Yesterday I attended the Third Annual SNS New York Dinner, a gathering of tech professionals and investors at the famous Waldorf=Astoria Hotel hosted by futurist Mark Anderson. As usual, Anderson stirred controversy with a big dose of his high-powered brain candy.
Anderson opened the evening with a set of interlocking observations about the current global landscape. First, Anderson said that the world will face two crises as it transitions into the new year. The first is a climate crisis and the second a financial liquidity crisis.
“We must now agree that the climate crisis is true. We are past the time for debate. But now we need a rapid response,” he said. “What if the global climate crisis is non-linear? There are no straight lines in nature,” he said. Anderson agreed with Albert Gore’s recent remarks that humanity is at war with the planet, but he reminded SNS attendees, as he did at the last two dinners, that there is lots of money to be made by figuring out to end humanity’s war against nature.
Anderson predicted that the West’s good will with China would come to an end in 2008, in no small part due to China’s role as a massive polluter (which the world will notice at the 2008 Olympics) but also because China has taken its current role in the global economy as far as it can. Soon China will have to grow up and evolve.
High oil prices, which Anderson has spotlighted at the last two SNS dinners, will continue to climb. “$70 a barrel for oil is the new floor,” he said. “We’ll see another run to $100 a barrel by December 31 next year, or shortly afterwards.”