Energy and Environmental Challenges

Vivid names have been used to describe possible states of the world in four realms—national security and society (chapter 4) and government and the world economy (chapter 5). The vivid names capture positive, negative, and in-between states—or as they have been referred to in chapter 2 romances, tragedies, comedies, and various subgenres. Mixing and matching these different future states in different realms (for instance, new caliphate and free to choose, or young and militant and progress and crisis) yields nearly limitless possibilities that makes prediction about the future nearly impossible (see appendix A). Indeed, scenarios are not predictions about the future. Rather, they are descriptions of possible future states, as an easily described single deterministic future end does not exist and the world is not likely to move in a uniform or well-defined direction. The outcomes of human action are not simple. Rather from the vantage point of the here and now, almost an endless array of possibilities exists.1