18.2. Global Problems of Today as Negative Consequences of Modern Culture

According to the opinion of contemporary researchers (philosophers, sociologists, economists etc.), the realization of Modern culture plans is the reason of global problems.

Global problems are not just important problems, or problems that affect many people. Rather they are those problems that affect the whole of the planet, and potentially all of the people who live on it. Climate change is one clear example that springs to mind quickly. This is because the consequences of humanly-generated changes in the atmosphere will, albeit in different ways according to region, affect everyone on the planet. In other words, the consequences are universal. Moreover, unless we profoundly change our collective behavior, climate change may well result in irreversible changes in the climatic conditions of life - a measure of the deep vulnerability of human society in the face of this issue. And it is easy to see that there will be no easy solution to the problem: the causes of the present situation are clearly related to our economic system, our attitudes to nature, our political organization, our technological capacities and preferences, and our uses of resources. Solutions will involve not just all communities and every country, but solutions will necessarily involve cooperation between all, rather than individual approaches. In other words, the example of climate change suggests that global problems are complex, intractable, and make human society as a whole very vulnerable.

Other examples of global problems of this scale and with these characteristics would include the following:

- weapons of mass destruction;

- violation of the human security of several billions of the world's poor, and the consequences of the conditions of their lives for the rest of the world;

- resource depletion, especially that of energy resources, on a scale and in a manner that both unsustainable and profoundly inequitable;

- physical, social and psycho-cultural consequences of unprecedented and still accelerating development of mega-cities;

- cultural collisions within and across national borders generated by globalization and claims to the primacy or universal superiority of one version of reason and ethics.

This is a very incomplete listing, and there could be many other such lists. In “High Noon: 20 Global Problems”, “20 Years to Solve Them”, J.-F. Rischard identifies twenty global problems, comparable to those just mentioned, and argues that:

1. a third of these have to do with how we share our planet (burning environmental issues);

2. another third of which relate to how we share our humanity (urgent economic and social issues requiring a worldwide coalition for their effective solution);

3. with a final third having to do with how we share our rulebook (important regulatory challenges urgently requiring a minimum critical mass of global rules to prevent free-riding and other negative consequences).

One key characteristic of global problems is that they are inter-linked in complex, and often unrecognized, ways. One problem exacerbates another or makes its solution more difficult.  For example, population growth affects all eleven other problems; more people means more deforestation, more toxic chemicals, more demand for wild fish, etc.  The energy problem is linked to other problems because use of fossil fuels for energy contributes heavily to greenhouse gases, the combating of soil fertility losses by using synthetic fertilizers requires energy to make the fertilizers, fossil fuel scarcity increases our interest in nuclear energy which poses potentially the biggest “toxic” problem of all in case of an accident, and fossil fuel scarcity also makes it more expensive to solve our freshwater problems by using energy to desalinize ocean water.  Problems of deforestation, water shortage, and soil degradation in the Third World foster wars there and drive legal asylum seekers and illegal emigrants to the First World from the Third World.

This interlinking of issues, or complex interdependency of problems, has implications for both the way we think about these issues - our forms of knowledge - and the way we might go about beginning to solve them. People often ask, “What is the single most important environmental problem facing the world today?” A flip answer would be, “The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!”  That flip answer is essentially correct, because any of the dozen problems if unsolved would do us grave harm, and because they all interact with each other.  If we solved eleven of the problems, but not the 12th, we would still be in trouble, whichever was the problem that remained unsolved.  We have to solve them all.

Often, global problems are multi-dimensional, and drive pervasive change driven by interrelationships across superficially segmented problems or disparate issues or levels of governance. Global problems may be the result of multi-directional causes that erupt suddenly from below or fall without warning from above, or both at the same time. Sometimes, events in one society arc for a moment around the planet to another, thereby dramatically changing both their trajectories.

The impacts of some global problems may not be felt for years or decades whereas decision-making time horizons are very short. Such enduring global problems may set severe limits on solving interrelated, medium-term global problems. Some solutions may turn out to generate further problems.

This has led to establishment of a small international group of people from the fields of academia, civil society, diplomacy, and industry to solve "complex problems that change when you apply a solution." Under the leadership by Aurelio Peccei, an Italian industrialist, and Alexander King, a Scottish scientist the group was formed in April 1968 when met at a villa in Rome, Italy, hence the name – the Club of Rome.

Representatives of the Club of Rome offered their own strategies dealing with global problems. One of the best-known strategies is known as the strategy of "sustainable development". It is responsible for the search for the global development model that would allow secure the economic, social and political processes without catastrophes. This means that the world should reveal all sorts of contradictions and possible distortions in the economic and social development in different countries and regions to remove them promptly with the help of negotiations (not weapons).

The concept of "sustainable development" is based on the obvious fact that the world is unique and at the same time diverse. There are dozens of different ethnic and national cultures, local civilizations, and that is the reason of tolerance towards one another. It is stressed the idea of mankind’s developing of global consciousness, which means the awareness of interdependence of all people from different regions of the world in various fields. Coordination, optimization of various spheres of international life can be promoted with the usage of computer technologies enabling us to create a global model of world development.

The most effective models of study of global and regional problems, which behavior could be predicted only with low degree of probability are synergetic, stochastic (probabilistic) ones. Their usage foresees the entire arsenal of modern mathematical theories allowing analyzing global processes as open, self-organized, nonlinear, disruptive systems with fluctuations, dissipation, coherence, bifurcation phenomena. These theories are able to take into account all possible components of Universe and earth evolution with its nonlinear effects, contribute to co-evolution (harmonious combination of) human and the universe. It allows in the future to achieve expected results and exclude (or at least blur) disastrous events.