n 351 Uneven Population Growth to 2050
Conventional wisdom foresees virtually all future population growth in LDCs. But
disaggregation presents a very different view. In the next 50 years, the US will grow by
nearly the same rate as total world population (+45% vs.+47%), while dramatic population
declines are expected in Japan (-21%), Eastern Europe (-14%), Southern Europe (-16%), and
Southern Africa (-18%, due to AIDS). China will grow only slightly (+8%), with India
(+58%) becoming the most populous country around 2030.
n 352 State
of the Future Report
Fifth annual Millennium Project survey describes 15 Global Challenges, introduces a State
of the Future Index, presents a questionnaire on future sci/tech issues, reports world
leaders' concerns, and more. (J.C. Glenn/T. Gordon)
n 352, 364/366 A Choice of Eight Indexes
New indexes join several recently-developed ones to give a better picture of the state of
the world. The Millennium Project has initiated the State of the Future Index and a
supplementary Sustainable Development Index (352), which joins the Human Development Index
and UNDP's new Technology Achievement Index (364), the new Globalization Index (365), and
the Global Competitiveness Index (366), which also has an Economic Creativity Index and a
pilot Environmental Sustainability Index.
n 354 Ethics
and Global Affairs
Thoughtful discussion from UNU Press on what ethics are, why they matter, and the extent
and limits of international responsibility regarding violence, human rights, equality,
refugees, globalization, and the environment. (J-M. Coicaud/D.
Warner)
n 361 Sustainable
Development
A comprehensive strategy for sustainable development of OECD countries as a "key
priority"; includes making markets work better, improved policy integration,
harnessing sci/tech, guiding climate mitigation, and better managing of natural resources.
(OECD)
n 368 World
Bank on Poverty
Nearly half the world's 6 billion people live on less than $2 a day. The Bank hopes to
attack poverty by promoting economic opportunity, enhancing poor people's political
capacity, and better guarding them against ill health, economic shocks, and natural
disasters. (World Development Report)
n 373
The End of Globalization—Again?
A Princeton historian argues that the world was highly integrated economically at the end
of the 19th century, yet descended into economic nationalism and protectionism
in the 1930s. Could globalism collapse again, through an inherent flaw in the economic
system and/or backlash resentments of the injustices provoked by the global economy?
n 374,
379 How Big a European Union?
One scenario of Europe in 2020 envisions 30 EU countries meeting to sign a treaty of
confederation. Zbigniew Brzezinski favors expansion, noting that it may be desirable to
include Turkey and Israel.
n 380 Russian
Transition Awry
Russia's "great leap to the market" over the past decade has done irreparable
harm, according to Mikhail Gorbachev. A network of Russian and American economists offers
139 proposals for a balanced economic transition. (L.R.
Klein/M. Pomer)
n 390 Sustainable
Materials Policy
The US consumes nearly one-third of the world's nonenergy materials, often wastefully.
Policies needed include better information, redirecting markets, reconfiguring corporate
culture, a shift in government focus, and more public engagement.
(K. Geiser)
n
398/399 New Frontiers Beneath Our Feet and Overhead
Recent discoveries of microscopic life forms deep beneath the surface of the Earth have
opened up a whole new area of biology, while changing the field of astrobiology and
broadening NASA's ideas about searching for extraterrestrial life.
Return to top
SYNTHESIS
World Betterment Ideas
In a world expected to grow from 6 to 9
billion people by 2050 (351), there are many problems that must be faced, and many
responses:
• The Millennium Project focuses on 15 Global Challenges and has devised an index to
measure overall progress from 1985-2010 (352);
• UN-sponsored world conferences have had many important impacts (353);
• Ethics in international affairs is an important emerging focus (354);
• Human rights continues to be a major focus for betterment, and seems likely to be
aided by the Internet and emergence of global civil society (355/356);
• Robert McNamara and James Blight insist that we have a moral imperative to avoid
human carnage and a multilateral imperative for doing so (357);
• Mark Satin synthesizes a number of recent manifestos that seek to promote
"planetary humanism" (358);
• Bela Banathy outlines the dimensions of evolutionary guidance systems (359);
• Barbara Marx Hubbard points to an emergence process necessary to evolve our
consciousness (360).
Global
Economy Betterment
Further ideas for world betterment in the
economic dimension include:
• The high priority of sustainable development for OECD countries (361/362);
• Applying high tech to the urgent needs of the world's poor (364);
• Enhancing competitiveness (366);
• Overcoming barriers associated with geography (367);
• A comprehensive approach to attacking poverty (368);
• Microfinance credit for the poor (369);
• Organization workshops to help the poor create self-managed enterprises (370);
• Greater attention to justice leading to global controls of capitalism (371);
• The Living Democracy Movement (372);
• Some sort of Asian currency unit or "yen bloc" to help stabilize the
global economy (377);
• A more balanced agenda of economic reform in Russia, which would surely have global
economy implications (380).
Betterment
Through Sci/Tech?
For better and for worse, there is
a pervasive "global technology revolution" underway, and a recent RAND report
pronounces that "life in 2015 will be revolutionized" (387). At the same time,
policies toward the materials that pervade our life must be refashioned to promote
sustainability and human health (390). The message is clear to the American Chemical
Society, which seeks to encourage green engineering and green chemical processes (391;
also 392). New lab automation will be helpful in fighting deadly infectious diseases,
ensuring safe food at a time of globalizing food production, and countering the decidedly
negative technologies of bioweapons (394). Genetic engineering and medical genetics
continue to be strongly opposed by many people worldwide (395), and new technologies are
shattering the self (396) and creating a society of cyborgs (397). Exciting new scientific
frontiers have been discovered in the subsurface biology of the deep hot earth (398) and
in the mission of astrobiology to find life in outer space (399). A step forward in the
search for extraterrestrial intelligent life has been taken with the SETI@home program
(400).
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