Are we stalling or holding on? Earth is the limit.
Faced with the major disruptions that have marked the 2020 decade since its beginning, supporters of the global system have no choice but to let go and quit or do everything possible to stay in place. One by one, each foundation of our economic and political organization is being called into question and requires efforts on the part of those who ensure its functioning, whether to guarantee continuity or to accompany the break.
This month, we will look at the West’s abandonment of the culture of innovation. Over the past few decades, we have experienced a frantic race for innovation (which is not necessarily synonymous with progress), imposing a pace that now seems unsustainable (both for citizens and for the decision-making apparatus). We, therefore, anticipate that economic and political decision-makers will one by one get out of this race, opting for more or less radical choices by refocusing on their core business. In the multipolar world, the trend is quite different, but the Western package will cause a welcome slowdown in this race.
We will devote a calendar of the future to the elections of 2023/2024, events of unprecedented magnitude since they will invite nearly a third of the world’s population to the polls in the most significant countries on our planet. Are we going to fall short of expectations? While this end-of-term convergence carries with it a potential political big bang, the candidates for re-election are numerous and often in a good position, so that all the hopes placed on a renaissance (notably of our Western world) by 2024 could well be disappointed.
There are also ruptures that we do not want to see. As part of our exchanges with our reader community, Dr. Louis Arnoux drew our attention to an original analysis of our oil future. While black gold remains the mainstay of our production and consumption system, the decline in the energy efficiency of its extraction and transport seems to be largely underestimated. He believes that we are living in the last decade of what is known as the Oil Age, since this raw material has played such a central role in the foundation and development of our system.
Detailed summary of issue 173:
2023-2025: The great Western innovation bug
Calendar of future events – a special focus on elections 2023/2024
Looking ahead: “We are living in the last decade of the Oil Age.”
Final shortage in sight: We’re running out of land
Investments, trends, and recommendations
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