What am I scared of? Not climate change. It is real, but it’s not happening fast enough to count as the epic disaster some people describe. Not COVID. Actually, I was a bit concerned about long-term health consequences, but expected not to die of it.
What I’m really scared about is our civilization self-destructing in the next 30 years. That’s just about when I’m scheduled to die, but it will have a huge impact on my son and grandchildren.
Below is a chart from Limits to Growth. It shows the interplay between very basic forces of civilization. This is the clearest glimpse into the future that anyone can get.
The population line plummeting around 2050 is basically a civilization crash. There’s a very narrow set of choices we must make to avoid this fate. In order to have even a chance of making the right choices, we need a deep change in how we talk with each other.
