Is the world facing any crisis?
Yes, you will not be surprised to learn from
me something that you already know, that the
world is facing various crises, of which I
would pick out four as being the most serious
crises.
The crisis with the most explosive potential
for damage is of course, nuclear weapons.
The risk of the U.S. and Russia getting into
a nuclear war has now decreased.
But the risk of India and Pakistan has increased.
The risks of North Korea and the United States
has increased.
And then the risk that terrorists either will
steal a nuclear weapon, as they tried to do
at the time of the World Trade attack, or
that they will take a perfectly normal dynamite
bomb, which they've been very good at blowing
off in the central of Paris and Lisbon and
other places, and just add to the dynamite
bomb a radioactive isotope like cesium 137,
which you can get from any hospital medical
facility.
You put your isotope in your dynamite bomb
and blow off your dynamite bomb in the center
of Washington, D.C.
And then you sterilize for the next 132 years
that area of Washington, which become radioactive.
Big consequences, so risk for the world is
nuclear risk.
Another risk of the world is obviously climate
change, which has the potential for cooking
all of us, cooking and drying out and raising
sea level for all of us.
The third risk for the world is running out
of resources.
The world is operating unsustainably now.
At the rate we are going, we will run out
of essential resources, fisheries, forestry,
water, topsoil within about the next 30 years
or so.
Either we solve it in the next 30 years or
we'll never get to solve it.
And then there's finally the world risk of
inequality.
There's inequality not only between Downtown
LA and Beverly Hills, there's inequality between
countries of the world.
But poorer countries nowadays have-- in this
globalized world-- have ways of visiting their
dissatisfaction on rich countries by supporting
terrorists or by forming unstoppable waves
of immigration or unintentionally by poor
public health systems, underfunded public
health systems, which means that they can't
cure their own diseases of malaria and dengue.
But nowadays, in these days of international
travel, American tourists go into other countries
and visitors from other countries come to
the United States, meaning that malaria and
chikungunya fever and dengue are showing up
in developed countries.
So those are what I see as the four biggest
problems facing the world.
I'm cautiously optimistic.
By cautiously optimistic I mean that we have
problems and we're capable of solving the
problems because the problems that we face
are problems that we humans are causing, such
as climate change.
They're not an asteroid racing towards us
and there's nothing we can do about it.
And how optimistic am I?
It depends upon the choices that we make.
I can't predict what choices we'll make.
But I would say that I see the chances as
at least 51% that my sons will end up in a
happy world 30 years from now.
And the chances are no worse than 49% that
they'll end up in a miserable world not worth
living it.
But it depends upon our choices.
And I cannot predict our choices.
If we make the right choices, we are guaranteed
to end up in a happy world.
