Seems to me like green energy, sustainable development and microfinance are buzzwords. I looked on the Dept of Ed site to see if there were trends to be spotted; but the most popular undergrad majors apparently are business, social sciences and education, so people are still fairly conservative in their projections I see. Enrollment in one- or two-year masters' programs might be a better indicator.

http://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=37

I must say something which surprises me is the speed with which certain ideas take over. I feel like five or ten years ago recycling was something people did if they had time or if, say, they were already making other large-scale changes in their lives by cutting back on meat or cycling to work. Now it's a no-brainer for almost everyone I know. The momentum of these things is fascinating: total resistance, and then the wave crests and just seeps down.

Not to be too pessimistic, but I see a major shift in the notion of individual liberties and individual rights. Whether or not this will be a policy issue is an interesting question; I am constantly surprised how little people around me seem to care or worry about this. I'm no conspiracy theorist myself, but I think it's fairly clear the paradigms are changing. This seems to me to be a subtext here and even here.

I would be willing to bet that if a person born in the mid-to-late twentieth century were suddenly transported to the end of the twenty-first, the single thing s/he would find most difficult to adjust to would be the radically different idea of what it will mean to be an individual in society, for instance around issues of privacy.

The most important policy issues will be those addressing the effects of global warming which by midcentury will be evident to even the most hardened sceptic.