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The Forum > Article Comments > Global civilisation in the the next three decades > Comments

Global civilisation in the the next three decades : Comments

By Peter McMahon, published 16/9/2014

Over the last five centuries we have seen the rise of a global civilisation on Earth, but now our global civilisation is in crisis and the next three decades will be critical ones.

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You forgot Scenario 4: Business as Usual. Things go on getting better; populations get richer, healthier and longer-lived; diseases are cured; work goes on getting easier; food becomes more abundant, partly due to the contribution of increased CO2; theological and political alternatives to regulated capitalism become increasingly rare, and more and more self-evidently dysfunctional; and fracking provides the cheap and abundant energy that we need to continue living well, and to extend our standards of living into the developing world until nuclear fission becomes viable.

Oh, and the doom-sayers are exposed, laughed out of all credibility and deported to live in the kind of virgin, resource-free island environment that they've been telling us to aspire to for so long.
Posted by Jon J, Tuesday, 16 September 2014 10:44:14 AM
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You left one minor point out JJ.
Populations keep growing rapidly eating us out of house and home (and planet).
Posted by ateday, Tuesday, 16 September 2014 10:58:09 AM
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This is 2014 JJ.
Nuclear fission has been viable for a few years now.
Remember?
Posted by ateday, Tuesday, 16 September 2014 10:59:50 AM
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Oops -- fusion, then. But as for global population, I believe that we're still on track to hit a peak around 2080 and then decline.
Posted by Jon J, Tuesday, 16 September 2014 11:11:16 AM
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"debate about how to best run a global civilisation and how to generate the institutions and other processes necessary to do this"

Fail.

This assumes that civilisations are "run" [by the clever ruling class ordering everyone around of course] and the only question is what particular configuration of coercion is "necessary" to do it.

Peter, that believe system has already been destruct-tested over the last 100 years, and proven wrong both in theory and practice, at enormous cost in human suffering.

Try something new? Try re-thinking what doesn't work? Try finding out why it didn't? Try falsifying your own beliefs? Try learning what theories correctly predicted why yours didn't work, and trying to falsify them?
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Tuesday, 16 September 2014 1:04:52 PM
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Assuming that humankind is still here or hasnt destroyed itself by then, it is really impossible to predict what the humanly created world will be like in 30 years time.
Due to the ongoing revolutionary development of micro-electronic technologies (and macro ones too) the humanly created world of 2015 is completely different to what it was 30 years ago in 1980.

Yes in the now-time quantum world in which everyone and everything is now instantaneously interconnected something completely new must emerge and business as usual is not an option. Nor is the option advocated by Jardine, which, although he pretends otherwise is just more of the same (turbo-charged business as usual)

This set of references describe the state of the humanly created world in the "21st century", how we got to here, and what if anything we can do about it.

http://www.dabase.org/not2p1.htm
http://sacredcamelgardens.com/wordpress/reality-humanity
http://www.beezone.com/news.html
http://www.coteda.com/fundamentals/index.html
Posted by Daffy Duck, Tuesday, 16 September 2014 2:14:48 PM
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