The Future

When the 21^st century began, people looked forward to a new millennium (the next 1,000 years). No one could say what kind of new world would take shape. Would say what kind of new world would take shape. Would computers take over more jobs from people? Scientists have made amazing advances in understanding how the human body works by identifying genes. Could science create new plants or even animals?

The world is rich enough to support even today’s population of over billion. But never before in human history has it seemed so small and under such pressure. Humans may visit Mars in the next 100 years, but there is no nearby planet like Earth to move to. Homo sapiens has to live in, and conserve, the world our prehistoric ancestors first explored. This must also happen under increasing pressure from an expanding population – it is predicted to reach 7 billion by 2012.

Many people believe that resources are being used at an unsustainable rate and that, before too long, we will not be able to create enough energy to provide food, clothing, heating and shelter for everyone. Others point to the impact that energy production today is having on the planet. They feel that population from the burning of fossils fuels is pushing the world’s temperatures up, causing global warming, and this will have disastrous consequences on the natural world as well as the towns and cities we live in.

There is also a great inequality as to how energy production and wealth are disturbed around the planet. A small minority of people have the vast majority of the wealth and use the most energy, while huge numbers of people live in poverty.

The War Against Terror

The events of 11 September, 2001 changed the political landscape. Almost immediately, the US started a war against terrorism, determined to stop terrorists from using certain countries as bases to launch attacks. This led to invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Afghanistan, under the Taliban regime, was seen as the hiding place of Osama bin Landen, head of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization which carried out the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC. American forces, with support from other nations, attacked Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban regime.

The next target was Iraq, which the US president, George W. Bush, accused of helping terrorists and of having weapons of mass destruction, including biological and chemical weapons. Many people disagreed with this idea, including the United Nations. The United Nations relies on debate and agreement before taking action against a nation. It sent weapons inspectors into Iraq to seek out any weapons of mass destruction. UN members disagreed about whether war against Iraq, or any ‘rogue state’, was justified.

Nevertheless, the US, along with a small coalition of other countries, invaded Iraq in March 2003, and overthrew its leader, Saddam Hussein, less than a month later.

However, terrorist attacks did not finish. Suicide bombings continued in Iraq and Afghanistan long after the fall of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and there were attacks on European capital cities. On 11 March, 2004, several bombs exploded on commuter trains in Madrid at rush hour, killing 192 people and wounding many others. Just over a year later, on 7^th July, 2005, four suicide bombers attacked London at rush hour on busy tube trains and a double-decker bus. Fifty-six people were killed in these attacks.

One World

The 20^th century brought startling changes in the speed at which information moved around the world. Countries came together in new groups, some with their own parliaments and laws, like the European Union. Multinational corporations, doing business in many countries, became richer than all but a few countries.

These changes have made people more aware of global events. They feel they are citizens not just of a country, but of a planet – and a small planet, with limited resources. Local ways of life are rapidly vanishing, replaced by a ‘mono-culture’. In many countries, people wear Western-style clothes instead of traditional dress, eat the same fast foods, and watch the same TV shows, beamed to them by satellite or down cables.

The world’s wealth is not distributed equally. Many people go hungry and have no clean water. Rich countries use too big a share of Earth’s resources to support their high living standards.

During the 1970s, pressure groups such as Greenpeace began to campaign on environmental issues. There is much that can be done to safeguard resources for future generations, such as stopping the dumping of nuclear waste, protecting endangered wildlife, saving what remains of tropical rainforests, recycling more, and turning to alternative energy sources (such as wind, wave and solar power) before we burn up all Earth’s fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas).

Governments meet at international conferences to discuss environmental problems and set targets, but in the end the answers lie with us all.

The Cold War Ends

The Cold War, a time of suspicion, spies and super-missiles, began to look less dangerous in the 1970s. The United States and the Soviet Union found they could agree on some things, such as cutting their arms bills, and signed agreements. The pressure on the Soviet leader was intense; his communist empire was cracking apart.

In 1972, the US and USSR signed the first SALT (missile disarmament) agreement. By 1980, the Russians had become involved in a long and costly war in Afghanistan, and their economy was in a bad way. In 1985, a new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, set about introducing political and economic reforms. He also sought friendship with the West. The US president was Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 on an anti-Communist stand. He was ready to spend billions of dollars on a defensive missile shield in space. But in 1987, Reagan and his British ally, Margaret Thatcher, signed an important agreement with the USSR to ban medium-range nuclear missiles.

Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union led to demands for free elections in Eastern Europe. By the end of 1989, Communism had collapsed in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. In 1990, East and West Germany were reunited and free elections were held in Bulgaria. In August 1991, an attempted coup in the Soviet Union led to the downfall of Gorbachev’s government. Boris Yeltsin took over as Russian president until 1999, when he was succeeded by Vladimir Putin. The soviet Union broke up as more former Soviet states became independent from Russia. In some cases, such as Chechnya, claims for independence were violently opposed by the Russian government who sent in the army to put down any rebellion. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War came to an end. There was just one superpower left in the world, the United States of America.

Asian Industry

After World War II, Asia made a spectacular economic recovery. Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan all became ‘tiger economies’, with rising living standards and modern factories. These produce goods that are sold all over the world.

Japan, whose factories had been bombed during World War II by the Allies, was aided by the US throughout the 1940s and 1950s. new factories, with the latest machinery, began turning out cars, radios, office equipment and gadgets for the home. In the 1980s, the factories began using automated robots to make electronic and other goods, including televisions and computers, and Japan became the world’s biggest maker of cars and trucks.

Japan was reluctant to play a big part in world affairs, other than in trade. It had given up its large military forces at the end of World War II, and no Japanese troops took part in any of the post-war conflicts, such as the Korean and Vietnam wars.

South Korea emerged from its war with its Communist neighbor, North Korea, to undergo an economic transformation similar to Japan’s. it too had a well-trained and organized work force, and invested money in new machinery and computers. North Korea, under Communist rule, lagged far behind the South in terms of wealth.

Singapore and Hong Kong both small, grew rich on trade and banking. Hong Kong was under British rule until 1997, when it was returned to China by agreement. It retained its special status as a trading area for China, which in the 1990s relaxed its restrictions on private businesses. Vietnam has also turned to a ‘free market’ economy. India, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines have prospered from industries employing many people who are paid low wages to make shoes and clothes, or to assemble electronic equipment for export. India, still mainly an agricultural country, has expanded its industrial production by over six times since 1950. The biggest employers are the clothing and textile industries.