Hard Choices Ahead: Adapting to Global Interdependence March 6, 2011

Global interdependence has emerged gradually but inexorably as the human population has burgeoned: New technologies have multiplied human interactions and impacts, globalization of trade has intermeshed geographically distant economies, and weapons systems have acquired unprecedented reach and destructiveness. Climate change, which results from the cumulative effects of these processes on the global ecosystem, is, perhaps, the most dramatic symbol of global interdependence. While these various trends have been well reported, the profundity of the change that global interdependence represents in the conditions of life on earth has largely escaped notice. Oregon State University professor emeritus Richard Clinton proposes that we ponder together the immensity of the challenge global interdependence poses to many of our accepted assumptions, honored values, and accustomed ways of doing things.

Richard Clinton is professor emeritus of political science at Oregon State University, where he taught international relations, Latin American politics, American foreign policy, and alternative international futures. He currently teaches in the Honors College at OSU.

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