Blogs

We have received a number of requests to clarify and expand upon a point made in our last update. In it we said that “the US stock of debt has a half life of just over 4 years and a coupon of just under 6%, which suggests a very pressing issue for the 2016 US Presidential Election”. We have been asked to explain exactly what that means and what chain of events might be triggered out to 2016.

I was invited back to Singapore to keynote the International Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning Symposium with hundreds of the world’s best futurists, planners, forecasters, government policy-makers, entrepreneurs, business executives, and other interesting people. Singapore is always a luxury to visit, of course, but the focus was on where does the world go from here?

A three to six meter sea level rise by the end of the century is looking increasingly likely, based on continuing IPCC projections. This raises a number of serious questions, including: how do we protect the Earth's biodiversity from the attendant habitat loss? And what happens to my beachfront condo?

The popularly contested nature versus nurture debate is as appealing as it is unresolvable in answering the question: how and why do we become who we are? While some believe that people behave according to genetic predispositions, others believe that people think and behave in certain ways because they are taught to do so.

Even though public opinion polls show a general distaste for partisan divisions, a rising tide of political partisanship is sweeping into many aspects of American public life. Witness the several recent examples of how partisanship and ideology have replaced civil discussion and pragmatism.

One thing is clear: the future will happen with or without you. In other words…change is coming whether you like it or not! But in order to know what the future may bring, we have to be constantly aware of what is going on around us. There is an experiment from several years ago which demonstrates this point very well.

For InterPress Service
© Hazel Henderson, October 2009

Trading is arguably the core activity in all market economies. Free trade is the mantra of all economists – left, right and center. Trading is considered indispensible and more trade is always seen as better. The financial crisis caused a closer look at trade and financial traders to see if these conventional beliefs are still valid.

For InterPress Service
© Hazel Henderson, 2009

The financial meltdown generated by Wall Street and the "too big to fail" culture of global money-center banks and financiers is generating local initiatives and demands to decentralize and democratize finance.

For InterPress Service
© Hazel Henderson 2009

It sometimes helps to view the future as a very large and very complex jig-saw puzzle where, in the present, we have most of the pieces to the jig-saw. The skill of the futurist is to fit those pieces together in a way that allows us to view the future usefully.