I had hoped we would avoid repeating the mistakes of the last century but we haven’t learned many lessons.

The first 50 years were consumed with national identity, the expansion of boundaries, extermination of ethnic groups, the use of force to take resources and the premature, violent deaths of a hundred million people. We were territorial pack animals supreme.

This nationalist self interest, this grab for colonial power and raw materials, was only partially reigned in by the Cold War and the United Nations, European Union and various trading arrangements that tried, with limited success, to bring warring members of the human family closer together.

However, earlier colonial interests spawned a range of festering problems that are still with us, in the Middle East, the Balkans and much of Africa. Add oil and religion and that’s unstable.

Individual countries surrendered only limited sovereignty after 1950 and now seem intent on taking even that back if the European elections are an indication.

Our desire to live in the present, forget past problems and ignore what is likely to happen in future is partly the result of our short-term representative democracy, greed for unlimited consumption, fostered by rampant corporate capitalism and a lack of understanding of the past.

The current century has all the ingredients to make the last one, with under two billion people in 1914, look relatively harmless.

We are now seven billion consumers, armed to the teeth, on our way to nine billion before 2050, and while we live in our separate little nations, for the first time in human history we have a world perspective.

There is globalisation with its almost instant communication and the potential to keep everyone informed about opportunity and inequality. The Arab Spring and the London riots were nourished by the mobile phone.

But the biggest threat is the way we are changing the climate, making it more difficult to feed the growing population and improve the diet of those barely subsisting.

Hunger is the driver of migration and in future tens of millions will be on the move to keep alive. As well as water stress and high temperatures causing food shortages there will be less fertile land as rising saltwater infiltrates deltas and coastal plains.

The 21st century is the last chance to find another way to live together. National boundaries, military might and self interest won’t work. Global problems need a global solution, for the sake of our grandchildren.