What Does Civilization’s Future Look Like, Given the Rise in Population and the Decline in Traditional Energy Resources?

I want to thank everyone who helped with this month’s survey, in which participants were asked to provide their forecasts for the future of our civilization, given the rise in population and the decline in traditional energy resources.  I’ll publish my usual brief report shortly, summarizing the results.  But I felt compelled to mention at this early stage something I noticed on the train from New York down to Philadelphia this afternoon, as I was paging through the responses.

There are optimists (those who claim all of this will all “come out in the wash,” i.e., that the future will be pretty much like the past and that we’ll find a way to handle the problems that present themselves).  And there are pessimists (those who say no, we’re at the brink of the collapse of our civilization, due to our gross mismanagement of the resources that have been entrusted to us.) Now, one might think that these two groups, as divergent as their perspectives seem to be, would have essentially nothing in common with one another.  In fact, the precise opposite is the case.

With the exception of a very few, respondents articulated their beliefs that we have pushed our planet’s capacity to provide a home for us to the limits.  Yes, there was the occasional voice that we can keep this process of extraction and combustion up indefinitely, but those voices were few indeed.  Most say that we are confronted by a life-threatening problem, and that we must act now to avoid catastrophic consequences.

But then the issue becomes, OK, who’s going to lead the charge?  How is it possible to find leaders who will make intelligent, responsible, high-integrity decisions in an environment in which these traits are in such short supply?  Ah, therein lies the rub.

Again, I hope to have the report available in a few days.