State of the Future

Found this article today and wanted to dig to get some more information on it.

"A major report issued by the United Nations Millenium Project has just been released. It finds that half the world appears vulnerable to social instability and violence due to increasing and potentially prolonged unemployment from the recession as well as several longer-term issues: decreasing water, food, and energy supplies per person; the cumulative effects of climate change, and increasing migrations due to political, environmental, and economic conditions. It also finds some good in the global financial crisis, which may be helping humanity to move from its often selfish, self-centered adolescence to a more globally responsible adulthood."

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Here is a link to the 2009 State of the Future report itself:
http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/sof2009.html

Interesting free PDF in there as well. At least they are thorough... 850+ pages.
http://www.millennium-project.org/SOF-2009/Chapter%209_1-ES-scanning.pdf

A quick snippet off page 10 is rather disturbing:

"The magnitude of the economic turmoil that focused world’s attention on financial deficits, coupled with increased environmental disasters, helped improve the understanding of potential long-term impacts of the increasing ecological deficit. Comparably, however, the environmental deficit is in most cases irreparable.

Earth Overshoot Day was September 23 in 2008—the day when humanity has used what nature can regenerate annually—and it is moving earlier each year, according to Global Footprint Network. The Living Planet Report 2008, which documents the extent of human pressure on the planet, reveals that 75% of the human population lives in countries that are “ecological debtors,” demanding more biocapacity than they have within their borders."

I've never heard of Earth Overshoot Day, it sure is heartbreaking seeing it quantified in that manner.