The last century – especially if we extend it back to 1870 – was unique. It took 18 centuries for the population of the planet to increase from 250 million around 1 AD to 1 billion in 1800. It increased to 1.6 billion by 1900 and it had crossed 6 billion in 2000. Such exponential growth of population is unprecedented. It was also around the beginning of the last century – give and take a couple of decades on either side - that internal combustion machine, aircraft, electricity, telephone and penicillin came into being. Later on the human specie built on the foundation of these inventions to create radio, computer, space travel, internet and the possibility of a visit to another celestial body in the universe.

The dual growth of population and technology explains the increase of carbon emissions. Until 1925, the rate of carbon emissions was 1 billion tonnes per year. The population then was less than 2 billion and many of the technologies were still young. By the time the population reaches almost 7 billion – with rapid growth of industrial civilization – around 2010, the rate of carbon emissions would have reached 10 billion tonnes a year. It is 8 billion tonnes a year now. We don’t need much greater evidence to prove the linkage between human activity, technological development and global warming.

The big question now is what next. Technological breakthroughs will continue. Before this column appears on our website, CERN will have charged its first proton beam at the Large Hadron Collider beneath Geneva. The two beams will clash into each other at the speed of light by the end of this year and we will know if we discover any new matter, any new source of energy, or any new black hole. I would consider the particle collision experiment at CERN as a giant leap, yet very much building on the breakthroughs made by physicists in the last century.

We may see bold experiments in creating a novel life form in the next few decades – marriage of genomes, artificial chromosomes, and perhaps even artificially made but almost natural biological organs. We have already laid the foundations of a post-human society.

We may travel farther in outer space, perhaps beyond our solar system. A human being or a post-human being may walk on Mars. We may have aircrafts regularly taking passengers to the stratosphere.

And yet we don’t have answers to the basic questions. Humanity has seen ego, greed, competition, conflict, exploitation for more than 6000 years. We are nowhere near creating a machine which can free humanity from greed and war. We are nowhere near creating a pill which can eliminate hunger from the earth. We are nowhere near creating a computer that can produce a permanent happiness code.

We don't know for sure if the population will stabilise at 9-10 billion as some experts argue or if it will quadruple from 6 billion in 2000 to 24 billion in 2100, just as it multiplied from 1.5 to 6 billion in the previous century. If the former happens, would the period of 1950-2050 be unique in human history when population exploded? If the latter happens, and if technological progress takes place alongside, would we not reach carbon emission rates of 20-30 billion per year and would we survive it?

When we wonder about the next thing in progress, we must be clear about the concept of progress. Is progress taking our conflict between upper castes and lower castes or whites and blacks to post-humans and humans? Or is progress taking our conflict from the earth to the outer space? Or does progress mean graduating from domination of the earth to the domination of the solar system?

If the next thing in progress is about extending average human life to 200 years or making space travel an every day affordable event, our science will have progressed. However, so long as the human mind is seized by a desire to compete and dominate, how can we say it has progressed from the minds of dinosaurs or jungle animals? With huge breakthroughs in physics and biology, the evolution of our bodies and our environment is foretold. However, the real question is whether the evolution of our minds and our basic instincts will ever take place.