A frank and clear-eyed assessment of six critical drivers of global change in the decades to come by the former vice-president. Gore discusses ever-increasing economic globalization; worldwide digital communications, Internet, and computer revolutions; multiple emerging centers of power; unsustainable growth in consumption, pollution flows, and depletion of the planet's strategic resources of topsoil, freshwater, and living species; genomic, biotechnology, neuroscience, and life sciences revolutions; and, a revolutionary transformation of energy systems, agriculture, transportation, and construction worldwide.