James Martin - The Meaning of the 21st Century 汉译

At the start of the 21^st century, humankind finds itself on a non-sustainable course—the course that, unless it is changed, could lead to grand scale catastrophes. At the same time, we are unlocking formidable new capabilities that lead to more exciting lives and glorious civilizations. This could be either humanity’s last century or the century that sets the world on a course toward a spectacular future.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

We live on a small, beautiful and a totally isolated planet, but its population is becoming too large; enormous new consumer societies are growing, of which China is the largest; and technology is becoming powerful enough to wreck the planet. We are traveling at breakneck speed into an age of the extremes—extremes in wealth and poverty, extremes in technology and the experiments that scientists want to perform, extreme forces of globalism, weapons of mass destruction and terrorists acting in the name of religion. If we are to survive, we have to learn how to manage this situation.

Formidable problems confront us, but this is a book about solutions—many solutions. With these solutions we will bring about the change in course, a great 21^st century transition. If we get it right, we have an extraordinary future. If we get it wrong, we face an irreversible disruption that could set humanity back centuries. A drastic change is needed in the first half of that 21^st century to set the stage for extraordinary events in the rest of the century.

Humankind has been able to thrive for thousands of years because nature provided it with resources like topsoil, underground water, fish in the oceans, minerals, oil and wetlands, but these resources are finite, like cookies in a jar. We are using up many of these resources, and some don’t have substitutes.

Nature also provided us with an ozone layer and a delicately regulated atmosphere, with forests that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but are now being depleted. Every year, because of our misuse of the Earth’s resources, we lose 100 million acres of farmland and 24 billion tons of topsoil, and we create 15 million acres of new desert around the world. An inch of good topsoil can take a thousand years to form, but when people destroy windbreaks by cutting down trees, the topsoil can be washed or blown away in months.

Water is vital for our survival and for producing food. It takes about a thousand tons of water to produce one ton of grain that, fed to cows, produces only 18 pounds of meat. Today mankind is using about 160 billion tons more water each year than is being replenished by rain and fed back into water storages. If this water were carried in water trucks, it would require a 300,000-mile-long convoy of trucks every day—a convoy length 37 times the diameter of the Faith. This is how much water we are using and not replenishing.

During the lifetime of today’s teenagers, fresh water will run out in many parts of the world, making food production difficult. Many fish species will be too depleted to replenish themselves. Global warming will bring hurricanes far more severe than Katrina and will cause natural climate-control mechanisms to go wrong. Rising temperatures will lower crop yields in many of the world’s poorest countries, such as those in central Africa. The immense tensions brought about by such catastrophes will occur in a time of extremism, religious belligerence and suicidal terrorism, and this will coincide with terrible weapons becoming much less expensive and more widely available.

This interconnected set of problems has an interconnected set of solutions. If we humans implement these solutions, we can gradually achieve sustainable development and a sustainable but affluent life. Working toward sustainability requires many different types of actions in different subject areas. In light of rapidly advancing technology, however, sustainability alone is not enough. We need to be concerned with survivability. There must be a move away from the untenable course we are on today toward a world where we learn to control the diverse forces we are unleashing.

Today’s young people will be the generation that brings about this great transition. Let’s refer to it as the 21C Transition. They are ultimately responsible for the changes we describe—a transition unlike any before in history. They are the Transition Generation. It is vital that they—all of them—understand the 21C Transition, so that they can understand the critical role they will play. For many, understanding the meaning of the 21^st century will give meaning to their own lives.