The World In 2037

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value
   —Arthur C. Clarke

I have to laugh everytime I read the projection that social security will run out of money in 2037.

WASHINGTON – Sick and getting sicker, Social Security will run at a deficit this year and keep on running in the red until its trust funds are drained by about 2037, congressional budget experts said Wednesday in bleaker-than-previous estimates.

The massive retirement program has been suffering from the effects of the struggling economy for several years. It first went into deficit last year but had been projected to post surpluses for a few more years before permanently slipping into the red in 2016.

This year alone, Social Security will pay out $45 billion more in retirement, disability and survivors' benefits than it collects in payroll taxes, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said. That figure nearly triples — to $130 billion — when the new one-year cut in payroll taxes is included.

No doubt social security will come up short some years before 2037 because the economic growth estimates underlying this projection are wildly optimistic. Nevetheless, the availability of social security funds sometime in the 2030s should be the least of your worries right now. I don't expect to be around in 2037, but many of you will be. If this country makes it to 2020 in (more or less) it's present form, let alone to 2037, I will be astonished.

What does the world look like in 2037?

• Oil — The United States managed to produce about 5.5 million barrels per day of crude oil and condensate in 2010. Oil production in the U.S. peaked in 1970. How much do you think we'll be producing in 2037? My guess is about half as much as we did in 2010. And worldwide? The world produces about 73 million barrels per day, but we'll be lucky to be producing 50 million barrels per day in 2037. Do you seriously think biofuels, gas liquids, enhanced oil recovery or heavy oil production, coal-to-liquids or gas-to-liquids conversions, and plug-in electric vehicles are going to preserve business-as-usual? If you do, you get free tickets to Disneyland. Call Walt to redeem them.


• Oceans — By 2037 the world's oceans will be all but fished out. Bounty from the sea? Forget it! Only the super rich will be able to afford some deformed farmed shrimp. If the phytoplankton die-offs continue, the oceans will be as dead as a doornail. The ocean acidification trends are just icing on the cake.


• Climate — If you think that the frequent, severe weather events the world has experienced in recent years are unrelated to global warming, you're living in a dreamworld. The massive Australian flooding that followed an unusually strong La Nina were aided & abetted by warmer sea surface temperatures which made the normal monsoon rains that much stronger. So-called extreme weather events like the recent heat waves in Russia will be far more frequent and destructive by 2037. What we don't know about how a warmer world creates freaky weather is far more frightening than what we do know.

I could go on here—fresh water shortages, pollinator die-offs, general ecosystems breakdown—but you get the point.

We live in a society in which the gap between the rich and everybody else is wide and growing wider. Thus, when push comes to shove, you know whose survival is guaranteed and whose is not. Even if we do not experience actual food shortages in the United States, bear in mind that we don't live in a vacuum. We live in a globalized economy. Soaring commodity prices will affect ordinary Americans just as they affect people in Egypt. Social breakdown will occur long before the factors I've listed interact to create a Perfect Storm.

Nature writer David Quammen quoted Thomas Homer-Dixon in his Planet Of Weeds (Harpers, 1998)—

"Think of a stretch limo in the potholed streets of New York City, where homeless beggars live. Inside the limo are the air-conditioned post-industrial regions of North America, Europe, the merging Pacific Rim, and a few other isolated places, with their trade summitry and computer information highways. Outside is the rest of mankind, going in a completely different direction."

Homer-Dixon said this in 19998, but we know in 2011 that not everybody in those "post-industrial regions of North America" is going to be enjoying their wealth while the rest of mankind goes in a completely different direction. If current income & wealth inequality trends continue, much of America will look like a Third World country. We're well down that path, and in the aftermath of the Great Recession—the banks were saved, they didn't save you—we have no reason to believe these trends will be reversed. The rich will be sipping champagne inside Homer-Dixon's stretch limo. Everybody else will be on the outside scrambling to survive. Many won't. That's what the world looks like in 2037.

So, what about social security? Just leave it alone! We've got much bigger fish to fry. But as we know, some politicians just can't do that. They want to accelerate our journey into the desperate, bifurcated world of the future. They want to get their hands on your social security money now—that's what "privatize" means. Perhaps that's because the dollar won't be worth the paper it's printed on long before 2037. Only so-called "hard assets" (oil, corn, gold, copper) will count for anything 26 years from now. And you already know who is going to own those.

I hope you remember what I said here today the next time somebody whines about social security.

Comments

[John D]

I'll go with 2020 is a good over/under for the collapse of our present US government. Up to one year prior, we'll still be discussing how our 'recovery' is coming along. You understand of course, that recoveries always follow recessions, right?