"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." - Albert A. Bartlett[1]. This is especially true of exponential growth with short doubling periods. Particularly troublesome are functions that double in under 5-10 years because they wrong foot us. We think the near future is going to be like the recent past just a bit more so, when the growth rate means it's actually going to be radically different.

Then there's the revolutions and technologies that ought to be possible and contributing to some exponential growth function but are actually permanently 30 years out. Like Nuclear Fusion power, AI, Moon bases, batteries that are high capacity, low volume and cheap.

And there's 30 year futures with a date. 2030 still feels like the far future because back in 2000 it was. Except that now we're half way there and it's only 15 years away. So when politicians talk about targets for 2030 (especially about climate change), you'd better ask what they're going to do right now to get there, because it's not that far away any more. It's not just some far future that can safely be ignored for a few years. Take, for instance the recent PR about China-USA agreements on reducing CO2 emissions; That date of 2030 is prominent. If China and the USA have any chance at all of hitting even those relatively modest goals, they had better start going after them aggressively today, not in 5 years time.

So combine short doubling period exponential growth, with a belief in technical fixes that are actually permanently 30 years away, with a belief that 2030 is so far future as to not be worth bothering about right now. Does that look like sleep walking over a cliff with your eyes shut?

[1] Here's another good one from the same guy. "We must realize that growth is but an adolescent phase of life which stops when physical maturity is reached. If growth continues in the period of maturity it is called obesity or cancer. Prescribing growth as the cure for the energy crisis has all the logic of prescribing increasing quantities of food as a remedy for obesity." - Albert A. Bartlett