I've read this for forty years. It used to be nuclear winter, when we'd all freeze to death. Then it was overcrowding meant no more farms, and we'd all starve to death. Or prices of commodities would zoom into the stratosphere and cause the earth to fall over (or something like that - it's bad if things are in the stratosphere).

I can't remember how many different reasons I've read about why Rome fell. Army overstretched, acceptance of homosexuality, and many other reasons, depending on the agenda of the writer.

I've read that the world is going to end or the US will fail, the world economy will spiral into devastating inflation, or PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. will take over for about forty years. Everybody had convincing arguments, but they've all been wrong so far. We all remember Malthus saying we couldn't continue in urban environments because there would be so much horse manure on the streets we'd choke on it. I'd say this is the same argument - "Social organizations become steadily more complex as they are required to deal both with environmental problems and with challenges from neighbouring societies that are also becoming more complex." "Problems are inevitable." "Innovation itself might be subject to diminishing returns, or perhaps absolute limits." We're all doomed, I've read over and over.

I figure the next hundred years will see more doomsday writing with different problems, just like the last hundred years. :-> I'll predict that nothing considered in this article will come true, just like nothing in all those other articles I read came true.