How I Was Terribly Wrong About Disaster in The American Southwest
Patreon post breaking down my worst prediction for 2024 & why I was so off-base
On December 31st of 2023, I released a list of predictions for 2024, and most of them turned out to pass: the war in Ukraine is still raging on, military conflicts in Haiti and Palestine have intensified, and it was indeed the hottest year on record.
There are some nuances and corrections I will be going into more deeply at a later date, but I want to highlight one prediction because I was so wrong it's laughable. I claimed in all seriousness that:
“…2024 is going to be the year the ‘shit hits the fan’ for a lot of people in the [American Southwest]. And since America already has a very poor social safety net, many Americans in the Southwest, particularly in New Mexico, will be forced to move with little resources. Next year round, I expect to see very different growth figures from the American Southwest overall.”
This obviously did not happen, with the exception of maybe California (and for completely different reasons). At best, you can say states like New Mexico had a flatlining growth rate, while Arizona and Utah are still seeing consistent growth.
I feel like this error is not a small gap in my reasoning but represents a larger problem around the conversation about collapse — i.e., that we assume it will be dramatic and noticeable when collapse is often a lot more mundane.
