Society

Globally, we have neglected this topic [agriculture] for decades. We have, worldwide, over a billion undernourished people. Food prices have risen over the past few years, with our own research showing these should accelerate up from 2010. The world's demographics are also alarming: The world's population has quadrupled in the twentieth century, doubling between 1960 and 2007. For the first time in history, we have seen the global urban population exceed the rural one, and, over the past forty years, agricultural-land has increased by only 10%. Two words, food security, are central to our model.

Unknown.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Physicist who developed the theory of relativity and E=mc².

Intelligence is a big deal. Humanity owes its dominant position on Earth not to any special strength of our muscles, nor any unusual sharpness of our teeth, but to the unique ingenuity of our brains. It is our brains that are responsible for the complex social organization and the accumulation of technical, economic, and scientific advances that, for better and worse, underpin modern civilization.

Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

the printing press helped democratise Europe by providing space for discussion and agreement among politically engaged citizens, often before the state had fully democratised.

German Philosopher & Social Theorist; Developed Theory of Communicative Action

New media conducive to fostering participation can indeed increase freedoms… just as the printing press, the postal service, the telegraph and the telephone did before.

Internet theorist & author on cognitive surplus and social media's impact.

A single super large combo meal at any popular hamburger outlet will contain a full day's worth of calorie intake. When one sees such meals being purchased and eaten, one wonders whether the individual concerned is going to consume only water for the next 24 hours.

Unknown.

We are in the midst of a pandemic of eating too much (the overweight and obesity pandemic) and a pandemic of not having enough to eat (the under nutrition and hunger pandemic). Roughly 1.6 billion people in the world are affected by the first pandemic and roughly 1 billion people in the world today are affected by the second pandemic.

Unknown.

HIV/AIDS is the greatest pandemic in human history. It is chronic pandemic, in the sense that its rise and fall is measured in decades. The known part of this pandemic is now three decades old, and it has several decades still to run.

Unknown.

In order to censor YouTube, for example, countries like Turkey and Pakistan had to block access to the whole site; it's not practical just to block selected content.

Unknown.

[the impact of the internet on liberty and free speech has been] very positive indeed – not so much two steps forward and one step back, as ten steps forward for every step back. By breaking the oligopoly of the established press and letting everyone be a publisher, it has made information much harder for the powerful to control.

Unknown.

Every country that has managed to raise its standards of living has somehow integrated itself commercially with the rest of the world, it's probably a necessary condition.

Leading economist specializing in European monetary integration and financial crises.

Taxes are the price of civilisation.

Supreme Court Justice; Major Legal Scholar & Reformer

The group found that, on average, people living in Manhattan travel 2.5 miles most days, compared to five miles in Los Angeles. But we also found that when you look at the longest trips people make, people that live in New York go significantly further, 69 miles on a weekday compared to 29 in Los Angeles

Unknown.

During the twentieth century we saw consumption boom beyond the planets natural limits, beyond what the planet is capable of sustaining. Everything is connected, forest destruction is a major cause of global warming, climate change.

Environmental activist & former Executive Director of Greenpeace International

Taken together, mass migration, mass starvation and mass extinctions are what we will see if we sleep walk into a future of unmitigated climate change. These stresses will ruin economies and drive competition over dwindling resources.

Environmental activist & former Executive Director of Greenpeace International

This has been a heart-wrenching day, and I will never forget the destruction and suffering that I have witnessed. I have visited the scenes of many natural disasters around the world, but nothing like this. The scale is so large: so many people, in so many places, in so much need…

Former UN Secretary-General, served two five-year terms.