What do YOU think the world would be like in 2050?

between now and 2050 fresh water will becoem the new oil.

Mass starvation and disease as the changing climate dries up most of the worlds breadbasket states. The rapid onset mini-ige predicted for Europe will kill Russian and Ukranian harvest and force massive changes on western Europe. In the US the growing glaciers and reduced rainfall means the Ogalla Sea dries up as predicted and centerpoint irrigation no longer works and the plains states stop being major farming areas. In China and India the changing climate, increasing population and loss of aridable land means a persistent shortage of food for 1/3 of the worlds population. In Africa the climate conitinues its drying trend and whole nations effectively vanish as organized states as famine and AIDS take their toll.

The worlds only hopes are to go vegetarian with low mositure staples (conr and rice go bye bye)where excess grain currently use to feed livestock can be easily converted into bread to take up some of the slack. And to build massive desalinisation plants to covernt massive ammounts of sea water into water for irrigation. This means countries without financial resources to build them will be out of luck.

The food crisis will create either a new wave of migration closer to the 4th century than the economic migration of the last 50 years or territorial wars as nations strike out and attmept to seize viable growing areas. This poses signifigant long term risk to Poland (and thus NATO) and Turkey (NATO again) as the slav population is forced south in search of food.

Compounding the problem over fishing and poor resource management today will leave the oceans unable to take up the slack caused by the loss of airable land

Long temr if we avoid nuclear war the major players will be the ones that have money and easy access to plentiful water. US, Western Europe, India, and China but evne here the populatiosn and standards of living will ahve dropped in many ways. Health and dietary issues will be near crisis or full blown crisi in every corner of the globe.

It's difficult to predict what the world will be like in 50 years, but if we were to assume current trends continue, by 2050:

Countries across East Asia with low birth rate (China/Taiwan/S Korea/Japan) will have a graying population with upside-down pyramid in terms of age/demographic spread.

China's economic growth would probably experience at least a couple of slowdown phases. Taiwan/Japan/Singapore/S Korea will probably have more immigrants from SE Asia (Philippines, Vietnam. Indonesia, ?). Militarily the PRC will probably not exceed the US in power projection capability by 2050, but on home turf it'd the biggest kid in its neighborhood. However in South Asia, I foresee a powerful India forcing the PRC to eventually re-align to a more neutral position between Pakistan & India.

Traditionally mono-ethnic countries like S. Korea and Japan will experience periodic anti-immigration backlashes as their governments scramble to offer financial incentives for their people to have more children, which will ultimately be futile as better-educated population indulge in materialism and self-gratification instead of raising a family.

China will become dependent on mix of nuclear and fossil fuels (tilting toward nuclear power), I foresee the PRC maintaining good relations with Australia and Canada. There's a possibility that bio-fuel might work and we'd see huge algae farms? But that's speculative.

I suspect Singapore will have more immigrants from mainland China by 2050. Philippines will experience very high population growth and we'll see more Filipinos moving abroad. Traditional surgery will be supplemented by non-intrusive ultrasound/vibration method and robotics/remote-control systems -- see da Vinci Surgical System by Intuitive Surgical Inc. for examples.

I don't expect North Korea to survive another 50 years, the "reunification" will be very costly to S. Korea. As S. Korea extend its rail network north, property developers will invade N. Korea to build new suburbs. S. Korea's real estate market will crash and home owners in Seoul will lose billions on their equity value, leading to mass riots and protests against the government.

India's population will exceed China by 2050, but Pakistan's population growth will be very high as well. However I don't foresee an all-out war between the 2 countries since their leadership is probably not stupid enough to risk a nuclear exchange. Pakistan will build lots of walls to keep the Afghans out, and India will build lots of walls and fences around Bangladesh.

Like PRC today, select areas of India will become very prosperous, but the vast majority of its population will remain poor. Countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, etc. will experience a period of rapid economic growth from low cost labor intensive manufacturing sector, which will last for ~20 years before slowing down due to rising labor/production costs.

The U.S. will probably have 400-500 million residents by 2050. Its economy will continue to grow fueled by immigration and population growth. However the gap between rich and poor will also increase in coastal states/cities. In those areas only a minor % of the workforce will have high paying jobs to provide an upper middle class lifestyle, while the majority will struggle to pay 50% or more of their income for housing (note: this is referring to coastal states like CA, NY, FL, etc, not Idaho).

For those in East Asia, basic college degrees will be mostly worthless. In Taiwan today the college acceptance rate is something like 97.x%, you have to try really hard to flunk and not get into college. Japanese universities will initially try to attract more students from abroad to fill its vacant seats/rooms before eventually downsizing. Taiwan & Japan will depopulate and its major cities will remain as center of its economic activity, but the rural areas will be hard-hit with heavy depopulation and decline in real estate value.

Traditional white collar office work will give way to contract based employment where benefits are portable and employers look for experience and productivity, not 20-year service loyalty. Corporations will move toward becoming multinational entities and various countries/states/provinces/cities will compete to attract them with various tax benefits and incentives.

To be a "winner" in 2050 a worker needs to have desirable and portable job skills, moving between countries/locations on contract. Such a person may travel to an "expensive" location for higher salary, then move back to a lower-cost location during down-time or partial retirement.

The gaps between wealthy and poorer locations in cost of living will remain large. Someone who is lucky enough to develop/obtain desirable (highly paid) work skills will be able to work in Shanghai/Tokyo/Los Angeles in 2050 for 10 years, save and invest wisely, then move to a rural area of Taiwan/Vietnam/etc and not have to work again for the rest of their life.

My prediction...

China will be strong even after a couple of downturns but definitely not number one per capita. China will still be an alternate independent power from the West for the world economy.

China wil become democratic of sorts but it's emergence will be slow and equivalent to watching paint dry meaning the West will have long moved on to other newer excuses to criticize China about.

China will have made major independent advancements in science and technology spurring on a Cold War of sorts. China will have a major presence in space.

Sino-US relations will only get worse. We will see the West push for the unequal treaties similar to what was seen in the Far East duing the 1800 and early 1900s, i.e., demanding Japan limit it's military capabilities while the West had no such restrictions. Of course China will ignore it. Not sure if war breaks out but if it does it will definitely go nuclear soon after.

The US will have been involved in a new major war in the Middle East. Either fighting one or more Islamic states or with Arabs against non-Arab Islamic countries. Both lead to much chaos and extreme instability throughout the Islamic world and their neighbors.

Some predict China will fall under extremist nationalism? Watch out for the US when the world become less and less black and white. More and more countries around the world won't follow the "us versus them" mentality that has long benefited the US. More nations won't abide by the international rules and regulations formed by the geo-politics of mostly Western powers. Meaning less US influence around the world and more insecurity in Americans.

One or two allies of the US today, seeing the rise of China passing them by, will move in independent directions. One or both will be in conflict politically and possibly militarily with either/both China and the US. Wanna guess which countries?

The world will have seen long stable growth in portions of Sub-Saharan Africa because of mostly the China factor being an alternative to the West.

FuManChu said:

In 2050 I predict that the world will have had, be having, or facing global resource wars brought on by countries demanding more than the current capacity of resource production (of most resources, not just fuel). Nuclear war will probably be avoided, but many will die and suffer because the world will have refused to try to live within its means.

It will only be after many years (even decades) of fighting and a global recession that people realise many items they take for granted or want are luxuries and not necessities. But by then it's impossible to say whether it will be too late to do anything, what with the possibility of global warming causing the flooding of many coastal regions, etc.

Humanity will survive, but at a great cost. The only hope is that the current greedy, self-indulgent element of human nature that is taking root in every corner of the world is counter-acted and we find a way to use what little this world has to offer more efficiently.

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I rather tend to agree, human nature being what it is, it may take quite a bit of bitter reality for societies to try to learn to live within their means - and it doesn't look like many people will voluntarily give up the lifestyles to which they have grown accustomed.

As to potential disasters such as the reversal of the earth's magnetic field, well, a US general about thirty years ago responded to the threat of a nuclear holocaust with the quip "If there's enough shovels to go around, everybody's going to make it." A little simplistic, but should any great catastrophe befall us, we're probably just going to have to make do as best we can since I doubt governments will have the means and the foreknowledge necessary to do a whole lot about it.

I will predict that the lineup of great powers in 2050 may well be the USA and China at the top, but I also suggest that either's placing may be a good deal more tenuous than at present. Both face rapidly aging populations, and obviously this means fewer workers supporting more retirees while having fewer children. For China, this also means an increasingly expensive workforce as the decades pass, potentially wiping out much of its competitive advantage in that regard. The US, heavily saddled with debt, is going to have a very hard time supporting government spending at the levels people are used to, especially in social security and national defence. Russia may be something of a wildcard, since it seems to be following a strategy of basing its strength on military power financed by petroleum, rather than meaningfully revitalizing its general economy - if petroleum stays high, Russia will ride high, if not..., and as for other great powers, I suspect India and Brazil will emerge, and possibly Pakistan and Iran, and Japan will re-emerge. As for Britain, Germany, and France, that'll depend on whether they choose to pay for mass populations of elderly or to pay for powerful militaries.

There is going to be a much greater gap between those who have it and those who don't, especially in those countries where most people have been used to having it. And this may eventually transform the politics of those countries, and not necessarily in good ways.

This said, there will almost certainly be some very interesting surprises.

"May you live in interesting times." - ancient curse

You may like to read this.

We'll all be dead.

zraver said:

between now and 2050 fresh water will becoem the new oil.

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I think that this will hardly be the case. The ocean is a limitless supply of salt water, and the technology to distill fresh drinking water out of seawater should become only even more readily available in the next coming decades.

crobato said:

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That's some pretty grim outlook. Even for someone who tilts to pessimism at times, that's a little more than I care to contemplate.

But maybe grim outlooks are a sign of the times, or of times to come.

Water is such an understated vital resource, you sometimes wonder what all the hubbub about petroleum would be compared to a dire water-shortage crisis, let alone wars over water.

Clouded Leopard said:

I think that this will hardly be the case. The ocean is a limitless supply of salt water, and the technology to distill fresh drinking water out of seawater should become only even more readily available in the next coming decades.

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Some nations may have the technology? But what about the poor farmer? The rest of the world's billions will not have, or afford a nuclear powered fresh water converter. Its not the availability its the cost.

In zraver's "Water Wars" which I will call at that, nations that are the source of water are the ones likely to be attacked. For example, Egypt's source of water, the Nile, comes from the Sudan. Guess who becomes the target.

In Europe, people may fight to secure the Alps, since many of Europe's major rivers like the Danube, originates from it.

China has at least five major water systems coming out of it. Suffice to say, I dont' see China targeting anyone, but China can become a target to someone else because of this. The water ways of Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam are dependent on China.

Russia and the US on the other hand, seem self sufficient since the end and the beginning of several waterways are within their countries.

The world thinks of the US being a military superpower, but remember first and foremost is that the US is the FOOD superpower, bread and basket to the rest of the world, including China. A major ecological crisis that happens in the US that will affect the food producing states, and you will have a major global food crisis.

That is why I think the one of the world's biggest threats facing today is biological, a blight or virus or germ that can wipe out crops and livestock, in the same sense like Mad Cow disease or Bird flu. If this hits the US food system, then the consequences are unimaginable.

What about hydroponics? IE genetically altered bacteria which either grow into food or produce edible byproducts just with water and sunlight?

Granted, vat produced food isn't going to taste very nice.