A STROLL IN THE ABYSS

There’s a metaphor I’ve used a couple of times before. “We are standing knee deep in the abyss”. I’m going to modify it by saying we are at low tide and it’s starting to come in. At what point do we start to move to save ourselves. We aren’t really moving yet. The abyss is the climate chaos. Floating on the surface, impeding our progress towards safety are all the other problems of our society, acknowledged or not. They include CRT, BLM, inequality of wealth, health care, education, intelligent infrastructure design, social safety nets, and the list goes on. To use another metaphor, “the elephant in the room nobody is talking about” is the inevitable change coming at an accelerating pace. A massive change in consumer psychology to adjust to climate change will be needed. Overlaid on this is the change in computing technology and robotics. I’ve seen one estimate that a quarter of all jobs will be displaced by AI and robotics. Of course some new jobs will be created, but we aren’t getting ready for the changes. How are we to provide a sufficient living for our population? This will be far more disruptive than necessary. There are some solutions talked about in the various think tanks and academia, but nothing is really happening. The trend in the more conservative states is to wade deeper into the abyss. This moves the average starting point deeper. There will be consequences.