The world's biggest problems in the next 100 years

[Spajjder]

What do you think?

I just list a few problems I've heard here

The EU and maybe US is currently facing big economic problems, alot of people are without jobs, no jobs - no customers, no business. Companies move to where there are business.

They move to "less developed" countries. Which in turn gets "more" problems with environmental problems etc.

We are using way to much resources, and our style of living is not sustainable. The earth is getting too hot due to overly use of fossil fuels. As the ice melts around the poles, the water level will rise, but oil companies just sees new oppurtunities to drill for more oil in now thawed areas round the poles, which in turn will give us more oil but even more environmental problems.
As countries grow richer, and as health care improves, more people survive, and spend even more resources.
None of the political systems seems to work. People want to be happy, strive for a better life, but by doing it, we are over taxing the earths resources.


What should we DO!?
If you could rule over everything "not be god, but rule over all the people and countries etc"
What would you do?
What way should the world be steering, and how?
Please elaborate, not just this or this would solve everything, please try to actually make up a plan, although simple, but with proper explanations as to how your plan/theory would be able to advance both environmentally as well as socio-economically

[removeduser_4536284751384]

If I could cahnge the world like you say above, I would try to bring liberal democracies, and social market economies, to countries where there are none. And that's all I would do. The rest will solve itself.

[Spajjder]

If I could cahnge the world like you say above, I would try to bring liberal democracies, and social market economies, to countries where there are none. And that's all I would do. The rest will solve itself.

Can you explain how?

[GreatAugustus]

Did you know? Greenland is going green!

[OCWife]

Colonize Andromeda.

[Ramashan]

Honestly, I can sum up the worlds biggest problem in the next hundred years in one word: Energy.

Everything else is more or less transient. We've gone through at least three periods of job insecurity in the past hundred years and many more before that, that is something that is cyclical as economies and industry changes and nations, people, and society need to make adjustments.

But ever since the dawn of the industrial age energy has been the key to everything. From growing the food to support the population of the planet, to getting it to market, you moving resources, to powering the very things that make our modern lives possible both in transportation and communication.

There's pretty much a consensus that all the major oil reserves have been discovered, it's just a matter of gaining access to them and now we're moving into more exotic forms of energy such as natural gas and shall oil. With an ever growing need for more and more energy as third world countries modernize these resources are going to be depleted in ever larger quantities. Eventually, my prediction is about two hundred years, there will be a society where the thought of the world running on oil and gas will seem like some fantastical fantasy story since so little of the resource will remain. Even if my time scale pessimistic there will come a time when oil just does not exist in enough quantity to provide energy for the things we take for granted today.

I'm not about to go off on a completely green environmental loony rant about saving the planet, but in order to solve the energy issue in the next hundred years we need to depolitize the whole thing. Start seeing a mixed variety of energy as being the norm. Wind, solar, hydro, biocarbons, etc.

Also, I am a huge advocate of space as being the next step in the human evolution of industry. We are already seeing the fledgling roots of this industry. Perhaps we wont be going to Mars for vacation, but having more private companies working in the orbital domain will create jobs just as the aviation industry and auto industry did before it. And although, yes, much of this can be outsourced, only top tier nations will have the ability to launch and maintain highly complex vehicles. This, to me, opens a whole new industry which can either retool existing manufacturing sectors or create new ones.

The other issue will be water. The solution to this is, energy, in the way of cleaning, desalinating, and moving water to where it's needed.

If a focus is made of diversifying the way energy is produced and delivered and perhaps building up an orbital and sub orbital space industry you not only create jobs but you solve some issues we will have to potentially face in the future.

I recommend reading a book called The High Road by Ben Bova. Written in 1983 it recommends and talks about, using the ideas of the technology of the time, things that we are only now beginning to do regarding the use of Space as an industry and energy resource.

[SomaaTheLion]

Honestly, I can sum up the worlds biggest problem in the next hundred years in one word: Energy.

Everything else is more or less transient. We've gone through at least three periods of job insecurity in the past hundred years and many more before that, that is something that is cyclical as economies and industry changes and nations, people, and society need to make adjustments.

But ever since the dawn of the industrial age energy has been the key to everything. From growing the food to support the population of the planet, to getting it to market, you moving resources, to powering the very things that make our modern lives possible both in transportation and communication.

There's pretty much a consensus that all the major oil reserves have been discovered, it's just a matter of gaining access to them and now we're moving into more exotic forms of energy such as natural gas and shall oil. With an ever growing need for more and more energy as third world countries modernize these resources are going to be depleted in ever larger quantities. Eventually, my prediction is about two hundred years, there will be a society where the thought of the world running on oil and gas will seem like some fantastical fantasy story since so little of the resource will remain. Even if my time scale pessimistic there will come a time when oil just does not exist in enough quantity to provide energy for the things we take for granted today.

I'm not about to go off on a completely green environmental loony rant about saving the planet, but in order to solve the energy issue in the next hundred years we need to depolitize the whole thing. Start seeing a mixed variety of energy as being the norm. Wind, solar, hydro, biocarbons, etc.

Also, I am a huge advocate of space as being the next step in the human evolution of industry. We are already seeing the fledgling roots of this industry. Perhaps we wont be going to Mars for vacation, but having more private companies working in the orbital domain will create jobs just as the aviation industry and auto industry did before it. And although, yes, much of this can be outsourced, only top tier nations will have the ability to launch and maintain highly complex vehicles. This, to me, opens a whole new industry which can either retool existing manufacturing sectors or create new ones.

The other issue will be water. The solution to this is, energy, in the way of cleaning, desalinating, and moving water to where it's needed.

If a focus is made of diversifying the way energy is produced and delivered and perhaps building up an orbital and sub orbital space industry you not only create jobs but you solve some issues we will have to potentially face in the future.

I recommend reading a book called The High Road by Ben Bova. Written in 1983 it recommends and talks about, using the ideas of the technology of the time, things that we are only now beginning to do regarding the use of Space as an industry and energy resource.

I can't agree more.

[Kitsunegari]

Demographic decline of the more developed countries, Italy, Spain, Japan, S. Korea, etc. are going down the drain fast.

[Aanker]

Demography is a major problem, to say the least, in developing countries as well.

Anyway, I'd say we should bulldoze over all the complaints and risk factors and just build nuclear power plants everywhere. Invest in electricity for cars and high-speed trains. Fund space exploration. Glass disobedient nations who do not wish to form a global, federal state whose only purpose will be the advancement and ascension of mankind out into the universe.

...

I just find these problems so distant. Sorry to sound ignorant or uncautious, but somehow I get the feeling that we need to take care of all the problems we have now instead of throwing a fit over the deteriorating climate, or depleting oil resources... Problems which, with time and human ingenuity, will probably be solved gradually anyway, rather than by some politically sanctioned budget or regulatory sniper shot.

[Kitsunegari]

Demography is a major problem, to say the least, in developing countries as well.

Yes we will have too many eaters and not enough producers so to speak. This probably won't last long though, since many predictions have poorer countries' fertility rates peaking in the near future then dropping off shortly, this is already underway in Mexico, for example.

[The excited one]

Demography is a major problem, to say the least, in developing countries as well.

well its benefits will be that the chances of global warming problem will solve itself as people found ways to effectively reduce Co gases as well as less people (not as much people) to use things that produce Co gases and also the demography will solve itself as mechanized labor will eventually replace human labor thus solve the problem that less people produce less because the robots are filling up and gap.

[Thorn777]

We need to get away from the infinite growth paradigme, and will make sense again.

Seems the debt situation will force us sooner than anything else. Stupid egocentric humans.

[Ramashan]

Thing is, as I mentioned, some things are just transitory. Debt, jobs, recession, etc. These things have been going on throughout history and will continue to go on far into the future. People talk of solving more immediate problems then bring up homelessness, disease, poverty etc. Again, these are problems which haven't been solved in over 5000 years and will never be completely solved. If we ever have a Mars base you'll eventually have poor, homeless, people and a disease to combat. That's just part of life. Granted, these things need to be dealt with at the moment in time they're happening, which is what governments should be focused on, but if you ask about what the problems in 100 years are, completely different out look.

I mean, if you asked someone 100 years what the issues were going to be today they'd be answering without the foreknowledge of two world wars, the nuclear age, and the rise and dominance of computers.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/614958/W...e100-Years-Ago

Pretty amusing

[Col. Tartleton]

What do you think?

I just list a few problems I've heard here

The EU and maybe US is currently facing big economic problems, alot of people are without jobs, no jobs - no customers, no business. Companies move to where there are business.

Short term problem due to bad management. Nothing to worry about on the century scale.

They move to "less developed" countries. Which in turn gets "more" problems with environmental problems etc.

The jobs should move to the developing world. Once they're actually developed everything will be back to normal. The issue isn't that the developing world is developing, it's that they hadn't developed on par with the West. Instead of worrying about China becoming the biggest economy we should be horrified that the average American is (or was IIRC) like 16 times wealthier than the average Chinese person. The West was built on our own "development", but market forces will lift everyone up.

The environmental problems are largely local. It's collateral damage. If they don't industrialize and then modernize fully they won't have enough money to clean the environment, so it's not really relevant.

We are using way to much resources, and our style of living is not sustainable. The earth is getting too hot due to overly use of fossil fuels. As the ice melts around the poles, the water level will rise, but oil companies just sees new oppurtunities to drill for more oil in now thawed areas round the poles, which in turn will give us more oil but even more environmental problems.

Burning oil is not effecting the temperature. That doesn't make any sense. How can the evidence of rises in temperature causing increased CO2 be a sign that increased CO2 is increasing the temperature...

If the Earth is warming, its because we're still coming out of the ice age. If that means the climates change it just means the climates change. There's nothing we can do about it. The climate isn't static.

As countries grow richer, and as health care improves, more people survive, and spend even more resources.

As countries grow richer and as health care improves the birth rates decline sharply to the point of population contraction. This of course is going to wreak havoc upon socialist societies which are only sustainable like any ponzi scheme by having a steady growing income of young people to support the old people. However in general, it means that the supply is not the problem, the demand will be.

None of the political systems seems to work. People want to be happy, strive for a better life, but by doing it, we are over taxing the earths resources.

The earth won't support more people than it can support for very long. It's nothing to worry about. If hypothetically the human population was so large as to cause global famine, the famine would reduce population until the system re-balanced. It's nothing to worry about.

What should we DO!?

Busch Light, blazers, and SEC football my dear man. Got to stay hydrated.

If you could rule over everything "not be god, but rule over all the people and countries etc"
What would you do?

Write a concise but all encompassing code of law for the whole world derived from the American founding documents, Napoleonic Code, and my own philosophical musings.

What way should the world be steering, and how?

Truth, Justice, and Freedom. The New World Order.

Please elaborate, not just this or this would solve everything, please try to actually make up a plan, although simple, but with proper explanations as to how your plan/theory would be able to advance both environmentally as well as socio-economically

Stop worrying and love the bomb.

[Ak1980]

Short term problem due to bad management. Nothing to worry about on the century scale.



The jobs should move to the developing world. Once they're actually developed everything will be back to normal. The issue isn't that the developing world is developing, it's that they hadn't developed on par with the West. Instead of worrying about China becoming the biggest economy we should be horrified that the average American is (or was IIRC) like 16 times wealthier than the average Chinese person. The West was built on our own "development", but market forces will lift everyone up.

The environmental problems are largely local. It's collateral damage. If they don't industrialize and then modernize fully they won't have enough money to clean the environment, so it's not really relevant.

This, even now the world growth enough food to fully support 2-3 billion more.

Some of the job already started to moved back to the developed world. Without industrialization the environmental problem can be worse, poor and hungry people don't care much about environment, as long as it can bring food to table, who care about burning the forest for farm, extinct animal or strip mining without any real regulation.

[Facupay]

The earth won't support more people than it can support for very long. It's nothing to worry about. If hypothetically the human population was so large as to cause global famine, the famine would reduce population until the system re-balanced. It's nothing to worry about.

Col. Tartleton, you do realise what "rebalancing the system" means right? It's not going to be a fancy chart were the population numbers start getting smaller, it's going to be a huge war and instability.

Overpopulation is a problem that can solve itself, but it could wipe us off in the process, so let's try to avoid reaching that point.

[Col. Tartleton]

Col. Tartleton, you do realise what "rebalancing the system" means right? It's not going to be a fancy chart were the population numbers start getting smaller, it's going to be a huge war and instability.

Overpopulation is a problem that can solve itself, but it could wipe us off in the process, so let's try to avoid reaching that point.

If it becomes too expensive to raise kids there will be fewer kids. The free market should naturally reinforce the proper incentives on the population to not have more kids than they can afford to raise.

If I can afford 1 kid I'll be able to support 1 kid. If I can afford 10 kids I'll be able to support 10 kids. If someone can't support any kids, they won't have any. At least for very long. Even with socialism you can't support more kids than the society can support. The only problem is when you build your society on debt as that's unsustainable.

The invisible hand guides all things. Order always arises from Chaos.

Reality has a nasty habit of solving problems.

[Ramashan]

If it becomes too expensive to raise kids there will be fewer kids. The free market should naturally reinforce the proper incentives on the population to not have more kids than they can afford to raise.

If I can afford 1 kid I'll be able to support 1 kid. If I can afford 10 kids I'll be able to support 10 kids. If someone can't support any kids, they won't have any. At least for very long. Even with socialism you can't support more kids than the society can support. The only problem is when you build your society on debt as that's unsustainable.

The invisible hand guides all things. Order always arises from Chaos.

Reality has a nasty habit of solving problems.

That is all sorts of bunk. The people who tend to have the most children are those who can't afford them and those who have more than enough money to do so. If you have a vibrant middle class, this is the demographic that has fewer children. The poor and the rich tend to favor larger families of 3 or more.

People will have children regardless of their financial means to afford them. But, i personally believe that any issues we have with population in the future will come down to my speculation that it will become a crisis when the energy needed to support that population becomes scarce.

Oh, and in the next twenty years the big issue will be the aging first world nations such as Europe and America and the young second third world nations such as India and the Middle East. Most of the first world nations simply can't afford to support the aged population that is sky rocketing at the moment. So, you think we have debt now....... wait till you have less than a third of the US population supporting the other 2/3rds. And that's with all able bodied adults working.

[Squiggle]

That is all sorts of bunk. The people who tend to have the most children are those who can't afford them

Might have to do with the fact the poor are subsidized by the middle class. The rest is just nonsense built on this basic error so nothing to reply to.

[Ramashan]

Might have to do with the fact the poor are subsidized by the middle class. The rest is just nonsense built on this basic error so nothing to reply to.

Not sure if you commenting on my entire post about middle class having less children (And I will stand corrected on the wealthy having more as the evidence seems to show that the wealthier are the less kids you have) and the age gap occurring in first world nations. But here's some resources.


http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/...09/picture.htm

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/06/...nferior-goods/

Any search you do you will find the evidence supports these statements. And I don't believe subsidies have anything to do it with it. Some of the major problems are lack of education and fertility and controception issues within religion.