Thoughts on New Year 1997: Achieving a Consensus for the 21st Century

摘要

Population, food, energy, the environment — these are all mutually related issues confronting us as we approach the end of the 20th century. Instead of describing these problems as "mutually related," perhaps a better term would be "mutually conflicting," as they involve tradeoffs. Indeed, ardent efforts over the past few decades have yet to find a resolution to them. Most predictions set the world's population at 10 billion people by the middle of the next century. To secure the food, energy and resources to support such a huge population — while maintaining the requisite economic infrastructure as well as protecting the environment — certainly represents a grave problem. We can no longer talk about "self-sustaining development," but must endeavor to find the solution to those problems. Still, given that they are mutually conflicting, there is no simple key out there allowing us to solve all of them at once.