Do you think the world will be better or worse 10 years from now?

Excellent question, @JenniferP. I just posted a TED talk on this very topic this evening. I have to say I agree with the speaker, Silicon Valley financier, John Doerr. I think he is spot on in the likelihood we will fail to do what we need to do to avoid a catastrophic future. I do not think it is Armageddon or the end of humanity, just the end of life as we have known it and a drastically reshaped world with only a tiny fraction of humanity surviving, and a mass extinction of many of the current species of plants and animals adapted to life as we currently know it.

As this thoughtful talk states, we don’t have to go there. But I think we will.

The end of the world stuff started around the beginning of it. I am 99% sure that global climate change is real and a disaster waiting in the wing. But I will be dead by then since humans are a tiny sliver of the grand scheme of things. I can’t get laid and don’t have kids. I honestly don’t care if your dumb kids have to navigate Waterworld.

Keep it in your pants or try to make the world better.

I think it will probably get better in broad strokes. Despite some setbacks, it has been getting better pretty consistently since World War 2.

Look at the last four years. We’ve suffered the worst recession since the Great Depression—and yet our society has improved in many ways. Women and gays have more rights. Technology has improved pretty dramatically. And more importantly, “the world” is a lot bigger than America. People’s standards of living in Africa and Asia have skyrocketed in recent years.

I’m not saying things are always getting better, or that they can’t get worse. But I think as long as we don’t manage to get into a global nuclear war, the general trend will remain.

Neither better or worse, but different.

I think that the future looks bad for the U.S.A. and especially capitalism but it’ll likely take longer than 10 years if Romney is elected but perhaps less than that if Obama is reelected. Either way we are all SOL as no one will be able to stop the collapse of the U.S.dollar while the U.S.A. free-falls into bankruptcy.

I’m getting up there in age and I’m hoping that I won’t be around by the time things really get bad. But I’m a very healthy and fit 62 year old and I could very well live another 25 or 30 years if I’m lucky or perhaps unlucky (HA!). Things could get very ugly by then. I feel so sorry for all the young people who will have to deal with the mess that was left for them.

@gondwanalon I too feel a great sorrow for the younger generation, my daughter included, who will have no choice but to deal with the mess left them. I said it here quite recently but if I were choosing whether to have children these days the answer would have to be no, what kind of world is this to be bringing a child into…… While I wish it were otherwise, if I am completely honest with myself, I simply do not feel hopeful for the future of mankind.

@gondwanalon Indeed we face problems, but not those you fear. Listen to some facts about debt.

I think better. We may have some occasional backpedaling, which only natural, but humanity marches on. We’re better than we were 20,000 years ago, or 2,000, or even a century ago.

Nature has been crazy for centuries, as is its nature…lol…and will continue to do so. We’re pretty adaptable, at least up to a point. I don’t think that point is coming any time soon though. I’m more worried about things like power and money…but then, people have proven to be adaptable to that for centuries, too. Honestly, I can’t say. But technology makes life probably easier than it was not even one hundred years ago. Kind of.

Short term prospects are not looking good. Climate scientists have been saying for years that we are going to be experiencing extreme weather conditions and they have been spot on. There have been extreme droughts in some places and torrential rains in others. Tornadoes are more frequent and, as hurricanes Sandy and Katrina show, hurricanes are going to get bigger and do more damage. At some point, people will finally catch on, but by then there will have been a lot of irreversible damage.

The short answer to your question is that things will be worse in ten years. I do believe that there will be good that comes out of it. In one way or another, life will go on. It may require coastal cities to go underwater, but people will finally catch on. We will finally look for ways of reducing carbon dioxide. Faced with the dramatic drop in the number of plant and animal species, efforts will be made to preserve what we have left. There will be a post-Armageddon.

@LostInParadise That may be the most realistic future we can now hope for. Perhaps it’s what we should now target.

I like the Strauss-Howe generational theory, created by authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, which identifies a recurring generational cycle in American history.

According to them history goes in cycles so we can rather accurately predict the next 20–25 years. Saying that, they predicted in 1999 we’ll be entering “winter/crisis” around 2005 and stay there until 2030 or so, when the new cycle will begin.

From Wikipedia:
The Fourth Turning is a Crisis. This is an era in which America’s institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression redirects towards community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group. Fourth Turnings have all been new “founding moments” in America’s history, moments that redefined the national identity

link

It depends on your criteria for measurement.

Some people think that the world won’t really be “better” until humans have become extinct. (One wonders if that means “other humans” or “all humans”, since people with this mindset don’t always state logical positions.)

Some others think that there is still too much undeveloped land.

So what would make for a “a better world” for you?

Maybe not in ten years, maybe longer than that but I think things are going to get considerably worse for a great many people. We are destroying our environment. We are breeding too fast and our way of life is unsustainable. It will, I am afraid, end in tears.

I actually think we are headed toward Armaggedon although I can’t say it will or will not be here in 10 years. No one “knows the day or the hour.” But this world can’t go on too much longer and all of the signs are there. 2 Tim. 3:1–5; Matt. 24:1–14. 2 Peter 3. Like I said I can’t say when it will happen but interesting things are happening in the world.

LOL… nonsense. The world is going to be here, rotating on its axis and spinning ‘round the sun. The sun will be coming up every morning for a few billion years more. The seasons will change (well, at least until the next Ice Age). The tide will go in and out (as long as the moon stays in its orbit). The stars will twinkle in the sky, whether anyone sees them or not.

And I expect that people will still shop for groceries in the Stop n’ Shop, the Winn Dixie, Kroger’s, Albertson’s or whatever passes for the local supermarkets (or street markets, or whatever) that they normally do.

Some of you really need to get out more, I think.

@orlando Interesting link. And welcome to Fluther.

i highly doubt it, it will probably be the same, if not worse, unless Christ returns before than :D

@CWOTUS were is your scientific proof of this?
“LOL… nonsense. The world is going to be here, rotating on its axis and spinning ‘round the sun. The sun will be coming up every morning for a few billion years more. The seasons will change (well, at least until the next Ice Age). The tide will go in and out (as long as the moon stays in its orbit). The stars will twinkle in the sky, whether anyone sees them or not.

And I expect that people will still shop for groceries in the Stop n’ Shop, the Winn Dixie, Kroger’s, Albertson’s or whatever passes for the local supermarkets (or street markets, or whatever) that they normally do.

Some of you really need to get out more, I think.”

The Magic 8-Ball says: “Yes!”

Psalms 104:5 and others say the earth itself will be around forever. I wasn’t saying that the earth would be destroyed. That isn’t what Armageddon is.

Well, as long as it isn’t the end of Stop ‘n Shop, either, then I guess I’m cool widdat. Bring it.