BY GEORGE MUSSER from Scientific American :
The 21st century feels like a letdown.
We were promised flying cars, space colonies and 15-hour workweeks.
Robots were supposed to do our chores, except when they were organizing rebellions;
children were supposed to learn about disease from history books;
portable fusion reactors were supposed to be on sale at the Home Depot.
Even dystopian visions of the future predicted leaps of technology and social organization
that leave our era in the dust.
As humanity grows in size and wealth, however, it increasingly presses against the limits of the planet. Already we pump out carbon dioxide three times as fast as the oceans and land can absorb it; midcentury is when climatologists think global warming will really begin to bite. At the rate things are going, the world’s forests and fisheries will be exhausted even sooner.
The trends are evident in everyday life. Many of us have had the experience of getting lost in our hometowns becausethey have grown so much. But growth is slowing as families shrink. Ever more children grow up not just without siblingsbut also without aunts, uncles or cousins. (Some people find that sad, but the only other way to have a stable populationis for death rates to rise)
Continue: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-climax-of-humanity
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