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.