Abstract
With peak oil near, has business-as-usual become business-was-usual? With climate change heating up the earth, even potentially leading to a new ice age, how should we best prepare? With terrorism becoming a daily fact of life has hope disappeared from our futures? Or will new technologies-gene therapy, stem cell injections, artificial intelligence- save us, or is this just the search for the magic bullet, a false hope, focussed only on the superficial, ignoring the deeper challenges the world faces?