Magic 8-Ball Takes the Mystery out of 2024
The best 2024 predictions you will ever see.
To gain better insights into what to expect in the sustainability world in 2024, I interviewed the original Artificial Intelligence. I revisited the AI that many of us remember from childhood and can still be found in novelty shops and online for the reasonable price of $17.99. Please come back at the end of the year and be amazed at the prescience of this mystical technology. Read on and be amazed.
The answers of the magic 8 ball are not investment advice, but we highly encourage you to run with them for investmentainment purposes.
Magic 8-ball. Thank you for joining us. I’ll get right into the hard-hitting questions. Have we reached the point at which warming over 1.5C is inevitable?
Signs point to yes.
But where will we end up? What temperature above industrial levels will we reach this century before we bend that CO2 ppm curve back down?
Ask again later.
Who will win the 2024 US presidential election?
Better not tell you now.
Will the winner of the US presidential election be an old white man who is trying to hang on to power too long, and has no adequate plan to address our environmental problems?
Yes.
When will the SEC in the United States release their final climate change disclosure rule?
Cannot predict now.
Will humanity finally discover or scale up a green technology that will seriously slow down climate change, such as fission, solar from space, carbon capture and storage, or something else that will be a hot news story for a week and then fade away, but in truth revolutionize energy production and therefore allow humanity to keep the status quo going with a miraculous green technology that will save us from ourselves?
My sources say no.
Who are your sources?
Reply hazy, try again.
Do most people in the world support aggressive action on climate change …
Without a doubt.
… until they are told someone has to pay for it?
It is decidedly so.
Will regulation on climate change advance to the point that it makes many people upset with such proposed changes in a year with many consequential global elections, and yet be woefully inadequate to address the problem even if it was approved and implemented?
You may rely on it.
Will COP 29 finally bend the curve on Carbon Emissions?
Don’t count on it.
Ok. Now I want to ask about some long-term issues, that I don’t think enough people are thinking about. The positive side of climate change. Let’s look to the long term. I’m looking to buy up properties in downtrodden parts of the American Midwest to take advantage of the skyrocketing land prices I anticipate, as the rest of the country tries to escape climate disasters in the Southeast and Southwest in the coming decades. Is this a sound investment strategy?
Outlook good.
On a similar note, I expect parts of the world to become “sacrifice zones” where oppressive heat most of the year will make those areas unlivable. People will flee and migrate to other places in the world leaving a lot of barren land behind. The great thing is that many of these areas are resource rich. Should I buy up this land in anticipation of it being abandoned so I can then send the people who abandoned it back to work on it for slave wages to extract the minerals there?
Signs point to yes.
You told me to ask again later about how high temperatures will get this century. How high will temperatures get above preindustrial levels?
Outlook is not so good.
I’ve heard some hysterical people claiming that society may collapse under the strain of environmental degradation, climate change, and biodiversity loss in the coming decades. Will our society collapse in the next 30 years?
As I see it, yes.
That’s terrible. Wait, do you mean my society, or just some societies that I don’t really know about, and therefore don’t care about? Is that the case?
Most Likely.
Wait, most likely my society will collapse or someone else’s?
Yes, definitely.
That doesn’t answer my question. Can I have a soft landing from climate change, where I make no changes to the way I live, and make no small sacrifices for the common good and still end up with the exact same lifestyle I enjoy now?
Very doubtful.
I’ll take that to mean, everything will be fine. Magic 8-ball. I find your wisdom indispensable in these uncertain times. But I am concerned about your environmental footprint. Are you recyclable?
My reply is no.