Futurist alumnus forecasts a nomadic human future Singapore-based futurist Parag Khanna (SFS’99, G’05) uses the lens of geopolitics to research the forces driving mass migration. In his new book, MOVE: The Forces Uprooting Us, he forecasts that despite two years of COVID-19 lockdown, the future of human civilization will be defined by mobility.
What drives voluntary and involuntary mobility around the world, Khanna explains, are forces like political instability, imbalances in labor markets, and climate change. His research analyzes trends in civil wars and conflicts, failing economies, technological disruption from AI and automation, and climate change displacement, and then synthesizes takeaways.
“These deep, fundamental drivers of human mobility long predate COVID and will long outlast COVID,” Khanna says. “The mass migrations of the past are not only going to continue, but also expand significantly, because all of these drivers are in overdrive.”
In MOVE, Khanna predicts that more Asian populations will move into Central Asia and Russia, and that both Asian and African populations will move into Europe. In the Americas,
he sees Canada taking leadership in accepting migrants, to the benefit of its cultural and economic future. And within the United States, he sees many people becoming climate migrants.
“There’s a large number of climate refugees in America, from forest fires, floods, and rising sea levels,” Khanna says. “America itself needs to think about climate adaptation and migration as a domestic issue, as well as a global one.”
MOVE also explores youth subcultures like #VanLife—in which young people voluntarily forego hyperconsumerism to live sustainably while staying digitally connected—as an important signal of change.
“One of the things I learned in this process of research is to take young people really seriously,” Khanna says. “We need to rebuild our economic, social, and political institutions to cater to their values, because they’re actually the right values to have for the kind of world we’re in today.”
Khanna says his interdisciplinary work was deeply influenced by his undergraduate experiences in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, especially in Professor Charles Pirtle’s Map of the Modern World class.
“Georgetown is one of just a handful of institutions that continue the tradition of teaching classical geopolitical theory. Very few people have the breadth of knowledge across disciplines to actually teach it. And Charles Pirtle was that man for an entire generation.”
Khanna remains close with Pirtle and connects his book to Pirtle’s class in particular.
“One of the most important things that he taught us is the complex layering of physical, political, and human geography,” Khanna says. “That’s really fundamentally what MOVE is about.”
Singapore-based futurist Parag Khanna (SFS’99, G’05) uses the lens of geopolitics to research the forces driving mass migration. In his new book, MOVE: The Forces Uprooting Us, he forecasts tha...
Will climate change drive humans extinct or destroy civilization?Almost certainly not—but unless we act quickly to stop warming the planet, there will be very severe consequences for many, many people.
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“Human extinction is not really the main worry,” says Schlosser. “There are going to be some really, really bad regional and local consequences. Consider island nations of the world—the type of warming that we're heading toward, with the expected sea level rise that could force them in many places to retreat or possibly abandon their homeland, is an existential threat to them.”
For many people, asking if climate change is the “end of the world” may be a way of asking if it’s the end of their world—if they should be taking steps to cope with widespread breakdowns in infrastructure or public services or the food supply. “And it depends upon where you live,” says Schlosser. “I would give a very different answer if you were living in the Northeast United States as opposed to an island nation or the coastal plains of Bangladesh or in the middle of the Sahel.”
In part, this is due to unequal climate impacts: low-lying coastal areas facing two or three feet of sea level rise will suffer greatly whether they’re wealthy Miami or impoverished Kiribati.
But there is also a basic injustice at work. Wealthier countries and regions have the most resources to prepare for, soften and recover from climate impacts. This means they’re more able to bounce back after a disaster strikes.“The most vulnerable populations are the poorest populations,” says Schlosser.
“If we do nothing about climate change, conditions are going to get worse for people who are poor and don't have the means to cope with it.”[...]
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/will-climate-change-drive-humans-extinct-or-destroy-civilizationClimate Change, the Erosion of State Sovereignty, and World OrderCLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS ATTENDANT impacts on natural resources have traditionally been treated as a“soft security” issue—a challenge to be managed, but not necessarily a disruptive factor in international security. Until recently, climate change was primarily the domain of specialized negotiators, such as environmental ministers and individuals present at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). However, this has begun to change. In response to a growing body of research demonstrating a significant relationship between a changing climate and state fragility, the foreign policy and security establishments of a growing number of nations have become increasingly concerned. A flurry of national security strategies, defense papers, and intelligence assessments have suggested that climate change is a“threat multiplier”...
https://climateandsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/werrell_femia_final-article_climate-change_state-sovereignty_world-order.pdf
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