There are politically motivated and inductive reasoning filters that gunk up the works of science. But, we all know the planet won't be around forever.
Reminds me of the story about a guy dozing off during an astronomer's lecture. The astromer is explaining that if we're still here, our star will kill us all off a billion years from now. The napping guy is startled awake and say, "What? What did you say?"
The astronomer repeats it and the guys says, "Whew... Okay. I thought you said a million years from now."
Which is going to bite us hard first? Well, if you're in your 50's, your parents have been labeled "The Greatest Generation." What will media label the children of "The Greatest Generation?'
I'll say we'll be called "The Greediest Generation."
Those of us in our 50's will see some of the effects of our greed before we die. If you're in your 20's now, you'll most likely be cursing us. And your children will cure us also.
Those of you in your 40's and 50's who live a comfortable, upper-middle class or above life now do realize that your children will not have a better life than you? This will be a great sea change in human development. Those who are living a lower middle-class, month-to-month existance, your children will feel the brunt of the changes in store in the next 20 years.
The changes will economic and dangerously geopolitical; the ecology is down the list somewhere. Energy and the hunt to grab up the last pumpable oil will be the catalyst to some troubling economic times: inflation breeding inflation, breeding high unemployment and tremendous stresses on a government safety net that won't hold. It's going to get uglier than you guys in you 50's have ever seen.
And that's the good news. The bad news is that this race for energy to keep bad economies from turning into abysmal economies will make the odds for a major global confilct over energy access more likely than not.
Don't get me wrong, we'll be able to muddle through the next ten years or so. But, things will really heat up in 10 years, and the decade from 2015 to 2025 will be, well, interesting. And just so you have a reference for how fast a decade flies, Bill Clinton was running for re-election 10 years ago.
I can understand the logic of "Gettin' your share while the gettin' is good," but the kids are not going to think too highly of us. We can blame it on the politicians or the bad guys in Asia for taking 'our' oil, but that won't change anything.
Nothing short of a trillions of dollars, Apollo-scale program, begun 5 years ago, would have smoothed out some of the rough times. Alas, we're too late. The kids will have to figure it out.
And just for the record, I'm an economic optimist. You should hear what the pessimists say.
