Contemporary Global Issues and Trends

The examples you are about to read represent a minute portion of global issues arising today.

The interconnection of global issues and trends

No global issues can be considered as isolated from one another. To give one brief example, new communication trends, such as using cell phones and computers, gave rise to new trends in consumption, which in turn resulted in vastly increased levels of electronic waste, a type of pollution which "comprise[d] 70% of our overall toxic waste" as of 2014 (Electronic revolution=E-waste, 2014, para. 5). Read more about e-waste below.

https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/Electronic-Waste-Facts

For another example of how global issues and trends are interrelated, consider deforestation and climate change. Deforestation is often driven by trends in agricultural products; to give one example, an increased demand for avocadoes has led to deforestation in Mexico. Deforestation is a major issue, resulting in habitat destruction and causing the potential for erosion, which causes the secondary potential for water pollution and a greater risk of mud slides. On a global level, deforestation alone produces 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions (Bennett, 2017, para. 16).

http://climate.org/deforestation-and-climate-change/

Climate change and sea level rise

Geographically speaking, climate change can be described as "the long-term alteration of temperature and typical weather patterns in a place" (Climate change, 2019, para. 2). Two major factors in climate change are consumerism and industrialization in the developed world. This has led to dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide emissions, which are implicated in climate change and sea level rise. Coastal areas and the polar regions are two geographic areas on the frontline for experiencing the effects of climate change. The National Geographic link below offers a good overview of climate change and its relation to geographic factors.

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/climate-change/

Due to these increasing levels of carbon dioxide, all living creatures are at risk for a number of health problems. A warming planet with higher levels of carbon dioxide provides an atmosphere conducive to the spread of allergens; as well, these conditions provide a greater range for pathogen-carrying fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes to spread. Elevated carbon dioxide is also expected to decrease protein in important food crops. See the sidebar at the link below for more on allergens and food security.

https://www.cdc.gov/climateandhealth/effects/default.htm

Sea level rise is another risk of climate change. At-risk areas of the world include China and Indonesia, both countries with extensive coastlines, and island nations such as Australia and Cuba. Closer to home, Florida, with its miles of coastline, is one of the geographic areas most at risk for increasingly severe coastal flooding and erosion. Read more about Florida's risks of coastal flooding below.

https://statesatrisk.org/florida/coastal-flooding

New Technologies

Computing and the internet have impacted many areas of society. One of these areas is medicine, and one of the biggest potential breakthroughs was ushered in by the Human Genome Project and the possibility of advances in preventive medicine. This was a project that "revealed a total of 3.12 billion base pairs in the human genome" (Bennett, 2000, para.3), and one that would not have been possible without supercomputers "capable of performing more than 250 billion sequence comparisons per hour" (Bennett, para. 5). Along with the potential benefits of this project come privacy concerns, the question of investment and gene-patenting, and the social effects of human engineering. The links below outline the Human Genome Project's achievements and discuss some of its drawbacks.

https://www.itworld.com/article/2783707/computers-helped-drive-breakthrough-in-human-genome-sequencing.html

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2000-01/computers-and-the-hgp/index.html

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009

One major economic crisis can lead to cascading effects throughout global markets. The collapse of a strong housing market in the United States, which began in 2006, indicated stresses in global financial markets and banking systems. Much of this crisis centered on banks and other lenders making risky loans to short-term investors in search of quick profits as well as to borrowers who previously might have been considered unqualified due to low income. Foreign banks also participated in this boom market. This led to increased borrowing by the banks themselves in order to expand their lending. When this volatile housing market broke down, investors began to pull their money out of banks; in turn, financial institutions around the world began to fail. Investment halted. Because global financial institutions were interconnected as never before, the phemonemon known as the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis set in (Global financial crisis, n.d.).
Read a step-by-step account of the GFC at the link below.

https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/the-global-financial-crisis.html

Additional Reading

The AP World History examination outlines more global issues and trends in its "Unit 9: Globalization 1900 to Present." Scroll to Unit 9 at the link below to look at more of these global issues and trends.

https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/ap-world-history-modern-course-and-exam-description_0.pdf