This paper suggests an intuitional ‘must-go path’ scenario for the sustainable development of human civilisation. The paper does this primarily by extrapolating human historical data over 30 years between 1970 and 2000. It is argued that one of the most important parameters in order to realise the ‘must-go path’ scenario is the sustainability of energy without further pollution.The authors’ key recommendations are:

for countries with mature nuclear technology, it is worthwhile to deploy fast reactor systems
energy efficiency has to be promoted and international cooperation to accelerate technology transfer needs to be accelerated.

It is concluded that more cooperation between countries and worldwide collaboration coordinated by international organisations are essential to make the ‘must-go path’ scenario real in the upcoming 20 or 30 years.