[extropy-chat] Global Energy Scenarios for 2020: with a transhumanist high-tech scenario

[Jose Cordeiro]

Dear transhumanist friends,
   
       The Global Energy Scenarios for 2020 are already available in print. The "State of the Future 2006" by The Millennium Project covers the energy scenarios and other fascinating topics, some of them related to human enhancement and transhumanism. The book was the number one best-seller during its launching at the World Future Society Conference in Toronto, Canada.
   
       You can order directly through The Millennium Project or Amazon.Com:
   
  http://www.amazon.com/State-Future-Jerome-Theodore-Gordon/dp/0972205152/sr=8-2/qid=1157898549/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-2322790-3374263?ie=UTF8&s=books
   
       Thank you to those of you who contributed to the input for the report. I coordinated the third energy scenario, based on a high-tech economy, which has a clear transhumanist flavour:-)
   
       Transhumanistically yours,
   
       José Cordeiro (www.cordeiro.org)
       Chair, Venezuela, The Millennium Project (www.StateOfTheFuture.org)
   
  ==========================================================
   
  State of the Future 2006 
 
Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon
American Council for the United Nations University, 2006 
The Millennium Project
 
Summary available at: http://www.acunu.org/millennium/sof2006-exec-summ.pdf 
 
Website: http://www.acunu.org/millennium/sof2006.html 
 
“
.The capabilities of civilization to build a better future are rich but terribly inefficient. Improving efficiency requires seeing the status of the whole and its parts as objectively as possible. For example, the avian flu could mutate and kill 25 million people, higher oil prices could plunge some economies into depressions, increasing natural disasters are causing massive human misery, and millions of people are caught in deadly conflicts around the world. Yet it is a fact that the world is becoming more peaceful, prosperous, and healthy.
 
The first Human Security Report found that the number of armed conflicts declined by more than 40% since the early 1990s, that genocides and politicides fell 80% between 1988 and 2001, that international crises declined by more than 70% between 1981 and 2001, that the dollar value of major international arms transfers fell by 33% between 1990 and 2003, and that the number of refugees dropped by some 45% between 1992 and 2003. The IMF estimates that the world economy grew 4.8% in 2005, while the population grew 1.15%, increasing annual per capita income by 3.65%.
 
The UN Millennium Development Goals continue to help focus international cooperation and increase sensitivity to global long-term perspectives in policymaking. Although criticized by some as too ambitious, these goals are increasingly becoming the benchmarks for global progress and measures for international efficiency. Over half of the world's $62-trillion economy is generated in developing countries. Over a billion people (16% of the world) are connected to the Internet. The digital gap continues to close, helping to democratize the coming knowledge economy with tele-nearly-everything and providing self-organizing mechanisms for emerging collective computer/human intelligence and management systems. A worldwide race to connect everything not yet connected is just beginning, and great wealth will be generated by completing the links among systems by which civilizations function and flourish
..”
 

Table of Contents – Print Section 
Foreword 
Acknowledgments 
Executive Summary - 

1. Global Challenges 

2. State of the Future Index -

3. 2020 Global Energy Scenarios - 
             Scenario 1. Business as Usual­: The Skeptic 
             Scenario 2. Environmental Backlash 
             Scenario 3. High-tech Economy: ­Technology Pushes Off the Limits 
             Scenario 4. Political Turmoil 

4. Emerging Environmental Security Issues- 

5. Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of the State of the Future and the Millennium Project –

Appendix
Millennium Project Participants Demographics 
Acronyms and Abbreviations - 
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