If you asked me, with little time to think and therefore quite spontaneously, I would say my vote on the top three priorities for the 21st century would be:
1. Education
2. Economic development
3. Solar panels.
Here is, in a bloggish nutshell. why:
1. Education
Today's education provides the fabric of tomorrow's society. The way we raise the next generation now is the way they will see the world in the future. According to a UNESCO report, the total of Africa spends less on education than a mid-size country like France. Sobering fact from the report: "Governments in sub-Saharan Africa spend only 2.4% of the world’s public education resources on 15% of the global school-age population. In contrast, North America and Western Europe account for more than one-half of the global total of public education spending. Yet, less than 10% of the world’s children and young people live in these countries."
2. Economic development
Economic precarity or even fear of economic uncertainty brings about social unrest. Witness any recent protest movement, from French taxi drivers to German public service employees, anti-globalisation movements are but relatively easy-going manifestations of (often legitimate) concerns. There are a number of studies linking the rise of terrorism to economic poverty. This blog article by Becker and Posner has a look at Pakistan as an example (with some animated, to say the least feedback comments). Singapore is famous for its peaceful society where citizens are happy to forego certain liberties for high GDP and security.
3. Solar panels
When it will be mastered, solar energy has the potential to provide unlimited energy to the planet, fundamentally changing economics and world relationships. The paradigm shift should be comparable to what we are going through today with information technology and the economics of information: from an economy of energy scarcity, we could move to an economy of abundance, where the marginal cost of every unit would tend towards 0, If the same amount that is literally pumped into conventional (oil, nuclear, coal) energy today was spent on developing solar energy, a number of global economic issues would simply vanish. Solar energy is easy to decentralise, can operate in remote areas, is environmentally impeccable and has unlimited (well, for our purposes anyway) resource. The graph illustrated in this post make a noisy point: the yellow dot on the left (yes, you have to scroll down) is the yearly amount of money spent on solar energy R&D in the US, the pink one on fossil fuel, next nuclear, next coal and the last one is the Iraq war. The graph is from a site called solarpowerrocks.com. They may just want to make a noisy point, but still…
Education makes the world look different. Education fosters creativity. Education builds a knowledge base for the nation and ultimately for mankind.
Economic development in combination with educational outlook creates potential and possibility. Possibility reduces angst and frustration, leading to more creativity.
Solar power has the elegance of environmental silence combined with a sense of well being. It can provide guilt-free consumption as well as clean production.
The combination of these 3 factors and their ramifications directly impact on other 21st century issues: environment (including the CO2 debate and the pending water crisis), demographics, trade and migration, world health…
If you find this debatable, great! Debatable is good. Let's talk.
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