WorldFuture 2012 Earth Sessions

This insider’s look at the world’s second-oldest profession will cover a wide-ranging list of trends affecting farming and agriculture as related to population, economies, and nation building across the globe. Today’s farmers face unique challenges raising livestock and crops as infrastructure declines and grain prices soar.

If the 20th century campus was a pastoral college town, the 21st is located in the urban core, a hybrid of real and digital worlds. The vertical campus engages communities, generates economic prosperity, and becomes a central element of thriving cities.

Reports of rising global temperatures have raised questions about responses to climate change, including efforts to (1) reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, (2) adapt to climate change, and (3) design and develop climate engineering technologies for deliberate, large-scale intervention in Earth's climate.

Achieving green economic growth and sustainable development requires comprehensive and coordinated strategies for entire regions as a complex system fully considering global drivers and local actions. Relying solely on green technology cannot achieve a green economy or communities.

The world is bumping up against multiple environmental and natural resource hurdles—climate change, peak oil, freshwater shortages, and rising prices for food, minerals, and commodities of all sorts. At the same time, a growing population and a surge in the wealth of the developing world are increasing consumption. Can innovation keep pace? What are the true limits to growth?

Experiments and demonstrations enable young people to appreciate the structure of the Earth, the fragile nature of our air and water resources, and the importance of energy. Students are empowered to save Planet Earth.

In the decade after this one, many believe that the impacts of peak oil and climate change will start to be felt. Global population growth will also have an effect, stretching our food and water resources towards their limits. We have it in our capacity to prepare for this future and to mitigate some of the possible negative effects.

Based on the new book, Reinventing Life — A Guide to Our Evolutionary Future, this session will explore the future of evolution and the decisions that each of us makes to drive it. Humans are currently dominating the evolutionary process in mostly unconscious and destructive ways.