[Paleopsych] Foreign Policy: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

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Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3158&print=1
[et seq., through 3188. All articles appended.]
September/October 2005

     * The Sanctity of Life
       By Peter Singer

     * Political Parties Subscription Only Archived Content
       By Fernando Henrique Cardoso

     * The Euro
       By Christopher Hitchens

     * Japanese Passivity Free Registration Required
       By Shintaro Ishihara

     * Monogamy Free Registration Required
       By Jacques Attali

     * Religious Hierarchy Subscription Only Archived Content
       By Harvey Cox

     * The Chinese Communist Party Free Registration Required
       By Minxin Pei

     * Auto Emissions Subscription Only Archived Content
       By John Browne

     * The Public Domain
       By Lawrence Lessig

     * Doctors’ Offices Subscription Only Archived Content
       By Craig Mundie

     * The King of England Subscription Only Archived Content
       By Felipe Fernández-Armesto

     * The War on Drugs
       By Peter Schwartz

     * Laissez-Faire Procreation Subscription Only Archived Content
       By Lee Kuan Yew

     * Polio Subscription Only Archived Content
       By Julie L. Gerberding

     * Sovereignty Subscription Only Archived Content
       By Richard N. Haass

     * Anonymity Free Registration Required
       By Esther Dyson

    Albert Einstein claimed he never thought of the future. It comes soon
    enough, he said. FOREIGN POLICY decided to not grant 16 leading
    thinkers that luxury. Instead, to mark our 35th anniversary, we asked
    them to speculate on the ideas, values, and institutions the world
    takes for granted that may disappear in the next 35 years. Their
    answers range from fields as diverse as morals and religion to
    geopolitics and technology. We may be happy to see some of these
    endangered species make an exit, but others will be mourned. All of
    them will leave a mark.

The Sanctity of Life
By Peter Singer

    During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of
    human life will collapse under pressure from scientific,
    technological, and demographic developments. By 2040, it may be that
    only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will
    defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is
    sacrosanct.

    In retrospect, 2005 may be seen as the year in which that position
    became untenable. American conservatives have for several years been
    in the awkward position of defending a federal funding ban on creating
    new embryos for research that prevents U.S. scientists from leading an
    area of biomedical research that could revolutionize the treatment of
    many common diseases. When they are honest, conservatives acknowledge
    that giving up some medical advances is simply the price to be paid
    for doing the right thing.

    This year, however, that view became much more uncomfortable. South
    Korean researchers showed that human stem cells can be cloned by
    replacing the nucleus of an unfertilized human egg with the nucleus of
    an ordinary cell. The South Korean breakthrough poses a stark
    challenge to the conservative position. The possibility of cloning
    from the nucleus of an ordinary cell undermines the idea that embryos
    are precious because they have the potential to become human beings.
    Once it becomes clear that every human cell contains the genetic
    information to create a new human being, the old arguments for
    preserving unique human embryos fade away.

    The year 2005 is also significant, at least in the United States, for
    ratcheting up the debate about the care of patients in a persistent
    vegetative state. The long legal battle over the removal of Terri
    Schiavos feeding tube led President George W. Bush and the U.S.
    Congress to intervene, both seeking to keep her alive. Yet the
    American public surprised many pundits by refusing to support this
    intervention, and the case produced a surge in the number of people
    declaring they did not wish to be kept alive in a situation such as
    Schiavos.

    Technology will drive this debate. As the sophistication of techniques
    for producing images of soft tissue increases, we will be able to
    determine with a high degree of certainty that some living, breathing
    human beings have suffered such severe brain damage that they will
    never regain consciousness. In these cases, with the hope of recovery
    gone, families and loved ones will usually understand that even if the
    human organism is still alive, the person they loved has ceased to
    exist. Hence, a decision to remove the feeding tube will be less
    controversial, for it will be a decision to end the life of a human
    body, but not of a person.

    As we approach 2040, the Netherlands and Belgium will have had decades
    of experience with legalized euthanasia, and other jurisdictions will
    also have permitted either voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted
    suicide for varying lengths of time. This experience will puncture
    exaggerated fears that the legalization of these practices would be a
    first step toward a new holocaust. By then, an increasing proportion
    of the population in developed countries will be more than 75 years
    old and thinking about how their lives will end. The political
    pressure for allowing terminally or chronically ill patients to choose
    when to die will be irresistible.

    When the traditional ethic of the sanctity of human life is proven
    indefensible at both the beginning and end of life, a new ethic will
    replace it. It will recognize that the concept of a person is distinct
    from that of a member of the species Homo sapiens, and that it is
    personhood, not species membership, that is most significant in
    determining when it is wrong to end a life. We will understand that
    even if the life of a human organism begins at conception, the life of
    a personthat is, at a minimum, a being with some level of
    self-awarenessdoes not begin so early. And we will respect the right
    of autonomous, competent people to choose when to live and when to
    die.
    Peter Singer is professor at Princeton University and the University
    of Melbourne. His books include Practical Ethics (New York: Cambridge
    University Press, 1979) and Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of
    Our Traditional Ethics (New York: St. Martins Press, 1995).

Political Parties
By Fernando Henrique Cardoso

    We take it for granted that political parties are vital to modern
    political life. They have shaped representative democracies since the
    late 19th century. Yet, their prospects are not bright in todays large
    democracies. In fact, these powerful political machines may soon
    disappear.

    The ground is already shifting underneath their feet. Political
    parties have based their platforms on ideological and class divides
    that are becoming less important, especially in more advanced
    societies. Although class consciousness still matters, ethnic,
    religious, and sexual identities now trump class, and these
    affiliations cut across traditional political party lines. Today, the
    labels left and right have less and less meaning. Citizens have
    developed multiple interests, diverse senses of belonging, and
    overlapping identities. Some political parties have managed to adapt.
    Think of the British Labour Party, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, or
    Brazils Workers Party, whose economic policy has very little to do
    with its trade union origins.

    Others wont be so lucky. Political dislocation exists alongside a
    growing fatigue with traditional forms of political representation.
    People no longer trust the political establishment. They want a
    greater say in public matters and usually prefer to voice their
    interests directly or through interest groups and nongovernmental
    organizations. The debate on genetically modified food in Europe, for
    example, can hardly be understood without reference to organizations
    allegedly representing consumer interests, such as Greenpeace. And
    thanks to modern communication, citizens groups can bypass political
    parties in shaping public policy. Political parties no longer have a
    lock on legitimacy.

    Voting, of course, remains essential. But voting doesnt require
    political parties, either. Indeed, the more important the issue, the
    more likely governments in places as different as Switzerland,
    Bolivia, and California will seek legitimacy directly in referenda
    rather than through parliaments or legislatures, the traditional
    stomping grounds of parties. The rejection of the European
    constitution in France and the Netherlands demonstrates that major
    political partiesall of which supported the constitutionoften have
    little leverage once an issue is posed to the people.

    In this environment, political parties are at a critical junction:
    They must transform themselves or become irrelevant. To survive, they
    must design flexible agendas not dependent on traditional class and
    ideological divides. Somehow, theyll have to recapture the public
    imagination. And theyll have to accept that others deserve a seat at
    the political table. Otherwise, the party may be over.
    Fernando Henrique Cardoso was president of Brazil from 1995 to 2003.

The Euro
By Christopher Hitchens

    "So, said Jörg Haider with a slightly unpleasant smile, you like the
    new Esperanto money? I was interviewing the leader of Austrias Freedom
    Party in early 2003, at a time when he was also applauding Saddam
    Hussein and supporting the suicide bombers in Israel and Palestine.
    His sarcastic comment about the newly introduced euro notes made me
    want to believe in the new currency even more. On a long reporting
    trip to Europe, I had been rather affected to find myself using the
    same money in Paris one evening as I had used to pay a Berlin taxi
    driver in the morning. I remembered how the Franco-German coal and
    steel agreement that was the nucleus of the European project was
    designed to make war within continental Europe materially impossible.
    On New Years Day 2002, it suddenly became possible to employ the same
    currency in Finland as in Greece (which surrendered the worlds oldest
    surviving monetary denomination in the form of the drachma). Why
    should one listen to any sneering about that, especially from a man
    not fully reconciled to the outcome of the Second World War?

    My internationalist prejudice is not something for which I feel like
    apologizing, even now. I remember how I twisted with embarrassment
    when Norman Lamont, British Prime Minister John Majors chancellor of
    the exchequer, returned from Brussels with the grand news that he had
    won the right to keep the visage of Her Majesty the Queen on any
    British version of the euro bill. If the Germans could make the
    remarkable sacrifice of the deutsche mark, their greatest postwar
    achievement, then why quibble over the insignia of the House of
    Windsor? I looked forward to showing my children the old British
    currency, just as I had kept a sentimental box of the ancient British
    coinage that had been making holes in our pockets before
    decimalization.

    And now I cant quite believe that my children, or their children, will
    be using the Esperanto money after all. As suddenly as it began, the
    whole idea of a common currency seems to have receded. The likelihood
    of new countries adopting the euro has become remote ever since the
    French and the Dutch repudiated the proposed European constitution
    earlier this year. But more than that, there is a pronounced nostalgia
    for the old money in Germany and in other nations that have already
    adopted the euro. If a referendum is involved, I cannot see the
    British electorate voting to abandon the pound, with or without the
    queens head, in any circumstances. The Scandinavian periphery now
    seems less, rather than more, persuadable. As for the new and aspiring
    members, such as Poland and Turkey, one winces to think of the
    disillusionment that will set in now that so many brave promises will
    be postponed.

    This economic setback is determined in part by political and
    bureaucratic failures large and small. Europes passport, to take a
    tiny example, could have been worth flourishing at a frontier post.
    But a series of dull compromises reduced it to a tawdry paperback,
    bound in some off-color maroon: too obviously a document designed by a
    committee. Then I should like to know at what dire meeting it was
    decided that the first seven words of the preamble to the European
    Constitution would read: His Majesty The King of the Belgians Until
    Albania or Belarus joins, which seems a long way off, Belgium and its
    monarch come first in the European alphabet. But this is not how
    things were done in Philadelphia, and the emphasis is not at all
    designed to produce a more perfect union.

    I take absolutely no pleasure in saying this. I did not at all care
    for the alliance of parties, from xenophobic to post-Stalinist, that
    combined to defeat the constitution and that now yearn for the euro to
    be undone. But I cant rid myself of the memory of that smirk on
    Haiders face. If the euro is going to be only one currency among many,
    then it will have lost its essential point. Esperanto aimed to replace
    the Babel of competing languages with one universal tongue, and it
    succeeded only in adding an extra tongue that was a mere hybrid. A
    euro that is legal tender only in some parts of Europe will not only
    emphasize the continents failure to eliminate differences: It will
    itself become one of those differences.
    Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a visiting
    professor of liberal studies at the New School University. His most
    recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (New York:
    HarperCollins, 2005).

Japanese Passivity
By Shintaro Ishihara

    In todays accelerating world, we are exposed to changes that might
    have taken two or three hundred years to unfold during the Middle
    Ages. Time and space have contracted, and nothing now happens in
    isolation. Japan is having difficulty adjusting to this new world. It
    clings to a hopelessly idealistic and historically illegitimate
    constitution handed down by U.S. occupation forces nearly 60 years ago
    to block Japans reemergence as a military power. Japan now entrusts
    its survival to the United States, has forsaken independent thinking,
    and has become spineless.

    Some people have contended that Japan can prosper as a nation of
    peaceful merchants. That might have been possible as long as the
    United States was a reliable guardian. Today, with the limited
    capability of the United States as a superpower apparent, this
    dependence is extremely risky for Japan. It is ironic that the
    Japanese economyespecially in the financial sectoris susceptible to
    plunder by the very Americans who were originally supposed to be our
    patrons.

    The Japanese used to have the spirit and backbone of the samurai, the
    same warriors who were applauded by Walt Whitman when they visited the
    United States in the 1860s. When will we recover our national virtue,
    described so well by Ruth Benedict in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword?

    Much will depend on how East Asia evolves, especially militarily, in
    the next decade. One critical factor will be where Chinawith its
    growing military and stubborn Communist Partycasts its gaze and
    whether its ambitions will be pursued with the same kind of hegemonic
    intentions employed in Tibet. It will also depend on whether China,
    which has repeatedly asserted claims on Japanese territory, persists
    in its provocations. I wonder how the United States will interpret its
    security treaty with Japan if our nation decides to confront China,
    perhaps even militarily, in the dispute over the Senkaku Islands, a
    part of Okinawa with potentially valuable seabed resources. There are
    many other uncertainties. The overheated Chinese economy is on the
    verge of collapse. What form will the frustration of the Chinese
    people take and how will it erupt? Economic collapse in China may
    trigger a Soviet-style disintegration that will lead to the
    dissolution of the Communist regime.

    Nor is China the only concern. North Korea, with a political regime
    that can only be described as insane, is busily developing a nuclear
    capability and brandishing it as a bargaining chip. Let us not forget
    that this is a terrorist nation that has abducted more than 100
    Japanese citizens and likely murdered most of them. Pyongyang has
    warned that it would hit Japan with missiles if Tokyo decides to
    impose economic sanctions, Japans sole form of leverage. Leaving aside
    uncertainty about the accuracy of North Korean missiles, the question
    of how Japan and the United States would respond remains critical.

    These regional tensions and uncertainties may finally stimulate Japan
    to emerge from its futile passivity and become a strong nation willing
    to accept sacrifices. When Japan again exhibits the backbone that
    helped it become the first non-white nation to modernize successfully,
    the balance of power in this region will change dramatically. Japan,
    not China, is the regions sleeping lion.

    Shintaro Ishihara is governor of Tokyo.

Monogamy
By Jacques Attali

    Two hundred years ago, few people foresaw legalized divorce or open
    homosexualitylet alone gay marriage. Abstract art and jazz were
    unimaginable. Aesthetics, morals, and family relationships, it seems,
    are the bane of the futurologist. We constantly speculate about the
    future balance of power, looming conflicts, and emerging technologies.
    Yet somehow, we imagine that morals and aesthetics are immutable. So
    we forget to ask how conceptions of good and evil, acceptable and
    unacceptable, beauty and ugliness will change. And they will.

    Monogamy, which is really no more than a useful social convention,
    will not survive. It has rarely been honored in practice; soon, it
    will vanish even as an ideal. I do not believe that society will
    return to polygamy. Instead, we will move toward a radically new
    conception of sentimental and love relationships. Nothing forbids a
    person from being in love with a few people at the same time. Society
    rejects this possibility today primarily for economic reasonsto
    maintain an orderly transmission of propertyand because monogamy
    protects women against male excesses.

    But these rationales are dissolving in the face of powerful new
    trends. The insatiable demand for transparency, fueled by democracy
    and the free market, is placing the private lives of public men and
    women under greater scrutiny. The reality of multiple lives and
    partners will become more apparent, and societys hypocrisy will be
    revealed. The continued rise of individual freedom will permanently
    change sexual mores, as it has most other realms. Likewise, jumps in
    life expectancy will make it nearly impossible to spend ones entire
    life with one person and to love only that one person. Meanwhile,
    technological advances will further weaken the links between
    sexuality, love, and reproduction, which are very different concepts.
    Widely available birth control has already stripped away an important
    obstacle to having multiple partners.

    Just as most societies now accept successive love relationships, soon
    we will acknowledge the legality and acceptability of simultaneous
    love. For men and women, it will be possible to have partnerships with
    various people, who will, in turn, have various partners themselves.
    At long last, we will recognize that it is human to love different
    people at the same time.

    The demise of monogamy will not come without a struggle. All the
    churches will seek to forbid it, especially for women. For a while,
    they will hold the line. But individual freedom, once again, will
    triumph. The revolution will begin in Europe, America will follow, and
    the rest of the world will eventually come around. The implications
    will be enormous. Relationships with children will be radically
    different, financial arrangements will be disrupted, and how and where
    we live will change. To be sure, it will take decades for the change
    to be complete and yet, if we look around, it is already here. Beneath
    our hypocrisiesin movies, novels, and musicthe shape of our future is
    visible.

    Jacques Attali is a writer, president of PlaNet Finance, an
    international nonprofit organization, and a contributing editor to
    FOREIGN POLICY.

Religious Hierarchy
By Harvey Cox

    It is easy to forget that, for centuries, most people were unaware
    that they had any choice in religious matters. They were surrounded by
    people like themselves, and only a few ever met believers from other
    traditions. No more. A mosque is being built around the corner and,
    look, the Dalai Lama is on TV again. Thousands of religious and
    spiritual chat rooms and blogs have popped up. This is the age not
    only of the cafeteria Catholic, but also of the cafeteria Buddhist,
    Baptist, and Mormon. More and more people view the worlds religious
    traditions as a buffet from which they can pick and choose.

    In this environment, religious hierarchy is crumbling fast. The
    notions of consumer choice and local control have stormed the
    religious realm, and decentralization of faith is now the order of the
    day. Religious leaders who once could command, instruct, and expel now
    must cajole, persuade, and compete.

    Protestant Christians, of course, have always been suspicious of
    hierarchy as a matter of principle. In practice, however, they have
    often let church bureaucrats run their affairs. Today, local Methodist
    or Lutheran congregations often ignore the dicta of church leaders,
    and denominational brand loyalty is a thing of the past. The 77
    million-member Anglican Communion recently faced a schism over the
    ordination of a gay bishop. In response, the Archbishop of Canterbury
    could only try to encourage a dialogue between the feuding parties; a
    resolution of the crisis from on high was out of the question.

    Christians are not the only ones straining against the religious
    hierarchies of old. In the early 1990s, the entire organized lay wing
    of Nicheren, the largest Buddhist organization in Japan, effectively
    seceded, leaving behind a rump priesthood without parishioners.
    Although a casual observer might assume that hierarchy is alive and
    well in Islam, the opposite is closer to the truth. Muslims have never
    developed a clear hierarchy, and they have battled over questions of
    succession and doctrine ever since the death of the prophet. Even the
    limited hierarchy that did exist has broken down. The Talibans leader,
    Mullah Muhammad Omar, became Afghanistans spiritual leaderand even
    donned the cloak of the prophetwithout the consent of other Islamic
    religious figures. Osama bin Laden presumes to issue religious rulings
    without formal training. Indeed, the present crisis in the Islamic
    world may stem from too many loud and conflicting voices, all claiming
    religious authority.

    Even the Catholic Churchthe lodestar of religious hierarchyis
    vulnerable to decentralization. Pope Benedict XVI knows that the
    churchs traditional flowchart is in trouble, and he intends to salvage
    it. He certainly has a long track record, including his campaign
    against the Latin American liberation theologians who tried to enlist
    the resources of the church for radical social change. He was less
    concerned with their alleged Marxist leanings than with the thousands
    of lively Catholic base communities they were organizing all over the
    continent, groups that did not fit into the churchs chain of command.
    Now, American Catholics are also demanding more say, staging vigils in
    churches they refuse to allow to be closed, withholding contributions,
    and taking dioceses to court. Voices are bubbling up from the bottom
    and seeping in from the edges, and hierarchy is showing signs of
    decay.

    The guardians of religious hierarchy understand the danger that lurks
    inside this revolution. Religions without unassailable leaders and
    with hungry competitors may find themselves marketing as much as
    ministering. Meeting buyer preferences may be essential in business,
    but it can eviscerate the integrity of the religious product. Imagine
    what the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount might have been
    if Moses or Christ had poll-tested them. And, yet, just such carefully
    tailored messages may be the key to the spectacular success of the
    so-called megachurches, which rarely make a move without consulting
    market research.

    Grappling with choice contributes to a religious maturity unavailable
    to someone who simply accepts what is passed down from above, and for
    that reason it could actually strengthen the capacity of the religious
    to cope with the challenge of secularism. Of course, the lack of
    recognized authority could also lead to fragmentation. But even that
    has an upside. Pentecostalism, for example, has no hierarchy, but its
    divisions and rivalries have generated an entrepreneurial energy that
    has made it the fastest growing Christian movement in the world. They
    have proven that sometimes religion without hierarchy can endure, and
    even thrive.

    Harvey Cox is professor at Harvard Divinity School and author of Fire
    from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of
    Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1995).

The Chinese Communist Party
By Minxin Pei

    It may appear the Chinese Communist Party has never had it so good.
    Inside China, the party faces no serious challenges to its authority.
    Internationally, talk of China collapsing is out, and China rising is
    in. We are regularly told that globetrotting Chinese diplomats are
    running circles around their American and European counterparts,
    cutting deals and burnishing Beijings image around the world. But
    inexorable forces are arrayed against the long-term survival of the
    Communist Party in China, and its chances of staying in power for
    another 35 years are slim.

    Ultimately, the party may fall victim to its own economic miracle. The
    partys unwillingness to establish the rule of law and refrain from
    economic meddling may yet slow the remarkable growth of the last
    decade. But for the sake of argument, lets assume China can continue
    to grow. Another 35 years of solid economic growth (even at a much
    slower 5 percent a year) would mean an annual per capita income of
    about $7,000. Professionals, private property owners, and hard-working
    capitalists will number in the hundreds of millions. If history is any
    guide, it will be next to impossible for an authoritarian regime to
    retain power in such a modern society, let alone one as large and
    diverse as Chinas.

    If economic success does not end one-party rule in China, corruption
    probably will. Governments free from meaningful restraints on their
    power invariably grow corrupt and rapacious. That is true in China
    today. Party discipline has broken down. Selling government
    appointments for personal profit has become widespread. The cumulative
    effects of pervasive official corruption can transform a developing
    autocracy into a predatory regime. The experience of General Suhartos
    Indonesia suggests that predatory autocracies have trouble turning
    high rates of economic growth into political stability. There, even 30
    years of impressive growth wasnt enough to save the regime.

    Autocracies that are expanding economically contain the seeds of their
    own destruction, mainly because they lack the institutional capacity
    and legitimacy to weather economic shocks. In this postideological
    era, the partys sole justification for its political monopoly is its
    capacity to improve the lives of the Chinese people. The party still
    pays lip service to an amalgam of Marxism-Leninism and Chinese
    nationalism, but with little credibility. A ruling party without core
    values lacks mass appeal and the capacity to generate it. Even its own
    elites are growing increasingly disillusioned, cynical, and fearful
    about the partys future. It is telling that many senior officials,
    including one provincial governor, regularly consult fortune tellers.

    A party capable of reinvention and regeneration might be able to skirt
    these looming dangers. But the Chinese Communist Party is growing
    arthritic. By 2040, it will have been in existence for 119 years and
    in power for 91. Today, the world has no septuagenarian one-party
    regimesand for good reason.

    Of course, in democratic societies, political parties undergo major
    transformations all the time. But one-party regimes have no intrinsic
    incentive to reengineer themselves and little capacity to correct
    course. Accumulated strains and ailments are left untreated until they
    precipitate larger crises. The Chinese Communist Party experienced
    this cycle once before, and the Cultural Revolution nearly destroyed
    the party. It recovered from that self-inflicted disaster only by
    thoroughly reinventing itself and adopting a distinctly anticommunist
    policy of market reforms.

    Will the party be as lucky next time? If the fortune tellers are being
    honest, theyll tell Chinas leaders the future isnt bright.
    Minxin Pei is senior associate and director of the China Program at
    the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Auto Emissions
By John Browne

    Those skeptical of the data on global climate change point out that
    there is a lot we still dont know. But there are some things we do
    know: By 2020, there will be another 700 million additional vehicles
    on the roadsmany in China. Ensuring that these new vehicles
    incorporate the latest clean technology will be one of the most
    critical public policy challenges of our time. The absence of total
    certainty or consensus on the dangers of climate change must not
    impede constructive action. Fortunately, scientists and engineers
    havent let it. And because of the advances they are making, I am
    convinced that one of todays most pressing environmental problems will
    soon disappear.

    By 2040, harmful vehicle emissions will be a thing of the past. Those
    who can remember the dark fumes pumped out of cars and trucks know
    that weve already come a long way. Lead, sulphur, and benzene have
    been progressively reduced or removed from new vehicles. In the United
    States, lead emissions have dropped by about 95 percent. If only a
    third of the cars in 2050 run at 60 miles per gallon rather than 30
    miles per gallon, carbon dioxide emissions will decline by 1 million
    tons a year.

    But the progress wont stop there. New refinery technology is producing
    ever cleaner fuels. The quality of lubricantswhich allow engines to
    operate efficientlyis improving. And engines themselves, whether
    hybrids or upgraded internal combustion machines, are becoming cleaner
    fuel burners. The combination of these trends will have a tremendous
    impact as the worlds capital stock of vehicles turns over during the
    next 35 years.

    Vehicles, of course, are only one source of potentially harmful
    emissions. The static uses of energyfactories, schools, and
    homesaccount for the bulk. There, the challenge is to transform both
    the products that generate energy and the goods produced so that the
    worlds increased energy needs can be met without savaging the
    environment. It is too early to predict that victory, but work is in
    progress. And I wouldnt bet against human ingenuity.

    Lord John Browne is the group chief executive of British Petroleum.

The Public Domain
By Lawrence Lessig

    Within every culture, there is a public domaina lawyer-free zone,
    unregulated by the rules of copyright. Throughout history, this part
    of culture has been vital to the spread and development of creative
    work. It is the part that gets cultivated without the permission of
    anyone else.

    This public domain has always lived alongside a private domainthe part
    of culture that is owned and regulated, that part whose use requires
    the permission of someone else. Through the market incentives it
    creates, the private domain has also produced extraordinary cultural
    wealth throughout the world. It is essential to how cultures develop.

    Traditionally, the law has kept these two domains in balance. The term
    of copyright was relatively short, and its reach was essentially
    commercial. But a fundamental change in the scope and nature of
    copyright law, inspired by a radical change in technology, now
    threatens this balance. Digital technologies have made it easyindeed,
    too easyfor creative work in the private domain to spread without
    permission. Piracy is rampant on the highways of digital technology.
    In response, code writers (both legislators and technologists) have
    created an unprecedented array of weapons (both legal and technical)
    to wage war on the pirates and restore control to the owners of
    culture. Yet the control these weapons will produce is far greater
    than anything we have seen in our past.

    So, for example, the United States has radically increased the reach
    of copyright regulation. And through the World Intellectual Property
    Organization, wealthy countries everywhere are pushing to impose even
    tighter restrictions on the rest of the world. These legal measures
    will soon be supplemented by extraordinary technologies that will
    secure to the owners of culture almost perfect control over how their
    property is used. Any balance between public and private will thus be
    lost. The private domain will swallow the public domain. And the
    cultivation of culture and creativity will then be dictated by those
    who claim to own it.

    There is no doubt that piracy is an important problemits just not the
    only problem. Our leaders have lost this sense of balance. They have
    been seduced by a vision of culture that measures beauty in ticket
    sales. They are apparently untroubled by a world where cultivating the
    past requires the permission of the past. They cant imagine that
    freedom could produce anything worthwhile at all.

    The danger remains invisible to most, hidden by the zeal of a war on
    piracy. And that is how the public domain may die a quiet death,
    extinguished by self-righteous extremism, long before many even
    recognize it is gone.

    Lawrence Lessig is professor of law at Stanford University.

Doctors' Offices
By Craig Mundie

    Getting sick today is a chore. Finding out whats wrong means
    scheduling an appointment, driving to the doctors office, filling out
    forms, waiting, and answering questions while being swabbed and poked.
    Then you wait for test results, pick up your prescriptions, and
    schedule more appointments with specialists. The nuisance of seeking
    care is quickly becoming a crisis around the world, as declining birth
    rates and aging populations put a crushing burden on national
    healthcare systems.

    Soon, governments, insurers, and taxpayers around the world will be
    forced to confront a complicated and inefficient system that focuses
    too much on managing disease when it arrives and not enough on
    preventing people from getting sick. A critical step in reforming the
    system will be making visits to a doctors office a last resort rather
    than a first step.

    This shift will require all kinds of structural, legal, and financial
    changes, but innovations in computing, communications, biology,
    nanotechnology, and robotics will ease the way. The Web is already
    allowing patients quick access to quality health information once
    dispensed only by white coats. Soon, patients will access customized
    health plans online. Diagnosing and treating many everyday conditions
    will be as simple as depositing a drop of blood in a machine and,
    within moments, having the computer tell you what you have and how to
    get rid of it.

    Doctors wont be obsolete, of course. In fact, general practitioners
    will be more important than ever, but theyll spend more time assessing
    options for preventive action and less time shepherding patients
    through their offices. Doctors will increasingly rely on highly
    personalized treatmentssuch as new drugs targeted specifically to
    personal needs, or even nanomachines that attack bad cholesterol or
    eliminate tumors too small to detect today. Specialists, in turn, will
    be free to focus on highly difficult procedures and push the frontiers
    of healthcare.

    Many of these technologies will reach the developed world first, but
    the rest of the world will benefit in turn. And it will behoove the
    rich countries to hasten the spread of its innovations. In an era when
    new diseases can circle the globe in hours, its in everyones interest
    to stop the next pandemic before it happens. The end result will be a
    technologically driven shift toward preventive medicine that will help
    keep soaring health costs in check and make visits to the doctor more
    rareand less painful.
    Craig Mundie is senior vice president and chief technical officer for
    advanced strategies and policy at Microsoft.

The King of England
By Felipe Fernández-Armesto

    In 1948, the embattled Egyptian King Farouk said that soon only five
    ruling royals would be left: the kings of hearts, clubs, diamonds, and
    spades, and the English monarch. It now looks as if he was off by one.
    The monarchy will not, however, drown in a wave of republican
    sentiment; nor will it be discarded because it fails. The crisis, when
    it comes, will be provoked by the unwillingness of the royal family to
    carry on with the job.

    In theory, royals should symbolize collective national purposeif and
    where such a thing existsand embody common values. That was the role
    for which Queen Elizabeth IIs brood seemed perfectly suited when they
    were young. Courtiers, counsellors, and the media cast them as an
    ideal of bourgeois gentility. Then history took over. The royals
    turned out to be all too representative of their timesmore like a
    sitcom household or a soap-opera dynasty than a model family: dim or
    daft, undisciplined, self-indulgent, driven by petty enmities, and
    animated only by infidelities.

    Their pomp and glitter now look tawdry and overpriceda gold tooth in a
    mouth full of decay. Charles, the prince of Wales, who has done so
    much for society and the environment, could have harnessed the
    goodwill of his people. Instead, he has turned his tragedy into farce.
    The latest of his bumbles was to book a shabby civil wedding, which
    can be represented as legal only by appealing, ludicrously, to the
    European Convention on Human Rights. We have thus discovered the
    worlds smallest and richest disadvantaged minority.

    In short, the royals have done an abominable job in a role they chose
    for themselves. By any normal criteria of employment, they ought to be
    sacked. Lamely and risibly, however, they can still do the day
    jobwhich is to stay mum, sign legislation, and entertain top
    foreigners. The British, on the whole, are willing to let them
    continue, not out of lingering affection but for want of a viable
    alternative.

    Soon, however, the royals themselves will lose the will to go on. Even
    the prince of Wales, who yearns to be king, no longer likes the
    country he is called to represent. From his point of view, the British
    have abandoned all their distinctive traditionssurrendering them to
    new, classless, politically correct values. Celebrity has replaced
    noblesse oblige as the nearest surviving thing to an aristocratic
    ideal. At the millennium celebrations, the queen had to link arms with
    the prime minister and mouth auld lang syne like a barmaid. If youre a
    royal, what is the point of carrying on in such a distressingly
    unfamiliar world?

    The next generationthe duo of Wills and Harryhas no appetite for the
    job. Both take after their mother. The shallow, meretricious
    egocentrism of Dianas life and times represents the only future these
    postmodern princes can hope to enjoy. Deracination, anomie, and
    future-shock separate them from the traditions to which they are
    supposedly heirs. Neither of them is very cleverindeed, even with
    every advantage possible, Harry proved incapable of getting close to
    an average performance in national entrance exams.

    Yet both princes surely have enough sense to realize that the job of
    king is now utterly unappealing. After what their parents have
    suffered from the public and the pressthe obloquy, the derision, the
    intolerable intrusions into their private livesthey can only face
    their fate with dismay. As Charles grows old, the boys will long for
    the prospect of being pensioned playboys rather than dutiful royals.
    The problem for the monarchy will be of a kind well known in other
    kinds of theater: how to get bums on thrones.

    Felipe Fernández-Armesto is professor of history at Tufts University
    and a professorial fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. He is
    author of Ideas That Changed the World (New York: DK Pub., 2003).

The War on Drugs
By Peter Schwartz

    The war on drugs will soon be over. It wont have been won or lost, and
    we certainly wont have wiped out illicit drug use. People will still
    pursue their personal pleasures and uncontrollable addictions. No, the
    war on drugs will end because drugs as we know them today will be
    gone.

    The model drug of the future is already here in the form of crystal
    methamphetamine, a drug that is sweeping the United States and making
    inroads abroad. Its cheap and easy to makelittle more than Sudafed
    doctored up with plant fertilizer. One hundred percent of the profit
    goes to the manufacturer; no intermediary or army of couriers is
    required. Made of locally acquired materials in the garage or
    basement, the drugs production is nearly impossible to stop. Only the
    stupid and incompetent get caught.

    Thirty-five years from now, the illicit professionals who remain in
    the business will be custom drug designers catering to the wealthy.
    Their concoctions will be fine-tuned to ones own body and neural
    chemistry. In time, the most destructive side effects will be designed
    out, perhaps even addiction itself. These custom drug dealers will
    design the perfect chemical experience for those who can afford it.
    The combination of cocaine with skiing, sex, or other intense physical
    activities is common today; likewise for pot and making music. In the
    future, there will be custom drugs for meals, golf, gardening, and
    more. Like crystal meth today, some drugs will reach the point of home
    manufacturing. And they will all be designed to make their use
    invisible to othersno red eyes, nervous tics, or lethargy.

    The shift to custom drugs that are locally produced will have some
    positive effects. Opium fields in Afghanistan and coca plantations in
    the mountains of Colombia will wither, creating new economic realities
    for those countries. The loss of cash crops will sting at first, but
    farmers and traders producing legal goods that are taxable and
    transparent will ultimately facilitate the building of healthy
    societies. Cocaine couriers wont sweat their way through customs, and
    human mules will stop smuggling bags of heroin in their guts. Drug
    lords will not need to launder billions of dollars or pay for private
    armies, and street corners wont have drug dealers waging gunfights for
    turf. The prison population in Western countries, and particularly the
    United States, will shrink.

    But as the violence of the drug trade dies down and as drugs become
    safer, drug use will blossom. The boundary between legal performance
    enhancement (Viagra) and the illegal drugs of pleasure and creativity
    will blur. The political and social pressure against drug use will
    remain, but it will increasingly resemble the campaigns against
    performance- enhancing drugs for athletes. Widespread use will spark
    debates about fairness and authenticity: Is a drug-using musician
    better than one who composes and performs naturally? Is it fair for
    only the wealthy to have the richest sexual or culinary experiences?

    Just as the legal system is struggling with new realities of
    intellectual property in a digital age, it will struggle to control
    innovation in the chemistry of pleasure. We may even wistfully look
    back at a time when there were smugglers to be chased and coca fields
    to be burned. The bad guys were brutes, largely foreign or inner-city
    hoodlums. The new drug sellers will be chemists, most likely caught on
    tax-evasion charges. Users, too, will be harder to hate. Theyll look a
    lot like you and me.

    Peter Schwartz is chairman of the Global Business Network, a Monitor
    Group Company.

Laissez-Faire Procreation
By Lee Kuan Yew

    Demography, not democracy, will be the most critical factor for
    security and growth in the 21st century. Booming populations are a
    drag on developing countries, and low fertility rates are sapping
    growth in developed societies. The poor are making themselves poorer
    through rising birth rates, and the rich will have less dynamic
    societies because they are not replacing themselves fast enough.
    Population growth is outstripping the capacity of governments to
    deliver basic services in the Middle East and Africa, producing
    breeding grounds for extremist and terrorist movements. Rich societies
    will, in turn, see migration from these places as a threatand they
    will resist.

    Sex, marriage, and procreation may not be beyond the reach of
    government influence for much longer. Governments facing population
    explosions and implosions will soon have no choice but to grapple with
    matters generally considered private.

    Efforts to cajole and educate populations into more positive
    procreation trends have had only limited success. European states, for
    example, have made Herculean efforts to reverse declining fertility
    rates, with disappointing results. Singapores fertility rate is a
    dangerously low 1.25 percent. Pro-natal policies have increased
    fertility only slightly. Without immigration that often exceeds the
    natural yearly growth, Singapores economic growth rate would be as
    sluggish as Japans.

    When public campaigns have partially succeeded, as in some
    Scandinavian countries and in France, they have forced society to
    reconceptualize the roles of marriage and the family, with the father
    taking on more of the mothers role, a transformation Asian families
    find difficult to accomplish. Even then, these countries are unlikely
    to get fertility rates to exceed replacement levels. Barring a
    dramatic change of course, they will need immigrants to keep their
    economies vibrant.

    Countries that most welcome migrants have an economic advantage, but
    open immigration policies also carry risks. New waves of migrants will
    be ethnically different, less educated, and sometimes unskilled. They
    will often be among the very religious in otherwise secular societies.
    Many will move illegally. The greater ethnic diversity they create can
    cause social tensions and have profound effects on cultural identity
    and social cohesion.

    Japan is perhaps the best example of a state that both fears and needs
    immigration. It has a reproduction rate of less than 1.3 percent and a
    rapidly aging population, yet it has shown a limited willingness to
    welcome immigrants. The United States, on the other hand, has
    traditionally been the most welcoming of immigrants. Although it has
    near replacement fertility levels, 80 percent of its projected
    population growth of 120 million in the next 50 years will come from
    immigration. Will it remain as open politically and culturally as
    Hispanics change the countrys character and culture? This dilemma is
    even starker for Europe, where most migrants are Muslims from North
    Africa and the Middle East. They are not likely to be assimilated into
    a largely Christian secular society, and their social isolation could
    impede the struggle against Islamic terror.

    It will gradually dawn on governments that immigration alone cannot
    solve their demographic troubles and that much more active government
    involvement in encouraging or discouraging procreation may be
    necessary. Those governments most able to think imaginatively about
    these problems will save their societies and their neighbors much pain
    and suffering.
    Lee Kuan Yew was prime minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990 and is
    now minister mentor.

Polio
By Julie L. Gerberding

    Few causes merit greater celebration than the end of a disease. But
    despite the dedicated efforts of the last century, the world has only
    held such a celebration oncewhen smallpox was eradicated in 1977.
    Current generations who know smallpox only as a fading scar on the
    upper arm forget the impact that this global killer had over
    centuries. Its eradication in the United States alone has saved
    countless lives and at least $17 billion.

    Today, the world is poised to add another disease to the list of those
    that will no longer threaten humans: polio. As difficult as smallpox
    eradication was, polio has presented an even tougher challenge. Some
    polio infections alert doctors with tell-tale paralysis, but for each
    of these cases, about 200 people may have only minor flu-like symptoms
    and can silently transmit the disease for weeks. As a logistical
    challenge, one observer has written, the difference between smallpox
    and polio eradication is the difference between extinguishing a candle
    flame and putting out a forest fire.

    Yet we have never been closer to ending the disease. In 1988, there
    were an estimated 350,000 cases of polio worldwide. In 2005, the
    confirmed caseload has been slashed to just 760 people in 13
    countries. Through national and international leadership, local
    heroism, and economic investments, immunization rates are climbing in
    most countries. In 2003, 415 million children in 55 countries were
    immunized during National Immunization Days, using more than 2.2
    billion doses of oral polio vaccine. Most national health services
    have responded quickly to outbreaks. China, for example, stamped out a
    potential flare-up last year. The World Health Organization launched a
    massive preemptive vaccination campaign in Somalia to prevent an
    outbreak from spreading into the country from neighboring epidemic
    areas.

    The obstacles now are not a lack of vision or inadequate technology;
    they are civil war and cultural mistrust. Several Nigerian states
    have, at times, blocked polio immunization campaigns, believing the
    vaccine to be a Western plot designed to render their women infertile.
    The August 2003 refusal by the state of Kano resulted in hundreds of
    children being paralyzed and the virus spreading to neighboring
    countries. Despite these setbacks, the U.S. Centers for Disease
    Control and Prevention and its partners around the world believe that
    polio eradication is within our grasp.

    Each global infectious disease poses unique challenges, but the
    strategy is clear: eradication in one region after another; isolation
    to a limited number of countries; and aggressive campaigns to break
    the chain of transmission and infection. In the Americas, public
    health authorities have already eradicated measles and are stopping
    the transmission of rubella. We are optimistic that these diseases,
    and others, will soon go from endangered to extinct. These
    eradications will be triumphs for public health scientists and
    practitioners. Even more important, they will be a testament to the
    power of global cooperation against diseases that recognize no
    boundaries.

    Julie L. Gerberding is director of the U.S. Centers for Disease
    Control and Prevention.

Sovereignty
By Richard N. Haass

    Sovereigntythe notion that governments are free to do what they want
    within their own territoryhas provided the organizing principle of
    international relations for more than 350 years. Thirty-five years
    from now, sovereignty will no longer be sanctuary. Powerful new forces
    and insidious threats will converge against it.

    Nation-states will not disappear, but they will share power with a
    larger number of powerful non-sovereign actors than ever before,
    including corporations, nongovernmental organizations, terrorist
    groups, drug cartels, regional and global institutions, and banks and
    private equity funds. Sovereignty will fall victim to the powerful and
    accelerating flow of people, ideas, greenhouse gases, goods, dollars,
    drugs, viruses, e-mails, and weapons within and across borders. All of
    this traffic challenges one of the fundamentals of sovereignty: the
    ability to control what crosses borders. Sovereign states will
    increasingly measure their vulnerability not to one another but to
    forces of globalization beyond their control.

    Impersonal forces arent the whole story, though. States in the future
    will sometimes choose to strip sovereignty from their fellow states.
    Similarly, a government that lacks the capacity or will to provide for
    the basic needs of its citizens will forfeit its sovereignty. That
    reflects not just moral scruple but also a hardheaded understanding
    that neglectbenign or otherwisecan generate destabilizing refugee
    flows and trigger state failure, which creates openings for
    terrorists. The 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo, which forced Serbia
    to give up control of the restive province after years of abusive
    rule, may well be a prototype for the future.

    Implicit in all this is the notion that sovereignty is conditional,
    even contractual, rather than absolute. If a state sponsors terrorism,
    develops weapons of mass destruction, or conducts genocide, then it
    forfeits the normal benefits of sovereignty and opens itself up to
    attack, removal, or occupation. The diplomatic challenge will be to
    gain widespread support for principles of state conduct and a
    procedure for determining the remedy when these principles are
    violated.

    States will also willingly choose to shed some of their sovereignty.
    This trend is well under way, most clearly in the trade realm.
    Governments agree to accept the rulings of the World Trade
    Organization because, on balance, they benefit from a rules-based
    international trading order, even if a particular ruling impinges on
    their right to protect national industries. Global climate change is
    also prompting limits on sovereignty. The Kyoto Protocol, which runs
    through 2012, requires signatories to cap greenhouse gas emissions.
    One can imagine an even more ambitious accord in which a larger number
    of governments, including the United States, China, and India, would
    accept stricter limits based on a recognition that they would be worse
    off if no country accepted such restraints.

    All this adds up to a world that is not fully sovereign. But nor is it
    one of either world government or anarchy. The world 35 years from now
    will be semi-sovereign. It will reflect the need to adapt legal and
    political principles to a world in which the most serious challenges
    to order come from what global forces do to states and what
    governments do to their citizens rather than from what states do to
    one another.

    Richard N. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations and
    author of The Opportunity: Americas Moment to Alter Historys Course
    (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005).

Anonymity
By Esther Dyson

    A world where everyone knows everything about everyone else has been a
    common dystopia. The villain in these frightening worlds has often
    been a shadowy government, thirsting for information and control. And
    that remains a frightening possibility in many parts of the world. But
    there are other, less gloomy outcomes. A world without secrets might
    actually yield a more forgiving culture with stronger, more informed
    individuals.

    Citizens of the developed world now give off information about
    themselves at unprecedented rates. Authorities demand information from
    us when we fly, pass through tollgates, cross borders, and enter
    public buildings. As the investigation of the July London bombings has
    revealed, dozens of cameras may capture a city stroll. The cyber
    trails that people leave are now well known. As many have discovered
    to their chagrin, records of e-mails sent and Web sites visited rarely
    disappearand they often pop up at the most inconvenient moments.

    Its ironic that the Web once seemed to promise individuals new
    opportunities to explore the world without showing their face.
    Instead, it is turning out to be a powerful force against anonymity.
    Most information about peoples online actions is traceableif someone
    with resources cares to go to the trouble. But there will be much more
    to this trend than the familiar fear of governments spying on innocent
    victims, or even they-asked-for-it dissidents. The bigger questions
    revolve around the tolerance of societies for diversity and
    recognition of the human capacity for change.

    The technologically adept and dedicated may be able to preserve some
    form of anonymityfor a time. Some people, for example, will create
    multiple identities online for the various sites they visit, the
    social networks they enter, and the online merchants they frequent. To
    be sure, most identities will be traceable by authorities with
    subpoena power, but not by your neighbors, your colleagues, or even
    your prospective employer. But, in the end, these defenses will break
    down and our slime trails will become increasingly visible.

    Those trails will pose a challenge for societies eager to judge
    instantly. Are we likely to have a tolerant society when whole swaths
    of once private behavior become visible? Unprecedented transparency
    may actually force a cultural changea sort of statute of limitations
    on reputations. Curiosity will continue (were human beings, after
    all), but a healthier understanding of how people can change may be
    the ultimate result.

    This salutary cultural change will not ease the concerns of those who
    fear anonymitys passing. But there is reason to doubt the breadth of
    this concern. The popular perception is that people want anonymity; in
    fact, it appears that most people crave recognition. Many young people
    want it so much that they join multiple networking sites, rate
    themselves and friends on various scales, and fill in online
    questionnaires and surveys. Even as individuals evince more and more
    concern about privacy and identity theft, they flood onto the Web as
    themselves, publishing blogs, posting photos, contributing reviews,
    and revealing all (or so it seems) on dating sites.

    In effect, people are trading anonymity for a voice. The Web is
    empowering individuals to engage with others not just as consumers
    picking from whats on offer, but as active negotiators, defining
    specifications for others to meet. That effect is particularly visible
    in the commercial and social realms, but less clear vis-à-vis the
    governments of the world. As anonymity fades, a critical question will
    remain: Are we getting as much as were giving up?
    Esther Dyson is editor of Release 1.0, the technology industry
    newsletter published by CNET Networks.