Davos 2018: A good look at the Future

I've been asked for many, many years where I get the random knowledge I spout all the time.  The answer is simple, I read books by really smart people who do lots of research, and I listen to talks and speeches, like this one.  As I've been drawing pictures a lot this past week, I've been listening to a bunch of the panel discussions from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  Every year, a big conference of leaders of governments and business get together to talk about what's happening in the world, what the challenges are, and what they may be able to do about them.  I've never paid much attention to WEF, or "Davos" as the business news channels call it. 

This year, I happened to have a lot of time to listen, and several of the panel discussions sounded interesting to me.  This was one of the best.  If you listen to the first 20 minutes of this talk, you'll get an amazing look at what's actually happening in the world, and the general direction we're heading.  Here are some of the trends and other things we're all heading towards:

- Russia and China are flexing their muscle in their regions.
-  The U.S., under the Trump administration, is backing away from our long time role was world leader.  This has a lot of world leaders nervous, and Russia and especially China are stepping into that role.
- The developing countries of Nigeria, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, and Mexico are growing and evolving at a tremendous pace.  These will be major economic countries in a decade.
- The world population, now 7.6 billion, will likely be 8.6 billion by 2030.
- There will be 2 billion more people in the middle class globally by 2030.
- Global renewable energy (like solar, wind, etc) is expected to grow by 43% between 2017 and 2022.
- China has a plan called "One Belt- One Road," to build a trade route, over land, from China across several countries, including Iran, to Europe.  This will allow China to transport goods and resources between them and Europe without having to use ships that take a long time.
- As the world weans itself off oil and gas, there will be a huge demand for the minerals needed to make Lithium ion batteries for phones, electric cars and other uses.  The U.S. doesn't have big quantities of any of these minerals, so we'll have to get them from other countries.  That could get really sketchy if political things change much.  Here's where most of these minerals are mined:  Lithium- Republic of Congo (Africa), Cobalt- Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia (South America); and graphite- China. 
- Global warming is melting ice in the arctic, making new shipping routes possible,  and there's also natural gas up there.  There will be a struggles to control these trade routes and resources up there.  Look out Santa.
- Over the next several years, the population of India will surpass the population of China to become the most populous country on Earth.  Wow, China has over a BILLION people.
- Most developed nations now have older, aging populations, and not enough young people.  Most developing countries are just the opposite, they have much younger populations.  This will lead to a host of issues in the future.

That's just part of what's in this discussion.  Oh, and the woman talking about Dubai, She will knock your socks off with the way they are embracing new technology and planning for the future.  I literally feel like where I live is 40 years behind.  Nobody's talking about this stuff around here.  And that, my friends, is why I blog about it.  Huge chunks of the Unites States have already been left behind by changing technology, and it's only going to get worse.