mark. Today there are just over 7 billion of us. At that time, some 3 per cent –
just 30 million people – lived in cities. Today, the corresponding figure is about
50 per cent, or some 3.5 billion people.
Current projections are that these figures and percentages will all increase.
World population is expected to grow, as will the proportion of us who live
in cities. The total expected population increase by 2030 – about another
2 billion people – is about the same as the expected rise in the urban
population, as increasing numbers are born in cities or move there.
Humanity has never before experienced demographic change on such a
huge scale. The movement from the countryside to the cities in the industrial
revolution two centuries ago has nothing on this. The migration from Europe
to the New World of the Americas from the mid-19th century to the early
20th numbered some 30 million. In the first ten years of this century, global
population grew by some 100 million a year and urban population even faster.
But the issue is not just population increase. There is the matter of resources.
According to one estimate, our seven-times-larger population compared to
1810 produces 50 times as much in economic output, and uses 60 times
as much water and 75 times as much energy. Seen in a longer timescale
going back to the beginning of recorded history some 5,000 years ago, that
astonishing increase in the production of wealth is as wholly unprecedented
and wildly abnormal as the increase in population itself.
The figures testify to the creativity unleashed through the industrial revolution.
They are the evidence against fears, widely expressed over the past two
centuries, that population increase must end in starvation and mass misery.
18
It is no new thought, however, to wonder how long this growth of output and
consumption can be sustained, to question what may happen as the emerging
economies of China, India, Brazil, and other countries, with increasing
economic growth in Africa and many parts of Asia, successfully produce and
consume ever-increasing amounts of everything, just as we have done in
Europe, North America, and Japan.
This growth in production both owes much to, and has fed, the extraordinary
growth in human knowledge over the past 200 years – as, indeed, does the
underlying population growth because of the improvements in public health
that have made it possible. Whether knowledge generates wisdom is, as
we all know, questionable. But if we are seeking to compare ourselves to
the past in the effort to understand who we are today, one thing is that we
are better educated. We know more and, despite the way it may seem, we
understand more.
Among other knowledge, we know more about each other than ever before.
There is more travel and more communication, leading to more encounters
and more information. As we encounter each other, we see our diversity – of
background, race, ethnicity, belief – and how we handle that diversity will
have much to say about whether we will in the end be able to rise successfully
to the great challenges we face today. It is possible to see every day how the
encounter between people and groups of diverse backgrounds can be on the
one hand a benefit – a source of interest, pleasure, or mutual gain – or on the
other hand a source of danger and potential loss – of jobs, fellow-feeling in
the community, or security.
It is paradoxical how we are divided and united by our needs. Because so
many of our needs are the same, there is a risk of clashing over our attempts
to meet them. And when there is a possibility of clashing and sides get
chosen, we are more likely to choose the side that looks, sounds, feels, and
thinks like us. Perhaps if our needs were as diverse as we are, they would
mesh and be complementary.
Especially when communities are under pressure, the need to band together
against the outsider gets stronger. The multiple sources of change in today’s
world are a constant source of pressure and thus of danger. Those who
once sought world government based on the recognition of all that we have
in common are destined for disappointment. We have chosen instead to
be divided, creating more and more independent countries and following
different faiths.
Yet there is also plenty of evidence that different ethnicity and faith do not
prevent people living together peacefully. As more of us cram into cities,
bringing our different traditions and social norms into close proximity, being
able to draw on that part of humanity’s experience will become more and
more important.
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The States of the World
Some of our sense of who we are comes from where
we were born and grew up – our countries, most
of which are quite recent creations. In 1945
the United Nations was founded by just 51
states, some of which were not fully
independent at the time (and the defeated states in
World War II were initially excluded). Today, the UN
has 193 members.
Over the past century, states have won, lost,
and regained independence, often against a
background of war and bloodshed. Some have
become formally independent before achieving
real independence; with others, it has been the
other way round. This atlas shows many ways –
economic, environmental, political – in which
independent states do not have full sovereignty in
the modern world – yet the evidence is clear that
sovereignty is a highly desirable political commodity.
The age of forming new states is not yet over.
CANADA
GREENLAND
ICELAND
USA
ST