About Crisis
The Long Crisis explores three converging crisis that will drastically influence the way that citizens of the world will live as the 21st century progresses. The three crisis are the meltdown of the world’s financial system caused by an unprecedented level of debt in both the public and private sectors, global warming and the consequences of climate change, and a crisis in energy and natural resources precipitated by peak oil and a growing global demand for water and food supplies.
Any one of these crisis could deliver a knock out punch to the world economy and to the way that people live. All three converging within a narrow time frame will give us poor humans all that we can handle and then some. It is ironic that at a time when advances in technology offer so much promise for the advancement of mankind and could usher in a new age of prosperity that the overuse of older technology is causing such severe environmental problems. For example, consider the impact that the massive burning of fossil fuels has upon the environment and upon human health.
While drastic, the consequences of a financial meltdown, climate change, and peak oil and natural resources need not be fatal to the human race. I do expect that in order to maintain any quality of life we will have to work together in a smart way as never before. Unfortunately, the world’s population will likely be considerably reduced no matter what we do. The race is on between the unsustainable wasteful consumption of valuable resources, such as fossil fuels and water, and a more measured sustainable means of living where constant growth is not regarded as necessary, no matter the cost.
How long will the Long Crisis last and exactly what will it take to pull us out of crisis mode? That is the challenge isn’t it? No one really knows. We can be assured that the cosmic clock is ticking. We can also be assured that we can not go back to the happy days of careless consumption , financial over leveraging, and over-sizing our cities, homes, automobiles, and lifestyles along with our Big Macs and up-sized order of fries.
In order to survive we will all have to learn to be much more conscious of the limits to growth as well as learning all over again that we are all in this together. The Long Crisis will bring drastic changes in the way we live. The frightening thing is that the changes may not at all be for the better.
Resource wars are already upon us and will likely intensify as food shortages, fossil fuel shortages, and natural resource shortages, especially for clean water, become more pronounced and widespread. Tensions are already rapidly increasing between developed and developing nations as the development growth cycle swings into favor of the developing nations. Former king of the mountain nations, such as the United States, are not likely to gracefully share the world stage as wealth and power continues to shift from west to east.
Will living in a Long Crisis mode bring out the best or worse in humans? We will soon know. The challenges are many and thus far the strong, courageous, insightful leadership necessary to meet the challenges seems to be sorely lacking.
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