1. The Great Transformation
This scenario occurs for a number of reasons including personalized health care – wherein each child born by then will have a full life probability pathway given, based on genomics, where they live (geomedicine), parents, income and epi-genetics. This will help the child map their life journey ensuring optimal health. Evidence-based practices with high health outcomes and low costs such as meditation and yoga will be dominant by then. Acute care will drop as prevention becomes the norm. Alcohol will become a minor drug by then not the dominant as in 2013. Insurers will provide dramatically reduced premiums for those who follow the health pathways. Over 50% of Australians will follow a low meat diet, generally vegetarian. Life expectancy will be 100 plus, if not more. 3d printers will be the norm, for food and other small scale manufacturing goods. Of course, there will still be organic gardens and many farmers will flourish from niche farms. Homes, city design, office design, will all be smart ie bioinformatics to ensure optimum health and productivity. Most will work from home, and the home will change dramatically by 2100. Ethnicity and being Australian will be delinked. The long term trend from farming to manufacturing to services to meaning systems will continue.
Australia’s leadership in governance will help the nation become an integral part of the thriving Asian Union. However, the polities will be far less nation-dependent and more an alliance of thousands of regional local communities with an overall Asian Unions platform as part of a global governance protocol. Solar and other soft energies will be dominant. Australia will be a far less blokie society and far more gender-embracing; an ecology of multiple perspectives.
Fairer, richer, healthier and happier
2. The Great Wars of 2050 – geopolitics wins the day.
The rise of Chindia, while benign in the beginning, led to a range of military conflicts between the declining core- USA and UK – and rising Asia. Australia, unfortunately, chose the wrong side, keeping allegiances with the old world. Economic devastation followed. Naval blockades, and the use of advanced technologies to disrupt food systems, information systems led to a world economy in a downward spiral. Eventually by the end of the century, there is redevelopment, but the last 50 years have been traumatic, large war, followed my smaller wars. . The world economy remains Asia-pacific focused by Australia does not benefit. Self-reliant communities do fine and the “battler” continue. There is major pressure on Australian lands for large Asian corporations. Cities, offices and homes remain stupid, not using the new technologies for optimization but rather focused on safety and security. Being Australian means being white.
Great inequity, poorer, sick and miserable.
3. The Great climate change (flip-flops) – Nature has the last laugh
Sea-level rise, climate refugees and a major landscape shift leads Australians to move away from the beach as climate change devastates the nation. Others adopt good old fashioned bush resilience and survive in this new world. Government is stronger, stricter, almost at a war footing. However, in the near future, as many climate change experts argue, the next flip flop is about to start, the ice age of 2130. Technological advancements will be focused on adaptation – new materials, even floating cities.
Resilient, poorer, in shock, and constantly adapting
4. Difference does not make the difference – the economic train wreck
The promises of the earlier part of the century – new health technologies, flatter politics, change in values – were incremental and did not overhaul the entire system, as the system was based on inequity. For the wealthy, they were healthier – engaged in organic food, personal trainers, meditation classes – while the poor migrated to Mcdonaldsville, using alcohol and sports to forget that the world economy exponentially rewarded those who could adapt to the new technologies. Those who could not, became poorer and poorer, fatter and more miserable. The fair go was changed to the smart go. A middle class in decline. In a way, Australia followed the path of the USA, with innovation not leading to more equity but to more gated (virtual too), communities. The main competition is who is the fattest nation in the world – Australia or the USA?
Dramatic inequity – health, wealth and (happiness) for the few and misery for the poor.