The reason we study trends, forecasts, and scenarios is that our actions have consequences. Our decisions or lackthereof will impact the fate of nations, of men, of our ecosystem, of life itself. Small or large, immediate or delayed, our in actions in a complex system have real effect.

Take Iceland. This financial calamity is causing the first net migration of Icelanders from their island since 1887.

Anna Margret Bjoernsdottir never thought she would be forced to leave her once wealthy homeland, but after 18 months of economic upheaval she has decided to join the biggest emigration wave from Iceland in more than a century.

“I just don’t see any future here. There isn’t going to be any future in this country for the next 20 years, everything is going backwards,” lamented the 46-year-old single mother, who plans to move to Norway in June.

The cause of the upheaval is the country’s integration into a global financial structure that even New York, London and Zurich scarcely understood.

Like many other Icelanders who have seen their worlds collapse since the financial turmoil began, Bjoernsdottir’s predicament stems from the decision, on advice from her banker, to take up a loan in foreign currency.

Repayments on her loan, in yens and Swiss francs, became insurmountable after the Icelandic krona nose-dived following the banking sector implosion.

“My loans are twice as high as they were,” she said, shaking her head in disgust. “The payments keep going higher and higher, so I have to leave, I’m forced to!”

We have lived in a period of relative peace and prosperity in the West, and if we read about emigrants fleeing their home country, it’s usually from some place like Cambodia or Guatemala, a place that that has never succeeded in our First World economics. Turning the page back a few years, we see immigration from Ireland and Italy due to extreme hardship. It is hard to imagine the new home of software development companies and luxury goods returning to a state of hardship.

Then again, it’s difficult to imagine recalcitrant Icelanders leaving for the shores of Norway.

That is why we look at scenarios – because these things are possible within a lifetime.