Jorgen Randers Last Night

Influential futurist Jorgen Randers, author of 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (2012), spoke last night to a packed Lecture Center audience of approximately 400.

Audience members remarked on the sharp contrast between Randers' sunny disposition and the terrifying implications of his data.

For more on Randers, go to http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/randers_jorgen13.html.

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Will Humanity Survive? Maybe Not.

Jorgen Randers, who visits Albany today, raises questions about humankind's near-term prospects. His report was delivered to the influential global thinktank, The Club of Rome.

The following is a summary of the report, which appears on The Club of Rome's website:

New Report issues warning about humanity’s ability to survive without major change

(Rotterdam, the Netherlands): 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, by Jorgen Randers, launched by the Club of Rome on May 7, raises the possibility that humankind might not survive on the planet if it continues on its path of over-consumption and short-termism.

In the Report author Jorgen Randers raises essential questions: How many people will the planet be able to support? Will the belief in endless growth crumble? Will runaway climate change take hold? Where will quality of life improve, and where will it decline? Using painstaking research, and drawing on contributions from more than 30 thinkers in the field, he concludes that....

Read more:  http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=4211

More about Rander's visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/randers_jorgen13.html

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Jorgen Randers In the Times Union

Jorgen Randers, who visits today, Wednesday, Feb. 8th, is interviewed by Elizabeth Floyd Mair in the Times Union:

Global thinking, global warning

Norwegian environmental scientist sees a bleak future unfolding if nations do not change course

   Jorgen Randers has spent much of his adult life worrying about the future. Not his own, but that of the planet.The environmental scientist co-authored the classic "The Limits to Growth" in 1972, which examined humanity's overuse of the Earth's finite natural resources and discussed a variety of scenarios that could result over the next four decades.
   Fast-forward 40 years to 2012, when Randers issued a new book, "2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years." In it, Randers, displaying a curious mix of passion and resignation, takes a hard look at what he believes the future is likely to be.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Global-thinking-and-global-warning-4240722.php#ixzz2K8DsSRYM
More on Randers' visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/randers_jorgen13.html

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Fast Forward to the Year 2100....

"Fast-forward to the year 2100. Computers, writes physicist and futurist Michio Kaku [who visits 2/21] in Physics of the Future (Doubleday, 2011), will have humanlike intelligence, the Internet will be accessible via contact lenses, nanobots will eliminate cancers, space tourism will be cheap and popular, and we’ll be colonizing Mars.

We will be a planetary civilization capable of consuming the 1017 watts of solar energy falling on Earth to meet our energy needs, with the Internet as a worldwide telephone system; English and Chinese as the contenders for a planetary language; a unified culture of common foods, fashions and films; and a truly global economy with many more international trading blocs such as we see today in the European Union and NAFTA.

Kaku’s vision of how the exchange of science, technology and ideas among all peoples will create a global civilization with greatly weakened nation-states and almost no war is epic in its scope and heroic in its inspiration."

Read more in Scientific American. Visit the Institute schedule for details of Kaku's visit.

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