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State of the World 2008

The annual Bruce S. - Jon L. "state of the world" conversation launched today on the WELL. I'm feeling a serious H.G. Wells Mind at the End of Its Tether vibe. [Link]

Now the Americans have clearly lost the thread... the Americans are really just horribly out of it, they're like some giant fundie Brazil, nobody takes their pronunciamentos seriously or believes a word they say... Whereas the world is much more seriously global now. China and India are real players, they're part of the show and they matter.

Serious-minded people everywhere do know they have to deal with the resource crisis and the climate crisis. Because the world-machine's backfiring and puffing smoke. Joe and Jane Sixpack are looking at four-dollar milk and five-dollar gas. It's hurting and it's scary and there's no way out of it but through it.

Everybody's reluctant to budge because they sense, probably correctly, that they have to wade through a torrent of mud, blood sweat and tears. Maybe, then, they emerge into the relatively sunlit uplands of something closer to sustainability.

So: I don't expect too much to happen in 2008: except for that intensified smell of burning as people's feet are held to the fire. "Nothing changes if nothing changes." But if nothing changes, then more and more china is going to flat-out shatter and break.

THEN they'll move. If they see somebody making money at it, they might move pretty fast.

jon posted this at 5:26 PM
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