Unpacking My 2024 Predictions
A deep dive into what I got right and what I got oh so wrong
On the verge of 2024, I made a series of predictions ranging from climate change to Artificial Intelligence (see A Tumultuous Year: What Lies Ahead in 2024). They were, by and large, quite grim, and while some of them turned out to sadly pass, others, thankfully, did not.
I wanted to review these predictions and analyze what I got right and where my thinking went very, very wrong.
The Ukrainian-Russian war will rage on
The reality: Yes.
In 2023, I argued that Putin hoped to wait out the clock on Biden’s presidency for a more amenable Trump administration. I made some predictions about border funding that did not come to pass (see the next point), but the larger point still stands — the War between Russia and Ukraine went on for the entirety of 2024.
I do not expect this to last, but I will go into that logic during another list.
The border will be further militarized
The reality: Yes (and No).
It might feel weird to write yes when Republicans in the Senate blocked a sweeping border security bill in 2024, but it’s essential to put the border into the context of over four decades of militarization.
Funding for the border between Mexico and Canada has consistently increased for years now. In 2023, the Department of Homeland Security’s budget was just shy of over $82 billion (with nearly $62 billion in discretionary spending). That number was over $91 billion in 2024 and $62 billion in discretionary.
This bipartisan project to increase such funding will probably continue for the foreseeable future, but again, the increase was not as substantial as I had hinted at the beginning of 2024.
It will be the hottest year on record
The reality: Yes.
This is one of those yes-no deals. As of this writing, the United Nations has indicated that when the World Meteorological Organization releases its full report in January, it will show that 2024 was the hottest year on record (so far).
The heat in the American Southwest will lead to internal mass migration
The reality: No.
This point was so wrong that I wrote an entirely different breakdown for it (see How I Was Terribly Wrong About Disaster in The American Southwest).
Basically, cost-of-living trends have not caught up with the price of environmental degradation. Housing is so terrible in the US that people are rolling the dice and moving to environmentally precarious areas where the situation has not devolved to the point where they need to flee.
