UN Report: The Future Could be Swell... But We're Blowing It
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 07.14.08
Image from hdptcar
Time for another round of good news, bad news. First, the good: According to a weighty new UN report (it's 6,300 pages long and includes submissions from 2,500 experts) uncovered by The Independent, the world stands poised to enter a new era of peace, prosperity and empowerment. Increased democratization, economic and technological advances and medical breakthroughs have the potential to bring millions out of poverty and make the world "work far better than it does today".
Now for the bad: Despite these promising developments, we are still more likely than not to screw it all up through sheer violence, inequality and environmental degradation. Worse, governments are not even properly equipped to take advantage of these advances or to prevent many of the looming crises.
Image from markg6
Just another doom and gloom report?
As Geoffrey Lean and Jonathan Owen put it, the "2008 State of the Future" report can hardly be accused of being your typical fear mongering tract. It starts off listing a number of humanity's most momentous accomplishments, portraying a bright future in which "the internet, international trade, language translation and jet planes are giving birth to an interdependent humanity that can create and implement global strategies to improve [its] prospects".
Some encouraging findings
Improvements in recent decades have helped slash poverty levels worldwide (except, unfortunately, in Africa) -- enough that poverty will have been cut by more than half by 2015. Life expectancy and literacy rates continue to rise while the number of conflicts and infant mortalities continue to drop. The internet is effusively praised as having already become the single "most powerful force for globalization, democratization, economic growth and education in history".
Current and future challenges to a new world order
While sounding an optimistic tone, the report doesn't mince its words in describing many of the problems currently plaguing the system:
"half the world is vulnerable to social instability and violence due to rising food and energy prices, failing states, falling water tables, climate change, decreasing water-food-energy supply per person, desertification and increasing migrations due to political, environmental and economic conditions . . . With nearly three billion people making $2 or less per day, long-term global social conflict seems inevitable without more serious food policies, useful scientific breakthroughs and dietary changes".
Ending on an optimistic note?
It concludes by castigating world governments as being "inefficient, slow and ill-informed" and reiterates a common refrain for more international cooperation and, most important, a "global strategy". Without this, it says, neither climate change nor international organized crime, among others, will ever be resolved.
For a more complete list of the report's recommendations and findings, see the full Independent story.
Via ::The Independent: We've seen the future ... and we may not be doomed (news website)
What the future will bring
::Future Of Water In The US West: A Bleak Projection Of Climate Consequence
::Gas Stations of the Future: Waste Land?
::Hybrid Airplane-Car for Commuters of the Future?
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Great Debate Tackles Climate Change
- Native Cultures Endangered By Climate Change
- What Will Business Get From Poznan?
- So Long 2008, and Thanks for All the Posts
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Once again, the UN is spot on. Will we never learn to trust that this body, perhaps uniquely among all human institutions, has almost no incentive to lie to us or do anything but make the world a better place? They are not always right, by any means, but their track record is better than that of just about any government, when it comes to mid-range and long-range predictions.
Anyone with a science background will tell you the same thing: all the energy, food, water, and information problems can be solved. We have the knowledge to do so, the rest is mostly just engineering. The ingredient lacking is leadership. Many of us have the vision of how great a world it could be, but until we have a leader who combines that vision with the persuasiveness and authority to make it happen, it won't.
In the meantime, I'll get working on making the solutions cheaper. In the best case, it costs less when we finally come to our senses and implement the solutions. More likely, it'll become cheaper to implement them than to not, and business will take care of the rest. In the worst case, the world order collapses and then, at least, the survivors will be more able to rebuild the world around them.
Imagine if we, here in the states, had chosen at the end of the cold war to spend 5% of our military budget on peaceful purposes instead. Building infrastructure at home and abroad. Aiding the development of foreign nations. Listening to the scientists' warnings and funding the development of non-fossil fuel energies (which in the 90's would have meant building nuclear while researching renewables). Would we be facing the same level of crisis today? Would there still be impoverished countries willing to harbor terrorists? I don't know. But even now, would our government EVER consider redirecting funds from military to civilian purposes? No, because no one who did so would get re-elected.
I think there's reason to hope. In the US right now, we're kind of mired in despair because of our horrible government, but they'll be out of office soon.
Also, a large number of countries in Europe and Asia have stepped in to take the envirnomental leadership role the US is temporarily too distracted to fulfill. The modern envirnomental movement was born here, and is still very strong, its just been outmaneuvered by the forces of ignorance.
Considering all the social progress that we made in the last century with regards to social levelling and fairer economic distribution, I'm sure there will be more. It just can't all be done at once.
Our progress in fighting hunger and poverty is due in part to recent commitments by the United Nations. In the year 2000, the 189 nations agreed on the Millennium Development Goals - a set of 8 rights-based goals. While the UN had set previous "goals" for reducing global poverty,hunger and disease, the previous goals failed to have a time frame to be achieved. The MDGs are set to be achieved by 2015. Continued economic progress in India and China are significant factors in the development of those nations.
I would love to see far more family-planning money coming from the US, and a complete repeal of all US laws which limit it. I know that keeping population within sustainable paramters involves a lot more than just distributing birth control, but that is a start. Even fertility in the US, long well in control of its growth, is beginning to look worrisome.