Nobody knows what the future will bring. We all have our own visions of what the world would look like 50 or a hundred years from now and there probably will be more differences rather than similarities in the images that we form in our minds. The poor and other marginalized sectors of our society would not have this luxury to imagine as they would be preoccupied in simply trying to live, but I am sure they do have dreams of the future, mostly on having better quality of life for themselves and their families. The rich will imagine urban amenities.
I say urban because the movement of people towards cities is a phenomenon which seems irreversible. It is a one-way street for both developed and developing economies and more pronounced in the so-called third-world countries where rural folks uproot themselves from toiling the soil in the countryside in preference for the blighted areas of urban settlements where life in the slums may even be worse but you have the availability of cholesterol-rich fast-food chains nearby and a thousand other "urban amenities." Half the world's population already lived in cities at the turn of this century. The Economist estimated in 2012 that 64.1% and 85.9% of the developing and developed world respectively will be in cities by 2050.
If it is an irreversible trend, how will the world look like then? There are already countless films which depict some kind of future scenario, but the one which sticks to my mind and which I dreaded the most, is the setting of the movie "The Demolition Man," starring S. Stallone, S. Bullock and W. Snipes. And it was not too far off - the year was 2032, although it was preceded by a hypothetical 2010 earthquake which supposedly changed the society in that part of the world. What reappeared is a crimeless, vice-free, modern, happy, urban society, with automatic gadgets and auto drive cars, with strict rules to eradicate all that is considered bad in our world now. Peaceful, clean and green, urban amenities to the extreme!
But what was revealed was the other side of the coin - a ghetto of ragtag resistance fighters who lived underground in underground canals and sewers, remnants of the old society who have to fight daily, invading the conclaves of the utopian society just to steal food to eat. Right, they are dirty, unshaven and live in the dirt and waste left by the clean society above ground unmasking the wide disparity between social classes. And yes, this is brought about by the desire of people to force a better world - others will be displaced and disadvantaged.
The climate change issues nowadays, coupled with the seemingly unbridled population growth will eventually force us to this dilemma. People flock to cities for a better life, brought about by efficiencies of numbers, but this require the kind of energy consumption and transport facilities that burn matter - coal, oil, bunker, and other petroleum products. Global warming activists are up in arms against these emissions, and calling for renewable and other clean energy sources. The undeniable fact remains - population will grow, carbon emission will increase, global temperature will rise, and climate change will happen. What we are doing will only slow down the process, not reverse it.
It is the breakdown of democratic principles which is the scourge and sometimes we simply do not think about it. I wrote last Sunday about "Green Transport," and the pitfalls which accompany it, attractive as it seem too many. The call to more electric vehicles because presumably they do not emit CO2 misses the fact that power is produced mainly by combustion plants. As people migrate to the cities, we need more and more electricity to keep the latter clean and efficient and we build plants in the countryside, far from the bustling metropolis where clean air is a premium. Eventually we may find ourselves in very elegant and highly sophisticated futuristic cities where everything is automated and clinically clean but 50 or 100 kilometers away we cluster smoke belching gas-guzzling generation plants to power up our modern way of life.
But we live on one earth, under the same roof, so to speak, so smoke 100 miles away will eventually find its way to the clean cities we covet. It is improbable that 100% of us will all live in cities, so some people and families will remain in non-cities, with all the smoke and waste produced by city folks, with fewer opportunities and definitely a lower quality of life. Whether we want this kind of society is something we collectively decide. At the end of the day, we are all in this together, and trying to pursue a dream of a classy electric city life, to the detriment of others, is certainly not the hallmark of a democratic civilization.
Development is not the amenities we desire. It is a better quality of life... for everyone.