The Future in Plain Sight

Book excerpt: From crises in the world’s financial markets to the breakdown of natural systems that support human life and well-being, The Future in Plain Sight is a powerful and unsparing look at what lies in store for us in the coming decades. For more than half a century, we have enjoyed a prolonged period of success and stability. Recent decades have been among the most prosperous in all of human history, and we have come to view this as the norm. However, the events of September 11, 2001, proved just how precarious our sense of safety really is. And what can we expect in the coming years? In The Future in Plain Sight, award-winning journalist and author Eugene Linden lays out the nine factors that foretell future instability. They include the dangers of religious fanaticism, the widening gap between rich and poor, the resurgence of infectious disease, and the effects of a changing global climate. Linden explores these and other destabilizing forces, then takes us to the year 2050 to see what life will be like.