Sometimes I wish I could live for 20 more years to see what the future brings. Most of the time I’m glad I’m 82 and almost certainly won’t.
I envision a USA very different from today—one shaped by a catastrophic climate change that can’t be averted, and by an economic collapse that can be averted only by drastic economic and political reforms that seem highly unlikely today.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine New York City during the Great Depression being hit by Superstorm Sandy.
Catastrophic climate change is usually discussed as a doom that will full upon us unless we accomplish X things by the year Y. In fact, catastrophic climate change is already upon us.
We can by our actions influence how bad things are going to get, but existing greenhouse gasses will produce increasing numbers of floods, droughts, heavy snow storms and power outages.
We the citizens of Rochester N.Y., located as we are on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, are fortunate. Cities such as Miami and New Orleans will meet the fate of Atlantis, but we have a good chance to survive.
We’re not in danger of tidal waves. We have had relatively few severe storms compared to other regions. We have access to a relatively abundant supply of fresh water which, however, we are not caring for.
Climate crisis is likely to be combined with financial crisis. Starting with the Reagan administration and especially since the Clinton administration, the U.S. government has turned over management of the economy to the financial markets.
There have been a series of financial crisis, each one worse than the one before. The response of the U.S. government has been to rescue failed financial institutions, and allow the cycles to continue.
At some point, there will be a financial crisis too big to resolve. Instead of financial institutions being “too big to fail,” they will be “too big to bail.”