Grand Challenges

All the biggest challenges of our time are transnational: mass migration, growing wealth inequality, [inflation,] the onset of ecological Armageddon. It's arguable that the politics of the nation state have become at best irrelevant, and at worst a hindrance, to tackling such global challenges. The outlook is grim. Democracy and Truth, A Short History: Sophia Rosenfeld

...In the past, when humanity lived in more than one hundred countries, it was like living in more than 100 boats. All we needed were rules to ensure that the boats did not collide. Each boat had a captain or crew to take care of it. Today, with the shrinking of the world, 7 billion people live in 193 cabins on the same boat. We have captains and crews taking care of each cabin. But we have no captain or crew taking care of the boat as a whole. Kishore Mahbubani: the Great Convergence

as we stumble into the Anthropocene we are failing to deal with grand challenges.

Our most challenging problems are trans-national. National governments can’t deal with them alone. Politics appears incapable of dealing with them. Many believe religion will take care of the problems, but it wont. Like other media it is a distraction. Without reliable information, critical thinking, and collective action consequences will be dire.

If we are not supporting institutions that preserve world order, we are part of the problem. International law (the ICC), mutual defense (NATO), preservation of nature (Paris Agreement), economic order (WTO), health measures (WHO), human rights (UNRWA), nuclear proliferation (), global government (UN), need our best efforts, and are not getting them.

Right wing government - self-serving, corrupt, lawless, religious, misinformed, incompetent, the primary cause of great wars. They are armed and hard to remove. Examples: Putin, Netenyahu, Hitler, other 'heroic' conquerors.

Population is devouring the earth. Self serving religions suppress discussion of the problem and want to force it to increase. Religion preaches science denial, misinformation, indoctrination, conspiracies, discrimination, authoritarian control, and regularly results in violent extremism, terrorism as seen on 9/11 or on abortion clinics, and addiction to war.

Fossil fuel addiction emitting CO2 must continue in order to feed 10 billion people. Global warming is inevitable as CO2 exceeds safe levels. Climate will deteriorate. Trump purged climate mentions from websites

Pollution out of control.

Storms,fires, and droughts will be more destructive and increasingly more costly. Insurance rates reflect that. Forest destruction, uncontrollable fires are destroying carbon sinks. Water shortages result from groundwater depletion, disappearance of glaciers. Desertification will destroy formerly fertile cropland resulting in food shortages. Famine will be exacerbated by crop loss.

Rapid loss of biodiversity resulting from extinctions.

Damage to ocean life from acidification and warming will reduce coral reefs, threaten shell fish, and reduce edible fish. Rising sea levels will flood coastal cities. Glacial melt could slow ocean circulation with devastating consequences.

Expanding cities consume farmland and forests. Shanty Towns will house many of the displaced.

Global migration will be unstoppable as growing parts of the planet become too hot to be inhabitable, rising sea levels flood major coastal cities, wars continue. Mass migration reliably drives right wing politics.

Nations, particularly powerful right wing ones, close and fortify borders to stop migration, keep migrants in hostile environments, build up weapons of mass destruction, and threaten civilization ending war.

To regulate the economy, international institutions are a must because some corporations are larger and more powerful than many countries. Unconstrained capitalism leads to extreme wealth disparities, volatile economies, authoritarianism, and political turmoil.

Extreme Poverty is a consequence of extreme wealth disparities. Capitalism, as the game of monopoly demonstrates, naturally extracts wealth producing inequality, produces oligarchs, misallocates, leaving many without the basics.

"...Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative.” Noam Chomsky

Global migration will be unstoppable as growing parts of the planet become too hot to be habitable, rising sea levels flood major coastal cities.

Pandemics are inevitable and become more frequent as dread diseases evolve and migrate. The first Trump administration fired the cabinet level pandemic response team, scrapped the response plan, then badly mishandled COVID. Now Trump has muzzled the CDC and resigned from the WHO. Incompetence is rampant in the Trump administration, and this will not end well. Bioweapons could do us in.

Addiction to war, and obscene expenditure on weapons of mass destruction rob people of well being. The idea that the US is exceptional (no one is exceptional), leads to the determination that it must police the world, place bases and soldiers in 100s of countries, create an empire, is justification for the world's largest military. NATO, a mutual defense agreement, should protect against rogue, invasive States. The US Nuclear arsenal can destroy the planet many times over.

Runaway technology, AI, autonomous weapons, other experiments could pose risks to humanity.

Right wing government protects the status quo, discourages critical thought, obstructs solutions at all levels. Inability to change locked-in culture may bring a New Dark Age that will likely be accompanied by climate collapse.

Environment collapse appears inevitable. There is no real effort to stop it or even slow it down. the future looks grim. The resurgence of right wing government will bring tyranny for future generations.