Designing Future Scenarios for the World in 2030

Question for Discussion: What will our future look like in 2030? Can we create a restorative economy and a sustainable future?

Reading: Wilkinson, "How to Build Scenarios" ;
Lewis: "Three Scenarios for the Future in 2030";
CIA: 2015: Table of Four Alternative Global Futures ;
NIC: Mapping the Future--Global Trends 2020;
Ehrenfeld, "Life in the New Millennium"

Final Exam Question: Drawing on the Paul Hawken’s book, The Ecology of Commerce, and course readings, the notes on the course website, and the course weblinks, how will Americans respond to the challenges posed by the global environmental crisis, globalization, and the 2008 financial collapse? What will the American economy, environment, and society look like in 2030? Can we end the global environmental crisis and create a sustainable future by creating a restorative economy that protects and restores the environment while at the same time creating prosperity and a high quality of life? How will the opportunity to reform the global economy and financial system created by the 2008 financial collapse affect our ability to create a restorative economy? Can we fix the global financial system, create a financially stable global economy and society, and reconcile corporate profits and free-market capitalism with the urgent need to preserve the global environment, protect and restore natural resources, reduce pollution, and maintain our quality of life? Or can the United States and the global economy continue on as we are, letting globalization, free-market capitalism, and free trade solve the challenges posed by the global environmental crisis and our emerging global society and economy?

Futuristic Scenario websites for the World in 2030

Global Trends leading us to 2030 (in-class)
Major Forces affecting Life in 2030 (in-class)
Wired: How to Build Scenarios for the Future
(4 Future Scenarios) (in-class)
Global Distribution of Household Weatlh: 2006 (in-class)
State of the World: Survival of Our Fragile Biosphere: Current Threats to the Human Future
(in-class)
Lewis: Three Scenarios for the Future in 2030
(in-class)
Ehrenfeld: Life in the New Milliennium (in-class)
Paths to Sustainability Diagram
Political Ecology: Core Principles Explained
CIA: Mapping the Future--Global Trends 2020
(Entire Report)
CIA: Mapping the Future--Global Trends 2020
(Executive Summary) (in-class)
Global Trends 2020: Introudction--Four
Alternative Futures (See links to these
four scenarios) (in-class)
CIA: 2015: Four Alternative Global Futures (in-class)
CIA: 2015: Table of Four Alternative Global Futures

Global Trends leading us to 2030

Global Distribution of Household Weatlh: 2006 (in-class)
State of the World: Survival of Our Fragile Biosphere: Current Threats to the Human Future
(in-class)
Predicted World by 2030 Graph: The Club of Rome Prediction
Global Trends: The World in 2030 (in-class)
Global Trends: Data for the World in 2030
Global Trends 2015
Four Alternative Global Futures
POLES: Population and Energy Use in 2030, Table
UN FAO: World Agriculture in 2030
UN: Population Growth in 2030
UN: World Urbanization Prospects to 2030

Rebuiling the Global Economy after the
2008 Financial Collapse

Global Environmental Trends

United Nations Development Goals

Scientific Warnings about our Future World

Measuring the Course of Global Development

Creaing Living Human Economies

Futuristic Scenario websites for the World in 2030

The Titantic heading towards the Iceberg: Collision straigt Ahead
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
Rebuilding the Global Economy after the 2008 Financial Collapse
(in-class)
Graph of Bailout Costs versus the New Deal
The $10 Trillion Hangover - Paying the Price for Eight Years of Bush
Bush's 10 Trillion Borrowing Binge
Glen Beck, Arguing with Idiots:The question is is Beck dressed
up in a Nazi military uniform?
U.S. Power and Influence Will Decline, Global Trends 2025 report says (in-class)
China blows by U.S. as world's largest car market -- DailyFinance
National Intelligence Report: Global Trends 2025 (in-class)
NIC: Global Trends 2025 Summary (in-class)
Global Trends leading us to 2030 (in-class)
Major Forces affecting Life in 2030 (in-class)
Wired: How to Build Scenarios for the Future
(4 Future Scenarios) (in-class)
Global Distribution of Household Weatlh: 2006 (in-class)
State of the World: Survival of Our Fragile Biosphere: Current Threats to the Human Future (in-class)
Lewis: Three Scenarios for the Future in 2030 (in-class)
Ehrenfeld: Life in the New Milliennium (in-class)
Ehrenfeld: The Utopia Fallacy: Life After Globalization
Paths to Sustainability Diagram
Creating Living Human Economies
CIA: Mapping the Future--Global Trends 2020
(Entire Report)
CIA: Mapping the Future: Larger Forces Shapring the World in 2020
(Executive Summary) (in-class)
Global Trends 2020: Introudction--Four
Alternative Futures (See links to these four scenarios) (in-class)
CIA: 2015: Four Alternative Global Futures (in-class)
CIA: 2015: Table of Four Alternative Global Futures
John Gray, Utopia Fails (in-class)

Professor Lewis: Three Alternative Futures for 2030

Scenario 1: America as the leader of a Globalized World

This is the future according to Thomas Friedman. The U.S. is the leader of a Globalized economy and world. Wealth and the standard of living for the top 20 percent of the world (the First World) has increased. The environment is cleaner in these wealthy nations. This globalized economy is still based on fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and some renewable energy. Computer technology connects this world into a global marketplace and a global village. The First World still consumes 70 to 80 percent of global natural resources, and doing so maintains a high quality of life. In the Third World, wealth and the standard of living are declining. Overpopulation, crowded urban megacities filled with slums and refugees, increasing threats from pollution to the rural and urban poor, declining environmental quality, scarce natural resources, and the increasing inability of Third World governments to govern and manage their economies and societies have caused the quality of life in most of these Third World nations to decline. In this Globalized world there is an increasing division between the wealthy First World and the declining Third World. The economic, social, and cultural decline that began in the poor African nations in the 1990s has spread to Latin America, India, China, the Middle East, and to Southeast Asia. Global Corporations dominate the economy and politics of the First World. There is increasing tension between the declining Third World and the wealthy First World. This tension leads to increasing numbers of U.S.-led military expeditions to put down local and regional rebellions in the Third World. Even more so than in the 1990s and early 2000s, Third World peoples see their only hope for a decent life is to escape to the wealthy First World. Because of the threat posed by these Third World refugees, First World nations are spending billions of dollars and using high technology to prevent these refugees from entering prosperous First World megacities. Global Warming, declining soil fertility, declining fisheries, dwindling supplies of clear fresh water, increasing air and water pollution, and declining global forests threaten to undermine this increasingly divided world.

Scenario 2: America as the leader of a Global Sustainable World. This is the future world of David Korten and John Cavanaugh and the anti-globalization critics. The U.S. leads the world in the creation of local and regional sustainable economies that are based on the principles of a "restorative economy." Instead of being a part of a Globalized economy, the U.S. tries to produce and consume products that are made in North America. Green taxes, strict environmental laws, polluter pay laws, and an emphasis on "reducing, reusing, and recycling" has improved the quality of local and regional environments. This economy is based on using renewable energy such as solar, wind, water, geothermal, and hydrogen fuel cells. This restorative economy emphasizes reducing material consumption and increasing consumption of services produced by local companies and cooperatives. The U.S. is leading the way to reduce the power of global corporations to dominate local and regional sustainable economies. Led by the United States, both the First and Third Worlds focus on creating sustainable local and regional economies. The standard of living, the quality of life, and the quality of the environment are slowly improving in both First World and Third World nations. Because the U.S. and other First World nations aren't supporting their economies and way of life by appropriating the natural resources, fossil fuels, and destroying the environments of Third World nations, global environmental quality and the air, water, soil, forests, and fisheries are all improving. Most of the resources needed to create this global sustainable economy came from high taxes and controls on the behavior of global corporations and the shift away from high military spending by First and Third World nations.
Instead of fighting over scarce resources and a declining global environment, First and Third World nations are cooperating to reduce their populations, restore their local and regional environments, and reduce their total impact on the Earth's ecosystems. The larger goal of this U.S.-led global sustainable society is to create healthy societies with sustainable standards of living in a healthy and clean global environment that will be better able to support future generations.

Scenario 3: America as a Fortress Nation in a Troubled , Declining World. This is the future world of Robert Kaplan and Chris Lewis. In this world the political, cultural, and environmental collapse that spread throughout Africa in the 1990s and early 2000s is spreading to the rest of the world. We witness an increasing Third Worldization of the First World. There is increasing inequality between the top one to five percent of the Global elite and the bottom 95 percent of the people in the First and Third Worlds. This economy is based on extended use of fossil and nuclear fuels, whose use is accelerating global warming and nuclear catastrophes such as Cherynobl. This is a Fortress World where the global elite who run giant global corporations and dominate First and Third World governments have to protect themselves from the majority of the population, whose quality of life and standard of living is declining. Increasing economic, cultural, and political dysfunction and anarchy spread from the Third to the First World. In such a Fortress World, the global environment is declining, damaged by global warming, destruction of forests, fisheries, and farmland, and pollution and the destruction of natural resources. With this declining global environment deadly diseases such as AIDS and super-resistant strains of the Flu, Tuberculosis, Cholera, and Malaria are devastating the populations of the First and Third World. With increasing threats posed by war, environmental destruction, massive refugee flows from impoverished areas to the wealthy First World enclaves, and global epidemics, First World elites increasingly rely on military and police forces to protect their Fortress communities and their privileged ways of life. In this world, a new and even more powerful form of Social Darwinism is used to justify the increasing concentration of wealth and privileges in a tiny global elite. Threatened by increasing anarchy and disorder, this Fortress World faces a global political, economic, and environmental collapse. With this global collapse, much like with the collapse of Rome, billions of people will face increasing wars and brutal conflicts over declining global resources and the declining ability of the global environment to support massive populations. With the collapse of this Fortress World, it will take thousands of years for local and regional communities to recover from this global catastrophe. The only model for this post-collapse world is the nightmare world of "the Road Warrior" movies.

Major Driving Forces Affecting
Life in 2030

Increasing threat of the 2008 Financial Collapse to the stability of the global economy
Increasing threat of global economic meltdown caused by uncontrolled globalization and the 2008 Financial Collapse
Increasing Globalization
Increasing population growth
Increasing demand for fossil fuels
Increasing divisions between the First and Third Worlds
Increasing immigration from the Third World to the First World
Increasing collapse of global ecosystems
Increasing global warming and climate change
Increasing growth of Failed States
Increasing threat of Terrorism
Increasing growth of the internet and instantaneous global communication
Increasing development of renewable energy
Increasing outsourcing of jobs from the First World to the Third World
Increasing threat of global pandemics caused by the growth of anti-biotic resistant viruses in the Third World
Increasing division between the Globalized World and the Islamic World
Increasing threat of bankruptcy by the United States.
Increasing threat that OPEC will switch the global reserve currency from Dollars to Euros.
Increasing concern about the rising number of immigrants in the First World.
Increasing scarcity of natural resources.
Increasing costs of scarce natural resources and fossil fuels.
Increasing growth of a global consumer culture.
Increasing threat of WMDs threatening global society and economic stability
Increasing threat of war and violence in the declining Third World countries.
Increasing threat to societal stability caused by economic insecurity and the growing division between the very wealthy and the vast majority, who are desperately poor.
Increasing threat of global environmental collapse caused by Global Warming and the destruction of Global ecosystem.
Increasing global insecurity caused by the interaction of environmental collapse and economic insecurity.
Increasing fear of economic and societal breakdown.
Increasing distrust of political and economic leaders.
Increasing fear that our political and social institutions aren't working
Increasing fear that the future will be worse than the past.