Earthsky Interviews
Private: What is the State of the Future?
07-30-2008 - Human World
You’re listening to futurist Jerome Glenn, and he’s talking about pulling together a nation’s vital indicators – such as food, energy, and medicine – on the health of an entire nation. Glenn is director of the Millennium Project, a global futures think tank that has released its 2008 State of the Future Report.
_Jerome Glenn_: It’s as balanced an assessment of the world future possibilities as I think exists.
The report looked at 29 factors, such as life expectancy and global warming, and it formed a 10-year outlook based on data from the past 20 years.
_Jerome Glenn_: The object of the game is to improve the entire game, not just improve education or just improve business. The idea is to improve the whole society. And that’s the idea of the State of the Future index.
EarthSky asked Glenn the obvious question, is the future getting better, or worse?
_Jerome Glenn_: What we’re concluding so far is that the improvements over the last 20 years were not bad at all. And the improvements over the next 10 years may not be as good as the last 20 years. So there’s a slowdown in improvement at the moment.
To read the 2008 State of the Future report, click “here”:http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2948.
“Jerome Glenn on the State of the Future”:http://earthsky.org/clear-voices/52662/jerome-glenn-on-the-2008-state-of-the-future-report
Listen to the *Clear Voices for Science* podcast.
I’m glad they are thinking about it.
Finally Earth and Sky mentions the population growth issue and the connection with environmental problems cause by overpopulation.
Hi Don,
I’m surprised you would say EarthSky doesn’t talk about population issues. In fact, many of us here are extremely interested in what experts have to say about population. Here’s a recent EarthSky blog on the subject of population.
We’re trying to raise the funds for a series of podcasts on population issues, in partnership with the Population Reference Bureau of Washington D.C.
Population is a the root of … well … just about everything we experience in the modern world. It’s the driver of so much!
Deborah
Letter to the Editor
Chapel Hill (NC) Newspaper
July 29, 2008
What purpose do bigger families serve?
We in the town of Chapel Hill are implicated in a daunting global threat, a colossal problem that appears to involve every citizen on the planet. No one is to blame for this human-driven predicament; yet all of us could be enjoined by the requirements of practical reality to humanely and voluntarily take responsible, self-limiting action to meet the challenge, I suppose.
Please note that annual birthrates of newborns in the human community are rising precipitously in the United States as well as in many other countries worldwide. For example, more than 4.3 million newborns joined the American family in 2007. That is more births than occurred in 1957 at the height of the post-WWII baby boom. Would someone please point out what advantages the American family derives from such rapid growth in its population numbers? The total number of human births last year exceeded the highest annual number of births ever achieved in the United States. How much longer can the United States sustain the momentum bound up in the skyrocketing growth of the human population? How long can the frangible ecosystems and finite resources of Earth be reasonably expected to sustain the human species, given the determination of people in most countries, not to regulate the growth of human numbers?
Many capable scientists are validating the projection that the human population on Earth could increase from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in the next 42 years. That is a 40 percent increase in our global population. Given its current and anticipated growth, it appears to me that the human species may well ravage the Earth between now and 2050 unless meaningful individual and collective efforts are made to slow the growth of human numbers.
Perhaps someone will kindly explain how much longer a planet with the relatively small size and make-up of Earth can be sensibly expected to support the well-established and easily discernable over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation behaviors of the family of humanity. — Steven Earl Salmony, Chapel Hill