Image from Pxhere

Christmas and the New Year. It’s traditionally a time to reflect on the past year, and to look forward with anticipation to what we would like to see in the future. At this time, it’s appropriate to think about the community, society and world we live in, and hope for better. It’s not been a good year in many respects – mass shootings, economic crises, global warming and worrying signs of irreversible climate change, homelessness on the rise, conflict, drought, famine, and idiots in charge of our governments.

In other ways, we have made some progress – raising awareness of the needs of minority groups, celebrating diversity, many cultural achievements, and improvements in health and every day life through technology breakthroughs (AI diagnosis, robotic surgery and 3D printing of human organs, for example).

As ever, the negatives seem to outweigh the positives, but just about all of the solutions are within the gift of world governments.

Here is my wish list for the future (some may think these are pious hopes):

1. Education must be our priority. Improvements in education are slow, or stall due to government bureaucracy and inadequate funding. Governments need to trust teachers, and step out of their way. In some countries, there is no education, or it stops at the end of primary school age. Enough funding (some have calculated this at around $5 billion) would bring free education to every child on the planet.

2. The planet is sick, and needs urgent intervention. We need a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It doesn’t help that certain leaders care more about profit than they do about building for the future. I wish to see a rapid rise in the use of battery powered vehicles, and reduction of the use of single use plastics, and other pollutants. We need improved recycling, to which governments need to fully commit.

3. Instead of building walls, build bridges. Simple.

What is your wish list for 2019 and beyond? The comments box below is open.

I wish you a very peaceful Christmas filled with love, and best wishes for a happy and successful New Year.

Best wishes by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.