It was to avoid collisions on the early railways that the Victorians replaced local mean times, one for each town, with a national standard for synchronising Britain’s clocks. Technology continues to multiply the ways in which we can be touched by distant developments. But the solutions are no longer so simple. In a report published yesterday, the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations argues that the challenges of the coming century will overwhelm the institutions we inherited from the last.
The problems are daunting. Our planet is growing warmer. International travel spreads diseases that are resistant to old cures. Global trade and finance create wealth but expose us to faraway storms.
The problems of the industrial revolution called for stronger national government. But the world’s challenges are now too large for a single state to solve. The US is losing interest in many of the international institutions it helped found after the second world war. China, no longer disposed to play by America’s rules, is nonetheless unwilling to fashion a new order of its own.