Technological progress led to a mounting crisis in the relationship between Man and Nature in the 20th century which, in the opinion of a number of experts, can end in ecological disaster in the mid 21st century. The author has tried to find the answer to the question of whether the world community, divided today into the advanced «North» and the as yet backward «South», will be able to drastically change, during half a century, production and consumption technologies on the global scale, social systems inside the countries and international relations to avoid ecological collapse. In this context the author analyzes an upward tendency in the world population, the rate of depletion of natural resources, environmental pollution and the extent to which the balance in the global ecosystem is upset; the future of technological progress from the standpoint of relieving the anthropogenic pressure on the environment; the possibilities for bridging the technological and economic, as well as the socio-cultural, gap between the «North» and the «South»; the future of local civilizations; the ways of forming supranational and global governing bodies.