Big Era Nine Paradoxes of Global Acceleration 1945 - Present
Big Era Nine is different from earlier eras because we do not yet know where it is leading. Nevertheless, we can distinguish some key world historical processes that have been especially important in shaping the current era. Their interactions, sometimes unforeseen, have given rise to major new challenges to humanity. Others as yet unknown lie in the future. Here we can at least suggest some key trends to watch:
- Human population has reached 6.4 billion, shattering all previous records and posing major challenges for the future. Already more than 50 percent of humans live in cities, a trend that seems certain to increase. The basic demographic patterns raise major questions about how to feed, clothe, house, and provide meaningful lives for so many people. They also pose significant environmental questions.
- The environmental effects of human actions have accumulated drastically during this era. Already manifest in previous Big Eras, environmental damage since 1950 has become progressively more severe and widespread. In some areas, it has become potentially irreversible. It includes massive deforestation, land degradation, atmospheric pollution, the extinction of species, the fouling of the world’s oceans and rivers, and global warming. For the first time, anthropogenic, that is, human generated, environmental change threatens the future of our species, if not the entire planet.
- The ability of humans to extract more energy and resources from a given area of the earth has decisively increased during Big Era Nine. A key feature of this era has been the accelerating use of petroleum and natural gas, the continuation of a trend that began with the fossil fuel revolution in the eighteenth century (Big Era Seven). Petroleum, natural gas, coal, and, to a much lesser extent, atomic power have vastly increased the amount of energy for human use, even as some parts of the world continue to enjoy disproportionate access to it.
- Politically, the period witnessed the Cold War (1947-1989) and its aftermath, the rise of the United States to global dominance, and the end of European colonial empires in Asia and Africa. The world has been affected by great political turbulence and wars in which the risk of nuclear confrontation has been present. The period has also seen the founding of the United Nations and numerous international political and economic structures, for example, the World Bank.
- Since 1950, the global economy has grown faster than ever before in history. Indeed, by some measures, more economic growth has occurred in this era than in all previous eras of human history combined. Yet the ability of economic globalization to deliver better lives for all has been deeply compromised by its contradictions, especially boom and bust cycles and wider social inequality. Is it possible to develop a more just as well as a more productive and profitable global economy? The record so far is not encouraging.
- New technologies of transportation and communication have made it possible not only to link all parts of the world in real time but also to connect individuals more intimately and inexpensively via mobile phones, chat rooms, texting, and group web sites. Thanks to the new electronic technologies of this era, governments and corporations have acquired unprecedented capacities to intervene in the lives of citizens, the better to observe, document, control, and organize multiple aspects of life. For better or worse, humans have been forced into closer interdependence than ever before.
- The continued escalation in the costs of military technology and its increasing development have made warfare vastly expensive for all states. Simultaneously, the costs of basic administrative, educational, and welfare services to unprecedented numbers of people have driven many states in the less developed world to the brink of collapse. In the gap between the capacity of states to organize and the growing global instability have come all sorts of private mercenaries, terror groups, and criminal syndicates. The race between order and disorder can be observed widely around the world.