Will filmmakers still be able to find work in 2020? Commodity prices have been rising extremely quickly in the past 12 months. The price of crude oil has doubled (it's currently at $127 per barrel) over the past 12 months and similar trends can be seen in the prices of steel, fertiliser, most food commodities etc etc.
Goldman Sachs forecasts that oil prices will average $141 over the 2nd half of 2008 (
link)
Russian oil output peaked late last year (and Russia is the world's 2nd largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia).
Saudi Arabia, traditionally seen as a "swing producer" (i.e. lots of spare capacity) only managed to up its output by a measly 300,000 barrels per day after huge amounts of pressure from the US (to put that number into perspective, global production is current about 85 million barrels per day).
Of the world's largest 21 oil fields, at least 9 are in decline.
Global oil production plateaued in 2005 whilst global demand has risen very rapidly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Production
Oil could hit $300 in the next 5 years (
link)
In other words, there is lots of evidence to suggest that oil prices are going to climb and climb into the foreseeable future.
IIRC, a very crude rule of thumb says that industrialised economies loose something like 0.5% of their GDP for every $10 added to the oil price. In other words, a global recession is virtually inevitable if commodities in general and oil in particular continue their meteoric price rise.
If the economy does start to unwind then surely one of the first industries to go will be the so-called "discretionary industries" (i.e. ones that aren't deemed essential for day-to-day life). And that means us, folks.
So here's my fear: we could easily see oil prices way in excess of $300 per barrel by 2020. That will put some serious drag on our economies. Which will, in turn, mean that no one will want to pay us to make films.