Update on the State of the Future

¶ … Future

Energy is one of the obvious challenges of the future. The problem with energy, as described in the article, is that the continuously developing technology and the new, more diverse and powerful economies require energy resources to be supported. Increase demand on the global market for products and services imply an increasing use of energy and a continuous need for it. The article shows that the demand for energy will grow with 60% in the interval 2002-2030, which is an enormous figure.

At the same time, while the demand for energy grows at an accelerated pace, the known energy resources diminish. Oil resources are in the last decades, as are the resources of natural gas. Even more so, it looks that, despite this situation, a lot of energy is actually wasted, without it producing any positive effects.

In the opinion of the authors, the solution to this problem is technology. Technology has the capacity to create innovative solutions by which energy can be better used. This would mean, on one hand, saving energy, creating projects that consume less energy resources, while remaining just as efficient.

Another important direction in which technology can also be used is the development of new sources of energy. This has already made its way on the market, including renewable sources of energy, such as the solar, wind or wave energy. The idea is to invest more into these technologies. The obligation of the international governments is to financially and legislatively support the research and development into these fields, while ensuring that the proper framework is in place to encourage businesses investing as well.

Another challenge for the future is environmental sustainability. The authors do a great job in the article of extending the notion of sustainability beyond the simple, strict environmental situation. They discuss the economic sustainability of the world and, in this sense, the gap that exists between developed and underdeveloped countries.

Africa is an obvious example of this and the main cause that has been identified is that the African countries, in their majority, have economies based on the export of raw products and commodities rather than on the development of alternative technologies and secondary industries. The result is that they are susceptible to pricing crisis, when the price of raw materials drops. At the same time, the profitability of an economy based solely on raw products is limited.