The World 2050

[Citizen James]

Take the most extreme predictions (good and bad) and scale them back an order of magnitude or so.  And add in a few people aren't expecting. 

It's fairly clear that the US will become a nation with no racial majority (just as California is now), and in fact the whole concept of race will begin to fade from national consciousness as a larger and larger percentage of the population will be multiracial.  Just as few people now differentiate between Anglo-Saxons and Irish (which used to be a big deal, once upon a time) social stigma based on race will continue to decline.

Open bigotry against gays will be fairly taboo, but will still exist in some quarters.  Gay marriage will be established as a norm, with a sizable minority (10-20%) still uncomfortable with or opposed to it.

Abortion will decline as a major issue as improvements in the reliability and availability of contraception render the debate almost moot with unintended pregnancies limited to rape victims, people with a severe lack in judgment, very rare prevention failures, and those who don't believe in contraception on religious grounds (and will not seek abortion on the same grounds anyway)

Human cloning will exist, but be frowned upon.  It will greatly disappoint those who expect a mini-me of themselves, being only a much younger twin with different life experiences.  This will lead to some limited research on the whole nature vs nurture debate, but information will be limited as any sort of strictly controlled experiment would create numerous violations of medical and psychological ethics.

The human genome will be fully mapped.  The earliest genetically engineered children (not super beings, but optimized selections from the parents gene sets ALA gattica) will be nearing their teens, and the procedure will be increasingly available among the middle to upper middle class.

Illegal immigration will decrease somewhat as other nations become less desperate places to live and overall quality of life increases across most parts of the globe.

Due to global warming, the northeast passage will become open year round and become a major shipping route between Europe and China/India.

China will stagnate some amidst internal power struggles (secrecy breeds corruption) but will eventually make fits and starts toward something resembling a parliamentary democracy. 

India will gradually rise to be the #2 world economic power, bypassing Japan and closing the gap with the US.  (though informally the EU will be competitive for the number 1 slot, it is still too loose a confederation to be considered an actual government).  Slow and steady wins the race will describe their rise, as their literacy rate continues to grow and their poverty level gradually shrinks.

Global warming will not sink cities (at least not permanently) as the rise will be gradual (though accentuated by hurricanes pushing further inland and slightly increasing in number and intensity) - sensible governments will build levees and dikes to prevent the worst.

Iran will undergo a Renaissance.  The Islamic world as a whole will move forward from the twelfth to seventeenth century, embracing a more rational and realistic worldview.  Iranian youth who have been biding their time for the old theocrats to die off will eventually get their wish as time takes it's toll.