How did the human race get on in 2007? On an evolutionary level, you could argue the species had a fabulously successful year. It increased its numbers by more than 80 million people, dominated all other life forms, and suffered no major setbacks. Most of its 6.5bn members lived longer than they could have expected only 30 years ago, moved around and traded with each other more than ever, and mostly survived whatever the natural world chucked at them.

But history will look back on 2007 and see a species in transition. In the next few months, the UN will declare that we have transmuted to an urban species, with more people in cities than the countryside. Only 100 years ago, nearly all humanity was made up of people who worked and lived close to where they grew or collected food, and who adapted their lives to the resources they had to hand. Homo sapiens — or urbanus — is now increasingly grouping together and engineering environments for its sole use.

“The world’s urban map is being redrawn,” David Satterthwaite, a senior fellow with the International Institute for Environment and Development, declared in October. Africa has a larger urban population than North America with 25 of the world’s fastest-growing large cities. Half of the world’s urban population in 2007 lived in Asia, and Europe’s share of the world’s 100 largest cities has fallen from more than half to less than 10% in the last century. It now has none of the world’s 100 fastest-growing cities.

But 2007 will also be remembered as the year that climate change rose up the international agenda. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel peace prize and warned that if left unchecked, the world’s average temperature could rise as much as 6C by the end of the century, killing hundreds of millions of people and changing all life.

World governments finally agreed in Bali to work together to try to stave off the worst effects. But in fraught negotiations that concluded last week, the US, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, tried to wreck the talks, was humiliated, then finally signed up reluctantly to work towards a post Kyoto treaty. The road to Copenhagen, where the concluding talks will be held in 2009, will be tortuous. The agreement failed to set a clear target for the cuts needed globally or in the developed world but it did address deforestation, and technology transfer to poor countries.

The main US beef was with China, emerging in 2007 as a global ecological phenomenon. It not only almost certainly overtook the US as the single biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but it scoured developing countries for natural resources to fuel

its industrial revolution. Last year, it used 48% of the world supply of cement, and while it has only four of the world’s

100 largest cities, it has a number in the richest 100. It also has many of the most polluted on earth. The US demanded that

it was only fair that it cuts its own emissions, even if, on a per capita basis, the 1,200 million Chinese emit only a quarter of the average American. Furthermore, by the end of the year, it was clear that nearly 30% of China’s emissions were linked to its exports and arguably are the shared responsibility of rich nations.

Like other rapidly developing countries, China pursued two separate development paths. One unfettered, breakneck growth powered by coal and oil, the other exploring the possibilities of a low resource economy based on green energy and new technologies. In 2007 China committed itself to building as many as 300 eco-cities to house nearly 300 million people expected to leave the countryside in the next 30 years; and as fast as it opened giant new coal power stations, it also developed wind and solar power plants. The next few years will show which path leads to the future.Meanwhile, as a direct result of demand, the price of oil rose from $55 a barrel in January 2007 to more than $90 by the end of the year, raising food prices and tensions even further across the world. As companies mostly failed to replenish their oil reserves, a race developed for unconventional sources of energy. Venezuela and some areas of the US and Canada are now in the frontline of massive opencast mining operations to extract oil from shales and tar sands.

Agriculture further consolidated into the hands of ever fewer companies. Syngenta, Bayer, Monsanto, BASF, Dow and DuPont now control nearly 85% of the $30 bn annual pesticide market; Cargill, Archer Daniels and Bunge control nearly 90% of global grain trade; a handful of firms account for about half the world sales of seeds, of which about a quarter are sales of genetically engineered seeds.

But the tumultuous year of change and transition ended with the human race signalling that it was at least prepared to act in some kind of unison. Whether the 180 countries that met in Bali can now really shift their economies to meet climate change will define the age. But we won’t know that for some years. – The Guardian