What are the BIGGEST Problems in the World? How do we prioritize them?

[krackato]

The way I see it, the top 16 Global Issues or threats facing the world are the following (with reasons why)

1. Global Nuclear War
Because it could destroy everything living on this planet

2. Extinction of Species (plants and animals) and Permanent Loss of Habitat
Because once we've lost a species that took millions of years to evolve, it's gone forever. I've read that 95% of the species that have ever existed on this planet are extinct now, but I'd like to think that humanity is better than the equivalent of a massive asteroid as far as the earth is concerned.

Now, I want to point out that I've placed loss of species above other problems such as human diseases, human famine, etc. Real easy for a guy like me to say since I haven't been hungry for more than I've wanted to be in two decades. I hardly think the poor African child dying of AIDS would agree with me. But I will say that if I were dying, I would still think that while my life and all human life is important, a complete and total loss of biodiversity across the entire human planet would also be a huge problem.

Has it come to this? Do we have to choose between 7-10 billion people with no more Lions and Giraffes and Rainforests and Tigers (TIGERS!) and no more fish...

3. Contamination, Pollution, Destruction, and Irresponsible Genetic Modification of the Food Supply
They say that within a few years, the oceans will no longer have anymore fish in them. That the only fish you'll be able to get will be from a private Corporation that's probably genetically modified it.

Genetically Modified Corn has be shown to cause infertility in Cows, Pigs, and other Live Stock. Who knows what it's going to do to us. Genetic Modifcation isn't like Star Trek. They literally 'shoot' dna into a cell like a freaking bullet and it goes in and tears up all sorts of strands and dos who knows what. I wouldn't trust the people at Monsanto to drive my car let alone control the entire food supply. And now they're trying to patent pigs. This isn't about vegetarianism (that's another topic). This is about a corporation who wants to patent and genetically modify every food supply in the world and control it all.
Check This: Patent For a Pig: The Big Business of Monsanto | WIDE EYE CINEMA - Free Conspiracy Videos

4. Deforestation
Pretty much the same as loss of species at #2.

5. Global Warming
I think that over the next 40 years, I think that Solar Technology is going to improve massively and that this problem, which won't be easy to fix, will get fixed.

6. Terrorism or Cultural Warfare
I want to step lightly on this issue, but at this point I think we've found ourselves in a cycle. They attacked us, we attacked them, they might attack us back, etc. etc. America will (rightly) point to 9/11. The terrorists (or whoever) will point to Iraq, and this thing might just escalate and escalate. I don't bring this up to point fingers or say what anyone should do. I'm just bringing this up to say that there are angry people on both sides and they're hell bent on their point of view. That being said, 9/11 was terrible, why the hell is Osama Bin Laden still out there, and no I didn't agree with attacking Iraq.

7. Fiat Currency and Central Banking
Watch "Money as Debt" here: Money As Debt

I'm not an economist, but I don't agree with the idea of a Federal Reserve, and I certainly don't agree with the Federal Reserve printing more money to bail out all the people who made stupid investments during the sub-prime mortgage thus causing inflation for all of us. No one bails the rest of us out when we screw up. I'm not sure what Ben Bernake is doing, but even Alan Greenspan doesn't agree with him.

[b]8. Access to Clean Food and Clean Drinking Water[b]
Pretty obvious. There's talk of a world wide food shortages and I don't really like the idea of Ethanol since it's makes no sense what so ever if you study the energy you have to put into it and what you get out.

9. AIDS, Cancer, Malaria, Heart Disease, other Deadly Diseases
Also pretty obvious. I wish the drug companies would focus on cures instead of treatment, but at least someone is doing something.

10. Subsidies
We don't need anymore corn! Stop subsidizing meat! This is probably the tip of the iceberg.

11. Over Population
Anyway, this one is tricky, but for me, we have so many people on this planet that are dying and starving. Until we can get the technology to take care of the people we already have, I think an increasing population is something that needs to be looked at very seriously. This one raises a lot of emotions, but some generation eventually has to look at it. Otherwise, are we going to have 20 Billion people on this planet? 50 Billion? 100 Billion? Infinite People? Obviously the planet can only hold so many people and people are starving right now.

Check out Real Time World Statistics Here: Worldometers - real time world statistics
We've added 153,000 people to Earth today so far.

12. Plastic, Plastic, Everywhere...
There's a mass of plastic out in the pacific ocean twice the size of Texas and the food supply is obviously ingesting large portions of it. And yes, some of it is in you. Makes me want to do a Lemonade Fast.

Check Out Garbage Island
TOXIC - Garbage Island - Part 1 of 12 - VBS.TV

13. War
Sigh. People killing people. What's the solution? I've read that the West and Islam were destined for a culture clash even before 9/11. For some reason different ideaologies insist on killing one another. It's been with us since the dawn of man. Is Global Peace actually ever possible? The older I get, the more I think it's all in our DNA and basically just to pray that things don't escalate until technology improves enough to make us all way smarter and happier (I'm looking at you Ray Kurzweil).

14. Factory Farming
Look at some videos on YouTube. I thought I'd seen it all. It is absolutely sadistic. There basically needs to be cameras and a live TV feed for every square inch of these things. I'm sure some are worse than others, but there's a way to kill an animal for food that, if nothing else, minimizes pain for the creature.

Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHTUq90RDIQ
Do not watch that if you have a weak stomach. It's the worst factory farming video I've ever seen. I don't seek these things out, but I've seen a few of these in my time. I don't think going vegetarian is enough. We have to set aside differences between meat eaters and vegetarians and vegans and maybe insure that stuff like this doesn't happen. There needs to be massive oversight and cameras because people are going to eat meat (read the completely unsympathetic comments on the YouTube video.) The least we can do is try to insure that the stuff above doesn't happen.

15. Poverty
It's 2008. Can we get these people some freaking drinking water. Dean Kamen is doing just that: YouTube - Colbert Does Water (wish I'd found a better video)

16. The Drug Policy/Prison Industrial Complex
Once again, my opinion, but I think drugs should be legalized and the whole drug war should be called off. It costs billions, kills people, and puts people in prison. If they can legalize tons of drugs in Amsterdam and it's perfectly peaceful, then there's no real reason that the same can't be done across the world. For me this is about personal liberties and I'd much rather deal with a stoned pot smoker than an angry drunk any day of the week. Hell, I'd rather deal with a heroin junkie than an angry drunk. Pretty much anything beats an angry drunk, but alcohol is the most abused drug there is and it kills thousands of people a year.

Okay, that's all I can think of. Poverty should be higher on the list. I still agree with the first one. Did I miss any?

[krackato]

Bjorn Lomborg: Our priorities for saving the world
TED | Talks | Bjorn Lomborg: Our priorities for saving the world (video)

He's a bit controversial, but interesting talk on the same topic.

[Just a Thought]

Lack of communication.

How can we even ask what the biggest problems are, before we have the dialog to establish what the problems are themselves? When have we asked as a global society, what is the problem, how far does it extend, and what needs to be done? There is no effective global dialog to solve our real global problems.

Lack of understanding.

When establishing that something is a problem, no one understands what it entails. In someplaces, it may well be that there is an educated audience with an understanding of more than just the word extinction; but in most of the world people have a vague idea of its meaning, and no idea how that will effect them--let alone how they could ever go about solving the issue.

Short sightedness

...Or thinking only as far as the next election/budget renewal. We as organisms exist to further the development of our species; objectively, there is very little to do with who we are, and an infinite amount to do with those who will come after us. Now this is an extremely broad view, seeing as many issues will effect our lives in our immediate future.

In contrast, our everyday concern over who did what and where are terribly trivial; yet we pay an huge amount of attention to them, killing millions with our inaction and shortsidedness.

[ABlix]

We did this is in one of our classes. I think an interesting aspect of global warming is that there is some sort of political clout behind it. Why is that so? Is it not a fact that CO2 emissions cause it and 2006 was the sixth warmest year on record since 1850 (when the industrial revolution started booming or such), with 4-5 other years close to that.

So hm, let's observe. Can global warming cause more tornadoes? Is it possible that because CO2 is trapped in the Earth due to all the dust particles and not letting it go off into space, the sunlight is warming the CO2 and causing the photons to be in an excited state? What is the effect of CO2 bunching together? Could it be possible that the reason certain storms occur is the CO2 is formed together into one huge molecular clout, or "cloud" by the energy the sun is placing. Could this be a spontaneous process?

[escapee]

The dwindling oil reserve is one huge energy and economical crisis we will be facing in the coming decades or even years. We better hope that whoever producing the air compressed car or air- electric - gas Hybrid will be able to make it viable and affordable to the mass as soon as possible.

World's dangerously dwindling oil supply - half of producible oil will be consumed by 2010 at current rate of oil consumption growth - Brief Article | USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education) | Find Articles at BNET.com

With the Fed printing enormous amount of money and unload it to the world and the concern on future demand, oil price is expected to skyrocket in the coming years and you already know who will get hurt the most.

[Jennihul]

There is only one problem in the world: Lack of respect.

For our elders...

For our poor...

For those different than us....

For those with different opinions than us...

For those with less power than us...

For those with less capabilities than us...

For those with different beliefs than us...

For our limited resources and hence our future generations...

For ourselves, that we are fooled into thinking "stuff" is more important than each other...

For the planet...

For our health....



Figure out the respect issue and you solve every single other issue we have as a species.


Jennifer

[krackato]

The Best Way For a Regular Person to Save the World

Pretty hilarious. See you at Radio Shack

[Stu]

Originally Posted by krackato

Bjorn Lomborg: Our priorities for saving the world
TED | Talks | Bjorn Lomborg: Our priorities for saving the world (video)

He's a bit controversial, but interesting talk on the same topic.

I came in here to post this Glad to see there are more fans of TED out there.

I think the right question to ask is not what are the biggest problems in the world but how do we mobilize people to solve these problems? There are many huge problems in the world and we know how to solve them (global warming is the perfect example of this) but how do we get people to really commit to solving them?

Al Gore has updated his global warming speech to try and address this problem, you can see it here. (Another TED talk)

[Brutha]

6. Terrorism or Cultural Warfare That being said, 9/11 was terrible,

AIDS kills far more people each year than 9/11 did in 2001.
Why do you think that terrorism is a more important problem?

Terrorism like 9/11 isn't really something to worry that much about. Terrorism only gets dangerous with ABC weapons or mass assignations of leaders.

[Plato]

Well you have to say what your ideal world would be before you can say what the problems are! That is the REAL task. After that deciding what to do becomes beautifully clear.

[Steve Pavlina]

I think the #1 challenge is low awareness. All of the previous problems listed can be improved/remedied by raising awareness and learning to live more consciously. Living unconsciously exacerbates all of these problems.

When people learn how they unconsciously contribute to such problems, they're more likely to decide to stop being part of the problem. But as long as people remain unaware and live unconsciously, they'll keep contributing to these problems.

A simple example: If we can convince enough people to be more selective about what companies they're willing to work for (or whether they'd want to be employees in the first place), then fewer people will consciously choose to work as slaves for destructive, greed-based enterprises. This can create more demand for conscious companies that make a positive net difference in the world.

Of course the first place we need to work on raising awareness is within ourselves.

This is why I opted to to make my primary aim to teach people to live more consciously. In my opinion this will have a greater positive effect than tackling any of the specific problems directly (as far as my particular skills and abilities go). Once we achieve a critical mass of highly conscious people, good solutions to the low-level problems emerge.

As long as mass consciousness remains to low, tackling the specific problems directly won't have much effect. Proposed solutions will only fall on deaf ears. Why? Because all of the solutions require enough people to care, and unconscious people simply don't care.

[Love]

Originally Posted by krackato

The Best Way For a Regular Person to Save the World

Pretty hilarious. See you at Radio Shack

LOL. This reminds me of one of my favorite novels--Ender's Game. Earth does come together to fight an alien race...

[cipher]

There are these issues, Yes and we are planning to resolve them, No.
It is a very good effort of getting them compiled and having them thought of.
But people are not willing to sacrifise for an abstract benifit in future for a cause that is not completely understood by them. No one is willing to understand the prevailing situation and so leave about the solutions.
It absolutely seems fine to state that Unawareness is the basic cause of all these issues, We are not ready to realise the impact of our activities against the world and then we excuse ourselves by saying we are ignorant.
Basic education must be dynamic enough to teach the global issues at an early stage in life.

[Thomas]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

A simple example: If we can convince enough people to be more selective about what companies they're willing to work for (or whether they'd want to be employees in the first place)...

So would it "rank" not-so-well to actually have employees as a company owner?

[PerDev]

What are the effective ways through which we can increase our Consiousness level ?

[Joeschmoe]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I think the #1 challenge is low awareness. All of the previous problems listed can be improved/remedied by raising awareness and learning to live more consciously. Living unconsciously exacerbates all of these problems.

When people learn how they unconsciously contribute to such problems, they're more likely to decide to stop being part of the problem. But as long as people remain unaware and live unconsciously, they'll keep contributing to these problems.

A simple example: If we can convince enough people to be more selective about what companies they're willing to work for (or whether they'd want to be employees in the first place), then fewer people will consciously choose to work as slaves for destructive, greed-based enterprises. This can create more demand for conscious companies that make a positive net difference in the world.

Of course the first place we need to work on raising awareness is within ourselves.

This is why I opted to to make my primary aim to teach people to live more consciously. In my opinion this will have a greater positive effect than tackling any of the specific problems directly (as far as my particular skills and abilities go). Once we achieve a critical mass of highly conscious people, good solutions to the low-level problems emerge.

As long as mass consciousness remains to low, tackling the specific problems directly won't have much effect. Proposed solutions will only fall on deaf ears. Why? Because all of the solutions require enough people to care, and unconscious people simply don't care.

Bingo.

The human race is a teenager. We have acquired the knowledge and skills to destroy ourselves, and the environment around us. But we are still at a dangerously low level of consciousness.

[Brutha]

What are the effective ways through which we can increase our Consiousness level ?

Look a bit through Steve blog. Maybe you can find something in it that helps your question.

[blazer1]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Look a bit through Steve blog. Maybe you can find something in it that helps your question.

Global consciosness can be achieved when our personal insecurities can be eliminated. Until then, it's a dog eat dog world.

[Ninja]

Okay, here's what I think:

1) Overpopulation: it is the cause of many problems in the world, like hunger, war and disease. if everyone lived like they do in Europe, we need 2.5 more planet Earths. And if we live like they do in the States, we'll need about six more blue globes. We can only continue to live the way we do now, by parasiting on the poor saps in third world countries. Either we change our lifestyle, or we change the ammount of children we plan to have. And the latter is a lot easier for most people.

2) education: children belong in school, not in the mines or a sweatshop. Ignorance causes a myrad of problems. War, disease (especially STD-s), violence against women and so on.

3) energy: first we use up nearly all our oil and poison the planet with deadly gasses, and now we 'solve' that problem.... by burning our food. I swear humanity is getting dumber by the second.