United States to splinter within fifty years, Karl Schroeder interview, averting climate crisis with technological innovation (and having less kids) …

• 1 – Paul Saffo Predicts End Of U.S. Economic Model

  Saffo said, “There’s less than 50 percent chance that the United States will exist as a nation by the middle of this century. And that that is actually a good news.” Interesting ideas, but I have no idea how plausible they are.

  (tags: futurism nation model economic America US PaulSaffo)

• 2 – 101 Reasons Freelancers Do it Better

  “A happy worker is a productive worker, and it’s hard to find a happier lot than freelancers. Whether they’re entrepreneurs, Web workers or something in between, freelancers enjoy a better lifestyle than their cube-dwelling brethren.”

  (tags: motivation inspiration career freelance)

• 3 – Copyediting and…stuff…

  Elizabeth Moon on the trouble with (some) copyeditors

  (tags: typesetting checking copyediting editing manuscripts writing)

• 4 – EcoGeek interviews Karl Schroeder

  “Well, let’s be clear on one thing: technology is legislation. A new technology can often create change (including social and behavioural change) where legislation and social activism have failed or are taking too long.”

  (tags: sustainability technology ecology environment futurism foresight writer author sf scifi fiction science interview KarlSchroeder)

• 5 – Rising Gasoline Prices Could Take A Bite Out Of America’s Obesity Epidemic

  “Just as rising gasoline prices are forcing many Americans to tighten their financial belts, new research suggests higher fuel costs may come with a related silver lining — trimmer waistlines.”

  (tags: increase price petrol gasoline oil peak obesity weight health)

• 6 – Should Americans have fewer babies to save the environment?

  “Let’s cut the birth rate to one child per couple, for a few generations at least. The population would dwindle by about 5 billion people over the next century, he says, ensuring the habitability of the Earth for the 1.6 billion who remained.”

  (tags: lifestyle change climate environment reproduction population children)

• 7 – Karl Schroeder on Rewilding Canada

  “Climate change is the great human opportunity; it is the unifying threat that will pull us together as a species, or destroy us. Still, it’s not an opportunity we’ve chosen, but a crisis thrust upon us to which we have to react.”

  (tags: environment ecology sustainability technology vertical farming architecture foresight futurism)