Throughout this book I have tried to present all the facts, to give us a rounded feel of the real state of the world, and I have tried to compare and contrast it to our current understanding, stemming from the recurrent incantations of the Litany. In this concluding chapter I want to sum up the problems and consequences of our biased view of the world. However, I will also allow myself to be more free to point out what I think are the great remaining challenges for humanity.

On the global level, it seems obvious to me that the major problems remain with hunger and poverty. Although we have witnessed great improvements both in feeding ever more people, ever better, and bringing ever more people out of poverty, and although these positive trends are likely to continue into the future, there still remain some 800 million hungry people and some 1.2 billion poor people in this world. In terms of securing a long-term improvement of the environmental quality of the developing world, securing growth so as to lift these people out of hunger and poverty is of the utmost importance, since our historical experience tells us that only when we are sufficiently rich can we start to think about, worry about and deal with environmental problems.