Teach children to type rather than write, accept that mankind has lost the battle to halt global warming, and establish a colony on Mars for when Earth becomes uninhabitable.
These are just some of the ideas proposed by a panel of eminent scientists and intellectuals asked to come up with ways of making the world a better place.
Their suggestions paint a bleak picture of humanity's current plight on a planet cursed by environmental destruction, unequal health care and the money-orientated selfishness of the Western world.
But the thinkers including Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and prominent atheist, Margaret Atwood, the author, and Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin entrepreneur, do find grounds for hope – even if some of the proposals collected by New Scientist magazine sound a little far-fetched.
While Prof Dawkins urges everyone "think like scientists" and Atwood calls for a ban on bottom trawling – a damaging type of fishing – many of their fellow contributors are more ambitious.
"We should establish a self-supporting colony on Mars," suggests J Richard Gott, professor of astrophysical sciences as Princeton University in the US.
"That would make us a two-planet species and improve our long-term survival prospects by giving us two chances instead of one."
As one might expect, his belief in the species-saving potential of space exploration is echoed by Sir Richard, whose Virgin Galactic company plans to offer orbital flight for paying passengers.
"If we are going to survive as a civilisation we need low energy and environmental access to space on an industrial scale," he told the magazine.
Environmental scientists Wallace Broecker, who coined the term "global warming", and James Lovelock, who invented the Gaia theory that the planet behaves like a living organism, agree that urging consumers to reduce their carbon consumption is now not enough to save the world.
Prof Broecker urges greater research into methods of removing CO2 from the atmosphere, while Lovelock says we must begin preparing for a warmer planet. "Our best course of action is to spend at least as much effort adapting to global heating as in attempts to slow or stop it happening," he says.
Many of the experts call for swift action to improve education and health standards in the developing world.
Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that radical changes to the curriculum are necessary to prepare children for a hi-tech future: "for youngsters, learning a global language and typing should trump long division and writing cursive".
Jimmy Wales, the founder of free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, argues that the world will only become a better place when people learn to confront their own prejudices, challenging everyone to spend a month immersing themselves in books and websites opposed to their own world view. "You may find that you were mistaken. And if it turns out that you were right, so much the better."
One of the few voices of optimism in the cacophony of doomsday warnings comes from Elon Musk, the US entrepreneur behind PayPal, the online payment system. His recipe for a better world? Look on the bright side of live, and appreciate your good fortune.
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