 up in the air by autotelic The economy bucked and threw the markets up in the air friday with the worst unemployment movement in a month in 22 years and rising food, commodity and oil prices sending shares crashing as the tensions between the developed and emerging and poorer nations play out behind the scenes. Domestically we're reassured everything is under control by politicians and bankers who are clearly not in control as this summer two thirds of the worlds population are likely to face double digit inflation and with ever tighter interdependency of rich and emerging nations in the global economy and increasing competition for shrinking oil and other key resources the future looks pretty fucking bleak even without factoring in the UN's recent depressing message that food production needs to be doubled in the next 20 years to meet demand.
The math says it all. And after 40 years then what? Can the planet bear that kind of demand upon it? The desperate numbers have also spurred the mega corporations and venture capitalists of Silicon Valley - who clearly need to start diversifying with the tech field set to migrate eastwards - to step forward to sponsor and fund alternative energy and other Green initiatives, both research and startups, but the gung ho optimism and laid back attitude of the west coast technologists and investors may well lead to nothing more than the Green equivalent of the dot.com boom and bust in the short term. Green may not be the new all profitable black - at least not in the kind of timeframe Silicone Valley is used to working with anyway. There may be no quick returns.
Sure we need people beavering away on alternative fuel, energy - and now we know we dont have a fucking choice - GM and nanotech agricultural research - but we've taken it to the wire on this one , badly wrongfooted ourselves with corn based biofuel production and with the effects of global warming set to take firmer hold, inflationary pressures, back for the long haul, cut throat competing international demand for scarce resources raging and the babyboomer retirement timebomb primed to go off in parallel with the UN 20 year timescale there is not an awful lot of room for manoeuvre. The technologists talk of technology reaping exponential rewards but at ground level its the problems that seem to be increasing exponentially because within the culture our leaders have never really planned for more than 4 or 5 years ahead, the future has always been regarded as someone elses problem by our political masters when its always been ours.
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