What does the world think about the future? A leading geographer surveys people's attitudes to what will happen tomorrow and shows why they get it so wrong In The Next Crisis leading geographer Danny Dorling unpacks the data on what people really think about when they consider the future. In a series of global surveys, he shows that our global concerns are often very different to those in the headlines - and we need to take these very seriously. We used to think of the future as a time of flying cars and infinite leisure; what happened? We live in "an age of crisis" or do we? In recent decades we certainly think of the world as in peril. Ideas of progress have been replaced by concern, worry and risk aversion. Large corporations now employ Chief Risk Officers who assess where the next danger will come from. In 2022 experts considered the top risks the energy supply crisis; the cost-of-living crisis; the food supply crisis; the threat of cyberattacks. But how does that reflect what really is going on? The need for food and shelter are seen as secondary level, local worries compared to western pre-occupations. But what can we be optimistic about, when looking towards tomorrow? The Next Crisis looks at the major crises that we face–the cost of living, poverty, inequality, unemployment, crime, corruption, health, climate change, the loss of biodiversity–and shows how we should rethink these futures.
Author
Danny Dorling is a British social geographer researching inequality and human geography. He is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography of the School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford. Danny Dorling has lived all his life in England. To try to counter his myopic world view, in 2006, Danny started working with a group of researchers on a project to remap the world (www.worldmapper.org). He has published with many colleagues more than a dozen books on issues related to social inequalities in Britain and several hundred journal papers. Much of this work is available open access and will be added to this website soon. His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education and poverty. Danny was employed as a play-worker in children’s summer play-schemes. He learnt the ethos of pre-school education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget this. He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers and a patron of Roadpeace, the national charity for road crash victims.
