How the Future Breaks Down

Three Ways the Next Few Decades Unfold, And Why They Matter

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It’s a pun. A bad one. Get it? How the future breaks down. How the future…breaks down. Sorry about that, but…

Just a smattering of headlines from the last few days. “Earth’s jet streams described as chaotic, ‘like a van Gogh painting.’” “Millions face a relentless summer of smoke that won’t end anytime soon.” “Humans approaching limits of ‘survivability’” — who said that, Extinction Rebellion? Nope, CNN. LOL.

In my 3 decade-long career being a weather forecaster, and now Chief Meteorologist and Climate Specialist, I have never observed so many of Earth’s vital signs blinking red. Meteorologists and climate scientists all around the world are in awe by the simultaneous literal “off the charts” records being broken.

Yes, it’s climate change.

You get the drift. Things are dire. But what does it all mean? When I peer into my little economists’ crystal ball, I see three scenarios, broadly, that we’re heading into. Which one affects you most depends on what kind of choices your country is going to make, unfortunately, which means it’s largely out of your hands. Let’s discuss them a little bit.

The first way the future breaks down is accelerationist capitalism. 

Now, the caveat I always have to add for Americans: capitalism doesn’t mean the dry-cleaning business you own, that’s just commerce, capitalism is profit maximization being the primary motivating impulse of a society, its institutions, everything privately owned, by mega, well, capital, like hedge funds, traded on markets, right down to the basics, like water, energy, healthcare, wheat, financialized, commoditized, profit-maximized. 

What do I mean by “accelerationist capitalism”? Just take a look at America. It’s a society with no functioning systems, really, for anything. Energy grids are on the brink. Water systems have already broken in many places. Food — LOL — inflation’s out of control. Then there are slightly less basic systems like healthcare, education, childcare — nonexistent. Those don’t exist in America because the central idea has always been that capitalism will provide all these necessities. Does it? Not very well, and even then, at an astronomical cost. So while Canada’s pioneering a new childcare system that’ll cost $10 a day…Americans would be lucky to pay $100. Unaffordable for most, which means that of course raising a family is that much harder.

It’s easy enough to see that this form of social organization — let’s call it absolutist capitalism — is a disastrous failure. America’s the only society in the world like this, and it’s the bizarre combination of nominally rich, but effectively poor. Who else is on this path? Britain is — after almost a generation of increasingly fanatical governance, its water system, LOL, just collapsed, and its NHS has been destroyed. How long did it take to build an NHS? 75 years. To implode it? Just a decade or so.