Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The second big driver that will transform our future
is of course, demographics. 1 billion
children are alive today, all of whom
will be adults within the next eighteen years.
All of them will see your lifestyle
on CNN or NBC even, if they don't
own a TV, they will see it through the door
of the bar. They will see it through the posters
on the side of the highway, even if they don't
own a car. 1 billion children, all of whom
will consume resources. Linked to that,
an urbanisation trend. At a
pace which we have never seen before. 300
million people in China alone
will move from rural areas into cities
in the next 8 or 9 years. Another 450
million people will move in Africa
off the land and into cities.
Most of them, most city dwellers
already live in slums. They have
no running water, or maybe the very first service they have
is access to a tap, a hundred metres away.
They have, at the moment, very little access
to electricity, but they're there. And they're demanding
infrastructure, and their homes will grow from the one-story shack, to
2 storeys, to 3 storeys, and then once the mains water supply arrives
another crisis comes. And of course, as you've seen it,
which is the puddles of water everywhere, the drains that are full
of soap and human waste,
the earth that used to be dry, because people only carried 10 litres
100 metres every
10 hours, now we have leaking taps, we have
sewage problems, and we have
a whole host of other issues requiring more infrastructure.