2030

Repeatedly, we are reading yearend predictions for the future – often projecting to 2030 which sees ever so far away.  But think about it:  9-11 happened eleven years ago and it seems like yesterday.  Add just six years to that time span and we realize 2030 is not a far-away “future” time; it is tomorrow!

Here are today’s latest projections for 2030 as published by the US National Intelligence Council:

• China becomes the leading economic power; but US remains a significant world leader due to its energy independence.

 

• On the upside, there will be growing affluence with a larger global middle class…better educated, wider access to healthcare, and communications technologies.

 

• Presented as a Teutonic shift,  “for the first time, a majority of the world’s population will not be impoverished and the middle class will be the most important social and economic sector…around the world.”

 

• On the downside, half of the world’s population most likely will be living in areas that suffer from severe shortage of fresh water.

 

• More radicalized groups; more violent, than current terrorists organizations

 

• Greater use of lethal, disruptive technologies such as biological weapons and cyber-weapons

 

• “State Failure” predicted for countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, Uganda, Yemen

 

• The “best-case” scenario is a political partnership between the US and China which may have been initiated by a crisis such as nuclear standoff between Pakistan and India

 

• The “worst-case” scenario could be the stalling of economic globalization due to perhaps an outbreak of a health pandemic.

 

In short, they found the health of the global economy increasingly will be linked to how well the developing world does – more so than the traditional West.  Those countries include Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa and Turkey.

2030 is just around the corner.  Another way of looking at that time span is to recall one of similar length from 1929 to 1945…from Crash to Great Depression to World War II to emerging on the precipice of a world dominated by the United States.

 

As I listen to the news pundits filling time with no election pending and nothing but the fiscal cliff and how to reform the Republican party to speculate about, it makes me wonder….

If the changes in the last eleven years cannot be accepted by the Republicans of today, how in the world are they going to adapt when not only they, but also the country need to move past the good old days  and focus on what is before us.  Can we all, as Americans, meet this challenge and that of a multi-cultural population without putting aside these great divides and relearning  how to work collaboratively for the good of the whole again?  How will we adjust and move forward as a global leader?