Human behavior is less predictable than the forces of nature, yet it is human behavior that shapes our future. Through the gray uncertainties that shroud what lies ahead on our endangered planet it is impossible to predict the future of humanity with accuracy other than to say that if a bright scenario does not succeed the dark scenario will.

As an analogy, the salmon-run can illustrate this point. An individual salmon in the run has only two extreme options, make a successful run and reach the spawning ground or be washed downstream without a chance to reproduce. There is no option to settle sustainably anywhere mid-stream. Similarly, entropy is the relentless stream that washes across the universe against which all life must labor to survive. 

There are several man-made factors that are accelerating the process of entropy on our planet. Climate change is perhaps the most observable but other equally threatening factors lurk beneath the surface. The major contributing factors to the dark scenario (listed bellow) are expected to impact our world either separately or in concert within the first half of the 21st century. 

Climate Change

Changes in climate patterns are caused mostly by greenhouse gases, the most significant among them being carbon dioxide (CO2). The principal source of man-made atmospheric carbon dioxide is industry and the highest end-use sector is transportation. The average car emits over five tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year. As a result of global warming glaciers are receding, polar ice is melting, and permafrost is thawing – these processes may already be irreversible. Climate change is expected to impact food production, water supplies and transportation, cause population dislocation, and disrupt the global economy and social order.

Energy Crisis

The most significant aspect of a probable global energy crisis may arise as a result of the need for a transition from oil to alternate energy sources. There will be no single-source replacement for oil. Oil may be replaced by solar, wind, bio-fuel, tidal, hydrogen, nuclear and perhaps other expensive and/or low energy-density alternates.

Oil and its infrastructure were developed over a century as our principal source of portable high energy-density fuel. The half dozen alternates and their infrastructure may not arrive in time and in sufficient quantity after the end of affordable oil. The insufficiencies of the changeover period will likely bring economic and social turmoil. 

Collapse of the Economy

Over the years, the U.S. government has spent $14 trillion more than it collected in taxes as of January 2011. Accumulating such massive debt is the road to bankruptcy. Numbers aside, the legacy of borrowing from the future amounts to taxing our children and grandchildren without their consent – a corruption and moral bankruptcy of democracy.

While the U.S. is still the consuming engine of the global economy, it is a hollowed economy losing credibility while running on IOUs and borrowed time. Given the increasing interconnectedness of the world’s economies, the collapse of the U.S. economy would inevitably plunge the world into global economic chaos. A 21st century depression will likely prove worse than the Great Depression of the 20th century given that world population has tripled since 1929 while essential resources and the life support capacity of our planet have diminished.

Polarization and War

Following the fall and dissolution of the Soviet Union, East-West polarization was replaced by a fragmented polarization of the world among cultures, religions and most significantly between the haves and the have-nots. The threat of Mutually Assured (nuclear) Destruction of the Cold War is replaced by terrorism at the hands of suicide bombers recruited mostly from the inexhaustible ranks of the billion have-nots of the world who live in poverty without hope. 

An even larger-looming threat is a war between the United States and other powers at the end of the oil age when trade relations, by then broken by depressed economies, will no longer serve as the glue between past trading partners. Instead, competition for diminishing resources will dominate the agenda and may spark a nuclear war.

Collapse of Carrying Capacity

The life and livelihood of seven billion people on Earth depend, to a varying extent, on the capitalist-consumerist economy of the world. Capitalist-consumerism, now a global economic monoculture, functions on the premise of economic growth – expanding rates of production and consumption. Our planet with finite resources and limited carrying capacity will not support such oversized demand. Without an alternate economic system, when carrying capacity is exhausted the global economy and social order will come to an end.

Sudden Collapse

This is perhaps the least recognized, but most threatening probability. The causes of sudden collapse are as invisible as the precursors of an earthquake or avalanche. Sudden collapse occurs when the rising complexity-generated stress within a large system overwhelms its inner cohesion and self-organizing capacity. Unlike conventional failures that are commonly caused by at least one failed vital part, in sudden collapse there may not be an identifiable failed part but the system as a whole is stressed to its capacity at which time a sudden failure and collapse occur.

The Dark Scenario Summarized

To kill a creature you need only to disable one organ. The aspects highlighted above are disabling threats to the vital organs of humanity’s social, economic and environmental life-support systems. Global systemic stress is rising as all threats are progressing and likely to converge within the first half of the 21st century. 

The invisible factors of sudden collapse have no weights and measures therefore science cannot predict such an event. At best, we can only estimate the rapidly rising probability of sudden socioeconomic collapse on our overpopulated, nuclear armed, conflicted, and environmentally damaged planet.

While the focus on climate change must remain high, we propose that the rising probability of sudden collapse receive urgent consideration. It must be recognized that conventional concepts and institutions are not equipped to handle such multidimensional challenges. Consequently, the Dark Scenario will be our inevitable future unless we spur a systemic and revolutionary change now.

The Holigent Solution can anticipate the threat and supply the remedy to avoid the Dark Scenario through a physical redesign and a hybrid socioeconomic operating system embodying that revolutionary change.