Best Case Scenarios

We spend a lot of time thinking about worst case scenarios. But we shouldn't discount the likelihood of better outcomes. Smart people of goodwill all over the world are trying to achieve them. And, by "best case scenarios" I mean outcomes that have some plausible chance of happening within time frames that people who are adults today can live to see.

China

China joins the rest of the world in backing away from coal as a power source and shifting to renewables like solar, wind, and tidal power, to nuclear power, and to improved energy conservation. Its high speed rail network and growing fleet of electric vehicles suggest that it isn't as indifferent to the environment as we might think.

A new generation of political leaders eases its authoritarianism and censorship, curbs its excessive use of the death penalty, checks China's territorial ambitions. It also cuts off tactic support for North Korea if it isn't conditioned on North Korean demilitarization and reforms.

Russia and the former Soviet Union

Putin dies. The Ukraine War is abandoned on terms not materially more favorable than the 2014 status quo. The Black Sea is demilitarized in a multi-lateral agreement. Maintaining a Soviet scale military becomes unsustainable and is curtailed. Ukraine joins NATO. Most autonomous regions of Russia gain more autonomy or gain independence.  

The declining importance of oil and gas in the global economy weakens autocratic powers in Russia and strengthens urban commercial and technology sectors. A grass roots political movement curbs the power of the oligarchs. Russia stops supporting North Korea, which together with Chinese tough love weakens that regime.

Former Soviet Republics continue to go their own ways with weaker ties to Russia and Russian expeditionary military activity is curtailed.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Belatedly, sub-Saharan Africa follows in the footsteps of Mexico, China, and Southeast Asia and becomes a global center for manufacturing, initially fueled by cheap labor and lax regulations, which leads to economic development, greater affluence, and a demographic transition. Improve rail, roads, and air travel link the continent. The declining importance of oil and gas weakens authoritarian regimes.

Regimes will start to leave the highly unstable coup and civil war prone phase of the transition to democracy and agricultural production in Africa will also improve and rise to global standards. So far, Africa has increased output by increasing the amount of land farmed, rather than by increasing productivity per acre, but this could easily change in the decades to come.

The Islamic World

The declining importance of oil and gas undermines the oil monarchies and authoritarian regimes of the Middle East, North Africa, Brunei, and Aceh. Without oil money to prop it up, fundamentalist Islam fizzles. Guest workers in the Arab world are replaced by domestic workers ending massive unemployment among young people in the region. Power shifts to commercial and technology sector firms forcing a transition to democratic regimes, peacefully or by revolutions.

The Islamic world, now in something of a Victorian era stage of cultural development, progresses, with less restrictive dress codes, less repression of women, less use of corporal punishment, and more commercial activity. Iran remains nominally a theocracy but with a great shift in the balance of power in favor of reformist politicians and away from religious leaders, until finally disestablishment arrives tracking the religious diversity and growing secularization of ordinary Iranians.

Latin America

More sensible regulation of guns and decriminalization of drugs in North America deflates and disarms the cartels of Latin America and opens the door for less corrupt government. Drug prohibition driven waves of homicides end, and a well-educated population comes to the fore. The disaster that is Venezuela eases as the declining importance of oil and gas in the global economy makes top down communist rule infeasible.

Climate change

We won't end the causes of anthropic climate change soon enough to prevent or reverse it. Sea levels will rise faster than expected, but not so fast that coastal urban centers can't be protected with sea walls that become island redoubts to a great extent, especially in places on the brink like Venice, southern Florida, and southern Louisiana.

Ski resorts move north with Alaska and the Yukon taking the center stage once held by Colorado, Utah, and Switzerland.

The great U.S. migration to the Sun Belt reverses itself as the heat in the Southern U.S. becomes intolerable and the winters in the Midwest and Northeast become more tolerable. The southern U.S. shifts in the direction of tropical and deep desert from subtropical.

The Sahara continues to expand before reaching a stabilized peak as fossil fuel use is discontinued worldwide. 

Petroleum and coal become as archaic as merchant and naval sailing fleets, while merchant ships start to universally rely in part upon wind power for propulsion. Natural gas fades more slowly but is eventually replaces by electrical grids fueled by wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and nuclear energy.

U.S. political divisions

As Baby Boomers die off and younger generations come to great power in society, Christianity withers, anti-LGBT sentiment fades, reproductive roots overcome a decade or so long stumble, anti-science movements return to crackpot status, and the Rehnquist court goes down in history as a second, regrettable, Lochner court. The filibuster is abolished, court packing ends the ultra-conservative Supreme Court, and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories gain their rightful political rights. The U.S. adopts a popular vote for the Presidency either by interstate compact or by constitutional amendment, or by the former leading to the latter. Gradual cultural homogenization, and continued migration to major cities eventually undermines the worst facets of Southern/Country/Western culture.

The global economy's shift away from fossil fuels undermines the worst political factions in places like West Virginia, Wyoming, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

The U.S. will finally get high speed rail in select, regional high traffic corridors, but will probably not develop a national high speed rail network.