A journalist recently asked me to comment as a futurist on the supposed disaster that some foresee for 2012.

In the Drake Magazine article “The Sky Is Falling” (under Features) I am quoted as saying:

Not everyone reading into the Mayan calendar sees the end of the world. Josh Calder …. doesn’t think anything will happen. To him, the Mayan-calendar madness is just another in a long line of end of the world theories. As a futurist, Calder’s job is to predict the future for corporations and government agencies. When examining trends in consumer behavior or national security, the 2012 date has never come up in his work. “Full destruction might be achieved by an astronomical event or a physics accident, but both of these seem a very low probability,” he says.

Calder believes worrying about 2012 is a waste of time and energy. “There has never been any solid evidence of magical foreknowledge of the future,” he says. “It is illogical to think that this will suddenly change.” Astronomically, he says the end of the world is set for billions of years in the future and, though he knows of a few ways we could be in trouble, Calder doesn’t seem too worried. “With luck, we will avoid them,” he says.

Image courtesy Torley (Flickr)