was safe. Britain was the leading economic power, but struggling with the internal issues of democracy and the adverse effects of industrialization. Britain was also struggling with a problem we don't really think about now - sanitation. Cholera and dysentery, diseases now only seen in the Third World, were rampant in British cities.
Militarily and economically, I would argue that the US is in the same spot. Yes, we've managed to shoot ourselves in the foot twice - once with the housing bubble and once with the ham-fisted "War on Terror," but being shot in the foot doesn't have to be fatal. Thanks to technology, our homeland is somewhat more vulnerable to attack, although a crippling blow is almost out of the reach of our enemies.
The problem we're struggling with, the one that rhymes (historically speaking) with sanitation is global warming. So here's my first prediction - we'll deal with global warming like the Victorians dealt with decease. Victorian medicine didn't cure deceases. Instead, they built sewers and mosquito nets and stopped bleeding people to cure a fever. In other words, prevention and not doing dumb things.
Thus with global warming. Various scientists are talking about geo-engineering Earth to reduce the impact of carbon emissions. The solutions proposed appear to be feasible at a fairly low cost, at least for a governmental level. Also, we will reduce our dependence on at least one fossil fuel, oil, as the price resets to a higher level.
My second prediction is that we'll still have wars, but that, at least until mid-century, they will relatively low-scale affairs like the Iraq War. Simply put, mid-century is the earliest that emerging powers India or China could pose a credible threat, and Russia's demographics are running the wrong way.
Even mid-century is an aggressive timeline for the emerging powers to get up to a US level. Both the emerging powers are going to have economic downturns, as nothing goes up linearly forever. (Ask your local real-estate broker or investment adviser about that.)
I do think we'll have some serious disruptions around mid-century if not sooner. The Saudi government is a couple of old men away from a constitutional crisis, and as the world transitions away from burning oil, they will get zapped economically. But, their problems will be more of a civil war in nature then a "let's conquer the world."
In world history, the period 1815 - 1870 was relatively peaceful, and after 1870, the next major war was 1914. I suspect that we could have something similar in the period 2008-2050. My hope (and my fiction assumes) that we use that period to go from space exploration to space exploitation.
* "Large" = thousands. She dumped $150,000 of money donated to McCain and/or the RNC.
