I am becoming ever more convinced that was needs to be done in the United States to preserve its position as a major world power cannot be done. There is no political will to prevent the utter collapse of the United States as a superpower
We've known oil crises were coming since the 1970s and planned for it with the SUV. Where it brags about getting what carburetor driven cars in the late 1970s got in gas mileage. Fixing the problem was too hard.
We've known global warming was going to be a problem since the 1980s. We managed to save the Ozone Layer, but anything else has proven too hard.
We knew how to solve the economic crises of 2008 (that are ongoing), but couldn't bring ourselves to do it (a $1,000,000,000,000 stimulus that bought everyone's mortgages, and put people to work building new rail, new wind and solar plants. and electric cars. Last mile broadband, etc.)
In every one of these cases, what needs to be done has not matched the political will to do it. At some point, it is too late to fix these issues.
It is already too make to prevent global warming. The window to prevent it from becoming an extinctino level event is closing, and EVERY NATION, including China and India is moving to do something --- except the United States.
A statistic that tells me a lot about where we will be in 50 years came at me today: In 2012, China will have double the high speed rail mile sof any other country in the world. That's a serious indicator of the future:
In 1860, the United States (north and south) had a combined 31,000 miles of rail. More than all of Europe, combined. the US was already showing itself to be a major industrial power that would eclipse Europe. In 1939, the US had 4.4 people per car, and ten times the miles of paved roads of Europe.
Leading in transport will mean leading in power eventually.
China will have more of the transportation method of the mid-21st century (electric rail power), that runs faster and costs less than anywhere else. China is the world's leader in high speed rail now. China will invest as much in rail between 2009 and 2014 (somewhere around a quarter TRILLION dollars) as the US will spend in Afghanistan in the same time period. Guess which one will bring returns and which is just pissed away?
The rebuff of the US at the G-20 last week is another sign. If the US was the dominant economic power it used to be, our 'printing money' would have probably been unnecessary, but even if it was, we wouldn't have gotten the push back on it that we have.
China may have the #2 economy in size right now, but in another 10 years, it'll be #1. The US economy has not grown, except for the top 5%, since 2000, and will probably not grow very much for another decade for that same 95%. China is growing at 8-12% a year.
So the world's leadership torch is passing to China in the next decade. It's going to happen, and the world will start looking to China for answers, and not the US. We cannot hold on to #1 like this. How will conservatives react to being #2?
So, since we lack the political will to really shift off of fossil fuel or deal with global warming, they are going to come and kill us in the end. We will become ever less competitive and sink into true third world status...but with nukes!