The Four Most Frightening Words in the English Language

Premonitions of a dying world.

They must be the four most frightening words in the English language: “if current trends continue.”

If current trends continue, there will be a global catastrophe. This catastrophe will change its face and shape as it evolves, like the alien in “The Thing.” It will appear—slowly or suddenly, anywhere and everywhere. It will be called by many names: Wildfire. Hurricane. Drought. Poverty. Financial crisis. Racism. Religious fanaticism. Totalitarianism. Genocide. Apocalypse.

It's almost here, this catastrophe with many faces. It’s building a nest in this world even as we speak. Can you feel it coming?

If it arrives on schedule—“like the mystics and statistics say it will,” to quote Warren Zevon—there’s gonna be hell to pay.

Eternal War

If current trends continue, Palestine and much of the Middle East will be a charnel ground. Then, the global genocide machine will move on in search of new prey. The only international law it respects is the law of supply and demand.

If current trends continue, war spending will eventually swamp the US economy. Our collective conscience will disappear forever because we failed to resist the atrocities committed in our name.

Militarism is also increasing the threat of nuclear war. If current trends continue, we’ll keep gambling on apocalypse—even as our chance of survival wanes.

Digital Despotism

If current trends continue, civil liberties in the United States will be just a memory. The most recent suppressive wave began under Joe Biden. It showed its face during last year’s protests against the Gaza genocide, as peaceful protesters confronted massed governmental forces—local, state, and federal—as well as lies, slurs and threats from politicians, billionaires, and the media.

The government already conducts mass digital espionage against its citizens. The media is already submissive to the state. A new kind of “cancel culture” already targets those who oppose injustice. It specializes in the media lynching of anti-genocide voices.

This oppression now spans the globe with threats and censorship. When supposedly neutral countries arrest a journalist like Ali Abunimah, even briefly, its purpose is to send a message: We have the power, and we’re watching.

We can expect these efforts to go into hyperdrive under Trump, with tacit or open support from the opposition party.

A Hostile Climate

If current trends continue, sea levels could rise as much as 8 feet in the next 75 years and, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains, sea levels will rise even more than the global average on America’s East and Gulf Coasts.

North America will experience “increased frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves in cities that currently experience them.”

Wildfires have already leveled entire towns in Hawaii and California. They’ll continue to increase in frequency and intensity.

With a six-foot rise in sea levels—something that’s very possible under current trends—nearly half the buildings in Lower Manhattan will be in constant danger from storm surges. 20 percent of the streets will risk daily flooding. An eight-foot rise—which is also possible—could put those streets underwater.

Refugee Planet

The total number of refugees and internally displaced persons (all of whom are “refugees” in common parlance) has tripled in the last decade. By April of last year, one in every 69 people worldwide (1.5 per cent of the world’s population) was a refugee.

If current trends continue, hundreds of millions of us will become climate refugees. More than 26 million people were displaced by floods and storms in 2023 alone. One study anticipates 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050.

Then there are the refugees of war. The UN reports that over 120 million people were displaced by violence in 2023, an 8 percent increase over the prior year. That number has steadily increased for more than a decade. By 2023, refugees were scattered across 86 countries, often living under brutal conditions. More than 6 million Syrians were refugees, as were over 6 million Ukrainians and more than 6 million Afghanis.

The total has almost certainly risen sharply since then. Fighting in Sudan has displaced more than 12 million people. Millions more Sudanese have died or are experiencing extreme starvation. Israel’s war crimes (and our own) have displaced nearly two million people in Gaza, nearly one million in Lebanon, and an unknown number in the West Bank. They have also killed many thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—and maimed countless more, most of them non-combatants.

The United States and Western Europe jacked this trend by sanctioning, supporting, and arming genocide in Palestine on an unprecedented (and illegal) scale—a trend that shows no sign of reversing.

If current trends continue, what percentage of humanity be displaced by the end of the century: One in ten? One in five? More?

Homeland Insecurity

As for the United States: If current trends continue, this country will become a sea of economic precarity dotted by islands of luxury. Wealth inequality steadily increased over the last 60 years (with a brief interruption caused by emergency COVID aid, now terminated). Income inequality has increased by more than 25 percent in the last 50 years, and the gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent has essentially doubled.

If current trends continue, AI and other Big Tech tools will rob us of our labor, worsen inequality, stifle human autonomy, and destroy the remaining shards of our broken democracy. Inequality and political corruption will take care of the rest.

Hope Against Hope

This is the story, not of an uncertain future, but of one that’s guaranteed­­ if we don’t make major changes.

Paradoxically, however, our civilization’s sickness can become our strength. The psychology of illness tells us how. When a healthy person thinks about illness, they may feel a low-grade fear: fear of what could happen, fear of the unknown. But for a sick person, fear is replaced by hope: hope for a cure and for healthier days to come.

Our social emotions haven’t caught up with our civilizational illness. Most of us still view the world with fear. But that’s the psychological state of health, not of illness. Now that we’re collectively ill, we need to foster a kind of hope that’s found in sick people: hope that motivates them to take action, hope that makes them seek out the best care they can get, and the support of a caring community.

Call it “active hope.” But it’s not an individual emotion. This time we need to hope, and act, together. Collective illnesses need collective cures.

There’s good news, too. This collective illness is human in origin. That means the cure is within us. “Remember the ancient way of strength,” said Native American poet and activist John Trudell. “Revive the memory of the universe.”

These sinister trends can change, but only if we draw on the strength, wisdom, and beauty we share with everything that lives. The future these trends show us is a challenge, not a verdict. It’s a question, not an answer.

The question is, Will we have a collective moment of clarity and change the direction we’ve chosen—before it’s too late?