Most people, I would say, have an idea floating around in their heads of what the future should look like, a way in which everyone would get along and prosper (or at least everyone said person cares about.) Some visions may be more fleshed-out than others. Some may be fuzzy visions of a cheerful, happy world with no hope of coming to fruition unless everyone worldwide spontaneously started to be way better people than they are currently. Others may come with plans on how to make their world a reality. Mine is, I think, the plan itself. People will always be complete bastards to each other, for no real reason but I think this plan reduces the number of excuses they have to do evil and would make the world a much better place. The best part is, these things are completely possible. It would just take a lot of effort on everyone’s part which is why I don’t hold out much hope of it happening, but regardless here it is:
1) Step One: Energy. What we need first of all is to solve the energy problem. My solution would be to offer an X-Prize like reward for coming up with a cheap, clean, renewable, and abundant way to create electricity and lots of it and distribute it safely. If we had extremely cheap electricity the generation of which was not destroying the environment, we could switch off of fossil fuels and onto electricity. We already have engines with electric motors, we just need to improve the technology for charging them and slowly replace gas stations with Recharge stations. We’d need batteries though that could go 500 miles on a single charge and take about 10 minutes to recharge. It’s certainly a challenge, but possible as technology continues to advance. And people can recharge their car overnight if they have to in their own garage. And once we have the means to create clean electricity, we can sell/give the technology to the rest of the world.
2) Step Two: Water. Once we have clean, plentiful energy in the form of electricity, the next thing that needs doing is providing water. Using electricity, we need to find a way to make efficient and cheap desalinization plants. Basically, every man is on an island. The big islands we call continents, but they’re still surrounded by water. The world is 2/3rds covered in water, but we can’t drink most of it because it’s salty. Providing clean, fresh water to the world would be the next step, and with plentiful, cheap, clean water, we can start irrigating areas that have become dessert. We can license out this technology to third-world countries as well to allow them access to clean water, and even land-locked countries will benefit, because with plentiful water other countries will not have any problems selling or providing water to their neighbors. With proper irrigation will come bountiful harvests and the citizens of each country will be able to produce enough to feed their families.
Yep, just two (giant) steps and we will have solved three of the main problems that cause wars: Energy, Water, and Food. Now if we could just do something about the other things that cause wars: bull-headed politicians, racism, power-hungry morons, and mankind’s ceaseless destructive tendencies, we’d be all set.