Single biggest issue in the world?

Ultra rich wrote:

We're not prepared for a big asteroid.

I kind of agree with this one. The odds of this happening in a given lifetime may be crazy low but wouldn’t it be a stupid way to go extinct when we’re smart enough to be ready for this if we cared? Maybe the real problem are all the stupid squabbles we have that prevent humans from unifying and developing our full potential as a race.

Too many of these answers so far are too idealistic.

THE answer is...

...lack of clean drinking water in most of the world.

EOT

generically speaking. the greatest threat is always war - nothing comes close to it. Except maybe pandemics I suppose.

The big threat is that trump's trade wars will turn the world away from an uneasy superleague of competitors...into a axis vs allies situation of superpowers. Trade wars can go hot. We need to reset the league rules asap and get everyone in the same league.

Immigration and reaction to immigration is second. Clearly poor people will be moving to rich nations, and the natives in rich nations will push back in unpredictable ways. We're tribal and we don't like newbies coming in. Climate disasters and resultant migration will probably make this the biggest story of the next century.

Climate of course...can the world grow in ways that protect the environment yet provide ways for poor nations to rise up? hard to see how that would work. Maybe, if tech improves and we stop with one-use items like fossil fuels and their derivatives like plastic.

Eventually we'll have to ration fertilizer to grow food with. I believe North Africa has the largest amount of it remaining. That will be interesting.

Funny how 20 years ago the threat of islamism would have been #1 and now it's an afterthought. So hard to predict anything .

but really, isn't nuclear war always #1? We've made it 2-3 generations with world-ending munitions. That's not very much. In a day all that humanity has built for a million years would end.

Nothing tops nuclear war.

Some people think that all the damage we do to the Earth is as natural as wild animals living off the land. If we end up poisoning ourselves or the planet then that's just nature running its course. Doesn't make the results any less disastrous and sounds like an enormous shirking of responsibility to me but hey.

The single biggest issue in the world is that jamin needs a woman.

Brexit / Nationalism

A horrendous movement that's leading to rich countries like the UK stopping lifting up poorer countries. Foreign aid cut right down. We created a vaccine that was easy to store and dirt cheap - yet how many have we helped send to Africa / India etc? All these live aids, charity singles etc counted for nothing - socially we're actually going backwards.

People's disrespect for hard, cold facts.

A lot of other problems come from this. Too many people are more interested in scoring ideological points than actually facing the reality.

dustydave wrote:

If you had to label just one.

The slow progression of world organization and power to Astana. The NWO Neocon agenda must be stopped before it is too late.

Josh439 wrote:

Booming obesity and myopia rates are probably the biggest issues that negatively affects the most people.

i just looked up the definition of "myopia" on google and I'm not sure which definition you're referring to. Care to make it a bit more clear for me?