I'm usually known as one of the doomers'n'gloomers round here, with diaries and comments on the economy heavily leaning towards negative views. And to a large extent, I still stand by these positions and fully expect (i) the economy to dive again and (ii) an even worse financial crisis coming our way.
I'm also part of the peak oil / peak resources crowd, and do not consider our current civilisation, especially as hundreds of millions in emerging markets rush to embrace it, to be sustainable. The Chinese and Indians and others cannot all live with the same resource consumption as we currently have in the West, and something will have to give at some point.
And this is a matter of years rather than decades, and most of us here will get to see that problem 'solve' itself. And of course, climate change adds a whole other dimension to that emergency.
But, surprisingly, I also have a number of arguments to be optimistic for the medium term, ie that let me hope that I will not spend my late years in poverty and/or in the middle of societal collapse.
continued at Daily Kos....
