Where We Are and How We Got Here
The Future of Humanity, Part 1
This is the first installment of a multi-part series on the modestly-titled topic “The Future of Humanity”. I’ll be rolling out more posts over the next few weeks, exploring some of the best science I can find on the big issues determining our future on this planet: political and economic realities (this post), fossil fuel realities, renewable energy realities, climate tipping-point realities, potential impacts on world population, and possible post-carbon futures for a world without oil. Here are quick links to the rest of the series:
- Part 2: Fossil Fuels … Can’t Live with ’Em, Can We Live Without ‘Em?
- Part 3: Can Renewable Energy Power a Civilization Built on Fossil Fuels?
- Part 4: Childhood’s End
- Part 5: The Coffin in the Room: Catastrophic Impacts on Human Population
- Part 6: The End We Start From
- Part 7: A Post-Carbon Future for Humanity?
We know a lot about the current state of the world, and most of it is not good.
One way to make sense of our current predicament is to imagine all of us at the center of a Venn Diagram like the one above. We are currently enmeshed in three domains of crisis and existential danger. We tend to focus…
