BUILDING a more environmentally stable future clearly requires some vision of that future. If not fossil fuels to power society, then what? If forests are no longer to be cleared to grow food, then how is a larger population to be fed? If a throwaway culture leads inevitably to pollution and resource depletion, how can we satisfy our material needs? In sum, if the present path is so obviously unsound, what picture of the future can we use to guide our actions towards a global community that can endure?

A sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without jeopardizing the prospects of future generations. Unfortunately there are no existing models of sustainability. For the past several decades, most developing nations have aspired to the automobile-centred, fossil fuel-driven economies of the industrial West. But from the localized problems of intractable air pollution to the global threat of climate change, it is now clear that these societies are far from durable; indeed they are rapidly bringing about their own demise.

If the world is to achieve sustainability, this will have to be done within the next forty years. If we have not succeeded by then, environmental deterioration and economic decline are likely to be feeding on each other, pulling us into a downward spiral of social disintegration. Our vision of the future therefore looks to the year 2030.