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Driver's Seat
What may come – or may not
By BOB DRIVER, columnist
Article published on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005 |
Predicting the future is easy. Predicting with any degree of accuracy is much tougher. Recent events demonstrate that.
Example: Katrina and New Orleans. Weather experts have warned for decades that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t say exactly when. Now we know.
For at least half a century futurists have said, “Don’t become addicted to oil. When supplies get tight, you’ll regret it.” Now the oil chickens have come home to roost. In Tampa (and elsewhere) taxi drivers are quitting their jobs because gasoline costs too much. Other forms of fallout will certainly come.
For instance, energy parties. In the Great Depression, people held rent parties. Friends would come over, have some drinks, kick in a few dollars, and thus enable their hosts to pay their next month’s rent.
Fast forward to 2006: Will we see rent parties to pay for heating bills, and for gasoline to get the wage-earner to and from work for a few weeks? Could be.
News media may soon be publishing instructions to parents on how to keep their children from suffering frostbite after money runs out to pay power bills. “Central heating” may refer to a charcoal hibachi in the middle of the living room, surrounded by family members wrapped in blankets.
Enough gloom. Let’s look on the bright side. As gasoline approaches $7 a gallon, teen-agers will be forced to give up their cars and stay at home. Fathers will suddenly begin to recognize children they haven’t seen in months. Family life will be rejuvenated.
The energy crisis may have a beneficial effect on housing for the poor. (Define “poor.” Today it means anyone who doesn’t have access to $300,000 to buy their first house.) As gasoline prices skyrocket, rich folks will give up their SUVs and Hummers. The second-hand gas guzzlers will be sold to the rest of us and fashioned into homes.
As an amateur futurist, I’ve been surprised that few experts have focused on a likely market for terrorists: crippling our nation’s computers. I would think that a team of well-organized El Qaeda hackers could easily wreak havoc on the computer systems of the Pentagon, the airlines, the nation’s electric power grid and huge chunks of the Internet. If that happens, the hellishness of 9/11 may suddenly seem like a tea party.
On the other hand, none of these dire possibilities may ever come to pass. Peddlers of Armageddon scenarios have a batting average of about .087, at my last count. But they do have one useful purpose: They can prod us anew into appreciating and treasuring each loved one, friend, sunset, rose, McFlurry and other blessings that today grace our lives. Today is not only the first day of the rest of our lives; it could also be as good as it gets.
Send Bob Driver an e-mail at tralee71@comcast.net.
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Article published on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005
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