3E Intelligence

First of all, a late merry Xmas to all my readers!

Now that Christmas days are finished (filled, of course, with my usual Dickens’ reading - that’s why there were no new posts), it is time to start looking forward to the new year.

I do not have a silver ball and I know I am taking a risk by presenting my list of predictions for 2008, but here they are anyway:

• The global economic situation will continue to worsen with a real possibility of recession in the US and, if the pessimists get it right, even a crash comparable to 1987;
• Although more reports on the speeding up of global warming will reach us and more freaky weather will hit us, the media and the politicians will start caring less (because they feel they have very little leverage) and citizens will suffer more and more from climate fatigue; that being said, the global diplomatic “climate traveling circus” will explode its carbon footprint with very poor results;
• Growing tensions between some big companies which are starting to see the light on eco-sustainability and those ones that will fight even harder to defend their short-term interests under the false flag of economic competitiveness;
• The EU’s emissions trading scheme will come under more fire and there will finally be a serious debate whether we should not abolish it and rethink our views on carbon taxes (although the EU’s unanimity rules on taxation will be a serious barrier for this debate);
• With oil prices continuing to climb despite an economic slowdown and rising food prices, the “oil peak” issue will finally reach the EU’s political agenda although it will not yet figure in any of the new follow-up climate/energy plans to be presented by the European Commission in January 2008;
• With the start of the debates on the “agricultural policy health check” and the long-term EU budget, the spirit of constructive hope found in Lisbon (during the Treaty ceremony) will quickly be replaced by new tensions and nationalistic fevers. The word “crisis of the EU” will be spoken again;
• The Slovenian EU Presidency (the first of the new member states) will try to stir up as little as possible and reach some good results in terms of progress of ongoing dossiers. The French Presidency, on the other hand, will stir up much but actually achieve very little;
• The backlash against globalisation will heat up with European politicians starting to listen to some of the US democrats’ populist anti-globalisation arguments;
• More than ever, China will be in the spotlights; the Olympic Games will be its “coming-out-party” but the “dark sides” of this economic growth wonder will start to be more visible;
• Relations between the EU and Russia will remain difficult and frosty;
• Worst-case scenarios (unlikely but still possible): a new deadly terrorist attack in Europe and Bush’s last folly: a war with Iran;

Oops, that sound all very “doom and gloom”, but as I once read on another blog: “doom and gloom is only bad when it is wrong”.

So, are there no positive predictions? Well, of course, there are a few:

• There will be serious breakthroughs in new technologies for cars and airplanes (which does not mean they can be commercialised quickly);
• The US presidential elections will be won by the Democrats; this will raise new hopes in Europe concerning transatlantic relations;

As for my own country:

• Belgium will not fall apart, although the “separation crisis” will return in March/April;
• Belgium will win one gold medal at the Olympic Games in Being (Henin).

Let’s hope at the end of 2008, I can write that on most points I was wrong, except for the last ones

Further reading:

• The Economist: The World in 2008
• Financial Times: President Clinton, Google grows, $100 oil, but no US recession – this is 2008
• James Howard  Kunstler: Forecast for 2008