New Year 010110

Another decade has passed into history with pundits promising a bright future for the New Year. The reality however is that the past’s unexploded time bombs are one year closer to detonation.

The polar caps are melting, the seas are rising and the earth is becoming hotter. Politicians called a conference, posed for pictures and declared “satisfactory” results. While the seas are deeper they are being fished to barren extinction, farmlands are becoming deserts and forests are turning into urban developments. Energy demands as well as costs are rising as fossil fuel reserves decline. Waste and pollution blankets the globe as people migrate from the land to urban mega centers that demand more resources and produce more pollution. Resources are being depleted at an alarming rate and clean water in those urban centers is in danger of rationing.

Politicians return home, reassuring their publics that a solution is in hand and action will be taken. They then turn problems over to technocrats and return to electioneering. The technocrats have heard it all before, so it is business as usual. They begin to update an action plan for the next administration. Some honestly don’t believe a crisis, any crisis, is a crisis. Others think the situation is unavoidable so why exhaust themselves pursuing placebo proclamations. They believe in their exceptionalism and any crisis will only impact those of lessor worth. The reality is they lack the capacity to adapt and are paralyzed by self-doubts, falling back on collective irresponsibility of anonymous no action.

Most of tomorrow’s explosions are the result of bombs planted by innovations and development of the 19th and 20th century. During that era developed states made many wasteful environmental missteps in their rush to greatness. People fueled the need to grow and grow quickly. Today the populations of great states are aging out of power competition as young populations begin to reach for their own golden power ring.

Conservative estimates are that by mid-century the world population will be over nine billion people. That number hides a growing imbalance of declining population in developed nations and explosive growth in developing states. Across Africa, Asia and Latin America the under 20 year olds form 25 to 45 percent of present populations. These young people are just entering their child bearing and creative years. The old decaying powers serve as a model for their needs and desires as they “want it now” not considering that this attitude planted the seeds of their own future destruction.

Developing states would do well to study the models of the past as a precaution against unplanned development. The great powers of the 21st century will be those that devise innovative ways to do more with less while satisfying the desires of accelerating demands. Innovation must not only solve development challenges but also defuse the environmental bombs left by the great powers of the past.