Science and technology have clearly transformed human civilization and will continue to do so in the future. In reviewing the advances that have brought us to where we are, an exciting reality has come into focus for me—the future is now. We are already living in the future, one that exceeds the exuberant imaginations of past futurists in many ways.

This is my long-run forecast in brief:
The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards.
I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse.
Julian Simon, 1997

Julian Simon, 1997
in Meadows, Donella Hager. I nuovi limiti dello sviluppo: la salute del pianeta nel terzo millennio. Milano: Oscar Mondadori, 2006.

Meteorology, the science of the weather and of its prediction, has always been, both in the past and even more so in the present, the target of criticism and even jibes, the standard of its forecasting leaving much to be desired. In the words of one humorist among many, `Weather forecasting is a science which tells us about the weather we should have had !' (P. Bouvard). We can't really know what the weather will be like more than two or three days ahead, as many forecasters will confirm. But now, all this has been erased in a trice! Now, it is unhesitatingly claimed, we can predict weather and climate (which is the sum of weather) as far ahead as the year 2100, from our viewpoint a century earlier! Astrology or science?