Asleep at the wheel... Food? Water? Energy? 'The Spirit in The Gene' at
work.
Steve
Poll: Americans Predict Life in 2050
A joint poll from the Pew Research Center and Smithsonian magazine finds
high hopes about science but anxiety about the environment
By T. A. Frail
Illustrations By Serge Bloch
/Smithsonian/ magazine, August 2010
*More from Smithsonian.com*
* Smithsonian magazine's 40th Anniversary
<http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/40th-anniversary/96832459.html?utm_source=relatedarticles&utm_medium=internallink&utm_campaign=SmithMag&utm_content=Smithsonian%20magazine%27s%2040th%20Anniversary>
Within the next 40 years, most Americans believe, the United States will
get the bulk of its energy from sources other than oil. Computers will
converse like people. Cancer will be cured, and artificial limbs will
outperform natural ones. Astronauts will land on Mars, and ordinary
people will travel in space.
But that optimistic outlook on scientific achievement---documented in a
nationwide opinion poll conducted by the Pew Research Center
<http://people-press.org/report/625/> and /Smithsonian/---does not
extend to the environment. A small majority of those polled said most of
the United States would face severe water shortages by 2050. Six in ten
said the oceans would be less healthy than they are now, and seven in
ten foresaw a major energy crisis. Overall, fewer than half expected the
quality of Earth's environment to improve.
"If the U.S. has a national religion, the closest thing to it is faith
in technology," said Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the
Pew Research Center <http://people-press.org/report/625/>. But
"technology is not seen as a panacea for fixing the environment."
The poll, occasioned by the magazine's 40th anniversary and designed to
assess attitudes about the next 40 years, also documented a drop in
expectations. Americans remain generally positive, with 64 percent of
those surveyed saying they were somewhat or very optimistic about what
the next 40 years holds for them and their families; 61 percent said the
same about the nation's future. But in a Pew poll taken in May 1999, the
questions garnered response rates of 81 percent and 70 percent,
respectively.
Of course, the 1999 poll was taken at the height of the high-tech boom
and on the eve of a new millennium. Since then, terrorists attacked the
United States, the nation has engaged in two wars, the cost of living
has outpaced wages and a recession has damaged the economy, among other
things.
In the new survey, 58 percent of respondents said a world war would
occur in the next four decades, 53 percent said terrorists would attack
the United States with nuclear weapons, and the same majority said the
nation would be less important in the world than it is now.
The /Smithsonian//Pew poll was conducted April 21-26---just after the BP
oil spill began in the Gulf of Mexico, but well before its magnitude
became apparent. The survey included 1,546 adults in the United States
reached by residential telephone or cellphone. The margin of error for
the total sample is no more than plus or minus 4.5 points.
The documented belief in technological advancement extended from the
laboratory (half said an extinct species would be resuscitated through
cloning) to outer space (half said evidence of life would be found
elsewhere in the universe) to the marketplace (a small majority said
gasoline-powered cars would go out of production).
In an exception to the pessimism about the environment, the poll found a
ten-point drop in the percentage of respondents who say the earth will
get warmer: from 76 percent in 1999 to 66 percent in 2010.
That trend "is very consistent with data we've gathered on the issue of
global warming more generally," Keeter said. "There are many possible
explanations, but one thing is quite clear: there is a strong partisan
and ideological pattern to the decline in belief in global warming." The
vast majority of the change since 1999, he said, has occurred among
Republicans and independents who lean Republican.
Because the U.S. population is expected to increase by more than 100
million by 2050, the poll asked about such growth. More than twice as
many respondents (42 percent) said it would be more harmful than
beneficial (16 percent). And there was ambivalence about immigration.
Roughly a third of respondents said legal immigration had to be
decreased to keep the economy strong, but a slightly higher proportion
said legal immigration had to be kept at current levels; a quarter said
it should be increased.
A clear majority expected race relations to improve (68 percent). Even
more expected a Hispanic candidate to be elected president of the United
States (69 percent). And 89 percent---the largest majority in the entire
poll---said a woman would be elected president.
There was broad agreement that the cultural landscape, however else it
changes over the next 40 years, will have less paper. More than six in
ten respondents said they believed that paper currency and printed
newspapers would disappear and personal letters sent by mail would be
exceedingly rare.
And a hopeful outlook on the U.S. economy---56 percent said it would be
stronger in 2050 than it is now---came with a caveat: 86 percent said
Americans would have to work into their 70s before retiring. Those
longer careers, in the respondents' view, would not be accompanied by
longer lives. Those who thought more people would live to be 100 (42
percent) were outnumbered by those who did not (50 percent).
*T. A. Frail* is a senior editor at Smithsonian.
Read more:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/40th-anniversary/Poll-Americans-Predict-Life-in-2050.html#ixzz0sTuGIa51
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
