For a while, I’ve been thinking about the doomsday predictions that India and China are producing, roughly 15 times the number of graduate engineers that we are. (That’s our 60,000 to their 350,000 and 600,000, respectively.) And some perspective came in an old stack of books.

This handsome devil to my left is a German agro-economist by the name of Fritz Baade. Died in 1974. Granted, that name has some serious star quality to it, but I’m willing to bet you haven’t necessarily heard of him. Until yesterday, I hadn’t either, but he’s got me thinking.

I was helping my friend and colleague, the eminent futurist Joe Coates, move some books in his annex here in Washington this weekend. As Joe has been a futurist for more than 40 year, his library has got some great books from prognosticators past. One of them that jumped out was a 1971 title called The Race to the Year 2000. Its principal question was, who will control the world of the future? The West (us) or the East (Russia, China, North Korea, et al)? Since we already know the answer, I was fascinated to see his reasoning.

Fritz was pretty pessimistic, actually, because you see the Soviets were outproducing us in terms of sheer number of engineers and machine tools. Thus, reasoned this venerable economist, given the fact that the sheer material force favored Soviet Communism, they were probably going to win unless we fixed that imbalance.

A few thoughts:

• What a great exercise in looking at assumptions that we can get caught in. Fritz assumed a) that there would be a Soviet Union and b) that machine tools would be the hot ticket. What about semiconductors and e-innovation, baby?

• Pretty obviously, there are significant cultural factors that make for a positive outcome in history. Having engineers is good, but having a culture that supports innovation, prosperity, freedom, justice, etc. counts for a lot.

My point? China and India are growing, industrializing, vibrant nations, and there is little question that there will be competition, both economic, political, military, and so forth. And America will be a place that people come to start a business and run with the big dogs. I think that as long as we make sure we have the soft infrastructure for innovation — venture capital, government support, a spirit for free enterprise, and ready financing, America isn’t in dire trouble.

But let’s not get cocky. 600,000 is a lot of engineers.

I’m sorry, but even I hadn’t ever heard a number this high.

“Health Care Spending for U.S. May Double to $4 Trillion by 2015“

I have to actively keep myself from only talking about healthcare as a futurist. The amount of money it represents is truly astonomical, in the sense that it’s nearly impossible to understand without metaphors and hyperboles. But it could be even more crippling to the economy than we thought.

Already we in America are spending more money than anyone else, while getting around the 16th best outcomes. (I’ll let you do your own Google search on this, there’s overwhelming data.) But if we up the ante to FOUR TRILLION?

We. Cannot. Continue. On. That. Path.

On the other hand, for four trillion a year, there should be some pretty good jobs, and hopefully some clever new technologies. I wonder what that will bring.

Globalization is a funny thing from the American perspective, I think. For years now, I’ve heard all manner of hyperventilating from corporate executives about how wonderous globalization will be because it will open up new markets. “There are a BILLION Chinese, you know, all clamoring to buy our stuff,” or so the conventional wisdom goes. Oh, and by the way, they can’t wait to share our values.

Then, once global markets are improving the economies of these growing nations, we start to freak out that they are able to produce, for example, more engineers than us.

EEK! The rest of the world won’t be living in dirt huts, sending off their best scientific talent to live in San Jose or New Jersey! My word, after 50 years and billions in foreign aid, some of these industrializing countries are actually…industrializing!

That’s right America, they won’t just be taking manufacturing jobs for textiles and vacuum tubes. There are billions of people out there who want to do more than lug bricks up the side of a hill or tie together sneakers in some factory. They want industrialization to bring an industrial way of life.

That’s why it’s so interesting to read articles such as “New Report Finds Brazilian Bio-Medical Industry is Advancing Thanks to Reforms in Innovation and Intellectual Property System.”

You remember Brazil:

Carnaval. Caipirinhas. Samba. Bundas.

Today, they see themselves as the home of: biotech, micro-arrays, and genomes.

Brazil has caught on to the idea that even if you have local talent to fuel a science & technology base, nobody will be starting companies and creating jobs if they don’t have a way to protect their investment. So Brazil has been working closely with the World Intellectual Property Organization to create a new IP regime that will support innovation.

It’s working. In June 2005, a Brazilian drug company named Ache released the country’s first innovative pharmaceutical product, an anti-inflammatory cream under the trade name Acheflan. The company initiated product development after Brazil reformed its patent law in 1996 and later filed for Brazilian and international patent protection. The drug is also an interesting mix of local and global: the active ingredient was discovered based on knowledge of the medicinal properties of local herbs, and now will be sold globally.

The point here is that we will see more competition from unlikely places as different countries modernize their legal systems. They have the scientific talent, and soon many will have the infrastructure to compete on a global scale.

Being a futurist, one must cover nanotechnology at a regular interval. Right now, most of the applications are springier tennis balls and stain-free pants, but soon it could be building materials as strong as diamonds for $5 a pound, cancer smart-bombs, and that sort of thing, so it’s worth keeping an eye out.

Nanotech evokes a lot of what my friend Sam Hooker calls FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt. Most people are barely sure what it is, so the big story in the media is about trepidation, not facts. Take for example this article from European portal Food Navigator, entitled “Food body urges caution in brave new nanotech world”. See that? Some panel of food experts is warning us to be “careful” about the effect of nanotech on food.

Careful about what? They are scaring the public with the bugaboo about “particles only 10 – 100 nanometers in size.” But what does that mean? This august body of culinary safety reminds us that,

“In using nanotechnology, it is important to assess how products of nanotechnology will eventually lead to the release of nanoparticles into the environment and to estimate our subsequent levels of exposure to these materials.”

How on Earth is this worth a press release? They’re saying, in English, is that first we need to: a) figure out of any of this nanotechnology is harmful whatsoever and then b) decide what policies should be made as a result.

No kidding! Isn’t that what we do on all kinds of food and drugs? Isn’t that what the FDA does? Why scare the public about nanotech using “brave new world” analogies?

It’s like I told the Ministry of Research for a certain European country — nanotech could be influential on agriculture by giving you great new sensors to tell where soil needs fertilizer, exactly where pesticides could be of use, and where the crops are ready for harvest. Boom! Cleaner water tables and healthier soil. Plus, new kinds of packaging using nanotech could assist the transport of fresh healthy food all around the globe.

You don’t have to put the nanotech in your sandwiches if you don’t want.

When involved with the study of the future, it is important to separate crazy new technologies and trends that are real from the crazy new technologies that are really hoaxes. So, the other night down at George Washington University, I was discussing renewable energy source with colleagues, and we came upon the topic of turkey guts. I mentioned that I heard about a new plant that used turkey parts as the feedstock, and through “thermal depolymerization” was producing crude petroleum. This could be a harbinger of many interesting new techniques to help us break our toxic addiction to oil.

Yes, this sounds weird on its face. In fact, one of my colleagues suggested that it may have even been a spoofed website, like those people who make fake bank websites to defraud you of your credit card number. Well, to defend my futurist honor, I had to check.

Well, say hello to Changing World Technologies and its CEO Brian S. Appel. They are promising “viable solutions to current environmental problems and answering the need for cost effective energy.” And yes folks, that means turning turkey guts into fuel.

I never said the future was pretty.

Yes, at their plant in Carthage, Missouri, they are able to convert this gruesome feedstock into the equivalent of Texas Tea, producing up to 500 barrels of oil a day out of the 200 tons of material that gets thrown out from a nearby poultry processing plant. Moreover, the company has plans to open more of these plants. Check out more information at the February edition of GeoTimes.

I must put in, for the sake of balance and my own curiosity, that a chemist has come forward and expressed his doubt, saying its like all the other snake oil. Give it a look, but it seems like a lot of people are being “fooled.” This looks like a might be a harbinger of some good stuff to come.

Forget Saudi oil, we’ve got the Oscar Meyer Oil Cartel!