The end is near...

Well OK so it isn't just around the corner but it's probably closer than we would all like to think.

Increasingly over the last few years I cannot help to think that the world as we know it won't be for much longer.

Motor City No Longer

I am convinced that I will not have the same type of job 30 years from now. I don't mean that I'll be in management rather than an engineer. I mean that I do not think that I will be working in the auto industry. My job will have been long ago down sized and those that remained shipped over seas. The auto industry in the US is dying, plain and simple. There is no getting around it. If I had one single piece of advice it would be to run, don't walk, away from here. I know I've said it before, but it's worthy of restating.

My prediction: GM will be filing for bankruptcy within the next 18 months. This may not be an immediate problem but consider that the aftershocks due to the financial fall out of their bankruptcy will effect multiple companies most significantly the most vulnerable. Those tier I & II companies that are already on the brink will be pulled over the edge either directly because of the GM's filing or will fall in as the edge erodes and finds them. Even if GM survives the filing thousands will loose their jobs. Most will not be GM employees (they will have long be let go)
, no they will be the individuals that do the real work that they once thought their college degrees ensured a stable career. The world as we know it will change.

It's Getting Hot in Here

Whether I have a job or not may be entirely irrelevant given the global climate change that is currently taking place. Sure we could be a multi year cycle that will soon be cooling and stabilizing, the problem with that is if we do nothing and we are wrong, by the time we know beyond the shadow of a doubt it will have been far far too long. It has been said that if we humans stopped today there would be enough energy in the system to continue to raise the earth's average temperature by one degree. And sure it's only one degree but do you realize how much energy would be required to raise the ENTIRE earth's atmosphere by one degree. We're not talk about a small amount of energy.

The predictions are for increased and more sever weather. Greater destruction from hurricanes and tornados. Increase seasonal flooding due to higher rains and coastal erosion from the melting of the polar caps. The world as we know will change.

$100 per Barrel - HA

It won't be long before $70 a barrel is a romantic memory not a dreaded thought of thinks to come. It won't end in Iraq and the politics of it will make today seem as nothing. We will soon be fighting India and China not only for jobs but oil as well. The promise of selling millions more new cars in those two markets will come a great price, increased oil consumption. Remember too that almost everything we come into daily contact is touched by oil. Plastics, detergents, fertilizers for food, oil for heating, electricity to run your house and factories and gasoline. It's not going to be pretty. The world as we know will change.

Things aren't going well right now and I blame the present administration and its politics of fear in part for my mood. I blame the fear of the unknown too. The world is at a cross roads, my life is in flux. The world as we know it will change; I can only hope to see the other end.