England-2011-ben

Ben's Journal

First question:

In your view what are the three most important challenges facing society in the near term (say 50 years)? Why are each of these so important? What does science have to offer for each? What does technology have to offer for each? Your entry should clearly address which are science based and which are technology based. You can describe both science and technology approaches for each of the problems you identify.

• First response.

The three biggest challenges facing society in the next fifty years are climatic change, failed states, and peak oil.

Climate change is a blanket term that covers a wide range of problems from warming and cooling of certain areas to sea level rise. It could cause Indiana to have ocean front property and New York to become the new Venice. This lessens the amount of arable land while simultaneously pushing people into a smaller land area. This will lead to real food shortages and strife as people are pushed together. Sciences offering to this problem are somewhat abstract. They could lead to ways of creating more efficient GMO's (although this hardly seems like a solution), discovering new methods for desalinating water. Technology stands to offer a good deal practical things to the solution. Technology could help help us build better sea walls so our cities can exist what will become below sea level. It could also help us develop machines to desalinate water or land. basically technology creates better systems with our existing science and incorporate new science into both existing and new machines.

Failing states is a huge problem because it creates a breeding ground for terrorist and human rights abuse among other things. Perhaps science can lead through breakthroughs that can help develop cheap infrastructure such as low cost high speed rail systems, but i dont think this is really a problem of science or technology. Likewise, technology could put these places in an area of higher economic stability by developing their resources, but without money this is unlikely to happen. This problem is largely economic and political.

Peak oil may be the biggest problem and one very closely linked to both failing states and climate change. Without oil, a great deal of our infrastructure, whether it be manufacturing or transportation shuts down. Science could offer a lot in terms of new fuels or new higher efficiency methods of extracting heat and in turn energy. Technology will allow us to adopt these new methods and adapt our current infrastructure to their use.

Second question.

• Second response.