all www  millennium-project.org

This Scenarios Bibliography is done by Susan Jette and is a collection that started in 1996 and is being updated with about 50 scenarios each year.

The scenarios annotated bibliographies are organized in the following domains:

I. International Economics and Wealth
II. Environmental Change and Diversity
III. Technological Capacity
IV. Demographics and Human Resources
V. Governance and Conflict
VI. Regions and Nations
VII. Integration or Whole Futures

I. INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS AND WEALTH

The World in 2050. How Big Will the Major Emerging Market Economies get and how can the OECD Compete? PricewaterhouseCoopers. John Hawksworth, director, Macroeconomics. Copyright @ March, 2006.

The PWC report discusses how OECD countries will grow to the year 2050 in purchasing power parity comparisons to the emerging market economies along an overall trajectory of anticipated carbon emissions and climate change policy. The report looks at a number of indicators for G7 countries: US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Canada, plus Spain, Australia, and South Korea; and the emerging market economies known as the E7: China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Mexico, and Turkey. Among a number of major findings, the report acknowledged that there was no single way to measure growth of OECD against the emerging economies such as China and India. Considering all of the factors, there is overwhelming evidence that the E7 economies will be 25% larger than the G7 economies by 2050. Within the G7, due mainly to population aging, China and Russia are likely to diverge negatively from the rest of the G7 countries. India is the youngest economy with a working age population that will show positive growth over the period to 2050. The report shows that the country most likely to show the fastest growth throughout this period is India. By 2050, India will likely have a GDP close to 60% of that of the US (using market exchange rates). China, although it will slowdown on the overall, will be around 95% the size of the US by 2050. Brazil will be a similar size as Japan; India and Mexico will grow rapidly, becoming larger than Germany by 2050; Russia will not grow due to population aging, but by 2050, it will be a similar size to France; Turkey will be a similar size to Italy by 2050. These long-term projections are subject to uncertainties and thus the report models six scenarios and explores two scenarios in detail. The report cautions that the rapid economic growth of the E7 and moderate growth of the G7 combined will have serious consequences for carbon emissions because of global energy consumption. If countries continue with the “business as usual” approach to emissions policy, the world will experience a doubling of global carbon emissions by 2050. The long-term consequences of global warming will be serious. Two key scenarios (see report for more detail): Scenario 1) Baseline. A baseline scenario in which energy efficiency improves in line with trends of the past 25 years, with no change in fuel mix by country; this ‘business as usual’ scenario acts as a benchmark against which to assess the need for change, rather than as a forecast of the most likely outcome. Scenario 2) Green Growth + CCS. This scenario incorporates possible emission reductions due to a greener fuel mix, annual energy efficiency gains over and above the historic trend, and widespread use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Of the scenarios considered in the report, only this ‘Green Growth Plus’ strategy stabilizes atmospheric CO2 concentrations by 2050 at what the current scientific consensus suggests would be broadly acceptable levels. The G7 economies - the US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Canada - may need to take the lead in reducing their carbon emissions, given that emissions from the faster-growing emerging economies will almost certainly continue to rise over the next few decades. The author concludes: "Our analysis suggests that there are technologically feasible and relatively low-cost options for controlling carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Estimates suggest that the level of GDP might be reduced by no more than around 2-3% in 2050 if this strategy was followed, equivalent to sacrificing only around a year of economic growth for the sake of reducing carbon emissions in 2050 by around 60% compared to our baseline scenario." "But if this is to be achieved, it will take further concerted action by governments, businesses and individuals over a broad range of measures to boost energy efficiency, adopt a greener fuel mix, and introduce carbon capture and storage technologies in power plants and other major industrial facilities." John Hawksworth

Outsights on the Global Economy – Four Scenarios for the Global Economy. Global Outsight Group. Project participants include: Mark Beatson. Director of Innovation Economics, UK Department of Trade & Industry, Roger Bootle, Managing Director, Capital Economics, Waltraut Burghardt , Senior Director, International Finance, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank, Peter Cornelius, Senior Economist, Global Business Environment, Shell International & Tapan Datta, Director of Economics and Strategy, Emerging Markets. Copyright 2006.

This paper presents four scenarios for the future of the global economy. It discusses key driving forces wih primary dimensions of security and technology. This paper focuses more on non-economic drivers. Four main themes were identified at the workshop: 1.) Technology. How fast will technology develop and be adopted? How much does information technology (IT) impact productivity? What will be the impact of social attitudes and security concerns? 2.) Social attitudes. How will demographic changes be reflected in cultural and social differences? Is the "clash of civilizations" inevitable or over-hyped? What part will ethics play in economic life? How will the work/life calculus play out in different societies? 3.) Environment. At what point - and in what magnitude - will pollution, climate change, and limits to the availability of certain resources make themselves felt in the economic sphere? What role will regulatory regimes play? What happens when health is treated as an environmental issue? 4.) Governance. Are we moving towards more closed versus open models of governance, with freer or protected trade regimes? How will rising security concerns influence political interventions in economic life? How far will the BRICs reshape geopolitics? What role will the media play in the ways we are governed? Here is a brief overview of these highly detailed scenarios. Contact Global Outsight Group for the full report. Scenario 1) Fortress skcolidloG (Goldilocks in reverse). “This is a world of high technology in which fierce competition reigns, with conflict over everything from resources to religion. Rapid development of technology is valued as a means of enhancing security. It is a world of trade blocs and protectionism, slowing the distribution of resources worldwide and eventually slowing growth - and making it potentially very unequal between economies. This is the world economists and policy makers hoped would never emerge again after the lessons of the 1930s. Insecurity is real, not just a high perception of insecurity. (Goldilocks economy refers to an economy where the pace of growth is just right, not too hot and not too cold.) This scenario finds the military driving R&D and innovation in search of greater security, yet security is in reality (not just in perception) much worse than today. The high level of insecurity drives the world into introverted blocs. Among other flashpoints, resource-hungry economies such as China and Japan are drawn into conflict as they attempt to secure their supply lines in a global economy that is initially growing fast and where sustaining growth depends increasingly on the power of the bloc to attract the necessary means of production.” Scenario 2) Fast, Free & Filthy. “This is an alternative high-tech world in which environmental concerns come to the fore, having started with fast, conflict-free growth that ignores the costs of environmental degradation. Eventually, technological innovation is called upon to combat pollution and overcome resource constraints, allowing growth to continue apace in the long run. This scenario avoids conflict through global political cooperation rather than confrontation - with resources and the environment key areas for action. For example, despite massive demand for water, potential water wars are averted through good-faith treaties, the sharing of resources, development of new clean water supplies, advanced desalination technology. Renewable energy is developing rapidly.” Scenario 3) False Horizons “A scenario that is driven by deep value changes, many of which seek to reduce the power of big business and curb the advance of technology. This unstable scenario - a mix of conservatism, welfarism, regulation, anti-business, alternative approaches to security - opens (but does not resolve) a debate on how value shifts may change the direction of the world economy and how long such shifts might last. achieves general security through cooperation, reinforced by a values shift that seeks to counter inequalities and perceived injustices: e.g. potential resentment between haves and have-nots is countered by welfare spending. The values shift is driven both by a moral shift as well as by the understanding that security is linked to income i.e. the shift is not entirely disinterested. But it is not clear how long this shift can last: hence the notion of false horizons.” Scenario 4) Fears & Phobias. “This is a highly insecure world which combines the technophobia of False Horizons with the politics of identity (nationalism even to the point of xenophobia). Nations and economies look inward. also witnesses international cooperation but only where absolutely essential (e.g. to share critical water supplies). There is no ability to deal collectively with less directly threatening issues such global warming - the temptation to "free ride" is irresistible. At the national level, this is a world of highly restrictive regulation, with heavy-handed curtailment of trade in goods, services, people, knowledge and capital. This primarily inward looking, look-after- oneself world is tense, full of fears and a sense of insecurity as a result.”

Corporate Dealings with the Network Economy William deRidder, Futures 38.9 (Nov. 2006). 1103 (16).

The formation of networks in a network economy help companies create new business opportunities. Companies develop new products, open up markets and are continually reorganizing within networks. Companies that want to actively deal with new technology, changes in consumer behavior, and economic drivers will have to work successfully in a network economy. This article focuses on network formation and network economy. The network economy has led to the formulation of the following three laws: 1) David Sarnoffs Law, former-chairman of the RCA Corp: the value of a non-interactive network is proportional to the number of users; 2) Bob Metcalfe's Law, founder of 3Com Corporation and inventor of the Ethernet: the value of an interactive network increases with the square of the number of users; 3) David Reed's Law, researcher HP Laboratories and MIT Media Laboratory: the value of a social network (with open peer-to-peer information exchange) scales exponentially with the size of the network. These laws can be metaphors for worlds observed in scenarios. Sarmoff's Law applies to a reality in classical economics where companies serve their customers in a formal market relation. Customers are seen as solitary, rational actors who maintain a relation to the firm. Metcalfe's Law shows us networks of customers that share information and make choices together. It is assumed that there are no dominant players in such a network. Reed's Law connects to networks where a few dominant actors are present, but there are also a large number of participants that exert little or no influence in the network. In this article, networks have been named according to the 'laws' that best describe the nature of the network concerned. Here are excerpts from the article that describes the three laws and their implications in detail. Scenario 1) Future of Corporations in Sarnoff networks. “The near future will bring deployment of technology. New applications will enable a further reduction of production and transaction costs. For this reason, the search for economies of scale will be a constant battle against time. Market competitors will also try to realize increasing returns by using cost reductions to lower the selling price. Sarnoff networks will in particular bring forth commodities and this development will be strongest in such networks. Merges and takeovers will likely prove to be inevitable, as will be the loss of employment. Possibly, the largest threat Sarnoff networks contain is embedded in the low value of the informal networks concerned. The formalization of the organization, often through empowering protocol and formalized relations, limits the ability of these companies to adjust to not only to new technology, but also to new developments in their market. Where the level of uncertainty rises in the years to come, and the success of organizations will be more dependant on their ability to adjust to new, barely predictable developments, companies based on a Sarnoff network will struggle, in spite of their relative size and financial power. Barbabasi adds: 'These days the value is in ideas and information. We have gotten to the point that we can produce anything we can dream of. The expensive question now is: what should that be?' Nonetheless, a market for mass produced goods will always remain. This market in developed nations may be mature, developing economies offer many chances. Several companies, such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble have already been successful with so called Bottom-of-the-Pyramid products; cheap mass-produced goods in small packaging offered to poor consumers in, mostly, urban areas in the third world.” Scenario 2) Future of corporations in Metcalfe networks. “Many companies focus on the opportunities that a network organization may offer them. Amongst others they look after the possibility of reducing the number of management layers emphasizes horizontal organizational structures. New external alliances are sought and found. Increasingly, companies realize that they cannot survive without these networks. Connectivity with other organizations and institutions has progressively become a prerequisite. Management literature of recent years is filled with analyses, prognoses and recommendations concerning these issues. Consequently the network-company has matured on the drawing boards. But practice is unruly. Even if an organization attains a high quality level, success is not guaranteed. Even more frustrating is the observation that when a business is successful, this success cannot always be attributed to the quality of its products. Watts has remarked: 'The difference between a hugely successful innovation and an abject failure can be generated entirely through the dynamics of interactions between players who might have had nothing to do with its introduction.' In recent research it has become abundantly clear that random networks and rational actors are not common in reality. The future of Metcalfe networks in a growing network economy lies with smaller companies or parts of companies in which personal service based activities are the core business. Especially many smaller and medium sized businesses serve many customers that can be described as actors in a random network. As long as they realize the limits of this situation, chances are slim that these organizations will expect too much of their innovation, production and sales efforts. Ambitious companies focus on Reed networks. Quite possibly they are a part of such networks already without realizing it themselves.” Scenario 3) Future of corporations in Reed networks “Companies that sell products that satisfy the growth needs of the buyer and serve markets containing a distribution system typified by the 'power law' are part of Reed networks. They find themselves in a structure that contains certain characteristics. The most important of these may be the existence of dominant companies and, because of this, the lack of a large segment of middle-sized firms. As a result of this there is a quest for a dominant role in the market. This position is attractive, not in the least from a financial viewpoint. It is this position that often leads to enormous profit. The battle for the largest share of the market is magnified by the expectation that these markets will exhibit a great amount of growth over the following years.”

Postcards from the Future: The Futures of Branding. Nathan Shedroff and Davis Masten. AIGA

Postcards from the Future is a new book developed by two brand professionals about the future of the brand industry. Workshops were started within the AIGA’s Center for Brand Experience. The authors, Shedroff and Masten took the results of the workshops and created eight visions in which branding plays key—and often scary—roles. The book combines both visuals and in-depth analysis, making it a source of fresh and challenging thinking to designers, marketers, brand professionals, executives, and cultural anthropologists. The following are brief overviews of eight brand visions. For the detailed report, contact the AIGA. Scenario 1) Economic Nirvana. “In world economies, whether due to new priorities, technologies, understandings, or cooperation, the vast majority of people are now able to meet all subsistence needs (shelter, food, healthcare, work, education, etc.) and have, for the first time for many of them, something called leisure time and new opportunity to pursue other interests. How does this effect the development of global brands? Or, local ones? Do brands face more competition or less? Does everyone become more or less brand-conscious? Does increased prosperity increase the quantity of brands? What about the quality?” Scenario 2) Economic Peril. “The world economy suffers a tremendous collapse. Whether due to lack or resources (or accessibility), too much demand, insecure speculation, or political conflict that destroys the carefully balanced and orchestrated coordination of trade between countries, all monetary systems are severely devalued and a majority of people have problems meeting subsistence needs. Do people even worry about "brands" in this climate? Are they more concerned with quality, substance, or "real" value as a result? Or, are they even more oriented to brands that help them make quick judgments and decisions about their needs? Are they so busy with survival that issues of style, fashion, and more ethereal concerns mostly go unaddressed?” Scenario 3) Demassification. “In a world where technologies have finally made it cost-effective--even profitable-to make customized products for all sorts of customers of almost every type. People can now extensively customize their designs for cars, clothing, pre-made foods, jewelry, curricula, and pets just like many houses have been for a long time. What does this do to traditional brands? If these products can now be changed substantially, are they even the same products any more? Do brands disappear? Can they compete? Do the customization processes and experiences themselves become the significant brands? Do product brands fade and corporate brands become more important?” Scenario 4) Remassification. “For whatever reason (economic, technological, social, or cultural), customization has either not been successful or not been possible. There is a new interest in cultural connection to others and building shared experiences and identities. Status as a member of a group is more important to most consumers than status as an individual. These groups might be cultural, religious, corporate, professional, local, regional, national, or ideological. What might help brands compete in such a competitively reduced set of brands? How do people choose (or do they) which groups/brands make the most sense? How does our construction of identity change or influence the formation of these brands?” Scenario 5) The Mavericks. “Traditionally, only a small percentage of the population has broken-away from the "pack" and pursued their own, ideally original identities. These people tend to be less brand-influenced and more motivated to either eschewing brands or developing their own brands. Imagine what would change if many more people became mavericks in their personal and professional lives. Could the stable order of work and life be maintained without the automated responses by consumers and expectations by companies around mass adoption of consumer brands? What happens when everyone not only establish their own, personal brands, but also forges their own path?” Scenario 6) Environmental Concern. “Through a combination of events and communications, the greater world of consumers finally gain a deep concern for the environment-what they might think of as nature. Not only are environmentally-oriented brands becoming more popular, but also processes that are thought to help the environment are adopted in full force (such as reuse, recycling, composting, reduction, etc.). How do these new concerns change the adoption, perception, and creation of brands? What do products and services that are seen to either have no clear relation to the environment or are actually bad for the environment do to react to these market conditions? Do they reposition? Change their products, services, or resources (if they can)? Do they hibernate?” Scenario 7) Privacy is a Rarity. “Due to an escalation of surveillance technologies, we are watched almost everywhere and at every time-certainly in the public space. Only inside our homes (or in some cases, our rooms) are we physically private and we are almost never private in a virtual space. Cameras watch our driving (and GPS pointers and satellites monitor our speed and route), our working, and our movement in restaurants, bars, casinos, shops, and plazas. Microphones listen into our conversations with customers, colleagues, peers, and family members. Workers from nannies to store clerks to managers-and even some executives are monitored via camera, phone, and email. What effect does this have on the appearance and development of, identification with, and visualization and presentation of brands? Are people less likely to adopt or display brands? Will they tend to use brands as camouflage? Can brands somehow augment our sense of privacy?” Scenario 8) City as Brand. “In an evolution of an already established scenario, more and more cities begin sophisticated, integrated brand development and management projects in both strategies and tactical presentations. Using New York City as a focus, since it has both opportunity and pressing need to reframe itself, what directions can the city take in evolving its already strong brand? How should it differentiate itself from other cities and, indeed, where is it already positioned? What mechanisms can be used to both create and promote new or newly articulated values? Is it possible for a city to have a brand? Is it possible to create or manage a brand for an experience as complex as a city? Who makes the decisions and how can it be managed? Is agreement needed at all levels-or any at all? Is there a process that can be employed? Is there a client? How does one measure success?”

Society in 20205 – What Next for the Make Poverty History Generation? Tom Hampson, Editorial Director of the Fabian Society . Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London, SW1H 9BN. Independent Newspapers UK, 2006.

The respected forecasting group Henley Centre Headlight Vision tested public attitudes to help it guess what kind of a society consumers might impact in 20 years' time. Would the values of the “Live8” generation last? In three of the four likely scenarios for 2025, “selfishness appears to outweigh caring about others.” It turns out that consumerism and individualism may prove a more dominant force by 2025. Caring about others or the problems of poverty may take a back seat. The following presents an overview of the scenarios. Contact the Fabian Society for the pamphlet containing the complete scenarios.. Scenario 1) Choice Unlimited. This is a scenario in which today's consumerist culture would become stronger; ethical consumption less mainstream and people would engage with international issues only sporadically. This is the type of scenario in which most people would have "personal home stylists" who would refresh their wardrobes, kitchen and interiors every four to six weeks. Scenario 2) My Home, My Castle. In this scenario, consumers would look inward; are suspicious of each other and encourage the Government to concentrate on consumers rather than global issues. The government look inward, community suspicion grows and government is encouraged to focus on the citizens rather than international issues. Scenario 3) The Puritans Return. This scenario would see people focusing much more on local issues, a rise in self-righteousness, the poor regarded by the masses as undeserving and the government expected to set a "moral" agenda at home. Scenario 4) The Good Life. In this scenario, community involvement grows and politicians come under under increasing public pressure to focus on global social and environmental justice. Green issues would be part of mainstream politics and climate change at the top of the agenda. After this study was published, the Trade Justice Movement was inspired to come up with a visioning exercise to the year 2025 (with additional contributions from Jubilee Debt Coalition.) The group discussed the reality of the business cycle and agreed on the following global and economic trends that are most relevant to business and global consumerism: 1) Growing power of trananational corporations – TNCs will continue to grow in reach, wealth and power. 2) Increased inequality – The rewards of growth are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a very small percentage of the global population. This trend is likely to continue in the West and to spread to emergent economies with unpredictable political, economic and cultural consequences; 3) Climate change - Global warming will be headed to well above 2 degrees C resulting in runaway climate change, with impacts already felt hard in poor economies; 4) Civil Society – More diffuse in the North and South; more militant. Southern involvement in campaigning changes; 5) Conflict, migration, the impact of HIV/AIDs, Water – may also become more pressing issues; 6) Trade – Multilateral/WTO trade system collapses into stasis and irrelevance, retreat into protectionism; more bilateral and regional agreements, increased south/south trade; 7) Oil and commodities – Major global oil shocks; OPEN crisis, huge switch to alternative fuels; 8) Economies and geopolitical power – China 2nd biggest economy in world; India growth too. China likely to continue its dramatic growth through 2010; 9) Migration – Increased protectionism against migration. Unsustainable population growth will be very big, fueling illegal migration and unsustainable use of environment; 10) Power will probably continue to shift to the larger developing countries (China in particular) – this will affect existing institutions and may lead to a new South-South trade agreements and new institutions. 11) World Bank/IMF – will continue to implement fiscal austerity on poorest countries; 12) Increased availability of communications technologies – while the increased availability and accessibility of communications technology potentially developing global solidarity.

Global Economic Prospects 2007: Managing the Next Wave of Globalization. 2007 World Bank - The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The World Bank, Washington, DC. ISBN 1014-8906.

This World Bank report examines the stresses and benefits of integration in a global economy. The discussion centers around a long term growth scenario, called the “central scenario” from 2006 – 2030. The results of the scenario describe “a world in which the gross domestic product (GDP) in high-income countries is slated to nearly double and that of developing countries will more than triple. The progressive expansions of China and India, the two largest developing economies and home to half the people of the developing world, are projected to drive the process. Their impact on the global economy will be increasingly felt as their exports and energy use, for example, approach the levels of the European Union and the United States.” World Bank The report then takes a series of projections and simulations built around this central scenario to examine aspects of the evolution of the global economy . The next wave of globalization will see the growing economic weight of developing countries in the international economy, the potential for increased productivity that is offered by global production chains, and the accelerated diffusion of technology. The World Bank also writes extensively about three growing consequences: growing inequality, pressures in labor markets, and threats to the global commons. The following is an excerpt from the report’s central scenario. The full report is available through the World Bank. Central Scenario to the Year 2030. “The medium-term outlook for the world economy remains positive. And while the pace of economic expansion is slowing, developing economies are projected to grow by an average 7.0 per cent in 2006, more than twice as fast as high-income countries (at 3.1 per cent). Over the next 25 years, developing countries will move to centre stage. Global economic growth is forecast to be faster in the 25-year period between 2006 and 2030 than the corresponding period 1980-2005. The output of the global economy rises from $35 trillion in 2005 to $72 trillion at constant market exchange rates and prices in 2030. This is an average annual increase of 3 per cent--2.5 per cent for high-income countries and 4.2 per cent for developing countries. In the central scenario, even though the incomes of developing countries will still be less than one-quarter those in rich countries in 2030, these incomes continue to converge with those of wealthy countries. This implies that countries as diverse as China, Mexico and Turkey will have average living standards roughly comparable to Spain today. While rich and poor countries alike stand to benefit from global economic growth, certain stresses already apparent--in income inequality, in labor markets and in the environment-- become more acute. - By 2030, the world's population rises from some 6.5 billion to 8 billion, with more than 97 per cent of this growth in developing countries. Over the next 25 years, rapid technological progress, burgeoning trade in goods and services, and the increased integration of financial markets will facilitate faster long-term growth. However, some regions, notably Africa, are at risk of being left behind. Moreover, even though many in the developing world are likely to enter what can be called the 'global middle class', income inequality widens within many countries. At the same time, low-wage competition from China, India and other developing countries--not only in goods trade but also in services--will place additional pressure on an integrating global market for labor. Unskilled workers, in particular, may fall farther behind. Managing these forces places a new burden on national policy makers--and on the international community as a whole--to ensure that the opportunities of global integration are broadly shared. The coming globalization also sees intensified stresses on the 'global commons'. Addressing global warming, preserving marine fisheries and containing infectious diseases will require effective multilateral collaboration to ensure that economic growth and poverty reduction proceed without causing irreparable harm to future generations.”

The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Program: 2007 – 2036. Development Concepts and Doctrine Center, published by UK Ministry of Defense, January, 2007.

Strategic Trends is an independent view of the future produced by the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Center (DCDC), a Directorate General within the UK’s Ministry of Defense. IT is a source document for the development of Defense Policy.
Key findings included eight major trends that were transformed into a scenario over the next three decades. These trends are: 1) Resource competition – economic growth and increased consumption will result in greater demand and competition for essential resources.; 2) Climate change - compelling evidence to indicate that climate change is occurring and that the atmosphere will continue to warm at an unprecedented rate throughout the 21st Century. Over the next 30 years, the resource-related challenges to global stability will be diverse, wide-ranging and significant. Climate change and a shifting environment; increasing demand for natural resources, particularly food, water and fossil fuels; a growing and rapidly globalizing economy; urbanization and the emergence of new health challenges will all have major impacts and unpredictable effects. While the global economy is likely to grow during the period, improving material conditions for many people, the combined, uneven effect of these impacts will be to increase uncertainty for many, creating new sources of insecurity, instability and tension; 3) Economic growth combined with the continuing rise in the global population - will intensify the demand for natural resources, minerals and energy. Oil is likely to remain the principal source of motive power, particularly for vehicles, and growing competition for this diminishing resource will lead to a significant rise in energy prices. It is possible that this will cause a slow down in economic growth from 2020, although this may be offset by new sources of energy: coal derivatives, hydrogen fuel cells, bio-ethanol and for power generation, nuclear fusion. 4) Energy market instability - may lead to political and even military interventions in order to protect access and safeguard supply. 5) Food price spikes - increasing demand and climate change are likely to place pressure on the supply of key staples; 6) Evolving family systems - In response to globalization and the pressures of a more uncertain world, networks based on family, clan or tribe structures and extended kinship groups, in common with a more communitarian approach, are likely to proliferate, especially in areas of declining or low prosperity and opportunity. 7) Strategic shocks - an analysis of trends and probable outcomes can only go so far in describing the future, the unexpected also needs to be taken into account - shocks will happen. The discussion in this repot outline ways in which discontinuities may occur. 8) Middle class proletariat - the middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The following is an excerpt from the scenario developed by an examination of trends to 2030. The complete text of the report can be found at the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centersite. Scenario: Ring Road Issues. “During the thirty-year period, covered by the study, human activity is dominated by three pervasive “Ring Road Issues”, namely, climate change, globalization, and global inequality. During the next three decades, there are constant tensions between growing interdependence and heightening competition among the nations. As a result, all aspects of human life changes at an unprecedented rate, throwing up new features, challenges, and opportunities. Three areas of change, or Ring Road issues, touches the lives of every human being on the planet by 2040 and aggravates climate change, globalization, and global inequality. The increasing pace of climate change alters the physical environment in which a rapidly growing population lives and its access to habitable land, food and water is under strain. The world economy expands at an unprecedented rate and its different segments become more and more integrated, creating globalized interdependencies and enabling multiple supra-national linkages in all areas of human endeavor. This does not benefit all strata of the society in equal measure. There are gainers and losers. A sizeable section of the society sees substantial improvement in material living conditions while others continue to face hardship and deterioration in their plight. These people suffer from fluctuations within a globalized market-based economy, making their lives full of uncertainties. In all the most affluent societies, rapid, large shifts in global markets, which are increasingly sensitive to uneven supply and changing demand, result in potentially dramatic change in personal fortune and confidence. Globalized communications field aspirations, heightened expectations and serves to expose differences in advantage and opportunity, stimulating grievance and raising the significance of global inequality as a social and political issue. During the next three decades, thanks to globalization, the volume of world trade rapidly expand, cutting across national barriers and overcoming distance. This leads to internationalization and integration of markets for goods, services and labour. Even though this boosts the pace of economic growth, it brings risks for national markets of developing countries, as they are exposed to destabilizing influence of global market. The ups and downs in the global market impact national markets, as they are transmitted through new and more efficient means of telecommunications. Labour comes under intensive pressure. It is “subject to particularly ruthless laws of supply and demand.” To quote the study: Socially, looser forms of political, cultural and economic association multiply, whose existence is largely virtual and dissociated, linking members who are physically dispersed, but who share common interests and seek competitive advantage of association. Politically, globalization raises levels of interdependence between states that are increasingly integrated within the globalized economy. Notwithstanding the increasing global production and improving material conditions for most people, the income disparities widen and poverty continues to be an insurmountable challenge.”

Raising Our Game: Can We Sustain Globalization? The Past and Future of Sustainability Bill Baue. Policy Innovations. June, 2007.

Established in 1987, SustainAbility advises clients on the risks and opportunities associated with corporate responsibility and sustainable development. This report looks to the year 2027 to examine future scenarios for the world’s sustainable development. It brings macro trends into a pattern so readers can understand six dimensions that are encompassed in the four future scenarios. The report uniquely creates the acronym G.A.M.B.L.E. (growth, acceleration, mainstreaming, barriers, leadership, and equity) as the six common aspects to all of the scenarios – indicators that also pose as changing variables. The report ends with seven recommendations, or "new rules" to face the trade-offs involved in choices between environmental and social value. What is in the Cards for the Future? The report proposes four potential scenarios (based on a card game metaphor) for how the future will unfold over the next 20 years, depending on how business attends to social and environmental sustainability. Each scenario corresponds to a card suit (Clubs, Diamonds, Spades, and Hearts) on a matrix with environmental wins and losses on the horizontal axis and social wins and losses on the vertical axis. Scenario 1) Hearts Scenario. “This is the future that the Brundland Commission “pointed us toward," the report states, as it balances environmental sustainability with social development. It projects a scenario where a pandemic slows global transportation, forcing simultaneous attending to human health and curbing environmental impacts. The crisis inspires creative destruction and innovation that ultimately leads to true sustainability. The report acknowledges that the concept of sustainable development has stood the test of time since it was first injected into the political mainstream in 1987 by the Brundtland Commission, though the marriage between sustainability and development has always contained tension. This is a world which demography, politics, economics, and sustainability gel. It is the future that the Brundtland Commission pointed us towards. The early years of this scenario, however, are rough, with a global pandemic shutting down global trade. But in this case the challenges come in forms that drive positive responses, underlining the importance of shared solutions and inclusiveness. Over time, virtuous spirals of improvement set in, in most places. The outcome: a second Renaissance, but across a larger canvas.” Scenario 2) Spades Scenario. “Democratic societies open out higher living standards to growing populations. One key consequence is that natural resource prices rise, but another is that ecosystems are progressively undermined, with most governments unwilling to take the political risks of asking voters to make sacrifices in favor of the common good. The challenges are managed to a degree, thanks to more open societies, but not well enough. Deteriorating environmental conditions gnaw at the islands of affluence.” Scenario 3) Clubs Scenario. “This is a world in which, among other things, the elites learn how to use environmental sustainability as an excuse for denying the poor access to their fair share of natural resources. One outcome is a slowing of the destruction of ecosystems locally, but this future is characterized by protracted periods of social tension – broken with increasing frequency by insurrections. The waves of change build fitfully, chaotically, with closed societies and communities often operating in denial for extended periods. Over time, this erodes islands of sustainability. One outcome is a slowing of the destruction of ecosystems locally, but this future is characterized by protracted periods of social tension – broken with increasing frequency by insurrections. The Spades and Clubs scenarios play out the potential consequences of over-weighting environmental sustainability at the cost of social stability, or over-weighting development in ways that compromise environmental viability.” Scenario 4) Diamonds. “This scenario is bleak – a domino-effect world, in which instead of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, our invisible elbows knock over a series of economic, social, and environmental dominoes. Demographic trends and the spread of western lifestyles devastate ecosystems. The challenges come in forms that disable decision-makers and overwhelm society’s ability to respond effectively. Over time, as fear closes down thinking and creativity, vicious spirals develop in politics, governance, economics, and technology.”

Global Scenarios on Microfinance- Part I. CGAP Executive Committee, World Bank. Focus Notes No. 39, October, 2006.

A major driver for financial inclusion worldwide has been microfinance, a concept that gained extraordinary momentum over the past ten years. The authors at the World Bank ask whether this is strong enough to be irreversible? Will it gather the momentum to reach the billions who still have no access to microfinance? This report takes a regional look at the low to middle income nations and considers regional stability factors in demographics, technology, and new financial structures. Part I herein looks at two scenarios of how wireless information technology impact regional microfinance. According to the World Bank, BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are forecast to overtake the G6 industrialized countries over the next 40–50 years in terms of the size of their economies. If one or more of the BRICs were to become unstable and falter, global growth prospects would be seriously compromised. The report asserts that developed country capital, structures, standards, and advice is declining in influence when it comes to BRIC and in turn, what happens in the BRICs will affect the LICs (low income countries). It is becoming apparent that what happens in the BRIC will affect the LICs (low income countries) so that LICs seeking economic growth and political influence will increasingly follow the lead of the BRICs. BRIC models for economic growth are increasingly compelling. Over the next decade, cell phones may be the key to bringing microfinance to very poor and remote peoples. Wireless technology could radically reduce transaction costs and create anytime, anywhere access, even for very poor and remote clients. Most of the microfinance community believe that the government’s best role is to create a friendly policy environment for microfinancial services and not to provide them directly, at least when it comes to credit. However, in the BRICs, many of these countries have populist governments and are increasingly getting directly involved in delivering financial services directly to the poor. The following scenarios provide an overview of the effects of wireless technology on microfinance in these regions. Scenario 1) Massive Access “Wireless technology revolutionizes the way financial institutions and other businesses offer financial services to low-income people. Hundreds of millions of poor and unbanked clients gain access to cell phones, either by owning their own or using someone else’s. This sparks the interest of domestic banks because the costs of executing low-value transactions can be lowered substantially. Because international banks are capturing most of the corporate clientele, domestic banks turn more to retail business. They invest in delivery systems that can reach more people at lower cost, thus improving access for lower-income clients. In BRIC countries, the movement down-market starts with the burgeoning number of lower middle-class consumers. Major mobile phone operators form a new hub that enables international remittances to be securely and cheaply routed to mobile phone numbers. Innovation in handsets and software design spurs rapid customer adoption even among poor and illiterate clients. Regulators appreciate the potential of technology and especially the combination of cell phones, smart cards, and POS, to extend access. In addition, they see wireless technology as a fast and transparent way to track transactions, making it easier, among other things, to comply with international standards that combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. They amend regulations that limit banking transactions to conventional bank branches, allowing other infrastructure to do double duty as virtual branches. Once customers can make payments, transfers, cash withdrawals, and deposits outside of conventional branches, banking becomes more convenient and less intimidating for them. User-friendly products, some tailored for illiterate and semi-literate customers, attract many poor clients. The increased volume of remittances and internal transfers stimulates demand for other services. Higher volumes and lower costs allow deeper penetration. In the BRICs, as well as LICs such as Bostwana, Kenya, and Namibia, governments opt to make social transfer payments to their “stem” of poor citizens through banks and other financial institutions, using electronic payments and wireless technology. Once deployed, this wireless backbone can handle huge numbers of transactions, including not only financial services but also other development activities. For instance, cell phones and wireless Internet kiosks transmit basic health education to poor households, market information to remote farmers, and rainfall conditions to holders of weather insurance. Easy access to information makes it far simpler for those in developing countries to tap into global best practices. It also ensures that governments are held more accountable.” Scenario 2) Deeper Digital Divide. “Technology is adopted mainly to serve the easier-to-reach, wealthy clients and the substantial middle class in BRIC countries. The high fixed cost of technology infrastructure allows large banks to push out small players. The large banks find other opportunities more attractive than extending the lower income frontier of the retail market, thus leaving most of the poor outside the system and worsening the digital divide. As financial institutions move toward automated processes, clients interact more with machines than with people. Poor people who do not fit lenders’ automated profiles lose out on the benefits of conventional microfinance, including the personal relationships with loan officers that make uncollateralized, unscored credit possible, and interaction with other poor clients, which builds confidence and empowerment, especially for women. Governments in developing countries are concerned that increasing numbers of financial transactions, including deposit collection, occur outside of the banking sector, beyond their limited capacity to supervise. In reaction, they tighten financial regulations, prohibiting banking services via cell phones and other electronic means outside of bank branches. Governments also clamp down on nonbanks, such as telecommunications companies, offering card and cell phone-based payments/banking services. The trend away from legalizing immigration in Europe and the United States blocks access to bank accounts and possibly even easy cell phone subscriptions for immigrants in the North. This makes it harder to send funds safely and cheaply back home to family members. The traditional donor community and other international actors supporting microfinance assume that technology can solve the access problem commercially: they think most of the job is done. They lose interest in financial inclusion. Most poor people are left behind, and entire LICs as well. This shift in interest leaves countries like Sudan and Zambia with limited support for building financial access, even while they remain on the fringes of the wireless revolution.”

Global Scenarios on Microfinance – Part II. CGAP Executive Committee, World Bank. Focus Notes No. 39, October, 2006.

A major driver for financial inclusion worldwide has been microfinance, a concept that gained extraordinary momentum over the past ten years. The authors at the World Bank ask whether this is strong enough to be irreversible? Will it gather the momentum to reach the billions who still have no access to microfinance? This report takes a regional look at the low to middle income nations and considers regional stability factors in demographics, technology, and new financial structures. Part II herein looks at two scenarios of how state institutions impact regional microfinance. This is part II of the overview of global microfinance scenarios that look closer at the trend of new state credit programs in poor countries. According to the World Bank, “The pendulum seems to be swinging back from widespread privatization and liberalization toward more state control—and possibly even nationalization in some cases. In between, there are several other options: requiring institutions to lend to priority social sectors (India, Colombia); requiring financial institutions to serve the communities from which they receive deposits (as with the U.S. Community Reinvestment Act); linking government contracts to banks’ social performance (South Africa); creating fiscal incentives to invest in priority sectors (as has been done in the Netherlands); or fostering moral suasion for banks to commit to access targets (South Africa’s Financial Sector Charter).” World Bank As states exercise more control over retail financial services, some may heed the accumulated lessons of microfinance experience. Armed with good practice guidance, governments could potentially provide these services directly and do a good job. On the other hand, governments may continue naturally to succumb to the significant social and political pressure to deliver subsidized, uncollectible loans. Scenario 1) Successful State Involvement. “A few governments take an informed, long-term approach to the use of their massive state bank infrastructure to offer sustainable financial services. They follow examples such as Bank Rakyat Indonesia, a state bank that successfully built firewalls between politics and the technical business of banking, resulting in sustainable provision of more than 31 million savings accounts and 3.2 million small loans outstanding at present. Based on sound practices and fuelled by massive injections of start-up capital, access skyrockets. Loan repayment is high, and state banks become profitable. BRIC and other governments channel social transfer payments to the poor through state and other commercial banks, enabling many people to have bank accounts for the first time. Governments professionalize their state savings banks, which become better at collecting, protecting, and investing poor people’s savings. Other governments successfully motivate private banks, for instance by entering into public/private compacts to extend access. They also encourage developments like credit bureaus that enable the poor to develop credit histories transferable from one provider to another. They work together with banks to develop common financial architecture like interoperable ATMs and POS machines and cell phone-based transaction networks that reduce costs and increase mobility of poor people’s money. The few success stories where governments in both BRICs and LICs have really insulated credit from politics and replaced traditional approaches with sounder practices draw imitators throughout the developing world. For one thing, aid flows, except in the poorest countries, are increasingly small relative to private capital flows and even smaller compared with remittances from workers abroad (see Figure 5). In 1988 remittances were less than half of official flows: by 2001 they were more than twice the size of official flows. As the cost of wiring money drops, and the number of migrants increases, remittances are likely to become an even more important source of money for the poor. The composition of the international donor community is also changing. New actors are emerging on the scene, both governments and private players. The BRICs and some of the oil-rich Islamic states are playing an increasing role as donors. Fortunes made in business, and especially in technology, are now being deployed to solve some of the problems of development. Warren Buffett’s spectacular $31 billion contribution makes the annual budget of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (already the largest private foundation in the world) bigger than the GDP of over 40 countries.” Scenario 2) Flood, Distortion, and Collapse. “BRIC and populist governments reject so-called international “good practice.” They blame the free market orthodoxy emanating from the West, and especially Washington, for deepening poverty and social divides in their countries. These same governments experience immense pressure to deliver resources quickly to poor and remote constituencies. In addition, a number of governments (especially in BRICs and some Middle Eastern countries) are so concerned about the potential impact of youth unemployment that they rush to create unsustainable microcredit schemes as a solution. As a result, state-owned “Banks for the Poor” crop up in dozens of countries. Interest charged on the loans is far below the cost of delivering them, and borrowers are not compelled to repay them. This kind of unfair competition squeezes out sustainable private MFIs. In BRIC countries, the governments finance these efforts as part of their welfare policy. In LICs, donors grudgingly agree to bankroll these new state players, in fear of being completely left out of the development debate in countries increasingly hostile to free-market ideas. Some countries reinforce each other’s stances, as happened in 2006 when oil-rich Venezuela donated $100 million to the Bolivian government for state-run microcredit, threatening to undermine Bolivia’s well-established and viable private MFIs. South-to-South dialogue and technical support hasten the spread of the new state credit initiatives throughout the developing world. Interest rate ceilings are imposed at levels too low for private microcredit players to survive, and so the subsidized and weak state-run Banks for the Poor are left as the only source of financial services for the poor. Thus poor people have access to their services only as long as the subsidy and political interest lasts.”

The Coming Global Knowledge Society: How to Analyze and Shape Its Future. Peter H. Mettler. Futures Research Quarterly. Spring 2005. p. 51.

The author describes global trends and the dynamics of trends by examining two scenarios of the future with two different timelines: 2030 and 2070. The following global trends were highlighted in the scenarios: 20 million people, completely self-determining and economically almost self-sufficient are heavily networking globally in respect to science, knowledge and know how, with strong feelings of responsibility for future generations as well as to help develop less developed regions. • Social futures, e.g., wealth-distribution, life-expectancy and population policy, as well as future studies in leisure, sport, professional activities, etc.; • Cultural futures, in particular the dialectics between individual and (world) society, as well as future studies on values, tolerance, morality or criminality; • Urban futures, in particular of megapols, as well as questions such as: "Would megapols be capable of forming countervailing forces to TNCs?" And/or: Would they be developing into a fourth political power besides the UN, nation-states and global-economy-players?; • Security futures, e.g., how the military and the armament industry, the technology of ABC weapons and their international proscription, the aerospace industry or SDI/NMD might develop; • Ecological futures, in particular man-made climate changes, weather doomsdays, water shortages and genetic manipulations in respect to agriculture and food as well as to humans; • And finally the question, how a decline of world population to -5 billion people could come about by 2150? Scenario 1) 2030 – Virtually the Same as 100 Years Ago. “The year 2030 is reminiscent of what it was like 100 years ago and what the situation led to then. Superpower Structure: The situation is comparable with that of 100 years ago in that now, as then, there are hardly any fixed points of reference any more; chaos prevails. Traditional factors—such as states, their military and security forces (the state's monopoly of power and strength), their economic power (with commissions from the state or income from the state's tax monopoly) and their territory—have largely lost their significance: the TNCs that have taken their place are neither wanting nor able to take these functions over. TNCs are aware of their responsibility only towards their shareholders, or at best towards their customers. In countries, (large) regions and even (sub-)continents—the Islamic world, China and/or India—internal wars have broken out (ideologies, separate regions and army units fighting against each other). Some of this is about spheres of influence. And in some places there have already been millions of casualties. Old and new ideologies are about conquering the world and eternal happiness, as well as condemnations of opponents, going as far as new calls and plans for genocide. Two entities play special roles: Urban Agglomerations: The chaotic conflicts are mainly fought in the urban agglomerations: in each of the approximately 50 megapols with more than 35 million inhabitants there are different victors, who enter alliances with like-minded rulers of other megapols (wherever they may be in the world), and are not afraid to use hunger as a weapon for suppression within the regions. Telematics: Telematics starts to be used to usurpers' ends, Orwell's visions were comparatively benign. Population: The world population declines, for the first time in over 200 years. Migratory movements involving hundreds of millions of people leave behind completely devastated areas. To combat this migration, local armies in the shape of citizens' vigilante groups are in the making. Military Structure: Although the armies of the former national states no longer exist (owing to the fact that the states are bankrupt), there are still huge arsenals of weapons available, constituting an incalculable risk (like the old Soviet nuclear weapons did after the implosion of the USSR in 1989). In particular, there are signs that fundamentalist fanatics are contemplating (and planning) how they could get hold of them. Scientific and Technological Development: Science and technology are scarcely global any more either: they are compelled to serve the high and mighty and do research and/or development for their purposes. Economy: Due to the almost complete collapse of world trade, there are extremely acute supply shortages: between 1980 and 2010 the range of varying production processes was given up in favor of specialization and market niches almost everywhere in the world (comparable with the situation in the USSR's successor states after the former had imploded). Education, Cuture, and Religion: Helplessness and rashness prevail, along with incriminations and the search for transcendental explanations for the disaster; but there is also a return to classical religions and values. The latter result in the most varied recommendations as to how to overcome the crisis.” Scenario 2) 2070 or Outcome of the Renewed Experience. “Where there is danger, help grows too. Superpower Structure: History does not repeat itself, but historic parallels do keep occurring: due to the situation in the year 2030, which retrospectively (i.e., as seen from the year 2070) can be seen as the climax of the crisis, a new power structure developed, which has not yet (i.e., by 2070) managed to lay down new basic rules that have any chance of retaining their validity for any length of time (e.g., after the Viennese Congress), but which have, nevertheless, succeeded in dissuading the world from using its weaponry and forcing it back to the negotiating table. Since then, more and more proposals for a new version of the UN and a new world economic structure were put forward. Four world players are likely to make up this new UN / world: • The parliament of the approximately 100 largest megalopolises, comprising about 1/3 of the world population. • The parliament of the approximately 100 largest TNCs, making up for around 40% of the world's GNP. • The parliament of the approximately 350 (nation) states, which still have approximately V4 of the world's GNP at their disposal. • The parliament of the approximately 20 economic blocks, which account for around 85% of the world's GNP. Their intertwining links no longer permit any single "entity" to grow beyond a given size (+7%), and the hierarchical systems (at least 4 levels) incorporate so many early warning systems that crises can and must be dealt with at an early stage: UN Megapols' TNCs' States' Economic blocks'. Urban Agglomerations: Since poverty vk'as greatest here, some of them joined to form a democratic alliance against those megapolis that were ruled in criminal ways. Their example encouraged the inhabitants of megapols ruled in criminal ways to gradually get rid of their rulers. They were assisted herein by both, the old (political) structures still in existence (e.g., international concerns, national states and political economic blocks such as the EU) and by telematics, which had been impossible to keep under total surveillance for a long time. Apart from this, people—in accordance with their own needs—made themselves relatively self-sufficient locally (i.e., in municipal districts) and could thus be blackmailed only to a certain extent. In a new sense, Mao's old saying, "Let 1,000 flowers bloom" came back into favor again. Telematics. During the last decades, the vast worldwide telematics network has passed its democratic test. Dictatorships covering small areas (even including those ruling several hundred million people) were not able any more to conceal the truth from the people they suppressed. And luckily, almost everywhere worldwide there was already so much telematics know-how available that local "experts" were unable to hinder communications to any substantial degree or penetrate even the most suppressed people. Population: The view that there is an optimum population for each area is now scarcely questioned. It has finally been recognized that the education of the population and its scientific and technological knowhow —not just its sheer numbers—constitute the capital of each region. Since medical sciences had managed by 2055 to increase average life expectancy by over 14 years (and remained stable since), world population has now stagnated at the level of 12 billion. Military Structure: There are just a few military units with geo-strategic tasks (and abilities), which report to the UN; apart from this, there are security forces specific to individual territories, with technically superior equipment but rotating staff. The territorial forces from two to three neighboring territories can prevent any invasion attempts by individual units, whilst the units with geo-strategic tasks can dissolve any alliance between several territorial forces. Scientific and Technological Development. Numerous experts (from all areas) opposed usurpers worldwide, committing themselves to more local/regional attempts to solve problems. Now, however, world associations exist again, even if they are not geared towards individual disciplines as they were previously. The percentages of all four parliamentary budgets earmarked for science and technology are rising again, but the qualification requirements are tougher than ever before: the more funding an expert or a program/institute gets, the tougher they become. Economy: The term "economy" (including the above-mentioned GDP rates) is currently being replaced by complicated regional development indices, which are now nearly fully developed, and which subordinate thinking in terms of finance and capital to thinking in terms of quality of living. Education, Culture and Religion: It is here that the actual fate-turning revolution has taken place. The egoistic, partial and particular manners of thinking—decisively shaped by the Occident—which so frequently resulted in criminal actions, realized its own limits in view of all the dangers, dimensions and complexities. But the old dangers have not really been eliminated/overcome, nor is there any safeguard against new dangers which will certainly emerge. Emphasis again is put on the concept of socially and environmentally tolerable flexibility.”

Global Innovation Outlook 2.0 – IBM. Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman and CEO, IBM Corporation.

The Global Innovation Outlook provides a platform for candid and open conversations about important issues of our day and in the future. Contributors include IBM’s top researchers, consultants, and business leaders. The Global Innovation Outlook also included 180 experts on business and business innovation. 2020 Scenario of the Corporation of the Future. In 2020 the corporation is modeled after Hollywood’s studio system where talent is recruited for very specific projects. The corporation creates an outside entity, subscribes internal and external talent to it, “creates stuff” (via project management), then deploy assets. “By 2020 the change is driven by a new generation of workers more comfortable with the idea of job fluidity rather than job permanence. The 2020 employee’s primary identification is less with the company and more with the “company they keep”—the larger network of colleagues and peers who share their interests, expertise or worldview. The employee of 2020 are coders or computational biologists or designers or educators first, and employees second. But a more fluid, flexible and mobile workforce is just one factor driving this change by 2020. Also helping to redefine the notion of the enterprise is the confluence of collaborative innovation, networked technology, and viable new business models such as business process outsourcing, customer-driven design and peer-to-peer production. Thus by 2020 the “specialized enterprise” comes into being. The ’90s version of this idea focused on “core” vs. “non-core” functions and activities. The goal was to contain what was core, and ship out the noncore to lower-cost providers. By 2020 the nature of competition becomes increasingly intense, global and unpredictable—requiring strength across the board. The objective therefore, is to decompose the enterprise into its component parts, understand with great precision what is truly differentiating—where the enterprise has strengths and weaknesses—and then make decisions about how to build, buy or partner for world-class capability. In this model, companies can focus their energies on their true point of differentiation, instead of trying to master many domains and ultimately squander competitive advantage by dispersing focus and investment. Rather than existing as static and fixed organizations, the enterprises of 2020 essentially become an aggregation of specialized entities with complementary interests—expanding, contracting and reconfiguring themselves in a way that best adapts to or even anticipates market dynamics. Paradoxical as it may sound, these super-flexible configurations prove more stable over time.”

Scenario Planning at British Airways – A Case Study. Long Range Planning, Vol. 29, No 2. 1998. Given the competitiveness of the airline industry, British Airways' Chief Economist, DeAnne Julius, proposed the use of scenarios to the Chairman's Committee. Because the expected benefits were somewhat intangible the decision was made to treat the exercise as an "experiment" to see if the process was suitable for use within the company. The exercise was divided into two phases: scenario development and scenario workshops. Each phase was led by a senior member from the Corporate Strategy department. The aim was to link the scenario workshops to the business plan of British Airways. Driving Forces for the scenarios included the information revolution, economic restructuring, and global competition. (See report for the complete scenarios.) Scenario 1) Wild Gardens. In "Wild Gardens" global integration goes so far that it is impossible to build lasting new structures of governance to replace the old, crumbling structures. In this world it is the Darwinian battle of winners and losers which shapes the future. There are Boom and busts in OECD, fast growth in LDC’s. In terms of values, there is no clear direction, Europe widens to numerous countries, and the party splits and strange coalitions. Niche players flourish in the airline industry, new players enter and exits thus shifting alliances and commodity market behavior. Scenario 2) New Structures. In "New Structures" shared values and new ways of organising are found which enable growth to continue in a manageable, rather than in a socially disruptive, way. Drivers include the market forces of competition and costs and need for flexibility. In this world there is a earch for order and stability, infrastructure investments, and long-term horizens. Europe grows strongly but there are setbacks in Asia and LDCs. Values are inner-directed. Euro-enthusiasts deepen the EU. Asia focuses on security. In the airline industry subsidies end in Europe, more European mergers, large, powerful distributors, huge environmental costs, airport constraints slow growth, HS trains and video-conferencing takes off.

Around the World – Collective Forethought: A New Paradigm in Strategy
Klaus Heinzelbecker and Adrian Taylor. Heinzelbecker headed the BASF AG Chemical Group, responsible for the management of the scenario project and the steering of different project teams.

The Chemical Advisory Group for Europe conducted a scenario workshop examining the external business driving forces for the scenarios. This included the regulatory burden in Europe compared to the rest of the world; relative costs of Europe vs. elsewhere in, e.g., labor, energy, and logistics; degree that globalization continues with regard to trade and investment; volatility and absolute levels of feedstock price; public perception of the industry's reputation and innovation. Drivers relative to the chemical industry include restructuring by scrapping inefficient plants and invest in better ones and innovation not just in products and processes but also business models.
Scenario 1) Sunny: Bright Future Ahead. “In this scenario, the EU in 2015 has access to competitive feedstock, and there is strong demand from local converters that reduces the pressure on prices. The innovative climate, with support of the general public, encourages new technologies such as biotechnology, and the emergence of suppliers using new raw materials.
Customers and important industries stay in Europe. Overall costs do not improve, but also do not get worse. The mostly positive external environment encourages the chemical industry collectively to do its homework, finding new business models and proactively restructuring.
This, in turn, spurs investment in the EU market and provides a flow of qualified workers, who no longer come from the synthetic chemistry background alone. This emerges as a normative scenario, where win-win relations can be developed for governments, greens and industry if all play their cards right. Certainly, the hope must be that this will be taken up as the basis for discussion on how to move forward.” Scenario 2) Cloudy – Realistic Optimism. “The external environment is not as favorable, with geopolitical tensions causing feedstock prices to rise and increasing their volatility. This situation is further aggravated by high energy prices within the EU, and decreased refinery capacity, both of which push up production costs considerably. Europe faces extremely tough competition from Asian finished products and Middle Eastern intermediate products. However, the regulatory authorities in the EU realize the problems, and give industry a helping hand in its restructuring, by supporting innovation and giving reasonable time delays for implementing regulations. Thanks to the positive message from the regulator, restructuring is undertaken whole-heartedly across the industry, with scrap and build taking place and specialization in niche markets. While there is a shortage of qualified labor, this is partly made up by bringing in qualified staff from developing countries. It is clear from this that, even faced with a threatening external environment, there is hope if the authorities can be won over, and if all Cefic member companies join forces to transform the industry.” Scenario 3) Rain – Be Prepared. “This scenario starts from a rather favorable external situation, where feedstock prices are reasonable, and there is bearable pressure from Asian competitors. Even if some client industry segments are leaving Europe, important clients remain active. However, the EU legislative machine is stuck in a "muddling through mode" following enlargement, and is unable to steer policies to reform, or indeed in any particular direction. The result is an increasingly unclear regulatory situation, which damages business confidence. Lacking this lead, the chemical industry fails to get its act together. Innovation is focused on short-term cost saving, restructuring is slow, and major investments flow to other parts of the world, leading to a brain drain, as top talent leaves in search of more dynamic horizons abroad. This scenario reinforces strongly the notion that the industry's fate lies in its own hands, too. A favorable outside world is not
enough to guarantee success as, by failing to seize the opportunity given them, with each company thinking only for itself, problems ensue.” Scenario 4) Storm: Whom to Blame? “A threatening geopolitical situation is coupled with a deliberate subsidy of feedstock in some producer regions combined and with a heavy and increasing legislative burden imposed by the EU authorities that fails to replace national regulations, but rather comes on top of them, with each country implementing EU laws in a different way. Even though Asia is not sucking in so much in investment, the problems of Europe are sufficiently large that few companies wish to build up local capacity there. Chemical companies therefore tend to cash-cow their EU assets, letting the productive resources age and decline. Innovation and innovators leave the European market, making it harder to recruit new talented human resources, even from outside the EU.
This scenario is clearly a minatory tale of just how bad the picture could get in the absence of good will from all those involved.”

World Out of Balance – Three Scenarios for 2015. Adapted from the book, “World Out of Balance” by Paul A. Laudicina. Copyright 2005. McGraw Hill Education.

A.T. Kearney's Paul Laudicina offers three scenarios that depict possible visions of the global future. Based on five key drivers of change - globalization, demographics, consumption patterns, natural resources/environment and regulation/activism - the author envisions three possible and plausible scenarios for the ten-year global outlook. Scenario One: Castles and Moats. “In this darkly pessimistic (though not necessarily most-probable) scenario, the world in 2015 is plagued with instability. Terrorist groups have continued their campaign of well-coordinated attacks against the United States and its institutions abroad. They succeeded in eroding global confidence in what was once seen as the world's preeminent political and economic superpower. Although most of al Qaeda's leaders have been caught and killed, many questions are still unresolved. They include Palestinian statehood, ongoing conflicts in Central Asia and the Caucasus region, as well as worsening standards of living in Middle Eastern countries. Fortress world - As a result, among Western nations, national security trumps all other concerns. Civil liberties have taken a backseat to security concerns, as governments subject their citizens to constant surveillance. With xenophobia on the rise, immigrants, foreign workers and even ethnic minorities are viewed with suspicion. Fewer and fewer people are willing to travel, work or live abroad, knowing that they will be subjected to intense scrutiny. As a siege mentality sets in, rising nationalist and populist sentiment is the catalyst for heightened levels of economic protectionism. Governments now consider it a high priority to protect jobs and prevent them from going overseas. And barriers to foreign investment and cross-border travel ensure that countries can safeguard their own unique ways of life. Countries no longer believe in the efficacy of multilateral arrangements and prefer alliances with small groups of like-minded countries they feel they can trust.” Scenario Two: Patchwork World. “Let's now switch to another, less calamitous, view of the world of the future. The state of the world and the business environment is characterized by a muddle-through mentality. Few governments show much leadership or vision — or even have enough high-quality talent to try to do so. The corporate sector responds in kind. Companies seek growth and profits by working their relationships and looking for advantage wherever they can find it in a fairly chaotic and turbulent world. Large patches of the globe are mired in poverty and violence, although the good news for North America, Europe and Australasia is that much of the trouble is localized. It does not spill over excessively into the zones of affluence, though they would be getting even more affluent if global growth rates were higher. The United States and the expanded European Union prove to be more resilient than others, given their vast internal demand and relative self-sufficiency. Widening divide - However, trade barriers in export markets have a damaging impact on key industrial sectors in Japan, China and Southeast Asian nations, curtailing overall macroeconomic growth in these countries. Government aid and emergency financing grow more scarce, leaving the developing world to fend for itself, while the world's wealthiest consumers account for a greater share of global spending power than at any other time in modern history. Rise of the middle class - In advanced markets, these on-the-go consumers show a penchant for sophisticated, easy-to-use goods and services that simplify lifestyles and address personal needs. Meanwhile, middle-income spending shifts to emerging markets such as China, India, Mexico and Brazil. Collectively, roughly two billion people — 29% of the world population — form the basis of this growing middle class. However, purchases of cars and first homes are sluggish, owing to economic growth rates that are lower than expected. Despite the broad convergence in purchasing power, a truly global "middle class" consciousness fails to take hold. National governments find it increasingly difficult to regulate corporations, in part due to the mass exodus of talented senior policymakers seeking more lucrative careers in the private sector. State, Inc. - Confronted with tight budgets and growing obligations to care for their aging populations, governments turn to corporations to handle a number of formerly public sector services. These include technical training programs, law enforcement and healthcare. As corporations assume a more visible role in the public sphere, they become increasingly sensitive about how they are perceived by the general public. As government oversight declines, a broad coalition of activist groups step into the breach to enforce certain standards of corporate behavior.” Scenario Three: Open Borders, Lingering Fears. “The United States and China are the dominant economic, political and demographic players on the world scene — with large, robust markets that are highly intertwined, with muscular roles in the world that sometimes collide. This is a time of intense business activity and technological innovation, and the rising tide of affluence continues to lift living standards in countries open to the global economy, even as further trade liberalization remains gradual. In the richest markets, companies tap into new consumption patterns emphasizing high-end, lifestyle-enhancing products and services. Trade in services is booming, and secure digital connections allow far-flung, truly global production and distribution networks to emerge. Rising expectations, coupled with a demand for constant innovation, makes consumers less tolerant of products and services that are cumbersome to use and do not deliver on their promises.”

Russian Prospects – Political and Economic Scenarios. Kaare Stamer Andreasen, Master of Social Science in Geography and Eastern European Studies , Jakob Kelstrup, Master of Arts in Russian and Eastern European Studies. Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, March/July 2005.

Today’s Russia has widespread freedom, democracy, and growing affluence. Will that still be the case in 15 years? 15 years ago, the Soviet Union was a goliath of an inefficient system and injustice. How well can we imagine a Russia of the future? The authors encourage readers to develop their own conclusions. The scenarios are profiled to enable individual companies and organizations to understand consequences within each scenario that shows developments along the chosen uncertainty axes over time. These economic scenarios for Russia are based on two uncertainty axes: one axis concerns whether Russia moves towards a more centralized form of government or towards a more decentralized form of government. One concerns whether Russia evolves towards a market economy (free enterprise) or whether it evolves towards a planned economy. The other uncertainty axis concerns whether Russia’s economy becomes based on raw material production or whether it becomes a differentiated production and service economy.
Scenario 1)Russia has a Working Liberal Economic System. “The Russia of 2020 has a working liberal economic system, but it has failed to develop a differentiated production and service economy. The raw material-dominated industrial complex still constitutes a substantial part of the Russian economy. Russia is hence very sensitive to fluctuations in global raw materials prices. In times of global recession the Russian economy is weak and dependent, and in global boom periods the Russian economy booms. The purchase power of Russian consumers rises and falls almost synchronously with global raw materials prices. Market Economy at Half Steam. - Market forces control Russia’s economic and industrial development, but the country has failed to diversify its foreign and domestic investments and thus develop a more differentiated industrial structure. One of the reasons for this is that Russia still hasn’t modernized its investment laws and the entire bureaucratic and administrative organization sufficiently to encourage far more foreign investments over and above the big investments in the oil and gas sector. Although membership of WTO has helped improve conditions for foreign investments in the Russian economy, it is still subject to too much government interference with sensitive parts of the energy sector. But Russia is still the EU’s biggest trade partner and deeply integrated with the global market. Hampered Middle Class - The development of a strong middle class has been hampered by a lack of diversification of domestic industry. As a result, the development of a Russian middle class to carry Russia into the 21st Century and contribute to a strong economic growth is not much further along than it was 15 years ago. The Russian consumer society is geographically unevenly distributed. Unequal regional development and the lack of investments across sectors has given the economic growth centres in two or three regions in European Russia a greater selection of goods than the rest of the regions. There is steady migration from rural to urban areas, as the regions around Moscow and St. Petersburg still lag behind the growth centres. The labour market is riddled with moonlighting, and there is major unemployment outside the raw materials sector. In addition, there’s not the same flexibility concerning changes in occupation in Russia as there is in Western Europe. David vs. Goliath.- Russia is experiencing lopsided economic development; the resource-rich regions do much better than other regions. Some attempt is made at regional redistribution and balancing of economic resources, but Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the resource-rich regions do better than the rest. The central government keeps a tight rein on the regions to prevent the resource-rich regions from seceding. Most regions are quite far from being self- sufficient and have to participate in inter-regional division of labour. In Russia’s struggle between the centre and the periphery, the richest regions succeed at the expense of those with fewer resources, those that don’t have the economic clout to negotiate with Moscow for privileged status. Oil Sets the Agenda - The high oil prices and Russia’s sale of gas to the EU still provide a positive trade balance. Unfortunately, not enough of the profits from oil and gas have been reinvested in other sectors than the energy sector. The money contributes to a continued economic growth in Russia, but the Russian growth rates are relatively small compared to those of e.g. China and India. Large parts of the raw materials sector are under the control of multinational companies. The greatest foreign investments in Russia have been in the oil and gas sector. The latter is still partly state property. The pipeline network has been partially modernised, but the Russian government has refused to invest extraordinary capital. The export of gas to the EU is the biggest source of income for the Russian state. There has thus been little real improvement in the climate of investment, except for the mandated WTO regulations that Russia has had to introduce. The most mature part of the market is thus the raw materials sector, where we see a lot of business and a well-developed retail business in the economic growth areas. The economy is booming in the districts where the raw materials sector dominates. There’s little unemployment as most of the labour market here revolves around the raw material sector and its associated service jobs. WTO Has No Effects on Exports - Russia still imports large quantities of foreign goods. Due to the membership of WTO, Russia has been unable to protect or develop its domestic industry as much as it would have liked. The membership allows Russia to export more of its domestic production, but lack of investments on the domestic front has rendered the country dependent on imported goods. This dependence on imports combined with the poor selection of goods in the peripheral districts has led to comparatively high prices on consumer goods. The financial sector has experienced a boom in loans by Russian consumers, and the financial sector in turn has invested more in the private sector. The WTO membership has thus had a positive effect on the financial sector.”
Scenario 2) Russia Becomes a New Economic Superpower. In this scenario, Russia has grown into a heavyweight in the global economy by 2020. Russia contributes strongly to globalization and is clearly part of international business life. Many Russian companies are players on the global scene. The Russian economy is very dynamic and has many participants. The former economic structure dominated by the raw materials sector has been replaced by a more diversified economic and industrial structure. More and more small and medium-sized private companies crop up. Things are going well. The emergency measures that were introduced to the Russian economy after the turn of the Millennium, among them a stabilization fund to soak up oil revenues, has led to large foreign investments across the sectors. This in turn has led to noticeable modernization and economic growth in areas like physical infrastructure, telecommunication, and the service sector. Russia’s middle class has grown, and the country possesses a well-educated, motivated, flexible, and globally oriented workforce. Russia is growing steadily stronger in areas like research, innovation, and development. The country has a strong domestic production plus a great growth of export-oriented production. Business life is characterised by strong national and international competition. Many small and medium-sized businesses have appeared, and private enterprise flourishes as never before. The government is very anxious to create good conditions for entrepreneurs. Growing regions. The Russian market is mostly characterised by great competitiveness. Two manifestations of this are a great amount of production for the domestic market and gains made by big modern Russian retail chains at the expense of the international chains. Foreign retail chains were too hesitant about expanding their businesses in the Russian regions, and the Russian chains took advantage of that to exploit the ‘first mover’ initiative in these areas. As the purchasing power of Russian consumers has grown greater and greater, this strategy has enabled the local chains to report greater profits than foreign chains. Regional expansion of retail trade has caused the income and employment figures of big cities other than Moscow and St. Petersburg to grow too. The Volga region, the Urals, and the Southern and Eastern regions in particular show high growth rates. A typical market economy There thus is a lot of business-to-business trade going on. The black economy’s share of the Russian economy has grown smaller due to e.g. more transparent tax rules, increased encouragement for investments, and reduced government interference in economic activities. It is no longer as necessary for local and foreign investors alike to have good political and administrative connections in the Russian business world in order to do business as it was 10-15 years ago, another sign that Russia has become a typical self-regulating market economy. The implementation of a functioning legal system has been of great importance. A more differentiated production and service economy has generated greater international confidence in the Russian market. Hence, in 2020, far more investments are made in Russian business. At the turn of the millennium, foreign direct investments (FDI) in Russia lagged far behind investments in other emerging economies, like the Chinese and South East Asian economies, but by now they’ve reached a much higher level and are on a par with the Central and Eastern European nations in terms of per capita FDI. The confidence in the Russian market is a consequence of careful attention paid to long-term improvements to the investment climate. This attention has resulted in more transparent property rights and investment laws plus a greater transparency regarding official handling of investment cases. WTO shows the way Russia’s membership of WTO has forced it to improve the investment climate. Thanks to WTO, foreign investors perceive lessened risks associated with Russia’s business world, although there is still some way to go before reaching Western standards and corruption is still to be found in certain parts of the Russian business world. Russia experiences increasing foreign and domestic investments in the shape of portfolio investments and direct investments. Russia has a transparent market with international accounting standards. Many Russian companies are quoted on the international stock exchanges. Faith in the Russian market, combined with the global economic success of Russian companies, generates opportunities for global actors to make big money on the expanding Russian market. Various foreign and domestic investments have led to a gradual shift in the Russians’ choice of employment. Where the oil and gas sector used to generate the greatest income and contributed the biggest share of the GDP, in 2020, the workforce is spread more evenly across various sectors. Service jobs thus play a greater part in the economic growth. Prosperity and contentment. The Russian people are generally content with the way things are. The rising economic standard of living, the excellent prospects for the future and the many fine opportunities make for an optimistic and dynamic Russia. Globalization is perceived as something positive that, at the same time, can be used to reflect Russia’s unique qualities. People take pride in being Russian, and Russian culture is in focus. The prosperity also benefits Russia’s marginal districts. Geographical location is less important in a digital age. Remote villages in Eastern Siberia participate on equal terms in the international knowledge society. Since a growing part of production is intangible, all the Russian regions participate in the global production. There is a tendency towards economic dispersion in Russia. The Eastern regions turn more and more towards Asia, the Western regions towards Europe. However, this does not foster burgeoning separatist sentiments. Federated Russia is firmly embedded in regional political activities. The outlying regions contribute more and more to the Federal budget. Russia has achieved political maturity, and an efficient public administration provides an equal distribution of resources.
Scenario 3) 2nd World In this economic scenario, the Russia of 2020 is characterised by government interference with the economy. Not the same interference that was common during the Soviet era, but still with some of the same signs. The Russian economy is still based on raw materials, and only feeble developments have been made towards a more differentiated production and service economy. The Russian economy is growing very slowly, almost not at all. Russia’s business life is dominated by great oligopolies, and there are growing internal inequities and lopsided economic growth. Bureaucracy, political cronyism, and corruption are basic facts of life. Fettered market economy/signs of planned economy. The economic initiatives that were launched after Russia’s independence created a broad foundation designed to help the economy of all of Russia’s industrial sectors mature, but the process has been mired by Russia’s growing dependence on high global oil and gas prices. Russia has failed to reinvest the income from its oil in other sectors of the economy. As a result the country remains dependent on the raw materials sector. Gas and oil are thus the mainstays of economic growth. However, investments in the gas sector have been inadequate and parts of it have yet to be modernised. The Russian economy is becoming more and more planned; many of the former state companies that were privatised in the 1990s are back in government hands. The state has also taken over majority ownership of industries that were showing excellent growth rates, like telecommunication, oil, and finance. This is partly a product of protectionist measures by the Russian government and partly in consequence of the government’s desire to have powerful economic negotiation tools at its disposal. The effects can be seen in Russia’s relations with the outside world, such as cooperation with WTO and trade with e.g. the EU. Russia’s attempt at restructuring its economy towards a market economy has thus failed. Membership of WTO is still not in the cards, due to mounting protectionism. A powerful bureaucracy runs the public administration. The economic structure is hierarchical with the raw materials sector and the machinery of state on top, and on the bottom the less important production and service sectors, whose growth rates more or less depend on the fluctuating growth rate of the raw materials sector. The state of Russia’s market depends on the global economy, as the country has failed to attract enough foreign investments to develop a differentiated industrial structure. More CIS, less EU. Because of its vulnerability, Russia regularly imposes trade restrictions on trade partners like the EU and China. The trade partners retaliate, and the result is ongoing trade disputes. So Russia has turned its gaze towards the CIS countries. Cooperation in the CIS has received a new lease of life because several of the member states see advantages from closer economic cooperation. Russia’s neighbours in the CIS area experience the same sort of fluctuating growth rates as Russia and likewise have trouble becoming truly integrated in the global economy. The only exception is Ukraine, whose independent economic profile is moving it closer to the EU; as a result, the country is attracting large foreign investments. Poor climate for entrepreneurs. The hopes from the start of the 2000s for development of a big middle class in Russia have not come true. The inequalities between different classes of Russian society have become worse. Unemployment is high, and the funds allocated to education and research are inadequate. There’s no demand for well-educated employees outside the raw materials sector and the administration. Conditions within the service and production sectors are bad, and the climate for entrepreneurs is poor. Even though Russia needs well-educated workers, it can’t offer them decent salaries or the degree of modernization that would be needed for their further development. Hence there is a relatively large amount of brain drain as well-educated people seek employment abroad. Barter and black economy Russia is experiencing great regional inequalities. Some of the nation’s 89 regions and peoples were not included in the economic plans and only serve as extraction areas for raw materials. Hence barter is growing more and more prevalent in these areas, and the black economy looms large in the economically marginal regions. For this reason, official economic statistics do not give a true picture of the development of the Russian society.As regards infrastructure, Russia is still lagging behind the goals that were formulated at the start of the millennium and compared to the expectations held by many prognoses. Russia has failed to develop its transport and distribution system adequately because the expected foreign investments failed to appear and because there have been no reinvestments outside the raw materials sector. At the same time, Russia has failed to attract the amount of foreign capital that had been expected to its retail sector. Foreign retail chains have withdrawn from the country because of an unstable investment climate and impenetrable legislation, particularly in the field of ownership law. Inertia and bureaucracy Russia has not been able to keep up with the economic growth rates of the richest countries and looks more and more like a second-world country. Russia’s labour market is characterised by a wage-earner culture. There are no encouragements and no opportunities for social advancement. The state’s interference with and regulation of the economy has created an efficient, but rigid bureaucracy. The many rules and courts hinder the activities of entrepreneurs. Business advisors find it necessary to be able to offer customers access to strong personal networks linked to authorities and trade.
4th Economic Scenario: New Soviet It’s Russia in the year 2020. Russia has developed a differentiated production and service economy and its dependency on raw materials has eased. There is considerable government interference with the economy. This interference has resulted in massive economic planning, and several sectors are protected by tariff walls, subsidies, and other government measures. Russia is trying out an industrialization strategy based on import-substituting industrialization in order to achieve complete independence. The goal is to create a combination of import-substituting industrialization and export-oriented industrialization. However, the attempt is not succeeding too well, and Russia is at a crossroad between protectionism and dependency on imports. Economic growth but no international competitiveness Russia has grasped the necessity of reinvesting oil incomes from the stabilization fund in other sectors than the raw materials sector, so the service sector and small and medium-sized businesses show high growth rates. On the surface Russia thus has a differentiated production and service economy. However, the state frequently takes control of formerly privatised companies, especially in the oil sector, telecommunication, and the dairy sector. Not because these companies are failing, but because of state interference and tax policies.Although developments have been more along the lines towards a differentiated economy, there’s still not a sound differentiated economic structure in place; local products are seldom competitive on the global market thanks to increasing protectionism and erection of tariff barriers.Russia makes considerable use of domestic investments, including domestic entrepreneurs, who have become numerous. However, the result is a more inward-turning Russian production cycle that is more suited to domestic markets than to the global market. The result is that Russia still has a big demand for foreign goods and can only show a small positive trade balance. Corruption is alive and well The regions have become better integrated with the overall economic development. As a result, foreign investments are more distributed among the regions and don’t just wind up in the big growth areas round 3-4 cities. The competition among regions is becoming fiercer and fiercer. A region’s effectiveness depends on political contacts and the state bureaucracy. The Soviet legacy of corruption and bureaucracy of the public sector is still with us. WTO accommodations Russia is not a member of WTO, but it has still had to adjust its economic development according to WTO regulations. Although the country is self-sufficient with most products, a big demand for certain foreign products and industrial spare parts makes it necessary to trade with the outside world. That’s why the EU is still a major trade partner of Russia, in spite of protectionist measures such as import quotas and trade barriers being frequent features of this commercial relationship. Russia hasn’t got had the foreign investments it needed to strengthen domestic production and make Russian goods dominant on the global market. Instead it has used oil revenues to reinvest in domestic production, which has created an economically differentiated, not internationally sound industrial infrastructure. Joint ventures are the most important and most frequent form of foreign investment. The central authorities encourages joint ventures, but they’re still not particularly attractive to foreign investors, since investors have very little influence on the running of the business. A flexible currency Russia’s planned economy leads to a centrally fixed currency that goes up and down according to how it will aid Russian exports. So when economic growth lags behind, the currency is lowered to make it easier to sell goods on the global market, while in boom times the currency is raised to protect domestic production. This makes Russia a less attractive country for foreign investors. The laws are unclear and sometimes hostile to investors from abroad.Regionalization, internationalization, and centralization. The close ties between the individual regions have served to modernise infrastructure and distribution network. There are still parts of Russia that has not benefited from this development, though: the most remote areas, where raw materials extraction is of great importance, but where not enough resources have been allocated to modernise the distribution solutions and warehousing facilities of retail chains. As a result, you can find a few regions that cooperate closely with neighbouring regions and constitute small business enclaves with political contacts to the state as important assets.Russian exports are hampered by not being a member of WTO. Consumer goods are primarily exported to the CIS countries and to 3rd world countries. Furthermore, exports are still dominated by raw materials whose global prices still influence the degree of economic growth in Russia. Russia is experiencing a small, but by no means insignificant, market in connection with Business-Business, as the central decision-making processes frequently make themselves felt in the business world, both on the regional and the national level. The Business-Consumer market is relatively small for foreign businesses because domestic businesses cover all areas and get preferential treatment. Business-Government is in many cases vital and cover political contacts plus contacts to the regional and federal bureaucracies.

The Shell Global Scenarios to 2025 The Future Business Environment: Trends, Trade-offs and Choices © Shell International Limited (SIL), 2005.

The reader is encouraged to refer to the 2001 Shell Global Scenarios (including the scenarios that were developed over a thirty year history of the Shell scenario project), for an apt and coherent background leading up to the 2005 work. In the 2001 scenarios, Shell presented two global scenarios that explored the challenges of a globalizing, deregulated, market-centric world. Today, the tensions captured in 2001 remain valid, but societies also face more complex choices on the nature of regulation, the framework for corporate governance, and welfare reforms. The key questions asked in 2001 were, “Will the resolution of dilemmas arising from globalization be dominated by global elites or by the people of the heartlands?” In 2001, the “Business Class” and “Prism” scenarios highlighted the “connections that matter” and “multiple modernities”. The 2005 Shell scenarios continues the work of 2001 and uses a metaphore for air navigation to show a charter of routes across three interrelated levels:1) the Jet Stream level of long-term, predetermined trends, uncertainties, and forces; 2) the Weather Systems level that reflect key regions as influenced by the Jet Stream context; and, 3) the Market-level of trends and turbulences. Part I of the 2005 Shell Scenarios present a “Trilema Triangle,”which is a unique analytical framework developed to map relations between market participants, civil society and states. Part II presents the scenarios themselves. Part III provides an analysis of critical trends common to all of the scenarios, starting with the international scene (emphasizing the US, China, the EU, Africa, and India), then matters of demography and patterns of economic growth. Part III concludes with a study on energy security and the move toward an energy and carbon industry. Key differences between the three scenarios are captured in Trilemmaps which compare specific features of Shell’s business environment that capture key dimensions. The following are scenario abstracts of Part II’s completed versions of the Shell Global Scenarios to 2025: Scenario 1) Low Trust Globalization: A Legalistic Prove it to me World: “The absence of market solutions to the crisis of security and trust , rapid regulatory change, overlapping jurisdictions, and conflicting laws lead to intrusive checks and controls, encouraging short-term portfolio optimisation and vertical integration. Institutional discontinuities limit cross-border economic integration. Complying with fast-evolving rules and managing complex risks are key challenges.” Scenario 2) Open Doors: A Progmatic, “Know Me” World: “Built-In” security and compliance certification, regulatory harmonization, mutual recognition, independent media, voluntary best-practice codes, and close links between investors and civil society encourages cross-border integration and virtual value chains. Networking skills and superior reputation management are essential.” Scenario 3) Flags: A Dogmatic, “Follow Me” World: “Zero-sum games, dogmatic approaches, regulatory fragmentation, and national preferences, conflicts over values and religion give insiders an advantage and put a brake on globalization. Gated communities, patronage and national standards exacerbate fragmentation, and call for careful country-risk management.”

Fleeting Equality: The Relative Size of the U.S. and EU Economies in 2020. U.S. - Europe Analysis Series. Adam S. Posen, Senior Fellow, Institute for International Economics, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC.

In May, the European Union celebrated the accession of 10 new members. In one fell swoop, by adding their combined GDP to that of the current EU-15, Europe had finally caught up to the United States in economic size. Both economies at present have an annual income of around $11 trillion. Their per capita incomes differ significantly, with the European Union spreading the same income over 170 million more people. Nonetheless, for symbolic as well as practical reasons, the achievement of parity between the EU and U.S. economies marks a milestone.2 This parity, however, is not going to last. Given differentials in demographics (both fertility and immigration rates) and in productivity growth that will persist for the foreseeable future, American economic growth will outstrip European growth. Absent some change in current trends, the U.S. economy will be nearly 20% bigger than the enlarged European economy in 2020. This analysis paper projects the relative sizes of the U.S., the expanded EU, and the “rest of the world” [RoW] economies out to 2020 under three scenarios—and even under the one most favorable to Europe, parity will not be maintained. Adam S. Posen

Three scenarios are considered. Scenario 1) Baseline: “The United States, enlarged European Union, and RoW, are all assumed to grow at their annual average growth rates of 1993-2003. In this case, the U.S. share of global GDP is essentially unchanged by 2020, the EU share declines by over 3%, and the RoW adds 4%. The U.S. economy more than doubles in size to $24.6 trillion, while the EU economy goes from parity with the U.S. economy in 2003 to $20.9 trillion (15% smaller than the United States) by 2020.” Scenario 2) Demographic Determinism: “The U.S. growth rate is assumed to slow down by 0.02% each year due to declining birth rates, in part due to improved income of Hispanic- and African-Americans. The EU growth rate slows down by 0.07% each year due to rapid aging of the population, which is if anything exacerbated by the accession countries. Part of the growth decline comes from the effect of aging on government budgets, and on productivity growth of meeting those budgets through increases in interest rates and distortionary taxes, with the rest coming directly through shrinkage of the labor force. The U.S. share of world GDP declines slightly by 2020, remaining just above 20%; the enlarged EU share of world GDP declines by 5% (overall global GDP grows noticeably but not disastrously more slowly than in the baseline scenario). The relative gap between the U.S. and the EU economies in 2020 is wider than in the baseline scenario, with the U.S. national income worth $24.0 trillion, and the EU economy $19.1 trillion (a 20% difference).” Scenario 3) European Reform: “The U.S. is assumed to continue to grow at its average rate of 1993-2003, but the EU growth rate is assumed to jump by 0.5% in 2008, stay that amount higher, and gain a further 0.05% a year through 2020. Under this scenario, in 2020, the EU growth rate would catch up with that of the United States. The rationale for such a scenario is that productivity is boosted from integration of the accession countries’ low-wage labor forces or the results of a number of domestic reform efforts in core European economies following the upcoming election cycles. It is assumed that these benefits take a few years to be felt, but with ongoing beneficial effects. In this scenario, the U.S. and EU shares of world output decline at a slower but still noticeable pace by 2020 (the EU share from 21.3% to 18.6%; the U.S. share from 21.1% to 20.0%). The size of the EU relative to the U.S. economy goes up compared to the baseline scenario, reaching 93% of the U.S. size in 2020. These scenarios all likely overestimate the relative size of growth of the RoW, including that of China and India, for two reasons. First, by measuring the economies in PPP terms, rather than in traded goods terms at multi-year average exchange rates, the scenarios tend to increase the size of developing countries’ output relative to that of developed economies. PPP calculations, in their effort to better account for the value of non-tradeables, even in very low wage economies, effectively assume that producing a $1 haircut generates as much purchasing power for the economy as producing $1 worth of high-tech equipment for export. In fact, the high U.S. and EU share of cutting-edge technology production (relative to their share of the world economy) and their ability to borrow on world markets in their own currencies (given the greater liquid assets available to them) means they control a greater share of global income than PPP calculations of world GDP shares imply. Secondly, despite the Asian financial crisis and the travails of certain countries in recent years, the last 10 years have been years of relatively good growth in the major emerging market economies, and projecting out their ongoing growth at the average rate of the last 10 years is on the optimistic end of things (though certainly not unreasonable). This would be particularly the case for China and India, both of which have undergone unprecedented growth spurts of late that may not be sustainable indefinitely. Thus, the scenarios give a lower bound for the U.S. and EU share of the world economy. These scenarios also likely underestimate the relative performance of the U.S. economy versus the EU going forward (barring reform) as well.”

Global Normative Scenario to the Year 2050 Jerry Glenn and Theodore Gordon. Published in the 1999 State of the Future Report: Challenges We Face at the Millennium. This was sketched previously in the 1998 Report details have been added using 1998-99 year's and earlier Lookout Panel responses. as well as other sources of information.

Although the following may look like three alternative normative scenarios, they are intended to be one scenario with three interdependent themes. Each theme represents a different perspective on how change occurs. Some believe technology is the key force that has made change occur. Others argue that changing consciousness and the human capacity is more fundamental to long-term systemic change. Still others say that political and economic policies create the conditions for changes in both technology and human capacity. The following global normative scenario assumes that all three themes are important to the realization of the normative future of 2050.

Normative scenarios represent desirable future worlds. They employ credible cause, effect and feedback relationships to get from the present to a desirable future.

Scenario: A Normative World in 2050: “By 2050 the world had finally achieved a global economy that appears to be environmentally sustainable while providing nearly all people with the basic necessities of life and the majority with a comfortable living. The resulting social stability has created a world in relative peace, exploring possible futures for the second half of the 21st century. Different explanations have been given for the series of astounding successes achieved by 2050. Some believe that breakthroughs in science and technology were the keys, others that development of the human potential was more fundamental, and still others that political and economic polices made the difference. All three themes were important and mutually reinforcing.” Technological theme: Internet has become a right of citizenship. Businesses give free accounts to all customers; employers give them as an employee benefit. The connection of virtually all people to the global information and communications systems accelerated the pace of scientific research and the introduction and diffusion of new technology. Biotechnology, nanotechnology, and closed-environment agriculture fed the world. New and improved sources of energy made cleaner economic growth. Brain-like intelligent systems used neural networks to augment human intelligence and improve decision making. Molecular manufacturing (nanotechnology) lowered manufacturing unit cost, requiring less volume of materials and energy usage, and hence, lowered the environmental impact of a population that had almost reached 10 billion. Vaccinology and genetic engineering eliminated most acquired and inherited diseases further reducing the need for more frequent pregnancies to have a similar sized family. This was a factor in further lowering fertility rates, even though generational mini-booms have continued from the great population explosion in the mid-20th century. Cyberspace had become a major medium of civilization creating a constantly growing, non zero-sum economy and had changed day-to-day life as significantly as the industrial revolution had changed life 200 years earlier. The success of the International Space Station had led to other orbital habitats, the lunar base, and the pioneer communities on Mars. Nearly 250,000 people now work in space communities in orbit, on the moon, and on Mars, giving a new frontier for human imagination and advances in civilization. Breakthroughs in the unified theory of matter and energy have led to a deeper understanding of mass, inertia, gravity and quantum behavior. Health is a widely accepted human right; equity in coverage and accessibility to quality health services and health information exist regardless of capacity to pay, culture, race, geographic location or social ascription. Tele-health and tele-medicine is widely available and easily accessible. Health care providers adopt new paradigms to forecast and prevent potential health problems through personal and public health approaches; early detection through biomonitoring and management of problems that do occur. The invention of secure electronic money revolutionized retail transactions, international trade, and provided extraordinary growth of employment. The synergy of telematics and micro-genetics provided a jump in human evolution eliminating many diseases and increasing human capabilities. Biotechnology has created high yield plant species that are disease and pest-resistant, use less fertilizer and are more tolerant of drought and brackish water. The mapping of bacterial, human, and plant genomes, provided knowledge of genetic processes and to some extent, information about how to control them. The World Energy Organization, created in the early 21st century, coordinated research and helped improve policy leading to today’s safer mix of sources that have reversed the greenhouse effect. Space-related inventions have created new industries, tax sources for social programs, improved living standards, expanded access to tools by miniaturization and production processes that have lowered the costs of many technologies from satellite communications to medical diagnostic techniques. Income from satellite communications, solar power satellites, orbital energy relay satellites (orbital electricity grid), lunar and asteroid mining, weightless manufacturing, and space tourism has led to an enormous growth of private sector ventures in space. This acceleration of the privatization of space applications has avoided the public cycles of interest and disinterest in space support, so common in the last century. Despite the technological progress and scientific insight in which today’s society is based, most scientists and engineers believe that there is still more to come, that the future holds further excitement, progress and discovery.” Human Development Theme: “The acknowledgment that education was the solution to many problems and that the knowledge economy was spreading rapidly, stimulated governments and corporations worldwide to increase their investments in education, training, and applications of cognitive science. The race to educate the world began after the World Summit on Cognitive Development in 2010. Most institutions that had even a peripheral association with education began debating the most equitable and cost/effective ways to make everyone knowledgeable, virtuous, and intelligent. Internet access became a right of citizenship. Educational software was imbedded into nearly everything that could hold a computer chip. The World Cyber Games permeating daily life blending entertainment and education. The transition from a mostly illiterate global population to a mostly educated world was achieved by the mid-2040s. The interconnection of many separate programs into a global system of education created a cyberspace in which all could get the best education at their own pace, learning style, and in their own language. In addition to the vast improvements in educational technology, the content of conventional public education also changed during the early 21st century. Education successfully linked human ecology to decision-making in an increasingly global society. Advances in cybernetics and human cognitive development increased the use of machine intelligence to augment human intelligence, while emphasizing social and emotional development for improved decisionmaking. In short, it became fashionable to be intelligent and virtuous.It was not enough to learn and understand the history and current status of an item; in the world of 2050 an educated person also knew a range of possible futures for that item. The millennium provided the focus to foster collaboration among the various inter-religious dialogues on human values and morals that continued over several decades and through all forms of media. Although cultural and religious conflicts will still need more time to fully disappear, these new initiatives have help to keep them in sufficient check to prevent the kinds of wars so prevalent in the last century. Changes in global frames of reference and philosophies due in part to understanding of the interaction of population and economic growth with environmental degradation gave rise to the more enlightened age of today. The merger of the environmental movements and human rights groups in collaboration with many leading multinational corporations made possible the global educational campaign that made clean air, water, and land to be accepted as a human right. As a result, many changes in environmental policies and behaviors have been made. It became unthinkable to establish an environmentally dangerous project. With global consciousness (awareness that everyone is aware of the world as-a-whole) institutional forms continuously reinvented themselves. Few hierarchical or network institutions existed in a continuous sense as in the 20th century. Instead they became fields for collaborative actions of varying time duration. Every four years the Olympic movement re-enforced this consciousness through its games in both cyber and three-dimensional space. In 2040, when the Mars Pioneers won the first Olympic competition in solar sailing between earth and lunar orbit, humanity seemed to pass some threshold of consciousness. We became aware that we were no longer an earth-only species but will become a space faring one. Our human capacity is just now beginning to be understood. The current debate about a possible signal from extraterrestrial intelligence is revolutionizing our values, philosophy, and views of the human potential as we enter the second half of the 21st century.” Political Economic Policy Theme: “The number of wars decreased as democracies and respect for cultural diversity increased in the early 21st century. Although old cultural conflict wounds of the past still flare occasionally, we can successfully avert and prevent them for growing into larger conflicts. The resulting social stability nurtured economic growth and created 2 billion people in the global middle class by 2010. This increased conditions for further stability and sustainable growth that moved over 5 billion people in the middle class by 2050. The transition from dictatorships to democracies is now complete. Authoritarian regimes cooperated in the transition realizing that democratic processes were increasingly necessary for social stability and the generation of wealth en par with global norms. Improved information technology helped make UN Electoral Units instrumental in this transition by providing effective election design, management, and monitoring. Threats to make development assistance and loans from international organizations dependent on progress toward democracy sometimes proved counterproductive. The incentive of participation in the Global Partnership for Development (GPD) proved effective as a partnership between high income countries and those with less industrial and entrepreneurial cultures to improve economic development. GDP membership required respect for human rights and policies to address environmental security. If they were abridged or thwarted sufficiently, intervention by UN peacekeeping forces could be authorized by the Security Council. A little noticed article in the GPD called for acceptance of periodic NGO assessments of progress on democratization and the reduction of corruption. The corruption reports have become an annually anticipated event and have proven to be an effective instrument through which countries have reduced corruption. As the world progressed toward peace, the reduction in arms R&D, production, stockpiling, trade, and military personnel was accelerated along with the efforts to convert military technology to civilian uses. The World Sustainable-development Organization (WSO) was created to provide a global focus for business, government, and individual efforts to invest into sustainable development. The International Court of Environmental Arbitration and Conciliation has become the key instrument for advising the UN Security Council on environmental security actions. UN Peacekeeping forces were deployed when the ICEAC ruled against a state that was unwilling to stop the leakage of nuclear waste that endangered several countries. Since then the threat of UN military intervention has been sufficient to cause remedial actions. Intergenerational equity has become a major global value and legal principle. Similarly, there are now government incentives for smaller and healthier families, effective long-term contraceptives, low infant mortality rates. Since family planning or spacing has become acceptable in nearly all cultures, it is unlikely that birth rates will increase in the near future. Birth rates have fallen sufficiently that now more people worry about sufficient population growth to the support the world’s increasingly aging population. The synergies among the successes in political economic policies, human development, and technology have resulted in a better world in 2050 that few at the turn of the century believed was possible.”

In the New Financial Cosmos, it Will be Safer to Take a Dare. Robert J Shiller, Yale University economist and author of “Macro Markets: Creating Institutions for Managing Society's Largest Economic Risks.” Peter Coy, senior writer, Business Week.

In the future, the idea of risk takes on a whole new meaning because in the 21st Century, we see that innovation and creativity are considered high priority values. Our values have changed from hard work to innovation; innovation on every level of the workforce. Thus, the need to hedge risks on careers. Skiller describes an interesting scenario in the year 2015: In the New Financial Cosmos, it Will be Safer to Take a Dare. “Imagine a market in 2015 where hedgers and speculators meet to trade futures, similar to today's betting on the value of corn or soybeans. The wagering will concern the future value of a career, a neighborhood, or even a country. If the risk of a stick-your-neck-out choice is hedged, it's suddenly a whole lot easier to take the plunge Think of the invisible losses that society suffers because of fear of failure: the brilliant careers that are never attempted, the great companies that are never launched, the products that are never produced. Society won't eradicate fear of failure in the 21st century. But it will do the next best thing: It will devise new kinds of financial instruments--new hedges--that will reduce the riskiness of new ventures. By so doing, it will embolden a new generation of smart but cautious entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams. All of us will benefit from the creativity this will unleash. The new financial instruments won't protect people from their own stupid mistakes. Instead, these hedges will insulate people from events outside their control that could affect their chosen careers, industries, or even countries. That will make people more the masters of their own fates. Career hedges are just one example of this broader application of risk-buffering by 2015. By 2015, it is also possible to hedge against a decline in the value of houses in one’s area. People might be more willing to spruce up their homes or buy houses in chancier neighborhoods if they could protect themselves against a slide in the local market. Amazingly, by 2015, it is possible for governments to create a financial instrument to hedge on national economic performance. By 2015, an Argentine receives a payoff if Argentina's economy hit the skids. That might encourage bright people to build a life in Argentina rather than emigrating. Hedging a career, a neighborhood, or a country may sound exotic. But consider the risks of the 21st century. It makes sense not to put all eggs in one basket.”

Future of Management. John Jordan, director of electronic commerce at Ernst & Young's Center for Business Innovation. Warren Bennis & Patricia Biedeman co-author of “Organizing Genius” Persius Books, 1998. ISBN 0-201-57051-3. Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California, is a well-known authority on leadership. He is the author of Leaders and On Becoming a Leader. He has served as a consultant to many large companies.
Patricia Ward Biederman is a staff writer with Los Angeles Times. Her writing focuses on cultural affairs.

Already, many companies are adopting work groups with no designated leader. In 1987, 28% of the largest 1,000 public companies boasted at least some self-directed groups. By 1996, 78% had some, according to research by Edward E. Lawlor III, head of USC's Center for Effective Organizations. The trend will only intensify as a generation of team-oriented managers climbs higher. Says Lawlor: ``I can see future generations of people getting to the top with more team experience--and being more willing to use it once they get there.''

Jordan describes a scenario in the 21st Century: The Global Corporation Becomes the Leaderless Corporation: “None of us is as smart as all of us.” “By 2020, the trailblazing corporate superstar becomes a thing of the past. Follow the-leader is a game companies will no longer play. The corporate path to success by 2020 is paved by teams made up of the best and the brightest, with their egos checked at the door. Successful companies are leaderless companies. Or, to be more precise, companies whose leadership is so widely shared that they resemble beehives, ant colonies, or schools of fish. In 2004, democratic decision-making in corporations was confined largely to factory floors and new-product laboratories, far from the top of organizational pyramids. But through trial, companies found that democracy had to extend upward toward the top of the pyramid. The lesson of history learned in the 20th century: the collapse of the Soviet Union because its command-and-control economy couldn't keep up with the West's free market. In the 21st century, the same fate will befall companies whose CEOs attempt to control everything. In a world that is becoming ever more chaotic and dependent on brainpower, teams at the top make more sense. By 2020, the outrageously paid CEO who sits behind a ``buck stops here'' plaque will rarely be seen or heard of. By 2020, the Internet will allow companies to be more like beehives because information can be shared horizontally rather than funneled up to the CEO's office and back down again. ``The nature of the process that built the Internet will inform everything that touches it. There's nobody in charge,'' says John Jordan, director of electronic commerce at Ernst & Young's Center for Business Innovation. In 2004, succeeding was like climbing the Rocky Mountains. It wasn't easy, but the path was obvious. Success was a matter of executing on a well-established business plan: Every step up brought you closer to the top. In 2020, it turns out that the Rocky Mountains are fluid and moving,'' ``One minute you're at the top, next you're in a valley.'' Team leadership is ideally suited for this new reality. When the landscape is changing daily, it's crucial to react fast--something bureaucratic, top-down organizations don't do well.”

Scenario of the Global Economy: Pivitol Change to 2010. Organization for Economic CO-Operation and Development. The OECD groups 30 member countries sharing a commitment to democratic government and the market economy. With active relationships with some 70 other countries, NGOs and civil society, it has a global reach. Best known for its publication and its statistics, its work covers economic and social issues from macroeconomics, to trade, education, development and science and innovation.

Scenario of the Global Economy: Pivitol Change to 2010. “The development and spread of team-oriented institutional forms was slow and, in fact, little-noted at the time. What drew much more attention was the gradual and then return to economic prosperity. This began as a US revival, created chiefly as former excesses were finally sweated out of the system. The technology sectors had also grown away from over-capacity and were, by the beginning of the recovery period, were beginning to harness the breathtaking technologies that the previous decade had created. The biotechnology boom began, enabled by legislative and opinion-forming structures which had evolved explicitly to handle issues of trust. The onset of the second business cycle upturn of the millennium, in 2007-8, showed what became a lasting, if gradual and regional capital market revival. This showed what could be done, and the machinery of economic and social growth began to spread in the industrial and the industrialising world. Plainly, some of the worst-afflicted nations were unable to take full advantage of this, and these formed the core of a reactive nucleus which we shall meet again.”
“This resumption of growth is now seen to have been a pivotal point in the past quarter century of social and economic development. It is worth pausing to review the state of play within the industrial nations of the period. A very new approach to public governance now characterised the economically and socially dynamic parts of the world, being right-sized, consultative, evidence-driven, often specialised, multi-layered and innately networked. One earned a political voice less by being elected as a representative than by being available, interesting and generally regarded as useful in decision-taking.”
“This mode of operation was set against the traditional machinery that was (and is) still in place in nations where economic dynamism has been replaced by energetic squabbles over claimancy. As one commentator on Germany has remarked, the period was marked by fury over slicing cakes rather than energy in baking them. The majority of individuals who declared policy activism as their chief civic engagement in the 2010 EU census were over seventy years of age. Similar surveys in Japan showed that only a few percent of the population saw themselves as politically engaged, whilst almost all respondents over 60 were members of a claimants union.”
“These differences were the source of considerable friction. European, and to a lesser extent, Japanese interests tended to interpret their problems as stemming from the actions of others, notably of the more competitive economies. Their weak position greatly influenced the way in which they wished the world and its rules to evolve. Mercantilist measures that protected domestic markets were initially favoured as socially-responsible steps to reduce "globalization". In fact, most penalised the trade from poorer nations, or blocked measures that would forward domestic productivity. Whilst tariffs were generally deprecated, regulations that set unreachable standards (of cleanliness, of ethical standards, of industrial health and safety) effectively barred markets. Diffuse international supply chains were subject to sharp controls. Later, as elderly populations began to react against fast change as a thing in itself, sources of modernity were themselves addressed: the biology industries, self-aware software, direct experience media and aspects of nanotechnology were all widely banned goods during the 2010-15 period. Concerns about 'cultural pollution' were given extreme prominence, at least in some few nations where populism had reached for a retroactive sense of common identity. Friction between these counties - where industrialised or no, secular or theocratic - and the leaders of economic and social modernisation also became pronounced between 2012-15.”
“The sharp distinctions in style between the various tendencies in the wealthy world had forced a formalism into international relations. The tendency to negotiate clear positions, and to see these as both important and binding, brought a new strength to international law. The nature of this binding was a mutual set of sanctions, and an agreement to small multilateral sacrifices in order to avoid these. Agencies such as the WTO acted to systematise these agreements, but did not of themselves have any power. Discipline came from fear of what followed failure. This was to have a profound effect on how the world evolved after 2010.”

E-Business Pulse: Got Your Crystal Ball? Barbara Gomolski is a research director at Gartner Group, a research firm in Stamford, Conn. InfoWorld. 10-15-2001.

The question on everyone’s mind these days seems to be, “What's going to happen to the economy, and what will be the impact on IT and e-business over the next ten to twenty years?" Nobody knows. For IT professionals, these are uncertain times. On the one hand, there is a significant and renewed focus on disaster recovery and business continuance. On the other hand, there are tight controls on discretionary spending and great reluctance to start long-term projects.

Barbara Gomolski discusses three scenarios of the 21st Century: E-Business Pulse: Got Your Crystal Ball? “In 2005, let us consider three possible scenarios of the future of e-business and what they would mean for IT. More important than "getting it right" in terms of which of these scenarios materializes is knowing the tell-tale signs of each case, and being able to adapt to the changing conditions.” Scenario 1) Everything's Coming up Roses. “The most optimistic scenario would be characterized by the speedy destruction of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, recovery of the global financial markets by 2005, and a significant rebound in the IT industry. If this happens, companies will gradually begin to rebuild their work forces and refocus again on growth strategies, such as e-business. Under this scenario, companies aggressively pursue applications such as CRM and b-to-b by 2005.” Scenario 2) The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Under this scenario, which I believe is the most probable, the United States and its allies make slow but steady progress in the war against terrorism, and the global financial rebound is equally sluggish. In this environment, we don't see businesses return to "growth strategies" until 2005 Until then, IT capital spending and staffing levels are held tight (pre-2001 levels), and companies retrench around core systems and existing customers. E-business is in a relative holding pattern, although Web-based collaboration systems and e-learning get a boost due to companies desire to halt travel. Scenario 3) Brother, Can you Spare a Dime? The bleakest scenario would be characterized by more large-scale terrorist attacks both in the United States and abroad, massive layoffs, weak corporate earnings, bank failures, and widespread bankruptcies in the IT sectors. This doom-and-gloom picture would mean that companies retreat to a defensive strategy by shedding all noncore businesses as well as big chunks of their work forces. In this environment, security and business continuance would represent a major thrust for IT, and emerging technology research around smart cards and user authentication would be on the front burner. Nobody knows what the future holds for the economy, in IT or e-business. But mapping likely scenarios and continuously scanning for indicators is something we need to do. Only then will we be able to respond to the inevitable changes.”

In Search of the New Economy: Encouraging Private Competitors to Fill the Demand for Skills. The Futures Project: Policy for Higher Education in a Changing World, Brown University, February 2001. From website: www.futuresproject.org

This future scenario explores the global challenges coming to higher education and describes various operational models: publicly funded institutions, privately operated institutions, and virtual universities.
The scenario is set in the fictional country of Globalya. Globalya, like many countries around the world is trying to address the growing chasm between the great numbers of students seeking and prepared for higher education, and Globalya’s limited capacity to enroll those students. Seeing opportunity due to Globalya’s inability to meet demand, private interests and institutions are coming into the Globalya and Globalya is experiencing a surge in the number of private higher educational institutions.
Overall, twelve new institutions have applied for authorization for operations in Globalya. Six are for profit enterprises; two are non-profits founded by individual philanthropists; one is a non-profit sponsored by a local company; and three are branches of foreign institutions. An initiative is also begun by the government for the Globalya Virtual University (GVU).
Budget problems in the country result in a 10% budget cut for the public universities. Faculty and students are becoming increasingly frustrated with having to do more and more with less and less. Plans for the GVU are scrapped, even after two years of development. Meanwhile, the cache of having a degree by foreign universities brings students to their doors; state universities are feeling deserted by constituents.

International Trade and the Doha Development Agenda.
Authors: Michael Garrett, Ian Goldin, and Dani Redrik in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, January 29,2003 http://worldbank.org

In this document, the authors set forth four possible scenarios for the WTO’s Doha development agenda.

Best Case Scenario: “A successful agreement results in substantial multilateral tariff reductions. Agricultural export subsidies are sharply reduced and strong disciplines place on domestic market insulation and distorting market support. Textile and clothing quotas are eliminated.

Increased movement of service workers is allowed and trade and investment in services booms. Reform discourages anti-dumping measures and improves the functioning of the safeguard regime.

Developing countries obtain sufficient aid for trade and strengthen domestic institutions. Greater openness stimulates foreign and domestic investment. Success at the multilateral level reduces the emphasis on existing regional arrangements, and new regional structures act as building blocks to non-discriminatory liberalization. Greater market access reduces the risk of macroeconomic imbalances. World market integration, particularly in agricultural commodities, creates more stable prices. Negotiations on the new issues on the Doha agenda are well managed. There are no new disciplines that raise the cost of complying with rules without compensating benefits.

Reduced trade barriers stimulate domestic reform, leading to a substantial increase in world trade, particularly in developing countries.

With a 50% reduction in tariffs, the World Bank model suggests a real income gain for developing countries of US $83 billion or 1%, and an exports life of 14.6%. High income countries see a 0.3% real income gain of US $67 billion and a 2.8% increase in exports.”

Baseline Scenario: “Modest multilateral tariff reforms are achieved including some progress in agriculture and textiles. However, developing countries see many import areas excluded. Resistance to agricultural reform limits reductions in domestic and export subsidies.

Limited progress is made in improving market access for services, but anti-dumping measures and safeguards increase as developing countries apply them unilaterally and retaliate against their imposition elsewhere. Aid for trade is only modestly successful with developing countries reluctant to offer strong or binding policy commitments.

Some progress on regional arrangements helps to reduce trade barriers, but inconsistency makes it difficult to use these arrangements as building blocks for further liberalization. Regional macroeconomic instability inhibits the acceptance of major liberalization.

With a 10% reduction in tariffs, the World Bank model suggests real income gains for developing countries of US$ 16 billion or 0.2%, with exports up by 2.5%. High income countries see a real income gain of US$ 14 billion or 0.1%, and a 0.5% increase in exports.”

Worst-Case Scenario: “There are two worst-case scenarios involving either a poor outcome from the Doha negotiations or a collapse of the process.

A Poor Outcome: Negotiations are concluded, but developing countries sign on reluctantly and only after strong-arm tactics by the European Union and the US. Modest multilateral tariff reforms are achieved including some progress in agriculture and textiles. However, major agricultural exporters capture most gains with many developing countries reaping few returns.

Developing countries are forced to agree to new disciplines in investment, competition policy, government procurement and trade facilitation. The impact on growth, particularly of poor countries, is disappointing and the credibility of the WTO is eroded.

Doha Negotiations Collapse: There is wholesale backsliding in commitments to abolish quotas on textiles and clothing, reducing market access for developing countries and the credibility of the system. Anti-dumping, safeguards and product standards are used extensively to restrict imports.

Regional arrangements become inward-looking fortresses. Labour standards and environmental measures are used in blatantly protectionist fashion to reduce penetration by developing countries.

Macroeconomic imbalances reinforce the downward spiral in investment and trade. The integrity of the system is undermined and weaker countries become even more fragile in trade and other global engagements.

With a 20% increase in tariffs, the World Bank model suggests the real income of developing countries is reduced to US$ 32 billion or 0.4%, with exports down 4.6%. High income countries see real income down by US$ 27 billion or 0.l%, with exports down 0.9%.

Either scenario results in a reversal in real income and trade. These results highlight, but understate, the consequences of a breakdown in international cooperation.”

Reappraising the Future – Scenarios for 2012, Accenture.
http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enweb&xd=ideas\wef\wef_scenarios.xml

Accenture, a consultancy to businesses worldwide, has developed four scenarios related to the future of globalization and its potential implications for businesses. The scenarios, presented below, are set in the year 2012.

1. Common Ground: “In this relatively stable and integrated world, tensions between different countries and different social groups are increasingly resolved by collaboration and negotiation. Economic growth is relatively slow but steady, and wealth is shared more equally within and between countries. Business is better connected with the rest of society. Most people are more secure and better off, and there is greater tolerance of diversity. But in richer countries in particular, concerns are growing about the high costs of this stability, which include rising inflation, high taxation, and excessive bureaucracy.

Business implications: Global supply chains tailored for local partnering; low cost of capital; new mass consumer groups in emerging markets; emphasis on co-regulation; common international standards and platforms; ethical consumers highly profitable; corporate focus on connecting with society.”

2. Survival of the Fittest: “Free markets have spread to many countries. Regulation and taxation are light and competition is fierce, forcing firms to be efficient and dynamic. Rewards are high for those who do well and many people are better off, but life is hard for those who do not succeed. Inequalities within and between countries continue to widen. The influence of the United States in business and in international security has grown stronger as other countries focus on more internal matters. While the world is in many ways quite stable, resentment of the influence of ‘big business’ and the perceived dominance of US culture sometimes spills over into hostility and violence.

Business implications: High levels of M&A activity; trade and investment liberalization; supply chains truly global; volatile financial markets; high levels of foreign investment; increasing wealth, but inequalities; move to self-regulation; low cost of capital.”

3. Tempestuous Times: “Economic integration and liberalization have continued but at the cost of greater tension as social and economic divides have widened sharply. Effective dialogue between governments, business and the rest of society has ceased. A few people have become more prosperous but many have been left behind. Global corporations take over many services previously provided by governments. Instability has grown and erupted into violence and conflict in many countries, and security has become the prime concern of both business and individuals.

Business implications: Focus on short-run returns; tight global supply chains; devastating customer boycotts of certain brands; minimal government regulation and taxation; conflicting standards and platforms; cost of capital increasing; high expenditure on security; backlash against certain new technologies.”

4. Worlds Apart: Driven by political and economic insecurities, countries have withdrawn into themselves. They still co-operate in a limited way, particularly on a regional basis, but make little attempt to address global problems. There have been sharp increases in protectionism and a partial reversal of market reforms in many countries. Countries with large internal markets have coped reasonably well with isolation and some groups have found cause for cautious celebration in this new world. But overall, economic growth has been slow and uneven and living standards for many people, especially among the world’s poorest, have fallen sharply.

Business implications: Local supply chains and local markets; high cost of capital; skills shortages in key sectors; fragmented infrastructure and standards; import substitution; multinationals focus on localizing their products; government intervention high.”

Urban Russia At The Crossroads, Russian Cities in the XXI Century: Development Scenarios. The Institute for Urban Economics http://www.urbaneconomics.ru/eng/article/20020522.html.

The Institute for Urban Economics prepared three development scenarios for Russian municipalities in the XXI century for Club 2015, a club for successful professional managers in Russia. According to the authors, these scenarios are an attempt to describe the road to development in the medium and long run.
Scenario One: Running East, Running West, or Running in Circles. In this scenario, efforts to serve the interests of political bureaucrats are at the forefront of activity. As a result, significant administrative barriers that hamper development, the quality of public services, and democratic freedoms are held in place. Urban development consists of varying blends of bureaucratic and statehood models.
Scenario Two: Ad Astra Per Aspera. Stable economic growth promotes the corporation model which gradually transforms into a civil society model. “The fledging democratic institutions support efficient local governance and broad public participation…. Moscow and St. Petersburg acquire the features of a "world city", while small and medium-sized cities form a well-branched network.”
Scenario Three: Our Good Luck. A previously disinterested citizenry creates true local governance and a civil society emerges. Information transparency promotes dialog between city and community members. “A powerful impetus is created for better economic efficiency and social effectiveness of local governance.”

Japan’s Uncertain Future: Key Trends and Scenarios.
Author: David J. Staley The Futurist

From the 1960s to the late 1990s, Japan experienced a period of unprecedented growth and social change. In this article, the author explores the “next period” in Japan’s history, based on three driving forces: the restructuring of the Japanese economy (including the end of lifetime employment), the long-term effects of demographic change, and the impact of the generation the Japanese refer to as “the new breed”, which is more cosmopolitan and individualistic than their parents. Using the driving forces, the author creates four scenarios for the future of Japan in the next 20-25 years.

Scenario One: Entrepreneurial Japan explores the impact of entrepreneurism on Japan’s economy. “Group identification and self-sacrifice were important keys to the post-war reconstruction of Japan, but with the downturn of the 1990s, the Japanese government has perceived the need for more individual initiatives to bolster the economy. An entrepreneurial Japan might take one of two forms. In one version, entrepreneurship rema
ins wedded to the corporate structure, with established companies harnessing the creativity and risk-taking initiatives of individuals for the economic benefit of the company. An alternative version suggests that Japan might develop a “cult of the entrepreneur”, where “the individual is lionized in the popular mind, rewarded for his initiative and envied for his wealth.”
Scenario Two: Japan as Number Two imagines “Japan as a second-tier economy, wealthy and healthy, but not an economic leader. In this scenario, the decline in company loyalty leads to a decline in productivity; as a result, the economy fails to regain its position as number one, even while providing a comfortable lifestyle for its citizens. A noteworthy feature of this scenario is the awakening of Japanese fathers. The time that workers might have spent on the job or socializing is instead given over to the enjoyment of family. Led by the new breed, men take on greater responsibility for raising their children.”
Scenario Three: An Inclusive Society proposes, “As Japan’s population ages and its birthrate declines, many women enter the workforce to fill the need for both skilled and unskilled labor. Japan also addresses its labor shortage by hiring more immigrants to fill job vacancies. Over time, these foreigners are fully welcomed into Japanese society.”
Scenario Four: Cultural Retrenchment and Isolation, “demographic pressures induce a conservative social reaction. Japan resists gender equality and multiculturalism. Women are encouraged to apply their “traditional” skills to care for an aging population. Alarmed at falling birthrates, the government adopts an official policy that encourages couples to have many children.”

Two Scenarios for 21st Century Organizations: Shifting Networks of Small Firms or All-Encompassing “Virtual Countries?”
MIT Initiative on Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century (January 1997) Authors: Robert J. Laubacher, Thomas W. Malone and the MIT Scenario Working Group

In this working paper prepared by members of the MIT Initiative on Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century, two scenarios are developed for 2015 that focus on a major uncertainty related to the future of organizations: the size of individual companies. Collectively, the scenarios consider issues such as the global business environment, corporate organization, and corporate governance.

Scenario One: Small Companies, Large Networks: In this scenario, the large corporations of the 20th century have become extinct. Instead, “nearly every task is performed by autonomous teams of one to ten people, set up as independent contractors or small firms, linked by networks, coming together in temporary combinations... and dissolving once the work is done.” Independent organizations take the place of large companies, providing opportunities for social networking, learning and reputation-building. “Many are similar to the writers’ and actors’ guilds of Hollywood. They help us save for retirement, and most of us
pay a percentage of our income to our “guilds” as a voluntary form of unemployment insurance. Most importantly, we derive much of our sense of identity and belonging from these stable communities that we call “home” as temporary projects come and go.”

Scenario Two: Virtual Countries: In this scenario, large global conglomerates dominate the organization of work. “These keiretsu-style alliances, each with operating companies in almost every industry, have minimal national allegiance. Members of the same family work for Sony/Microsoft or General Electric/Toyota, and feel little loyalty to the U.S. or Japan. Employees own the firms in which they work, through pension plans, stock options, employee participation contracts and other vehicles. And just as the modern nation states ultimately turned to democracy, many of the corporations of the 21st century have moved to representative governance. Decisions are made hierarchically, but every year on election day, we choose from slates of managers who vow to do the best job for the company as a whole.”

Creating the Future: Scenarios for the Digital Economy.
http://edie.cprost.sfu.ca/~idea.html
Authors: Ed Boroevich, Mary Boname, Barbara Gill, Anthony Hempell and Sara Pitman.

Three scenarios explore the interaction of trends related to the adoption of digital commerce technology (such as smart cards, digital cash and home banking) and their potential implications for Vancouver City Credit Union.

Scenario One: Corporations Rule: This scenario envisions the convergence of financial institutions and technology, with banks developing lead technologies such as microchip cards and smart consumer databases. A decline of government power has created an opportunity for financial institutions to offer “personalized” financing for a wide range of needs, such as day care, health care and education, making them an invaluable part of individual communities.

Scenario Two: Crypto-Anarchy: In this world, “the government disappears on a federal level or is so weakened that it becomes nothing more than a figurehead,” resulting in minimal regulation and a high degree of customer choice. “Digital cash is the predominant means of exchange.... [but] due to its anonymous and untraceable nature, it has become impossible to track the income of individuals. Large corporations have disintegrated and the commercial sector is dominated by highly competitive specialized companies.” The fragmentation of corporations and decentralized cash systems threaten the viability of financial institutions.

Scenario Three: Third Sector Ecotopia: “In this scenario, issues concerning the collective health of the public take precedence.” Environmental concerns and a decline of manufacturing jobs combine to create an economy in which the non-profit sector becomes the lead supplier of social services. As decision-making is decentralized to smaller regional/provincial governments, electronic networks facilitate a more advanced form of participatory democracy. Financial institutions provide an array of services, including e-cash kiosks, daycare facilities and community centers.

Cybernomics: Toward a Theory of Information Economy.
Author: John Perry Barlow. This paper was published by the Merrill Lynch Forum, funded by the Merrill Lynch Foundation.

John Perry Barlow states the obvious: we are inhabiting a world, which differs from the one we were born into. Yet, he profoundly illustrates why the world we are currently living in is a co-revolutionary relationship between technology, economy, and society. Mr. Barlow contends that that the effects of revolutionary invention are rarely understood in their own time. Success in the future will depend on an understanding of “relationships, a continuous flow of information, transparency, and a willingness to relinquish control to the unknown.” Mr. Barlow extrapolates the challenges into imagery, and in turn, imagery into challenges. These images of the future make a strong case for humanity to re-visit current assumptions, as we move forward into the 21st Century. This book is good read because the elemental features Barlow poses, stretches the imagination with clearer vision, particularly on how society and economics will evolve.
Scenario One: Relationships Replace Things: In this world, the challenge is to “de-materialize thoughts about commerce – beyond the trading of things.” Ideas and ownership of ideas cannot be physically defined. Economic theory accepts that - unlike things once understood in the Industrial Age - relationships do not increase in value with scarcity. Relationships become an active flow of information—“the greater the flow, the more valuable the relationship, assuming that the flow is being pulled by the voltage of relevance.”
Scenario Two: Context is More Important than Content: In this world, Barlow challenges the reader by asking the question, “what really is content when there is no longer a container for it?” Content becomes less perceived as physicality as context. Cyberspace is context. It is more important. It all started with the advent of electricity. The 21st Century holds the possibility that we will all be connected so that our very synapses travel thousands of miles in a single instance. Cyberspace becomes an environment, not just a medium. Economic transactions will not be “contained” within objects,” but rather, will be a part of the flow of an overall environment.
Scenario Three: The End of Accounting: “The underlying assumption of physical economy is that there is a predictable and tight relationship between inputs and outputs.” As the information economy progresses into the 21st Century, it will challenge us by behaving quite differently. Corporate reliance on predictable results – driven in large part by the constraints of those balance sheets that are the measurement of quarterly success—may be directly counterproductive to long term organizational innovation.” The companies that will succeed will be those that engage in a “gift economy” – a set of practices based on the principle that “what goes around, comes around”. Already, we are seeing the seedlings of this principle within organizations that are seizing a good percentage of this new type of investment capital.
Scenario Four: Transaction Becomes Continuous: “In the economy of life, transactions are in constant flow.” Yet, when we transact today, we think of a deal as something apart from the surrounding flow. In the 21st century, human bandwidth will broaden as exchange deepens in value and trust over time. In this world, “…the more open a system, whether that system is a company or a technology platform, the more likely it is to nourish interactivity and, therefore, stimulate attention.” This is indeed an attention economy.
Scenario Five: Chaos Becomes Opportunity: Mr. Barlow poses quite a startling question: Could neurosis simply be the inability to live with ambiguity? If humanity surrenders to the biological nature of the information economy, then there is a surrender to ambiguity; “…the dream of predictability is no longer a luxury” in this world. To try to predict will be more of a burden and, quite possibly an undoing. “Life is unpredictable in an era of such absurdly expanding (scientific and technological) possibility. Unanticipated consequences are the rule as the (possibilities) increase exponentially…each time we solve one problem, we create several more in the process.”
Scenario Six: Pantheism Replaces Monotheism “If ubiquitous information access does nothing else, it unmasks the mystique of Authority. Even before the Internet, it was clear that the notion of God-given power was in steep decline. In the 21st Century, the workings of “web networked consensus,” in which the Many increasingly replace One, God, (white men) or Authority, emerge more rapidly.”
Scenario Seven: Women Win: “Women will be magnanimous in their victory since they were always more interested in sharing ownership than imposing it.” Cyberspace is all about relationships. “Women understand more deeply than men do.” Cyberspace breaks the glass ceiling of the Old Boy Network, wherein start-up capital was contained in containers with no mind about context. In the context of Cyberspace, the 21st Century is and will more strongly see a business environment where women win.
Scenario Eight: The Southern Hemisphere Rises: “The developing world was spared from the industrial habits of the developed world. The environment of Cyberspace is all about “mind over matter.” In the 21st Century, any individual or organization can place itself on an even footing with the largest IBMs’ or Microsofts’ of the world, “given the right idea properly executed”.
Scenario Nine: The First Shall be Last: The developing world “is ready to join the conversation and they are sick of being regarded as problems…” Mr. Barlow makes a compelling case that developing countries are not so much bothered by chaos or uncertainty as the developed countries are. “They were raised on both (chaos and uncertainty), and the information economy presents possibilities for their harnessing wealth undreamed of before.” “In other words, the disenfranchised can surf.”

New World, Old Order.
Author: David Rejeski, formerly of the Council on Environmental Quality. (Mr. Rajeski is currently with the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC.) 2001.

Are international institutions that are as old as our grandmothers likely to be as effective at protecting the environment in an increasingly globalizing economy? What role will multinational corporations and transnational advocacy networks play in a New World order? The rapid pace of change unleashes sustainability challenges that are unheard of today. "The challenges of sustainability simply overwhelm the adequacy of our responses," wrote United Nations (UN) Secretary General Kofi Annan in his Millennium Report. "With some honorable exceptions, our responses are too few, too little and too late." In this highly academic and distinguished paper, Rejeski interviews a number of noted environmentalists and economists. He concludes by illustrating Four Future Paths – A Look at Four Leading Concepts that measure conceptual visions of the types of organizational structures that would best perform in an age of “challenges of sustainability”.

Leading Conceptual Scenario One: Global Environmental Organization. “Some prominent voices have called for the formation of a powerful world environment organization. French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac have called for creating one global environmental agency to pull together and push forward many environmental agreements. Germany, Brazil, Singapore, and South Africa have called for such an organization. The idea was even backed by Renato Ruggiero in 1999, when he served as executive director of the World Trade Organization.

The idea has been pushed for years by a network of people from academic institutions led by Yale's Prof. Esty, who prefers calling it a Global Environmental Organization, or GEO. A group convened in New York City by Esty's Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy claimed a GEO could cure the fragmentation of policymaking between the United Nations Environment Programme, The United Nations Development Programme, the Commission on Sustainable Development, and the diaspora of international bodies that oversee environmental compacts, each in a different city. "The global environmental governance structure is inadequate for the pollution and resource challenges the world faces today," the group opined. Calling the current regime "weak and performing poorly," participants concluded, "The growing recognition that a number of serious pollution control and resource management issues are inherently transboundary in their scope makes the status quo unacceptable and the need for improved global environmental governance urgent." Esty contends that a GEO would provide more leadership and focus on international environmental issues. An overarching organization could also boost the exchange of ideas between the staffs of various secretariats, he says. A single location would make it easier for less-developed countries to staff negotiations and meetings, which currently are dispersed in time and place. And it could serve as an advocate for advancing environmental treaties that have run aground. If headed by a prominent figure, a GEO could "lead governments toward reaching agreements," says Yale's Speth. Others look to it to pressure the World Trade Organization to give greater weight to environmental agreements. GEO critics decry another bureaucracy and say it might distract from the important drive to get existing organizations to integrate environmental analysis into their decision making. Others say it may achieve little in a world where consensus develops slowly. Harvard's Juma, for instance, says that the failure to make environmental progress may have caused the proliferation of conventions, rather than the other way around. He doubts that proliferation undermines implementation. In response to critics of big, clumsy bureaucracies, Esty argues that a global environmental organization needs not be hierarchical and centralized, and might operate more like a network. "It might be decentralized and might even be virtual," he said. "You want a structure that encourages those that have a role to play to come and play it." Some GEO backers had hoped that the Millennium Summit of the UN in September 2000 would grapple with environmental governance and propose new solutions. But the hundreds of speeches barely touched on the subject. Instead, Esty looks to the tenth anniversary of the Rio Summit in 2002 as the next forum where nations can consider a global environmental organization.”

Leading Conceptual Scenario Two: Boost UNEP. “The governments of Germany, Brazil, Singapore, and South Africa are among those that have called for revitalizing UNEP to serve as some kind of global environmental organization. UNEP's leadership sounds amenable. In late 2000, UNEP Executive Director Klaus Topfer called for the world's nations to strengthen UN institutions at the UN's Earth Summit in 2002, on the tenth anniversary of the biodiversity conference in Rio de Janeiro. "All of us must urge our leaders at the Summit to renew their commitment to the UN and to equip it with the necessary tools and resources to meet the unprecedented challenges of the New Millennium." Topfer said UNEP stood ready to work with all parties to catalyze a new regime of environmental regulations, policies, and partnerships that could address the negative aspects of globalization. But even while Topfer is credited with strengthening UNEP, many observers doubt that it is capable of playing a strong, leading role. Critics blame its charter, budget, structure, past leadership, and even its Nairobi location. UNEP's budget is smaller than that of some U.S.-based nongovernmental environmental groups. Developing nations feared it might become a global agency that would deter their development in the name of environmental protection. They founded it as a creature of the UN General Assembly, which is dominated by less- developed countries, and put it under the direction of an unwieldy, 58-state governing council. Given a general charter to solve environmental problems, UNEP has dissipated its efforts in all directions. To be a strong advocate and coordinator, its critics say UNEP would need a coherent and manageable mission, more funds, more independence from the General Assembly, and a more streamlined leadership system. Some observers suggest merging UNEP and the much larger and better-funded UNDP. But that combination might face some of the same concerns that have restrained UNEP; poorer nations would want assurances that development programs would not lose any resources to environmental programs or be constrained by them.”

Leading Conceptual Scenario Three: Clusters/Environmental Alliances. “Calestous Juma, a Harvard professor and former UNEP official, argues that a global environmental organization is unnecessary and may get entangled in bureaucracy. Saying that a global environmental agency would be "too cumbersome to work," he notes that centralized, hierarchical UN agencies are widely regarded as inefficient, and that UN agencies are increasingly relying on networks of other parties. "The strength of the treaties lies in the fact that they give more power and authority to governments and citizens, not to centralized UN agencies," Juma wrote to the Financial Times of London. Juma's lack of confidence in the United Nations is widely shared. Oran Young, a Dartmouth College professor and director of its Institute of International Environmental Governance, notes that post-cold war euphoria about UN leadership is "giving way to mounting skepticism about the capacity of the United Nations to cope with an array of pressing problems." Currently, each environmental agreement is overseen by a conference of the parties, which delegates duties to a secretariat, scientific advisory body, and other organizations. Instead of a new hierarchical organization to coordinate these bodies, he calls for greater coordination between them in what he calls "environmental alliances" or "clusters." Bodies implementing the Convention on Biodiversity, for instance, already work closely with those in charge of the Ramsar Convention on wetlands of international significance. Those two conventions could work with CITES and other conventions to draft consensus standards for sustainable uses of land. The clusters or environmental alliances have many supporters. Dartmouth's von Moltke, for instance, prefers them to a single, new organization for environmental issues. The U.S., he notes, does not give all environmental authority to one agency. Rather it spreads that authority around among several. Internationally, "five GEOs might be a good idea, dealing with different environmental issues," says von Moltke. Clusters and alliances have been widely discussed, with some advocates calling for various environmental agreement bodies to be brought together physically in one location. One advantage of these, some advocates say, is they could reduce the need for negotiators to fly around the globe from one site to the next for interrelated talks, which can be particularly difficult for small nations with limited budgets. Co-located secretariats could also share information and techniques for solving problems and work out potential conflicts. But clustering and alliances are ill defined and face some of the same resistance as a GEO. Any effort to pull together many staffs into one organization will face bitter resistance, Juma notes. Employees fear losing influence or even their jobs. Conference members would lose authority. And a host of questions entangle the idea. For instance, how would the clustering of secretariats and new alliances with others be structured and promote cooperation? One cluster or alliance might combine multilateral environmental agreements dealing with atmosphere, such as the Kyoto Protocol on climate change or the Vienna Convention for Protection of the Ozone Layer and its Montreal Protocol. Forestry, biodiversity, and wetland agreements might be joined in a cluster. Chemical pollution issues might be clustered, as might marine issues or land-use issues. However they are arranged, clusters and alliances are sure to overlap. Climate change, for instance, can greatly affect biodiversity; forest and land-use choices can influence climate, desertification, and agriculture. How should clusters cooperate? Should they have common staffs to coordinate them? Who will serve as the advocate for new negotiations? Clustering advocates have many questions to answer.

Leading Conceptual Scenario Four: Clusters/Environmental Alliances. “Inertia alone may make major structural changes difficult in the near future, and some observers say that may not be such a bad thing. A new, global environmental organization may make little difference, said a report from London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs. GEO proposals, wrote Joy Hyvarinen and Duncan Brack, "have suffered from a significant lack of detail and a failure to explain why the creation of a new global environmental organization would make any difference to the underlying problems of a lack of resources, a lack of political will, and inadequate policy integration." More effective environmental agreement implementation and better communications may be more important than structure. Some observers argue that reform efforts are better expended on making existing institutions work better. Many voices are calling for strengthening the enforcement and implementation of existing multilateral environmental agreements and new scrutiny of government subsidies, including export credit loans and water rates, that lead to environmental damage. Both are easy to say, hard to do. Others say environmental analysis should be integrated into existing bodies. Rather than setting up a new organization to lobby nations, trade and multilateral banking agencies, David Reed of the World Wide Fund for Nature argues that those institutions would respond better if their own bureaucracies acquired expertise on environmental issues. "The World Bank should increase its capacity to collect environmental data, to monitor trends in environmental performance and issues, to share information with the broader public, and to help develop strategies for addressing environmental problems," contends Reed. No other international institution, he says, "is better positioned or in command of such an extensive range of resources" to address environmental problems. The WTO, IMF, and the multilateral banks also need to integrate environmental considerations into their project planning and evaluations, critics say. And this will happen, some say, only if member nations first integrate environmental analysis into their own trade and aid policies and negotiation strategies. Real progress will be difficult without a strong commitment by the United States to multilateral environmental agreements. In a globe with diffuse environmental authority, the importance of the world's dominant economic and military power is hard to overstate. And to win developing countries' cooperation and support, any new thrust toward environmental agreements will have to be greased with aid from the developed countries to those countries that can least afford short-term sacrifices and new technology needed for sustainable economic development. One way to make that integration effective is to open national and international proceedings to scrutiny and participation from private sector organizations. The United Nations has been moving in that direction. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has praised "global policy networks" of governments, civil society groups, and corporations as "the most promising partnerships of our globalizing age." He looks to them to help lead the world community of nations toward sustainable development.

"They work for inclusion and reject hierarchy. They help set agendas and frame debates. They develop understanding and disseminate knowledge. They allow for stronger, broader consensus on new global standards. They help implement and monitor those standards once they are agreed. They raise public consciousness and speak to our conscience." Such multifaceted networks are, Annan said, "one of the ways we can strengthen the bonds of our global community."

Questioning Assumptions – Exploring Alternative Business Futures.
Author: Ged Davis, March 13, 2002. (Ged Davis is Vice President, Global Business Environment, Shell International Ltd. Swedback Conference, Stockholm.)

This is the latest set of Shell’s global scenarios – completed in mid-2001, with an outlook to the year 2020. These highly detailed scenarios explore the driving forces of globalization, liberalization, and advancing technology, as well as a number of highly detailed forecasts of energy futures. From a social standpoint, these scenarios are of particular interest because the narrative and illustrations explore in detail, the social consequences of these very powerful global forces. A quote from Shell’s prescient introduction: “Soon after Shell finished them (the global scenarios) the shocking events of Sept 11th illustrated both the reality of global integration and the reaction it can provoke.”

Scenario one: Business Class: Growth of the Global Elite: Volatile Growth: Describes a world of highly powerful, networked business. Business becomes the “Matrix” (as in the movie), of the entire world. “Is Business Class good for international business? Well, it’s certainly no picnic. Grinding competition in open, transparent, global markets - aided by new communications technology – brings commoditization and university benchmarking. There’s no room for mediocre performance and rents are under constant pressure. Business success depends on the relationship between the value creating “core” and the rest – more and more of which can be, and become, outsources. The need to find and sustain elusive competitive advantage drives a relentless search for efficiency and innovation . Speed is essential for seizing fleeting opportunities. In increasingly volatile markets, this has to be combined with resilience and superior risk management.”

Scenario Two: Prism: “Describes a world shaped not by what we have in common but by the interplay of our differences. People find their values in roots. They pursue their own versions of modernity by reflecting cultural values and practices more. This does not reject the markets or modern technology. But it is emphasis on the community. Governments are expected to deliver more and better universal welfare and maintain social cohesion, as well as delivering economic progress. Developing countries continue to pursue their path to growth and European Union is strongly coherent. “New European Way” – responds by finding an economic rationale for welfare. Is Prism bad for international business? It is clearly a world in which being local matters. Multinationals must compete in many different markets, each with their own values, rules and requirements. Customers favor ‘local’ suppliers. Access depends on relationships and reputation. Choosing the right partners and recruiting and developing good local staff are vital skills. But it is not just a matter of responding to local conditions and meeting local needs. Multinationals must add value – delivering global best practices and cutting-edge technologies. And doing so in a way that suits the local conditions.”

Terrorism and the Challenge to Globalization
Author: Peter Schwartz, Red Herring Magazine, December, 2001.

In this article, Mr. Schwartz reviews the globalization debate – a pretty clear schism, between the globalization ‘haves’ - those believing it is good for everyone (raising all boats at the global marina); versus the globalization ‘have nots’ - those believing it is not so good, because it “drives the power of global corporations toward economic hegemony and a fall-out will be the result.” Mr. Schwartz reviews the theories of Paul Hawken, Kevin Kelly, and Benjamin Barber to glimpse into the future and forecast scenarios against today’s political realities. According to Schwartz, it may be possible to take a glimpse at where the geopolitical future is headed.

Scenario One: Radical Islam: “If radical Islam is the new Communism, we may be in for a long and ugly war. This scenario involves a world of perpetual conflict with no winners. As atrocities on both sides feed on each other, the dividing lines become deeper and wider in an ever more-terrible cycle of violence.”

Scenario Two: Better International Institutions: “If Mr. Hawken and Mr. Barber are right, there are at least two possibilities. In the best of all possible worlds, democratic governance would begin to emerge globally. Existing institutions would become more transparent and democratic. New institutions would be created to better regulate common elements like the air and the oceans, and to establish appropriate global rules of behavior for corporations.”

Scenario Three: American Hegemony: “But one has no trouble imagining another scenario, in which the United States refuses to surrender any sovereignty and acts unilaterally in its own interests. In such a rogue superpower scenario, the reception for U.S. companies around the world will become chilly indeed, as the world lines up to resist American hegemony. Sympathy for any new horrors inflicted upon the United States will be very limited, and cheers will be heard in Paris and Rome, as well as in the back streets of Gaza and Karachi.”

The World in 2050.
The Challenge Network directed by Dr. Oliver Sparrow. (Dr. Sparrow frequently appears on television and is an accomplished futurist, GBN member, and radio performer.)

The Challenge Network provides a scenario of the world in 2050, starting with five ruling forces that have formed the world in 2050. These five forces that shaped the world of 2050 are known as “Quincunx.” In this world, infant induction software imprints the Quincunx on every newborn mind. The five forces of Quincunx are:

1) ‘Infrastructure’: “This once meant physical transport and housing, energy supplies and crude telecommunications, the management of resource flows and waste products. By 2000, it had come to imply the then-unprecedented web of capability and skill on which business, in particular, could draw. There was great excitement at the turn of the century as this new infrastructure began to lift growth rates and suppress waste. Few could have seen what it means today: a reservoir of knowledge and capability, functionality and finance, all mapped together on demand to serve a volatile need. The unceasing eruption of knowledge and insight accelerates the shocking, discontinuous tectonic processes of creation and destruction.”

2) ‘Options’: “Life, for the majority, was once focused chiefly upon convention and necessity. ‘Options’ once implied something unusual: choice. Today, we have the world’s capabilities at our hand. We can extend our life spans in ways limited only by our personal finances and by the rights, which we have, each won through public service. We can engineer our personalities to meet transient needs. We can choose our social milieu from an almost infinite spectrum, or mix examples of this to taste. The capabilities inherent in the infrastructure afford us the means to envisage limitless possibilities, and to do so in conjunction with simulacra of consumers, partners and those who might object to what we do. We can define an offering, have it given life and put it to market in hours or days, and – in the established world, at least - only those without imagination or taste need to be excluded from this.”

3) ‘Best practice’: “Is both our constraint and our spur. All can choose, and none willingly choose anything but the best. Every enterprise and political entity survives only through the constant satisfaction of volatile public choice. The choice which each agent exercises – on how to present and differentiate itself, on how best to balance complex competing demands – fills the time which delegation of operations to infrastructure and automation has released. The interests of each such agent is interwoven with many others, al exercising expert choice, each instantly critical of actions or policy which does not attain these high standards. In this expert arena, are the key task of area-based governance has shifted from operations to issue harmonization and dispute resolution. The $17 trillion cession by the Anglophone Domain of its major systems management to the Shell-Greenpeace-Cisco hegemon (SGC) is an example of how far this will now go. Four hundred million people have handed over the management of the core – but boring – aspects of their daily life to a transpersonal hegemon, which knows each as an individual and is now a petty deity in their daily lives. Politics, within the para-statals making up the geographical political representation, now focuses on how to tackle issues, and which issues to address. Best practice drives us all forward at a gallop. Stable responses are found in equivalent rates of innovation and in differentiation. The latter has proven a powerful tool, and few regions or activities do not now strive actively to be different from every other agent. A wave of differentiation has swept across a world once seemingly doomed to uniformity. No one of the 12,000 UN-registered para-statal entities is much like any other, and all strive daily both to differentiate their offer from that of their rivals, whilst also harmonizing their interface with everyone else. The rejectionist states that have retained uniformity, which have imprisoned their populations and closed their frontiers have, regrettable, doomed their 3 bn citizens to, at best, poor choices and majoritarian tyranny. It is to be hoped that hegemonic influences in Greater Germany and Japan will bring both from their ‘retirement home’ out to face the world in all its richness.”

4) ‘Connectivity’: “Once meant the ability to link remote agents together, point by point. Now, it implies a shifting, constant pattern of immersion. It offers us a new universe to inhabit. Similarly, those who one dreamed of artificial intelligence saw the natural home for this as the machine. Few recognized what commercial organizations and the fusion of military systems had already achieved until, at least, the first hegemon came spontaneously into existence. The story is too famous to recall in detail: a vastly complex issue fought between two hugely complex and competent adversaries, a sea of data visualized by arbitration software: suddenly, many people saw the same thing from many perspectives and a completely new way of acting came into existence. Knowing what we now know about cognition, we could have anticipated this spontaneous achievement. Indeed, the result – although a true meta-consciousness, capable of making decisions and conducting conversations – is obviously primitive when compared to contemporary interfaces. Simulations of pre-hegemony activities suggest that at peak creative potential, a team could – for fleeting minutes, when confined to a single room – achieve the flickering of what now burns bright and continuous in every home and place of work. Those who have participated in the SGC fusion will know the elation of seeing, in detail, all aspects of the entire Anglophone domain in a single perspective. For many, there is no higher pleasure.”

5) ‘Exhaustion’: “The complexity which these four members of the Quincunx have created could, if ill-managed, paralyze the machinery by which we survive. Each possibility throws up a myriad stakeholders, each armed with ideas, objections, alternatives to consider. This brings us to the last – and most multifaceted - of the five forces in the Quincunx: exhaustion. World systems are known to have exhausted their limits of natural resilience in the ‘teens of this century. Human-created systems reached the same state somewhat sooner. Pre-hegemonic financial systems, for example, attained a degree of integration in which dynamic artifacts - oscillations and other unexpected outcomes – began to set profound limits as to what could be done with them. The European crash of 2007 was as directly attributable to these as to the social forces of the times. The water wars of the Tigris-Euphrates and Arabian Peninsula marked the beginning of resource difficulties. The Gulf Stream instabilities of 2020-2030 brought our collective attention to planetary engineering. Solving these issues required enforced give and take, and political decision-making was required to appease a range of stakeholders, which then-current systems of governance could not at all manage. Hegemons and related knowledge management tools – the so called ‘civil engineering’ of the knowledge economy - helped to drain many of these swamps. Firm, directive leadership by the wealthy nations was also fortunately able to survive the fragmenting forces of the 2007-2013 periods. We of the established world have been fortunate not to fight a major war, as it would assuredly be our last. Intelligence and active data-mined oversight has allows us to control the people capable of developing so-called "garage" weapons of mass destruction. The general spread of dangerous technologies did and does, however, seem certain to lead to a self-propagating accident. Providentially, those which have occurred to date have been contained or cauterized.”

Manufacturing Anywhere.
Author: Robert Gunther, a freelance business writer based outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Please see full narrative and graphic’s to Gunther’s writing on RAND website: <www.rand.org>.)

What will be the impact of the diffusion of manufacturing on the environment? Where will the new environmental leverage points be in a world of manufacturing anywhere? Environmental policies in the manufacturing sector have traditionally focused on the end-of-pipe by-products and emissions from the production of large factories. But the pressures of regulatory policy and public pressure - especially in Europe – is calling for manufacturers to take environmental responsibility for products “across their entire life cycle”. According to the author, Robert Gunther, it means that, “Of necessity, the future of manufacturing will be more fluid and diffused.” Already, we are at the precipice of a major global trend in manufacturing: a trend encompassing dispersal, powerful networking technologies, supply chains that cut-across not only the regional level but also the global level. Among the many images of the future this author illustrates in this article, he includes an entertaining scenario created by Susan Helper of Case Western Reserve and John Paul MacDuffie of the Wharton School, offering two possible images of how the Internet could change relationships between customers and manufacturers in the auto industry.

Scenario: buildyourowncar.com. “It is April 27, 2010, and Kate has decided she wants to buy a new car. Out of many sites that her Web Pad brings up, she narrows her choices to two: Ford.com and Buildyourowncar.com. Ford.com: On Ford.com, she settles back with a cup of coffee and reviews a list of options. She has given the Ford site permission to look at her demographic data, so it knows she likes to windsurf and take her 4-year-old nephew on outings. Ford also receives full body measurements for her and her nephew. The site starts with available models, listed in order of potential appeal. She picks the low-end Focus, and a model is displayed with a roof-rack specially configured for windsurfing boards. She selects it without hesitation. A little further down she is presented with a Lego car seat, filled with Lego building blocks, perfect for her nephew. Based on her height of 5 feet 3 inches, she is offered extra high seats. She then explores other options, including global positioning, and subscribes to a service that allows two-way interaction with local businesses. She then clicks through to get a final price for the custom-configured car, which could be delivered to her driveway in three days. She decides to pay the extra $35 for a test drive from a local dealer. Dealers now make their money selling assorted travel services while her repairs are handled by a local shop. But before clicking on "finance your purchase," Kate saves her Ford Focus configuration and looks at a new site, buildyourowncar.com. Buildyourowncar.com: This site lets her pick components from any manufacturer and assemble them into one car. She likes the styling of the Ford Focus but the reliability of Honda engines. She also would like a Bose sound system that wasn't available at the Ford site. She has a few worries, however. Buildyourowncar.com assured her that all of these parts would fit together perfectly, due to standard interfaces agreed upon by manufacturers in 2008, but Consumer Reports still cites quality problems with these "mix and match" vehicles, as well as ambiguity about who covers warranty costs. Also, there is no physical dealership or opportunity for a test drive. The site does generate a video image of Kate in the car she has configured, showing how easy it is for her to reach controls. She tries out the driving simulation on the site, and plugs in a new BMW engine to get a feel for a high-performance engine in the Ford Focus body. Kate, a little tired from having spent a couple of hours looking for cars, takes a break to think about her options. She doesn't really believe her parents when they say they used to spend days or weeks looking for new cars, and still not end up with one they really wanted.” According to Gunther, “The Internet is expected to move the auto industry to a build-to-order model, as it has in computers (such as the Dell Direct model where you can custom order your computer directly from the company, eliminating any retailers). But how this evolution occurs, and how quickly, depends on major changes in the industry. A mix-and-match car that combines components from different manufacturers would require a level of standardization that has yet to be achieved in the industry.”

The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization.
Author: Thomas L. Friedman Farrar Straus & Giroux; (June 2000) (Author Thomas L. Friedman has two Pulitzer Prizes and one National Book Award. He has worked for many years for the New York Times.)

Thomas Friedman brilliantly captures globalization’s history, trends, and major tensions between global forces through the use of metaphors, a literary form that illustrate difficult concepts more visually. Friedman writes about the history of globalization, from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (“the wall”) to the world of “the Web” of globalization in 2000. The trend Friedman foresees as gaining to a level of momentum and perhaps, critical mass, are the various “threats and opportunities that increasingly derive from whom you are connected to.” Globalism is the triumph of free-market capitalism. “The technologies driving globalism are computerization, miniaturization, digitization, satellite communications, fiber optics, and the Internet, which reinforce its defining perspective of integration.” Friedman uses opposing metaphors to create a powerful play of ideas. In addition to metaphors in his book, Friedman recounts many stories; stories that tell of a clash, conflict, or contradiction, that reaches a crisis point and is resolved through the structure of two opposites and their struggle to reconcile. The following represents the central metaphor and plot line of his book. A Globalization Metaphor: The Lexus. “The Lexus stands for speed, modernization, movement, luxury, and globalization.” A Globalization Metaphor: The Olive Tree. “The olive tree stands for everything that roots us, anchors us, identifies us, and locates us in this world – whether it be belonging to a family, a community, a tribe, a nation, a religion, or, most of all, a place called home.” The Interplay Between These Two Worlds: Friedman sees the world, the nation, the town, and even the person as divided between building the Lexus and disputing who owns the Olive tree. “If the Lexus is driven too heedlessly, the Olive Tree will block its path. Those who download for a living will find themselves confronted by those with a bullet hole through its center – the standardized treatment for all suspect packages. Of course, so-called free markets have their rules. Friedman calls this “The Golden Straitjacket,” a one-size fits-all requirement that squeezes and pinches some, but accelerates growth while shrinking politics and diminishing left-right polarities. He wants to unleash the creative chaos of capitalism on a global scale, but create a safety net to catch those mangled by the Lexus careening through the Olive Tree grove.” (New York Times)

The Return to Depression Economics: 2010. A scenario from the book, “The Return to Depression Economics.”
Author: Paul Krugman, published in 1999, WW. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY.

“Surely the Great Depression could never happen again. Or could it?”

Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote the book, "The Age of Diminished Expectations" which was called "perhaps the best little book on economics in the past ten years." (Boston Globe). In his recent book, "The Return of Depression Economics", Krugman argues that in 2010, we will see a return to literally, depression economics; which "means that for the first time in two generations, failures on the demand side of the economy--insufficient private spending to make use of the available productive capacity--have become the clear and present limitation on prosperity for a large part of the world. " It's the same problem that was at the root of the 1930s depression. And while it took a world war to solve that problem, Krugman sees solutions that are far less dramatic, but that require a willingness to chuck obsolete doctrines and think about old problems in new ways. Krugman draws a scenario of China, which Krugman calls "corrupt, croney-ridden, with terrible banks, but saved so far by its inconvertible currency.

Scenarios of China in 2010: "Could China go the way of its neighbors? Possibly: but the crisis would look a bit different because of the capital controls and the absence of large foreign-currency debts. One scenario would involve massive domestic bank runs---with the government hesitant to provide the huge injections of cash needed to stop the runs, for fear that putting too much money into circulation would create such an incentive to swap yuan for dollars for the currency controls would prove ineffective.

The other Scenario of China in 2010 would involve a sort of Japanese-style slowdown in domestic spending, which the government is again unable to fight effectively, not because the interest rate is zero but because rates can go only so low before, once again, causing capital flight that swamps the controls. In both cases the crisis story builds on a real problem: China's banks really are a mess, and the country does have flagging private investment and consumer spending.

Back to the present: The good news is that the Chinese government is well aware of these risks and is trying to combat them through massive public investment spending, a classic Keynesian remedy. There clearly is significant capital flight from China despite the controls, but it is a steady leakage rather than a torrent, and the country's immense foreign exchange reserves are still intact.

Summary: The clear and present danger is not that China itself will collapse, but that --- as it perceives the pressure gradually increasing - it will choose to devalue its currency. This would not lead to catastrophe for China, but would endanger whatever recovery is taking place elsewhere in Asia.

The Online “Webolution” to 2010. “Future Consumer.Com”
Author: Frank Feather, published July 2000, Warwick Publishing Company, Ontario, Canada.

The author makes an excellent case that by 2010, the Internet will gobble up 31% of consumer spending, “leaving most brick-and-mortar retailers in rubble.” In this book, Feather portrays a history of Internet, webonomics, multiple perspectives of the Internet; who will shop online, what they will buy; branding, and e-marketing strategy.

The author in the foreword presents a scenario of "Webolution" of Shopping to 2010: “The Web takes shopping out of the shops. By 2010, the Internet will gobble up 31 percent of retail spending, leaving most brick-and-mortar retailers in rubble. The head-spinning Internet Revolution hurricane, or "Webolution," is not east to forecast. However, before it's done - around 2018 - it will reverse and unwind virtually everything that the Industrial Revolution put into place. It will smash the mass consumption economy to smithereens and re-center it on the home. The Webolution is so big that few grasp its significance. Doubtless, the plodding plowman didn't "get it” when the first steam train puffed past his field. Likewise, the metal-bending blacksmith didn't "get it" when the first "horseless carriage" sputtered past his shop. … But this Webolution will rock the world, again utterly transforming life and commerce. And the rewards will accrue fastest to those who embrace it first. Click-happy shoppers are flocking online and will stun shortsighted brick-and-mortar retailers who stubbornly insist that people will always come to their stores. Online sales will kick in big time during 2000 - 2002, growing rapidly throughout the decade to top $1 trillion by 2010. By then, the Web will be 100 times bigger than today - a tidal wave, drowning those who can't or won't surf…. Around 2005, online purchases will reach 10-15 percent of total sales in most categories, wiping out the profit of most retailers. By 2010, online shopping will grab 31 percent of retail sales - 43 percent if you exclude the automobile and education categories. All but the most savvy will get killed. Most strip malls and many shopping malls, along with half the department stores, supermarkets, retail chains, banks, and local shops, will vanish without track ad click-and-buy e-tailing takes over. Who needs thousands of banks, bookstores, supermarkets, hard ware stores, drug stores - or any other kind of store - if you can buy everything from a few Web Sites? ... By 2010 a majority of Americans will live what Bill Gates calls a "Web Lifestyle" and will do at least some e-shopping. Most of them will do most of their shopping online. Already, people are buying everything from luxury automobiles to the drug Zantacs over the Web, and in the near future the question will be, "What isn't selling online?" For 2010, sights such as Amazon.com and EBay will have served as living laboratories of the future. In 2010, the end user's list of bookmarked favorites will determine the winner verses loser and, it will be a simple as that. From 2001 - 2010, expect a major shakeout in retail. The debate on who will win - pure bricks, pure clicks, or bricks and clicks - will be a matter of vying for consumer attention. “
And that's the story.

The Future of the New Economy.
Author: Peter Schwartz, chair, Global Business Network. Red Herring, July 2000.

The author asks profound questions about what is it that really drives an economy? With the recent and tremendous "explosion" of companies and new industries, the future - boom or bust - new economy or old economy - it is literally, "up for grabs". It comes down to something very fundamental - our beliefs. Three typologies of popular economic theory have emerged in support of the scenarios: the new economy theorists acknowledge the potential growth of a more quickly moving and rather accelerating economy with more reliance on brains than brawn; the network effect theorists acknowledge the "new, new thing", but for some businesses and industries, growth will occur in spurts; for others, success becomes a stair-stepping process, primarily because markets become so efficient, that anyone with a good strategy can compete; the third set of theories questions the "hype" of the new economy, with tensions running deep on a real definition of the age old question of productivity, newly shrined by the prism of IT. Based on these theories, the author presents three scenarios and completes the article with investment strategy implications.

Scenario One: New Economy Scenario: “First is the new economy scenario. It's a world of mostly winners. Incumbents fall, and there are many new kinds of players in the world economy. This is a world where education is at a premium, and knowledge workers have the higher value-creation potential. It's a world of a dispersed global workforce, with an increasing proliferation of skills. And it's a world where all the value-creating units are linked together in virtual value chain. It's a world of global electronic markets that create trade in goods, services, jobs, education, and finance. It's a world where liquidity is inevitably global, as is investment. And it's a world that relies intensively on the information technology infrastructure expanding and accelerating. It's a world where skills and knowledge matter. Where intellectual property rights are critical. Where information and data stores have intrinsic value. And where we use networks for interchange and transaction of values. It is a world where rewards are more often measured in equity than cash, and that equity in turn is based on intellectual capital more than physical capital.”

Scenario Two: Incremental Scenario: “The second scenario is an incremental scenario. It's a world of a much more modest transformation. We eventually get to the new economy, but much more slowly. Here, the incumbents recover and mostly win. There are many winners and many losers. It's a world that resembles today for quite a long time.”

Scenario Three: An Illusion: “The third scenario is a world where the new economy is principally an illusion. It's a world that leads inevitably to two tiers, where there are few very well off, and many that have fallen far behind, unable to compete in the IT-driven economy.
It's a world where there are some of the old winners, and very few of the new. Most of the new players crash and burn along the way. And tomorrow resembles today in most important respects.”

Scenario Four: The Crash: “The fourth scenario is the crash. Like Icarus: we fly too high, and crash and burn, or burn and crash. This is a world where almost everyone is a loser. It's a world where the leverage finally crashes the stock market, and brings down the average consumer. Most of the technology turns out to be hype, and it really isn't nearly as productive as we all imagined.”

Scenario learning: A powerful tool for the 21st Century planner.
Authors: Jeff Ellis, Steve Feinstein, and Dennis Sterns. Journal of Financial Planning Denver Apr 2000

Scenario learning is a technique - like scenario planning - that predicts possible outcomes. Increasingly, it is being utilized by financial planners helping clients understand their personal financial futures within the context of the macro environment. The real strength in the technique is the bonding between financial planner & client and the learning that comes from the exercise. This article explains two different approaches to scenario learning and demonstrates ways to develop these possible futures for financial planning. Based on the following assumptions about the US economy, the following three scenarios were developed by the authors in a series of workshops. The assumptions were: technology stocks revive in first decade of the 21st Century; index funds outperform most passive managers; Internet won't impact high-touch financial planning; and baby boomer trend brings prosperity.

Scenario One: Boom Times: " The baby boomer wealth effect (championed by Harry Dent and others) will create tremendous prosperity for the next ten years, followed by a period of lower equity growth as boomers pull money out of stocks, instead of putting it in. Technology stocks continue to flourish, with portfolios of 50-70 percent high-tech allocations becoming common. The wealth effect continues to balloon vacation properties and all sorts of upscale consumer goods. Spending stays high through traditional retailers and Internet shopping malls. The client embraces the good times, spends lavishly and saves less as investment returns seemingly make saving unimportant. The good times help pay down the national debt substantially, causing a high demand for bonds and a resulting decline in interest rates. Just as boomers start retiring, they are forced to stay with a high percentage of stocks, liquidating a bit each month for cash flow, rather than rotating to low-paying bonds. "

Scenario Two: Margin Bust: ”This scenario assumes "that the Internet severely compresses profit margins for many goods and services, which has already happened in a number of sectors. As margins become squeezed in 2003-2005, corporate earnings for many companies flatten out, causing further erosion in price/earnings ratios. Technology stocks still have momentum, but profit "accidents" become much more frequent as certain core non-technology businesses cut information technology spending to prop up anemic cash flow. As the stock market sputters to a stop in this scenario, the wealth effect shifts into reverse. Baby boomers begin to panic, with their retirement in sight, and double-digit returns no longer are the norm. Reduction in spending compounds the margin problems, creating a downward cascade effect. We will call this scenario the "Margin Bust."

Scenario Three: Return to Sanity: ”This combines the other two scenarios with entirely different possibilities. In this third scenario, "speculative excess is rung out of the economy in a recession that lasts for almost a year. It doesn't cause a meltdown but actually refocuses on sound financial planning principles of diversification, saving and more modest expectations. The baby boomer megatrend pulls the economy along but not until many of the dotcom frenzy dies off and marginal businesses are forced to merge or go out of business." The authors agree that while this third scenario is not as extreme as SC1 or SC2, it is useful. It is similar to the modeling of wild fluctuations common to financial planning -over two to three year time segments such as Monte Carlo simulations, which is critical to viewing this future realistically.”

B2B or not B2B? Scenarios for the future of e-commerce.
Author: David Targett European Business Journal London April 15, 2001. Vol 13 Issue 1.

The objective of this article is to review the past fifty year history of information technology and its development, picking up lessons on the way. The premise is the increasing recognition that scenarios are useful in an industry that is nearly impossible to forecast - IT. After defining e-commerce, including B2B, B2C, G2C, G2B, and G2G, and reviewing the history, and muliplex-odium of recent published forecasts, the author brings the reader to a set of three scenarios on e-commerce & e-business. He reminds the reader to remember that e-commerce is simply this: buying, selling, and marketing on the Internet. And, e-business is simply this: the same thing embedded into business processes.

Scenario 1): Gold Rush: “In this scenario e-commerce growth is at the low end of current expectations. It is characterized by the following features: The Internet is in widespread use for study, personal information and entertainment. This is almost inevitable given present trends. B2B grows but never reaches the highest predicted levels: there are too many cases of deliveries going wrong; too many products prove to be not amenable to this sort of trade. E-marketplaces run into problems over anti-trust and monopoly legislation. B2C is a minority interest: customer confidence is lacking, people use mobile telephones for telephoning and digital TVs for viewing a wider range of channels but not for accessing the Internet. G2C is a minority activity: the government does not get its act together, too few people have access or are interested in using the service. This scenario carries a number of implications. Children will have to be able to use the Internet to avoid being disadvantaged in their studies; businesses should identify whether they are in the 20% or so who must trade on the Internet if they are to survive. The sure winners will be companies supplying Internet equipment and services. This is the reason for the name: Gold Rush. In the 1840s Gold Rush a lot of money was made but not from gold. It was made from selling picks and shovel, and food and accommodation. Likewise under this scenario the people making money will be the Internet equipment suppliers.”

Scenario 2): New Labour: “In this scenario e-commerce is making a significant difference to many, but not all, aspects of business. Personal Internet use is widespread, even more than the previous scenario. B2B grows to the levels indicated by the more optimistic forecasts, 40% or so of total trade. The Internet becomes the normal way of doing business in most industries. B2C grows but is by no means a dominant factor in retailing. Some of the present obstacles to growth are overcome but others are not. G2C grows to levels commensurate with Internet use and B2C; the government gets its act together: people can access government services on the Internet ... if they want to. The factors promoting e-commerce and the obstacles tend to favour B2B. And the lower costs have immediate impact on the bottom line. So, it is quite feasible that B2B will move ahead while B2C lags. The implications for scenario two are mainly for business and the need for them to get up to speed on B2B. They will have to adapt to it or die. The reason for the name New Labour is that it might seem that under this scenario a lot is going on but the expected significant changes to our lives do not materialize. Which is the odd one out - the early nineteenth century factory, the passenger railway or the telephone? All are technologies that made an impact not just on business but on society as a whole. Railways made long distance travel a real possibility for ordinary people. The telephone changed the nature of communication, making it much more personal and direct. However, the odd one out is the early nineteenth century factory. The first mass production technologies changed the whole structure of societies. Previously textiles had been manufactured in literally cottage industries by extended families. New technologies, such as the spinning jenny, were not affordable, especially as larger machines meant increased economies of scale. And the new machinery needed water for the steam power. The cottage industries disappeared and production moved to factories. The machine age and the division of labour came about. Towns grew up around the factories and the nature of society was radically different. The final scenario relates to significant social change.”

Scenario 3): Second Industrial Revolution: “The third and final scenario presents the case where there is universal access and use via a range of technologies. Personal Internet use, B2B, B2C and G2C are the way things happen. The result is radical social change. What might this change look like? We might speculate as follows. Internet companies dominate global business. People with the technological and management skills to work in them are the elite of the workforce. They can move around and they owe their loyalties to their own groups and companies rather than to national governments (Angell, 2000). In his book Angell likens the new knowledge workers to the barbarians arriving at the gates of Rome. Nation states diminish in importance. International power structures change. Social divisions increase in magnitude. There is a digital divide. Transport and logistics structures change. Goods are delivered rather than collected. People rarely travel on business: they use enhanced video-conferencing perhaps via mobile phones. Sainsbury's car parks become adventure playgrounds and Heathrow's second runway is planted with flowers. Housing changes, becoming much more self-contained, especially for the 'haves' rather than `have-nots' of society. Under this scenario the implications are vast for both people and businesses. Governments will have to move speedily, perhaps more speedily than they are able, to protect society, economies, the environment and businesses
from the many negative impacts of these changes.”

2020 Vision – The Next Quarter Century in Management Consulting.
Report of the Association of Management Consulting Firms, Industry Insider. 01/01/98.

Discussions by members of the Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF) and their guests at the association’ s Annual Fall Meeting. The members felt that the next quarter century will see massive and ever-accelerating change in management consulting. A first look ahead toward the Year 2020, from Richard Armitage and Ted Gordon, examined the environment for management consulting created by international relations in the post-Cold-War world, as well as the globalizing economy and developments in technology. Richard Armitage believes that historians and statesmen looking back over recent years have devoted too much attention to trying to discover or define a “new world order.” The post-Cold-War, no longer bi-polar world, with an increasingly globalizing economy and new patterns in international relations, is and will be disorderly. Yet some patterns and trends are emerging. The fundamental international challenge is to reinvigorate and renew international relations in terms appropriate to the post-Cold-War era. The biggest international challenges will be in China, Russia, the Mid-East, and the Kashmir-Pakistan area.

New demands within the business environment create a range of possible scenarios for the future. These were presented at the conference by four consultants: Scenario 1: the role of information technology and business strategy; Scenario 2: the business of “business intelligence,” Scenario 3: the causes and effects of privatization; and Scenario 4: possible crises and risks for management consulting in the near-term future. Some of the lessons learned by the scenario exercise include - consultants in the future can supplement the capabilities of in-house staff; deliver bad news when necessary; apply special skills when needed in the short term; act as an independent source of information; and anticipate as well as help to develop strategies for anticipating and managing risk, as well as coping with ongoing change.

Industrial R & D in 2008.
Author: Charles F. Larson, Research Technology Management, 11/01/98.

Changes in industrial R&D will accelerate over the next 10 years. Scenario planning indicates that there are several drivers of change, the most prominent of which are information technology and globalization. People in the industrial R&D laboratory of 2008 will be more risk-taking and business-oriented, with skills that are constantly being upgraded. Technical intelligence will be fully integrated throughout the firm and far more comprehensive than today. Technical work will be more efficient and effective, utilizing a wide variety of outside resources. Flexible organizational structures and true enterprise integration will capitalize on a new era of creativity for growth and competitiveness. Leadership and skillful management will be critical elements of these evolving processes. Five scenarios were developed for potential changes in R&D management, technology, and innovation due to evolving "forcing functions" or drivers over the next 10 years, which included information technology, globalization of technology, growing diversity of the work force, integration of technology planning and business strategy, partnerships and alliances, and customer power. The scenarios were characterized as follows:

Scenario 1: Cyclical Change: This scenario assumed that the current paradigm in R&D - to carefully control costs and to do more with less-is a cyclical change that has occurred before. Thus, while the environment for R&D will continue to evolve over time, there was no fundamental, long-term change taking place. It also assumed that different industries were in different phases of the cycle. Therefore, it was recommended that business sectors that lead the cycles be identified as early indicators, that techniques for adapting to change in these sectors be described, and that these techniques be disseminated for the benefit of trailing business sectors.

Scenario 2: Globalized R & D: The prediction in this scenario was that as companies continue to become more global, the R&D function will gradually spread throughout the world. Of course, globalized R&D is already a reality in many companies, such as Procter & Gamble and 3M. The thought was that teams will function through electronic networks and that management of the R&D function could be directed from remote locations. It was concluded that many companies had already globally integrated their R&D efforts more than other business functions. In a recent survey of 308 CEOs, the Foundation for the Baldrige National Quality Award found that "globalization" was judged to be the most important trend currently affecting U.S. companies.

Scenario 3: R & D Through Partnerships: In this scenario, it was assumed that technology will become increasingly complex and more expensive to develop. Therefore, many companies will choose to maintain their key competencies only in selected core technologies and obtain additional capabilities through partnerships and alliances with other companies, government laboratories, universities, and contract R&D organizations. Moreover, various R&D support services will be integrated with other corporate or business-unit functions, resulting in some R&D leaders managing virtual laboratories. An example of this trend is the contracting to outside vendors of information-technology and human-resource-development functions.

Scenario 4. Innovation Function Absorbs R&D: This scenario envisioned that the future focus of most firms will continue to be on revenue growth through creation of new products, processes, or services, and through the development of new markets. In response to this intensified emphasis on innovation, the R&D function will merge with marketing, and R&D leaders will become business managers as well. Many companies have already initiated efforts to address new customer expectations through improved integration of marketing and R&D, as well as through direct interaction of R&D with a company's external customers, i.e., "4th generation R&D".

Scenario 5. Networking Counts: In this scenario, it was assumed that networking with peers through organizations such as IRI will become more important. Changing conditions in the R&D environment will be accommodated so long as opportunities exist for sharing best practices through a growing variety of electronic techniques as well as in traditional, face-to-face gatherings on specific topics. All R&D managers are becoming "information managers," and all companies are now "information machines," regardless of what products they sell.

Most Likely Scenario: The author believes that the most likely scenario is a composite of the scenarios outlined above in what he outlines as the “Laboratory of 2008.” See original article for more details.

American Consumers in 2025: Three Scenarios (Part 1).
Author: Gray Knight, Journal of Advertising Research, Nov/Dec 99, Vol 39 Issue 6, p 71, 8p, 3 charts.

Scenario planning is a way to help think about and plan for the future in spite of the inadequacy of the normal research tools. Scenarios are not predictions about the future. They are simply stories about an imaginary future world. They allow us to set out a range of possible futures, which then can be used to develop and evaluate strategies. Most importantly, scenarios help to identify at least some of the driving forces that are likely to shape the future.

Scenario 1. Li Ping’s Story – Orlando, Florida, February, 2025. “Li Ping waits at the loading dock as the boxes of groceries coming off the end of the conveyor belt are placed into his truck by his coworkers. It is early in his shift, the sun just setting, and this is the first of three times that he would be here today at the warehouse in Orlando. Ping works for WalMartExpress, the largest retail bundler in the United States. WalMartExpress had formed from the merger of Walmart and Federal Express two decades ago. With the growth of on-line ordering of lower-priced consumer products, marketplace advantage went to the company that could deliver goods to consumers' homes most efficiently. By combining orders into large bundles of goods, shipping costs could be spread over more items, offering savings to the consumer and providing a cost advantage to the most efficient bundler.

In fact, shipping charges are no longer listed as a separate item on the consumer's bill. What the consumer shops for is the minimum total delivered price for the bundle of goods purchased, including the shipping charge. On-line agents have long since made finding the minimum price for a bundle of hundreds of goods fast and easy. Consumers do not need to invest time in making price comparisons. Agents simply do that for them. Perfect price information drove out price differences across bundlers and meant the end of coupons and discounts for individual products. The price of the bundle is all that matters and WalMartExpress's software provides that answer instantly.

A few decades ago, when commercial use of the net was new, the common wisdom was that companies who controlled the on-line ordering process would dominate every consumer market. This turned out to be true where the product itself could be delivered over the net, as with music and movies. When the supply chain required the delivery of a physical product into consumers' hands, however, the winning business model was based on efficient logistics, not on software.
The speed of the Internet was critical to giving the advantage to the bundlers. After a slow first decade or two, the Internet had finally gotten fast enough to be truly useful. There were no real tricks to on-line ordering software or developing on-line agents that were not understood in the 1980s, so there was no lasting proprietary advantage in the electronic ordering and management of the customer relationship. If a company didn't have a system, it could buy one, or buy a company that did.

Once the net became fast enough, some of the early mover advantages went away. The cost advantage of efficient delivery systems overwhelmed established on-line equities and partly offset the advantage of well-populated consumer databases. Speed in the movement of information in and out of homes and processing speed made all the ordering systems equal.” See original article for more of the scenario.

American Consumers in 2025: Three Scenarios (Part 2).
Author: Gray Knight, Journal of Advertising Research, Nov/Dec 99, Vol 39 Issue 6, p 71, 8p, 3 charts.

A continuation of the article above. Outlines three scenarios of American consumers in 2025. Scenario 2: One Scenario of U.S. Social Change to 2025 (for scenario 1: Li Ping’s Story – Orlando, Florida, February 2025, see summary above). “In hindsight the future is always obvious, and it's true that the signs were all around us back at the turn of the century, if only we'd paid attention. But a quarter century ago, almost nobody was writing about how "time-shifting" and "age-bending" would rewrite the "rules" of the life cycle--or of American society as a whole, for that matter.

Sociologists and marketers had spotted the phenomenon of kids "getting older younger"--girls giving up their Barbie dolls at earlier ages and many kids being more technologically savvy than their parents and teachers. And everyone knew the aging Baby Boomers were doing their damnedest to stay younger longer. By the turn of the century, the age at which women were having babies was being stretched so far in both directions that it wasn't unusual to see a 15-year-old mother proudly carrying her first newborn, followed closely by a 45-year-old woman in the same situation. In evolutionary terms, the image was no less than stunning, but hardly anyone would have noticed it. After all, in 1999, the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen were still fighting it out at the top of the charts as 50-year-old Boomers and their kids both snapped up their albums.

Even so, very few people realized that these clear signs of "time shifting" and "age bending" were merely a prelude of things to come. Of course, the Baby Boom generation played a pivotal role in this story. Shortly after they burst on the scene after World War II, the Boomers pioneered dramatic changes in each stage of life as they passed through it--from practically "creating" the concept of the modem teenager to trailblazing the challenging path of the two-career family to soundly rejecting the biological limits of menopause--with a little help from modern biotechnology.

After all this, it was common wisdom that the Boomers would redefine what it meant to grow old. Little did we know, however, that they had their greatest trick of all saved up for last. In close conspiracy with their offspring--the upbeat millennial generation--the Boomers not only redefined the later stages of life; they recreated the very idea of the life cycle itself. Here's how it happened. The foundation was laid by the most primal of forces: the increasing ability of people to exert ever-greater control over the processes of birth and death. Today, the average life expectancy of Americans is pushing 90 years for women and 85 for men--hardly the stuff of science fiction, perhaps, but a stunning gain of more than a decade of life in just a quarter-century. One in five people make it to their 100th birthday party today--and that number is rising.
But technology changes fast, while people change slowly. These changes took a long time to wind their way through the collective psyche. We would never approach our lives in the same way again.” See original article for more on this scenario.

American Consumers in 2025: Three Scenarios (Part 3).
Author: Gray Knight, Journal of Advertising Research, Nov/Dec 99, Vol 39 Issue 6, p 71, 8p, 3 charts.

A continuation of the article above. Outlines three scenarios of American consumers in 2025.
Scenario 3: Susan Cohen, 1990s Child – Detroit, Michigan, March 2025. (For Scenario 1. Li Ping’s Story – Orlando, Florida, February 2025, see summary above; for Scenario 2: American Consumers in 2025, see summary above). Susan Cohen stared at her monitor screen as though it might suddenly jump up and make a suggestion on its own. "Let's see," she said, "how can I get 34 hours into a 24-hour day?" "That is illogical, Susan. You are suggesting a task that is by the parameters of its definition impossible. If you insist on pursuing such activities, I'm afraid I can't possibly be expected to help you," the voice-activated screen said. "Sorry, sorry," Susan said. She had been born in 1991 and was 25 before full human-computer verbal interface had become common. It still struck her as strange that she could actually engage in conversations with a screen instead of just talking to it. But it turned out Ray Kurzweil was right back in 1999 when he predicted that a $1,000 computer would be essentially as smart as a human by 2019. (Actually the breakthrough had come in 2017 but most people forgave Kurzweil a few months here or there.)

Of course, her daughter found it strange that her mother found the whole process of human/machine interface strange at all. Born after "The Kurzweil Effect" became a reality, young Susan increasingly found it difficult to relate to her mother and grandmother. Intergenerational strain was the least of Susan's problems. As a single woman with MGDs (or multiple generational dependents) Susan found it difficult to keep up with the basics of life. Her mother constantly told stories of the joy of going to the grocery store and actually playing hide and seek with that night's dinner, but Susan, who remembered her mother chasing from store to store and cursing every minute she stood in line, viewed such talk as evidence of either early onset of Alzheimer's/Dementia or just another attempt to justify her increasing reluctance to fully participate in life.

For Susan, shopping was both easier and more difficult than it was in her childhood. The basics of life were essentially all taken care of. Thanks to embedded technology in her kitchen, laundry area, and pantry those products that weren't on CHR (continuous household replenishment) essentially ordered themselves whenever they ran low. CHR products, including paper goods, personal toiletries, and pet food, arrived like clockwork two or three days before they were needed. Even the accounting for the transaction was handled in a transparent way. Every payday a certain percentage of Susan's check was forwarded to Cybergrocer. Orders were then debited from the account, and if Susan, Jr., managed to break the encryption codes (which she did on a frequent basis to order more ice cream), Cybergrocer extended a limited amount of credit.” For more on this scenario, see original article.

Artifact Projections from 2005.
Author: Kevin Kelly, Philips Website. URL: www.philips.com/design/vof/.

In the past, Philips Company has had some global successes in innovation (CDs) and some terrific flops (CD-i). If the company learned anything, it was that “social trends and cultural preferences are as important to inventions as technological advances.” The company assembled a team of sociologists, graphic designers, cultural anthropologists, engineers, filmmakers, ergonomists, and futurists to develop an abstract framework of cultural and technological trends. The team probed such intangibles as our shifting sense of time, multiple identities on the Web, nature awareness, and browsing patterns. From this profile, together with a sense of technical options, Philips came up with more than 300 scenarios, or short stories, about future products and services. From those 300, Philips compressed the possibilities to 60 clearly defined but interlocking concepts, which it crafted into a set of actual models.

The company took these models, immersed them in real environments, and made a video "commercial" about each, including how the proto-gizmos interacted with each other. For more on the actual scenarios and this project see www.philips.com/design /vof/.

The Future Paradigm for Socio-Economics: Three Visions.
Author: Richard Hattwick, Journal of Socio-Economics, 1999, Vol. 28 Issue 4, p 511, 22p, 2 charts.

Presents visions of three different paradigms that might define the socio-economics of the future. This was the result of a three-day conference held by The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In this paper, the three paradigms for Socio-Economics (SE) are envisioned as being nested rather than adjacent or overlapping.

Vision 1: "Psychological Socio-Economics" (PSE): “In this vision SE retains most of what is currently found in mainstream academic economics but replaces the assumption of economic man with the richer concept of psychological economic man. The full body of academic psychology is made a part of the field of study. However, this version ignores significant portions of the knowledge base found in transpersonal psychology and clinical psychology, just as academic departments of psychology tend to pay less attention to them. An excellent recent survey of the potential content of this vision is found in Hugh Schwartz' recent book Rationality Gone Awry? (Schwartz, 1998). Peter Earl's earlier survey also spotlights much of the content that would fit here (Earl, 1988).”

Vision 2: "Sociological Socio-Economics." “This case incorporates all of the first vision, but adds a strong emphasis on issues of equity, justice and community as well as a focus on social institutions and their impact on the economy. This vision brings a large amount of the discipline of sociology into the paradigm. It is tempting to suggest that the likely future content of this vision is summarized by Amitai Etzioni's The Moral Dimension (1988), his The New Golden Rule (1996), and his Essays in Socio-Economics (1999). However, Etzioni's writings do pick up some of the important additional features introduced by the third vision, so his work cannot be fully captured by Vision 2.”

Vision 3: "Humanistic Socio-Economics" (HSE) or "Humanistic and Holistic Socio-Economics." “In this vision a large number of the issues dealt with in the humanities and in biology are incorporated into the paradigm. History and even spiritual matters also become legitimate topics of Socio-Economics analysis. History is important because it is needed for the study of evolution and dissolution. The spiritual-self help literature is useful because it helps us understand the images or mental models underlying human behavior in various historical contexts. Books that come reasonably close to illustrating this approach are Robert Solo's Economic Organizations and Social Systems (Solo, 1967) and Manuel Castells' three volume work entitled The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Castells, 1996, 1997, 1998).” See article for background, methodology, modeling.

The Roaring Zeros – Wealth in 2020.
Author: Kelly Kevin, Fortune, Sept. 1999.

The good news is you'll be a millionaire soon. The bad news is, so will everybody else. No bubble, no crash; instead, a decade or more of continued good times. What if the Dow doesn't fall to 3,000, but zooms to 30,000 in four years? Scenarios are all about “what ifs”. What if we are just at the beginning of the beginning of a long wave of ultraprosperity? Picture 20 more years of full employment, continued stock-market highs, and improving living standards. Two more decades of inventions as disruptive as cell phones, mammal cloning, and the Web.

Wealth in 2010: “The market fluctuates daily, but by 2010, the Dow will soar past the 50,000 mark. In 2020 the economy, for the first time, reflects four forces at once: demographic peak - the largest, best-educated, most prosperous generation that has ever lived is entering its peak years of productivity, earning, and spending; technology rush - the largest deployment of novel products and services, labor-saving machines, and life-changing techniques; financial revolution - money itself is undergoing a revolution. The velocity of money - how often it changes hands – continues to increase; global openness - the spread of democracy, open markets, freedom of speech, and consumer choice around the globe accelerates.”

Fast Forward to 2020: The Dow at 100,000: “After two decades of ultraprosperity, the average American household's income is $150,000, but milk still costs only about $2.50 a gallon. Web-enabled TVs are free if you commit to watching them, but camping permits for Yellowstone cost $1,000. Almost everyone working has signed up for a job that does not exist (at the moment); most workers have more than one business card, more than one source of income. Hard-hat workers are paid as much as Web designers, and plumbers charge more for house calls than doctors. For the educated, the income gap narrows. Indeed, labor is in such short supply that corporations "hire" high school grads, and then pay for their four-year college education before they begin work. What the rich have in the year 2000, the rest have in 2020: personal chefs, stay-at-home moms, six-month sabbaticals. The personal private foundation has become the status symbol of wealth. People magazine features its annual list of the world's most charitable donors. Although tax rates have lowered, the amount of money flowing into state and federal budgets is awesome. Social Security has ample funds, and hundreds of thousands of schools, hospitals, and libraries have newly opened. Ambitious, large-scale public works are all the rage; there's a scandal over whose corporate logos appear on the space suits of the first manned mission to Mars. The majority of Americans are heavily invested in the stock market, so market quotes are as ubiquitous as pop music. The abundance of cheap appliances and gadgets has devalued possessions. The most affluent consumers boast of having less of this or that, but in the end they spend a larger percentage of their income on services and products that attempt to define their identity. In the age of ultraprosperity, it's easy to make a dollar, but hard to make a difference.
Indeed, money gets dull quickly, and that becomes the greatest challenge in the age of ultraprosperity - to make money mean something, or to find meaning outside of money. If we handle prosperity properly, it should focus our attention on the other ingredients of wealth: friendships, relationships, values, character, charity, justice, and thinking about the long-term future. What better use of prosperity than to prepare the wealth of seven generations hence? Whether in fact we'll be responsible with our prosperity in 20 years is too hard to predict. But here, in some detail, are a variety of consequences that seem possible, should this ultraprosperity happen.” See article for full scenario.

The Global Corporation Becomes the Leaderless Corporation.
Author: Byrne John A, Business Week, 08/23/99. Issue 3644, p88, 3p, 1c. Section: 21 Ideas for the 21st Century

The trailblazing corporate superstar will become a thing of the past. And follow-the-leader is a game companies will no longer play. The path to success will be paved by teams made up of the best and the brightest, with their egos checked at the door. Success will belong to companies that are leaderless--or, to be more precise, companies whose leadership is so widely shared that they resemble beehives, ant colonies, or schools of fish. The Leaderless Corporation: “Companies increasingly adopt work groups with no designated leader. The trend intensifies - future generations of people getting to the top with more team experience--and being more willing to use it once they get there.' More and more, CEOs like Cisco empower those directly under the top with greater autonomy, because the CEO can't possibly keep up with every detail of the work. In the 21st century, the all-powerful CEO may not be powerful at all. Companies that thrive will be ``led'' by people who understand that in business, as in nature, no one person can ever really be in control.”

Future Marketplace: Consumer Heaven?
Author: Jennings Lane, Futurist Nov/Dec 97, Vol. 31 Issue 6, p9, 3p.

Describes the society foreseen by Edith Weiner and Arnold Brown where emotion and motility are the society's dominant characteristics. His article outlines the types of jobs seen in the future; how income is spent; how products and services will reach customers.

Future Marketplace: Consumer Heaven? – Witness Rise of the “Emotile” Society. “Emotion (a heightened concern for personal well-being) and motility (fast movement and rapid change) will be future society's dominant characteristics. This is driven by: (1) Work: Where will tomorrow's jobs be? People will increasingly opt to become service providers (guides to information sources, personal consultants, and freelance specialists) rather than pursue traditional roles as long-term salaried employees. This is partly because growing market instability in the Emotile Era will make old concepts like job security and company loyalty impractical and partly because workers' own focus on "personal well-being" will make them less willing to commit themselves to long-term relationships of any kind-including those with employers. (2) Markets: How will people spend their incomes? The key word is "edutainment." Tomorrow's products must not only do their jobs well, they must aggressively draw customer's attention. And (3) Methods: How will products and services reach customers? Their answers are both suggestive and unsettling. Growing computerization will lead to major changes in how goods and services are produced, advertised, selected, and delivered. High-speed communications could make currency trading and other information-dependent transactions too fast for the human brain and even make wealth itself less tangible. "Embedded systems" of built-in computer chips will make consumer products of all kinds, from cars to vacuum cleaners, able to control their own performance in detail and even communicate with others (perhaps automatically summoning a technician on sensing that some component is about to break down). Computerized manufacturing methods will make personalized products as affordable as mass produced items. As a result, there will be fewer stores stocking "ready-made" consumer goods. Instead, customers will select from simulations of many styles and models that are modified to their exact specifications in advance and delivered to them as needed.”

Opportunities in the Emotile Era: “Health care, genetic engineering, preventive medicine, anti-aging foods, "cosmeceuticals"; brain mapping; cosmetic surgery; rehabilitation; diet and nutrition; exercise spas; memory enhancers; biosensors; sensory augmentations; sunscreens; insurance; food and water monitoring, will experience enormous growth. Personal services: Vacation planners, personal entertainment programmers, personal editors, personal home organizers, personal beauty specialists, personal pet companions, personal wardrobe consultants, educational consultants and counselors. Financial security: Services and programs for retirement planning, unemployment financing, career retraining; services aimed at the financial needs of single women, including widows and divorcees; long-term care programs for the elderly. Personal security and safety: Monitoring and sensing services, protection services and devices, private communities, private education, encryption and espionage equipment, paramilitary services, environmental cleanup companies. Religion and spirituality: Scriptures (including interpretation and enactments), spiritual fiction, faith and emotional healing, guidance in ethics, schools of philosophy, cults, ethnic apparel, search for "self," human-rights activism, stewardship activities, marriages of Eastern and Western thought, survival leisure and travel, 12-step programs and support groups.”

Manufacturing in 2020.
Author: Morley Richard E., Book Review: 2020 Foresight Fortune 11/08/99.

Manufacturing's future includes adaptive software, village factories--and humans in control.
The Technology Machine: How Manufacturing Will Work in the Year 2020: includes adaptive software, village factories--and humans in control. Fifty years into the computer revolution, they tell us, manufacturing's transformation from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age is only now taking effect. Factories run increasingly on information in the form of embedded silicon and software. This potent combination is evolving toward the Technology Machine, the authors' name for the factory of tomorrow, in which "intelligent systems will supplement human management." The Technology Machine's software, they say, will include complex adaptive systems that "will cease to be a problem." Software no longer a problem? That prediction alone is bound to bring a smile to many a plant manager.

The authors delve into today's chaotic battle between suppliers of costly, large-scale enterprise resource planning systems and upstarts trying to exploit those systems by adding capabilities such as advanced planning and scheduling. From this chaos, predict Morley and Moody, will emerge software to span the enterprise and its suppliers. It's not impossible. Innovators like Bill Fulkerson of Deere & Co. have put to work so-called genetic algorithms—Deere can now automatically schedule production for any of more than six million combinations of options on a seed planter ordered by a customer. As use of such systems spreads, predict the authors, the Technology Machine will take on attributes of an evolving biological organism.

The other dramatic change Moody and Morley forecast is a return of the village factory. "Everything will be produced in small, fast replication centers" that will be controlled via the Internet. "Imagine pulling up at your local Home Depot and ordering a Caribbean-blue Jacuzzi. In less than the time it would take to pick out ceramic tiles and fixtures, the tub would be molded and ready for pickup at the [local production] cell." Is this notion of reviving the village factory nostalgia or Nostradamus? Probably a bit of both. The Jacuzzi could happen. But your car assembled at your dealer? That strains credulity.

Tomorrow's best factories, say Morley and Moody, will be more like quiet, clean-room labs than clanking assembly plants. Where the experts to staff and manage them will come from is a major question. The authors rightly bemoan the lack of university training of manufacturing specialists. But they see a bright future in which humans will control the Technology Machine and not the other way around.”

Global Scenarios.
Author: The Forbes Group, Island Press, 1998.

The Forbes Group analyzed an underlying assumption of three global scenarios impacting capitalism and economies worldwide. Lack of faith in government and serious declines in voter participation as in the US during the nineties, leads to government dominated by special interests that tend to further alienate voters. It is generally felt that the old and familiar institutional frameworks that held the world together after World War II are not up to the task of managing the “triple revolution” that is changing the world: technological revolution that is transforming the world into an information society; an economic revolution, as communism and managed economies give way to increasingly unfettered capitalism; and a market-driven world, and a political revolution, replacing dictatorships of the right and the left with young democracies. The joint impact has shattered the institutional framework of the world forever.

Scenario 1: Institutional Decay: “The bureaucratic desire for self-preservation prevents reform. Without reform, institutions become overwhelmed worldwide. Existing institutions, though weakened, have enough political strength to derail most reform efforts. Resistance hardens around the limited self-interest of the institutions themselves and those who are dependent on them. This response is not sustainable in the long run, however, and leads eventually to institutional collapse and a power vacuum in society. This slow rot is similar to the process that produced the final collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism. Unable to accept their own limitations and failures and change with the times, the Communist parties adopted a siege mentality that led to their costly and sometimes bloody destruction.” (Did the capitalists get the answer right or did both schools get the question wrong?)…”

Scenario 2: Baling Wire and Chewing Gum: “This scenario assumes that the self-preservation instincts of western institutions result in some constructive responses to the radical changes by the turn of the century. This happens because western governments have a tradition of at least pretending to respond to popular concerns. But these reforms are concessions grudgingly made only to assure the preservation of the institutions, not to actually solve the problems. Under this scenario, change is superficial and shallow, the proverbial rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic. Some individual institutions may indeed disappear under this scenario. For example, the Conservative parties in Canada and Britain or the Democratic Party in the U.S. might ultimately follow the Communist parties of Eastern Europe into the ash bin of history, but national party structures remain the prevailing form of political organization. To defend national sovereignty while appearing to respond to globalized issues, weak international institutions such as the World Trade Organization or the UN are reorganized but essentially preserved in their current form...”

Scenario 3: Creative Destruction: “ The final scenario assumes that early 20th Century economist Joseph Schumpeter was right. Every product, market, industry, nation or institution moves through a life cycle of creation, growth, destruction and replacement. Today's institutions are either circumvented or replaced by new institutions more able to develop emerging technologies and adapt to changing political climates. There are many parallels for what is happening. Factories replaced cottage industries. Farm machinery brought corporate farming and the transformation of the United States from a rural to an urban society. The civil rights movement and major social and economic change led to the transformation of the Old South from a Democratic to a Republican stronghold. World War II brought the end of worldwide colonial empires…” (Are the rapid changes in global communications, information management, government and trade as significant? Maybe.)

World Boom Ahead: Why Business and Consumers Will Prosper.
Author: Knight Kiplinger, Kiplinger Books ISBN: 0938721550 October, 1998.

In “World Boom Ahead,” Kiplinger provides a positive vision of the global economy of the future. His belief in a steadily improving human condition and belief that a dramatic improvement in living standards lies just ahead is a bright spot since he writes so plausibly. He believes that intelligent organizations can navigate through turbulent times and the accelerating pace of change. In terms of change, 1997 marked the year that would define the millennium. In that one year, the world was treated to an amazing array of developments in technology, world affairs, and business that in an earlier time, would have constituted a whole decade of change, but crammed into a year: near-collapse of Asian economies followed by expensive international rescue; western corporate mega-mergers and invasion of the east; Indian and Pakistani nuclear testing and mounting belligerence; rebirth of U.S. antitrust police; new miracle drugs; impact of Galaxy IV satellite malfunction worldwide; for-profit venture to decipher the human genome in competition with government; the reality of cybersabotage on every level. Kiplinger points to the wisdom of scenarios, as the following all contain elements of plausibility and are set against his positive vision as a way to gauge the contrasts and work toward avoiding these worlds:

Scenario 1. Severe Overcapacity and Deflation: “The growth in world manufacturing capacity will be so great, especially in the developing nations, that even rising consumer demand cannot possibly keep up. This will lead to aggressive dumping of exports, price cutting, the raising of trade barriers, general deflation, shrinking output worldwide and declining real wages, especially in the advanced nations...”

Scenario 2. “Hot Money” Chaos: “Uncontrollable flows of capital will surge in and out of world economies, especially emerging markets, destabilizing currencies and causing wild swings in production and living standards. Currency and stock speculation will run amok. A series of serious national and regional recessions will infect the entire global economy, causing worldwide slumps of long duration. The rescue resources of the advanced nations, funneled through the International Monetary Fund, will not be sufficient to shore up all the economies in need of help at one time...”

Scenario 3. Burdensome Aging Populations: “About 15 or 20 years from now, the advanced nations, with their low or negative population growth (including even China by then), will be groaning under the social-service expenses of their aging populations. A mass of retirees will have to be supported by a proportionately smaller group of workers, pushing taxes up and diverting economic resources from investment to consumption. What’s more, stock markets will decline as seniors cash out to cover their living expenses...”

Scenario 4. The Malthusian Nightmare: “ Soaring populations in today’s “Third World” will outstrip the world economy’s capacity to support them with food, water, fuel and jobs. This will lead inexorably to resource depletion and soaring prices, famine, out-of-control urbanization, environmental degradation and attempted mass migrations of poor people into advanced nations, where they will be unwanted but sometimes needed to fill labor shortages...”

Scenario 5. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: “The biblical scourges—famine, plague, conquest and war—will recur as they have throughout history, but in more-virulent forms. Populations will be decimated and living standards compromised by antibiotic-resistant bacterial and viral infections, some of them trans-species infections like AIDS. Raging nationalism, ethnic and racial conflict will be as devastating to life and material well being as communism and fascism were in this century. New kinds of tyrannies will subjugate large portions of the globe. Warfare will be made all the more terrible by the use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons…”

The Silver Lining of Global Imbalances.
Global Economic Forum, The Latest Views of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Economists. http://www.ms.com; headed by Stephen S. Roach, chief-economist and director of Global Economic Analysis, 1999.

Stephen Roach, chief economist and director of Global Economic Analysis, writes the latest views of the economists at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, one of the most prestigious financial firms in the world. With America the sole locomotive of a dire world, there has been concern about a destabilizing endgame dominated by the US balance of payments crisis (while Japan and Europe enjoy a surplus). Such disparities in balance of payments among the world’s three major trading blocs plus the US emerging as the world’ s importer of first and last resort makes great fodder for some interesting global economic scenarios because of the dichotomy - a domestically driven US economy that has spawned externally driven growth elsewhere in the world. Stephen S. Roach The key question is, is such an outcome sustainable? Is the world fed up with ever-widening current account imbalances? Morgan Stanley proposes a scenario of global healing.

Scenario: Global Healing: “The dollar continues to hold, rising against the yen but falling a bit against the Euro at the turn of the century. Currencies are really just the measure of the degree of attractiveness of one asset against another. With Japan in a liquidity trap and the new European Central Bank having to take some time to earn credibility, threats to the dollar are unlikely to happen. The global imbalance may in fact, have a silver lining, riding a wave of global healing - a world that is willing to wait it out. It would be a transition to a more synchronous outcome for the world economy at the turn of the century, and likely to be a major fundamental supportive force for the next decade. In “Global Healing” the American consumer will then cease functioning as the world's sole surviving locomotive and global current-account imbalances will begin to move back toward a more stable alignment. History will undoubtedly treat the gaping US balance-of-payments deficit quite kindly. The international shortfall could well turn out to be America's ultimate bill for financing the recovery of a world in crisis. But this same "external leakage" -- which kept a 4.3% increase in 1998 real GDP from turning into a 5.5% gain -- has also served the useful purpose of preventing a serious overheating of the US economy…”

Two Scenarios for 21st Century Organizations.
Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 1997.

In 1994, the Sloan School of Management at MIT inaugurated a multi-year research and education initiative called "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century." One of the key activities for this initiative has been developing a series of coherent scenarios of possible future organizations. Scenario planning was chosen as one of the key approaches for the 21st Century Initiative, since it provides a structured methodology for thinking about the environment in which future organizations will operate and the likely form those organizations might take. This paper describes the results of the scenario development activity to date and suggests directions for future work. Some areas of driving forces discussed were: technology, human aspirations, globalization, complexity, and demographics (in particular, center of gravity of world population and wealth shifting away from North America and Europe). An uncertainty that emerged in the discussions of the Working Group most often was over the size of individual companies. Will organizations in the future be much larger, much smaller, or not very different in size from the organizations we know today?

Scenario 1. Small Companies, Large Networks (focus on how work might be organized in ever-shifting networks of small firms and individual contractors): “Imagine that it is now the year 2015. A world of fluid networks for organizing tasks and more stable communities. The corporation of the late twentieth century was just a transitional form; but in 2010, nearly every task if performed by autonomous teams of one to ten people, set up as independent contractors or small firms, linked by networks. Work is ad hoc. Automobiles, for example, would be designed by a coalition of hundreds of competing firms that are autonomous and self-organizing. Authority is not so much through command channels as teams, especially in areas demanding innovation. Since the contractual life would be lonely, independent organizations are used for social networking, learning, reputation-building and income smoothing...”

Scenario 2. Virtual Countries: (large vertically- and horizontally integrated firms; pervasive role of firms in employees’ lives; employee ownership of firms; employee selection of firm management). “Imagine that it is now the year 2015 … The huge global conglomerate has emerged as the dominant way of organizing work from cradle-to-grave by providing income and job security, health care, education, social networking, and a sense of self-identity. Organizations are as powerful and influential as nations. People are defined not so much by geographic location as they are by the company. Employees own the firm in which they work; just as the modern nation states ultimately turned to democracy, many of the corporations of the twenty first century have moved to representative governance…”

The World Economy in 2020.
OECD Observer, April 1998.

Using a computable ‘general equilibrium’ model known as the ‘Linkages’ model, the OECD Development Centre designed two contrasting visions of the world economy to the year 2020. The models incorporated a fundamental high-growth future verses a low-growth future relative to the effects on trade, production and employment patterns, on food and energy markets, and on the global environment. The most significant trends seen is the flourishing two-way trade between OECD countries and non-OECD countries and the increasing capital flows to non-member countries such as Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Russia, known as the “Big Five” - already becoming substantial importers. Both projections assume that basic resources (population and natural resources) and behavioral relationships will remain broadly similar in the future.

Scenario 1. High Growth Worldwide: “The vision presented here is an optimistic one, and if realized, could provide the means to tackle current and future challenges—not least poverty, environmental degradation and aging. Trade opportunities expand as the liberalization of trade, falling transport and communications costs, and increased international mobility of capital could work together to bring about a further opening-up of economies. The benefits from the global mobility of capital accrue from a more efficient allocation of world savings to the most productive investment opportunities and the possibility of smoothing consumption by borrowing or diversifying abroad. Under the assumption of high growth, world agricultural production would expand at roughly the same rate over the next 25 years as over the past two decades, with productivity improvements contributing most of it. However, one of the major worries raised by the high growth projection is its environmental implications…”

Scenario 2. Low Growth Worldwide: “The OECD vision of this world is not so much an antithesis to positive structural forces that spawn high growth, successful scenarios, but rather, slower progress with policy reform in OECD and non-OECD countries - with less trade liberalization and will less rapid advance on domestic policy reforms, not least in fiscal consolidation, removal of domestic subsidies and structural policies - could result in lower (perhaps much lower) growth rates. The assumption of the “virtuous circle” of growth is very strong in both scenarios, as the number of forces driving developments in the world economy, chief among them demographic change, technological innovation, international trade and financial liberalization - how these forces intertwine has prime importance to providing a framework for long-term planning in OECD economies…”

The Futures of American Business.
Author: Peter Schwartz, Lawrence Wilkinson, Sean Baenen. Journal of Business Strategy, Nov-Dec 1997 v18 n6 p40(9).

By considering possible future developments that stretch the bounds of plausibility, business organizations are better prepared to deal with the uncertainty and unconventional risk that may come their way. Four highly diverse scenarios for American business are presented to help companies plan for an uncertain future. Every scenario is accompanied by a list of what companies can do to prepare.

Scenario 1. Changeover and the Long Run: Predicts business turbulence and the rise of flexible enterprises. A world characterized by * Ten more years of turbulence as the world economy continues its transition; * Flexible enterprises playing in fluid markets "December 2007: Remember how confusing things used to be for businesses in the 1990s? The pace of change was outlandish. Technologies continually remade themselves, markets around the world continually redefined themselves, and industries continually reshaped themselves. No organization was immune from radical change, and there certainly wasn't much in the way of sure bets. Well, nothing's changed. Those who found the 1990s a confusing time have found the early years of the 21st century to be no different. The world continues down a path of economic and social transition that will determine the way all of us work, live, and play for the next several decades. Problem is, nobody is sure when that decision is scheduled be handed down, and there are still no clear indications of who will be making it. Every time Microsoft, for instance, seems to have its thumb over the computing industry, something else comes along to change the rules of the game…"

Scenario 2. The Long Boom: "A world characterized by * Two decades of sensational economic growth fueled by infrastructure growth and consolidation; * Organizations competing in truly open markets December 2007: Wired, the world's leading news magazine, recently published its yearly "Numb Minds Awards." With the Dow Jones industrial average crossing the 18,000 mark in September this year, the awards were given to various pundits that had a decade prior predicted the decline of America - indeed, of Western Civilization. It seems funny, almost. In the 1980s and 1990s, we heard endless diatribes about how the world was falling apart and how much more difficult our children's lives would be from our own. So said many poets, politicians, and scholars. In fact, the turbulent '90s were the first stages of an economic boom that has lasted longer than any in history. And it shows no signs of ending. The world's economy has essentially doubled during the past 12 years, bringing an increase in prosperity for billions of people. Today, we are riding the waves of what many believe to be at least a 25-year run of a greatly expanding economy…"

Scenario 3. Global Palisades: A world characterized by * Highly fragmented world markets; * Widespread scaling back of formerly multinational companies December 2007: Many of those who received their masters of business administration degrees in the 1970s found themselves trained for a business world that for all intents and purposes no longer existed by the time they were entering the ranks of senior management in the 1990s. Business schools, which needed to update their curricula to reflect the new era of the networked economy and global markets, gradually retooled to churn out the new breed of executive for the 21st century. It wasn't long before this millennial elite also found themselves operating in a world that was much different from the one for which they had prepared. After almost two decades of hope, the digital revolution never came. Throughout the 1990s and early part of this century, it was one new innovation after another with no sign of the lock-in that so many had hoped would finally come. Each new machine or protocol was expensive and obsoleting, and none of them worked together. By 2003, the Internet seemed to have no real nutritional value, and advanced networking technologies were seen as equipment that could transmit money from corporate coffers to vendors but could do very little to change your life. All of the squabbling over standards and shareholder return in the '90s and early years of this century made technology complex and just plain expensive - to develop, to acquire, and to deploy.

Scenario 4. Wild Card Scenario: Wet, Arctic, and Blue: A world characterized by * Fundamental shifting in the global climate; * An incipient change in the locus of industry and tenor of world politics. Wild Cards are those seemingly sudden developments that have the power to change the outcome of the entire game beyond all recognition. Because Wild Cards are so uncertain, it's not practical to count on their arrival. As such, they are not futures we plan for, but against. During the 20th century, and particularly the past 20 years, Wild Cards (the quick fall of communism, increasing number of natural disasters, and the rise of the Internet and its current concomitant economy, to name a few) seem to have been occurring with increasing frequency and increasing importance. December 2007: The world today is subdued by a profound global climate that can essentially no longer be predicted. What most of us believed was simply another inconvenient El Nino the winter of 1997-98 turned out to be the precursor of large-scale climate shifts that have left weather patterns nearly impossible to forecast from year to year. The only thing we do know is that it will never be the same.

New Organizational Forms: The Strategic Relevance of Future Psychological Contract Scenarios.
Author: Paul Sparrow; Cary L Cooper, Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, page 356-371, December 1998.

This paper discusses a number of processes and transitions that have dominated the world of work in the 1990s, namely downsizing, restructuring, and privatization. It builds on the work-leisure literature of the 1960s and psychological contract literature of the 1990s to identify four possible future scenarios for employees:

Scenario 1. The Self-Correcting Animal: “Equity theory posits that the main individual response to an inequitable employment relationship is job dissatisfaction and noncompliant behavior, i.e., employees re-establish feelings of equity by altering either their inputs or their outcomes. Low job insecurity has generally been found to be positively associated with these two outcomes, although the relationship can be moderated by factors such as the level of work-based support and the type of occupation. Those who have always worked in jobs that are insecure have less psychological attachment to lose. We should expect to see some significant changes in outcome measures. However, researchers taking this first stance note that the little empirical research that has directly tested predictions about the psychological contract indicates that people operate as self-correcting animals. This position states that the contract is more stable than many make out, breach of contract is overstated, work and leisure activities can compensate for each other, and the contract therefore operates as an influenceable state of mind…”

Scenario 2. Reconfigured Labor Market Diversity: “In this scenario, changes in the psychological contract are again assumed to be relatively low. We still witness high levels of continuity in behavior and relatively low breach, and any observed changes in behavior also prove to be temporary. However, the contract is assumed to operate more as a trait, not as an influenceable state of mind. Moreover, work and leisure dynamics spill over into each other, and some people therefore pursue high work intensity or variety patterns, while others seek the opposite. Under this scenario individual difference is once more an important predictor of behavior. Continuity is again evident. The view of downsizing as refocusing on the need to reveal, analyze, and predict current patterns of diversity in employee behavior is merely the continuation of a long tradition. Guest (in press) drew attention to the work in the late 1960s (Sofer, 1970; Williams & Guest, 1971) and the 1980s (Scase & Goffee, 1989) on diverse work orientations and career anchors, and the desire of many managers to reduce or control their level of engagement in the employment relationship.

Understanding the new patterns of behavior will lead to a redrawing of the current contours of internal labour market behavior. The challenge is to reveal the new contract-as-trait patterns, because they will form a new basis for diversity of behavior within organizations. Generational patterns might be expected, whereby a small group of individuals from the babyboomer generation (now middle-aged) and those nearing retirement feels betrayed by the decline in employment security and shows an immediate negative adjustment. Younger employees may not feel the need to make much correction in their behavior. Although this diversity might pattern across generations, in reality it may be more subtly linked to differences in personality, value, and internal career anchors.

Scenario 3. Limited Capacity: third scenario assumes that there are limits to human capacity that may be breached by changes in the intensity of employment. The main parameters of this scenario are not particularly new. In 1994, the U.S. Human Resource Planning Society set up the State-of-the-Art (SOTA) Council to consider what the main change drivers and challenges would be at the millennium (Eichinger & Ulrich, 1995). Not surprisingly, it predicted that tensions would be caused by competitive changes associated with globalization and internationalization. At that time, the requirements of flexibility demanded structural change (rationalization, downsizing, and delayering) and horizontal management techniques. SOTA predicted the need to build trust and confidence (so individuals would believe what managers say) and the need for organizations to become "boundaryless" (with information and ideas moving across hierarchical, horizontal, and external boundaries effortlessly). The lack of flexibility was seen as a problem of employees having limited capacity for change. The limited capacity scenario suggests that new forms of work will affect the average level of well being. This concern is reflected in recent research examining the link between the effects of work hours and health. Evidence that many employees are now working longer hours to cope with increasing workloads, job insecurity, and pressures for improved performance is clear, and the success of many atypical forms of employment in terms of their impact on productivity and employee well-being has yet to be fully evaluated (Wallace & Greenwood, 1995).

Scenario 4. New Rules of the Game Scenario: the fourth scenario, the change in motivational drivers becomes permanent. The contract is found to be a state and not a trait. It is therefore amenable to change and influence, and the changes experienced are more radical. In particular, changes in organizational form have reconfigured jobs, and the roles of several job characteristics that were previously shown to be important in core OB relationships are now altered. New organizational forms have resulted in new job attributes such as physical working conditions, levels of vigilance, shift work, long hours, new technology, responsibility levels, accountability, time spans of discretion, and degree of autonomy and control. Change may have been more radical than we believe. The new rules of the game scenario assumes that the consequences of this is not only a reweighting of the psychological outcomes associated with these factors but also new and as yet little understood relationships.

Reconfigured jobs create a new context that invalidates previously assumed relationships. That we need to question assumptions more radically is demonstrated in recent examinations of the work-strain relationship. Sparks and Cooper (1997) examined data on over 7,000 employees and observed a decrease in the relevance of two core constructs-job demands and job control (range of decision-making freedom)-in predicting psychological well-being. Factors such as work vigilance and responsibility, which are by-products of the new organizational forms, have increased in importance. Moreover, the impact of all work predictors has become much more situation-specific: Specific factors are important for specific occupations. Linkages that were assumed to exist between work characteristics and psychological outcomes such as work strain may be reconfigured.

A Vision for the World Economy - Openness, Diversity, and Cohesion.
Author: Robert Z. Lawrence, Albert Bressand, Takatoshi Ito. The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 1997.

This book and the project, “Integrating National Economies” focus on the tension between two fundamental features of the world at the end of the twentieth century. First, the world is organized politically into nation-states with sovereign governments. Second, growing economic integration among nations is eroding differences among national economies and undermining their autonomy. As the twentieth century comes to a close, three roads to the economic future lie before economic policymakers: reliance on the historical policies of reducing at-the-border trade barriers, the agenda of shallow integration; harmonizing and reconciling national differences, the agenda of deeper integration; or reversing previous liberalization and reasserting national autonomy. These approaches suggest three scenarios. “In the world of the Invisible Hand, nation-states would maintain open borders for trade and capital but engage in little international coordination. Competition in trade and international capital markets would produce automatic pressures for harmonization. Under an alternative scenario, Global Fragmentation, nations would resurrect protective barriers. Finally, major economies such as the United States or the European Union may impose Imperial Harmonization, under which they would force smaller nations to adopt designated standards and regulations. The most pessimistic of these scenarios is Global Fragmentation. To the extent that it is realized, forces of protectionism and nationalism would undermine the world’s ability to maintain open economies and global cooperation, with costly consequences. Such fragmentation would threaten the prospects of both emerging and developed nations. Emerging nations would back away from the outwardly oriented policies necessary for sustained growth. Developed nations would sacrifice opportunities for economies of scale and growth through specialization. Imperial Harmonization is a less pessimistic vision, but it would increase global political disparities. It would permit only some nations to fully realize the gains from international cooperation and would suppress diversity. A world governed by the Invisible Hand is a more optimistic vision because it would permit national diversity and encourage harmonization through market pressures. Without international governance, however, opportunistic national behavior could be expected, some problems would prove insoluble, and the least fortunate nations would be totally neglected.”

Future Global Capital Shortages - Real Threat or Pure Fiction?
Author: Wolfgang Michalski, Riel Miller and Barrie Stevens, OECD Secretariat, Advisory Unit to the Secretary-General. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1997.

There had been a significant decline in total saving in the OECD area as a whole over the past 30 years. According to the authors, the average gross national savings rate has fallen by about 4 percentage points of GDP. The fall in net saving has been even sharper - from around 15 per cent of net domestic output during the 1960s to its current level of about 7 to 8 per cent. The decline is visible at all levels - national, government, private and household. The fall in saving across Member countries has been paralleled by a general decline in investment rates, more pronounced in net than in gross terms, concentrated largely in the private sector. The authors present a highly plausible worst case scenario of the aged dependency ratio that drives a rising demand for public funds.

Scenario: Rising Demand for Public Funds in OECD Countries: The authors assert that by 2010, public demand for funds rises to high levels in the OECD countries. All other government expenditures remain constant, but social expenditures rise roughly in proportion to the dependency ratio. Old age pension replacement rates are fixed at their 1997 level, so pay-as-you go pension expenditures are exactly proportional to the old age dependency ratio. The increase in public health expenditures is driven by age-specific health costs. “ Microeconomic evidence in Japan and in the United States shows that age-specific health expenditures increase almost exponentially with age, so this part of social expenditures increases even faster than the old age dependency ratio. On the other hand, population aging is accompanied by a decrease in the proportion of children, reducing social expenditures for schools and family transfers. However, this offsetting effect is relatively small, in addition to which the OECD estimates probably exaggerate social expenditures past the year 2010, because they rest on rather high fertility assumptions. The rise in the dependency ratio translates into an increase in the public demand for funds as long as age-specific social expenditures and tax rates remain as they are now.” This is a worst-case scenario in terms of government deficits. The lesson of the scenario is that any forecast of the demand for funds is conditional on public policy changes in reaction to population aging. Spending cuts in entitlements programs, either directly by reducing replacement rates or indirectly by reducing eligibility and tax increases for the working populations, will decrease the demand for funds relative to the worst-case scenario.

Economic Evolution and Structure - The Complexity on the U.S. Economic System.
Author: Frederic L. Pryor. Published 1996.

This book provides an analysis of the economic system in the U.S. In one chapter, the author sketches scenarios of the future of capitalism, relative to the U.S. economy. Pryor approaches the problem in three steps: first, by investigating how the current system is performing and to ask whether the projected performance will be sufficiently poor as to force a change in the economic system; secondly, to explore directly, the sources of systemic change, whether internal or external. For this purpose, the author isolates four key changes: increasing structural complexity, increasing internationalization, decreasing social cohesiveness, and a re-energized “spirit of capitalism”; finally, linking these sources of systemic change to particular scenarios. The author concludes that major changes in the organization and control of production are the most far-reaching system changes that could occur in the coming decades. Three scenarios have some probability of occurring.

Scenario 1. Finance Capitalism. “Third-Party capitalism” provides a label for several different types of capitalism in which institutions, rather than individual owners of the means of production, exercise major decision-making powers in the crucial productive institutions. Finance capitalism represents the most likely form that such a third-part capitalism could take.”

Scenario 2. Atomic Capitalism. “This is the label for an economy where production is carried out in relatively small enterprises and where one type of structural complexity, namely the separation of ownership and control, is reversed. It represents almost the antithesis of finance capitalism.”

Scenario 3. Remodeled Capitalism. “This is the label for an economic system that had adapted to the increasing structural complexity. It reflects an enhanced valuation of human capital through a greater use of skills and a greater education of the labor force. Among other things, production would increasingly shift toward those sectors in which the United States has a comparative advantage.”

An Anticlassical Political-Economic Analysis - A Vision for the Next Century.
Author: Yasusuke Murakami. Stanford University Press, Nov. 1996.

The substance of this book is an attempt to develop a partial theory that the authors call an anticlassical political-economic analysis. Of interest is the author’s use of a biological framework for discussion and presentation of a scenario of a new international system that is rule-based. A Scenario for a New International System: “What would an international system dependent on a rule-based approach be like? The empires of colonialism and the quasi-empires of socialism were clearly grounded on justice-based approaches. What form could liberal democracy between states take? For comparison, let us imagine the extreme case, in which a world-state has emerged and national boundaries have lost their significance. This world-state would perhaps be governed by an “ideal world parliament,” copying a typical parliamentary democracy. In this democracy, everybody would have an equal right to vote, and those who lived in particular regions would not have special privileges (such as the right of veto enjoyed by members of the UN Security Council). In this model the democracy between countries would be the same as the democracy among people.”

The New Capitalism.
Author: William E. Halal. John Wiley & Son. July 1986/486p. Three scenarios of U.S. capitalism scenarios to 2000.

The world is recognizing and affirming the ideals of democracy and free enterprise because they offer the best means for adapting. The best combination is a balance of the two, exemplified in Democratic Free Enterprise, described by the author. Key elements of the new capitalism include: smart growth - combining profitable business with public service; market networks - fluid organizational environments; participative leadership - profit and worker ownership; multiple goals - profit no longer the central principle; and strategic management - issues management at the heart of strategic change. Professor Halal concludes with three scenarios.

Scenario 1.) Corporate America: the Reagen influence to get America back into Laissez faire economics was maintained through the 1990s. By 2000, big companies and multinationals literally reigned. “Fierce competition prevailed for awhile to create a flurry of efficient innovations, but, as the economic transition matured, mergers and acquisitions consolidated most industries into a few large corporations.” Big corporations manage schools and universities because education has become increasingly critical for running a complex technological society.

Scenario 2.) Regulated America: most aspects of life are regulated by government as America returns to an “America that Cares.” This welfare state is a more secure and fairly well administered society, but the promised gains remained illusive. Reforms were made, but only by replacing business mega-corporations with federal bureaucracies.

Scenario 3.) Democratic Free Enterprise America: a major populist movement targets big business, which becomes a major political issue. The role of business is then redefined by a coalition of centrist politicians and business executives. The movement leads to various changes that redefine much of the economic system, such as agreements to automate smokestack industries while providing worker- training on new technologies.

A Visit to Belindia
Author: Frederick Pohl. Chapter from “The World of 2044 - Technological Development and the Future of Society” edited by Charles Sheffield, Marceto Alonso, and Morton A. Kaplan. Paragon House, St. Paul, Minnesota. Global economy scenario to the year 2044.

One of a collection of scenarios from various authors looking to the year 2044. Key trends in A Visit to Belindia include the widening of the have-have not gap, slow growth in the advanced industrial nations and irresponsible government spending. This pessimistic scenario depicts the widening of the have have-not gap worldwide, and the term ‘Belindia’ popularly describes this condition: a small number of well-to-do classes having the same standard of living as in Belgium while the rest of the world lived at a standard similar to India’s in the mid-nineties of the 20th century. Belgium plus India = Belindia.” Belindia is really the whole world now.” The potential of technologies to contribute to economic growth and a higher standard of living stagnated dramatically due to inappropriate government spending on pork barrel projects when there should have been spending on research and development. With such a widening of the have have-not gap at the beginning of the 21st Century, narcotics became the fastest growing industry in the world. With virtually no exploitation of potential technologies to solve environmental problems, by 2044 the ozone layer was almost gone, and throughout the world, a few million lived under protective domes while billions lived unprotected, and, “They didn’t live very well at all.”

The Capitalist World-Economy: Middle Run Prospects.
Author: Immanual Wallerstein, Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance 14:3, July 1989, 279-288. Three scenarios of the world economy to 2050.

Wallerstein traces the capitalist-world economy and, from the perspective of 1989, the world was in the middle of a period of global economic stagflation that could have meant the decline of US power while Japan and Western Europe were improving their positions. Four possible vectors of historical occurrences for the 2000-2050 middle-run period are described, then, “if all four vectors are correctly estimated, three scenarios are possible”:

Scenario 1.) A story of the struggle for hegemony, pitting Japan/US/China against Western Europe/USSR (or parts of the former USSR), results in a world war by 2050. Scenario 2.) Faced with the exhaustion of the present world-system and the fear of nuclear disaster, this is a story about a world system that consciously reorganizes itself into something else. The world recreates a new structure of inegalitarian privilege. Scenario 3.) A story of the anarchic crumbling away of the world system, generating massive experimentation and massive insecurity, until chaos creates a truly new world order that is relatively egalitarian and democratic.

Business NOT as Usual: Rethinking our Individual, Corporate, and Industrial Strategies for Global Competition.
Author: Ian I. Mitroff, San Francisco: Josey-Bass Publishers, April 1987/194p. Four scenarios of U.S. development into the 21st century.

The author discusses business strategy in a changing world. The book concludes with four scenarios of the future of U.S. corporate and industrial development.

Scenario 1.) Continually increasing prosperity without substantial change or dislocation. This most optimistic scenario assumes that past methods of operation are sound and will lead to increasing prosperity in the foreseeable future. There is no need to change the thinking about complex problems or restructure organizations and industries.

Scenario 2.) Continued prosperity with substantial early adjustment. This is also an optimistic scenario but in a very different way. It’s basic premise is a highly adaptive America, where clear signals of the decline of industry are perceived early enough, so that shifts into new patterns are made (for example, less bureaucratic, smaller, more autonomous companies that can compete more effectively).

Scenario 3.) Late and slow recovery after substantial pain. This scenario is optimistic but also in a different way. It predicts that substantial pain will occur before the United States finally makes the changes necessary to compete in a world economy. That is, many more industries will reach “near death” before the wall of resistance that has been built on past successes is broken down, and they realize that radical restructure is critical to survival, let alone prosperity.

Scenario 4.) Catastrophic decline after severe pain. Most pessimistic. Maintains that by the time the pain has become so great that change is clearly needed, it will be too late. Foreign products and competitors will have made such a dent in US domestic markets, not to mention world markets, that the chance of disengaging their stronghold will be extremely difficult.

U.S. Financial Services in the Global Economy: International Competitiveness and Safety and Soundness.
Author: James D. Robinson III, Vital Speeches of the Day, 56:6, 1 Jan 1990, 176-180. Three scenarios of financial services to 2000.

In a speech given by James D. Robinson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American Express Company on the future of the U.S. financial industry, it was concluded that there were three plausible scenarios. Key trends driving the scenarios are: wealth becoming more widely distributed around the world resulting in a truly global economy; the increasing globalization of financial markets; and increasingly, financial markets becoming a guide to economic policy.

Scenario 1.) Creeping Incrementalism: a continuation of the piecemeal, loophole-driven erosion of regulations and the legislative stalemate that had characterized U.S. financial system reform. This is an “extension of the status quo” scenario.

Scenario 2.) Back to the Bunkers: a world of protectionism on all levels. For example, the re-regulation in the U.S. into distinct financial services industries, and internationally, the creation of trade blocs, which is a very fragile kind of security, vulnerable to market forces finding new ways around artificial barriers.

Scenario 3.) A Positive Future: “open markets that land consumer choice, in which all types of financial institutions can compete with adequate rules of consumer protection, fair play, safety and soundness.”

In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: The Political Roots of American Economic Decline.
Author: William S. Dietrich, University Park PA: Penn State Press Oct. 1991/343p. A global economy scenario to 2015.

From the perspective of 1991, the author considers the various angles of a key trend: Japan’s growing technological and economic mastery. From a U.S. point of view, Dietrich writes a hair-raising scenario called “Pax Nippocina”, characterized by American decline and Japanese world leadership. Japan dominates every leading edge industry, and becomes the world’s financial center. Its GNP is twice that of the US, and GNP per capita is four times higher. The Japanese own 40% of US manufacturing assets, as the US (and the EC) is relegated to a third tier nation, relying on East Asian high-tech products. Although Japan has experienced problems in their economy, Japan has the potential to rise again. When looking out beyond the 1990s and to the year 2015 or 2025, “Pax Nippocina” is a plausible consideration.

1990 Ten Year Forecast. Institute for the Future.
Corporate Associates Program, Menlo Park CA: IFTF Feb 1990/237p(8x11’). Three scenarios of the business environment to 2000, 2030, 2050.

“A comprehensive view of change in the business environment, divided into three sections: a core forecast of key driving forces in the 1990s, a center section glimpsing the first 50 years of the 21st Century in three scenarios (2010, 2030, 2050), and a discussion of four major issue clusters (consumers/customers, employees/managers, investors, and government).” Future Survey Annual 1990 This “Ten Year Forecast” suggests that the rising tide of social insecurity among middle-aging baby boomers about their economic situation, health benefits, and debt burden. For 2010, the Institute for the Future forecasted enormous growth in middle-class consumers in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Europe: “By 2010 these areas will have a third of the world’s middle-class consumers, up from 18 percent today.” The “Ten Year Forecast” is proprietary, but there are many excellent forecasts, papers, and reports that can be ordered through the Institute’s homepage at: www.iftf.org.

Wild Cards: Preparing for “The Big One”.
Author: John D. Rockfellow, The Futurist, 28:1, Jan-Feb 1994, 14-19. Three Wild Card scenarios to the year 2000.

Oftentimes a set of scenarios will include a wildcard scenario of an event having a low probability of occurrence, but a very high impact if it does occur. In this article, the author describes three wildcard events from a collaborative report titled, Wild Cards: A Multinational Perspective.

Scenario 1.) Hong Kong Rules China: “In 1997, Great Britain has relinquished control of Hong Kong, but the joke is on China. Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the five special economic zones of mainland China have become the supernovas of the late twentieth century. They have gobbled up the Chinese communist dinosaur and blasted away the possibility of another Tiananmen Square massacre.” By 2000, Hong Kong serves as the main conduit for Chinese exports. Mainland China’s average annual growth rate has stayed constant due to a lack of infrastructure, while Hong Kong’s exports have increased substantially.

Scenario 2.) Europe Goes Regional: by the year 2000, Europe will dismantle the nation-state in favor of strong regional representation in the European Community. The community is still seen as necessary to protect economic and security interests, but the nation-state as an intermediate step in the hierarchy of decision making has been bypassed.

Scenario 3.) The No Carbon Economy: scientists establish that the world’s climate is getting warmer due to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The world experiences more droughts, cyclones, heat waves, etc. Public awareness of the situation grows, bringing with it a greater understanding of the limitations of development based upon abundant and cheap energy.

The Age of Diminished Expectations: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990s.
Author: Paul Krugman, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, Sept 1990/204p. Three near term scenarios on the US economy.

Key trends in the US economy are described: productivity growth, income distribution, unemployment, the trade deficit, inflation, the budget deficit, trade with Japan, finance, debt in the developing countries. From the perspective of 1990, the author concludes with three scenarios of the U.S. economy.

Scenario 1.) Happy Ending: US growth of productivity at 3% a year leads to a general rise in living standards and defuses the problems of trade and budget deficits.

Scenario 2.) Hard Landing: foreign investors loose confidence in the US, and the immediate impact is the fall in the dollar, or the reverse. “If you want to envision a real hard landing, simply imagine that foreigners face a perceived risk that is not alleviated by a lower dollar, such as fears of expropriation. Suppose that the resulting dollar crash follows a period of dollar stability, so there is no cushion to brake the rise in import prices, and we have the bad luck to stumble onto a third oil crisis just as the dollar plunges. Suppose that the US economy is already having an inflation problem when the crisis hits. What you get is a recipe for a truly disastrous hard landing.” This hard landing scenario can be avoided with good policy.

Scenario 3.) Drift: no radical developments or changes. In the 1990s there will be a growing and ever more miserable underclass, while the middle class probably does better. By 2000 unemployment probably will drift down to 4-5%, inflation will creep up to 7%, net foreign claims in the US will be about 20% of GNP, foreign firms will account for 25% of US manufacturing and 45% of banking, an increasingly unified Europe will have a larger GNP than the US; Japan’s GNP will be 80% or more of the US level, and a world economy that is likely to be less unified due to trading blocs will slow the growth of world trade. This scenario is far short of what used to be regarded as success, but it “now looks perfectly acceptable, and might be regarded as a success.”

Long-Term Scenarios of the World Economy to 2015.
Authors: Andre de Jong and Gerrit Zalm (Central Planning Bureau, The Netherlands). Conference on Long-Term Prospects for the World Economy. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Paris OECD, Aug 1992/193p. Four scenarios on the global economy to 2015.

According to the Central Planning Bureau, The Netherlands, many policy makers in government and business base decisions on their perceptions of the future. Three perceptions of the future - equilibrium, coordination, and free market - were discussed at this conference, and were related to various regional developments in economics, natural resources and the environment, along with the interactions among the driving forces to create four alternative scenarios supporting a long-term study of the Dutch economy, with a focus on the world economy.

Scenario 1.) Balanced Growth: emphasis on economic equilibrium and innovation. This is the most optimistic scenario. An annual growth rate of the world economy is more than 3.5%, which is ecologically sustainable and includes all the major regions of the world.

Scenario 2.) Global Crisis: tensions between trading blocs (Japan led bloc is strongest) create a vicious circle of slowing economic growth. This is a “lack of balance” scenario featuring global tension and conflict, slow growth and depression. It examines the damages of ignorance and the challenges of a delayed response to regional and global problems. Drought leads to a worldwide crisis in food supply and global economic recession. How the world may end up in widespread distress with only a possible high cost solution, is examined.

Scenario 3. ) Global Shift: technology is the driving force behind a free market economy. A shift in economic activities takes place from the Atlantic to Pacific basin.

Scenario 4.) European Renaissance: trade blocs slow growth of free market economy. Europe proves to be the best at integrating and expanding its bloc and flourishes. The two most powerful economic blocs in the world are Western Europe and North America. Although they are quite different, both blocks are vulnerable, and their economic performance will have a huge influence on other regions, especially their neighbors.

Long-Term Prospects for the World Economy.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Paris: OECD, Aug. 1992/193p. Nine near term scenarios on the world economy.

A “Forum for the Future” conference hosted by the OECD in Paris, June 1991. This conference brought together key economists and thinkers from around the world, examining the forces that are likely to drive the evolution of the global economy and its major regions to the year 2000 and beyond. In addition to the summary by Michel Andrieu, Wolfgang Michalski, and Barrie Stevens, the conference provided seven additional papers that included scenarios. Long-Term Prospects for the US Economy, by Maurice Ernst and Jimmy W. Wheeler (Hudson Institute) provided three scenarios of the US economy to the year 2000. US trends identified included: defense and discretionary spending; entitlements such as social security and Medicare; special benefits and subsidies, and general revenues.

Scenario 1.) Central Surprise Free Scenario: GNP Growth ranges between 2.3-2.7% through the 1990’s and to the year 2000. No surprises here; it is a “business as usual” scenario.

Scenario 2.) Virtuous Circle Scenario: overall luck was very good; the combination of good management, especially in the industrial sector, and policy yields 3.2% growth.

Scenario 3.) Slow Growth Scenario: only 1.8% growth. Confidence becomes lost in the “American Dream” and the US begins to loose ground in terms of competing in the global economy. North American Economic Integration, by Wendy Dobson (U of Toronto) provided three scenarios: 1.) Base Case; 2.) Freer Trade (resulting from NAFTA - accelerating economic growth in all three countries); and 3.) Further Evolution (common market or economic union in the longer term). European Economic Integration, by Emilio Fontela (U of Madrid) provided three scenarios: 1.) The Conventional Wisdom Scenario; 2.) The Scenario of Deepening; and 3.) Scenario of Widening.

The Great Boom Ahead: Your Comprehensive Guide to Personal and Business Profit in the New Era of Prosperity.
Author: Harry S. Dent Jr. Hyperion Publishers Jan. 1993/273p. A global economy scenario to 2025.

A Global Boom Scenario. A new world economic order of three trading blocs (North America, Europe, and the Far East), is led by a booming U.S. economy. America’s baby boomers reach peak productive years as the U.S. gains economic dominance and leads the move to customization economies. U.S. information infrastructure and workforce become the best in the world. Mexico rides U.S. coattails to become the Third World country with the strongest growth. Warns that the world needs to prepare for the “Mother of all Depressions” from 2010 - 2025, which could bring the curtain down.

21st Century Capitalism.
Author: Robert Heilbroner. W. W. Norton & Co, N.Y. Sept 1993/175p. Five scenarios of capitalism to the 21st century.

In contrast to stagnant command and control societies, capitalism presents the impetus, challenges, and generates tremendous change in a society. It “thus carries us along into futures that are full of unpredictability, and yet formed and shaped in ways that are far from being utterly unforeseeable.” The author presents the economic theories of Smith, Marx, Keynes, Schumpeter, and Heilbroner as scenarios for the future of capitalism into the 21st century.

Scenario 1.) Adam Smith: a world of economic growth, resource restraints, economic decline from growing population and shrinking resources.

Scenario 2.) Karl Marx: a world of growth with continual periods of economic crisis and restructuring, with labor ultimately gaining control of the economy.

Scenario 3.) John M. Keynes: a world of market driven societies creating lasting underemployment and the need for social investment.

Scenario 4.) Joseph Schumpeter: capitalism will continue to grow through creative destruction, but will ultimately decline from moral decay.

Scenario 5.) Robert Heilbroner: capitalism can grow with the right social investment. Barriers to social investment include the deficit, American tax phobia, and coping with inflationary pressures.

The Post-Nationalist Map: Cartography of Cultures and Economies.
(Special Issue). New Perspectives Quarterly 12: 1, Winter 1994-95/64p. Single copy from the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. Two future maps of the 21st Century.

This special issue is devoted to showing that the world in the 19th century was once divided by geo-political relations and has evolved in the 20th century into a new cartography of cultures and economies, and is destined to evolve further into the 21st century. Views included in this issue were: Nathan Gardels (editor, NPQ), Francis Fukuyama (RAND Corp. - Washington), Chai-Anan Samudavanija (Bangkok), Kenichi Ohmae, Jacque Delors, Robert Reich, Riccardo Petrella, Paul Kennedy, Paul Krugman, James Goldsmith, Richard Rosecrance, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Riccardo Petrella (EU/FAST).

Riccardo Petrella sketches two future maps of the world system, so vivid that they are scenario like. The first map is a world dominated by a hierarchy of 30 city-regions (the CR-30 replacing the G-7), linked more to each other through telecommunications than by geography; the second map is a global civil society that balances the business world with a global social contract that gives equity to all through a redistribution of wealth.

The Twenty-First Century Organization: Analyzing Current Trends—Imagining the Future. Author: Guy Benveniste, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, Feb 1994/310p. Two scenarios of the organization to the 21st century.

The author outlines six trends driving two scenarios of the future of the organization. These trends include: worldwide competition for ideas, highly educated work force, feminization of organizational culture, sophisticated communications, rapid change, and a shift from hierarchy to more egalitarian organizations.

Scenario 1.) New System: in this world, most, if not all people are highly educated and are members of professional organizations that represent their occupation. Individuals are members of Professional Councils, Professional Courts, and Professional Boards.

Scenario 2.) The Firm: in this world, American organizations engage in global business. These organizations are operated on the senior staff professional model, with two hierarchies of workers: senior professional workers with considerable discretion and other professional workers in fairly controlled situations. Credit goes to those who work diligently. Rewards are based on outcome measures. These large enterprises run schools, hospitals, hotels, and restaurants.

The Haves Have Less.
Author: Gaia Young, and channeled to Nichola Lemann. The New York Times Magazine Sept 29, 1996. A labor scenario to 2096.

This scenario plausibly describes the evolution of work into the 21st century. Key trends include the striving for education, high unemployment, and the widening of the have have-not gap. The world of work becomes a “meritocracy”, in which people rise to power and position because of their education based ability (rather than birth as in an aristocracy). Meritocracy is especially seen in the US. However, populist reaction against the meritocratic elite causes such professions as law and medicine to decline in status, while a quarter of the work force is made up of domestic servants.

II. ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AND BIODIVERSITY

Sustainable Communities and the Great Transition. James Goldstein. Tellus Institute. Copyright @ 2006. GTI (Global Transformation Initiative) is a global network that assesses normative transitions to a healthy planet through imagining social, political, technological, environmental, and economic transformations worldwide. The workshop series known as the “GTI Paper Series” can be located on the Tellus Institute website. This is GTI Paper Series #12. James Goldstein is a Senior Fellow at the Tellus Institute. He has more than twenty years experience in environmental research.

This reports considers an idealized approach to the sustainability of cities within the context of a global initiative. Scenarios take into account land use, transportation, and food & agriculture, detailed in three archetypical regions to the year 2084. These regions are: Agoria, Ecodemia, and Arcadia. The unique characteristics of these regions have important implications for the identities of their inhabitants, their governance structures, and the relationships among communities and regions (described by Paul Raskins in 2006 report on Tellus Institute website). Signs of impending global consciousness is evident around the world. The success of cities to participate in global unity and a “new layer of identity” depend on factors that will be important to the success of sustainable transitions in the future. The United Nations projects that “sixty percent of the world population will be urban by 2030, and that most urban growth will occur in less developed countries.” The term “glocalism” describes the development of a global identity in parallel with a strengthened local identity - a goal of communities striving to be sustainable. By 2004, more than 2,250 local and regional authorities in forty-two countries had become signatories of various charters of sustainability. Accordingly, it is plausible to consider that by the second half of the 21st century, cities will likely engage responsibly in a global network. One of the global scenarios that examine transportation follows (among land use and food & agriculture). Excerpt of scenario to 2087. Global Scenario: Transportation in the Future. “In all regions the transportation system is remarkably different from that of the early twenty first century. After finally recognizing that global reserves of petroleum were diminishing and that continued widespread use of fossil fuels posed a dire threat to climate stability, the 2015 global commitment to a hydrogen economy fueled by renewables and biomass is about to be realized. It has been a long and difficult transition spanning most of the century, requiring massive infrastructure investments and technological advances. During this transition over the past few decades, hybrid-electric, dual-fuel gas/hydrogen, and biofuel vehicles played a key role, but the transportation sector is now largely fueled by hydrogen. Average vehicle weights have been reduced significantly with “light-weighting” through the use of composite materials, and hydrogen fuel prices are high to reflect the full cost of production and to discourage excessive use. While the shift to renewables-generated hydrogen has virtually eliminated concerns about greenhouse gases and other air pollutant emissions as a strong motivator to reduce vehicle miles traveled, a desire to minimize congestion and use resources efficiently are still important considerations. Widespread telecommuting is also prevalent. The deification of the car and the view that private vehicle ownership expands personal freedom, so prevalent in the early part of the century, has largely been replaced by the broader notion of mobility. Mobility comprises a range of approaches to moving about comfortably and efficiently (preserving a sense of independence into our elder years and despite any physical disabilities) rather than a narrow focus on cars as the primary means of travel. In recent decades considerable efforts have been made in terms of policy and infrastructure investment to enhance public transit and inter-city rail, delivering extremely rapid, frequent, and pleasurable service based on late twenty-first century technology. This was motivated not only by concerns about climate change and resource exhaustion, but also by a strong movement to enhance quality-of-life by minimizing congestion and travel times, and by the growing demand for convenient nonpolluting transport. Along with public transit, in response to the obesity crisis that afflicted growing numbers of people early in the century, an investment in the promotion of walking and biking led to the inclusion of bikeways and related facilities (e.g., for storage) in land-use regulations and transportation plans.” End of scenario excerpt. In the future, a new generation of sustainable cities on a global level will have several key characteristics: quality of life, human solidarity, and ecological sensibility. These shared attributes also include an integrated approach, broad participation, a “glocal” perspective, and a long-term view. The report demonstrates the methodology and usefulness of scenario planning in city planning with a set of scenarios on the future of the city of Boston, MA USA to the year 2050. The report discusses an analysis of business as usual if current trends continue and alternative futures. The scenarios also include new indicators to track the region’s global impacts and responsibilities. Scenario 1.) Business as Usual. “The business-as-usual scenario assumes that current trends in the Boston region continue, with no major policy changes, surprises, or discontinuities. The dominant values and forces shaping the region-the primacy of markets, the growing pace of land conversions for development, heavy reliance on fossil fuels and automobiles-remain intact.” Scenario 2.) Policy Reform. “In the policy-reform scenario, residents and policymakers recognize the negative consequences of trends and policies in resource use, the environment, economic activity, and social conditions. While most of the dominant values shaping the region remain unchallenged, the government focuses concerted effort on creating jobs, providing affordable housing, expanding access to health care, reducing sprawl and congestion, promoting greener technologies, and improving environmental conditions. Although social and environmental conditions improve, the overall trend toward sprawling development and depletion of natural resources persists.” Scenario 3.) Deep Change. “The deep-change scenario posits transformational change in the Boston region. Residents, government, and NGOs recognize their global connections, and this growing sense of global responsibility contributes to a fundamental shift in values and a shift of priorities away from economic growth and consumption toward enhanced quality of life and well-being. Residents embrace a vision of a sustainable region in a sustainable world with a strong sense of community and human solidarity. Citizens see that they could achieve far better quality of life by working and consuming less, living in more compact and integrated communities, and acting in ways that connect them to the world beyond.” This is an excellent report for those interested in urban planning and city development. Good overview of solid methodology for short-term and long-term futures.

The Energy Project: Independence by 2020. Tsvi Bisk. The Futurist 41.1 (Jan-Feb 2007): p25(7). The author is an independent Israeli futurist, social researcher, and strategy planning consultant. He is the director for the Center for Strategic Futurists.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Outlook for 2006, U.S. gross oil imports are expected to increase to 20.2 million by 2025. Worldwide consumption of crude oil is projected to grow 40% by 2020. The author asserts that worldwide terrorists threats are practically all financed by Persian Gulf petrodollars. “For the sake of our shared environment and international stability, the time has come for the West to formulate a coherent energy policy dedicated to downgrading oil as the dominant international commodity. We will all live in a safer, freer world when oil becomes a commodity on par with coffee, sugar, and tea, rather than the lifeblood of Western economies.” Tsvi Bisk What is needed is a global effort by rich nations to transition economies to next-generation fuels and vehicles. Scenario: Report to the Congress of the United States on the Energy Project. January, 2020 The author writes a scenario from the vantage point of 2020. “The goal of the Energy Project was to destroy the power of petroleum as an international commodity. This has for all intents and purposes been accomplished. The successful completion of this objective has seriously undermined the financing of international Islamic terror, reducing it to a minor tactical annoyance rather than the major strategic threat it once was. The Energy Project also rendered impotent the petroleum-funded nuclear weapons programs of former rogue states such as Iran. The end of oil dependence has also been beneficial for the world economy. The U.S. trade deficit has been reduced by 40%, and hundreds of thousands of well-paying domestic jobs have been created….The United States became completely energy independent in 2019 through a combination of conservation, alternative energy (solar, wind, and geothermal), gasification and liquefaction of coal, and various technologies that turn carbon-based waste (sewage, manure, garbage, plastic, rubber, agricultural, etc.) into usable diesel and gas. The United States had already become relatively energy independent by 2015--its sole oil imports then being from fellow NAFTA members Canada and Mexico. The industrial might of the United States was mobilized in a manner not seen since World War II. By 2010, a new coal-liquefaction plant (a coal-fired power plant that uses a carbon-neutral process to convert coal into a liquid fuel) producing 30,000 barrels of fuel a day (at $40 a barrel) was being installed every month in the United States. This was adding 360,000 barrels of daily production every year. Thermal or catalytic depolymerization units that produced a thousand barrels of liquid fuel from sewage and garbage were installed daily. This was adding 365,000 barrels of daily production a year. Plug-in hybrids, flex-fuel engines, household energy conservation, and increased use of wind, solar and geothermal energy were conserving an additional 300,000 barrels of daily consumption of oil every year. Ethanol production from agricultural waste and biodiesel from the food processing industry was adding the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of daily production of fuel annually. By 2010, more than 1.1 million barrels of oil (daily production) was being taken off the international market each year by the lower 48 states alone. China, employing similar technologies and policies, has also become energy independent. Large supplies of oil were diverted from the United States and China to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan (which had also drastically reduced oil consumption by conservation and use of various biodiesel technologies). These countries now receive all their energy imports from Russia, Canada, and Mexico (not OPEC). The European Union's remaining oil and gas imports also come from non-OPEC countries such as Russia, Mexico, and Brazil, as well as western Africa…. Spreading of Democratic Values: These developments enabled the West to confront what many have long argued is the largest single obstacle to the spread of democracy and Western values. As early as 2009, the projected end of U.S. energy dependence began to enable greater geopolitical flexibility as well as greater adherence to democratic values on the part of the West. Also in 2009, after the formation of the Organization of Petroleum Consuming Countries (OPCC), industrialized nations began to lessen their oil purchases from Saudi Arabia, quickly dethroning it as the biggest oil exporter in the world. By 2012, Saudi Arabia trailed Canada, Russia, and Venezuela in total exports and was no longer the chief indirect financier of international Islamic terror. Today, the total volume of exports from the Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait) is less than 6 million barrels a day and declining… A Second Iranian Revolution - In 2009, with its economy in collapse and its impoverished population furious, Iran underwent a second revolution. The army, intellectuals, and business community embraced the Turkish model of modernization and governance. The catchphrase of this second revolution was "Where is the Iranian Ataturk?" Iran has since become a constitutional republic. The Mullahs were relegated to their pulpits and deprived of secular power. Iran was forced by economic necessity to establish close ties with the United States and the European Union. In order to integrate into the global economy, they were obliged to contribute to global political stability. In order to secure overseas direct investment for this historic switchover, Iran was obliged to adopt transparent business practices in line with international standards and to implement the democratic reforms necessary to join the World Trade Organization. This spurred growth in their manufacturing and service sectors, and Iran became a net exporter of products and services rather than oil. In 2010, Iran cut all ties with terrorist organizations, and in 2013 it reestablished relations with Israel.”

The Amazon in 2050: Implementing the Law Could Save a Million Square Kilometers of Rainforest. Woods Hole Research Center senior scientist Daniel C. Nepstad. March 23, 2006. Nature Magazine March 23, 2006.

This paper shows that existing laws would spare the Amazon one million square kilometers of deforestation (one fifth of the entire forest area), avoiding 17 billion tons of carbon emissions to the atmosphere. According to Britaldo Soares-Filho, the paper’s lead author, “For the first time, we can examine how individual policies ranging from the paving of highways to the requirement for forest reserves on private properties will influence the future of the world’s largest tropical forest. Our model shows that several unique forest ecosystems and entire watersheds will be badly degraded over the next 45 years if we don’t rapidly increase our capacity to govern this dynamic region.” By developing the first model of Amazon deforestation, two extreme scenarios were developed, encompassing the likely range of future trajectories of deforestation through 2050. Scenario 1) Business as Usual. Scenario in which the forces of destruction continue unopposed. Specifically, this scenario (abbreviated as BAU) assumes that the network of parks and other protected areas remains at 31 percent of the region’s forests, that up to 40 percent of these protected areas are subject to deforestation, and that nearly 85 percent outside of protected areas are subject to deforestation. This translates to a loss of nearly 2 million km2, leaving only 56 percent of the original forest area. Scenario 2) Frontier Governance. “Society and government, together with the scientific and environmental communities, work to control frontier expansion and insure the ecological integrity of the basin. Within the governance scenario, protected areas (parks and reserves) are expanded to 41 percent of the region’s forests (as currently planned by the Brazilian government), protected areas are fully enforced, and only 50 percent of the forests outside of protected areas are subject to deforestation. Furthermore, the deforestation rate, although rising initially due to road paving, declines over time, simulating the effects of emerging markets for carbon retain in native forests. Under this scenario, 73 percent of the original forest would remain in 2050.The future expansion of deforestation will not affect all forests and watersheds equally. The dry forest formation of Mato Grosso will virtually disappear by the year 2050, and many watersheds (including the Xingú and Tocantíns Rivers) will lose most of the forest cover in their catchments, increasing flooding and sedimentation. The region of greatest loss of mammals will be in the eastern Amazon, where expanding agriculture will overrun many species with small ranges. Of the major highways planned for paving, the Manaus-Porto Velho highway will be the most damaging in terms of new deforestation. The challenge of Amazon conservation is to find ways to redirect political and economic forces towards this second, more sustainable future scenario, conserving most of the forest for centuries to come.”

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment United Nations. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is a research program that focuses on ecosystem changes over the course of decades, and projecting those changes into the future. It was launched in 2001 with support from the United Nations by the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

In 2005 the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment sponsored by the United Nations released the results of a report on the continued absorption of the planets natural resources. The report warned that harmful consequences of degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years. “The bottom line is that human actions are depleting Earth’s natural capital, putting such strain on the environment that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. Habitat loss on land will lead to a sharp decline in local diversity of native species and related services in all four scenarios by 2050.” MA Group The habitat losses projected in the four scenarios will lead to global extinctions as populations adjust to the remaining habitat. The Scenarios Working Group considered the possible evolution of ecosystem services during the 21st century by developing four global scenarios exploring plausible future changes in drivers, ecosystems, ecosystem services, and human well-being. The following are overviews of the scenarios. The actual scenaros, graphis, and illustrations are contained in the report, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Scenario 1) Global Orchestration. This scenario depicts a globally-connected society that focuses on global trade and economic liberalization and takes a reactive approach to ecosystem problems. However, it also takes strong steps to reduce poverty and inequality and to invest in public goods such as infrastructure and education. Economic growth is the highest of the four scenarios while this scenario is assumed to have the lowest population in 2050. Scenario 2) Order from Strength. This scenario represents a regionalized and fragmented world, concerned with security and protection, emphasizing primarily regional markets, paying little attention to public goods, and taking a reactive approach to ecosystem problems. Economic growth rates are the lowest of the scenarios (particularly low in developing countries) and decrease with time, while population growth is the highest. Scenario 3) Adapting Mosaic. In this scenario, regional watershed scale ecosystems are the focus of political and economic activity. Local institutions are strengthened and local ecosystem management strategies are common, and societies develop a strongly proactive approach to the management of ecosystems Economic growth rates are somewhat low initially but increase with time, and the population in 2050 is nearly as high as in Order from Strength. Scenario 4) Technogarden. This scenario depicts a globally-connected world relying strongly on environmentally sound technology, using highly managed, often engineered, ecosystems to deliver ecosysten services and taking a proactive approach to the management of ecosystems in an effort to avoid problems. Economic growth is relatively high and accelerates, while population in 2050 is in the mid-range of the scenarios

Planning for Power: A Roadmap from EPRI Lights the way for Electricity in the 21st Century. Clark Gellings, Energy Journal, Spring 2006 p35(6).

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) developed and published the Electricity Technology Roadmap, providing guidance on technology planning for the electricity industry. The Roadmap describes a global vision for electricity in the 21st century, a plan to set priorities, and an outline of the technologies needed to achieve the vision to 2050. A long-term, coherent view to 2050 is essential to the survival of the industry. EPRI used scenario planning to identify the technologies that the electric utility industry would need to survive under various scenarios in 2050. EPRI uses a roadmap to illustrate key trends and likely future events. The following presents the complete version of the scenarios as published in the article, Planning for Power: A Roadway from EPRI Lights the Way for Electricity in the 21st Century. : Scenario 1) Digging in Our Heels. “Digging in Our Heels is a world in which we actively resist change. Society embarks on a "momentum strategy." This world may not be perfect, but the perceived cost of alternate strategies is deemed to be too high to receive attention. - In this world, natural gas and other primary fuel prices are rising, driven by growth in demand and supply constraints, and direct or imputed cost of C[O.sub.2] emissions is very low. The low cost of C[O.sub.2] derives from inconsistent political will and uncertainty regarding climate change, as well as the desire to avoid more significantly burdening the energy industry with the cost of mitigating its environmental externalities. This does not to imply that the environment is not an important concern of consumers--just that it is not a high priority. - This world, which evolves slowly from current conditions, reflects moderate to fast global economic growth and geopolitical circumstances in which the U.S., Europe, China, and India are the leaders. The U.S. digs in against imposing high cost on its economy to address what are perceived as unclear links between human activity and climate change. Many other nations, but not all, follow the U.S. lead. - China and other developing economies, though using more modern and efficient technologies to fuel growth, make no extraordinary efforts to address climate change issues. They focus instead on wealth creation and poverty reduction. Global economic competition is driven by politics and concern for jobs more so than the level of energy and electricity prices. Energy price increases do not prevent long-term economic growth. U.S. labor productivity continues to grow, but wages are kept low because of competition from China and India, immigration, and reduced trade barriers in general. - Adequate energy supplies, though of some concern, are maintained because sufficient investment flows into resource development. Businesses and consumers accept increasing energy prices, even with a few shocks, since the value added in final energy consumption is high. The U.S. economy continues to shift toward a high-technology, service-oriented base with slow but steady increases in the adoption of energy-efficient technologies. Thus, U.S. consumers maintain a high and growing standard of living. - But the power industry does not keep pace with the rest of the economy. Concerns for full cost recovery and tepid customer interest dampen plans by power companies to offer substantially higher-quality services or invest in new and replacement infrastructure--let alone advanced technologies. Central-station technology dominates decisions regarding new generating capacity at the expense of distributed generation. Gas and coal are the fuels of choice in the near term (2005 to 2015). New nuclear generation becomes increasingly competitive for a significant portion of the generation mix in the post-2015 time period. Reliability does not significantly improve and investments in the delivery infrastructure are limited to the basic level required to meet load growth, which tracks just below economic growth rates as energy intensity declines. - Areas of Technology Development. The world of Digging in our Heels is characterized by the continuation of current trends related to high fuel prices and manageable costs to meet environmental requirements in the energy sector. The focus is on short-term operations issues--fixing problems--rather than creation of fundamentally new technologies. Executives and managers recognize that strategic issues will have to be addressed, but they postpone the needed work. - Instead, they are forced to spend time on urgent crises that divert their attention from longer-term issues. Nevertheless, progress is evident in some areas. In the consumer sector, end-use efficiency improvements are effective in lowering costs and reducing the need for adding generation capacity. The consumer portal links information technology with the grid, leading to a requirement for ubiquitous computing. The IT revolution leads the way to a more reliable power delivery system. Important developments are evident in the supply side as well, as generating companies strive for a balanced portfolio of generation options. - Some of the most important issues include the relative value of distributed versus central station generation and the role of non-emitting (renewable and nuclear) generation. Research is also needed to understand the role of coal--do we extend the life of the current fleet of coal-fired plants or develop new technology, such as integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC)? What are the relative costs of these options? One suggestion is to retire subcritical coal plants and upgrade with either IGCC or NGCC technology.” Scenario 2) Supply to the Rescue. “This scenario is a world that relies on supply-side solutions to a broad range of energy issues. The abundant supply of low-cost natural gas in this world spurs economic growth and development, particularly in energy dependent businesses. - In this world, government and industry make large investments that lead to ample supplies and stable moderate prices for both natural gas and other primary fuels. Consumers and politicians believe that the current pace of moderate improvements in environmental quality is sufficient to meet societal goals and that technological innovation will continue to provide improvements on a timely basis. They prefer continued and stable economic growth over a difficult-to-prove connection between energy use and climate change. - North America (U.S., Canada, and Mexico), Western Europe, China, and India anchor global economic growth as world trade expands and international conflicts diminish. Technological innovation in computing, communications, bio-science, nano-technology, and other areas continues to move the U.S. toward a more knowledge-based economy with decreasing energy intensity. The shifts in global production and distribution of goods continue to impact the nature and level of job growth in the U.S., but overall economic growth continues at a moderate pace. - Some natural gas reserves are located far from the likely point of end use in the U.S. and thus influence U.S. geopolitical and military planning. This scenario assumes that to address national security concerns, the U.S. moves ahead quickly with infrastructure development to enable the importation of more natural gas. This trend continues as more new gas and oil discoveries are brought on line. Developing and implementing LNG technology moves to a level of international cooperation that mirrors that in oil development and transportation. - Eventually gas prices fall relative to coal and gas is the most competitive choice for power generation. With low gas prices, many utilities and companies install relatively inexpensive distributed generation systems with easy access to existing and new gas supplies. Energy suppliers point out that displacing coal generation with natural gas for power generation reduces C[O.sub.2] emissions--a "no regrets" strategy. - Areas of Technology Development. The world of Supply to the Rescue is characterized by an expansion in primary energy supply that moderates prices and a continuation of low and manageable costs to meet energy sector environmental requirements. The technical thrust of the Supply to the Rescue world is gas--global exploration and production, transport and handling, and the role of LNG. Gas development on the scale needed will require global cooperation among all stakeholders. This cooperation will mirror the experience (and exemplify the risk) of the global oil industry. Cost and technology developments in power infrastructure will influence the course of distributed generation. - A distributed generation future will require technology development to assure safe, reliable, cost-effective, and user-friendly operation of the generation system. User education will become an important theme of technology development. Grid reliability issues are also important in this world, due in part to the need to understand the processes of integrating distributed generation with the grid. Ultimately, nuclear energy expands significantly, and IGCC may gain traction in this world as a means of keeping gas prices low. The focus of technology development here may emphasize methanation, the production of pipeline quality gas from coal.” Scenario 3) Double Whammy. “Double Whammy, as the name suggests, incorporates both high gas prices and high societal concerns about environmental costs. Taken together, these factors produce a more than proportionate share in their impact on the economy. Technology advances offer a collaborative basis for meeting the challenges of this world. - Double Whammy reflects a significant change in beliefs and values of the majority of Americans, industry, and government leaders toward the position that anthropogenic changes in global climate are occurring, that they are harmful, and that they must be addressed soon. There continue to be conflicting scientific opinions regarding man's activities and global climate change, but the political perceptions about harm make the debate moot. - The U.S. joins an international consensus that is willing to accept sudden shifts and sustained high prices for traditional energy sources. The expectation is that the resulting technology upheaval and shift in investments by government and businesses will eventually moderate energy demand and costs while sustaining the environment. - As a result, businesses and consumers face increasing fuel prices due to policy or taxation and lingering demand, and these higher prices do not fall off immediately. The direct and imputed cost of C[O.sub.2] emissions grows rapidly at first, but over time increases more slowly. - This policy shift sets off a boom in investment and innovation. Business leaders see not only market potential, but are also anxious to invest in short-term and long-term technology innovations that can support global competitiveness. - Led by North America and Western Europe, a mutually supportive atmosphere evolves between business leaders, politicians, and consumers to combine voluntary actions and market incentives to shift energy use patterns toward a cleaner and more sustainable path. The initial focus is on conservation, improved end-use efficiencies, combined heating and power, renewables, and other "soft path" technologies. Over time, innovations occur that generate surprising impacts on efficiency, cost, and environmental quality while delivering enhanced features. - In many cases, China and India find it easy to install the best available environmental technology because they have no sunk base of assets. Instead, their economic growth keeps fuel demand up. - Interestingly, clean, coal-based generation and clean nuclear energy become important elements in a transition strategy to replace fossil generation with non-C[O.sub.2]-emitting generation. Gas is at a disadvantage because of its high cost, and the high cost of capturing C[O.sub.2] from the flue gas of a gas-fired generator. Over time, policy makers realize that renewables are incapable of addressing climate change on their own, so they commit to nuclear power and advanced clean coal as a major part of their generation portfolios. - Areas of Technology Development. The world of Double Whammy is characterized by high prices for primary energy supplies and high and rising costs to meet energy sector environmental requirements. The high gas and C[O.sub.2] cost creates an atmosphere that favors technology development aimed at reducing costs as well as improving the environment. There are both demand side and supply side dimensions to the technology development requirements, met by market forces that support innovation and new product development. - Large central station generation will enter a period of transition to meet more stringent environmental requirements, thus efficiency and low-cost mitigation will be important. Market responses lead to collaboration and sustained investment in research and development of new and alternative energy products and services to meet more stringent environmental requirements. This world has a great role for nuclear energy and renewable sources and energy efficiency. Distributed generation might play a key role in a system integrated with renewables.” Scenario 4) Biting the Bullet. “Biting the Bullet refers to the need to take painful actions in the near term to forestall even more painful consequences in the future. The climate change issues of Biting the Bullet have such a large impact on society that precipitous actions are required as society attempts to deal with a series of crises. - A sequence of world-scale, climate-related events and wide acceptance of scientific thinking change worldwide views about climate change. Based on changing voter perceptions that the U.S. must join with other large economies to address climate-change issues, U.S. policy makers take strong actions. They increasingly impose regulations and standards that dictate many industry choices and lead to adverse economic outcomes in the short term. But it was considered a cost worth paying for longer-term benefits. - The policy changes take some steam out of demand for primary fuels. With slower economic growth, fuel prices moderate and begin to decline. Industries with large sunk costs in assets that are forced out of use enter a period of restructuring, but government investment eases some of the burden. - A shift to more sustainable lifestyles is forcibly pursued and politically supported, pushing some immature technologies into the market despite uncertainties regarding lifecycle costs and long-term benefits. Industry accepts the changes because voters demand them and government promises to buy-down the risk of these investments.” The U.S. decides to accept lower economic growth and puts pressure on other developing nations, especially China, to do likewise. Along with Western Europe, the U.S. imposes trade sanctions on nations with poor environmental standards. This slows the overall rate of global economic growth, but also protects jobs and promotes new investment in domestic industries. - Consumers believe that short-term sacrifices and changes in behavior and lifestyle will pay off in the long term by reducing the likelihood of adverse climate changes and moderating primary fuel price increases. Technology innovations in digital applications, bio-science, and other fields are directed toward creating products and services that support sustainable lifestyles. - The imposition of a high C[O.sub.2] tax slows economic growth and, without low-cost carbon capture and sequestration technologies, makes coal, oil, and gas very unattractive choices. Once alternatives supply technologies are in place, industry and consumers are prohibited from reverting to fossil fuels. Natural gas is allowed as a transition fuel but with quickly increasing constraints related to its greenhouse emissions. - Areas of Technology Development. The world of Biting the Bullet in the energy sector is characterized by high and rising costs to meet environmental requirements that eventually drive shifts and structural changes that moderate primary fuel costs. This world is driven by a strong sense that technology-based solutions are needed to meet climate change and environmental quality issues. Government and industry programs focus on efficiency, nuclear energy, renewables, and other clean technologies. Central station generation faces strong pressures to shift to more clean and efficient technologies, but the electricity industry is also receives guidance and support from regulatory authorities interested in ensuring results. Large-scale solutions that work are supported, and thus nuclear power grows at an impressive rate in this world.

Our Biopolitical Future - Four Scenarios. Richard Hayes, Center for Genetics and Society. March/April 2007 issue of World Watch Magazine. Originally published in World Watch – Vision for a Sustainable World. Volume 20, Number 2.

At one time we thought it impossible, the idea of manipulating our own genes – for gosh’ sake. Today and practically everyday, we discover yet another gene that influences a human trait. The four scenarios of the human biopolitical future presented below may help us think through these issues. They take place over the 15 year period from 2007 through 2021. “A central theme is the tension between libertarian and communitarian values. Humans evolved with tendencies both to compete and to cooperate, and societies have varied in the emphasis they give to one tendency or the other. Environmentalists are familiar with the libertarian/communitarian tension as the tragedy of the commons: an individual may benefit by polluting a river or the atmosphere, but if everyone seeks to benefit in this manner, everyone suffers.” Richard Hayes An appreciation of this tension affords us a richer understanding of today’s political landscape. The following provides a complete version of the scenarios published in World Watch - Our Biopolitical Future – Four Scenarios. Scenario 1) Libertarian Transhumanism Triumphs. “The opening years of the 21st century were marked by controversy over cloning, stem cells, and human genetic modification. Despite concern about fraudulent cloning claims and unethical gene therapy experiments, genetic technology was increasingly seen as part of a progressive vision that rejected outworn, traditionalist values and embraced a bright future of technological innovation and economic growth. - During this same period libertarian sentiment grew rapidly among many Americans, encouraged by a well-funded network of think tanks, bloggers and entrepreneurial scientists. By 2009 their ideology of “free markets, free choice, free bodies,” was spreading at the expense of both religious conservativism and social democratic liberalism. Democrats and Republicans alike argued in favor of free trade, school vouchers, deregulation, privatization, personal retirement accounts, pharmacological freedom, and repro-genetic autonomy. - With visions of trillion-dollar markets waiting to be served, global biotech conglomerates raced to develop technologies allowing parents to screen embryos for behavioral and cosmetic traits. For the other end of the life-cycle, these same forms established high-tech life-extension and cryonics facilities throughout the world, most lucratively in small countries proudly advertising their lack of regulatory oversight. - Among the earliest adopters of genetic modification were athletes, and the public turned out in droves to see gene adopted competitors break one record after another. Despite hand-wringing from an older generation of sports professionals and a short-lived protest movement by concerned parents, by 2011 athletics was fast becoming a contest of competing genetic interventions rather than innate ability, coaching and practice. - A major threshold was crossed in 2013, when Swedish scientists announced the birth of the first true “designer baby, ”that is, a child able to pass its modified genes to its own children. Although ostensibly developed to prevent congenital disease, within four years the procedure was being offered commercially for a wide range of aesthetic, cognitive, and performance enhancements. The cost of a designer baby was high (about US$235,000), but affluent couples flocked to the new “better baby ”clinics to ensure that their children had the best genes money could buy. - Meanwhile the transhumanist movement, which had started as a fringe group of sci-fi cultists in Los Angeles in the early 1990s,was growing into a major social force. The transhumanists were obsessed with the prospect of reconfiguring the human species and the rest of the natural world through genetic modification, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology. The combination of libertarian politics and transhumanism resonated strongly with ambitious young technophiles throughout the world, and an increasing number of up-and-coming figures in the sciences, commerce, the arts, and politics openly identified themselves as libertarian transhumanists. - In 2015 Forbes magazine estimated that flemboyant bioindustrialist and committed transhumanist Dmitri Rastovich had become the world ’s first person with net assets in excess of US$1 trillion. When asked by reporters to comment on growing fears that biotechnology was giving rise to human genetic castes, Rastovich replied, “There is no alternative. Relax and enjoy it.” - One of the earliest casualties of the spread of libertarian transhumanism was the environmental movement. Attempts to channel biotechnology along environmentally friendly paths had succeeded in a handful of instances, such as the time in 2014 when genetically engineered microbes successfully biodegraded a major oil spill off the Southern California coast. But at the core of the transhumanist philosophy was a belief that nature, whether in the form of plants, animals, humans, or ecosystems, was an inferior product whose due-date had long since expired. After 2018 the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and other longstanding environmental groups rapidly began losing membership.” Scenario 2) One Family, One Future. “The opening years of the 21st Century were marked by controversy over cloning, stem cells, and human genetic modification. In 2008 the U.S. biotech industry organized a political action committee to promote an industry-friendly agenda of “Cures for All.” Initial success was tarnished, however, when covert human cloning labs were discovered the following year in Thailand. Embryos used for these illicit experiments were traced to fertility clinics associated with the World Stem Cell Consortium, established by scientists in Australia, Belize and Cyprus, to help themselves and others evade national regulations. - In 2010 a German human rights group documented the deaths of over 300 women worldwide from ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, the result of aggressive efforts to obtain eggs for cloning research. Meanwhile wealthy individuals were increasingly outsourcing the entire process of reproduction. Women rated “Grade A ”were routinely being offered sums in excess of US$150,000 for their eggs, genetically “superior ”sperm could be purchased over the Internet, and young women from Ukraine and Romania were paid little better than minimum wage for the use of their wombs. In 2012 a Scottish gene therapy experiment gone awry left two dozen infants with an incurable form of bone cancer and life expectancies of less than 12 years. - Religious conservatives saw an opening, and began speaking out against the eugenic juggernaut and in support of equality, social justice, human rights, women ’s and children ’s health, the sanctity of the natural world, and the precautionary principle. The political tide began to shift. After winning filibuster-proof congressional majorities in the United States in 2014, conservatives quickly succeeded in banning reproductive and research cloning, sex-selection, research using human/animal chimeras, physician-assisted suicide, child-accessible Internet pornography, and gas-guzzling SUVs. Protests were heard from the biotech industry, civil libertarians and the automakers, but the great majority of people in the United States were relieved to find that someone was finally willing to draw some lines. - During these same years, growing repugnance over the dehumanizing impacts of the new genetic technologies, techno-capitalist globalization, and the pervasive tawdriness and superficiality of the post-modern world helped fuel neo-traditionalist movements in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The gifted German-Turkish writer Fredericka Muska, author of the influential book Humanity or Transhumanity?, drew on conservative Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Confucian social values to offer a universalist vision of a human future embracing peace, love, and harmony with nature. Her impassioned speaking and writing gave rise to the mass social movement known as “One Family, One Future ”(OFOF). It was a secular movement open to people of any (or no)religious faith, but it adopted codes of conduct similar to those found in many traditional religions. In the period after 2016 the practice of wearing a full-length woolen scarf displaying OFOF iconography spread throughout the world as a symbol of the rejection of post-modernity. - Although OFOF endorsed the use of the Supernet, the iWeb, and other new information technologies, it viewed high-tech medical practice with suspicion. By 2018 many countries had abandoned research on genetic modification. The use of naturopathy, aroma therapy, herbal preparatories, and a form of massage therapy accompanied by poetry and song had all but replaced conventional medical treatment among significant sectors of the world ’s population. - As early as 2017 the established religious denominations began losing members to OFOF. In some North American and European cities as much as 30 percent of the population would gather for OFOF ’s Saturday affirmation services. This proportion is certain to increase, because OFOF families shun birth control and now average seven children per couple. - In 2019 OFOF-USA announced the formation of a political party, and in last year ’s (2020)elections OFOF candidates —all men, and all wearing the full, luxuriant beards that now designate OFOF clan leaders —won two dozen seats in the House and four in the Senate, taking votes from both Republicans and Democrats. Similar parliamentary gains have been made in about 20 other countries. Earlier this year, OFOF leaders told the tens of thousands gathered at their 2021 annual World Convocation that the human future never looked as promising as it does today.” Scenario 3) A Techno-Eugenic Arms Race–– “The opening years of the 21st century were marked by controversy over cloning, stem cells, and human genetic modification. In 2008 biotech enthusiasts in the United States organized a national campaign to “liberate ”stem cell research by loosening even the minimal existing state and federal oversight guidelines. Although many scientists worried that this would allow ethically questionable activities to be swept under the carpet, they were reluctant to break ranks and speak out for fear of giving aid and comfort to demands by the religious right that stem cell research be banned entirely. - In 2010 North Korean scientists announced the birth of a child genetically modified to allow an increased respiratory capacity of 18 percent above the human norm. The scientists involved made no pretense that this was done to address a medical need. Rather, they said, it was the first step towards creating “The New Man ”for the 21st century. - Just eight months later, China —with an exploding GDP, growing nationalist fervor, and 60,000 freshly trained biotech engineers entering the workforce each year — announced a national initiative to improve the genetic quality of its people. All couples at risk of transmitting genes identified as deleterious were required to take steps to avoid doing so, with the government covering all costs. In addition, couples could volunteer to have their children “enhanced,” again with all costs covered. Leading Chinese rock stars were featured in a massive media campaign promoting the program. - Alarms were raised by international human rights and social justice organizations, but to little effect. Other countries knew they had to follow China ’s lead or risk having their children left behind. A new techno-eugenic arms race rapidly escalated out of control. - In 2014 the CIA reported that Venezuelan scientists had created a virus that turned skin cells containing special concentrations of melanin carcinogenic. Other countries enacted laws requiring the medical termination of “lives not worth living.” Still others approved forms of human experimentation, using prisoners, the disabled, terminally ill patients, orphans and others, that had been anathema barely a decade earlier. - Some early promoters of human genetic modification argued that its widespread use would result in such a diverse array of genetic types that the concept of “race ”would finally be consigned to the dustbin of history. In fact just the opposite has occurred. With ethnocentrism and nationalism on the rise, right-wing governments have issued genetic profiles of “ideal ”racial and ethnic types, and individuals are implicitly or explicitly urged to modify themselves and their children to conform with these profiles. - By 2018 most genetic research was being conducted by secret government and corporate labs. In that year it was reported that scientists in Mumbai had developed a procedure to slow the rate of human cellular aging by as much as 60 percent. Leading Indian government officials and biotech executives, realizing the havoc this technology could cause if made widely available, moved quickly to limit its use to priority national security resources: themselves. - Today, in 2021, the genetic scientists and their political and military commanders have lost any sense of identification with the larger human community. In their minds the well being of any existing human cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the historical transition to a post-human future. But they differ about who will supply the foundational human stock. - And if it seems that things could not get any worse, just last week a doomsday cult announced that it has perfected and is about to release the “Elysium Virus,” a genetically engineered hyper-viroid that inactivates neural calcium ion channels. Its release would rapidly destroy all life on Earth above the level of a sponge. The cult has issued no demands; its members say they are driven by an altruistic desire to relieve “all sentient beings ”of the burden of existence. The world is holding its breath, teetering on the verge of panic.” Scenario 4) For the Common Good. “The opening years of the 21st century were marked by controversy over cloning, stem cells, and human genetic modification. Opinion surveys showed strong support for the development of genetic technology for medical purposes, but controversies involving blackmail attempts using stolen sperm donor records, the deaths of clonal primates at a lab in Oregon, and shady financial practices by leading bioethicists began to raise doubts. Although the new genetic technologies attracted many sincere, socially responsible researchers, by 2009 the field was increasingly dominated by dismissively arrogant scientists, unscrupulous fertility clinic operators, traffickers in clonal embryos, and out-and-out racist eugenicists. - Reaction from the general public and affected constituencies had been building for some time, and by 2010 reached a tipping point. Advocates for women ’s health, consumer rights, and economic justice raised concerns about risky technologies that put corporate profits above safe, affordable health care. Civil rights leaders warned of a new free-market eugenics that could stoke the fires of racial and ethnic hatred. Disability rights leaders charged that a society obsessed with genetic perfection could come to regard the disabled as mistakes that should have been prevented. Civil libertarians were appalled to learn of plans by global biotech consortia to establish a universal DNA registry. Lesbians and gays were disturbed by reports that prenatal tests for sexual orientation were about to be made commercially available. Environmentalists argued that genetic modification of living organisms, including humans, was a powerfully disruptive technology being deployed before long-range consequences had been considered. - In 2011 liberal and conservative religious denominations put aside their doctrinal differences and convened an international summit that declared the genetic modification of the human species to be a threat to human dignity and the human community. Later that year the Citizens Health Assembly, representing hundreds of international health, development, and indigenous rights organizations, began a major campaign opposing the global biotechnology industry ’s drive to have human genomics declared the lead technology for addressing public health problems in poor countries. - The first credible reports of covert attempts to create clonal and genetically modified children appeared in early 2012. The efforts were taking place on a fleet of converted naval hospital ships sailing the South Pacific and guarded by gunboats. The identities of the scientists involved were unclear. Responsible political and scientific leaders realized that a strong response was in order. In late 2012 a group of internationally recognized scientists and health policy experts declared that the new human biotechnologies “carry with them both great promise and great risk,” and that scientists must be willing to work within socially determined limits. The declaration received extensive press coverage and commentary. - In 2013 a bipartisan group of U.S. senators began meeting to broker a broadly acceptable, comprehensive package of human biotech regulations. All involved agreed to take the issues of abortion and the moral status of human embryos off the table, and to focus on policies on which it appeared that consensus might be reached. As it turned out, this was easier than had been anticipated. Embryonic stem cell research was allowed but “designer baby ”applications and human cloning were banned, and a new federal commission was established to oversee human biotech research. In 2015 the final bill was signed into law. - The following year, international civil society leaders prevailed upon the United Nations to convene the Extraordinary Summit on Bioscience and the Human Future. Delegates included noted scientists, political leaders, and scholars, and representatives of the full spectrum of social and religious constituencies. Negotiations were contentious and frequently threatened to break down. But the delegates realized that this might be the last chance humanity would have to agree upon a common framework for regulating these powerful technologies, and by 2018 success was in sight. In 2019 the UN General Assembly approved the Universal Convention on Biomedicine and Human Rights by a nearly unanimous vote. In 2020 the Convention went into force after having been approved by the parliaments of 110 countries. All involved recognized that they had participated in an undertaking of world-historical import. Just last month, the 2021 Nobel Prizes for Medicine and Peace were jointly awarded to the lead institutions that had made this all possible: The United Nations, the World Assembly of Science, the Global Council of Religions, and the NGO Network for a Human Future.”

The Cataclysm. David Morrison, chairman of the International Astronomical Unions Working Group on Near-Earth Objects.

In Tolkian’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, “a blackness permeates the firmament and darkens the sky as far as the eye can see.” Paul Chodas, the principal engineer in the Near-Earth Object Program office at NASA’s Jet Propultion Laboratory (JPL), estimates a one-in-500 chance that a newly discovered asteroid measuring 30 to 70 meters, would collide with Earth on September 21, 2030. Discover Magazine published a list of 20 likely end of the world scenarios with an asteroid impact event listed as the number one most likely to occur. This is an alternative future in which an asteroid with a diameter over 30 km crashes into the Earth, before the year 2030. This scenario predicts the state of our world after the cataclysm. It is a work of fiction; to make it more enticing and believable, characters, organisations and locations are given proper names. Scenario: The Cataclysm - Asteroid hits the Earth. “This is earth after an immense shockwave rips through the surface of the planet. It is the Year 1 A.C. The Aftermath - Most humans had been wiped out. No city or village had been spared. Society, economy, and politics would never be the same - ever. But in the week after the Cataclysm, few people considered how it had changed their lives. They would first need to survive, find their friends and their loved ones, and gain wealth and prominence in this new world. Crime - Humanity entered a Week of Wandering, in which the quest for survival eclipsed all other needs. Society had fallen apart, but it would soon emerge again. The old nations were gone - new states began to rise in their place. Vigilante justice replaced law and order. Cities and communities were nearly all destroyed; billions of lives were lost; is it no wonder that crime became rampant. The initial crime wave did not last long. People soon realized that with so many people eradicated from the face of the earth, that there would not be any significant reason to steal, or to commit many other crimes. There was a sheerly overwhelming amount of unused wealth and material in the families in which no one survived, and therefore it was apparently as if everyone in the world suddenly received a sudden gift from all those who had died. It was as if their relatives and friends had all perished, and they had left them an inheritance. Once people realized this, they did not so eagerly steal covertly, and began to steal overtly. After all, there was no law to bring the contents of the deceased's wills to fulfillment. Anything that was not used would be lost and wasted. Everyone had more than enough to content themselves, despite the fact that the majority of everything ever made by humanity had been lost. The New Society - In each city or region, some humans managed to survive, however. They found others who like them had managed to survive, and formed temporary settlements where they met. In this way the scattered survivors managed to reestablish a competent society, as each realized that the survival of the others was crucial to his/her own survival. Crime had fallen to an all-time low, with people simply taking what was needed and no fight over what existed. In each of these New Societies, a democracy arose, as no particular group or person held much power over any others. With the rise of these New Societies came leadership and organization, and over the next few days these became more elaborate and larger as communities wandered around for help and merged with others. This development was aided by the contribution of Ham Radio operators who sent distress calls to their vicinity. Food was everywhere, and so was everything else for that matter, except for people. As the leadership organizations of each of the New Societies strengthened, they thirsted for more people. They began quests to other places, homing in on the ham radio distress calls, accruing people of various subject areas of training along the way. Before long, some of these New Societies had become rather competent. Formation of States - The rise of New States began in the void of political order. Some of the associations were quite obvious, such as the survivors of the former United States banding together to form the new United States. Elsewhere, such as in the Balkans, such patriotism was not evident; attachment to other groups with people of similar ethicity became more prominent. Warfare broke out in these regions, and in border regions, as radicals found that for the first time their goals of Pan-slavism or whatever could finally become a reality. In order to protect their peoples from such dangers, the leadership of the New Societies banded together more closely. Communities became ever larger, in some places approaching thousands. Before long, military vehicles and instruments were being used in these minor skirmishes. It was a sad consequence of human nature that after suffering and losing so much in the Cataclysm's initial effects, their first thought would be crime; and their second, war. Outbreak - Meanwhile, the corpses of the dead, unburied, putrified, and with the coming of the molds and flies came plagues of all kinds. Before long, the ruins of the world's cities had become an infestation of such plagues, and because the survivors had to return to them for survival wares, they became infected. Before long, many people had become sick, and many others had died. The untreated horrors of the twentieth century--hemorrhagic fevers, plague, influenza, typhus, cholera, and more--were all unleashed amonst the survivors. The cure for this difficulty was, unanimously, the moving away from the cities and dependence on villages and the countryside, where such diseases could not develop. But the consequence was the loss of the goods that they needed. And even so, many of the New Societies were wiped out. Those that survived were also decimated. Unification - Some of the more ambitious and calculating leaders of the New Societies began shipping medications. Others launched battles. More used their rhetoric to urge world unity. Battles did break out, but their scale was minor. In most cases a community surrendered after suffering single-digit casualties, such was the degree that they found survivors important after the Cataclysm. Many others wanted to join with their fellow survivors to form a united world. Still others were pleased by obtaining cures for their suffering brethren. Before long, one man had established superiority, after vanquishing a socialist New State and a democratic New State, both of which were unable to quickly respond to the threat that an organized leadership could muster. This one man was called the Hegemon (meaning Ruler of the World) and his possessions the Hegemony. He was an amiable ruler who knew when to be ruthless and had a strong grip on reality and practicality. And the platform that he ran on when he attempted to gain the favor of the survivors, was that he would ensure that such a Cataclysm would never, never happen again. And he could do that. Even before he had fully established his control over the world, he had laid down the foundations for a rapid advancement of society, similar to the Stalinist era's Five Year Plans, that would sacrifice consumer goods for capital goods and bring the crushed world industry back to life. For he himself was paranoid, afraid that he would die should another asteroid hit the Earth.”

The European Dream: Building Sustainable Development in a Globally Connected World. Jeremy Rifkin, Wall Street Journal. 16.2 (March-April 2005): p34(6).

Why is Europe so environmentally advanced? Could Europe be the most sustainably developed in the world today? Unlike America, European policymakers tend to focus more on creating a political, social, and economic environment that creates a high quality of life for all of its people. “The European Dream focuses on inclusivity, diversity, sustainable development, social rights and universal human rights. And it works. While Americans are 28 percent wealthier per capita than Europeans, in many ways, Europeans experience a higher quality of life, clear evidence that, in the long run, cooperation rather than competition is sometimes a surer path to happiness.” Jeremy Rifkin Europe and the U.S. have nearly opposite approaches to the question of environmental stewardship. At the heart of the difference, according to Rifkin, is the way Americans and Europeans perceive risk. Americans have a heritage of risk taking. Historically, American immigrants risked their lives to for a better life; Americans are inventive and bold. With it’s longer history, Europeans tend to take a more cautious approach by looking at all the angles. Europeans tend to be more mindful of the negative environmental results of industrialization, science, and technology. In this article, Rifkin illustrates a future mid-century of Europe that leads the world in sustainable development practices.
The European Dream - Europe Leads the World in Sustainable Development. By championing a host of global environmental treaties and accords taking the precautionary approach to regulation, the EU shows a strong willingness to act on its commitment to sustainable development and global environmental stewardship. The EU accelerates to the very top of the list of of the hydrogen economy and tackles environmental priorities to more fully integrate renewable-based hydrogen by 2050. The EU leads the world in championing the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, ensuring compliance to produce 22 percent of its electricity and 12 percent of all of its energy using renewable sources by 2010. Although a number of member states are lagging behind on meeting their renewable energy targets, the very fact that the EU has set benchmarks puts it far ahead of the U.S. by 2015. By 2050, the EU makes the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources through a highly detailed governing step-by-step shift process. It becomes, by 2050, a fully integrated hydrogen economy, based on renewable energy sources. Creating this economy becomes in fact, the next critical step in integrating Europe after the introduction of the Euro was successfully implemented. The European hydrogen game plan had a sense of history in mind. “Great Britain became the world's leading power in the 19th century because it was the first country to harness its vast coal reserves with steam power. The U.S., in turn, became the world's preeminent power in the 20th century because it was the first country to harness its vast oil reserves with the internal-combustion engine. The multiplier effects of both energy revolutions were extraordinary. The EU by 2050, leads the world into the third great energy revolution of the modern era.” Jeremy Rifkin

Visions of the Future of a Sustainable Europe – PRELUDE – Five Scenarios for 2030. Jacqueline McGlade, European Environment Agency. Speech at Friends of Europe, Brussels, November 29, 2006.

According to Jacqueline McGlade, the European Environmental Agency plays a leading role in building an integrated assessment of Europe, include the PRELUDE project, which stands for Prospective Environmental analysis of Land Use Development in Europe. This agency used the scenario planning technique to complete a case study on land use development in Europe for the purposes of surveying sustainable practices. The agency came up with a sustainable development strategy through the use of tools to map discontinuities against a set of alternative futures, including shocks and surprises, and integrate different political perspectives. The exploratory scenarios of PRELUDE contribute to a meaningful framework for strategic policy-making, broad enough in time and space. The European Environmental Agency drew-up five scenarios of Europe to 2030. The following is a brief overview of the five scenarios. Complete scenarios are available through the European Environmental Agency. In the first scenario, Scenario 1) A Europe of Contrast. This scenario is characterized by increased competition pressure, passive government and decreasing social solidarity. Rich gated communities in the countryside evolve in sharp contrast to urban ghettos. Agricultural markets are liberalized, and only large farms with intensive management survive. This is a “Great Escape” scenario in which the international markets rule. Government intervention is low. Relatively poor immigrants move to the urban city centers. Societal tension builds up. The contrast between rich gated communities in the countryside and urban ghettos becomes extreme. Key drivers of this scenario include international trade (globalization), decreasing solidarity, and reduced policy intervention. Scenario 2 ) Europe of Innovation. This a bottom-up scenario. The essential drivers in this scenario are growing environmental awareness, technological breakthrough innovation and political decentralization. Agriculture is revolutionized, facilitated by an open source mentality and propagation of knowledge. Production becomes small-scale and less intensive. This is a “Lettuce Surprise U” scenario where technological innovation is triggered by a food security crisis. People lose trust in central government. The political system decentralises and the demand for environmentally friendly food production increases. New crop varieties are developed that enable higher yields with lower inputs. Scenario 3) Europe of Cohesion. In this scenario a series of environmental disasters highlights Europe’s vulnerability. There is widespread concern and public support for a strong policy intervention. A new set of coherent policies for sustainable and regionally balanced development is set up at the European level. In “Big Crisis” environmental disasters change the political climate in favor of centralized government. New policies focus on sustainable and regionally balanced development. Public transport is strongly promoted. Key drivers include growing environmental awareness, growing solidarity, and policy intervention (centralisation). Scenario 4) Europe of Harmony. This is an evolved society scenario. In “Evolved Society” climate change and energy scarcity trigger environmental awareness and strong policy interventions. Revival of the countryside is high on the agenda and supported by financial incentives. People move away from the most densely populated (lawland) areas and settle in more rural and safe areas. Key drivers in this scenario include energy scarcity (shift to renewables), growing environmental awareness, and policy intervention (rural development). Scenario 5) Europe of Structure. In “Clustered Networks”, society adapts to the growing demands of an ageing population. Agriculture marginalises. Spatial planning encourages migration away from polluted urban areas. New cities, with a service economy, are created, benefiting from efficient traffic solutions, a relatively cheap labour force, and investment premiums.”

Planes, Trains, Trees, and Water. BBC Book of the Future. www.bbc.co.uk

The British Broadcasting Company asked readers, citizens, and experts their opinion on a plausible future of the world in the year 2020. As a result, one thousand submissions were received and many were published in the BBC Book of the Future. Users were asked to vote on those articles that were most innovative. The scenario “Planes, Trains, Trees, and Water” discusses the future of urban transportation and sustainable development. As metropolitan areas become increasingly congested, transit systems are becoming more integral to urban planning. City planners are recognizing the importance of transit as the lifeblood to the metropolitan community and are therefore contracting more joint development initiatives that involve the negotiation of commercial relationships between transit system planners and developers. “Transit Supportive Development” (TSD) – is a trend that will see the development industry create more uses that are consistent with the markets served by transit. Scenario: Planes, Trains, Trees, and Water. “Since the huge success of the Severn Airport, built in the Bristol Channel in 2010, and after many years of haggling, it has finally been agreed to replace all major inland airports with offshore facilities. This is to start with the building of a huge airport in the Thames estuary to replace Heathrow and Gatwick….Aircraft will not fly over populated areas, so reducing noise pollution. There would be less chance of a September 11 type attack in Britain, as aircraft flying inland would be immediately regarded with suspicion…It is to be serviced by high speed maglev electric train link to London. This was invented by Eric Laithwaite of Lancashire many years ago, but scorned by the scientific fraternity and the U.K government until it was adopted by Germany, Japan and China. In these places, though costly to build, it was found to be extremely fast and efficient…It is 2020 and the majority of freight is now transported by rail in specially designed containers, these are diverted to their various routes at container yards by computer controlled container handling machinery. All railway lines have now been electrified so the power can be supplied from re-newable energy. There are now many wind farms off shore, after much argument people finally allowed these to proceed, as the alternatives were much worse…In 2020 the countryside has seen some major changes over the last 20 years. Many forests are now full of our native deciduous trees instead of the dark monotonous rows of fir trees. This has made a huge contribution to the return of wildlife, as has the leaving of strips of land uncultivated by farmers, an idea fostered by environmentalists and taken on board by the government…Many different crops are being grown, such as beautiful blue field of linseed and the gorgeous yellow fields of oilseed rape. These crops are both used for alternative fuels. In the south, vineyards have replaced many of the older small farms and the wine can compete with some of the finest imported varieties…Perhaps one of the largest changes has been the expansion of the water industry. No longer are billions of gallons of water allowed to flow uselessly into the sea. Water is allowed to reach rivers in sufficient quantities to sustain the fish and other wildlife, surpluses to this are collected and fed into the national water grid. The river water is also collected when it finally reaches the barrage. This is sold on, mainly for irrigation purposes, and transported by tankers…The costs of these schemes have been largely offset by the savings in costs of flood damage. Pipelines through the channel tunnel link our grid to the Euro grid so that metered water can be sold on to other countries that may need it. There are plans to install an undersea pipeline across the Straights of Gibraltar to North Africa.”

DNA Memory. BBC Book of the Future. www.bbc.co.uk

The British Broadcasting Company asked readers, citizens, and experts for their opinion on a plausible future of the world in the year 2020. As a result, one thousand submissions were received and the best were published in the BBC Book of the Future. Users were asked to vote on those articles that were most innovative. The scenario DNA Memory was written by Researcher DaBeast and placed on the BBC site on January, 2003. This scenario is a flippant view of the miniaturization trend. It was inconceivable a decade ago that DNA could be used for microprocessing. DNA molecules might one day be integrated into a computer chip to create a biochip to move computers even faster. In the future, DNA computers will be capable of storing billions of units of data more than a regular computer today. Scenario: 2020 DNA Memory. “Scientists at THINKtank, Inc. today declared a break through in data storage technology. They claim that they have managed to encode the complete works of Shakespeare in to the DNA structure of the common cold. Using a virus to store data has been a dream since the technology was first discovered back in 2003, but this is the first time that a harmful virus has been used. THINKtank claim that this will lead to a revolution in education, saying that according to their projections the entire population of England will have the cold, and the encoded knowledge, by the end of the year. If the experiment is a success, THINKtank will start a whole program of viral encoding, and have been approached by several leading advertising agencies about the possibilities of encoding advertisements. THINKtank have also announced today the launch of a new range of cold cures, which contain the DNA software to enable the user to absorb the new viral knowledge they receive from the cold. They are available in lemon, cherry and tea flavour.”

Electric Power Industry Scenarios EPRI’s Interim Report. Gerald Harris, Carl Weinberg. Global Business Network. February 2006.

For more than 30 years, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has been a leading independent, nonprofit center for public interest energy and environmental research, seeking collaborative solutions to the challenges of electric power. EPRI's members represent over 90 percent of the electricity generated in the United States. The Electric Power Industry Technology Scenarios project, conducted with GBN, involves two areas: 1) principal planning effort on the time horizon of 10–20 years, instead of the 50-year horizon of the current Electricity Technology Roadmap planning effort; and 2) uses scenario planning as a tool. The project began by identifying a key "focus" question about the future that the scenarios would address: How will demand for U.S. energy services and the potential externalities that may result shape electricity technologies over the next 20 years? The four scenarios presented in this report are built upon two key uncertain drivers of change: the evolution of primary fuel markets, in particular natural gas that fuels the power sector, and changes in societal values on energy industry externalities, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2). The results of this scenario analysis will be an input into the analysis supporting the next EPRI Technology Roadmap. Scenario 1) Digging in Our Heels. “A world in which we actively resist change. Society embarks on a "momentum strategy". Natural gas and other primary fuel prices are rising, driven by growth in demand and supply constraints, and direct or imputed cost of CO2 emissions is very low. This world may not be perfect, but the perceived cost of alternate strategies is deemed to be too high to receive attention. “ Scenario 2) Supply to the Rescue. “A world that relies on supply-side solutions to a broad range of energy issues. The abundant supply of low-cost natural gas in this world spurs economic growth and development, particularly in energy dependent businesses.” Scenario 3) Double Whammy. “A world that incorporates both high gas prices and high societal concerns about environmental costs. Taken together, these factors produce a more than proportionate share in their impact on the economy. Technology advances offer a collaborative basis for meeting the challenges of this world.” Biting the Bullet. “A world in which painful actions need to be taken in the near term to forestall even more painful consequences in the future. The climate change issues of Biting the Bullet have such a large impact on society that precipitous actions are required as society attempts to deal with a series of crises.”

The Corporation and the Environment. Global Innovation Outlook 2.0 – IBM. Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman and CEO, IBM Corporation.

The Global Innovation Outlook provides a platform for candid and open conversations about important issues of our day among many contributors of innovative thinking. Contributors include IBM’s top researchers, consultants, and business leaders. The Global Innovation Outlook also included a 180 outside experts. Scenario: Environmental Consciousness in 2020. In 2020 companies will be much more environmentally conscious. Profitability and environmental responsibility will go hand in hand. Those companies that invested in new technologies in 2006 will have a competitive advantage by 2020 when resources become scarcer and governments tighten regulations. 2020 companies “take the lead in pursuing environmentally sound practices, attracting consumers and an influential movement of socially conscious investors. It is common practice for companies to plan for the end-to-end lifecycle of products. They are therefore free from the wasteful pressure of constant new product releases. Rather than curtailing revenues, this shift creates new and more consistent revenue streams. Electronics manufacturers maintain and increase revenue by releasing “soft updates” of plug-ins or other components that enhance the experience of older products. In turn, this stimulates a move from a product-driven business model to a services-driven one that strengthen bonds between manufacturers and their customers by providing more touchpoints between the two and, if the experience is consistently satisfying, more brand loyalty. Companies see massive waste reduction through new collaborative relationships within and across ecosystems. In this day, reverse supply networks are common. New efficiencies and revenue streams open up businesses networked for their reverse supply chains, sending used components and manufacturing by-products back and forth to one another. By starting to think of waste as valuable, companies design products and processes in a way that preserves the strength and integrity of the ingredients, so that more of them can be reused more often. In essence, they see the lifecycle as not so much end-to-end but unending.”

EPRI Futuristic Report Offers Insights to Technology Paths for Today's R&D Investor. Palo Alto, October, 2001. Report prepared by EORI and sponsored by the Consortium for Electric Infrastructure to Support a Digital Society.

Report was funded by EPRI's Strategic Science and Technology program. This EPRI report speculates about daily life in the year 2020 in order to anticipate technologies that will be needed by the people who inhabit the industrialized world twenty years from now. Four different scenarios are used to predict potentially attractive and useful paths for investment in technology development today. Lessons learned from the scenario exercise include the following: • No scenario can meaningfully be described as "anti-technology," although the scenarios differ in the success and the enthusiasm with which inhabitants approach technology and the extent to which they turn to innovation for solutions. • Energy efficiency plays an increasingly important role in people's lives, although the drivers behind this trend differ from scenario to scenario. • The development of standards and protocols is essential for technological advances of the sort contemplated here. Each of scenario has different implications for the built environment, for energy use, and for energy providers. According to the author, the two most critical variables embedded in these scenarios are the rate of technology change and the degree to which society embraces individualism. Scenario 1 – Overview) Contractor Nation. This is a high-tech world characterized by flexible, pragmatic work relationships and prickly individualism, in which rapid innovation allows inhabitants to deepen their commitment to individual choice. Scenario 2 – Overview) Rave New World: This scenario features communal connectivity in an atmosphere of radical technological change, with an affinity for group solutions and a youthful optimism in the fertility of experimentation. Scenario 3 – Overview) Gridlock: Incremental technological advances, combined with a desire to "get away" from other people, and a failure to resolve common standards and solutions, makes this scenario a stressful place, characterized by both competition and frustration. Scenario 4 – Overview) Take Our Medicine: This world thinks of itself as mature and inhabitants are willing to make difficult decisions to advance the greater good, even if that requires the sacrifice of some individual rights; restraint and community-level planning characterize the scenario.

China’s Sustainable Energy Future: Scenarios of Energy and Carbon Emission. Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Shell Foundation. October, 2004.

In the China’s Sustainable Energy Future: Scenarios of Energy and Carbon Emissions, the Energy Research Institute (ERI), an independent analytic organization under China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), sought to explore in detail how China could achieve the goals of the Tenth version of the Five-Year Plan. These goals include economic development, technological improvement, and access to energy resources. China’s ability to forge a sustainable energy path has global consequences. The country’s annual emissions of greenhouse gases comprise nearly half of those from developing countries, and 12% of total global emissions. The scenarios in this study estimate realistic targets for energy efficiency and energy supply development that are in line with a sustainable development strategy. The scenarios also help to analyze and explore ways in which China might slow growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Scenario 1) Ordinary Effort. “This scenario depicts a situation in which sustainable development and environmental policies receive much less emphasis than economic policies. Ordinary Effort represents a trajectory for China that could result if the Government fails to assign a high priority to reducing growth in energy use. It assumes that China’s current high economic growth trajectory will continue at the rates projected in government plans, and that no significant new environmental or energy efficiency policies will be adopted. Population growth is at the high end of current forecasts, reaching 1.485 billion in 2020. Urban and rural housing grows rapidly, and urbanization rises, but less so than in the other scenarios. Although penetration of household appliances rises quickly, the rate of energy efficiency improvements is slow, leading to rapid growth in residential energy use. In the transportation sector, Ordinary Effort assumes only minimal upgrading and replacement of rural motor vehicles and a large increase in the total number of motorcycles and automobiles. Small and medium cities continue to lack effective planning mechanisms for public transport, causing heavy reliance on private vehicles, and a resultant increase in traffic congestion. These trends are accompanied by slow improvement in fuel economy. The Government plays a minimal role in directing manufacturers to produce or consumers to choose efficient technologies and make environmentally conscious decisions. Vehicle stocks are the same as in other scenarios, but vehicles are used more in this scenario than in the others. Industrial reorganization is relatively unsuccessful in changing energy intensity. China experiences difficulty adapting to global economic changes, damaging competitiveness in international markets. Domestically, the closure, merger and reorganization of small enterprises is not implemented successfully, leading to major economic inefficiencies. Progress in energy-sector reform lags behind other sectors, and monopolies continue to exist in some areas. In the electric power sector, desulfurization devices are gradually applied to coal-fired power plants. However, by 2020, power plants without desulfurization still comprise a large proportion of capacity. The development of hydropower, nuclear power, IGCC and wind power is relatively steady, but no direct policy emphasis is placed on renewable technology development. Energy efficiency policy is minimal in this scenario. The Energy Conservation Law is implemented, but policy measures fall short of creating effective market incentives. Technological development is hindered and the operating efficiency of equipment does not reach advanced international levels.” Scenario 2: Promoting Sustainability “Promoting Sustainability illustrates the implementation of government targets as promulgated in the 10th Five-Year Plan and related policy documents. It represents China’s energy growth trajectory through 2020 if current government targets are met. Compared to Ordinary Effort, policies to promote sustainable development are implemented earlier and more vigorously. Promoting Sustainability portrays a future in which current government policies and programs are carried out as expected. Population growth trends reflect effective implementation of State policies. Development of small cities is emphasized, with consideration given to sustainable urban development practices. The consumption of housing and automobiles increases significantly. Household energy used in large cities is mainly electricity and gas, while households in small cities use mainly electricity, coal and LPG. Demand for household appliances spurs a large increase in sales. Natural gas is used in large amounts in eastern China. For this study, 1 bcm of natural gas = 37.3 PJ (low heat) = 35.3 billion cubic feet. Throughout China, the scale and structure of enterprises are successfully reformed to increase economic efficiency. Energy firms are restructured and monopolies broken. The technical efficiency of industrial processes continues to improve at rates similar to those in recent years. Public transport and motorcycles are a key development focus. Between 2005 and 2010, Euro-II vehicle emissions standards are implemented in all big cities and some smaller coastal cities. These standards are also implemented in medium-sized and small cities between 2010 and 2020. From 2005 to 2010, LPG use in urban public transportation and taxis rises. In the electric power sector, all newly built coal-fired power stations are equipped with desulfurization equipment by 2020. Advanced clean-coal power generation technologies are used starting in 2010. Hydropower, nuclear power, IGCC and wind power all expand rapidly. Implementing measures to the Energy Conservation Law are adopted and improved upon, and the energy efficiency of technologies in all sectors and industries, including process equipment and cross-cutting technologies like motor systems, is on the way to reaching levels currently prevailing in advanced industrialized countries by 2030. Domestic oil supply shortages are met through oil imports. The development of domestic natural gas resources and related infrastructure construction is successful, creating a strong market for natural gas. In 2020, domestic output of natural gas is assumed to be 120 bcm and imported gas to be 50 bcm. China’s overall energy security strategy is to diversify energy imports and utilize high quality foreign energy resources. In this scenario, existing environmental standards continue, and new regulations are added. Air pollution control measures in Acid Rain Control Regions and key cities are implemented by 2005, with SO2 emission standards met by 2010, and all standards met by 2020, meeting the Government’s targets for controlling acid precipitation. New air pollution policies are implemented to target PM10 and PM2.5. Air quality in large cities is also improved by increasing the supply of gas fuels. Public awareness of energy conservation and environmental protection is moderate.” Scenario 3: Green Growth “Green Growth assumes that sustainable development will be a policy priority for the Government and that extensive environmental and energy policies will be implemented to achieve this goal. This scenario illustrates the energy consumption trajectory that would result from aggressive policies to promote energy efficiency, development of renewable energy, and other policies to promote sustainable development across all sectors. State birth-rate control policies are strictly implemented such that China’s national birth rate declines annually. Urbanization goals promote the development of western China with many new small and medium-sized cities, and the continued growth of large cities. Global economic integration and continued enterprise reforms promote efficiency improvements across sectors. Consumer purchasing power continues to increase, resulting in an increase in demand for energy services, which are met in a more sustainable manner compared to the other scenarios. Programs to promote environmental awareness result in consumers preferring environmentally sustainable means of transportation. Residents in large and medium cities rely primarily on public transportation. Intelligent Transportation Systems, which use information and communications systems to manage urban transport systems, are established in major cities. There is considerable technological advancement in the automobile industry. Clean fuel substitution technologies are widely applied to both public transportation and private cars. Euro-III vehicle emissions standards are implemented in key cities. Domestic energy consumption moves towards highquality energy resources, including gas fuels and electric power. There is a large increase in the consumption of natural gas in cities. The replacement of older household appliances with more efficient models is accelerated in urban households. In rural areas, the proportion of electricity and LPG use in the total fuel mix increases. Renewable energy technologies are commercialized to a greater extent than in the other two scenarios. In the electric power sector, desulfurization devices are extensively applied to coal-fired power plants. Clean energy technologies such as supercritical generating units and IGCC are applied in some areas. Hydropower continues to be developed at the current rate, nuclear power and IGCC growth rates are higher compared to the other scenarios, and wind power increases rapidly. In energy efficiency policy, there is comprehensive implementation of new financial incentives and an energy-pricing system to promote energy conservation. Implementing measures to the Energy Conservation Law are successfully adopted and improved upon. As in Promoting Sustainability, energy efficiencies of technologies across the board are on the way to reaching today’s advanced levels in industrialized countries by 2030. As in the other scenarios, the gap between domestic oil supply and oil demand is met through oil imports, but efficiency improvements relative to the other scenarios allow oil imports to be smaller. In addition, the natural gas pricing system is improved and demand for gas grows quickly, resulting in an increase in imported natural gas. In 2020, domestic output of natural gas will be 120 bcm and imported gas will be 80 bcm. China’s overall energy security strategy is to diversify energy imports and utilize high quality foreign energy resources. Current environmental regulations are implemented and new, more stringent policies are added, particularly in large cities. Stricter NOx emission standards are implemented. Substitution for coal occurs in big cities as well as some wealthier medium cities. A more stringent legal system to enforce environmental regulations is established. Stricter SO2 emission standards for power plants are implemented to reinforce the adoption of desulfurization technology in power plants. Public awareness of energy conservation and environmental protection is higher than in the other scenarios.”

Fusing Energy. BBC Book of the Future. www.bbc.co.uk

The BBC asked readers and citizens what would the world look like in the year 2020? As a result, the BBC received over one thousand submissions for the BBC Book of the Future. Users were able to vote on these articles and the most popular, interesting, and profound were published. Here is a scenario by Researcher “Red Yarn”, published on the BBC site January 2003. Scenario: Fusing Energy. “The discovery on July 26, 2016, of getting energy by using fusion truly revolutionised the world like no other. Producing fusion energy is vastly different from other forms of producing power in that it is cheap, plentiful and clean. Plentiful because it basically fuses water atoms to get the energy, and there's plenty of that about. Cheap because only a small amount of water is needed to get a vast quantity of energy. And clean because the waste products are non-radioactive and harmless. All oil, coal, and gas burning plants could be shut down; they were costly and polluting, and the raw materials were running out anyway. Renewable energy plants like windmills were just not needed. All fission energy plants could also be shut down immediately, the risk from these was just unacceptable. The new fusion plants meant that electricity could be produced at an incredibly cheap price. It suddenly made perfect sense for cars to run on electricity, petrol now just seemed unfeasibly expensive. Eventually, new engineering techniques meant that the fusion reactors could be reduced in size, so that fusion power stations were not needed anymore. Energy could instead be produced 'on the fly', when and where it was needed, by using portable reactors. Anything that needed a power source could be powered by a fusion 'battery' that just needed water topped up from time to time to run. At first these were huge things, and could only be used in submarines or as emergency generators in hospitals. However, they became smaller and smaller until they resembled the batteries from the end of the 20th century, and could power personal music stations and game boys. At this point scientists decided that no more research into energy production would be made, as it was just not needed!”

Energy Technology Perspectives -- Scenarios & Strategies to 2050 International Energy Agency (IEA) Published 2006. ISBN 92-64-10982.

At their 2005 summit in Gleneagles, G-8 leaders confronted the global energy question. They called upon the International Energy Agency to provide advice on scenarios and strategies for a clean and secure energy future. Energy Technology Perspectives is a response to the G8 request. This report assesses how energy technologies can work with emerging technologies to contain an overrun on emissions in CO2. These global energy scenarios go out to the year 2020. (See report for detailed scenarios.) The scenarios include major strategic elements such as energy efficiency, CO2 capture and storage, renewables and nuclear power. According to the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency , “A sustainable energy future is possible, but only if we act urgently and decisively to promote, develop and deploy a full mix of energy technologies – including improved energy efficiency, CO2 capture and storage (CCS), renewables and -- where acceptable -- nuclear energy. We have the means, now we need the will.” Key challenge discussed in this book is the need for a “portfolio of technologies” to spread risk and costs. “A sustainable, secure energy future will hinge on dynamic financial and policy efforts, within both public and private sectors, to streamline and deploy existing or emerging energy technologies and to boost energy efficiency in transport, industry and buildings. Urgent action is needed now to prevent current investment decisions from locking inefficient, high-carbon energy infrastructure into the world's economies.” Key trends in energy technologies are discussed in detail. Power generation, buildings, industry and transport are analysed to the year 2050. Assumptions based on forecasts analyse five accelerated technology scenarios about the epeed of energy efficiency gains and technology market penetration. Both demand side and supply side technologies are discussed. On the demand side, technologies are clustered under transport, buildings, and industry. ON the supply side, the technologies are clustered under carbon capture and storage, nuclear, and hydrogen.
The global scenarios provided analysis to illustrate how technologies can make a difference to 2050. Technology strategies discuss barriers and possibilities over the short term and over the next two to three decadess. The most important technologies and practices the study found were: Improved energy efficiency; Clean coal with CCS; Renewables, including biofuels; Nuclear, Hydrogen and fuel cells. In the study, the Baseline Scenario builds on the WEO Reference Scenario followed by two Accelerated Technology Scenarios (ACT). These pose as a family of scenarios to demonstrate how technologies that are already commercial or under development can help towards a sustainable energy future All scenarios analyse the impact from measures to accelerated R&D, demontration and deployment efforts as well as measures aimed at giving incentives for low-carbon technologies. The scenarios differ in terms of assumptions for nuclear, CCS, renewables, advanced biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells and energy efficiency progress.

Urban Ecology of the Future. Morton Elle. The author, Morten Elle holds a PhD in Civil Engineering. He has worked for many years on self-government, residents' schemes and urban ecology. He is a member of the local IVTB group at Danmarks Tekniske Højskole, where he holds a senior scholarship.

This publication describes four possible scenarios for the urban ecology of the future. The analysis includes solving the problems of energy, water, waste water, and waste and recycling in residential areas in the future. Each scenario is illustrated by examples of a futuristic Denmark. The author examines in detail a number of important aspects of social development, developments in housing areas and solutions to the problems of energy, water, waste water, and waste and recycling. There are a wide range of solutions to the environmental challenges of the future. The four scenarios described in this publication in detail are: Scenario 1) “A scenario in which information technology in particular plays a major role in solving environmental problems. This is primarily an individual solution on a voluntary basis, and little time is spent on solving environmental problems.” Scenario 2) “A scenario where each individual is responsible for solving environmental problems. Technology (or high technology) plays a negligible role. The individual solution is found on a voluntary basis, and this involves a considerable amount of time.” Scenario 3) “In this scenario, technological solutions at local-authority level play the dominant role. Technology is crucial, but this is applied outside the dwelling and the residential area. There is a relatively strong element of local authority control. Little time is spent in the dwelling or residential area on solving environmental problems.” Scenario 4) “A scenario in which those living in the residential areas are actively involved in solving many of the environmental problems. Technology plays a key role, but the most important element is cooperation between the local residents. There is a certain amount of local control. Those residents actively involved spend some time on solving the problems.”

Sustainable Consumption of Food: A Framework for Analyzing Scenarios about Changes in Diets Faye Duchin Department of Economics Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Journal of Industrial Ecology 99, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University, Volume 9, Number 1.2

This article describes the advantages of a global Mediterranian diet to counter the effects of ill-health and obesity among the developed nations. It reviews findings by industrial ecologists about the energy and land required for the production and consumption of alternative foods and diets in several European countries.Analysis of the environmental and economic implications of alternative scenarios describing healthy diets can help stimulate more intensive dialogue, debate, and action among the interested parties; such analysis can both benefit from and contribute to initiatives such as the World Health Organization's global strategy on diet and health, which intends to enlist the support of governments, corporations, and civil society. Faye Duchin

Global Framework for Scenario Analysis: A scenario serves as a hypothesis to be tested with a model. The implicit hypothesis lying behind the scenarios discussed in this article is the following: Scenario 1) If the meat-based diets favored by today's affluent populations were replaced by a palatable, nutritious, plant-based diet, and if the latter rather than the former were emulated in the developing countries, it would be possible to feed a growing global population without substantial increases in either the cost of food or pressures on the environment. One example of these hypothetical dietary assumptions is the Mediterranean-type diet, and the simplest scenario would have all diets converging to a common one. This could be a good choice for an initial analysis at a relatively aggregated level of representation of crops and foods. One could also define distinct regional versions of plant-based diets that make the most intensive use of customary, locally available items and further disaggregate to distinguish the current and possible future diets of different categories of households in each region.
By contrast, Scenario 2) a business-as-usual scenario would assume that regional average diets will remain basically unchanged from current patterns. It is unclear whether this scenario is feasible because the world population is growing and changes in the climate system increasingly affect the mixes and yields of crops in different regions. An analysis would have to be studied on a model framework used to describe the impact of climate change on agriculture and its ability to satisfy the demand for food. Another plausible scenario, Scenario 3) is that diets of growing segments of the populations of developing countries will shift toward the current diets of the affluent: more calories per capita and a larger share of calories from animal products and added fats and sweeteners. The physical feasibility of such scenarios for the future and their environmental and economic consequences have barely begun to be explored. Conclusion: It is conceivable that the American diet could be emulated in all parts of the world. Relative to that baseline, a global shift toward a Mediterranean-type or other plant-based diet could be expected to have a more favorable impact on the environment and on health. The upgrading of nutritionally deficient diets, though, especially in developing countries, could more than offset the environmentally beneficial impacts of adopting a plant-based diet in the rich countries. The outcomes will depend not only on dietary choices but also on changes in the current practices of the food production, processing, handling, and service sectors. Better understanding of the implications of these changes will facilitate the identification of specific agricultural, trade, or other policies that could promote effective dietary innovation and indicate the extent of changes that will be required.

Blogging a Pandemic- a Bird Flu Scenario Plausibly Real - Scenarios and Anticipations. Nature Magazine Issue 558, May 26, 2005.

The May, 2005 issue of Nature focused on avian flu and the possibility of a pandemic. This issue illustrates how a flu pandemic might play out with a future scenario that provides a nice exercise in bringing to life the information that is often buried as inputs or outputs to simulation models such as EpiSims. This article concludes with a look back at how unprepared society is in mid-2005. These short-term scenaric glimpses of possible futures sheds light on the present, revealing early warning signs and looming decisions that may turn us away from or towards the imagined events.

Scenario: "2 February 2008. The Virus Spreads" :Today, I was at a press conference at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. A guy from the CDC pointed to a giant screen, a map of the world dotted with red pixels. He said that they'd reckoned the virus might hit in two or more waves up to eight months apart, as in past epidemics. They'd hoped the first pandemic strain of H5N1 might be poorly contagious, and come back again with a vengeance after it had picked up more infectivity. By that time we might have had a vaccine. That was just a hunch, though. And it was wrong. The mild pandemic in 1968 took almost a year to cross the globe. This one probably started around October. So we're now almost four months in. Look at that map! With the huge increase in passengers travelling by air, it's already lodged in 38 cities around the globe. The outline of Asia is barely visible beneath the swarm of red pixels. Now the virus is in coastal cities on both sides of South America. It hit Europe two weeks ago, ripping through Paris in just 11 days. In the French capital alone, there were 2.5 million cases and 50,000 dead. That's par for the course's infection rate 25% and mortality 2%, similar to the 1918 pandemic. Extrapolate these numbers, and we're going to have over 30 million dead worldwide. In poor and densely populated countries like India, it could be worse. Where's next, I asked. Based on passenger data which had to be prised from the airlines, one epidemiologist was willing to make a guess. "Within two weeks, there." He traced his finger from San Diego to Los Angeles, up to San Francisco. Within another three to four weeks, it'll be the turn of the conurbations along the eastern seaboard.

A Playful but Sensible Approach to Possible BioFutures Plausibly Surreal. Jamis Cacio. Coverage on Elio Cavccavale's Utility Pets. March, 2005. Hybrids: towards a new typology of beings and animal products will be shown at the Science Learning Centre, Institute of Education, in London, till 02 June 2005. Elio Caccavale had also talked at the Subtle Technologies symposium , May 26-29, Toronto, Canada

Elio Caccavale's Utility Pets is a project that explores the idea of building animal farms to supply human spare parts. Elio devised a series of educational dolls exploring the emergence of biological hybrids in biotechnologies, and our moral, social, cultural and personal responses to the strange and different in human biology and also "transhuman" creatures. Learning from companies and organisations that produce educational dolls, the designer, with the help of bioethicist Richard Ashcroft, made twelve myBio dolls that could symbolise possible biofutures. The use of narrative and myBio dolls can help children understand how to deal with applications of biotechnology, and with the social development of biotechnological knowledge. Tomorrow’s children will need to know the key methods used in biotechnology so they can learn to understand the many possibilities of biotechnology. Elio Caccavale

Scenario: "2030: A Playful but Sensible Approach to Possible Biofutures" In this world of 2030, John, an avid smoker and organ recipient, takes home a pig and gives it a good quality of life until the day of the organ replacement comes. Psychologiests by 2030 have innovated a series of studies & objects to investigate the emotional exchange between John and the genetically modified pig that has been bred with elements of the owner's genetic makeup. In this world, John is supplied with a Smoke Eater, a device that allows the user to smoke at home without creating passive smoke that would damage the health of the pig, or, utility pet. John doesn't have to worry about damaging his own health since the pet has spare organs ready to be used if needed. In 2030, the general consesnsus is one of reluctant acceptance, as this biotechnique tends to encourage bad habits since there is no longer a fear of death as a result of smoking. Meantime, patients routinely are examined using GFP from jellyfish, which is a flourescent indicator used for monitoring gene expression. Cows produce proteins in their milk for pharmaceutical drugs (this is symbolised by the "milk thread" attached to the cow’s udders); myBio goat has a spider web attached to the udders demonstrating one animal making the natural product of another.

21st Century Policy Project California Integrated Waste Management Board Issues Summit, January, 1999. www. ciwmb.org

Under the leadership of the California Integrated Waste Management Board, the state is nearly two-thirds of the way toward achieving ambitious waste diversion goals set forth by the Legislature. As California entered the new millennium, many issues remained and new issues and waste streams are on the horizon. The 21st Century Policy Project brought interested parties together to form a new consensus for the future of solid waste management in California. Under the Board's leadership, this process provided the most current information from within the nation and around the world, stimulated fresh thinking, and built on the successes of the last decade to conserve resources while protecting the health, safety, environment, and economic well being of future generations. In its leadership role, the Board hosted several events to elicit participation from external and internal stakeholders. These events included an "issues summit", and a "trends and issues" convention, which ultimately led to the following scenario of the future of waste management. Before we get to the scenario, the following are the primary trends discerned by the stakeholders: Increasing home waste production; -.increasing inventory of recycled material in warehouses; - decrease in the need for new landfill space over last five years; increasing consumption of convenience foods and other highly packaged products; increasing population in California; - aging of the population; political mood shift--less trust in government institutions, call for more "accountability." Trend Analysis: The distillation of a global trend to a specific waste management-related trend. Also, determining which trends are most likely to have the greatest impact on CIWMB.

Scenario: Vision for the 21st Century: "In 2010, materials are managed as part of a “sustainable” system that resulted from a shift in our thinking and in our framework of incentives and disincentives. We have shifted from a “take make waste” linear approach to using natural resources and making products to a “systems” approach that incorporates the long-term costs and benefits of natural resource extraction and cross-media environmental impacts. This system minimizes the use of virgin materials, considers social equity issues, minimizes pollution and discards, and safely manages unavoidable discards as a resource. Business, government and community organizations are equal partners in a relationship to create a balanced economic, environmental and societal bottom line that moves us in this direction. This is accomplished through: Open access to information in each area; Balanced use of economic incentives and regulatory authority; and A planned and open process for participation in decision making by all parties. The Board is an advocate for sustainable materials management practices and their associated benefits to the public/communities, businesses, and to government. The Board does this through a strong legislative effort, education, practical assistance, up-to-date and comprehensive information on materials management topics, and progressive research and development programs."

Electric Power Horizens- For the First Time in History, U.S. Electric Power Infrastructure Could Create Dependence on Foreign Fuel Supply. Ron McMahan, Chairman and CEO of Global Energy Decisions. Global Energy Decisions released a study in September, 2004 oion looking ahead to America's energy security, utilizing a new scenario-based analysis of the energy future to 2020. Gary L. Hunt, President, Global Energy Advisors who can be reached at 916-609-7750

For the first time in history, U.S. electric power infrastructure could create dependence on foreign fuel supply. High oil prices, geopolitical instability, tightening constraints on U.S. natural gas production and toughening environmental regulations foreshadow tough choices ahead for America's energy security, according to a new scenario-based analysis of the energy future to 2020 released by Global Energy Decisions (Global Energy). "The electric power industry is the central nervous system of the U.S. economy. The relationship between GDP growth and electricity demand is well-understood. For the first time in history we are headed down a path of dependence on foreign supply to fuel our electric power infrastructure. The energy security debate today tends to focus too much on the price of a barrel of oil and not broadly enough on the critical question of the security of electric power supply," said Ron McMahan, Chairman and CEO of Global Energy. Using detailed scenario analysis combined with a fundamental market view to help companies examine the risks and opportunities of future energy alternatives to their business strategies, Global Energy's "Electric Power Horizons" study found: 1) An expanded deregulated power market increasingly served by the new fleet of gas-fired electric power plants combined with a steadily growing economy could see the U.S. consumption of natural gas almost double by the year 2020. This significantly increases the risk of relying on imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) under the RTOs Work scenario up to 15 TCF per year in LNG imports would be needed by 2020, a daunting infrastructure task. 2) The United Nations Kyoto Accord calls for greenhouse gas emissions limitations that may put nearly one-half of the nation's coal plants at risk of closing or serious limitations on their operation by 2018. The U.S. may be the Saudi Arabia of coal, but Kyoto compliance may negate coal as a viable fuel source. 3) Electricity load growth is the key factor to power market recovery, but a terrorist attack that threatens our economic recovery or a serious environmental risk from global warming could have economic impacts that take more than 10 years to overcome thus threatening the viability of the electric power industry. 4) Since the Three Mile Island accident and nuclear construction cost over-runs sank America's nuclear power plant building no new nuclear plants have been built. But new nuclear plants may be a critical stepping-stone both for energy independence as well as to meeting Kyoto green house gas emissions reduction targets and our growing energy demand. Today the current fleet of operating nuclear plants is performing spectacularly in providing reliable, economic base load energy for a growing economy. 5) Renewable and alternative energy offering strategic "sweet spots," such as geothermal, wind and solar energy resources exist across all possible energy futures. Will renewable energy fulfill its potential or remain a heavily subsidized niche play? Aligning our political and economic objectives with our energy reality is a key to making renewable energy sustainable. "'Electric Power Horizons' takes scenario planning to the next level with actionable insights leading to better strategic assessment by quantifying impacts and risks of our energy policies across alternative future business environments," said Gary L. Hunt, President, Global Energy Advisors, a Global Energy division. Global Energy, with input from utility, natural gas, coal, academic, financial and rating agency clients, developed three powerful and equally plausible scenarios captured in "Electric Power Horizons": Scenario 1) Terrorism & Turmoil: Terrorists' disruptions create economic slowdown, concerns about energy security and uncertainty, and the need for strategic action to restore America's self confidence and resolve. Scenario 2) RTO Works-Markets Reign -- FERC and states actually find ways to work together to expand regional transmission organizations nationwide in a non-gas-constrained world where America's genius for competition and innovation are unleashed to help secure our energy independence. Scenario 3) Green World: Evidence of global warming leads to a carbon tax and a shift to a carbon-constrained world. This crisis scenario is just as profound as a terrorist attack in undermining our energy security. Do we have an action plan to address this potential risk?

Climate Change and Insurance study commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Insurers. 'Expert-judgement' based probabilistic scenarios UK, 2005.

These scenarios are statistical, but they present interesting "expert judgements" for four climate futures for the British Isles. These expert-judgement based scenarios have been constructed based upon available evidence from the current climate science and climate change scenarios that have been presented in recent reports (e.g. Hulme and Jenkins, 1998 and Agnew and Viner, 2000). These climate scenarios are descriptive examples of how the climate of the British Isles may is likely to evolve in the future. These four possible realisations of the climate system shown are based upon different levels of probability from Scenario-1 High, what is likely to happen to Scenario 4-High-reaction, a plausible scenario but low probability of occurrence based upon the high values of climate sensitivity and rapid growth in greenhouse gas emissions. To the reader, these scenarios are not stories of the future, but rather, statistical versions of likely futures. These scenarios utilize changes in mean temperature, precipitation, windstorms, and sea-level rise; all easily understandable for the imagination of the layman.

The expert judgement based scenarios presented here should be used as guides for assessing possible future impacts and thresholds that may exist within the insurance and other exposure sectors and where applicable, other exposed sectors (e.g. transport, agriculture, water resources and tourism). A given exposure unit if deemed vulnerable to impacts as described by Scenario 1 High Probability: is going to be very sensitive to climate change in the near future, whilst one only sensitive to Scenario 4 is a robust sector which will show few impacts above those already experienced within current natural variability. Scenarios 1 and 2) have been constructed to capture the ranges of change for a number of variables as described by the IPCC. For example the 4-10cm rise of sea-level per decade and the temperatures changes prescribed by a climate sensitivity of 1.5 to 4.5oC. The scenarios are time dependent but where possible show rates of change rather than changes by a given period. One problem that exists in presenting climate change scenarios for given periods in the future (e.g. the 2050s) is that many stakeholders see this as a distant time horizon which is beyond their envelope of experience. Thus there can be a tendency to view climate change as a phenomena which is problematic for the next generation rather than the current. We have seen, however that it is the rates of climate change and how we move from the current state to an evolved climate that is problematic and that the impacts of human-induced climate change are impacting now. Scenario 1) High Probability: Mean temperature 0.2 to 0.3°C rise in mean temperature per decade 2020s: 1.3°C Warmer; 2050s 2.0°C Warmer, Higher night time temperatures. Occasional cold winters 0.2 to 0.3°C rise in mean temperature per decade. 2020s 1.3°C Warmer 2050s 2.0°C Warmer Higher night time temperature 0.2 to 0.3°C rise in mean temperature per decade 2020s 1.3°C Warmer 2050s 2.0°C Warmer Higher night time temperatures Occasional cold winters 0.2 to 0.3°C rise in mean temperature per decade 2020s 1.3°C Warmer 2050s 2.0°C Warmer Higher night time temperatures 0.2 to 0.3°C rise in mean temperature per decade 2020s 1.3°C Warmer 2050s 2.0°C Warmer Higher night time temperatures Occasional cold winters Precipitation 2020s Winters 7% Wetter Summers 2% drier 2050s Winters 11% Wetter Summers 15% drier Higher number of intense winter rainfall events Years with summer rainfall below 50% of 1961-90 average is approximately 1 in 5 Windstorms No change in variability/frequency of extreme high impact (e.g. windstorms) events Sea-level Rise 4-10cm increase per decade 2020s - South East (e.g. Harwich) 20cm North West 14cm 2050s - South East (e.g. Harwich) 41cm North West 28cm Localised coastal flooding due to higher tides - within design of sea-defences Scenario 2) Mean temperature 0.2 to 0.3°C rise in mean temperature per decade through 2020s :1.3°C Warmer 2050s: 2.0°C Warmer, no repetition of early 1980 winters Higher summer temperatures, higher night time warming. Precipitation: 2020s Winters 10% Wetter Summers 4% drier 2050s Winters 15% Wetter Summers 17% drier Higher number of intense winter rainfall events Increase in winter fluvial flood events Increase in summer droughts to 2 years in 3 Windstorms No change in variability/frequency of extreme high impact (e.g. windstorms) events Sea-level Rise 6-10cm increase per decade 2020s - South East (e.g. Harwich) 25cm North West 20cm 2050s - South East (e.g. Harwich) 55cm North West 40cm Severe localised coastal flooding, localised sea defence failures. Scenario 3) Mean temperature: 0.3 to 0.4°C rise in mean temperature per decade through the 2020s. 1.4°C Warmer through the 2050s. 2.4°C Warmer. No repetition of early 1980 winters. Higher summer temperatures, higher night time warming. Higher number of extremely hot (+40°C) days. Precipitation through 2020s: Winters 12%, Wetter Summers 10% drier, 2050s: Winters 20% Wetter Summers 20% drier higher number of intense winter rainfall events. Large Increase in winter fluvial flood events Summer drought increase to 8 in 10 years Windstorms 7% increase in severe winter and summer wind storms per decade. Increase in strong convective activity, and associated features e.g. tornados. Scenario 4) Mean temperature 0.4 to 0.5°C rise in mean temperature per decade through 2020s. 1.8°C Warmer through 2050s. 3.0°C warmer, Increasing number of very hot days. No cold winters Precipitation 2020s: Winters 15% Wetter Summers 15% drier 2050s Winters 20% Wetter Summers 20% drier Higher number of intense winter rainfall events. Regular number of winter fluvial flood events Summer drought increase to 9 in 10 years.Windstorms 15% increase in severe winter and summer wind storms per decade. Common strong convective activity, and associated features e.g. tornados Sea-level Rise 10 - 30cm increase per decade (WAIS Collapse) 2020s - South East (e.g. Harwich) 37cm North West 35cm 2050s - South East (e.g. Harwich) 100cm North West 70cm

Assessing Future Ecosystem Services: a Case Study of the Northern Highlands Lake District, Wisconsin Peterson, G.D., T.D. Beard Jr. Assessing future ecosystem services: a case study of the Northern Highlands Lake District, Wisconsin. Conservation Ecology 7 (3): 1.

The Northern Highlands Lake District of Wisconsin is in transition from a sparsely settled region to a more densely populated one. Expected changes offer benefits to northern Wisconsin residents but also threaten to degrade the ecological services they rely on. Because the future of this region is uncertain, it is difficult to make decisions that will avoid potential risks and take advantage of potential opportunities. This research group adopts a scenario planning approach to cope with this problem of prediction. They used an ecological assessment framework developed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment to determine key social and ecological driving forces in the Northern Highlands Lake District. From these, they describe three alternative scenarios to the year 2025 in which the projected use of ecological services is substantially different.

Scenario 1) Walleye Commons: " In the 2000s, national and global economic growth accelerated due to reforms in energy policy, expanding globalization, and peaceful international relations. As wealth spread worldwide, many regional conflicts were resolved. Terrorist threats declined, and international travel increased sharply. The expansion of high-speed wireless networks increased the ability of people to telecommute and greatly increased the flexibility of the traditional work week. People had more disposable income than previous generations and more time for leisure activities. Global travel became easy, cheap, and common. Life in Wisconsin's northern highlands, however, has taken a turn for the worse. Climate change brought longer summers and milder weather. As expected, warming reduced opportunities for snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, and other winter sports. At the same time, quite unexpectedly, climate warming also contributed to the spread of disease. A deadly walleye pathogen, which was amplified in hatcheries, quickly spread and forced the closure of several valuable walleye fisheries in the NHLD. Even worse, a water-borne protozoan introduced from South America created a new human health hazard in the region. The protozoan easily moved from lake water through open cuts to infect the human nervous system. Over a period of years, victims of protozoan infection suffered gradual and debilitating nervous system disorders. Although the disease was usually not lethal, the quality of life of those infected was severely reduced during the multiyear recovery period. The coincidence of easy global travel, substantial disposable income, limited fishing opportunities, and fear of disease had a substantial impact on life in the NHLD. People from urban centers who had once flocked to the region due to its accessibility, charming beauty, and relaxed atmosphere now chose to vacation or retire to other, safer locations. The decline in tourism and the sale of many second homes, along with the fear of living with a mysterious and dangerous disease, led many local business owners to follow their former customers to other regions. These initial emigrations set in motion a downward spiral. Declining property values, bankrupt businesses, and school closures led more people to leave the area and accelerated the decline. Small towns lost almost all of their businesses. Larger towns, such as Minocqua and Eagle River, became small, poor, and dilapidated. When they couldn't be sold, many summer homes and cabins were seldom visited or simply boarded up and abandoned. During this emigration, however, few people left Lac du Flambeau. Despite unemployment and declines in casino revenue, people began to take advantage of low land prices to purchase land. Due to the construction of new casinos in southern Wisconsin, the Lac du Flambeau Tribe in cooperation with a consortium of other Native American groups was able to purchase land in northern Wisconsin. The State of Wisconsin and The Nature Conservancy also took advantage of cheap land to expand existing nature reserves. The net result was an increase in the size of protected areas and tribal lands and a decrease in the amount of land held in small private plots. Ecologically, this series of events had both predictable and surprising consequences. Wetlands greatly expanded as riparian vegetation reclaimed once-manicured lawns. Wildlife proliferated due to reduced exploitation and increased available habitat. The reduction in fishing and boating slowed the spread of invasive species, especially into small isolated lakes. Reduced human activity increased overall water quality and improved fish populations in the region. However, erosion from poorly maintained roads and lawns increased turbity in a number of lakes. Size and age distributions of fish populations shifted toward older, bigger fish, i.e., those typically targeted by anglers. In lakes affected by the hatchery-borne walleye disease, walleyes did not recover, but other fishes such as smallmouth bass and muskellunge established robust stocks. A few larger lakes became eutrophic as the septic systems of abandoned lakefront homes failed and leaked. However, there was less pollution in the area in general, and the increase in wetland area provided more filtering and buffering capacity for the pollutants that remained. Surprisingly, mercury pollution in lakes became an increasingly severe problem. Coal burning upwind of the NHLD continued to deposit mercury across the region, and the increased wetland area exacerbated the bioaccumulation of mercury. The increase in wetlands caused an increase in anoxia and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in lakes. Increased anoxia increased the generation of methylmercury, and increased DOC reduced the ability of light to degrade methylmercury. The presence of large, old fish, which bioaccumulate more mercury than do the smaller fish lower on the food chain, in combination with the increased amounts of methlymercury led to high levels of mercury in many fish. For Native Americans heavily dependent on spearfishing walleye, which selects for larger, more mercury-laden fish, this presented a health risk, but an innovative system that combined lake rotation with pulsed harvesting was invented to reduce mercury exposure. In 2025, there were roughly 12,000 people living in the NHLD district, which represented a fourfold population decline from 2000 to near 1900 levels. However, the Native American population had grown from less than 10% of the population to roughly 40%. People living in the area were not much better off than they were in 2000 and relatively much worse off than in Wisconsin as a whole. With the exception of walleye, fish populations were healthy. The lakes looked good, but the water was dangerous. However, the people of the NHLD now say that the wealth they receive from nature more than compensates for their low incomes. Those who disagree left long ago. Scenario 2) Northwoods.com: In the 2000s, concerned that the robust growth of the U.S. economy would leave Wisconsin behind, the state government, business leaders, academics, and community groups created state-wide economic and community development plans that would allow Wisconsin to thrive in the 21st century. A program that combined venture capital with university and community partnerships lead to the establishment of a new University of Wisconsin campus and business park in Rhinelander. The goal of this university was to retain young people in Wisconsin. The university emphasized local community and business development. With the establishment of the university campus and the influx of faculty, staff, and students, the regional economy gradually diversified away from tourism toward an economy that included a number of branch or back offices for a wide variety of businesses. Some initial local successes combined with the high quality of life led to the rapid expansion of these branch offices. Young people were drawn to the area by the low cost of living and the high quality of life in the North Woods. Companies found the area attractive because they could recruit talented people for relatively low wages. Some companies even argued that the residents of the NHLD received two paychecks: one from their jobs and the other from life in a region that offered remarkable opportunities for outdoor recreation. As young people remained in the region, the Rhinelander and Minocqua areas began to urbanize. The young residents tended to cluster near the social life of the university. As the area developed and property values rose, this area gradually expanded along the Wisconsin River from Rhinelander to Merrill. The fresh waters in the Wisconsin River corridor from Eagle River to Merrill became highly urbanized and heavily used. The lakes closest to this corridor sustained major ecological impacts from urban development and heavy human recreation. Most nearby wetlands were drained for lakeshore development, more pollutants entered these lakes from the watershed, blue lakes turned green from increased nutrient runoff, increased fishing pressure caused fish stocks to decline, boat traffic accelerated the dispersal of invading species, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons increased 100-fold in the lakes. A series of fish kills in the Wisconsin River caused widespread concern about the costs of development. Economic growth around Rhinelander had increased the tax base of cities and towns, which increased the relative political power of urban residents. These fish kills mobilized the urban residents to protect the aquatic resources of the surrounding areas. City governments and then county governments and businesses all supported new land use policies to appeal to their new constituents. However, businesspeople in the NHLD preferred market-based policies to strict regulation, and, in cooperation with the University of Wisconsin faculty, they created an innovative and profitable market for quality riparian habitats and a variety of ecosystem services provided by pristine lakes. Acquiring conservation lands became a major goal of the local government. Zoning ordinances and conservation easement plans, funded by a steep horsepower tax on boat motors and riparian development, were enacted to preserve the lakes in the surrounding region. Although many landowners profited from these policies, other residents grew angry as development costs for lakefront property soared, as did the cost of utilities, wells, and fishing. Some rural constituents took advantage of the cost-sharing programs and capitalized on the increased value of their property for tourism, whereas some urban residents still wanted to use large motorboats on pristine lakes. However, regardless of this opposition, the majority agreed that, if the inhabitants wanted to degrade ecosystem services, they would have to pay to replace them. Although the Lac du Flambeau casino did not do as well as hoped, the influx of new job and training opportunities into the NHLD greatly improved job, educational, and cultural opportunities for Native Americans. In two decades, they went from having a per capita income less than half that of other northern residents to one as high as the state mean. Despite some conflicts with the new town-oriented environmental regulations, these regulations increased the value of much of the Lac du Flambeau land. The tribe, controversially, limited access to a number of reservation lakes to produce highly profitable, high-quality fishing lakes. In 2025, the population of the region had grown to nearly 65,000 people, a 50% increase over the population in 2000. Most of the population growth occurred near the Wisconsin River. Household income in the region was now about equal to that of Wisconsin as a whole. Rather than being older than the rest of Wisconsin, the population of the region was slightly younger. In general, the conservation policies caused most of the lakes in the region, specifically those further away from the urban corridor, to improve in quality. Overall, the region was providing more ecosystem services than in the past. More riparian habitat improved fish recruitment and growth, and more trophy fish were caught. Lakes that previously had experienced a lot of motorboat activity and associated pollution improved in water quality. Wetland area increased, adding to the improvement of the water quality in many lakes. Increased wetland area also increased DOC inputs to some lakes, and, through methylation-light penetration feedback, mercury problems were exacerbated in some areas. However, because few people depended on fish for food, mercury was not considered a serious health problem. Scenario 3) Lake Mosaic: Economic growth in the late 20th and early 21st centuries created many wealthy baby boomers. Despite a generally robust economy, international tensions, terrorism, and warfare greatly reduced international travel. Their ready cash and reluctance to travel led many families to consider either buying a vacation home in, or retiring to, the NHDP. Furthermore, the milder climate resulting from global warming made northern Wisconsin a more desirable location to live in year-round. These changes, combined with the expansion of high-speed wireless networking, increased the number of people who could alternate their lives between two homes. All these factors increased the number of households that decided to move, full- or part-time, to the NHLD. Most of these new residents wanted lakeshore property and homes in the woods away from the hustle and bustle of city life. Lakeshore development proceeded rapidly. The residents, most of whom moved to the area because of a love of the outdoors, spent lots of time on lakes or in the nearby wooded areas. Consequently, they chose locations that were not highly developed. As the number of cabins on an individual lake began to climb, that lake became less attractive to new arrivals, and new developments began on other, less developed lakes. As a result, almost all lakes in the region became moderately developed. Most residents were very attached to their lakes. Often people were attracted to a particular lake because of its features and the attitudes of the other people living around it. These people frequently organized themselves into lake associations. Many existing lake associations became quite powerful organizations and implemented a wide variety of activities intended to improve life around their lakes. However, the scope and ultimate goals of these activities varied greatly. Some people improved their lakes by removing all hazards to boat navigation and importing sand for beaches, whereas others tried to improve fishing; still others added woody debris to their lakes in an effort to return them to a past wild state. The great variability among lakes and the diverse interests of the people settling around them led to considerable variety in lakeshore development patterns. Some lake associations advocated the rights of residents to build "dockominiums," modify habitat, and intensify boating activity. Other lake associations worked to ban personal watercraft, severely restrict loss of habitat, limit access, and improve fishing. With the increased population of the region, fishing quality generally declined despite ever-stricter regulation by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. This led several groups of people, including some fishing clubs, to purchase the entire perimeter of a lake to allow them high-quality fishing. On these lakes and a few lakes in government-maintained wilderness areas with "trophy-only" regulations, fishing quality was excellent. Some private landowners were able to profit handsomely by selling extraordinary fishing opportunities at premium prices. However, in most lakes accessible to the public, fishing quality continued to decline because of increased fishing pressure and the continual removal of the larger individual fish. Whenever one lake had a particularly good year, mobile anglers would quickly descend on it and reduce the quality of its fishing to the level of the other lakes in the region. The decline in public fishing opportunities combined with the improvement in private fishing was only one of many initially subtle, but increasingly open conflicts among people living on different lakes. Tourist operators complained about how the new residents, through overfishing, limited their ability to attract tourists. Lake residents were often unfriendly to outsiders, and conflicts over noisy boats, roads, land use, and the deterioration in water quality sometimes led to nasty and long-running feuds. Ecological management decisions were frequently court-mandated. There were many irate letters to the editors of local papers, more intense influence peddling, more acrimonious County Board meetings, and increasingly frequent acts of vandalism. This gradual spread of low-density residential development across the landscape had variable and lake-specific ecological effects. These depended on the preferences of the lakeshore owners and the characteristics of the individual lakes. For example, a "swimming lake" might have less coarse woody debris, better or at least stabilized water quality, and decreased motorboat traffic. In other lakes, especially small lakes or lakes with only a few property owners, habitat, water quality, and fishing quality remained high. In 2025, the population of the NHLD was 55,000 people, a population increase of 25% from 2000. The region's inhabitants were generally older and richer than in Wisconsin as a whole. However, there was a lot of inequality. Whereas a number of rich people owned huge homes that they occupied for only a few weeks a year, many local residents earned minimum wages for cleaning and security companies. Everyone could agree, however, that the North Woods had become more like the suburban environments found commonly throughout the United States. There were many suburban features, ranging from extensive lawns to strip malls. Local politics were more contentious and divisive. Although many people were unhappy with the ways that the NHLD had changed, there were conflicts that prevented effective organization to improve the situation. There was a sense of quiet resignation that the North Woods would inevitably follow the path of suburbanized counties "down south." Some long-term residents even sold their homes to relocate to quiet, wild, undeveloped lakes in Canada.

CERA: Three Scenarios for Transmission Evolution Hart Energy Publishing, LP, publishers of Hart’s Energy Markets magazine. October 16, 2000.

North America’s interstate power transmission system is gridlocked and plagued by a tangle of problems and regulatory uncertainty, according to High Tension: The Future of Power Transmission in North America, a study recently released by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). With the gridlock comes rising concern about the quality and reliability of the nation’s power network. CERA found there is too little incentive to invest in building up the transmission system, and strategy and planning are lacking with no clear consensus on how to open the electricity logjam. “Electric transmission and its future has become a central focus and strategic uncertainty for the North American electric power industry, said Larry Makovich, CERA senior director for North American power. CERA outlined three scenarios for the future of the North American grid. They are: Scenario 1) Incentivized Grids: “Scenario suggests the transmission sector could evolve into a viable stand-alone business. For-profit regional transmission organizations (RTOs) would combine ownership and control of the grid and become the predominant form of transmission operator. Scenario 2) Off-Road Solutions: “Scenario envisions the continuation of gridlock in the transmission sector with more consumers and industry players pursuing generation solutions, such as distributed generation, to alleviate bottlenecks.” Scenario 3) Commanding Heights: “CERA’s name for a scenario in which the federal government takes a direct role in restructuring the transmission sector, maintaining and controlling the existing grid, and planning new transmission capacity additions. The federal government would implement and enforce common reliability standards, dispatch policy, and interregional coordination of the transmission system.” According to CERA, signs to watch that would indicate the industry is moving toward one of the above scenarios are: experimentation with performance-based rates for transmission service; implementation of price caps; investment in merchant transmission projects; expansion and consolidation of RTOs; resolution of jurisdictional disputes; congressional action on restructuring and reliability legislation; response to FERC Order 2000 RTO filing requirements; incidence of grid sabotage; and political constraints on market integration and power reliability.

Three Scenarios of a Deregulated Energy Marketplace Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). March, 2004.
Will the deregulated energy landscape resemble a checkerboard or Silicon Nation? Or are we headed for a "service plus" approach to retail competition? These three scenarios are sketched by Cambridge Energy Research Associates in a report, "Customer Choice in the Information Age: North American Retail Energy Scenarios to 2015," cosponsored by Arthur Andersen and EDS.
"The struggle in the coming years will be over whether retail competition continues to evolve in a patchwork quilt fashion or whether financial forces, new technologies, e-business and other forces cause the industry to move even more rapidly to competitive markets," says Claire Behrens, CERA director of retail energy. She adds, "The question becomes whether the majority of customers are served under a regulatory framework that only supports the principles of competition or one that fosters practical competition."
The CERA report describes the three scenarios as follows: Scenario 1) Checkerboard: A long and uncertain transition to retail competition leads to massive utility industry consolidation into super-regional distribution companies. The regulatory rules governing the transition to competitive retail energy markets effectively inhibit "practical" energy competition from emerging for almost a decade. Most mass-market customers continue to be served under regulated utility company sales rates or default service rates for the majority of the period, with all customers getting choice only at the end of the period. Scenario 2) Service Plus: Low stock market prices relative to earnings pressure utility holding companies to exit the regulated merchant function. Their exit creates new growth opportunities in both unregulated retail energy sales and services for retail energy markets and new entrants that favor established, high-profile brands. These players bundle energy with other product and service offerings. All customers get choice by the middle of the scenario period, and by the end of the period, one-third of power customers and half of natural gas customers have switched providers. Scenario3) Silicon Nation: The development of e-commerce auction exchanges and portals, robust wholesale markets, and national standards for retail natural gas and electricity transactions pressures utilities to exit the regulated merchant function and provides customers with an opportunity to gain direct access quickly to wholesale markets through Internet portals and auctions. As a result, most customers have access to choice before 2010. Switching rates are high, with two-thirds of natural gas customers having switched by the end of the period and almost half of power customers exercising choice.

I am Your Local Power Plant. Larry Armstrong, Senior Writer for Business Week, August, 1999.

This scenario examines trends in self-sufficient enery, technology, and home ownership.

Scenario of the 21st Century: I am Your Local Power Plant. “By 2009, most everybody's got a personal turbine. They can run on palm oil or manure gas, keep things purring in the house, and if there's excess juice, homeowners can sell it back to the grid It is 2009 and I have two electric meters: ``in'' and ``out.'' The ``in'' meter runs most of the time. But once in a while, when power is scarce and expensive, a little generator in my cellar comes on. It keeps everything in the house humming; excess electricity gets sold to the grid. I love watching that ``out'' meter whirl. Personal power plants have come a long way from the 20th century, when they mostly made a racket on camping trips. Now, they're everywhere in 2009, purring like kittens. Sure, there are still big central generating plants, just as there are big mainframe computers. But the hot trend is ``distributed generation''--putting generation close to consumption. That way, the utilities can dismantle their nuclear- and coal-fired plants, and there's no need to tear up the streets to replace power distribution cables. My personal power plant takes over automatically whenever there's a power failure or a big price spike. I signed up for so-called marginal cost power, which is supercheap most of the time but gets astronomical during peak periods--like hot summer days. Remember when you could get a discount if you let the utility remotely turn off your air conditioning for a couple hours? Now, it can remotely switch on my generator when it needs an extra punch.” Wow. 21st Century stuff. Pretty cool.

What if the Forests Were Silent? Alan Rabinowitz of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and John Carey, senior writer, Business Week, August, 1999.

Conservationists believed they had succeeded in safeguarding the forests. But although trees and land have been secured, the animals are disappearing. More than a quarter of all extinctions, where blame can be attributed, have been caused by human hunters.

Rabinowitz describes a scenario of the 21st Century: What if the Forests Were Silent? “It is 2020. Dawn breaks on a tropical forest. Conservationists had succeeded in protecting the trees from the bite of the chain saw, and under the dense canopy, all seems primordial and pristine. But something is missing. Dawn normally brings a symphony of sound. But here there is only silence. No raucous cries of monkeys. No trilling avian melodies. No rustling in the underbrush. The animals are largely gone.” By 2020, this silent dawn is occurring almost everywhere in the world. Indeed, such ``empty'' forests have appeared in countries from Laos to Zaire. The cause is simple: Humans continue to kill the animals. Whether by snare or spear, trap or gun, people have been taking a staggering toll on anything that can be eaten or sold for food or medicine. Wildlife biologists are only starting to tally the cost, but estimates range from up to 24 million animals killed each year in the Brazilian Amazon to 600,000 pounds of wild meat taken annually from Korup National Park in West Africa alone. “Through the early 21st century to 2020, conservationists struggled to protect a natural world already reeling from such threats as population growth, deforestation, and pollution; the rising slaughter adds a formidable challenge in 2020. The underlying causes include the growing numbers and Westernization of forest-dwelling tribes. To that add three other factors: the influx of ranchers and settlers, the building of logging roads that make remote areas accessible, and the enormous value of the natural-medicine trade. By 2020, conservationists succeeded in holding onto the forest, but the world was losing the animals that made the forest function.”

The Pentagons Weather Nightmare: The Climate Could Change Radically and Fast. That Would be the Mother of all National Security Issues. David Stipp, Fortune Magazine, February 9, 2004. This article is about a recent study on global warming commissioned by the Pentagon with consultant Monitor Group’s Global Business Network.

There is growing evidence suggesting the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—“like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over.” Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies--thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.” How will this world look in 2020? Or perhaps, 2010?
Scenario of the 21st Century: A National Security Nightmare. “A TOTAL SHUTDOWN of the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like the Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far south as the coast of Portugal. Or the conveyor might only temporarily slow down, potentially causing an era like the "Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent storms, and droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes caused horrific famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas. For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the bill--its severity fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a time of rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen by 2020:
At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather variation--allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and its climate has become more like Siberia's. Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague unlivable. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south. Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America. Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean islands--waves of boat people pose especially grim problems. Tension between the U.S. and Mexico rises as the U.S. reneges on a 1944 treaty that guarantees water flow from the Colorado River into Mexico. America is forced to meet its rising energy demand with options that are costly both economically and politically, including nuclear power and onerous Middle Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic losses. Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop, struggles to deal with immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa and elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps buffer it from catastrophe. Australia's size and resources help it cope, as does its location--the conveyor shutdown mainly affects the Northern Hemisphere. Japan has fewer resources but is able to draw on its social cohesion to cope--its government is able to induce population-wide behavior changes to conserve resources. China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. It is hit by increasingly unpredictable monsoon rains, which cause devastating floods in drought-denuded areas. Other parts of Asia and East Africa are similarly stressed. Much of Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which contaminates inland water supplies. Countries whose diversity already produces conflict, such as India and Indonesia, are hard-pressed to maintain internal order while coping with the unfolding changes. As the decade progresses, pressures to act become irresistible --history shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding, they raid. Imagine Eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations, invading Russia--which is weakened by a population that is already in decline--for access to its minerals and energy supplies. Or picture Japan eyeing nearby Russian oil and gas reserves to power desalination plants and energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing at their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land. Or Spain and Portugal fighting over fishing rights--fisheries are disrupted around the world as water temperatures change, causing fish to migrate to new habitats. Growing tensions engender novel alliances. Canada joins fortress America in a North American bloc. (Alternatively, Canada may seek to keep its abundant hydropower for itself, straining its ties with the energy-hungry U.S.) North and South Korea align to create a technically savvy, nuclear-armed entity. Europe forms a truly unified bloc to curb its immigration problems and protect against aggressors. Russia, threatened by impoverished neighbors in dire straits, may join the European bloc. Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies are stretched thin as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek to shore up their energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear proliferation. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb. The changes relentlessly hammer the world's "carrying capacity"--the natural resources, social organizations, and economic networks that support the population. Technological progress and market forces, which have long helped boost Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset the crisis--it is too widespread and unfolds too fast. As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc has noted, wars over resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually died. As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human life.”

Striving to Have it all in Sustainable Rural Development Institute for Alternative Futures. Newsletter. June, 2004.

It is possible to develop rural areas in a way that brings economic prosperity, maintains social cohesion, and promotes environmental sustainability - all at the same time. But the social science research required to help reconcile these objectives must be interdisciplinary and must go beyond the boundaries of conventional rural studies. Topics that need to be dealt with range from environmental impacts of new technologies, migration, and changing land use patterns to impacts of ageing and growing diversity in the UK's population, to developments in global trade policy, food security, and "joined up" government. The research agenda for fostering sustainable rural development is large, but so are the potential benefits.

This insight emerges from a project on Rural Futures: Scoping SOcial Science Research Needs carried out by the Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) and the Institute of Innovative Research (IiIR) at the University of Manchester. The project was commissioned by the UK's Economic and Social research Council (ESCR) to develop recommendations on priorities for long-term econojmic and social research.

Scenarios were used to stimulate creative thinking about research proorities. IAFs President, Clem Bezold, says "This approach enabled project participants to look at a wider "possibility space" of plausible futures conditions than they would have simply working from current conditions, outlooks and assumptions. The scenarios, adapted from the Countryside Agency's previous scenario study, State of the Countryside 2020, explored thee challenges presumed to be inherent in rural development: Scenario 1) Growing On: High economic growth at the expense of social cohesion and environmental sustainability. Scenario 2) Growing Together: Rapid growth done in a way that maintains social cohesion, but at the expense of environmental sustainability; Scenario 3) Green in Pieces: The countryside becomes more environmentally sustainable, but also more economically divided and socially fragmented. Scenario 4) Green Together: Economic growth, social cohesion, and enviornmental sustainability come together and prove mutually reinforcing.

Human Population and the Future of Biodiversity. An information update produced by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS): Population-Environment Linkages Series, No. 4. August, 2000.

The population of our species—which recently reached six billion—is ecologically unprecedented. “Based upon mathematical relationships comparing