Global development

Warnings of impending global disaster are characteristic of our time. According to many scientists and popular pundits, an overcrowded, poisoned, and exhausted earth lies in wait for our grandchildren or children, or perhaps even for our old age. But these predictions are shrouded in controversy. Technological optimists, pointing to the accomplishments of the past, look for new materials and sources of energy; economic optimists, pointing to the amazing records of past growth and to the theoretical efficiencies of perfect competition, look for the market economy to induce appropriate technological changes and resource substitutions; social and political optimists, pointing to mankind's seemingly limitless adaptability, look for government policies, social reorganization, and modifications of individual behavior to alleviate problems as they arise. At various times and places in the world, however, local situations have approximated on a relatively small scale the conditions warned of by contemporary Cassandras. Certain well known cities of the world have long been regarded as hideously overcrowded. Others have for short periods experienced alarming death rates from polluted air and water. The energy crisis has brought the potential effects of resource exhaustion home to people everywhere, and rapid, seemingly uncontrollable inflation reminds us that the stable development of complex economies can scarcely be taken for granted. Even if — as some argue — crash programs for resource conservation, pollution abatement, and population control do not yet seem warranted, it would at least seem obvious that a better understanding of the global state of mankind is needed and that improved methods for projecting long-run development should receive high priority attention. It is the purpose of the present notes to outline some of the facts and some of the issues of global development and to suggest their relationship to the problems of change and to the methods for their study and control. The firstcomment, trends in global development, reviews a few of the most important worldwide trends, indicating the new dependencies and interrelationships that they imply. The second, the world-modelling controversy, briefly summarizes major issues concerning the formal theoretical, modelling attempts to understand and project the implications of these trends. The third and final comment is concerned with the problem of man's modes of adaptation especially as described by strategic planning based on time discounting and how they relate to the problem of global development and the long-run well-being of people now and of generations unborn.