Worldwatch have published Vital Signs 2005, their assessment of global economic, socio-political and environmental trends. The amassing of statistics from a wide range of sources reveals some fascinating statistics about the state of the world.

Global unemployment has risen to 6.2 percent, up from 5.6 percent in 1993. The lack of job opportunities has been linked to ongoing instability in places such as the Middle East, where 58 percent of the population is under the age of 25 and a quarter of working-age youth are unemployed.

It is interesting to put this statistic in the context of policy priorities in the developed world: pension shortfalls due to greying populations and immigration. There is surely room for sensible reform of the latter to soften the blow of the former.

Both emissions and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) are accelerating: U.S. energy-related emissions are the highest, and rose 16 percent between 1990 and 2003. China ranks second in its total emissions, up more than 47 percent since 1990. The average atmospheric CO2 concentration has risen 35 percent since the dawn of the industrial age, to 377.4 parts per million by volume in 2004.

I am not at all optimistic about these trends reversing in the near future. The US Government is using every trick in the book to deny the self-evident, and thus undermining attempts at international consensus. Meanwhile, the rapid development of China and India risk making piecemeal efforts at emissions reduction elsewhere irrelevant in any case. If it is not too late already, the only realistic hope comes from the development of environmentally-friendly energy sources which are attractive on the open market. The future for the global climate looks bleak.

World oil consumption surged by 3.4 percent in 2004, the fastest rate of increase in 16 years.

In the continental U.S., oil production peaked at 8 million barrels per day in 1970 and fell to just 2.9 million barrels a day in 2004.

Production is falling in 33 of the 48 largest oil-producing countries, including 6 of 11 OPEC members.

Ever growing demand chasing increasingly scarce supplies will inevitably lead to conflict and economic turmoil. Surely this creates even more impetus to develop sustainable, economically viable alternative sources of energy. In relation to the amounts spent on other sectors, the money to finance effective development of technologies which we already know hold the key to future energy provision are tiny. The only thing impeding such an approach is pressure from those industries which stand to lose the most from such changes. No prizes for guessing which ones those are.

Despite a growing global grain harvest and rising meat production and consumption, the number of hungry people around the world has increased for the first time since the 1970s, to 852 million daily. Estimates suggest that programs to cut world hunger in half would cost $24 billion annually.

The cumulative number of people infected with HIV/AIDS reached 78 million in 2004—nearly double the 1997 total. Big wild cards for the future are China and India, where two fifths of the world population lives and where HIV/AIDS surveillance efforts remain inadequate. Spending just $10 billion a year on a global HIV/AIDS program and $3 billion to control malaria in sub-Saharan Africa would save millions of lives.

Programs to provide clean water and sewage systems would cost roughly $37 billion annually; to eradicate illiteracy, $5 billion; and to provide immunisation for every child in the developing world, $3 billion.

Meanwhile...

Military spending also surged: every hour of every day, the world spends more than $100 million on soldiers, weapons, and ammunition.

High-income countries, home to only 16 percent of the world’s people, account for $662 billion, or 75 percent, of global military expenditures.

Military budgets of high-income countries are roughly 10 times larger than their combined development assistance.

It may not be a particularly original point to make, but can it be stated too many times? According to these figures it would cost the world $82 billion to halve world hunger, save millions of lives senselessly lost to AIDS and malaria, provide universal clean water, and immunise and give basic education to every child in the developing world. This money could be found by reducing global arms spending by less than ten per cent. Anyone else think that a world which provides these basic needs to all its citizens will be more than 10% safer, and less likely to provoke conflict between the haves and have-nots?