If you’ve ever wondered what life will be like in the year 2065, I have some ideas, fresh from the people (Whitman students) who will be guiding us there.
Based upon my observation that when riding a motorcycle, you go where you are looking, I asked the 18-20 year-olds in my Environmental Studies 120 class to write about the world in 2065. They gazed into their crystal balls. Here’s what they saw.
Although most of it is not a pretty picture, they think there’s hope.
Let’s begin with what we fear might be true: “The world is an environmental mess, spiraling downwards towards environmental disaster.” one paper began pessimistically. The issues of 2065 enumerated by students include sediment piling up behind dams, groundwater resources polluted by fracking, and an ocean bereft of life and replete with dead zones. “The world is full of talkers and not enough doers” observes one. Another student, who may have read too much Cormack McCarty in other classes, wrote “In the boy’s drawing, the sky was yellow, the tree was gray with no leaves, and when the teacher asked the boy why there were no birds in his drawing of the tree he responded that he had never seen one.” Then the student notes that this is NOT how she thinks 2065 will be, but how it is liable to be if we continue the way we are.
Most of these college freshmen are more optimistic. “A move to more local styles of living will reduce future energy needs.” one predicted.. “Because we are focused on preserving many natural landscapes, I would like to think there will still be beautiful landscapes in 2065” said another. Other ideas include cars that derive energy from solar panels embedded in road surfaces, solar-powered trains that provide most of our cross-country transportation, and a world in which we “first-world” humans have learned to live simple lives that require few resources or energy (The Great Simplification.) Another student passed a law that forbade hydrocarbon production of use. One paper suggested, tongue –in-cheek, that with rising sea levels, Manhattan had become “the Venice of the Americas” with Miami following suit, (and filing suit over New York’s trademarked slogan.)
Who knows whether any of this will happen. (I especially enjoy imagining Manhattan–as-Venice.) We do face daunting problems of climate change, resource depletion, and population growth. Taken at face value, the future looks gloomy. But the freshmen– people who will be elders in 2065–have different ideas. They envision solving global problems.
I know from experience that you go where you look. Or, put another way, by a voice from a different wisdom philosophy that I don’t often quote: “Believe it is possible to solve your problem. Tremendous things happen to the believer. Believe the answer will come. It will.” (Norman Vincent Peale.)
Month: December 2013
Seven Generations: The long reach of climate change.
Every month, the highly regarded journal Nature: Climate Change refines our understanding of global warming. This month’s revelation is more jaw-dropping than most. Its ominous title: Continued global warming after CO2 emissions stop.
We have naively assumed that if we just Stopped Adding Greenhouse Gases to the Atmosphere, global warming would slow, and then stop. This is a reasonable assumption. Within a year of banning ozone-destroying CFCs, the Hole in the Ozone stopped growing and started shrinking. Voile!
But that is NOT what is going to happen. Instead, the globe will cool – perhaps for a century. Then, after lulling us into complacency, the Earth will begin to warm again, as heat stored in the oceans radiates into the atmosphere. And this second warming episode may persist for hundreds of years. “….surface temperature may actually increase on multi-century timescales after an initial century-long decrease.” In other words: If we stop lacing the air with CO2, it will cool for about a century. But then all the extra heat stored in the oceans will radiate into the atmosphere, heating the Earth even more than before. So it is not just our children who face more desperate lives, but seven generations of humans after us.
This week there is a hopeful sign that maybe we are taking this climate thing more seriously. Less than a month ago, William Nordhouse’s book The Climate Casino was published. It’s the latest climate disaster book. The American economy looms large as a casualty. I’d planned to use The Climate Casino as one of several readings in my environmental studies class Spring term. But the Whitman bookstore can’t get it. It is sold out of the distributor, sold out at Amazon, Barnes and Noble online, The Bookloft in Enterprise, Book and Games in Walla Walla, and even a bookseller in London that I tried to order from. Perhaps Yale University Press only printed 100 copies or so, thinking that climate made dull reading. Evidently they were wrong.
But, while awareness of climate problems rises, we remain reluctant to act. After-all, nothing really bad will happen until long after we are gone. The US has no carbon tax, (17 other nations do, including Sweden, India, Japan, and Norway, and Costa Rica.) and no national cap and trade scheme. We remain conveniently wedded to fossil fuels. But shrugging our shoulders and getting on with life as “normal” is the ultimate cop out. The quality of life for our progeny—for all life—in the next two centuries is in our hands today. Bearing responsibility for the future should be no less a concern than that voiced eloquently by Iroquois tribal leader Oren Lyons: “In our way of life, in our government, with every decision we make, we always keep in mind the Seventh Generation to come. It’s our job to see that the people coming ahead, the generations still unborn, have a world no worse than ours and hopefully better. When we walk upon Mother Earth we always plant our feet carefully because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them.
Nature Climate Change: Continued Global Warming after CO2 Stoppage. Froelicher, et al, 2013:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2060.html
and
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-11/pu-eie112213.php
NY Times review of The Climate Casino: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/business/climate-casino-an-overview-of-global-warming.html?_r=0
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