Earth in 2050: The 4 Plausible Storylines
What does the future look like? (At the rate at which we’re going)
By Ahaan Vaknalli
Where do you see yourself in the future? We’ve often been asked this question, whether it’s from an admission officer for a university or a distant relative at a family gathering. We usually answer with the same thing, it’s either the job that we want or the profession we see ourselves to be in. The biggest issue with this is that we imagine ourselves to be living in the same world we live in today. We imagine our surroundings to be identical when in fact the world would be a very different place.
In 30 years, a lot of what we see around us would have changed drastically. By the 2030s, the Amazon rainforest would have been cut down to the point where it could no longer produce moisture, turning it into a dry savannah and killing thousands of animal species. At the same time, the arctic would start losing it’s ice during the summer risking the polar bears and altering the global water cycle. By the 2040s, frozen soil that trapped large pockets of methane would thaw, releasing the toxic gas into the environment, suffocating all living species around the world. By the 2050s, oceans around the world would have lost their coral reefs due to ocean acidification, fish would start to die due to the increased temperature. And by the 2080s, global food production would enter a crisis as soil would become exhausted due to overuse. At the same time, the weather would become more and more unpredictable with a 4°C increase in planet temperature. It’s horrifying to think of how we’ve driven our climate and pushed it to this extent, almost to the point where the human race could be at risk of extinction.
Before we start to freak out on how we’re going to cope with these environmental changes, let’s take a look at the three plausible futures that lay ahead for us.
Post Anthropocene
It might seem like a sesquipedalian term at first, but when broken down, it defines the era that follows our epoch, or our current geological time period if put in simpler terms. The Post Anthropocene theory describes the utopian possibility of a respective relationship between man and environment. To give a brief outline, it states that the years of environmental damage has built up to a point where society is directly being affected by their actions in the past, through ways such as famine, crop failures, living conditions. This finally ignites the passion that fuels society to push through this phase where collaborative decarbonisation is now a worldwide initiative. To say the least, it’s not as simple as it seems.
“Greentocracy”
It might sound like democracy, but it is far from it. The Greentocracy possibility entails authoritarian bodies, war, political conflicts, restrictive living conditions, and everything in between. The theory states that governmental bodies will try and enable a number of restrictive laws and rules that enforce drastic changes and improvements from citizens around the world. It claims that people will be pushed into high rise buildings, and food will be restricted to variations of SPP’s (Surrogate Pseudo Proteins), mock meat, and lab-grown plants. More than 50% of the world’s population rely on foods that have synthetic origins, and the impacts of these synthetic foods will start to show by this point. There will be “severe micronutrient deficiencies” across large sections of the population due to our reliance on these “artificial” food sources. If you think this is bad, you won’t have much time to complain about it, because Eco Re-Education facilities will be put into place. This is basically a way to drill environmental values into the masses. Surprisingly, this is not the most dystopian theory out of the quartet.
Extinction
As you can infer from the subheading, this possibility is more of a struggle to stay afloat, literally and figuratively. While the environment is destabilised in terms of what it has to offer to humans, things such as food, water, and energy sources, are all depleted majorly. Natural resources are still being hunted for, but Geo-engineering and GMO crop development have become the solution to the issue. However, all is not well with the control of these GMO crop developments, because the seeds will be sold by one large corporation that generalises the seeds for everyone. This may lead to a number of issues, ranging from terminator seeds to superweeds. Meanwhile, there will be enclosures made for citizens of afloat cities to breathe in purified air, while the cities themselves face the issue of economic disparity.
Human Prevalence
This possibility is currently what we’re on track for, at the rate at which we’re going. The theory discusses the possibility of countries such as Canada and Russia, who have large spaces of ice prone land, becoming arable for farming and for growing crops. Meanwhile, cities like Rio will suffer from a water shortage, while Miami will start to sink. However, the colder countries will thrive under the expansion of agricultural land, as well as due to the increase in resource mining. These regions will be home for citizens around the world who have lost their habitable homeland.
While all of these are theories, some far fetched, some not, it’s important to remember that they are all plausible futures. The statistics are real, facts show that despite all our efforts right now, it is still not enough. There is often the common misconception that everything will turn out to be just fine, things will just fall into place and the world will continue to cope with the changes, but the reality of the situation is the opposite. We need to act now to help the world cope with these changes that will soon come our way.
Works Cited
https://citi.io/2020/03/19/the-4-plausible-futures-of-the-world-greentocracy/ .“The 4 Plausible Futures Of The World: Greentocracy — CITI I/O.” CITI I/O, 19 Mar. 2020, citi.io/2020/03/19/the-4-plausible-futures-of-the-world-greentocracy/. Accessed 24 Dec. 2020.
Read, Max, and David Wallace-Wells. “8 Predictions for What the World Will Look Like in 20 Years.” Intelligencer, Intelligencer, 7 Jan. 2019, nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/2038-podcast-predictions.html. Accessed 24 Dec. 2020.
Mosher, Dave. “Here’s What Earth Might Look like in 100 Years — If We’re Lucky.” Business Insider, Business Insider India, June 2017, www.businessinsider.in/science/heres-what-earth-might-look-like-in-100-years-if-were-lucky/articleshow/58951450.cms. Accessed 25 Dec. 2020.
Young, Robin, and Jack Mitchell. “Humans Have 30 Years To Stave Off Climate Catastrophe, ‘Uninhabitable Earth’ Author Says | Here & Now.” Wbur.org, WBUR, 13 May 2019, www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/05/13/climate-change-uninhabitable-earth-david-wallace-wells. Accessed 25 Dec. 2020.
“Climate Change Driving Entire Planet to Dangerous ’tipping Point‘.” Science, 27 Nov. 2019, www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/earth-tipping-point/. Accessed 25 Dec. 2020.
