The world slows the growth of development. In reaction to earlier decades of high crime and chaos, communitarian values triumph over strictly individualistic ones. Slimmed-down and digitized governments win the trust of people. Directed taxation funds public works, some of them large-scale. Technology, such as online shopping, makes urban living very resource-friendly.
Net access is a subsidized right.
Dirty technologies are outlawed, forcing less-developed countries to leapfrog to clean and light technologies, if they can. Initially, this widens the gap between rich and poor nations. Europe erupts into a second renaissance, becoming a moral beacon. Japan mobilizes not much later. The Islamic world awakens.