Global Challenges of the Twenty-First-Century Essay

Introduction

The dawn of the new millennium has brought many positive changes and discoveries as well as various challenges for the world to take into account. Some of those challenges include the failure of global economic expansion, the rise of nationalist and anti-capitalist sentiments, and climate change.

Main body

First of all, the beginning of the century was marked by the War on Terror started by G. W. Bush in Iraq after al-Qaeda took responsibility for the 9/11 terrorist attack. Following that, the U.S. housing market crashed in 2008 after several years of decline resulting in the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression. The globalist economic policies promoted the strategy of outsourcing which helped the countries with predominantly cheap labor to excel while driving the capital and jobs away from the U.S.A and Europe (Adelman et al. 927). This resulted in the discontent of the middle class and the rise of the anti-globalist and anti-capitalist movements. The trend was largely employed by populist right-wing politicians like Trudeau, Johnson, and Trump to seize the electoral majority and establish new nationalistic policies. Simultaneously, global climate change, which has been dawning upon humanity since the start of the industrial revolution, has reached a point where it has become undeniable. According to the report compiled by IPBES, “climate change was responsible for significant and irreversible reductions in global biodiversity,” as well as countless cataclysms and natural disasters (Adelman et al. 928).

Conclusion

To conclude, the global recession, as well as the War on Terror, was largely responsible for the nationalistic anti-globalist movements around the world. In the new reality, the problems of intolerance and discrimination have surfaced once again. However, global climate change is the biggest challenge that humans have faced yet, threatening to destroy the world as we know it.

References

Adelman, J., Pollard. E. and Tignor, R. (2021). Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, Volume 2: From 1000 CE to the Present (6^th ed.). W. W. Norton & Co.