In 2048, how will we view election 2008?

Unless we prepare our children and grandchildren now for the real challenges of tomorrow, those issues may overwhelm them. Unfortunately, the level of rhetoric currently pervading the 2008 election isn't even coming close.

By Leigh Pomeroy

The 4th of July has come and gone. In Minnesota the corn should have been knee high. But in many parts of the state it was more ankle length, like tennis socks.

We're waist deep, however, in the mire of the political season. And I'm still waiting for the candidates, pundits and media to discuss the real issues that face America and the planet.

What are those issues?

By far the most comprehensive, long-term challenge is that the human species is on the verge of overpopulating and overusing the planet earth -- its home -- and shows no sign of abating this course in the near future. For example, Dr. Eric Chivian, Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, notes that "25% or more of all species currently alive may become extinct during the next 50 years" if today's rates of extinction continue. This is just one impact of humankind's footprint on the planet.

A little more than 300 million people inhabit the United States today. Few Americans would say, "That's not enough." Sure, there are rural areas that would welcome more people, but most urban and suburban dwellers (I wager) would say, "I like the size of my city the way it is."

Now imagine the U.S. with 410 million people, which is what the population is projected to be in 2048, just ten presidential elections from now. That means that today's fifth grader will have 110 million more fellow Americans to deal with by the time he or she reaches 50.

Worldwide there are 6.7 billion humans, up from 3 billion in 1960 and on the way to over 9 billion by 2048. If today we're facing rapidly rising costs for food and fuel, what will our condition be like when there are 2.3 billion more of us -- over one-third more?

Even though I teach writing and film to college students, I try to discuss what I think young people need to know for the future.

I talk to them about the internet, and how this generation, having grown up with it, takes it for granted. I mention that as biological beings how we are now physically incapable of processing all the information instantly available to us. I tell them that it may be common within decades for humans to have biological or electronic memory implants to assist our brains to function.

I tell them that although I teach writing and its rules -- spelling, punctuation, grammar, structure -- they may not need those skills in the future. Computers may take care of all of that mundane stuff for them. Or perhaps their brain implants will.

I tell them that by the time they are my age (pushing 60), there will no longer be ice at the Arctic polar cap. "Think about it," I say. "The last time this happened was thousands of years before our ancestors emerged from forests and grasslands to create the beginnings of what we call civilization." (If I were teaching kindergarten the students might ask, "But where will Santa Claus live?")

Then there are the other issues not being discussed: How to pay for Medicare and Social Security for an aging population. How to stem the flow of U.S. assets -- land, natural resources, infrastructure, financial institutions, manufacturing or debt -- to foreign ownership. How to deal with increasingly frequent natural disasters whose effects are magnified by land overdevelopment, climate change and simply having more people on the planet.

My students may notice the corn growing in the fields, but few have any idea where most of our food comes from and how it is processed. They take for granted the so-called "green revolution" that brought about a significant advances in crop yields and agricultural efficiencies over the last 60 years.

But the green revolution may be at its end, as increasingly society is forced to deal with its externalized costs, like dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, depleted and poisoned aquifers, herbicide resistant weeds and pesticide resistant insects. There is a physical limit to what the land and crop species will yield, no matter how much manipulation is used to enhance productivity.

July 4th in the U.S. means hamburgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob, beer and soda. But our meat is processed by immigrants (both legal and illegal), the fresh corn comes from Mexico, the beer company is probably owned by a foreign corporation, and the gas we use to get to our celebrations arrives via pipeline from Canada or by ship from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria or Venezuela.

It's a different world that it was in 1776, 232 years and 10 generations ago. It will be a different world in 2048. Are students learning today what kind of world they will be facing just 40 years from now? And are the politicians talking about that world less than two generations away?

Unless we prepare our children and grandchildren now for the real challenges of tomorrow, those issues may overwhelm them. Unfortunately, the level of rhetoric currently pervading the 2008 election isn't even coming close.