Review & Forecast: A Cosmopolitan Perspective

摘要

There Will be those who proclaim to the world that "they take each day as it comes." Most of us, however, are curious, and even a bit anxious, to peer into the future. So what might 2004 bring? Let's begin with something reasonably uncontroversial - the physical world in which we live. There's every sign that we have entered a period of significant climatic change. In England it isn't that obvious, though we broke one or two summer temperature records in 2003 and there are plenty of English kids who've never seen a real snowfall. But visit the Alps and no one there is in any doubt. The glaciers are retreating so fast one can almost see them melting away. Still, in the mountains, the tree line (the height above which trees will not grow) is climbing. Glaciers and tree lines are both quantifiable changes one can measure with a ruler. The geographers and climatologists have been busy predicting the dates by which this or that ski resorts will be out of business. Maybe 2004 will be the year when Congressmen on the Hill are finally persuaded that all this talk of global warming is for real, and meaningful action must be taken to curb hydrocarbon emissions, which is one of the many contributors to the accelerating pace of this trend. In addition to some of the obvious tightening of auto emission standards, industry, too, might be asked to use less energy. The current administration remains unpersuaded, but climate modelers are in no doubt.