Archive Events ACT

The industrial revolution, and particularly the period since 1950, has brought a profound increase in well-being to many people around the world. The many benefits of contemporary civilization, especially in the western world, have also entailed significant costs that are only now being fully understood. The list of these costs has become increasingly familiar. We are losing biodiversity at an accelerating rate, probably driving the Earth’s sixth great extinction event. We are now activating more nitrogen industrially than all of the natural terrestrial processes combined. The climate is becoming warmer, with the risk of reinforcing feedbacks that could push the Earth into an even warmer state. Humanity is now rivaling some of the great forces of nature, and propelling the Earth into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, with an uncertain future for humanity. The most fundamental challenge facing us in the 21st century is to continue to improve human well-being, particularly for those in the poorest countries, but to decouple that improvement from the pressure that the human enterprise is now putting on the planet. Meeting this challenge presents many opportunities. Many of these opportunities lie in the realm of engineering, as we need new technologies to produce energy, move people and materials, and provide homes and workplaces. Other changes are also required, particularly in the institutions that guide how we live and work and perhaps also in the fundamental values that underpin the increasingly globalised civilization of the 21st century.