A few weeks ago i was invited for a breakfast conference hosted by the Institute of Directors (IoD) n Southampton. I didn’t really want to go but in the interests of fostering a closer relationship with our accountants, i made my way over. What i saw when i got there changed the way i look on everything. The whole world as i knew it was foreign and alien, and i realised just how frighteningly ignorant i am about the future.
The speaker was David Smith, a renowned international futurist who has his own research company Global Futures & Foresight. I had met another master Jedi, and it made me think about how i should present my material, and about the nature of change. David very kindly sent me a copy of the presentation he gave, but unfortunately i’m not able to redistribute it. What i have done is paraphrase a lot of the information inside it, as i wished everyone i knew could have been there to experience it. David and I are meeting for lunch next week and i’m hoping to keep in touch with him a lot more as time goes on.
When you read this, remember that it is due to happen within our lifetime. Most of us will have teenage kids and have been married. Some of us will have died, most of us will be in the latter stages of our career and we will be slowing down. But this is the world our children and their children are going to inherit. I’m deeply grateful to know now instead of later, so i can work out what to do. No-one i know has any idea about this wide-scale overview of the human race.
If these words bore you or you turn off the TV when the word “economy” is mentioned, bite you tongue and read this. Everything that happens on a macro scale is then reflected on a micro one. What happens in the world at large will affect your day to day life.
Everything is changing. We need to prepare for it now.
We have lived on the earth for over 3000 years. Just 30 years ago, there was no
- Worldwide Web
- Personal computers
- Mobile phones
- E-mail, E-bay, E-Biz,
- Perestroika & Glasnost
- European Union
- World Trade Organisation
- Marketization of China
- Globalization
- Global Warming
- iPod
- Laptop
- Nano-technology
- Genetic engineering
- Social Networks
- AIDS
World Power, Population & Economy
In 1950, just a few decades ago, the world’s population was just over 2 billion. Today it has tripled in size and is over 6 billion. In 2100, it will be 10.5 billion. Between 1804 and 1927, it took us 123 years to add 1 billion people. Between 1987 and 1999 we added another billion people in just 12 years. There will be 3 billion more people in 40 years time. We’re breeding like wildfire.
Where are they going to live, and how on earth are we going to have enough natural resources for them? If we look at the calculations for that next 40 years, it’s dramatic.
Europe’s getting smaller and people are leaving. At present we have 729M people, which will reduce to 632M. The US and Canada’s joint population will increase slightly from 305M to 392M, whereas its southern neighbours will also see more people, going up from 520M to 768M. But the real drama is in Africa and Asia.
Africa’s population will rise from 796M people today to a massive 1.8 billion. Australasia’s will do the same, rising from 3.7 billion to 5.2 billion. All these new people will be in the poorest and currently underdeveloped parts of the world.
The world’s population is at a historic turning point. This year, half the world’s population will be urban with a population of 3.2 billion people and will be larger than the entire global population in 1967, 40 years earlier. We don’t live in the country anymore. The human race is now officially a city-dwelling animal.
Whoever has the largest economy controls the world. Today, the US is the world’s largest economy with 28.4% of the planet’s gross domestic product (GDP). Next up it’s Japan with 10.6%, then Germany (6.4%) and the UK in 4th place with 5%. In 2050, the world will have completely changed so it’s unrecognisable. Western powers will be pushed out in favour of Asia. This is going to happen in our lifetime. In the world our children grow up in, the top 3 economies in terms of GDP will be China (45k BN), the US (35k BN) and India (28k B). Next is Japan, with 5k BN. The UK is 7th with 4.8kBN. Our economy is going to get smaller. That means less jobs and less opportunity.
What that means is that China will be the most powerful nation in the world, and whatever goes on there will affect everyone else. The US’s economy will no longer control the markets as it does today. China and India are next to each other geographically. The US will struggle, but the land mass in central Asia will control the world’s markets. Everything will gravitate around them. China consumes 8.8% of the world’s oil supplies. Its middle class will grow from 200M today to 2BN in 45 years, which is an indicator of prosperity. 3M+ English-speaking university graduates come out of India every single year, mostly in IT. Your degree will be meaningless.
But interestingly, that’s exactly how the world’s economies looked in 1820, so it’s something of a reversion to normality. China’s massive power declined in the 19th century essentially because its ship-making industry collapsed. But now they are on the way back, and buying up most of America via US Treasury bonds. That has amounted to blackmail and left the US powerless o resist China’s march to domination. There is nothing they can do. If China pulls its money out, their economy collapses. They control manufacturing, electronics and a number of other industries. They will set the playing field for our children.
Ageing & Life Expectancy
Since 1840, the highest average life expectancy has improved by a quarter of a year every year. If that trend continues, people in the country with the highest life expectancy would live to an average age of 100 in about six decades.
In the UK, the average life expectancy this year is 79. In 2060, we can expect to live to 100 on average. Our grandchildren can expect to live to an average of 123 around 50 years later on. To contrast that, the current life expectancy of the most prosperous nation in Africa (South Africa) is 43, due to the rampant impact of HIV. Think of the maths – larger population, and we live longer too. It’s not going to work. We’re due a war or natural disaster as part of nature’s population control program.
Human and animal cloning has been performed successfully. Scientists now see ageing as a “disease”. The world’s leading authority, Dr. Aubrey de Grey of Cambridge University, believes with the rate of technological progress (especially relating to the human genome) that human life expectancies have the potential to reach 500, or possibly even 1000. “The first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already“ he says. If you think that’s far fetched, look back on the last 50 years. A tripled population, exponential communications and a rate of change unsurpassed in human history. This is just the start.
Interestingly, in all industrial nations fertility is well below the 2.2% replacement level to maintain the population. Basically, we’re not having enough children. In the UK, we average 1.7 children per family, which is down from 2.4 20 years ago. Up to 45% of our population will be 60 years old and higher in 2050, which means we will officially be a country of old people. Currently it is 20%. Think about India again. Almost all their population is under 25. Ours is older. Who will win out?
Feminisation
Across the globe females now outperform men at every level of the education system. Yes ladies, you are officially better. 70% of retail customers will be women in next decade, 70% of online banking is by women and 70% of all US & UK personal wealth is owned by over 65s, who are mostly women.
UK Wealth
The baby boomer generation holds the wealth in the UK, In 2004 the UK those born in the 50s held 80% of the UK’s wealth and bought 80% of all top of the range cars,80% of cruises and 50% of skincare products. 41% of baby boomers in the UK described themselves as wealthy. Baby boomers’ equity in their property is worth £543 billion, by the time they all reach retirement age (2020), this will have risen to £1,425.4 billion.
The under 35s (us) own less than a tenth (9%) of the nation’s personal wealth. We’re poorer than our parents and they have all the wealth. In the UK, the over 50s spend £267 billion a year, and that will increase by a further £33 billion to £300 billion in 2008. The people with the money in this country who will dictate the High Street and all consumer buying will be our OAPs. Think next time you spit at one.
Global Warming
Most scientists agree that the Earth is heating up, due primarily to an atmospheric increase in carbon dioxide caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum. The 2 films to watch on this issue are “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore, and Channel 4’s “The Great Global Warming Swindle” which provide both sides of the argument.
National Geographic News checked with Eric Steig who saw “An Inconvenient Truth”. He says the documentary handles the science well.”I was looking for errors,” he said, “But nothing much struck me as overblown or wrong.”
Glaciers are disappearing from the Alps and will be gone by 2050. That’s 50 years earlier than a July 2006 study predicted. The loss would change the supply of drinking and irrigation water. Melting glaciers could cause water shortages for 1 in 6 of the world’s population. Desertification already affects 74% of the land in North America. In Africa, more than 2.4 million acres of land (73% of its drylands) are already affected by desertification. According to a UN study, about 30% of earth’s land including the 70% of dryland - is affected by drought.
There have been around 12,000 global weather related disasters since1980 that have caused over 618,000 fatalities and cost $1.3trillion, including $567BN over the last 10 years alone. Environmental refugees forecast to rise from 30M in2004 to 50M in 2010 and 150M by 2050. Can you imagine 150 million refugees? Unabated climate change could cost the world at least 5% of GDP each year; if more dramatic predictions come to pass, the cost could be more than 20% of GDP. For those who don’t know, that’s absolutely catastrophic.
3.0 - 3.5 billion people water stressed (i.e. will not have enough water) by 2025-2030. Regional tensions over water may be heightened by 2015, especially in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Northern China. India will have potentially used up or polluted all its groundwater by 2020. What are 1 billion people without water going to do, especially when they are the world’s 2nd largest economy?
A 2 degree C temperature increase, the lower end of the range of predicted rise in this century, means a 12% to 20% fall in global food production. By 2050 humans will need at least two planets’ worth of natural resources to live as they do now. If everyone lived as Britons did, three planets would be needed to sustain the world’s population. Demand placed on the natural world had tripled since 1961. Humanity is using the planet’s resources faster than they could renew themselves.
Personal Values
It’s argued we live in a post-modern society, which is sometimes better described as “individualism” and involves us making our choices instead of being guided by organisations and schools of thought. Science and reason have taken over from faith and authority, and we create our own belief systems from mixing pieces of information from different religions, cultures and people. Statistics show that we have lost our faith in our institutions – government, marriage, family, church, work, travel and food.
900M people worldwide are registered on social networking websites as we use technology to organise our personal lives. 40% of people on myspace are aged 35-55, despite the perception it is a website generally for bands and teenagers.
Careers
Companies recruitment criteria are changing rapidly as they look for different things in interview candidates that we did before because all companies are now complaining about how hard it is to find and keep young talent. Employers now look for (in order of importance): intelligence, honesty, hard-working ethic, good communication skills and an ability to solve problems. The top leadership skills (again in order of importance) are good communication skills, visionary/strategic skills, motivational skills, organisational skills and entrepreneurial qualities.
So if you want to get hired, you need to demonstrate your intelligence, that you are honest, how hard you work, that you can communicate well and can solve problems well. If you want to be a leader, you need to communicate well, be good at vision and strategy, be able to motivate people, be very organised and have entrepreneurial flair.
The presentation ended with a great piece of wisdom.
“Better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong”
Clem Sunter 2006
P.S. I have references for each fact quoted here but it’s a little long-winded to quote them all. If you would like the source for any claim made here, drop me an email and i’ll let you know where it’s from and why it’s credible.
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