Everyone wants to predict the future, but Laurence Smith actually does so in his new book, “The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Our Civilization’s Northern Future” (Dutton, 2010).

Smith, a UCLA professor and geographer, traveled the Arctic region after receiving a Guggenheim fellowship in 2006. In Russia, Canada and the northern regions of Europe, he visited remote aboriginal villages, and studied both permafrost and demography.

He concludes that the future is a mixed bag of positive and negative: People will urbanize further; the global population will age; and aboriginal groups of the far north will gain a voice in how we spend our natural resources. It’s not how many people live on Earth, but rather how we live that will affect outcomes.

To read the full interview click here.

Published: Wednesday, November 24, 2010