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 the 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 anywhere mid-stream. 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 factors lurk beneath the surface, less observed yet equally threatening. The major contributing factors to the dark scenario (listed bellow) are expected to impact our world either separately or in concert within the first four decades of this 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 gas is industry and the highest end-use sector is transportation. The average car emits over five tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year. Climate change is expected to impact food production, cause population dislocation, and disrupt the global economy.

Energy Crisis

The most significant aspect of a probable global energy crisis may arise as a result of the transition from oil to alternate sources. There will be no single-source replacement for oil. Oil will 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 a dozen alternates and their infrastructure will most likely arrive with some delay after the end of affordable oil. The insufficiencies of the changeover period will likely bring economic collapse, social turmoil and war.

Collapse of the Economy

Over the years, the U.S. government has spent $10 trillion more than it collected in taxes as of the end of 2008 and continues to spend $1 to $2 billion more per day than it collects. Accumulating such massive debt is the road to bankruptcy. Numbers aside, taxing our children and grandchildren without their consent corrupts democracy and represents moral bankruptcy.

A probable collapse of the U.S. economy is now visible on the horizon. 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 hard times. 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 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 two 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, will no longer serve as the glue between past trading partners. Instead, competition for diminishing resources will dominate the agenda and spark an intentional or accidental nuclear war. (See Peace: Conflict, Stress, Hope and Peace Correlations)

Collapse of Carrying Capacity

The life and livelihood of nearly all the 6.6 billion people on Earth depend, to a varying extent, on the capitalist-consumerist economy of the world. Capitalist-consumerism, 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 outsized 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 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 beyond its capacity to function at which time a sudden failure and collapse occurs.

The Dark Scenario Summarized

To kill a creature you need only to disable one organ. The half dozen aspects highlighted above are disabling threats to the vital organs of humanity’s social, economic and environmental life-support systems on our planet. All six threats are in progress beyond speculation and all likely to come to maturation within the first half of the 21st century. If Earth had six lives all six could be lost; and that’s the Dark Scenario.