To me, the world economy is one of Energy, not money.
Our over-dependence on non-renewable energy sources is a HUGE issue that few business or political leaders seem to comprehend.
I think you can just say "non-renewable resources". We are stretching systems to the brink in many areas. I would say more troubling than the non-renewable energy is that many people have no clue that water in much of America is a non-renewable. The Oglala aquifer is going dry and already some of the most productive land in America is becoming unfarmable. The aquifer filled over thousands of years at a very slow rate as glaciers melted. It has been sucked dry in really less than a century and, last I read, it supplied over half of the irrigation water between the Mississippi and the Rockies.
Similar problems are on the horizon in California.
Our cell phones and computers all depend on rare earth metals which will get harder and harder to find.
The list goes on. Now I think eventually people will solve these problems. There have been many times in human history where we have gone past the carrying capacity of the land and have run out of resources. Europe enjoyed great weather and thus great prosperity from 1000 to 1250, but suddenly the climate cooled and much arable land went out of production at higher altitudes and lattitudes. Famine returned after a two-century absence and was ultimately only solved by killing of 1/3 of the population in the Black Death. It took 200 years for population to recover, but which time agricultural methods had improved such that the so-called Mini Ice Age of the late 16th century did not lead to famines like in the 13th century.
In any case, I see us at a similar moment - resources stretched to the limit and weather changing. In this case the weather won't lead directly to fewer resources by directly shortening the growing season. But a warmer drier climate will mean that our resource-intensive agriculture, dependent on huge amounts of irrigation and fossil fuel, will be challenged to continue to produce at those levels. Already in California it is rare for farmers to be allowed their full requested allocation of irrigation water.
We can conserve our way out of some of it. There is so much waste (please hold while I go shut off that light in the kitchen that is doing nothing useful). But we will reach limits and unless replacement technologies come into play as fast as needed, there is going to be serious disruption.
Interesting book (not particularly well-written though, unfortunately) is The World in 2050. The author takes what he considers "conservative" models, meaning models that predict on the low end of disruption, and things still come out pretty scary.
One of the main things he points out is that even if we increase production of renewable energy 10x, we do not come close to meeting the needs for 2050 on renewables. I forget the percentage, but it's very low. This means that we are likely, indeed almost certain, to see *more* of our energy come from coal, the dirtiest fuel in use right now (CO2 being only part of it - it also pumps mercury into the atmosphere and more radiation than nuclear even when you count Chernobyl, Japan, etc).
So I think the Jetson's future Schmidt talks about in the article is one possibility. And if we solve fundamental systems problems, I would say it's conservative. I expect to see more and more prosthetic implants. At first blind people will get artificial eyes. But we are rapidly approaching a world in which prosthetics are better than nature. Oscar Pistorius would never have made the Olympics on the legs he was born with. Double-amputee and MIT engineering professor Hugh Herr argues that we are on the brink of a serious social reorientation as prosthetics out-perform natural limbs/eyes/ears and society has to confront a "handicap" population that is stronger, faster, has better hearing and eyesight than people with their OEM legs and eyes. At a certain point, if my doom and gloom scenarios from above are solved, I expect to see helathy people with implants as a matter of course.
I think people are preparing themselves for it mentally right now. I hear people talk about their photos and say "those are my memories". We've already gone from storing those memories in books in the attic to carrying them around in our pockets on devices that can be misplaced. I think soon, perhaps by 2033, people will find the idea of being able to leave their memories in a coffee shop unacceptable and will want the memory implants.
Then again, maybe the survivors will be out in the wilderness surviving on berries and squirrel meat and explaining to their children that the long hard surfaces they see around them once carried climate-controlled rolling things that covered more miles in 20 minutes than they would cover in a whole day....
