It's The End of the World As We Know It (and I feel fine)

danieldwilliam asked me for some advice for his children, and when I replied with "Head for the hills. Learn to farm and to be self sufficient", he responded with "You think the 21st century is really going to be that bad? Why so?"

That is a blog post of its own. This one.

In general, I am an optimist; little stresses me, I tend not to worry about things and I am pretty relaxed. So I can see why my advice to danieldwilliam's children concerned him somewhat. He probably has enough to worry about already...

So why do I have a pessimistic view of the long term?

Well, there are economic issues first - these are even medium term. Greece is bust. Portugal, Spain, and Italy may be bust. (And if they go, with all its banks, what the betting that Germany will be insolvent?) The Euro is basically screwed, and trying to sort out the mess may well scupper the EU. Even if it doesn't, I imagine that there will be mass unemployment and a huge loss of wealth as banks go under.

Across Europe, there may be civil unrest and a loss of civil liberties as governments try to maintain the illusion of control. There may be a rise of far right, nationalistic politicians and political parties happy to take advantage to peddle xenophobic claptrap.

Meanwhile in the USA there may a concomitant rise in the far right religious ideologues and zealots. Just look at the Republican candidates. Millennials with their finger on the trigger. Nice.

1939, here we come.

Coupled with this we have increased climate change. It appears unlikely that the rise of CO2 can be limited to that which will constrain a temperature rise to 4°C. (A few years ago that was considered the worst case scenario.) We are likely to see an increase in extreme weather events in the UK, and an increasingly asymmetric rainfall distribution: wetter north and west, drier south and east (see chapter 3 of UK climate change projections [PDF] from DEFRA). Where is there currently a drought in the UK? Where expects the greatest population growth? Where do all the immigrants (legal and illegal) want to work? The south east, which already suffers from the greatest impact of population on infrastructure.

I envisage that Africa, Asia and southern Europe fare a lot worse. Severe drought, billions of deaths, mass migration to the north.

Into a Europe suffering from economic meltdown and the rise of extreme nationalistic politicians. Hardly a healthy mixture.

I can imagine an increasing strain on northern British cities, whose infrastructure struggles to cope; a loss of productive farmland in the south of Britain due to drought; a shortage of food (and hence increasing cycles of civil unrest...); water shortages. Health crises. (Will we have a health service that can cope? I doubt the health service we have now could cope...)

You may now understand my advice.

Or perhaps I was just too traumatised by Harry Harrison's “Make Room! Make Room!” and the film “Soylent Green” which it spawned.

Normal, positive, enthusiastic, optimistic service will be resumed as soon as possible...