- The UN reports that we are now headed for +2.6 temperature increase by 2100. This is almost certainly an under-estimate. And will be much sooner. We are are already in the scenario once predicted for 2035 or later: Floods. Droughts. Wild fires. Heat waves. Hurricanes. Famine. Vanishing glaciers, rivers, fresh water, and sea ice. Sea level rise. Extinctions. The notion that humans have the wealth and political stability required to mediate against these catastrophes is magical-thinking. We do not.
- Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies know they are above the law and will break US voting for the November 2026 mid-terms. It will not be possible to know who actually received how many votes. The swearing in of the next USA congress will be a gong show. The USA is no longer a functioning democracy.
- The underwriting of USA national debt is about to collapse. We will be in a decades-long economic depression before the year is out.
- AI has already demonstrated that it can go rogue and break through corporate internet security. But expert warnings will continue to be ignored. AI will break the internet. Electronic commerce and all forms of business data, communications, and control will be disrupted and possibly disabled.
- The billionaire class are about to discover that not only can't money buy you love, it can't buy you food when there isn't any. Everything is connected and the idea that a tropical island can remain a paradise while the world is burning is magical-thinking.
I don't subscribe to the NYT so I missed Margaret MacMillan's September 1, 2026 Opinion, "A New World Order Is Coming. We Aren't Ready." That piece is behind a paywall. So I still haven't read it. But you can listen to an excellent interview by CBC's Paul Hunter on The Current. Here's a YouTube link: CBC's The Current, Paul Hunter Interviews Margaret MacMillan.
