The overwhelming data from scientific analysis, anecdotal evidence and personal experience points towards a systematic deterioration in Man’s well-being around the world. This is in stark contrast to the corresponding period of unprecedented technological advancement, global economic growth and unparalleled extraction of the earth’s resources.
While over the last two and a half centuries the world has industrialised, technologised and advanced more rapidly than at any time during the previous two thousand centuries, the unforeseen side-effects of such extraordinary progress have created dangerous implications for the earth’s population. Three particular Global Threats to Well-Being jeopardise both collective contentment and global security.
1.The Resource Constraint
The Resource Constraint suggests there are insufficient resources on the planet to sustain current levels of consumption for the existing population. The relationship between the earth’s resources, the productivity of goods produced, rates of consumption and the human population has broken down.
Climate Change exacerbates the resource constraint through the ecological damage caused by heating the earth’s atmosphere from carbon emissions. For those still unconvinced by the inconvenient truths of global warming, resource shortages should engage activity until the evidence is conclusive.
Inequality measured by a deficiency in basic human needs (poverty) still remains the most immediate and tangible threat to global human well-being. While ever collective happiness is not the central human objective in theory, intention and practice then personal, communal and global aspirations will remain mismatched and well-being erosion will continue.
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