GLOBAL FUTURE ANALYSIS


DANGERS | TENSIONS


Local: When one family in the street has no food or is disconnected from the power/gas grid, they are losers. When the whole street has no food and no electricity and heat, they will go together to the food stores and grid curb hubs and take it by violence. Only wise local governments could address these huge issues that occur when the going gets tough. They need all the budget the can get for building a new economy, this is the reason that regional and national governments in the future must 'earn' their budget by supporting function, otherwise the just find one big united block of multiple regional and local resistance. Companies and Government Officials that want to reduce local tensions must read Heinberg and Kunstler plus Schumacher and Raiffeisen, those four pictures both the problems and the solutions: it will be consuming 4 lives of adequate wisdom in one week. Good local governments will attract brains and capital. Comparative Quality of Operation will become the challenge for local governments, just as it was in the 16th till 19th century in Europe. Some cities attract by their successful (quality of living, business and freedom) policies the brains and capital that search for good breeding/living environments. The most important governmental layer will be the local governmental layer. Any layer above this layer will be seen as facultative and facilitative. Regional: The main regional tensions will have water and energy as cause. Water is the oil of the 21st century. On July 13, 2008 the French President Sarkozy loosen the valve / pull the pull out of the EU by installing the Union for the Mediterranean. Giving a huge part of the EU instant an other supra national partner 'in the bedroom', a partner with no budget demands, an actual huge common binding facet and great historical background on a low energy demanding transport medium which the Mediterranean Sea) is. Water equals agriculture equals food. Water is the semtex of the 21st century. France will tap severely the Meuse in the future (for addressing Central France's water deficit), leaving parts of Belgium, Germany and Holland with severe less water supply. Diplomacy will face enormous challenges concentrated on one word: Water. Regional cooperation will be redefined. The rise of the influence of the EU as political body will stop and decline severely. Bilateral will be the keyword for the losing influence / political decline of any supra national body. Supra national bodies their future is only being servicing in facilitating bilateral relations/dating. Global: The world will be very angry to the USA. As always there must be a scape-goat when things went wrong and this time this will be the USA (other nations forgetting their own stupidity/responsibility instantly if a scape-goat is pointed). This is the reason that federal USA will be abandoned by the States: Being part of it will become a heavy burden instead of lifting wings. In their affords to save the sinking ship the US administration could use excessive military power as lender of last resort (as the FED fail in this function), but the world will not allow this. For the rest of the world the American Dream is already over. Guantanamo Bay, Bush, Cheney, Rowe, Rumsfeld and the Abu Ghraib Prison like events have already damaged the human/rightness/freedom imago facet of the USA brand globally severe (after it has it absolute top after 9/11), but when the world can writedown their investments in the US the friendships with the US and Americans will be cooled down to zero degree Kelvin (the absolute zero point with less possible action). The Americans will face what the Russians has faced after the collapse of their empire. America will have its Putin sometime, but the American Putin can not build on huge natural reserves, but maybe on huge food production (like cereals where the first main export wave of the US). US version 1.0 (till 1971) has grown into US version 2.0 (till 2009), version 2.0 is unsustainable due high energy model and energy deficits (thereby energy imports) and therefore will crash on too high energy use and too high debt based consumption. The US version 3.0 will be sustainable. The US has far too much natural and human resources not to become a healthy (and this time on prosperity sustainability focused) nation again. The human resource facet of the US is important, like this is in each nation (Americans are certainly no Über Menschen, not the chosen ones), because they're sure inventive, positive (and yes slightly bold) people in a wide and beautiful landscape/continent. The relatively lack of tensions has boost the global economy severely, this will end.


Author: Gijs Graafland


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