Tea Leaves 2007

What the new year will bring

Ronald Bailey | December 29, 2006

(Page 3 of 3)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will receive the first application for building a new nuclear power plant since 1973.

ENVIRONMENT

There will be no new commitments for limiting greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol made a the next U.N. climate change conference in December 2007.

Criteria air pollutants will continue their decline in the United States.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Saddam Hussein will be executed for his crimes. Apparently quite soon. In any case, he will go to Hell, if it exists.

There will be no successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Civil war will break out between Hamas and Fatah.

World population growth rate will continue to slow.

World deforestation will continue to slow. U.S. forest area will continue to expand.

CRIME

After years of falling, the average violent crime rate in the U.S. will remain essentially flat, rising or falling by no more than 2.5 percent.

The U.S. rape rate will continue to fall from its height in 1992.

And oh yeah, the Drug War will continue uselessly and destructively on.

It seems unlikely that our prison population can grow by much more, so I predict that the increase next year will be under 1 percent.

On an endnote of modesty I quote management guru Peter Drucker: "Forecasting is not a respectable human activity and not worthwhile beyond the shortest of periods." Hey, I'm just trying to look one year forward here. I hope that any of my less than happy predictions are false, and that we all have a much happier New Year.

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.