- New AIDS data show that China, India and most of Africa are in big trouble. Russia and East-Europe may be the next.
- Not enough civil liberty in many arabic countries may lead them to total poverty.
- Brasil has to deal with rampant criminality, Columbia with guerilla, and Argentina with economic crush (along with civil unrest). And that's just an overview of South America
-The United States is isolating itself, economically and politically. Add to that the constant reminder about potential terrorism, and you get a celf-centered, paranoid nation to be.
- Canada has to deal with drought in Alberta and Saskatchewan, so does part of the United States. A high percentage of grain production is at risk. Iceberg lettuce price already skyrocketed this winter, what will it looks like when bread and pasta will do the same? And add the fact that Chretien is about to declare himself prime-minister for life (ok, just kidding, but sometimes, he acts as if the country belongs to him...).
- And in the past two years, I can't remember one month that was 'normal'. Meteo is getting so weird.

I don't know much of the European or Australian situation, but otherwise, the world looks like it is crumbling apart.

So, here's the 'Ask a geek' part:
What do you know of the world's (or part of it) situation? Good news or bad news, knowledge is primordial.
What will it looks like in 10 years? Will it just past away? Will we be into big troubles? What kind?
Do you think someone can do something about it? What would you like to do?

Power up your brains cells, and let's draw the real picture of this world of ours...

With us being so pissed about people comming in and terrorizing us, and the creation of the police state, while all of the protests are going on, no one would notice the banding together of many nations in europe/asia which are on our enemy list.

The other option, is of course, one of those damn terrorist groups gets his hands ona bunch of thermo-nuclear bombs, blows 'em up just right so that everyone dies.

On the optimistic side, all of these problems could go away before school starts, bt I doubt it

AIDS: has killed about 20 million people so far. The flu pandemic of 1918-1919 killed 20 million people, during the middle of a world war, with a smaller population base. The world survived. Today hardly anyone remembers the spanish flu. Going back further: the black death killed 25 million people, 1/3 the population of Europe.

The Arab world: I judge them as a total repressive failure. They remind me of the former soviet union: big military, very lucky to have a natural resource base, but no real economy or development. I think that a lot of Arab governments are going to collapse in a similar way to the former soviet union.

South America: no opinion.

United States: I don't agree that the US is isolating itself economically. It's pretty thoroughly integrated into the world economy. Politically, the US has military and political commitments all over the world. I see the US as withdrawing from some of those, and I think that's a good thing.

Canada: no opinion.

Things I worry about:

The surveillance state. Governments everywhere have unprecedented ability to track their citizens, and a lot of them are pushing this pretty hard (e.g. the United Kingdom). In the USA, leaders from J. Edgar Hoover to Hillary Clinton routinely used the government intelligence apparatus to collect information on their political opponents.

Large scale environmental effects. The 20th century marked humanity's transition from "smaller than nature" to "actions that permanently affect nature". I don't think any society on earth has an effective way to handle those effects. We have good economic systems that handle the production of "goods", but I don't know any system that handles the concomittant production of "bads".

Cocooning. People wrap themselves up in their televisions and their Internet browsers. "Millions of them ... living out their lives ...".

Things I don't worry about:

Resource exhaustion: humans are very ingenious about finding and developing resources. Plus we have good economic systems that cause demand to fall off, and supplies to go up, as the price rises. Compare the price of oil now to the price of oil 20 or 40 or 60 years ago in inflation-adjusted money.

Population: is already levelling out in the developed world, and will level out in the developing world as their economies develop and they introduce education for women.

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Originally posted by Alien Investor:
AIDS: has killed about 20 million people so far. The flu pandemic of 1918-1919 killed 20 million people, during the middle of a world war, with a smaller population base. The world survived. Today hardly anyone remembers the spanish flu. Going back further: the black death killed 25 million people, 1/3 the population of Europe.

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In most of Africa, the infection rate is 1/3 of the population. All of these people will die within 10 years, unless they can get access to the drugs they need. I don't have population numbers, but we can safely assume 20 million death. I believe it safe to assume up to 10% of Chinese people will get infected, and half of them will not have access to medication. That's 50 million more deaths. And we still haven't counted India and Indonesia. We're already looking at about 2% of the world's population dying from AIDS. This being very conservative numbers, we are heading to a decrease of world population, instead of the usual increase. So I also don't think overpopulation will be a problem.

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The Arab world: I judge them as a total repressive failure.

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I agree, although I would have tried to put it nicer.

South America: no opinion.

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United States: I don't agree that the US is isolating itself economically. It's pretty thoroughly integrated into the world economy.

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Aren't trade tariff an isolationist tools?

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Politically, the US has military and political commitments all over the world. I see the US as withdrawing from some of those, and I think that's a good thing.

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Well, that's a point of view. But I wonder what's so bad about a permanent international penal court.

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Resource exhaustion: humans are very ingenious about finding and developing resources. Plus we have good economic systems that cause demand to fall off, and supplies to go up, as the price rises. Compare the price of oil now to the price of oil 20 or 40 or 60 years ago in inflation-adjusted money.

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I totally agree.

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War: looking at history, human society has survived a lot of big ones. War has had its chance. It's not going to destroy the world, although it will continue to destroy many, many beautiful human lives.

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I must agree here too.

Now, I don't believe the world will be destroyed. I actually see the next years as a period of great challenges. But great challenges create great opportunities for those who can see. And I believe the answer lies into the technology camp. But still, it's just my opinion, and I don't have enough facts to start working on it.

Politically, I view the recent steel tariffs as an aberration in a long, strong trend towards global free trade. So I don't attach a lot of weight to one or two tariffs, although I think that all tariffs are bad.

The trouble with an international criminal court is deciding what constitutes criminal activity. In principle the UN upholds human rights everywhere, but it actually supports whatever the majority of governments in the world support, and the majority of governments are pretty awful. Witness the series of resolutions on Israel.

The joker here is that the US has troops literally all over the world. I'd like to bring most of those troops home in the first place.

- Alien Investor -
Before September 11, there was a long period of peace and prosperity in the world. I mark it from approximately the collapse of the Soviet Union (1990) to the September 11 attacks (2001).

Actually, you could make the argument that the bipolar world of the Cold War was a stabilizing factor that prevented many wars (on the other hand, it did include several proxy wars between US satellite states and Soviet satellite states). Since the endgame of the Soviet Union (Aug - Dec 91), we've had the Balkans return to their traditional grudges, we've had civil wars and cross-border wars throughout Africa, we've had India & Pakistan gear up to a shooting war a number of times, we've had several insurgencies within former Soviet republics, we've had an on-going low-intensity airwar in Iraq (including a couple instances when it came close to a ground war, most notably in 1994 & 1998), ...

See, e.g.,
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/
http://www.afsc.org/pwork/0599/0509.htm

Granted, many of the wars of the '90s are/were continutations of Cold War era wars, but my point is that the world of the 1990s was *not* a peaceful place. What's different is the "single enemy" for us to focus on.

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Originally posted by Stereo:
We're already looking at about 2% of the world's population dying from AIDS. This being very conservative numbers, we are heading to a decrease of world population, instead of the usual increase.

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"more developed" world: population 1,193 million; 11 births per 1000 people per year; 10 deaths per 1000 people per year.

"less developed" world: population 4,944 million; 25 births per 1000 people per year; 8 deaths per 1000 people per year.

world: population 6,137 million; 22 births per 1000 people per year; 9 deaths per 1000 people per year.

www.unaids.org says, among other things, that 5 million people became HIV positive last year. On a worldwide scale that is 0.8 infections per 1000 people per year. That is large, but it is still 10% of the total death rate per year. (I figure that each person who is infected will die of the disease at some point, so that new infections per year is a good way to filter out the buffering effects of the long disease period. The actual death rate will be less than the infection rate because some people won't die of the disease).

Compare with the Spanish Flu, which killed 1% of the world population in 1 (one) year. But then it died out.

I agree with Stereo that some areas of the world are hit so hard that their existence is at stake. UNAIDS/WHO says that 70% of the HIV-positive people in the world live in sub-saharan africa (28 million out of 40 million). Also 70% of the new infections are in sub-saharan africa, and 70% of the reported deaths in 2001.