The next turn of the century As we approach the beginning of the 21st century, it may be useful to ask: What will be the status of the environment in the 22nd century? When Earth Day has passed its sesquicentennial, what environmental issues will Earth people feel are important? When resource recovery and its analogs have been institutionalized, when recycling has been pushed to its limit of efficiency, what new initiatives will be on the dockets for governments around the world? As the population of the planet steadily increases, how much area that is currently natural will be absorbed into metropolitan complexes or converted into agricultural land to feed the mass of human beings? What natural areas will remain; what species other than man will survive? Will they be locked into smaller and smaller parks that increasingly resemble zoos? Will the few remaining aquatic mammals be tended or will they roam free? Will most of the remaining forests be monocultures, merely factories that are not accessible to the general public? Will planet Earth increasingly be a managed environment for the sustenance of a huge human population? What else will survive? As generations pass and billions live in cities with little or no contact with the natural environment, what political power will naturalists have-will enough people identify with preservation issues to make them politically viable? Will environmental organizations with names such as Sierra be anachronisms in a culture that knows little of mountain ranges or wilderness areas? Will the international community be united in protection of the environment and human health? Indeed, will multinationalism succumb to internationalism; will local and regional autonomy to manage resources and protect ecosystems increase or decrease? Will industry be totally integrated on a global basis, and how will natural resources be managed and allocated?
0013-936X/90/0924-1761$02.50/0 0 1990 American Chemical Society
In the 22nd century what will be the outlook for the environmental engineering and science profession? What will environmental chemists, biologists, geologists, and engineers be doing and how will they be trained? What research issues will remain? What policy will policy analysts be analyzing? As we contemplate the transition from the 20th to the 21st century, we should also contemplate what the following 100 years will bring and what forces are in motion to determine the quality of life in the 2100s. Clearly, most of our energies must be devoted to the solution of problems in the here-and-now, but we must not forget to look far enough into the future to avoid serious problems that will plague generations for centuries to come.
Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 24, No. 12,1990 1761
