If you’ve been hanging out for the next big revolution, then you might not have to wait for too much longer. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has predicted that after years of “heading to a boiling point”, the 2020s will be the decade where everyone loses the plot and actually makes a change to the world.
In a report detailing all of their predictions, Bank of America has come up with some pretty interesting claims. We’re going to hit a lot of ‘peak’ moments, times when we reach a tipping point where things like inequality and demand for oil all of a sudden start dropping away.
And if the predictions are to believe, we might actually start doing something about climate change and poverty in the world.
My favourite prediction is that we’ll hit peak inequality. Voters demanding that mega-rich people pay their share of tax is the beginning of a potential wealth distribution, because watching people live in poverty while others are buying their third private jet sucks.
Peak oil is predicted to hit in a way not many people originally anticipated. The assumption was that eventually we’d run out of oil, and that’s what would cause the use of it to drop. Instead, it looks like the actual demand for oil will fall away as we move towards a future of renewable energy.
Reaching peak oil is connected to the prediction of reaching peak cars in the 2020s, as electric vehicles become more and more common.
Finally, we’re predicted to reach peak ‘stuff’. We all know that we can’t keep churning out as many products as we do, and so as recycling and the sharing economy becomes more popular, we might finally see a slow to all that mass produced… stuff.
So, in the 2020s we’re looking at a more equal decade with less oil, less cars, and less useless stuff as humans finally – finally! – start giving a damn about the planet. My fingers are firmly crossed.