My general belief, over the last few years, has been that humanity is more or less doomed, mostly out of an inability to manage resources intelligenty. My best guess was that we’d stumble through most of the next century okay before running smack up against some horrible eco-catastrophe or other. Though it wouldn’t necessarily be obvious at the time, humanity would peak sometime in the 2000s and start a long and painful decline back into chaos and squalor.
Now, however, largely as a result of the United States’s botched adventures in Iraq, I’m skpetical that humanity will even survive to 2100. My best guess at the most likely scenario has the nukes flying sometime in the latter part of the next century, probably as a frustrated and paranoid America lashes out at its demons in the only way it knows. I now seriously doubt both the rest of the world’s tolerance for American habits, and America’s ability to cope sensibly with skepticism from abroad.