Looking Ahead to Maryland 2050: Living in Our Environment

Abstracts

Future Studies: Maryland in the World

Dennis Pirages, Harrison Professor of International Environmental Policy, Department of Government and Politics

Abstract
Assessing future challenges and opportunities for Maryland as we move toward the year 2050 requires developing a theoretical framework for anticipating change.  The future will not be a simple extrapolation of the past.  The social sciences are currently poorly equipped to develop such a framework, partially because it is an interdisciplinary undertaking.  Three sets of factors can be identified that will strongly influence Maryland’s future: demographic shifts, environmental change, and technological innovation.  Taken together, these factors will raise future challenges and create new opportunities.  Maryland in 2050 also is likely to be much more deeply integrated into an emerging global system and be increasingly impacted by changes taking place in other parts of the world.

Speaker information
Dennis Pirages is Harrison Professor of International Environmental Policy at the University of Maryland.  He graduated with honors from the University of Iowa and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University.  He is author or editor of fourteen books including Global Ecopolitics, Global Technopolitics, Ecological Security, and most recently From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security.  While on leave from the University of Maryland he has served as Senior Staff on the Presidential Commission on an Agenda for the 1980s, and also as coordinator of a mid-level professional training program for the U.S. State Department. He also served for five years on the Executive Board of the World Future Society.  His research interests focus on future global issues, with particular emphasis on globalization and the spread of infectious disease, as well as the international politics of technology and energy resources.