What humans face in the 21st century

By Frosty Wooldridge

Americans enjoy nothing less than the highest standard of living in the world.  We inhale more junk from China than any other country.  We buy more cars and gadgets than all other countries combined.  Manufacturing concerns call us consumers rather than citizens.

Within the next four decades, much of what we take for granted will change.  It will change on many levels.  It will change in our personal lives, freedoms and mobility.

My friend Marilyn Hempel, president of Population Press, www.populationpress.org , features great thinkers at her site.  She publishes a superb quarterly catalogue that spells out the latest trends.

Her latest guest, Glen Hiemstra said, “The following tipping points are going to rock our world.”  He is the director at www.futurist.org .

The Global Climate Crisis

“There is no longer any doubt that the planet is getting warmer,” said Hiemstra.  “Twenty-one of the 22 hottest years on record have occurred in the past 25 years. The Arctic polar region is heating up at two to three times the rate of the rest of the planet. This heating coincides with the final industrial age, in which the primary enterprise of humans has become locating, digging up, and setting fire to long extinct life forms. This heating, a matter of a few degrees is not a minor matter, suggesting a life of warm leisure in Bermuda shorts. Rather, it promises an era of wild weather, disruptions to agriculture, transportation, and commerce.

“There is time, but very little time, to take measures to retard global warming. Action is required now. And the amazing news is that there are many developments that enable a vision of no additional global warming, then reversal of the warming, in this century. Nuclear half-life accelerators are one such possibility. But we have to change soon.”

The End of Cheap and Easy Oil, Just In Time

“The oil age has lasted about 120 years,” said Hiemstra. “No energy source has been easier or cheaper than locating pools of oil and pumping it from the ground. Now, the easy pools are gone, and the price is increasing, both the cost of exploring and developing oil, and the global cost in conflict of exploiting the primary deposits in the Middle East. Our long, nearly free ride is over. The task of the next quarter century is making the shift from easy oil to alternative energy.”

As Michael Pacheco said in 2005, “We are going to need everything we can get from biomass, everything we can get from solar, everything we can get from wind. And still the question is can we get enough?”

“Advances in wind energy using magnetic gears is but one important development, as are hybrid, fuel cell, and perhaps best of all Tesla [electric] motor cars that will end the role of oil in transportation,” said Hiemstra. “Cheap LED’s to replace all light bulbs, the greatest source of electricity use in buildings, is a clear path to a better future.”

Nano-Solar Cells

“Among the most important of nanotech developments will be the manufacture of nano-solar cells,” said Hiemstra. “Pioneered by Konarka and by NanoSolar of California, these thin film cells, which are printed onto a polymer substrate on giant drum printers, will take solar energy from the exotic to the common place. The first large scale fabrication plant is slated for completion in 2007. When this NanoSolar plant is fully operational it will produce 430 megawatts of solar cells per year, about a fourth of a typical nuclear plant.”

Obesity Decreases Life Spans

“At the same time that the biotech revolution promises longer and healthier life, the exploding obesity epidemic lifts the curtain on a future in which, for the first time, young people may face a life span which is less than their parents,” said Hiemstra. “This moving map illustrates the rapidity with which significant obesity has swept through American states, only to be mimicked around the world. This two decade old trend coincides with the tremendous increase in the number of meals that involve fast food, the huge increase in portion size of these meals, and the introduction of high fructose corn syrup into practically all processed foods.”

Outlook for the U.S. 2011 ~ Demographics and Social Policy

“Aging—more people living longer,” said Hiemstra. “The age wave, which hit shore on January 1, 2011, becomes a big story finally, but unfortunately in a misleading way. There will be a concerted effort to use the age wave and government deficits to justify an effort to permanently cripple Social Security in the U.S. It is true that the Social Security Trust Fund is “where the money is” when you look at available tax money in the U.S. But it is not true, and never has been, that Social Security is on the verge of bankruptcy, or requires massive changes. Simply leaving things as they are enables a full payout of benefits until 2037. Minor changes like an increase in Social Security taxes of 1/20th of a percent per year for 20 years would make the system self-sustaining longer term.

“The key problem now is deciding what the Federal Government can stop spending on in order to repay the taxes borrowed from the Trust Fund for general use since the Reagan “reforms” of the early 1980s. There are only two realistic ways to create pools of money that are large enough—either raising general tax rates, or substantially decreasing military spending. Preserving Social Security in the U.S. will be more important than ever, as a declining percentage of aging workers will have company pension programs, and the self-funded 401K programs designed to take their place are both very insecure and on average too small to provide a reasonable retirement for more than half the population. A monumental fight over Social Security looms and the outcome will determine whether the U.S. slips back into significant poverty among the aged.”

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You may contact Marilyn Hempel at www.PopulationPress.org