An Uncharted Global Future Commences In 2021: How & How Much Will The World Change?

By Kumar David –JANUARY 10, 2021

Prof. Kuma David

There are two schools of thought, one says that the world will gradually return to “normal” (its former self) sooner or later. The other more sombre view which I subscribe to is a premonition that things have snapped for better for worse and it won’t be the same again. Not every portent that I sense will come to pass, but many of these changes cannot, not happen. Covid-19 was the last straw that broke the camel’s back; it was one gigantic straw but actually many pressures accumulating over the years combined and blew. Covid is a catalyst whose long-term implications will be far-reaching in geopolitics, governance, economics and culture.

First ecology; the damage that humans wreak on the planet is unsustainable. The pandemic brought us face to face with catastrophe. The virus did not jump from bat or civet to humans; quite the contrary we raped and ravaged the forests, the waters and the mountains, and nature having nowhere to turn came home and nestled in our bosom. Second the earth’s carrying capacity. There are too many humans and to say we breed like rabbits is an unconscionable denigration of rabbits. Third the global economy in the last two decades has been characterised by a widening gap between haves and have-nots and for the first time since WW2 absolute poverty is on the rise if we take China out of the computation. Governments have become more repressive in the Twenty-first Century. And worst of all is ever increasing intolerance between communities. Is barbarism among humans the sum total effect of this melt down? Will the jolt 2020 delivered shake us up before calamity becomes apocalyptic catastrophe? I cannot paint the whole canvas from ecology, to population, to economics, to social inequality and political tumult today. I will be selective.   

Allow me to preface this with the comment that for the next decade – to look beyond this horizon in this essay is not sensible – what happens in America will be the decider. I have often said in this column that in the early 2030s China will become the world’s largest economy and a diplomatic and military power on par with the US, but that does not contradict my assertion here that as an exemplar and moral influence the American legacy will last long. While the PRC’s development strategy will overdetermine the economic model adopted by developing countries, China’s moral influence will be crippled until and unless the Communist Party, at least in this its centennial year, becomes sure footed enough to tolerate other mass organisations, especially in Xinjiang Province. The next four years of Biden Presidency is crucial. His team is conventional, decent, reliable, tried and tested but it certainly does not sparkle with brilliance; pedestrian like the boss himself but I guess it is just this that warms mundane liberal hearts. But the liberals have a point. The next four years is course correction; dull plodding to undo a maniac’s domestic and international ravages but above all else also to address the economic hardships of Americans in the lowest income quartile and banish the raison d’etre of the Trump Base. Biden’s success will not be measured in the stratosphere but on terra firma, by which measure Obama – glittering intellectual compared to poor old Joe – presided over a failed second-term.

The Environment

Youth-led climate activism is the most influential force in the formative days Biden’s Administration. The movement has notched high-profile victories; Deb Haaland, a Native American will lead the Interior Department and Gina McCarthy an environmental health and air quality expert, the Environmental Protection Agency. Former Secretary of State John Kerry who helped craft the Paris Accord will hold Cabinet-rank position as climate Tsar. There are expectations that Biden’s USA will be a world environmental trailblazer. But the team will be greeted by the grinding realities of obstruction from Washington Republicanism and moneyed vested interests. The outcome of this tussle will shape the planet’s climate in the decade of the 2020s and American youth mobilisation is the key that will influence environmental youth movements everywhere.

Population will decline but not fast enough

The population of the world on 1 Jan 2021 was 7.83 billion and the number of births in the first ten days of 2021 was 2.9 million. Far too much for the global resource base to carry; humans create too large a footprint before finally, they their “hiatus make”. A recent BBC programme says population will peak at 9.7 billion in 2064 and decile to 8.8 billion by the end of the century; still too large and the rate of decline too slow. It would be better if in two generations global population declines to below 7 billion and if thereafter stabilises at a steady four billion.  Humanity has intelligence, technology and the skill to enter this ‘noosphere’. Stripped of mumbo-jumbo a ‘noosphere’ is a term coined by Vladimir Vernadsky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin for when reason and science come together to create a higher consciousness.

The population of different countries in million in 2100 is projected as follows (2020 population in paracentesis): China 730 (1390), India 1090 (1325), Nigeria 790 (214), USA 335 (330), Japan 60 (125). China’s decline to nearly half and Japan’s to less than half is remarkable, but more than threefold explosion in Nigeria is astounding and alarming. Sub Saharan Africa, about one billion in 2020 will rise to 3.36 billion by century’s end, while Latin America and the Middle East also buck the declining trend. LA’s 630 million in 2020 will swell to 750 million – the Catholic Church wants them to procreate around-the-clock. The Middle East cum North Africa, now 600 million, will rise to 1 billion by 2100; myopic education and oppression of women lie at the root. The worst of the pandemic has still to devastate Africa and the Middle East and I am optimistic that the crisis will ameliorate this social bigotry. Only dramatic change can avert famine, devastation of forests, despoiling of open-spaces and pollution of the waters.

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