Millennia: 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium - 4th millennium
The Decade as a Whole
This decade is expected to be called "the teens", "the twenty-teens", "the tens", or "the twenty-tens".
Events and Trends
The baby boomer generation which is designated as "officially" including babies born after the end of World War II in 1945 reaches the age of 65 beginning with this decade. 65 is the standard (though not universally accepted) age of retirement in the United States. A rapid expansion of the number of retired persons due to the aging Baby Boomers is expected to have a drastic effect on the economy of the United States and Europe, especially Social Security and Medicare. This expected surge in the distribution of retirement benefits has been dubbed the pension bomb.
Technology
Around this time, the Hubbert peak of global oil production dictates widespread disruptions to conventional energy supplies of oil and natural gas. Some academic and business research into hydrocarbon deposits has concluded that the continued usage of this form of energy source will inevitably create widespread reductions in its supply during the 2010s, resulting in a sudden need to switch to alternative energy sources such as nuclear energy and "green" sources such as solar and wind power. Similar predictions about the "end of the age of oil" have been made almost since oil first became a major commodity, and so far no such predictions have borne out. However, Marion Hubbert's 1954 prediction that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970 proved to be startlingly accurate, so it is possible that the prediction of the same methodology applied to world oil production may be equally accurate. Still, it is a hotly debated subject. See also future energy development.
Last updated: 10-15-2005 11:36:45
