01.01.2030: Looking Back on a Lost Decade

In recent years, my primary concern about our collective future has shifted from having too much CO2 in the atmosphere to having too little cheap and practical energy to uplift more than 6 billion people still below decent living standards. This remains a minority viewpoint, especially among the minority of us who were born into rich-world affluence and control the media narrative.

As such, I'm continuously looking for ways to encourage more people to consider the dark side of "net zero by 2050," especially when approached through deeply inefficient vehicles such as green technology-forcing policies and fossil fuel divestment.

The article linked below is my latest effort. It is a medium-term forecast with a twist: a report from the year 2030, discussing four key trends from the 2020s. I don't foresee any major disaster, just a persistent stagflationary environment that halts poverty alleviation in exchange for minor progress in slowing greenhouse gas emission growth. In such a scenario, the opportunity costs from failing to improve billions of lives (thus also failing to improve climate resilience) dwarfs the progress with greenhouse gases (partially offset by new environmental impacts from the growing green industry).

I sincerely hope I'm proven wrong about the stagnation in global economic upliftment. Still, I struggle to see another outcome as billions of underprivileged people strive to better their lives in an environment of chronic underinvestment in the industries that gave everyone reading this their high quality of life. Time will tell...