Our legacy: how we will be viewed in 2050

The number of people is not our only problem. Many millions, particularly those in developing countries, live in abysmal conditions and many die from malnutrition and disease. Many, including many indigenous peoples, live with unclean water and inadequate food, and have pitiful health standards and poor educational opportunities.

If our society had any humanity and dignity for our fellow humans we would address these problems as a matter of urgency. The situation is no better for legitimate refugees, as ineffective world bureaucracies strangle their access to refuge and welfare. We have the capacity to address these problems, but are failing to do so.

Unfortunately, the lot of the disadvantaged is unlikely to improve when some organisations and governments openly promote population growth.

Some governments provide financial incentives to encourage population growth according to the tenet that economic growth flows from population growth. Other organisations, particularly some religions conceived in antiquity, encourage procreation and rally against birth control, and perversely, oppose the use of condoms that could also prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Unchecked population growth is incompatible with long-term sustainability.

A more appropriate objective would be to increase the quality of life per capita (including economic, environmental, social and other factors) in an ethical and sustainable manner.

This is clearly a desirable outcome, even if its implementation might be more problematic, especially when some religions continue to deny equality and individual rights and irrationally discriminate against people based on their sexual preference, sex and belief system.

Some religions deny gays the same rights as heterosexuals, deny women equality and the right to their own bodies by opposing abortion, and deny the terminally ill rights to their own bodies by opposing euthanasia (which is a voluntary act, by definition), meaning that many people unnecessarily and inhumanely suffer indignity and pain in the final stages of their lives.

Some governments customarily but foolishly reward discriminatory and intolerant religions, and their business enterprises, with substantial tax concessions. Although many religious people might have good intentions, they have been indoctrinated in a system of subjective beliefs derived from their particular culture or geographic region.

They allow their children to be similarly indoctrinated and try to impose their religious values on others, but vehemently reject other religious or secular values being imposed on them. This religious confrontation and inequity has contributed to establishing intolerance and mistrust of other peoples, nations and cultures as a defining and regrettable characteristic of our current and previous generations.

Two consequences of this intolerance are war, which dominates security considerations now as it has throughout recorded history, and terrorism, which has emerged recently as a threat to peaceful civilisation.

War, terrorism, and mutual mistrust of other nations have resulted in the defence budgets of the economically more powerful nations being obscene in their profligacy.