It’s not that we didn’t see this coming. Forget the weather patterns you grew up with, the U.S. and the rest of the world are entering a new climatic pattern: water will be scarcer, rains shorter and more intense, snowfalls fewer, weather patterns more erratic. These new weather patterns are no longer abnormal. According to a majority of the world’s...
What can you do?
It is confounding why more people don’t take the many simple steps available to them to conserve water. You can significantly reduce water consumption in and around your home or business for, in most cases, very reasonable cost. There is no simple one-size-fits-all set of solutions, but doing a little homework can make a big difference. Here are some resources:...
Tapped out and going dry
From Australia to Mexico to sub-Saharan Africa, the world is gripped by a shortage of fresh, clean water. The evidence is everywhere. Up to 80% of China’s rivers are now so polluted that they no longer support aquatic life. NASA satellite photos indicate that India’s water table is shrinking by as much as a foot each year, even while the...
Surveillance state
It’s the Summer of 2013. How much of what has happened since the Spring Trends Journal do you remember? And of what you do remember, which events affected your life? Spring was still new when on April 15 two brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were accused of detonating bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The two explosions...
Trend forecast
While the causes of class, regional or civil war are different, the end result is essentially the same: “War.” And it’s going to go global. It was, and remains, my Top Trend for 2013.
What can you do?
Buy locally grown and made products. Keep the money in your community! If you’re a community-minded entrepreneur, put a team together and make a grassroots investment in this emerging trend, particularly if no grocery store serves the community. Encourage community and local youth groups to use urban farming as a jobs training program, and seek support from local governments and...
The Rust Belt goes green
In the 20th century, the American heartland — from Kansas City to Pittsburgh — sprouted factories that turned out everything from hammers to rocket engines. Now, after decades of hard times for manufacturing, the heartland is sprouting again. Only this time, the crop is sprouts – along with jobs, an urban-agriculture industry, and a solution to the problem of the...
Is gold still golden?
Turn on the cable business shows, read the financial papers, listen to the media’s prized “experts,” hear it from billionaires, and most of all, pay attention when Mr. Big speaks. The message is essentially the same: Gold is a loser’s game. We begin with media favorite Nouriel Roubini, New York University’s own and a member of the White Shoe Boyz...
Gold is golden!
On June 26, when gold was trading at $1,233 an ounce, I had forecast in my Trends in the News segment that it was near the bottom of its trading range, and it could go $100 to $150 lower. Nonetheless, I maintain my long-held forecast for gold to reach $2,000 an ounce. Why? Because there will be no meaningful economic...
Bernanke missed the housing crash, too
Despite President Obama’s praise for Bernanke’s “ … bold action and out-of-the-box thinking,” the Fed chairman boasts a long losing streak of making wrong economic forecasts and misreading the economic tea leaves. In a CNBC interview, July 29, 2005, the Harvard-graduated, former Princeton Professor of Economics, Fed chairman was asked: Q. “Tell me, what is the worst-case scenario if we...