[Bas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he 21st century will overturn many of our basic assumptions about economic life. The 20th century saw the end of European dominance of global politics and economics. The 21st century will see the end of American dominance too, as new powers, including China, India and Brazil, continue to grow and make their voices heard on the world stage. Yet the century's changes will be even deeper than a rebalancing of economics and geopolitics. The challenges of sustainable development—protecting the environment, stabilizing the world's population, narrowing the gaps of rich and poor and ending extreme poverty—will render passe the very idea of competing nation-states that scramble for markets, power and resources.

The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet. We have reached the beginning of the century with 6.6 billion people living in an interconnected global economy producing an astounding $60 trillion of output each year. Human beings fill every ecological niche on the planet, from the icy tundra to the tropical rain forests to the deserts. In some locations, societies have outstripped the carrying capacity of the land, resulting in chronic hunger, environmental degradation and a large-scale exodus of desperate populations. We are, in short, in one another's faces as never before, crowded into an interconnected society of global trade, migration, ideas and, yes, risk of pandemic diseases, terrorism, refugee movements and conflict.

[TheDude]

Bit too optimistic/simplistic for me. For instance, the Grand Inga project in Africa holds great promise - 39GW of hydro! but read thisto get an idea of the barriers to actually improving peoples' quality of life.

His solutions to problems like malaria are indeed relatively cheap, but in a world of declining energy will the political will to divert aid be there? We've seen what the current US Administration has done to block funding for access to any kind of birth control for people in the third world.

Energy solutions don't get much attention either, aside from a brief description of CSP, which hasn't become economical as of yet. Yet another pundit who doesn't see a cliff ahead, let alone understand how steep it may be.