The National Intelligence Council has published its Global Trends 2025 report, hypothesizing on the potential ramifications of current and projected trends. The preliminary assessment about our natural resources is, unsurprisingly, glum:
Unprecedented economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more people, will put pressure on resources—particularly energy, food, and water—raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.
So despite the fact that our president of the last eight years chose to do nothing to protect the world’s food water and energy supplies—instead putting a fox in every henhouse, refusing to reign in big oil and allowing polluting industries to self-regulate—the intelligence community actually weighs input from the scientific community:
Many scientists worry that recent assessments underestimate the impact of climate change and misjudge the likely time when effects will be felt. Scientists currently have limited capability to predict the likelihood or magnitude of extreme climate shifts but believe—based on historic precedents—that it will not occur gradually or smoothly. Drastic cutbacks in allowable CO2 emissions probably would disadvantage the rapidly emerging economies that are still low on the efficiency curve, but large-scale users in the developed world—such as the US—also would be shaken and the global economy could be plunged into a recession or worse.
Hopefully the new administration will take seriously the stark warnings this report offers:
Experts currently consider 21 countries, with a combined population of about 600 million, to be either cropland or freshwater scarce. Owing to continuing population growth, 36 countries, home to about 1.4 billion people, are projected to fall into this category by 2025.”
Action on food security, energy independence, resource preservation and climate change are of critical importance. Hopefully President-elect Obama and his advisors act on such intelligence, unlike another president who has shown little interest in prophetic security briefings.