life 2050 essay

What Will Your Life Be Like in 2050?

Will it be just like today, but electric? Or will it be very different?

• University of Toronto

• Harvard University Extension School

Hulton Archives/ Getty Images

• Environment
• Business & Policy
• Home & Design
• Current Events
• Treehugger Voices
• News Archive

New Scientist magazine's chief reporter Adam Vaughan recently published "Net-zero living: how your day will look in a carbon-neutral world ." Here, he imagines what a typical day would be like in the future—through the lens of Isla, "a child today, in 2050"—after we've cut carbon emissions. Vaughan says “most of us are lacking a visualization of what life will be like at net zero” and acknowledges the writing is fiction: "By its nature, it is speculative – but it is informed by research, expert opinion, and trials happening right now.”

Isla lives in the south of the United Kingdom—will it still be a united kingdom in 2050?—and her life looks pretty much like life does today: She has a house, a car, a job, and a cup of tea in the morning. There are wind turbines, great forests, and giant machines sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It all sounds like a green and pleasant land, but it didn’t sound like the future to me.

It’s an interesting exercise, imagining what it will be like in 30 years. I thought I would give it a try: Here is some speculative fiction about Edie, living in Toronto, Canada in 2050.

Edie’s alarm goes off at 4:00 a.m. She gets up, folds up the bed in the converted garage in an old house in Toronto that is her apartment and workshop, and makes herself a cup of caffeine-infused chicory; only the very rich can afford real coffee 1 .

She considers herself to be very lucky to have this garage in what was her grandparents’ house. The only people who live in houses these days either inherited them or are multi-millionaires from all over the world, but especially from Arizona and other Southern states 2 , desperate to move Canada with its cooler climate and plentiful water and can afford the million-dollar immigrant visa fee.

She hurries to prepare her pushcart, actually a big electric cargo bike, filling it with the tomatoes, and preserves and pickles she prepared with fruits and vegetables she bought from backyard gardeners. Edie then rides it downtown where all the big office buildings have been converted into tiny apartments for climate refugees. The streets downtown look very much like Delancey Street in New York looked like in 1905, with e-pushcarts lining the roads where cars used to park.

Edie is lucky to be working. There are no office or industrial jobs anymore: Artificial Intelligence and robots took care of that 3 . The few jobs left are in service, culture, craft, health care, or real estate. In fact, selling real estate has become the nation’s biggest industry; there is a lot of it, and Sudbury is the new Miami.

Fortunately for Edie, there is a big demand for homemade foods from trustworthy sources. All the food in the grocery stores is grown in test tubes or made in factories. Edie sells out and rides home in time for siesta. There may be lots of electricity from wind and solar farms, but even running tiny heat pumps 4 for cooling is really expensive at peak times. The streets are unpleasantly hot, so many people sleep through the midday.

She checks the balance in her Personal Carbon Allowance (PCA) account to see if she has enough to buy another imported battery for her pushcart e-bike 5 after her nap; batteries have a lot of embodied carbon and transportation emissions and might eat up a month’s worth of her PCA. If she doesn’t have enough then she will have to buy carbon credits, and they are expensive. She sets her alarm for 6:00 p.m. when the streets of Toronto will come alive again on this hot November day.

The New Scientist article is illustrated with an image showing people walking and biking, turbines spinning, electric trains running, with kayaks, not cars. This is not an uncommon vision: There are many who suggest we just have to electrify everything and cover it all with solar panels and then we can keep on with the happy motoring.

I am not so optimistic. If we don't keep the global rise in temperature to under 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) then things are going to get messy. So this story was not just a speculative fantasy but based on previous writing about the need for sufficiency and worries about the embodied carbon of making everything , with some notes from previous Treehugger posts:

• Thanks to climate change, "Coffee plantations in South America, Africa, Asia, and Hawaii are all being threatened by rising air temperatures and erratic rainfall patterns, which invite disease and invasive species to infest the coffee plant and ripening beans." More in Treehugger.
• "Dwindling water supplies and below-average rainfall have consequences for those living in the West." More in Treehugger.
• "We're witnessing the Third Industrial Revolution Playing out in real time." More in Treehugger.
• Tiny heat pumps for tiny spaces are probably going to be common. More in Treehugger.
• Electric cargo bikes will be a powerful tool for low-carbon commerce. More in Treehugger.
• 2022 in Review: The Year E-Cargo Bikes Took Over
• This Mass Timber Passivhaus Rental Building Is Perfect for Active Adults
• Building a Sustainable Condo Today Involves Designing for the Future
• Five, Just Five, Solutions to Roll Back Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• A Car Ban Will Improve the State of the Climate, But Is It Ableist?
• Nobody's Perfect, and You Don't Have to Be
• What's the Right Way to Build in a Climate Crisis?
• 2021 in Review: The Year in Tiny Living
• 2021 in Review: The E-Bike Revolution Hits the Streets
• Two Views of the Future of the Office
• Is Any Party in the Canadian Election Taking Climate Seriously?
• The Rise of Tall Wood
• Best of Green Awards 2021: Eco Tech
• The Future of Main Street, Post-Pandemic
• How We Get Around Determines What We Build, and Also Determines Much of Our Carbon Footprint
• Best of Green Awards 2021: Sustainable Travel

An unsettling peek into the reality of life in 2050

Share this idea.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

Rather than just imagine the future, what if we could walk around in it? In an installation, designer Anab Jain invites visitors to enter an apartment in the middle of the 21st century.

What will our world look like in 30 years?

Many of us fear the worst. Today, violent storms and wildfires are ripping through the world; we’re rapidly losing crop biodiversity ; and large numbers of people are already suffering from chronic food insecurity . Any of these situations, it seems, could spiral out of control over the coming decades.

But why just worry about the future when you can step into it? Anab Jain , a TED Fellow and the cofounder of London future-design studio Superflux (watch her TED Talk: “ Why we need to imagine different futures ”), builds potential tomorrows that people can experience firsthand right now — and gain insights that we could apply to take control of our destinies. “A lot of us in the West don’t think climate change is our problem; we always think about it as somebody else’s problem,” Jain says. “It’s too big and too difficult to deal with. We take in the data, but we don’t apply it to what this means for our own lives.” In an installation called Mitigation of Shock , the Superflux team aim to show us what our lives might be like if we do nothing to combat global warming, by taking us into a flat in London — in the year 2050. Let’s step in ….

A door marked “64” takes you into a small apartment. There’s a couch that looks like it was just sat on. Shelves contain a family’s worth of books, toys and gadgets, and a coffee table holds a partial cup of coffee and a half-eaten cookie. Beyond the dining room table is a kitchen counter with recipe books; shelves overhead are full of containers of home-preserved food. The radio is tuned to the news. So far, it’s not that different from many apartments you could find in Europe today.

But as you look around, your gaze falls on a newspaper on the coffee table. The headline reads “Worldwide crop failures in 2049: How will we eat?” You hear the radio announcer talking about eco-terrorists, the hijacking of supermarket trucks, extreme weather and poor air quality. Flip through a ledger on the dining room table, and you’ll see a record of the family’s experiments in growing food, next to vials of carefully labeled seeds. The jars of preserves on the shelves turn out to be marked with the month, year and place where the food was foraged. Scan the cookbooks on the shelves, and you’ll see titles like How to Cook in Scarcity and, more alarmingly, Pets as Protein . Recipes tacked to the kitchen wall offer ways to prepare mealworms and foxes.

Turning the corner into the next room, you realize that you’ve wandered into a factory of sorts. The humming space is bathed in a fluorescent glow, and the industrial shelving units are filled with boxes of plants growing in a swirling fog circulated by tiny fans. Oyster mushrooms are being cultivated on the top shelves, along with smaller plastic containers full of live mealworms. As you peer out a window above a table brimming with a jumble of hardware, you can see storm clouds darkening the sky as people squabble over food in the streets.

“We created this living space to imagine what we might need to live in a world where some of the most drastic impacts of climate change have already occurred,” says Jain. Mitigation of Shock — which is now on view at Barcelona’s Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) — is part of an exhibition called “After the End of the World,” which envisions the future toll of centuries of human impact and negligence. The installation takes what’s happening now and fast-forwards the action in one specific direction. In that way, it’s less a calculated prediction than an educated extrapolated guess of the future.

The scenario is fictionalized, as are the recipe books (thank goodness). However, the solutions that Superflux co-founder Jon Ardern and the studio team have built are very real. The plants on the shelves are being fed using fogponics and LED lights, all controlled using Arduinos, or microcontroller units. “The Arduinos are connected to ultrasonic sensors in a box of nutrient-rich water,” says Jain. “When the Arduino tells the sensor to go off, it converts the water into a nutrient mist that is dispersed to the plants’ roots by using computer fans.”

This is only one possible future of many, Jain hastens to add. “There could be others — worse or better,” she says. Right now, many people in developed nations can go to the supermarket and buy whatever they fancy, from Peruvian avocados to Kenyan green beans. But the way things are going, there’s a chance that this casual abundance will start to vanish. After visiting the installation, the Superflux team hopes that people walk away with a more visceral idea of what living with food insecurity might look like.

They also want people to realize we already have some of what we need to adapt. “Fogponics and hydroponics already are in use, although people currently see them as a hobby. Foraging, home preserving, growing food on allotments, and local food networks exist, too, but not as a form of survival,” says Jain. “We made the food production system using off-the-shelf stuff that we bought and hacked together and coded. The question then becomes, what if your life—your family’s life—depended on it?”

The apartment is also cluttered with discarded gadgets. There’s an unused surveillance camera, something that resembles a Nest smart thermostat, and a smart cup that will tell you when your drink is hot enough. “There’s also a fridge with a smart panel that tells you it’s run out of milk, but there’s nowhere to buy milk,” says Jain. “In our scenario, these things are now irrelevant — detritus, just lying around. We wanted to hint at the shiny future that is being predicted by tech companies and corporations. The lived reality will be somewhere in the middle.”

Jain has been intrigued by the response from visitors so far. “A lot of people have told me that they feel freaked out by it,” she says. “And some have said, ‘This feels totally normal — it’s already happening.’ It’s very different, depending on your emotional connection to what’s happening around you. How much time have you spent absorbing and internalizing the information we’ve been given and the changes that have already occurred?” Jain’s best-case scenario for the installation would be for folks leave wanting to make some behavioral shift. “We’re still buying from supermarkets; most of us are still not feeling that shortage, insecurity or vulnerability,” she says. “I think the news is like a fire outside the window. You close the window if you think the fire’s going to be bad. But what if the fire starts coming in through the window? That’s the feeling we want to give people: that it’s happening now, but we also have the tools, strategies and, most importantly, the imagination for whatever comes next.”

Mitigation of Shock was on exhibit at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona through April 29, 2018.

About the author

Karen Frances Eng is a contributing writer to TED.com, dedicated to covering the feats of the wondrous TED Fellows. Her launchpad is located in Cambridge, UK.

• art and design
• TED Fellows

TED Talk of the Day

How to make radical climate action the new normal

11 book and music recommendations that will ignite your imagination

8 mouthwatering TV shows and movies about the future of food and our planet

9 must-watch adventure, fantasy and romance movies you didn’t know were about climate

Gallery: During lockdown, this street photographer created a vibrant, surreal world starring his parents

Leather is bad for animals and the planet — but what if we made it in a lab?

Gallery: 11 otherworldly photos of land, sea and sky at night

24/7 darkness, polar bears and ice everywhere: 8 striking photos of Arctic researchers at work

Could tiny homes be the adorable, affordable and sustainable housing that our planet needs?

6 ways to give that aren't about money

Let’s stop calling them “soft skills” -- and call them “real skills” instead

A smart way to handle anxiety -- courtesy of soccer great Lionel Messi

3 strategies for effective leadership, from a former astronaut

The 7 types of people you need in your life to be resilient

There’s a know-it-all at every job — here’s how to deal

Mental time travel is a great decision-making tool -- this is how to use it

Gallery: Using design to build a community

Skyscrapers are boring: One architect against the tyranny of the tower

Take an intentional walk -- and experience your community in a whole new way

What if we did everything right? This is what the world could look like in 2050

According to studies, these accumulations of ice are thawing at a pace so fast that they could disappear in 25 years. Image:  REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci (ARGENTINA) - GM1E5CG0XS301

.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo{-webkit-transition:all 0.15s ease-out;transition:all 0.15s ease-out;cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;outline:none;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:hover,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:focus,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-focus]{box-shadow:0 0 0 3px rgba(168,203,251,0.5);} Christiana Figueres

Tom rivett-carnac.

.chakra .wef-9dduvl{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-9dduvl{font-size:1.125rem;}} Explore and monitor how .chakra .wef-15eoq1r{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;color:#F7DB5E;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-15eoq1r{font-size:1.125rem;}} Climate Change is affecting economies, industries and global issues

.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;color:#2846F8;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{font-size:1.125rem;}} Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:, climate change.

This is an extract from the World Economic Forum's Book Club pick for March 2020: The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac. Join our Book Club to discuss.

The World We Are Creating

It is 2050. Beyond the emissions reductions registered in 2015, no further efforts were made to control emissions. We are heading for a world that will be more than 3 degrees warmer by 2100.

The first thing that hits you is the air.

The World Economic Forum launched its official Book Club on Facebook in April 2018. Readers worldwide are invited to join and discuss a variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction. It is a private Facebook group dedicated to discussing one book every month.

Each month, we announce a new book on our social media channels. We then publish an extract and begin a chapter-by-chapter discussion with group members. Selected comments and questions are sent to the author, who in return sends us a video response.

Unlike other book clubs, the group features the direct involvement of the authors, giving you - our global audience with members all around the globe - a chance to directly connect with some of the most influential thinkers and experts in the world.

We have featured authors such as Steven Pinker, Elif Shafak, Yuval Noah Harari, and Melinda Gates.

You can join the Book Club here .

Follow us on Twitter here .

Follow us on Instagram here .

In many places around the world, the air is hot, heavy, and depending on the day, clogged with particulate pollution. Your eyes often water. Your cough never seems to disappear. You think about some countries in Asia, where out of consideration sick people used to wear white masks to protect others from airborne infection. Now you wear a daily mask to protect yourself from air pollution. You can no longer walk out your front door and breathe fresh air: there is none. Instead, before opening doors or windows in the morning, you check your phone to see what the air quality will be. Everything might look fine— sunny and clear— but you know better. When storms and heat waves overlap and cluster, the air pollution and intensified surface ozone levels make it dangerous to go outside without a specially designed face mask (which only some can afford).

Southeast Asia and Central Africa lose more lives to filthy air than do Europe or the United States. There few people work outdoors anymore, and even indoors the air tastes slightly acidic, making you feel nauseated throughout the day. China stopped burning coal ten years ago, but that hasn’t made much difference in air quality around the world because you are still breathing dangerous exhaust fumes from millions of cars and buses everywhere. China has experimented with seeding rain clouds— the process of artificially inducing rain— hoping to wash pollution out of the sky, but results are mixed. Seeding clouds to artificially create more rain is difficult and unreliable, and even the wealthiest countries cannot achieve consistent results. In Europe and Asia, the practice has triggered international incidents because even the most skilled experts can’t control where the rain will fall, never mind that acid rain is deleterious to crops, wreaking havoc on food supply. As a result, crops are increasingly grown under cover to protect them from the weather, a trend that will only get stronger.

Our world is getting hotter. Over the next two decades, projections tell us that temperatures in some areas of the globe will rise even higher, an irreversible development utterly beyond our control. The world’s ecosystems have stopped absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and are, on balance, emitting it. Oceans, forests, plants, trees, and soil had for many years absorbed half the carbon dioxide we spewed out. Now there are few forests left, most of them either logged or consumed by wildfire, and the permafrost is belching greenhouse gases into an already overburdened atmosphere.

The increasing heat of the Earth is suffocating us, and in five to ten years, vast swaths of the planet will be uninhabitable. By 2100, Australia, North Africa, and parts of the western United States might be entirely abandoned. Now everyone knows what the future holds for their children and grandchildren: tipping point after tipping point has been reached until eventually there will be no more civilization. Humans will be cast to the winds again, gathering in small tribes, hunkered down and living on whatever patch of land might sustain them.

The planet has already reached several such tipping points. First was the vanishing of coral reefs. Some of us still remember diving amid majestic coral reefs, brimming with multicolored fish of all shapes and sizes. Corals are now almost gone. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the largest aquatic cemetery in the world. Efforts have been made to grow artificial corals farther north and south from the equator where the water is a bit cooler, but these efforts have failed, and marine life has not returned. Soon there will be no reefs anywhere— it is only a matter of a few years before the last 10 percent dies off.

The second tipping point was the melting of the ice sheets in the Arctic. There is no summer Arctic sea ice anymore because warming is worse at the poles— between 6 and 8 degrees higher than other areas. The melting happened silently in that cold place far north of most of the inhabited world, but its effects were soon noticed. The Great Melting was an accelerant of further global warming. The white ice used to reflect the sun’s heat, but now it’s gone, so the dark sea water absorbs more heat, expanding the mass of water and pushing sea levels even higher. More moisture in the air and higher sea surface temperatures have caused a surge in extreme hurricanes and tropical storms. Recently, coastal cities in Bangladesh, Mexico, and the United States have suffered brutal infrastructure destruction and extreme flooding, killing many thousands and displacing millions. This happens with increasing frequency now. Every day, because of rising water levels, some part of the world must evacuate to higher ground. Every day the news shows images of mothers with babies strapped to their backs, wading through floodwaters, and homes ripped apart by vicious currents that resemble mountain rivers. News stories tell of people living in houses with water up to their ankles because they have nowhere else to go, their children coughing and wheezing because of the mold growing in their beds, insurance companies declaring bankruptcy leaving survivors without resources to rebuild their lives. Contaminated water supplies, sea salt intrusions, and agricultural runoff are the order of the day. Because multiple disasters are always happening simultaneously in every country, it can take weeks or even months for basic food and water relief to reach areas pummeled by extreme floods. Diseases such as malaria, dengue, cholera, respiratory illnesses, and malnutrition are rampant.

Now all eyes are on the western Antarctic ice sheet. If and when it disappears, it could release a deluge of freshwater into the oceans, raising sea levels by over five meters. Cities like Miami, Shanghai, and Dhaka will be uninhabitable—ghostly Atlantises dotting the coasts of each continent, their skyscrapers jutting out of the water, their people evacuated or dead.

Those around the world who chose to remain on the coast because it had always been their home have more to deal with than rising water and floods— they must now witness the demise of a way of life-based on fishing. As oceans have absorbed carbon dioxide, the water has become more acidic, and the pH levels are now so hostile to marine life that all countries have banned fishing, even in international waters. Many people insist that the few fish that are left should be enjoyed while they last— an argument, hard to fault in many parts of the world, that applies to so much that is vanishing.

As devastating as rising oceans have been, droughts and heatwaves inland have created a special hell. Vast regions have succumbed to severe aridification followed by desertification, and wildlife has become a distant memory. These places can barely support human life; their aquifers dried up long ago, and their groundwater is almost gone. Marrakech and Volgograd are on the verge of becoming deserts. Hong Kong, Barcelona, and Abu Dhabi have been desalinating seawater for years, desperately trying to keep up with the constant wave of immigration from areas that have gone completely dry.

The Sahara Desert, which was once contained in Africa, now extends to Europe, into areas of Spain, Greece, and southern France. Extreme heat is on the march. If you live in Paris, you endure summer temperatures that regularly rise to 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit). This is no longer the headline-grabbing event it would have been thirty years ago. Everyone stays inside, drinks water, and dreams of air conditioning. You lie on your couch, a cold wet towel over your face, and try to rest without dwelling on the poor farmers on the outskirts of town who, despite recurrent droughts and wildfires, are still trying to grow grapes, olives, or soy— luxuries for the rich, not for you.

You try not to think about the 2 billion people who live in the hottest parts of the world, where, for upward of forty-five days per year, temperatures skyrocket to 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit)— a point at which the human body cannot be outside for longer than six hours because it loses the ability to cool itself down. Places such as central India are becoming uninhabitable. For a while people tried to carry on, but when you can’t work outside, when you can fall asleep only at four a.m. for a couple of hours because that’s the coolest part of the day, there’s not much you can do but leave. Mass migrations to less hot rural areas are beset by a host of refugee problems, civil unrest, and bloodshed over diminished water availability.

Inland glaciers around the world are almost gone. The millions who depended on the Himalayan, Alpine, and Andean glaciers to regulate water availability throughout the year are in a state of constant emergency: there is no more snow turning to ice atop mountains in the winter, so there is no more gradual melting for the spring and summer. Now there are either torrential rains leading to flooding or prolonged droughts. The most vulnerable communities with the least resources have already seen what ensues when water is scarce: sectarian violence, mass migration, and death.

Even in some parts of the United States, there are fiery conflicts over water, battles between the rich who are willing to pay for as much water as they want and everyone else demanding equal access to the life-enabling resource. The taps in nearly all public facilities are locked, and those in restrooms are coin-operated. At the federal level, Congress is in an uproar over water redistribution: states with less water demand what they see as their fair share from states that have more. Government leaders have been stymied on the River and the Rio Grande shrink further. Looming on the horizon are conflicts with Mexico, no longer able to guarantee deliveries of water from the depleted Rio Conchos and Rio Grande. Similar disputes have arisen in Peru, China, and Russia.

Food production swings wildly from month to month, season to season, depending on where you live. More people are starving than ever before. Climate zones have shifted, so some new areas have become available for agriculture (Alaska, the Arctic), while others have dried up (Mexico, California). Still others are unstable because of the extreme heat, never mind flooding, wildfire, and tornadoes. This makes the food supply in general highly unpredictable. One thing hasn’t changed, though— if you have money, you have access. Global trade has slowed as countries such as China stop exporting and seek to hold on to their own resources. Disasters and wars rage, choking off trade routes. The tyranny of supply and demand is now unforgiving; because of its scarcity, food is now wildly expensive. Income inequality has always existed, but it has never been this stark or this dangerous.

Whole countries suffer from epidemics of stunting and malnutrition. Reproduction has slowed overall, but most acutely in those countries where food scarcity is dire. Infant mortality is sky high, and international aid has proven to be politically impossible to defend in light of mass poverty. Countries with enough food are resolute about holding on to it.

In some places, the inability to gain access to such basics as wheat, rice, or sorghum has led to economic collapse and civil unrest more quickly than even the most pessimistic sociologists had previously imagined. Scientists tried to develop varieties of staples that could stand up to drought, temperature fluctuations, and salt, but we started too late. Now there simply aren’t enough resilient varieties to feed the population. As a result, food riots, coups, and civil wars throw the world’s most vulnerable from the frying pan into the fire. As developed countries seek to seal their borders from mass migration, they too feel the consequences. Stock markets are crashing, currencies are wildly fluctuating, and the European Union has disbanded.

As committed as nations are to keeping wealth and resources within their borders, they’re determined to keep people out. Most countries’ armies are now just highly militarized border patrols. Lockdown is the goal, but it hasn’t been a total success. Desperate people will always find a way. Some countries have been better global Good Samaritans than others, but even they have now effectively shut their borders, their wallets, and their eyes.

When the equatorial belt became mostly uninhabitable just a few years ago, you watched the news with disbelieving eyes. Undulating crowds of migrants, half a billion people, were moving north from Central America toward Mexico and the United States. Others moved south toward the tips of Chile and Argentina. The same scenes played out across Europe and Asia. Most people who lived between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn were driving or walking away in a giant band of humanity. Enormous political pressure was placed on northern and southern countries to either welcome migrants or keep them out. Some countries let people in, but only under conditions approaching indentured servitude. It will be years before the stranded migrants are able to find asylum or settle into new refugee cities that have formed along the borders.

Even if you live in areas with more temperate climates such as Canada and Scandinavia, you are still extremely vulnerable. Severe tornadoes, flash floods, wildfires, mudslides, and blizzards are always in the back of your mind. Depending on where you live, you have a fully stocked storm cellar, an emergency go-bag in your car, or a six-foot fire moat around your house. People are glued to oncoming weather reports. No one shuts their phones off at night. When the emergency hits, you may only have minutes to respond. The alert systems set up by the government are basic and subject to glitches and irregularities depending on access to technology. The rich, who subscribe to private, reliable satellite-based alert systems, sleep better.

The weather is unavoidable, but lately the news about what’s going on at the borders has become too much for most people to endure. Because of the alarming spike in suicides, and under increasing pressure from public health officials, news organizations have decreased the number of stories devoted to genocide, slave trading, and refugee virus outbreaks. You can no longer trust the news. Social media, long the grim source of live feeds and disaster reporting, is brimming with conspiracy theories and doctored videos. Overall, the news has taken a strange, seemingly controlled turn toward distorting reality and spinning a falsely positive narrative.

Everyone living within a stable country is physically safe, yes, but the psychological toll is mounting. With each new tipping point passed, they feel hope slipping away. There is no chance of stopping the runaway warming of our planet, and no doubt we are slowly but surely heading toward human extinction. And not just because it’s too hot. Melting permafrost is also releasing ancient microbes that today’s humans have never been exposed to— and as a result have no resistance to. Diseases spread by mosquitoes and ticks are rampant as these species flourish in the changed climate, spreading to previously safe parts of the planet, overwhelming us. Worse still, the public health crisis of antibiotic resistance has only intensified as the population has grown denser in the last inhabitable areas and temperatures continue to rise.

The demise of the human species is being discussed more and more— its trajectory seems locked in. The only uncertainty is how long we’ll last, how many more generations will see the light of day. Suicides are the most obvious manifestation of the prevailing despair, but there are other indications: a sense of bottomless loss, unbearable guilt, and fierce resentment at previous generations who did nothing to ward off this final, unstoppable calamity.

The World We Must Create

It is 2050. We have been successful at halving emissions every decade since 2020. We are heading for a world that will be no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer by 2100.

In most places in the world, the air is moist and fresh, even in cities. It feels a lot like walking through a forest, and very likely this is exactly what you are doing. The air is cleaner than it has been since before the Industrial Revolution.

You have trees to thank for that. They are everywhere.

It wasn’t the single solution we required, but the proliferation of trees bought us the time we needed to vanquish carbon emissions. Corporate donations and public money funded the biggest tree- planting campaign in history. When we started, it was purely practical, a tactic to combat climate change by relocating the carbon: the trees took carbon dioxide out of the air, released oxygen, and put the carbon back where it belongs, in the soil. This of course helped to diminish climate change, but the benefits were even greater. On every sensory level, the ambient feeling of living on what has again become a green planet has been transformative, especially in cities. Cities have never been better places to live. With many more trees and far fewer cars, it has been possible to reclaim whole streets for urban agriculture and for children’s play. Every vacant lot, every grimy unused alley, has been repurposed and turned into a shady grove. Every rooftop has been converted to either a vegetable or a floral garden. Windowless buildings that were once scrawled with graffiti are instead carpeted with verdant vines.

The greening movement in Spain had begun as an effort to combat rising temperatures. Because of Madrid’s latitude, it is one of the driest cities in Europe. And even though the city now has a grip on its emissions, it was previously at risk of desertification. Because of the “heat island” effect of cities— buildings trap warmth and dark, paved surfaces absorb heat from the sun— Madrid, home to more than 6 million people, was several degrees warmer than the countryside just a few miles away. In addition, air pollution was leading to a rising incidence of premature births, and a spike in deaths was linked to cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses. With a health care system already strained by the arrival of subtropical diseases like dengue fever and malaria, government officials and citizens rallied. Madrid made dramatic efforts to reduce the number of vehicles and create a “green envelope” around the city to help with cooling, oxygenating, and filtering pollution. Plazas were repaved with porous material to capture rainwater; all black roofs were painted white; and plants were omnipresent. The plants cut noise, released oxygen, insulated south- facing walls, shaded pavements, and released water vapor into the air. The massive effort was a huge success and was replicated all over the world. Madrid’s economy boomed as its expertise put it on the cutting edge of a new industry.

Most cities found that lower temperatures raised the standard of living. There are still slums, but the trees, largely responsible for countering the temperature rise in most places, have made things far more bearable for all.

Reimagining and restructuring cities was crucial to solving the climate challenge puzzle. But further steps had to be taken, which meant that global rewilding efforts had to reach well beyond the cities. The forest cover worldwide is now 50 percent, and agriculture has evolved to become more tree-based. The result is that many countries are unrecognizable, in a good way. No one seems to miss wideopen plains or monocultures. Now we have shady groves of nut and fruit orchards, timberland interspersed with grazing, parkland areas that spread for miles, new havens for our regenerated population of pollinators.

Luckily for the 75 percent of the population who live in cities, new electric railways crisscross interior landscapes. In the United States, high- speed rail networks on the East and West coasts have replaced the vast majority of domestic flights, with East coast connectors to Atlanta and Chicago. Because flight speeds have slowed down to gain fuel efficiency, passenger bullet trains make some journeys even faster and with no emissions whatsoever. The U.S. Train Initiative was a monumental public project that sparked the economy for a decade. Replacing miles and miles of interstate highways with a new transportation system created millions of jobs— for train technology experts, engineers, and construction workers who designed and built raised rail tracks to circumvent floodplains. This massive effort helped to reeducate and retrain many of those displaced by the dying fossil fuel economy. It also introduced a new generation of workers to the excitement and innovation of the new climate economy.

Running parallel to this mega public works effort was an increasingly confident race to harness the power of renewable sources of energy. A major part of the shift to net- zero emissions was a focus on electricity; achieving the goal required not only an overhaul of existing infrastructure but also a structural shift. In some ways, breaking up grids and decentralizing power proved easy. We no longer burn fossil fuels. There is some nuclear energy in those countries that can afford the expensive technology,6 but most of our energy now comes from renewable sources like wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro. All homes and buildings produce their own electricity— every available surface is covered with solar paint that contains millions of nanoparticles, which harvest energy from the sunlight, and every windy spot has a wind turbine. If you live on a particularly sunny or windy hill, your house might harvest more energy than it can use, in which case the energy will simply flow back to the smart grid. Because there is no combustion cost, energy is basically free. It is also more abundant and more efficiently used than ever.

Smart tech prevents unnecessary energy consumption, as artificial intelligence units switch off appliances and machines when not in use. The efficiency of the system means that, with a few exceptions, our quality of life has not suffered. In many respects, it has improved.

For the developed world, the wide-ranging transition to renewable energy was at times uncomfortable, as it often involved retrofitting old infrastructure and doing things in new ways. But for the developing world, it was the dawn of a new era. Most of the infrastructure that it needed for economic growth and poverty alleviation was built according to the new standards: low carbon emissions and high resilience. In remote areas, the billion people who had no electricity at the start of the twenty-first century now have energy generated by their own rooftop solar modules or by wind-powered minigrids in their communities. This new access opened the door to so much more. Entire populations have leaped forward with improved sanitation, education, and health care. People who had struggled to get clean water can now provide it to their families. Children can study at night.

Remote health clinics can operate effectively. Homes and buildings all over the world are becoming self- sustaining far beyond their electrical needs. For example, all buildings now collect rainwater and manage their own water use. Renewable sources of electricity made possible localized desalination, which means clean drinking water can now be produced on-demand anywhere in the world. We also use it to irrigate hydroponic gardens, flush toilets, and shower. Overall, we’ve successfully rebuilt, reorganized, and restructured our lives to live in a more localized way. Although energy prices have dropped dramatically, we are choosing local life over long commutes. Due to greater connectivity, many people work from home, allowing for more flexibility and more time to call their own.

We are making communities stronger. As a child, you might have seen your neighbors only in passing. But now, to make things cheaper, cleaner, and more sustainable, your orientation in every part of your life is more local. Things that used to be done individually are now done communally— growing vegetables, capturing rainwater, and composting. Resources and responsibilities are shared now. At first you resisted this togetherness— you were used to doing things individually and in the privacy of your own home. But pretty quickly the camaraderie and unexpected new network of support started to feel good, something to be prized. For most people, the new way has turned out to be a better recipe for happiness.

Food production and procurement are a big part of the communal effort. When it became clear we needed to revolutionize farms, with increased community reliance on small farms. Instead of going to a big grocery store for food flown in from hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away, you buy most of your food from small local farmers and producers. Buildings, neighborhoods, and even large extended families form a food purchase group, which is how most people buy their food now. As a unit they sign up for a weekly dropoff, then distribute the food among the group members. Distribution, coordination, and management are everyone’s responsibility, which means you might be partnered with a downstairs neighbor for distribution one week and your upstairs neighbor the next.

While this community approach to food production makes things more sustainable, food is still expensive, consuming up to 30 percent of household budgets, which is why growing your own is such a necessity. In community gardens, on rooftops, at schools, and even hanging from vertical gardens on balconies, food sometimes seems to be growing everywhere.

We’ve come to realize, by growing our own, that food is expensive because it should be expensive— it takes valuable resources to grow it, after all. Water. Soil. Sweat. Time. For that reason, the most resource- depleting foods of all— animal protein and dairy products— have practically disappeared from our diets. But the plant-based replacements are so good that most of us don’t notice the absence of meat and dairy. Most young children cannot believe we used to kill any animals for food. Fish is still available, but it is farmed and yields are better managed by improved technology.

We make smarter choices about bad foods, which have become an ever- diminishing part of our diets. Government taxes on processed meats, sugars, and fatty foods helped us reduce the carbon emissions from farming. The biggest boon of all was to our collective health. Thanks to reduced cancers, heart attacks, and strokes, people are living longer, and health services around the world cost less and less. In fact, a huge portion of the costs of combating climate change were recuperated by governments’ savings on public health.

Along with outrageous spending on health care, gasoline and diesel cars are also anachronisms. Most countries banned their manufacture in 2030, but it took another fifteen years to get the internal combustion engine off the road completely. Now they are seen only in transport museums or at special rallies where classic car owners pay an offset fee to allow them to drive a few short miles around the track. And of course, they are all hauled in on the backs of huge electric trucks.

When it came to making the switch, some countries were already ahead of the curve. Technology-driven countries such as Norway and bicycle-friendly nations like the Netherlands managed to impose a moratorium on cars much earlier. Unsurprisingly, the United States had the hardest time of all. First, it restricted their sale, and then it banned them from certain parts of cities— Extreme Low Emission Zones. Then came the breakthrough in the battery storage capacity of electric vehicles, the cost reductions that came from finding alternative materials for manufacture, and finally the complete overhaul of the charging and parking infrastructure. This allowed people easier access to cheap power for their electric vehicles. Even better, car batteries are now bi-directionally connected with the electric grid, so they can either charge from the grid or provide power to the grid when they aren’t being driven. This helps back up the smart grid that is running on renewable energy.

The ubiquity and ease of electric vehicles were alluring, but satisfaction of our appetite for speed finally did the trick. Supposedly, to stop a bad habit you have to replace it with one that is more salubrious or at least as enjoyable. At first China dominated the manufacture of electric vehicles, but soon U.S. companies started making vehicles that were more desirable than ever before. Even some classic cars got an upgrade, switching from combustion to electric engines that could go from zero to sixty mph in 3.5 seconds. What’s strange is that it took us so long to realize that the electric motor is simply a better way of powering vehicles. It gives you more torque, more speed when you need it, and the ability to recapture energy when you brake, and it requires dramatically less maintenance.

As people from rural areas moved to the cities, they had less need even for electric vehicles. In cities it’s now easy to get around— transportation is frictionless. When you take the electric train, you don’t have to fumble around for a metro card or wait in line to pay— the system tracks your location, so it knows where you got on and where you got off, and it deducts money from your account accordingly. We also share cars without thinking twice. In fact, regulating and ensuring the safety of driverless ride-sharing was the biggest transportation hurdle for cities to overcome. The goal has been to eliminate private ownership of vehicles by 2050 in major metropolitan areas. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re making progress.

We have also reduced land transport needs. Threedimensional (3D) printers are readily available, cutting down on what people need to purchase away from home. Drones organized along aerial corridors are now delivering packages, further reducing the need for vehicles. Thus we are currently narrowing roads, eliminating parking spaces, and investing in urban planning projects that make it easier to walk and bike in the city. Parking garages are used only for ride-sharing, electric vehicle charging, and storage— those ugly concrete stacking systems and edifices of yore are now enveloped in green. Cities now seem designed for the coexistence of people and nature.

International air travel has been transformed. Biofuels have replaced jet fuel. Communications technology has advanced so much that we can participate virtually in meetings anywhere in the world without traveling. Air travel still exists, but it is used more sparingly and is extremely costly. Because work is now increasingly decentralized and can often be done from anywhere, people save and plan for “slow- cations”— international trips that last weeks or months instead of days. If you live in the United States and want to visit Europe, you might plan to stay there for several months or more, working your way across the continent using local, zero-emissions transportation.

While we may have successfully reduced carbon emissions, we’re still dealing with the after-effects of record levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The long-living greenhouse gases have nowhere to go other than the alreadyloaded atmosphere, so they are still causing increasingly extreme weather— though it’s less extreme than would have been had we continued to burn fossil fuels. Glaciers and Arctic ice are still melting, and the sea is still rising. Severe droughts and desertification are occurring in the western United States, the Mediterranean, and parts of China. Ongoing extreme weather and resource degradation continue to multiply existing disparities in income, public health, food security, and water availability. But now governments have recognized climate change factors for the threat multipliers that they are. That awareness allows us to predict downstream problems and head them off before they become humanitarian crises. So while many people remain at risk every day, the situation is not as drastic or chaotic as it might have been. Economies in developing nations are strong, and unexpected global coalitions have formed with a renewed sense of trust. Now when a population is in need of aid, the political will and resources are available to meet that need.

The ongoing refugee situation has been escalating for decades, and it is still a major source of strife and discord. But around fifteen years ago, we stopped calling it a crisis. Countries agreed on guidelines for managing refugee influxes— how to smoothly assimilate populations, how to distribute aid and resources, and how to share the tasks within particular regions. These agreements work well most of the time, but things get thrown off balance occasionally when a country flirts with fascism for an election cycle or two.

Technology and business sectors stepped up, too, seizing the opportunity of government contracts to provide largescale solutions for distributing food and providing shelter for the newly displaced. One company invented a giant robot that could autonomously build a four-person dwelling within days. Automation and 3D printing have made it possible to quickly and affordably construct high-quality housing for refugees. The private sector has innovated with water transportation technology and sanitation solutions. Fewer tent cities and housing shortages have led to less cholera.

Everyone understands that we are all in this together. A disaster that occurs in one country is likely to occur in another in only a matter of years. It took us a while to realize that if we worked out how to save the Pacific Islands from rising sea levels this year, then we might find a way to save Rotterdam in another five years. It is in the interest of every country to bring all its resources to bear on problems across the world. For one thing, creating innovative solutions to climate challenges and beta testing them years ahead of using them is just plain smart. For another, we’re nurturing goodwill; when we need help, we know we will be able to count on others to step up.

The zeitgeist has shifted profoundly. How we feel about the world has changed, deeply. And unexpectedly, so has how we feel about one another.

When the alarm bells rang in 2020, thanks in large part to the youth movement, we realized that we suffered from too much consumption, competition, and greedy self-interest. Our commitment to these values and our drive for profit and status had led us to steamroll our environment. As a species we were out of control, and the result was the near-collapse of our world. We could no longer avoid seeing on a tangible, geophysical level that when you spurn regeneration, collaboration, and community, the consequence is impending devastation.

Extricating ourselves from self- destruction would have been impossible if we hadn’t changed our mindset and our priorities, if we hadn’t realized that doing what is good for humanity goes hand in hand with doing what is good for the Earth. The most fundamental change was that collectively— as citizens, corporations, and governments— we began adhering to a new bottom line: “Is it good for humanity whether profit is made or not?”

The climate change crisis of the beginning of the century jolted us out of our stupor. As we worked to rebuild and care for our environment, it was only natural that we also turned to each other with greater care and concern. We realized that the perpetuation of our species was about war more than saving ourselves from extreme weather. It was about being good stewards of the land and of one another. When we began the fight for the fate of humanity, we were thinking only about the species’ survival, but at some point, we understood that it was as much about the fate of our humanity. We emerged from the climate crisis as more mature members of the community of life, capable of not only restoring ecosystems but also of unfolding our dormant potentials of human strength and discernment. Humanity was only ever as doomed as it believed itself to be. Vanquishing that belief was our true legacy.

Join our Book Club to discuss the extract.

To join the Book Club, click here .

To follow the Book Club on Twitter, click here .

To follow the Book Club on Instagram, click here .

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Related topics:

The agenda .chakra .wef-n7bacu{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-weight:400;} weekly.

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

.chakra .wef-1dtnjt5{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;} More on Climate Change .chakra .wef-17xejub{-webkit-flex:1;-ms-flex:1;flex:1;justify-self:stretch;-webkit-align-self:stretch;-ms-flex-item-align:stretch;align-self:stretch;} .chakra .wef-nr1rr4{display:-webkit-inline-box;display:-webkit-inline-flex;display:-ms-inline-flexbox;display:inline-flex;white-space:normal;vertical-align:middle;text-transform:uppercase;font-size:0.75rem;border-radius:0.25rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;line-height:1.2;-webkit-letter-spacing:1.25px;-moz-letter-spacing:1.25px;-ms-letter-spacing:1.25px;letter-spacing:1.25px;background:none;padding:0px;color:#B3B3B3;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;box-decoration-break:clone;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;}@media screen and (min-width:37.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:0.875rem;}}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:1rem;}} See all

How direct biomass estimation can improve forest carbon accounting

Marco Albani

March 20, 2024

How pairing digital twin technology with AI could boost buildings’ emissions reductions

Philip Panaro, Sarah Parlow and François Amman

March 19, 2024

Warning on Great Barrier Reef bleaching and other nature and climate stories you need to read this week

March 18, 2024

Access to financial services can transform women’s lives – an expert explains how

Kateryna Gordichuk and Kate Whiting

In pictures: These are the top underwater photographs of the year

March 14, 2024

4 ways geopolitical tensions are increasing carbon emissions

Laia Barbarà and Claudia Galea

March 12, 2024

What the World Will Look Like in 2050 If We Don’t Cut Carbon Emissions in Half

Before COVID-19 crashed into our world, governments had two major crises to tackle: the oil price crash and the climate crisis . Now that three crises have converged, so too can the path through them. We can rebuild clean and healthy with trillions of dollars of stimulus , transitioning away from fossil fuels to clean infrastructure and industries that create millions of jobs, overcome deep social inequalities and create a thriving economy.

In our book, The Future We Choose , we outline two possible futures; one where we act to halve emissions in this decade, and the one imagined in extract below, if we fail.

It is 2050 . Beyond the emissions reductions registered in 2015, no further efforts were made to control emissions. We are heading for a world that will be more than 3 degrees warmer by 2100.

The first thing that hits you is the air.

In many places around the world, the air is hot, heavy, and depending on the day, clogged with particulate pollution. Your eyes often water. Your cough never seems to disappear. You can no longer simply walk out your front door and breathe fresh air. Instead, before opening doors or windows in the morning, you check your phone to see what the air quality will be. Everything might look fine—sunny and clear—but you know better. When storms and heat waves overlap and cluster, the air pollution and intensified surface ozone levels can make it dangerous to go outside without a specially designed face mask (which only some can afford).

Our world is getting hotter, an irreversible development now utterly beyond our control. We have already passed tipping points, like The Great Melting of the Arctic sea ice , which used to reflect the sun’s heat. Oceans, forests, plants, trees, and soil had for many years absorbed half the carbon dioxide we spewed out. Now there are few forests left, most of them either logged or consumed by wildfire, and the permafrost is belching greenhouse gases into an already overburdened atmosphere.

In five to 10 years, vast swaths of the planet will be increasingly inhospitable to humans. We don’t know how habitable the regions of Australia, North Africa, and the western United States will be by 2100. No one knows what the future holds for their children and grandchildren.

More moisture in the air and higher sea surface temperatures have caused a surge in extreme hurricanes and tropical storms. Coastal cities in Bangladesh, Mexico, the United States, and elsewhere have suffered brutal infrastructure destruction and extreme flooding, killing many thousands and displacing millions. This happens with increasing frequency now.

Because multiple disasters are often happening simultaneously, it can take weeks or even months for basic food and water relief to reach areas pummeled by extreme floods. Diseases such as malaria, dengue, cholera, respiratory illnesses, and malnutrition are rampant.

Melting permafrost is releasing ancient microbes that today’s humans have never been exposed to—and as a result have no resistance to. Diseases spread by mosquitoes and ticks are rampant as these species flourish in the changed climate, spreading to previously safe parts of the planet, increasingly overwhelming us. Worse still, the public health crisis of antibiotic resistance has only intensified as the population has grown denser in habitable areas and temperatures continue to rise.

Every day, because of rising water levels, some part of the world must evacuate to higher ground. Every day you see images of mothers with babies strapped to their backs, wading through floodwaters. News stories tell of people living in houses with water up to their ankles because they have nowhere else to go, their children coughing and wheezing because of the mold growing in their beds, insurance companies declaring bankruptcy leaving survivors without resources to rebuild their lives.

Those who remain on the coast must now witness the demise of a way of life based on fishing. As oceans have absorbed carbon dioxide, the water has become more acidic and is now so hostile to marine life that all but a few countries have banned fishing, even in international waters. Many people insist that the few fish that are left should be enjoyed while they last—an argument, hard to fault in many parts of the world, that applies to so much that is vanishing.

As devastating as rising oceans have been, droughts and heat waves inland have created a special hell. Vast regions have succumbed to severe aridification, sometimes followed by desertification. Wildlife there has become a distant memory.

Cities such as Marrakech and Volgograd are on the verge of becoming deserts. Hong Kong, Barcelona, Abu Dhabi, and many others have been desalinating seawater for years, desperately trying to keep up with the constant wave of immigration from areas that have gone completely dry.

Extreme heat is on the march. If you live in Paris, you endure summer temperatures that regularly rise to 111°F (43.8°C). This is no longer the headline-grabbing event it would have been 30 years ago. Everyone stays inside, drinks water, and dreams of air-conditioning. You lie on your couch, a cold, wet towel over your face, and try to rest without dwelling on the poor farmers on the outskirts of town who, despite recurrent droughts and wildfires, are still trying to grow grapes, olives, or soy—luxuries for the rich, not for you.

You try not to think about the 2 billion people who live in the hottest parts of the world , where, for upward of 45 days per year, temperatures skyrocket to 140°F (60°C) —a point at which the human body cannot be outside for longer than about six hours because it loses the ability to cool itself down. Places such as central India are becoming increasingly challenging to inhabit. For a while people tried to carry on, but when you can’t work outside, when you can fall asleep only at 4 a.m. for a couple of hours because that’s the coolest part of the day, there’s not much you can do but leave. Mass migrations to less hot rural areas are beset by a host of refugee problems, civil unrest, and bloodshed over diminished water availability.

Even in some parts of the United States, there are fiery conflicts over water, battles between the rich who are willing to pay for as much water as they want and everyone else demanding equal access to the life-enabling resource. The taps in nearly all public facilities are locked, and those in restrooms are coin-operated. At the federal level, Congress is in an uproar over water redistribution: states with less water demand what they see as their fair share from states that have more. Government leaders have been stymied on the issue for years, and with every passing month the Colorado River and the Rio Grande shrink further

Food production swings wildly from month to month, season to season, depending on where you live. More people are starving than ever before. Climate zones have shifted, so some new areas have become available for agriculture (Alaska, the Arctic), while others have dried up (Mexico, California). Still others are unstable because of the extreme heat, never mind flooding, wildfire, and tornadoes.

One thing hasn’t changed, though—if you have money, you have access. Global trade has slowed as countries such as China stop exporting and seek to hold on to their own resources. Disasters and wars rage, choking off trade routes. The tyranny of supply and demand is now unforgiving; because of its increasing scarcity, food can now be wildly expensive. Income inequality has never been this stark or this dangerous.

As committed as nations are to keeping wealth and resources within their borders, they’re determined to keep people out. Most countries’ armies are now just highly militarized border patrols. Lockdown is the goal, but it hasn’t been a total success. Desperate people will always find a way.

Ever since the equatorial belt started to become difficult to inhabit, an unending stream of migrants has been moving north from Central America toward Mexico and the United States. Others are moving south toward the tips of Chile and Argentina. The same scenes are playing out across Europe and Asia. Some countries have been better global Good Samaritans than others, but even they have now effectively shut their borders, their wallets, and their eyes.

Even if you live in areas with more temperate climates such as Canada and Scandinavia, you are still extremely vulnerable. Severe tornadoes, flash floods, wildfires, mudslides, and blizzards are often in the back of your mind. Depending on where you live, you have a fully stocked storm cellar, an emergency go-bag in your car, or a six-foot fire moat around your house. People are glued to weather forecasts . Only the foolhardy shut their phones off at night. If an emergency hits, you may only have minutes to respond.

The weather is unavoidable, but lately the news about what’s going on at the borders has become too much for most people to endure. Under increasing pressure from public health officials, news organizations have decreased the number of stories devoted to genocide, slave trading, and refugee virus outbreaks. You can no longer trust the news. Social media, long the grim source of live feeds and disaster reporting, is brimming with conspiracy theories and doctored videos.

The demise of the human species is being discussed more and more. For many, the only uncertainty is how long we’ll last, how many more generations will see the light of day. Suicides are the most obvious manifestation of the prevailing despair, but there are other indications: a sense of bottomless loss, unbearable guilt, and fierce resentment at previous generations who didn’t do what was necessary to ward off this unstoppable calamity.

Adapted from THE FUTURE WE CHOOSE: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright

More Must-Reads From TIME

• Why We're Spending So Much Money Now
• The Fight to Free Evan Gershkovich
• Meet the 2024 Women of the Year
• John Kerry's Next Move
• The Quiet Work Trees Do for the Planet
• Breaker Sunny Choi Is Heading to Paris
• Column: The Internet Made Romantic Betrayal Even More Devastating
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

You May Also Like

What will the world be like in 2050?

Talk details.

• EssayBasics.com
• Pay For Essay
• Write My Essay
• Homework Writing Help
• Essay Editing Service
• Thesis Writing Help
• Write My College Essay
• Do My Essay
• Term Paper Writing Service
• Coursework Writing Service
• Write My Research Paper
• Assignment Writing Help
• Essay Writing Help
• Call Now! (USA) Login Order now
• EssayBasics.com Call Now! (USA) Order now
• Writing Guides

Life In The Future (2050) (Essay Sample)

Table of Contents

Introduction

How far into the future have you gone in your daydreaming or reflections? I recently took the time to think about what life in the future may look like.

For this essay, I asked myself, “What will life be like in 2050?” 2050 seems far away but with modern technology, economic development, scientific advances, and climate change, we will find ourselves in that day and age soon.

Want to write about life in the year 2050? You can read the essays below for your guidance. If you need extra help, think about availing our affordable essay writing services .

What will life be like in 2050 essay

The 2000s came with innovations in many fields and sectors across the world. Most notably, the Internet kicked in and revolutionized the world, connecting people globally and creating an international village of Internet citizens.

Social media took it further by establishing a platform where you could manage your network of relationships.

From 2010, more new inventions were introduced to the global population, and the trend seems to be continuing at a steady rate. Life ahead seems to hold more surprises.

This paper aims to outline possible future scenarios of what life may look like after the next few decades, specifically by 2050.

Heading into the 21st century

Space explorations.

The 21st century brought to the fore more technology-oriented inventions than ever before.

While the 20th century saw man land on the moon, the 21st century will witness man visit several of the many planets that dot the universe.

The first to be explored will be Mars, also called the Red Planet. The mission is likely to be accomplished by 2030, as planned by NASA. This will write a new chapter in history and set a precedent for future explorations by subsequent human generations.

Discovering the cure for AIDS

Moreover, increased investment in research activities is likely to pave the way for the discovery of a vaccine for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

Increased acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community

Sex and gender issues are another aspect that will change by 2050.

Homosexuality has become a familiar topic of conversation in the current generation. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues are slowly being talked about and recognized amid heated debates among more conservative groups.

By 2050, they are likely to be such a universally accepted community that the law will require employers across the world to set aside a percentage of their employment vacancies for LGBT candidates. Such a mandate will be implemented alongside the existing gender-based directive of the equal female-and-male employee ratio.

The digitization of media

Media technology continues to rapidly evolve. At present, social media is taking the lead in relaying quick news bits and community engagement. Without question, it poses a threat to traditional sources of media including television, newspapers, radios, and magazines.

By 2025, some traditional media sources, specifically print newspapers, will have a diminished readership as online news sites and social media will have penetrated their share of readership.

The rise of e-commerce and e-cars

Mobile phones will play a greater role in retail shopping and financial transactions. Electronic money will replace paper money.

Additionally, with declining oil reserves across the world, electric cars will step in for petrol cars in the next few decades. Consequently, there will be a major shift in job trends, as some roles will be taken over by AI or will no longer be relevant.

The ever-changing face of US politics

The United States made history in 2016 by electing a president with no prior experience in politics. The electorate is breaking away from the traditional mentality of choosing experienced politicians with track records.

To say that a female president will be elected into office after President Donald Trump’s era is not shallow speculation. By 2050, the U.S. will have tasted female leadership.

Also, if Trump’s anti-immigration policy and deportation of illegal immigrants get adequate support in subsequent leaderships, the United States may have stunted population growth and few cases of immigration. These kinds of policies will impact America’s role as a global influencer.

Global warming continues to be a problem

Finally, global warming will become an even bigger problem. We will continue to see a rise in sea levels. At the same time, pollution will damage our freshwater sources.

From another perspective, dictatorships, chiefly in Asia, will destabilize the world. North Korea, China, and other emerging nuclear-armed countries will become major security threats to the entire world.

While such countries may trigger increased regional wars, World War 3 will not occur. In addition to this, terrorist groups will dominate major regions of the world.

With many changes up ahead – good and bad – in the coming decades, it would be good to prepare and anticipate how it will personally affect us.

Life In The Future 2050 Short Essay

In this day and age where we live in a developed world, it would be so easy to let our imaginations run wild when we think of what society would look like in the year 2050.

Nowadays, the technological advances we’ve made in almost every industry show incredible progress. Virtual reality is shaping the world of gaming, as well as e-learning and employee onboarding. Artificial intelligence is helping us run our households. Solar energy is being featured in many progressive homes and structures.

What about if we fast-forward to 2050? We may see a completely different list of developing countries as we continue to witness technology changing the lives of the global population. Self-driving cars may be a common occurrence as we seek to find ways to promote safer roads. More environmentally-friendly products and services will be used in homes and offices as we become more aware of the effects of climate change. Finally, robots may change the face of manufacturing. Manual labor may no longer be needed, which will result in tremendous job losses.

These are just a few of many life-altering changes that we could see happening in the coming years.

How to Write an Essay About The Future

A good way to envision the future is to daydream. When we describe something that hasn’t happened yet, we largely utilize our imagination. As such, we need to take time to sit down and think about our image of the future.  Ask yourself all sorts of questions that will stimulate your imagination. Will we be able to finally contact other planets? How will genetic engineering cause demographic changes? Are we going to care more deeply about renewable resources? What will the state of the ozone layer be given our current trend? After asking yourself all these questions, the next step is to do some actual research. Look for credible sites and authors that focus on forecasting and predicting. See how they line up with your speculations. Choose the trends that most accurately align with each other.

Will Life Be Better In The Future?

It depends on what you mean by “better.” Are driverless cars really the best way to ensure road safety? Will young people truly benefit from the progress we make as a society? Will technology really bring people together? In other words, will these revolutionary changes really be for a more connected and happy society or simply a matter of convenience? It is hard to answer this question definitively. We don’t know if life will be better for every member of the global population in 2050, but we know that it will certainly be different for everyone.

• Show search

Perspectives

The Science of Sustainability

Can a unified path for development and conservation lead to a better future?

October 13, 2018

• A False Choice
• Two Paths to 2050
• What's Possible
• The Way Forward
• Engage With Us

The Cerrado may not have the same name recognition as the Amazon , but this vast tropical savannah in Brazil has much in common with that perhaps better-known destination. The Cerrado is also a global biodiversity hotspot, home to thousands of species only found there, and it is also a critical area in the fight against climate change, acting as a large carbon pool.

But Brazil is one of the two largest soy producers in the world—the crop is one of the country’s most important commodities and a staple in global food supplies—and that success is placing the Cerrado in precarious decline. To date, around 46% of the Cerrado has been deforested or converted for agriculture.

Producing more soy doesn’t have to mean converting more native habitat, however. A new spatial data tool is helping identify the best places to expand soy without further encroachment on the native landscapes of the Cerrado. And with traders and bankers working together to offer preferable financing to farmers who expand onto already-converted land, Brazil can continue to produce this important crop, while protecting native habitat and providing more financial stability for farmers.

The Cerrado is just one region of a vast planet, of course, but these recent efforts to protect it are representative of a new way of thinking about the relationship between conservation and our growing human demands. It is part of an emerging model for cross-sector collaboration that aims to create a world prepared for the sustainability challenges ahead.

Is this world possible? Here, we present a new science-based view that says “Yes”—but it will require new forms of collaboration across traditionally disconnected sectors, and on a near unprecedented scale.

Download a PDF version of this feature. Click to see translated versions of this page.

I.  A False Choice

Many assume that economic interests and environmental interests are in conflict. But new research makes the case that this perception of development vs. conservation is not just unnecessary but actively counterproductive to both ends. Achieving a sustainable future will be dependent on our ability to secure both thriving human communities and abundant and healthy natural ecosystems.

The Nature Conservancy partnered with the University of Minnesota and 11 other organizations to ask whether it is possible to achieve a future where the needs of both people and nature are advanced. Can we actually meet people’s needs for food, water and energy while doing more to protect nature? 

The perception of development vs. conservation is not just unnecessary, but actively counterproductive to both ends.

To answer this question, we compared what the world will look like in 2050 if economic and human development progress in a “business-as-usual” fashion and what it would look like if instead we join forces to implement a “sustainable” path with a series of fair-minded and technologically viable solutions to the challenges that lie ahead.

In both options, we used leading projections of population growth and gross domestic product to estimate how demand for food, energy and water will evolve between 2010 and 2050. Under business-as-usual, we played out existing expectations and trends in how those changes will impact land use, water use, air quality, climate, protected habitat areas and ocean fisheries. In the more sustainable scenario, we proposed changes to how and where food and energy are produced, asking if these adjustments could result in better outcomes for the same elements of human well-being and nature. Our full findings are described in a peer-reviewed paper— “An Attainable Global Vision for Conservation and Human Well-Being” —published in  Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment .

These scenarios let us ask, can we do better? Can we design a future that meets people’s needs without further degrading nature in the process?

Our answer is “yes,” but it comes with several big “ifs.” There is a path to get there, but matters are urgent—if we want to accomplish these goals by mid-century, we’ll have to dramatically ramp up our efforts now. The next decade is critical.

Furthermore, changing course in the next ten years will require global collaboration on a scale not seen perhaps since World War II. The widely held impression that economic and environmental goals are mutually exclusive has contributed to a lack of connection among key societal constituencies best equipped to solve interconnected problems—namely, the public health, development, financial and conservation communities. This has to change.

The good news is that protecting nature and providing water, food and energy to a growing world do not have to be either-or propositions. Our view, instead, calls for smart energy, water, air, health and ecosystem initiatives that balance the needs of economic growth and resource conservation equally. Rather than a zero-sum game, these elements are balanced sides of an equation, revealing the path to a future where people and nature thrive together.

II. Two Paths to 2050

This vision is not a wholesale departure from what others have offered. A number of prominent scientists and organizations have put forward important and thoughtful views for a sustainable future; but often such plans consider the needs of people and nature in isolation from one another, use analyses confined to limited sectors or geographies, or assume that some hard tradeoffs must be made, such as slowing global population growth, taking a reduction in GDP growth or shifting diets off of meat. Our new research considers global economic development and conservation needs together, more holistically, in order to find a sustainable path forward.

What could a different future look like? We’ve used as our standard the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 measures for “a world where all people are fed, healthy, employed, educated, empowered and thriving, but not at the expense of other life on Earth.” Our analysis directly aligns with ten of those goals. Using the SDGs as our guideposts, we imagine a world in 2050 that looks very different than the one today—and drastically different from the one we will face if we continue in business-as-usual fashion.

A sustainable future is possible.

To create our assessment of business-as-usual versus a more sustainable path, we looked at 14 measurements including temperature change, carbon dioxide levels, air pollution, water consumption, food and energy footprints, and protected areas.

Over the next 30 years, we know we’ll face rapid population growth and greater pressures on our natural resources. The statistics are sobering—with 9.7 billion people on the planet by 2050, we can expect a 54 percent increase in global food demand and 56 percent increase in energy demand. While meetings these growing demands and achieving sustainability is possible, it is helpful to scrutinize where the status quo will get us.

The World Health Organization, World Economic Forum and other leading global development organizations now say that air pollution and water scarcity—environmental challenges—are among the biggest dangers to human health and prosperity. And our business-as-usual analysis makes clear what many already fear: that human development based on the same practices we use today will not prepare us for a world with nearly 10 billion people.

To put it simply, if we stay on today’s current path, we risk being trapped in an intensifying cycle of scarcity—our growth opportunities severely capped and our natural landscapes severely degraded. Under this business-as-usual scenario, we can expect global temperature to increase 3.2°C; worsened air pollution affecting 4.9 billion more people; overfishing of 84 percent of fish stocks; and greater water stress affecting 2.75 billion people. Habitat loss continues, leaving less than 50 percent of native grasslands and several types of forests intact.

However, if we make changes in where and how we meet food, water and energy demands for the same growing global population and wealth, the picture can look markedly different by mid-century. This “sustainability” path includes global temperature increase limited to 1.6°C—meeting Paris Climate Accord goals—zero overfishing with greater fisheries yields, a 90 percent drop in exposure to dangerous air pollution, and fewer water-stressed people, rivers and agricultural fields. These goals can be met while natural habitats extend both inside and outside protected areas. All signatory countries to the Aichi Targets meet habitat protection goals, and more than 50 percent of all ecoregions’ extents remain unconverted, except temperate grasslands (of which over 50 percent are already converted today).

Behind the Science

Discover how TNC and its partners developed the models for 2050.

III. What's Possible

Achieving this sustainable future for people and nature is possible with existing and expected technology and consumption, but only with major shifts in production patterns. Making these shifts will require overcoming substantial economic, social and political challenges. In short, it is not likely that the biophysical limits of the planet will determine our future, but rather our willingness to think and act differently by putting economic development and the environment on equal footing as central parts of the same equation.

Climate, Energy and Air Quality

Perhaps the most pressing need for change is in energy use. In order to both meet increased energy demand and keep the climate within safe boundaries, we’ll need to alter the way we produce energy, curtailing emissions of carbon and other harmful chemicals.

Under a business-as-usual scenario, fossil fuels will still claim a 76 percent share of total energy in 2050. A more sustainable approach would reduce that share to 13 percent by 2050. While this is a sharp change, it is necessary to stanch the flow of harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The reduction in carbon-based energy could be offset by increasing the share of energy from renewable sources to 54 percent and increasing nuclear energy to one third of total energy output—delivering a total of almost 85 percent of the world’s energy demand from non-fossil-fuel sources.

Additionally, we will only achieve the full extent of reduced climate impacts if we draw down existing carbon from the atmosphere. This can be done through greater investment in carbon capture and storage efforts, including natural climate solutions—land management strategies such as avoiding forest loss, reforestation, investments in soil health and coastal ecosystem restoration.

The net benefit of these energy redistribution efforts is twofold. First, they lower the rate at which greenhouse gases are flowing into the air—taking atmospheric carbon projections down to 442 parts per million, compared to business-as-usual estimates that put the level closer to 520 ppm.

Second, these energy source shifts would create a marked decline in particulate air pollution. Our models show that the higher fossil fuel use in the business-as-usual scenario is likely to expose half the people on the planet to poorer air quality by 2050. Under the sustainable scenario, that figure drops to just 7 percent of the world’s inhabitants, thanks to lower particulate emissions from renewable and nuclear energy sources.

Case Studies: 

• Forests That Fight Climate Change: Brazil’s Serra da Mantiqueira region demonstrates how reforestation can tackle climate change, improve water supplies, and increase incomes in rural communities.  Learn More
• Can Trees Be a Prescription for Urban Health?:  Conservationists, community organizations and public health researchers joined forces to plant trees in Louisville, Kentucky and monitor their impact on air quality and residents’ health.  Learn More

Food, Habitat and City Growth

Meeting the sustainable targets we propose requires a second front on land to shift how we use available real estate and where we choose to conduct necessary activities. Overall, the changes we include in our more sustainable view allow the world to meet global food, water and energy demands with no additional conversion of natural habitat for those needs—an outcome that is not possible under business as usual.

While transitioning away from fossil fuels is essential to meet climate goals, new renewable energy infrastructure siting will present land-use challenges. Renewable energy production takes up space, and if not sited well it can cause its own negative impacts on nature and its services to people. In our more sustainable path, we address this challenge by preferencing the use of already converted land for renewables development, lessening the impact of new wind and solar on natural habitat. We also exclude expansion of biofuels, as they are known to require extensive land area to produce, causing conflicts with natural habitat and food security.

Perhaps most encouraging, we show that it is possible to meet future food demands on less agricultural land than is used today. Notably, our scenario keeps the mix of crops in each growing region the same, so as not to disrupt farmers’ cultures, technologies, capacity or existing crop knowledge. Instead, we propose moving which crops are grown where within growing regions, putting more “thirsty” crops in areas with more water, and matching the nutrient needs of various crops to the soils available.

Unlike some projections used by others, for this scenario we left diet expectations alone, matching meat consumption with business-as-usual expectations. If we were able to reduce meat consumption, especially by middle- and high-income countries where nutritional needs are met, reducing future agricultural land, water and pollution footprints would be even easier.

Meanwhile, on the land protection front, our analysis is guided by the Convention on Biological Diversity, the leading global platform most countries have signed. Each signatory country has agreed to protect up to 17 percent of each habitat type within its borders. While many countries will fall short of this goal under business as usual, it can be achieved in our more sustainable option.

By making changes in food, water and energy use, we can better protect nearly all habitat types.

We acknowledge 17 percent is an imperfect number, and many believe more natural habitat is needed to allow the world’s biodiversity to thrive. Looking beyond protected areas, we see additional differences in the possible futures we face. Our more sustainable option retains 577 million hectares more natural habitat than business as usual, much of it outside of protected areas. Conservation has long focused on representation—it is not only important to conserve large areas, but to represent different kinds of habitat. Under business as usual, we will lose more than half of several major habitat types by mid-century, including temperate broadleaf and mixed forests, Mediterranean forest, and temperate grassland. Flooded and tropical grasslands approach this level of loss as well.

But with the proposed shifts in food, water and energy use, we can do better for nearly all habitats in our more sustainable scenario. The one exception is temperate grasslands, a biome that has already lost more than 50 percent of its global extent today. In all, the more sustainable scenario shows a future that would be largely compatible with emerging views that suggest protecting half of the world’s land system.

 Case Study:

• Managing Sprawling Soy:  A partnership between businesses and nonprofit groups in Brazil will help farmers plant soy in the areas where it is has the smallest impact on natural habitats.  Learn More

Drinking Water, River Basins and Fisheries

Water presents a complex set of challenges. Like land, it is both a resource and a habitat. Fresh water resources are dwindling while ocean ecosystems are overburdened by unregulated fishing and pollution. Business-as-usual projections estimate that 2.75 billion people will experience water scarcity by 2050 and 770 water basins will experience water stress. Africa and Central Asia in particular would see fewer water stressed basins in the sustainable scenario.

Changes in energy sources and food production (see above sections) would lead to significant water savings by reducing use of water as a coolant in energy production and by moving crops to areas where they need less irrigation. Thanks to these changes, our more sustainable option for the future would relieve 104 million people and biodiversity in 25 major river basins from likely water stress.

Meanwhile, in the seas, we find an inspiring possibility for fisheries. Continuing business-as-usual fisheries management adds further stress to the oceans and the global food system as more stocks decline, further diminishing the food we rely on from the seas. But more sustainable fisheries management is possible, and our projections using a leading fisheries model shows that adopting sustainable management in all fisheries by mid-century would actually increase yield by over a quarter more than we saw in 2010.

And, while we know that aquaculture is a certain element of the future of fish and food, many questions remain about precisely how this industry will grow, and how it can be shaped to be a low-impact part of the global food system. Given these unknowns, we kept aquaculture growth the same in both our views of the future.

 Case Studies:

• Cities and Farmers Find Common Ground on Water: Smarter agricultural practices in the Kenya’s Upper Tana River Watershed are resulting in better yields for farmers and more reliable water supplies for the city of Nairobi.  Learn More
• Technology Offers a Lifeline for Fish:  A new mobile application being piloted in Indonesia is helping fill a crucial gap in fisheries management—providing accurate data about what species are being caught where.  Learn More

IV.  The Way Forward

This analysis does not represent a panacea for the growing need for economic development across the planet or for the environmental challenges that are ahead. But it does provide an optimistic viewpoint and an integrated picture that can serve as a starting point for discussion.

Our goal is to apply new questions—and ultimately new solutions—to our known problems. We present one of many possible paths to a different future, and we welcome like-minded partners and productive critics to share their perspectives with us. We encourage people from across society to join the conversation, to fill gaps where they exist, and to bring other important considerations to our attention. Most of all, we call on the development (e.g. energy, agriculture, infrastructure), health, and financial communities—among others—to work with us to find new ways of taking action together.

Ultimately, by illustrating a viable pathway to sustainability that serves both the needs of economic and environmental interests—goals that many have long assumed were mutually exclusive—we hope to inspire the global community to engage in the difficult but necessary social, economic and political dialogue that can make a sustainable future a reality.

Protecting nature and providing water, food and energy to the world can no longer be either-or propositions. Nature and human development are both central factors in the same equation. We have at our disposal the cross-sector expertise necessary to make informed decisions for the good of life on our planet, so let’s use it wisely. Our science affirms there is a way.

Join us as we chart a new path to 2050 by helping people and nature thrive—together.

Testimonials

Opportunities to Engage

Designing strategies to address global challenges for people and nature requires integration of diverse bodies of evidence that are now largely segregated. As actors across the health, development and environment sectors pivot to act collectively, they face challenges in finding and interpreting evidence on sector interrelationships, and thus in developing effective evidence-based responses.

Learn more about these emerging coalitions that offer opportunities to engage and connect with shared resources.

Bridge Collaborative

The Bridge Collaborative unites people and organizations in health, development and the environment with the evidence and tools to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges. Learn More

Science for Nature and People Partnership

SNAPP envisions a world where protecting and promoting nature works in concert with sustainable development and improving human well-being. Learn More

Wicked Econ Fest

Wicked Econ Fests are workshops between leading economics, finance, conservation and policy experts to tackle specific, decision-driven challenges. Learn More

Global Insights

Check out our latest thinking and real-world solutions to some of the most complex challenges facing people and the planet today. Explore our Insights

We personalize nature.org for you

This website uses cookies to enhance your experience and analyze performance and traffic on our website.

To manage or opt-out of receiving cookies, please visit our

What Will America Look Like in 2050?

A Smithsonian/Pew poll finds optimism about science and social progress despite worries about the environment and population growth

Within the next 40 years, most Americans believe, the United States will get the bulk of its energy from sources other than oil. Computers will converse like people. Cancer will be cured, and artificial limbs will outperform natural ones. Astronauts will land on Mars, and ordinary people will travel in space.

But that optimistic outlook on scientific achievement—documented in a nationwide opinion poll conducted by the Pew Research Center and Smithsonian —does not extend to the environment. A small majority of those polled said most of the United States would face severe water shortages by 2050. Six in ten said the oceans would be less healthy than they are now, and seven in ten foresaw a major energy crisis. Overall, fewer than half expected the quality of Earth’s environment to improve.

“If the U.S. has a national religion, the closest thing to it is faith in technology,” said Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Research Center . But “technology is not seen as a panacea for fixing the environment.”

The poll, occasioned by the magazine’s 40th anniversary and designed to assess attitudes about the next 40 years, also documented a drop in expectations. Americans remain generally positive, with 64 percent of those surveyed saying they were somewhat or very optimistic about what the next 40 years holds for them and their families; 61 percent said the same about the nation’s future. But in a Pew poll taken in May 1999, the questions garnered response rates of 81 percent and 70 percent, respectively.

Of course, the 1999 poll was taken at the height of the high-tech boom and on the eve of a new millennium. Since then, terrorists attacked the United States, the nation has engaged in two wars, the cost of living has outpaced wages and a recession has damaged the economy, among other things.

In the new survey, 58 percent of respondents said a world war would occur in the next four decades, 53 percent said terrorists would attack the United States with nuclear weapons, and the same majority said the nation would be less important in the world than it is now.

The Smithsonian /Pew poll was conducted April 21-26—just after the BP oil spill began in the Gulf of Mexico, but well before its magnitude became apparent. The survey included 1,546 adults in the United States reached by residential telephone or cellphone. The margin of error for the total sample is no more than plus or minus 4.5 points.

The documented belief in technological advancement extended from the laboratory (half said an extinct species would be resuscitated through cloning) to outer space (half said evidence of life would be found elsewhere in the universe) to the marketplace (a small majority said gasoline-powered cars would go out of production).

In an exception to the pessimism about the environment, the poll found a ten-point drop in the percentage of respondents who say the earth will get warmer: from 76 percent in 1999 to 66 percent in 2010.

That trend “is very consistent with data we've gathered on the issue of global warming more generally,” Keeter said. “There are many possible explanations, but one thing is quite clear: there is a strong partisan and ideological pattern to the decline in belief in global warming.” The vast majority of the change since 1999, he said, has occurred among Republicans and independents who lean Republican.

Because the U.S. population is expected to increase by more than 100 million by 2050, the poll asked about such growth. More than twice as many respondents (42 percent) said it would be more harmful than beneficial (16 percent). And there was ambivalence about immigration. Roughly a third of respondents said legal immigration had to be decreased to keep the economy strong, but a slightly higher proportion said legal immigration had to be kept at current levels; a quarter said it should be increased.

A clear majority expected race relations to improve (68 percent). Even more expected a Hispanic candidate to be elected president of the United States (69 percent). And 89 percent—the largest majority in the entire poll—said a woman would be elected president.

There was broad agreement that the cultural landscape, however else it changes over the next 40 years, will have less paper. More than six in ten respondents said they believed that paper currency and printed newspapers would disappear and personal letters sent by mail would be exceedingly rare.

And a hopeful outlook on the U.S. economy—56 percent said it would be stronger in 2050 than it is now—came with a caveat: 86 percent said Americans would have to work into their 70s before retiring. Those longer careers, in the respondents’ view, would not be accompanied by longer lives. Those who thought more people would live to be 100 (42 percent) were outnumbered by those who did not (50 percent).

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

T.A. Frail | READ MORE

Tom Frail is a senior editor for Smithsonian magazine. He previously worked as a senior editor for the Washington Post and for Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

Leave your feedback

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/most-americans-have-a-gloomy-outlook-for-life-in-2050

Most Americans have a gloomy outlook for life in 2050

WASHINGTON — Ask people to imagine American life in 2050, and you’ll get some dreary visions.

Whether they foresee runaway technology or runaway government, rampant poverty or vanishing morality, a majority of Americans predict a future worse than today.

Whites are particularly gloomy: Only 1 in 6 expects better times over the next four decades. Also notably pessimistic are middle-age and older people, those who earn midlevel incomes and Protestants, a new national poll finds.

“I really worry about my grandchildren, I do,” says 74-year-old Penny Trusty of Rockville, Md., a retired software designer and grandmother of five. “I worry about the lowering of morals and the corruption and the confusion that’s just raining down on them.”

Even groups with comparatively sunny outlooks — racial and ethnic minorities, the young and the nonreligious — are much more likely to say things will be the same or get worse than to predict a brighter future.

“Changes will come, and some of them are scary,” says Kelly Miller, 22, a freshly minted University of Minnesota sports management grad.

She looks forward to some wonderful things, like 3D printers creating organs for transplant patients. But Miller envisions Americans in 2050 blindly relying on robots and technology for everything from cooking dinner to managing their money.

“It’s taking away our free choice and human thought,” she says. “And there’s potential for government to control and regulate what this artificial intelligence thinks.”

Overall, 54 percent of those surveyed expect American life to go downhill, while 23 percent think it will improve, according to a December survey from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Only 21 percent predict life will stay about the same. That minority may be onto something, however.

While no one can say what catastrophes or human triumphs are to come, contentment at a personal level has proven remarkably stable over the past four decades.

Interviews by the federally funded General Social Survey, one of the nation’s longest-running surveys of social trends, show Americans’ overall happiness as well as satisfaction with their jobs and marriages barely fluctuating since 1972. Those decades spanned the sexual revolution and the women’s rights movement, race riots and civil rights advances, the resignation of one president and impeachment of another, wars from Vietnam through Afghanistan, the birth of the home computer and the smartphone, boom times and hard times.

Despite the recent shift toward negativity about the state of the nation, the portion of U.S. residents rating themselves very or pretty happy stayed around 9 out of 10.

“Most people evaluate their lives very stably from year to year,” said Tom W. Smith, who has been director since 1980 of the GSS, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. “You don’t want massive surges and falls in personal happiness, and the fact that we don’t see that is reassuring.”

The GSS, conducted once every two years, will send interviewers back into the field in 2014. The AP-NORC Center survey asked people to rate the change in American life during the period tracked by the GSS, from 1972 to 2012.

A majority — 54 percent — say life in America is worse today than four decades ago. Those old enough to remember the early `70s are especially nostalgic, as are tea party supporters and people who live in the countryside. Those who say U.S. life has declined are more apt to name politics, the economy, moral values or changes in families as the biggest difference.

The 3 in 10 who think life is better are more likely to point to computers and technology as the big change. Racial and ethnic minorities are apt to cite domestic issues, including civil rights.

The GSS offers a look at the real-time changes in American opinion, along with things that have stayed the same, and hints for the future:

Some of the opinions voiced in the 1972 survey are rarely uttered today. Back then, nearly 4 in 10 nonblacks agreed with the idea that whites had the right to keep blacks “out of their neighborhoods.” A quarter of nonblacks said they wouldn’t vote for a black man for president, and 26 percent of all adults wouldn’t back a well-qualified woman.

Now the president of the United States is black and a woman is the most-discussed prospect for 2016. The GSS dropped those three questions in the 1990s as results began to show they were no longer contentious.

La’Shon Callaway, a 19-year-old political science student at Stockton College in New Jersey, is optimistic that his generation will make the future brighter and that he’ll see discrimination fade over his lifetime.

“People are getting tired of it, and fed up,” said Callaway, who is black. “They’re realizing even if you’re not the same color as me, you’re still a person and I’m still a person.” As 2050 approaches, one central component of U.S. race relations will change: Non-Hispanic whites will no longer make up the majority of the population, according to Census Bureau projections.

Love and Family

In 1972, the sexual revolution was ablaze. That year the Supreme Court ruled that unmarried couples had a right to birth control. “The Joy of Sex” manual was published. And then there’s “Maude,” the sitcom character who shocked Americans by getting an abortion.

Still, a third of Americans back then disapproved of a woman working if she had a husband to support her. The GSS no longer bothers asking that one.

Americans today are more worried about divorce and the increasing number of never-married moms. Nearly 4 out of 10 women who gave birth in 2011 were unmarried, according to the census.

“It’s very sad to me,” says Christine Hicks, 57, of Nashville, Tenn., who divorced when her two children were teens. “It’s really hard to be a parent when you’re alone.”

Despite the social turmoil, 98 percent of married people today say their union is happy, including two-thirds who are “very happy.” And marital fidelity remains an ideal endorsed by nearly all Americans.

The political debate over abortion shows no signs of being resolved, more than 40 years after Roe vs. Wade. Young people today are somewhat more conservative on the issue than middle-aged Americans.

Gay marriage, on the other hand, appears headed toward future acceptance. Young people are solidly in favor, while opposition is strongest among the oldest Americans.

Through those decades of moral tumult, the vast majority of Americans held onto belief in God or some higher power. Fewer than 1 in 10 say there’s no God or no way to know. Yet ties to organized religion are slipping .

Since 1972, the number of Americans who name no faith preference has quadrupled to 20 percent.

“Maybe it just means people are thinking for themselves and not following blindly,” says Hicks, a Tennessee state worker and Methodist churchgoer. “But I do think the church gives families a foundation.”

Recession, a stock market crash, runaway inflation and an oil crisis marred the U.S. economy in the early 1970s. Forty years later, those look like the good times to many.

Before the Great Recession hit in 2007, most people consistently said their family finances were getting better instead of worse. That’s not the case anymore. Americans are more likely to consider themselves “lower class” than ever in GSS history — 8 percent say that.

“You read every day about ‘no more middle class’,” says Bill Hardy, 67, a Westerville, Ohio, investment adviser. “It’s the poor versus the rich almost.”

Whites are especially pessimistic about their prospects. Black and Hispanic optimism surged after Barack Obama became the first black president in 2008.

Overall, about half of Americans still believe their children will have a better standard of living than they do.

“I just think they’re going to have to deal with a lot,” Hardy, who is white, said of his grown children and three grandkids. “They’ll deal with it. Kids today are very smart.”

Associated Press reporter Connie Cass wrote this report. AP Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed. Follow Cass on Twitter @Conniecass .

Read more: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research .

Support Provided By: Learn more

Educate your inbox

Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.

• Skip to main content
• Skip to secondary menu
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Study Today

Largest Compilation of Structured Essays and Exams

Essay on Year 2050 | What Life Style will be in the year 2050?

March 3, 2018 by Study Mentor Leave a Comment

Human and his immaculate calculations are inseparable. Since yesterday’s mankind has lived life around mathematical.

And they have kept on evolving theories, axioms, innovation and invention. He/she lives in present day but the top most part of his body always lured him to indulge either in past or future.  

To explore past, they become archaeologist and studies every possible aspect that could have existed. They don’t leave any stone upturned.

They have discovered how early man would probably have looked like. How he evolved into hi- tech super robotics sought of human from ape species.

What he used to eat and how he use to cook when devices like gas burner, oven and microwave oven were not imaginable.

How he used to build houses, which concrete did they use? They have been able to calculate the time span of various species of human being.  

This is all possible because of technological advancement. From the root of hair, experts can find out the DNA of that person.  

Not only exploring past has become viable but also the future is more or less under the control of human being.

Though they yet to have total control but human does have a considerable control over future. This is a fact you can’t argue for.  

Year 2050 is not very far from 2017. Just 33 years away and then we would land in year 2050. The year is not so far away that we can’t assume what probably would be the scenario then.

Yet the year is not so nearby either that we could exactly predict how will be the environment exactly.   

Predictions could be made about facilities that could come up with time. Though the year is not so far away that we could imagine human evolution but habits would undergo changes.

May be students won’t move out of their houses to go to school. E- Schools will take the charge to build the educated foundation of nation. Houses would have all the high end technological devices.   

One may eat as many number of chocolates they want to eat but calories concern would not dare to destroy the taste.

Foodies will have the ultimate gift of technology that eat, sleep and then eat. Leave the weight gain worries on to super machines.  

Portable cars is not an exaggeration to think of. Portable furniture has come to real life from reel life. Then portable cars are not far behind in league.

40 years back imagining devices that could give you ease to walk and talk was remote off thought.   To see live the caller was inconceivable.

But it is reality today. More than reality the device to enable life changing has gain the status of necessity.  

Human has made computers and super computers. The rapid pace of development would someday enable computer to generate human.

Machines are getting wittier with each passing day. They have replaced humans in factories. So it’s quite imaginable that one day machines will take part in human production process.  

Space visit no longer would be the monopolies of astronaut. People would be able to visit other planets the same way as they go and visit market nearby them.  

Self-driven vehicles which are being tested now a day would be a common sight. The especially abled will at least become little more independents with this step.

Robots will do house hold chores and also will act as friends with conscious mind. Mannerism will be trait of robots at least.  

Non-renewable resources of energy will deplete and human would have to depend totally on renewable sources of energy.

Solar energy would be greatest source of energy. The steps are being taken in this direction to promote more use of solar energy as source of energy.  

Underwater hotels, air crafts like the one in science fiction movies will be alive. May be teleportation will take charge of whole scenario of air travel.  

Emotional front will also face changes. Human would be more mechanical and emotions will take a back seat.

Communication and accessibility will be at an all-time high. Fast food, entertainment, and news would be ready for our consumption at our will.  

But technology has its side effects too. With more and more of advancement materialistic approach is guiding power. Relations are for namesake.

As long as people derive benefits from relation they carry it. Once they realize that they are giving more and gets lesser in relationship, they quit it.  

Things will only worsen with time. Parental love will have held no place in kid’s life.

If parents would be capable of fulfilling desires of kids they will be treated as part of family. Otherwise kids will not give it a second thought in leaving parents for friends.  

Tress will be preserved in museum as it will be among endangered species. Deforestation would leave little of fresh air for coming generation. People will move out of houses wearing oxygen mask.   

By the year 2050, the world’s population will reach nine billion. The demand on the world’s resources – energy will be severe.

But the road from now to then need not be bleak. There is a path to a future filled with opportunities, with amazing individuals and extraordinary projects leading the way.  

Human species need to be future ready but that preparation should not cost our present. They have to strike the perfect balance for the fear of sinking of boat.

Human beings are dependent on environment for their very existence so it is important to maintain a perfect harmony between human and natural environment.  

Health should be protected and promoted because if health is lost, life sounds miserable. To live healthy life one has to act today.

Reader Interactions

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Top Trending Essays in March 2021

• Essay on Pollution
• Essay on my School
• Summer Season
• My favourite teacher
• World heritage day quotes
• my family speech
• importance of trees essay
• autobiography of a pen
• honesty is the best policy essay
• essay on building a great india
• my favourite book essay
• essay on caa
• my favourite player
• autobiography of a river
• farewell speech for class 10 by class 9
• essay my favourite teacher 200 words
• internet influence on kids essay
• my favourite cartoon character

Brilliantly

Content & links.

Verified by Sur.ly

Essay for Students

• Essay for Class 1 to 5 Students

Scholarships for Students

• Class 1 Students Scholarship
• Class 2 Students Scholarship
• Class 3 Students Scholarship
• Class 4 Students Scholarship
• Class 5 students Scholarship
• Class 6 Students Scholarship
• Class 7 students Scholarship
• Class 8 Students Scholarship
• Class 9 Students Scholarship
• Class 10 Students Scholarship
• Class 11 Students Scholarship
• Class 12 Students Scholarship

STAY CONNECTED

• About Study Today
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions

Scholarships

• Apj Abdul Kalam Scholarship
• Ashirwad Scholarship
• Bihar Scholarship
• Canara Bank Scholarship
• Colgate Scholarship
• Dr Ambedkar Scholarship
• E District Scholarship
• Epass Karnataka Scholarship
• Fair And Lovely Scholarship
• Floridas John Mckay Scholarship
• Inspire Scholarship
• Jio Scholarship
• Karnataka Minority Scholarship
• Lic Scholarship
• Maulana Azad Scholarship
• Medhavi Scholarship
• Minority Scholarship
• Moma Scholarship
• Mp Scholarship
• Muslim Minority Scholarship
• Nsp Scholarship
• Oasis Scholarship
• Obc Scholarship
• Odisha Scholarship
• Pfms Scholarship
• Post Matric Scholarship
• Pre Matric Scholarship
• Prerana Scholarship
• Prime Minister Scholarship
• Rajasthan Scholarship
• Santoor Scholarship
• Sitaram Jindal Scholarship
• Ssp Scholarship
• Swami Vivekananda Scholarship
• Ts Epass Scholarship
• Up Scholarship
• Vidhyasaarathi Scholarship
• Wbmdfc Scholarship
• West Bengal Minority Scholarship
• Click Here Now!!

Mobile Number

Have you Burn Crackers this Diwali ? Yes No

• About The Digest

Life in 2050: A Look Into Sustainable Cities of the Future

In the next 30 years, cities worldwide will be forced to change in ways never seen before. Sustainability will no longer be an enticing feature; it will be the driving force behind any major city. Sustainable cities of the future will be bigger, greener, and more intertwined with technology. There will be multiple instigators behind this shift. Climate change and advancement in technology are the obvious ones, but they’re unlikely to be the most potent forces. The main reason cities will be forced to become significantly more sustainable will be due to population surges.

The world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. This is up from the current figure of 7.8 billion. These numbers have been on a significant rise for some time now, as we’ve seen a jump of nearly 2 billion just in this century alone. This population growth presents troubling implications for the world economy, climate change, resource availability, quality of life, and much more. Humanity will have to adapt. 

Our world is already changing. Planning for this growth has been well underway for some time, and exciting ideas are starting to come to fruition. With the advent of smart technology and a greater emphasis on protecting the environment , we’re closer to the cities of the future than we realize. We’ve already seen surface-level changes: more bike lanes in cities, a renewed emphasis on recycling and clean energy, and further accessibility of public transit. There are some cities across the globe, however, that are much further ahead in regard to their sustainability practices. These cities are providing the rest of us a window into the future. 

Let’s take a look at what sustainable cities of the future could look like in 2050 and which cities are already ahead of the curve:

Cities in 2050

When we think of the year 2050, most of us might think of science-fiction renditions from movies with visions of flying cars and a world driven by gadget-like technology. While we should expect life to be more intertwined with advanced technology, we should also know that the main priority is likely going to be sustainability. The popular buzzwords of today’s world like “smart” technology, “organic” sourcing, and emphasis on “natural” resources will become the predominant themes of living. Likely out of necessity more so than popularity.

Here are some of the most probable features we can expect in the cities of 2050:

Densely-Packed Cities

Out of the population of 9 billion in 2050, 70 percent are expected to live in cities. Cities will be more densely packed than ever before. We can expect a greater emphasis on quality of life and ensuring citizens have accessibility to reduce the negative effects of overcrowding. This enhanced accessibility likely will involve streamlined access to nature, technology, desired services, and practically anything that can improve one’s quality of life. Accessibility will be at an all-time high because it’ll be a necessity to keep cities thriving. With more people, that also means an even greater need for sustainable practices. There will have to be city-wide and even worldwide buy-in to avoid the legitimate threats of pollution, dangerous air quality, resource shortages, and much more.

Jewel Changi Airport, Singapore / Photo by Joe Green

Localized Communities and Urban Hubs

As cities of the future face higher density, there will be a need to create more localized communities. The goal here will be to reverse a practice known as “urban sprawl,” which we see too much of right now. Sprawl refers to growth and development across large land areas, with very low density yet significant environmental implications. For example, suburbs are the most common form of sprawl. These suburban areas can create some economic development, but ultimately it’s hard to argue that it’s enough to overrule the negative environmental and resource impact. If we continue with sprawl, we’ll run out of space, permanently damage the environment, and have severe resource shortages; it’s just not sustainable. Especially in the U.S., we can see with any major city a non-stop outward development in the areas surrounding the cities. 

The way we’ll likely combat this by 2050 is via “urban hubs,” which are localized communities that include mixed-use buildings and developments. Instead of one city center, there might be five or so urban hubs throughout a city. Architects will design buildings for all-in-one use: residences, workspaces, social hangouts, farming, etc. This creates an entire localized community of everything one might need to maximize space and reduce the carbon footprint per person. Modern technology will play a significant role here, making buildings and communities more useful and enjoyable. Within urban hubs, we can also expect more integrated communities between age, class, and much else. National Geographic provides a great breakdown of these urban hubs and much else here .

Building Concept Design for Paris in 2050 / Design from Vincent Callebaut

Redefined Transportation

As you might expect, transportation in 2050 will likely be entirely different. However, it’s probably not going to be what most of us might’ve expected. The big talk nowadays is self-driving cars, but their future might not be all that bright in reality. Even with zero-emission cars, there are potential pitfalls from a sustainability perspective. Vehicles, emission-free or not, cause cities to be far less efficient, make it much harder for other forms of transportation to grow, and use up a good deal of resources. Streets in 2050 will likely be less present and instead will favor more space for pedestrians and alternative transportation. Cars go against the idea of reducing sprawl and make city experience less enjoyable by the area they take up and the impact they have. They’ll probably still be around, but maybe not to the extent that we’d expect. 

Public transit will become more prevalent and should be safer, more affordable, and highly efficient. High-speed and automated travel likely will be the status quo. In the City of Miami, for example, officials already have plans in place to start developing personal rapid transit vehicles, like the ones seen in the design below. Another interesting element here is the role drones will play. It seems no matter what, they’ll be of value in some significant way, but one idea is the potential for drone transportation and use in public transit by 2050. 

Rendering provided by Ultra Global Ltd.

Smart Cities 

Technology in 2050 will need to first and foremost aid sustainability. The tech sector is already becoming more involved, and we can expect that trend to continue. Cities will be driven by smart technology that’ll make people connected in more ways than before and hopefully boost city-life experience. Efficiency will be vital, and that’s where artificial intelligence and automation come in. They’ll likely be the backbone of the economy and everyday life. 

We’ll have some hoops to jump through first when it comes to artificial intelligence and automation. As we can see even in 2020, this technology has both positive and negative side effects on human life. Hopefully, by 2050, AI and automation will serve solely as a significant benefit to humanity and help us be more efficient, have greater work-life balance, and help economies thrive. We can also expect cities of 2050 to include virtual and augmented reality technology as a mainstream feature of society. Such technology will continue to change the way we interact, as we’re all very familiar with here in 2020.

Increased Biodiversity & Revamped Resources 

As mentioned, one of the biggest threats to worldwide population growth is resource shortages. Therefore, we can expect cities of 2050 to be completely self-sufficient—or at least that’s the hope. Cities will have more extraordinary biodiversity by preserving local ecology and making cities “greener.” Therefore, the natural environment will be much more protected, and areas in and around the city can hopefully be core resource production sources. It also means more creative ways of generating resources, with concepts such as vertical farming , underground farming, and even rooftop farming. 

Some vertical farming concepts are already in the works. While there is still a ways to go, more advancements in technology will allow such to be possible in the future. We will need much more protection of natural environments both in and around cities. Cities will need to be self-sufficient to meet the increasing demands of population growth. This applies not only to resource production but to energy sources as well. Cities will have to, at the very least, create as much energy as they use. Sustainable cities of the future will redefine the phrase “concrete jungle,” becoming more of a literal expression than a symbolic one.

An example of vertical farming practices

What’s Happening Right Now?

Though the features outlined above might seem far-out, some of these ideas are already underway in cities across the globe. Several cities are worth paying particular attention to now and in the coming years, as they’re functioning as the sort of trial runs for developing sustainable cities of the future. There are two cities I specifically wanted to highlight because they show two different but equally successful approaches to creating a sustainable modern city. With that said, let’s take a look at what’s happening in Singapore and Copenhagen. 

Singapore is a truly unique place, serving as both a city and a country, a true city-state. It also has undergone such tremendous change in the last 50 years, perhaps like never before seen. In 1965, the city-state was struggling economically, was heavily polluted, and was far from a desirable place for tourists and investors. Fast forward to 2020, and it’s one of the greenest and most modern cities in the entire world. The city is perhaps the best model for how sustainable cities of the future will look. 

Singapore is a densely packed city but places significant emphasis on quality of life and sustainability. Citizens have proximity and accessibility to all they need, such as schools, entertainment, shops, healthcare, and affordable public transit. Buildings are extensively intertwined with both natural and produced biodiversity under the green initiatives. Overall, the city-state is exceptionally accessible, is mostly self-sufficient, protects and promotes biodiversity, and is the closest city to what I outlined above in the entire world. 

Copenhagen is another world leader in sustainability but offers a different approach than that of Singapore. While Singapore has undergone a complete overhaul in development, Copenhagen has stayed relatively the same but has instead overhauled its sustainability practices. I like to think of Singapore as the desired future of cities, whereas Copenhagen is the more realistic future for cities to model in the coming years.  Copenhagen has revamped its sustainability practices to become one of the world leaders. Take a look at this short clip to see how:

How We Move Forward

Singapore and Copenhagen are beautiful examples of redesigning and refocusing our cities to become more sustainable. But if we’re to get to a point where such cities are common, there are hoops to jump through first. Perhaps the most obvious is the financial impact. These initiatives undertaken by both cities are costly, and it’s ultimately the local citizens that feel the burden. The cost of living in Singapore and Copenhagen is exceptionally high—among the most expensive in the world. Ultimately, sustainability should save money and reduce costs down the road; however, it’s the initial financial burden that poses the biggest drawback for most cities worldwide. 

Another big hurdle, particularly in the U.S., is complete buy-in to sustainability. The only way we’ll ever reach the ideal sustainable cities of the future is by the full support of people. In the 2019 Freethink feature video on Copenhagen, you can see that despite how expensive such measures are, the citizens have entirely bought in, which aided tremendously in advancing the initiatives. 

Despite the challenges cities are facing due to COVID, now could be the best time to start considering sweeping changes. Money and citizen buy-in makes this problematic. But I wonder if cities will ever have an opportunity like right now to start making real adjustments. There’s a lot at play here, and it’s easier said than done. But looking at New York City, for example, it’s possible that rethinking sustainability practices could help propel the city forward.

One way or another, communities worldwide will have to make profound changes to be more sustainable by 2050. Why not start sustainable cities of the future, now?

About the Author/s

Garrett Rutledge

Garrett is a writer at The Digest. He currently lives in Astoria, NY, and loves writing about topics that make readers think. His passions include film, sports, traveling, and culture.

• Garrett Rutledge https://thedigestonline.com/author/grutledge/ 11 Ski Trips Near New Jersey (2023 Guide)
• Garrett Rutledge https://thedigestonline.com/author/grutledge/ Whose Idea Was This Anyway? The Bizarre History Behind Our Favorite Christmas Decor
• Garrett Rutledge https://thedigestonline.com/author/grutledge/ Richie “The Boot” Boiardo: New Jersey Mafioso and Secret Pop-Culture Icon
• Garrett Rutledge https://thedigestonline.com/author/grutledge/ Revisiting New Jersey’s Cannabis Legalization a Year Later

An Inside Look at Sirenetta in Hoboken

10 mystery novels that will blow your mind, related articles, the state of the solar energy industry in..., powerpoint presentation step by step, new jersey devils’ brendan smith hosts first-ever “kancer..., 7 spectacular christmas tree lightings in somerset county, giving back made easy at these nj holiday..., celebrate indigenous heritage month in nj with these..., leveraging social media for community engagement, my backyard at nectar’s: growing awareness of native..., how artificial intelligence and machine learning are revolutionising..., allentown’s 2nd annual daffodil days festival.

Why not have a national or global student contest to create a new gender-neutral sport / recreation activity that keeps players separate, has not hand or head contact with shared equipment, and can be played during a pandemic? This may help society now and during other pandemics in the future.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Yes, I would like to receive emails from The Digest Online. Sign me up!

• Entertainment
• Restaurant Guide
• Weekly Newsletter

What will life be like for Australians in 2064?

From a "zombie self" to the reshaping of cities and nanobots in your blood stream, here are nine ways things might be different 40 years from now.

It's 2064. A Queensland great-grandmother, let's call her Lisa, is sweltering in her living room as she waits for a driverless car to take her to hospital. Her robot carer delivers water and medication while a nanobot circulating in Lisa's bloodstream sends real-time health data to her doctors.

Lisa's health crisis was sparked by a recent bushfire, a regular problem by mid-century. The air is still thick with smoke and the temperature has broken 48 degrees for the second time in a week. Heat from the fire destroyed her solar-power system and her home's air filtration and cooling systems have failed.

She is struggling to breathe and heat stroke is setting in. Even at age 98, Lisa lives alone. More than 4 per cent of the population is now over 85, up from around 2 per cent in 2000, and it is common for Australia’s elderly to lead independent lives. But after a conversation with her doctor via hologram , it is decided Lisa will head to hospital to stabilise her vital signs.

As she waits, Lisa uses the computer interface embedded in her brain to message her children, using just her thoughts, updating them on her health.

It is all so different to the 2020s when Lisa was caring for her own mother — tapping on the window of her aged care home during the COVID pandemic, trying to sync up a charged iPad with an internet connection and an agreed time to chat over FaceTime or WhatsApp. 

How wonderful it would be to chat to her mother now, Lisa thinks, as she opens an app and calls up the digital clone of her husband Dave, who died four years ago aged 101.

This digital twin sounds exactly like him and is programmed with hours of memories, ideas and opinions that can be used to generate conversations years after he has passed away.

As Dave’s holographic image sits before her, they talk through happy memories together and he counsels her to stay positive while she waits for her transport to arrive (solar powered, of course).

AI: The next disruptive tech

In 2024, this scene may seem like science fiction — a crazy prediction lifted straight from a Hollywood script. But for centuries, human societies have been supercharged by the arrival of disruptive technology — innovations so remarkable they changed the trajectory of human history.

Imagine life without the wheel, the light bulb, the telephone. The era of artificial intelligence is the next great disruptive tech and will be as significant as the Industrial Revolution, according to the chief scientist of UNSW's AI Institute, Toby Walsh.

The scale of change it will bring to human lifestyles between 2000 and the 2060s will be as transformative as that experienced between 1900 and the 1960s, he believes.

Managing this change is exciting but also complex. The federal government has outlined a plan to support the growth of AI while also imposing controls on its development.

So what will life be like in the age of AI? From a "zombie self" to the reshaping of cities, here are nine ways things might be different in the future.

1. We will no longer be the smartest thing on the planet

Technological singularity — the moment when machine intelligence matches then outpaces that of humans — is coming. Experts, like American computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurtzweil, even put a date on it: 2029. 

"It's looking like once we've crossed over we're not coming back," says John Hawkins, whose PhD at the University of New England explores the future of human consciousness in the age of AI.

It concerns Hawkins that thousands of years of human knowledge will be digitised and once singularity is reached, it will be under the control of machines which can build on it, without the moral and ethical framework that human consciousness provides. 

As a result the AI future is more likely to be dystopian than utopian, Hawkins believes.

"We hear calls to pause development because we're afraid if we go too far, too fast, it may be a genie out of the bottle situation," he says. 

“The problem is that AI is likely to be developing at such a speed, such opacity, that we don’t really understand what [the machines] are doing. We risk having applications out there that we are dependent on, and that are shaping us, yet we are being controlled and manipulated by algorithmic activities like puppets on a string.”

It’s scenario that also concerns Walsh, who has described the transfer of thousands of years of human knowledge to AI, and then out of human control altogether, as the singularity takes hold, as “ the greatest heist of all time ”.

2. Humans will cease to exist (well, kind of)

Like an episode of Black Mirror, AI will mesh human life with the digital world to create what Walsh has called " Homo Digitalis " — a digitally-enhanced human that lives between the real world and online spaces, with augmented and virtual reality becoming more and more a part of our daily experience.

"The distinction between the two will be increasingly blurred," says Walsh, author of  2062: The World That AI Made . "We will interact with people that we will never meet physically and spend more of our time in these connected places and outsource a lot of what we do to our digital devices."

Kurzweil also predicts the merging of AI and humanity and he has a date for that too: 2045.

Some of us may have body parts that are replaced or enhanced by technology.

This might be as simple as handing aspects of our memories over to digital devices — like we do already by using Google Maps, for example — or as sophisticated as implanting tech in the brain that allows computers to read our thoughts.

This AI tech is already being tested by Melbourne company Synchron, and promises to transform the lifestyles of people with motor neuron disease . 

As we rely more on AI, parts of our brains will change.

Brain scans of London cabbies show the hippocampus, involved in spatial memory and reasoning, gets larger during the course of learning the network of London roads. Will it shrink if we are no longer memorising these kinds of tasks?

Walsh believes change to our brains isn't necessarily something to fear.

The key is whether what we lose is compensated for by what we gain, Walsh says, referencing an essay by philosopher Neil Postman .

3. Everything might be fake

Futurist Mark Pesce says the "hyper abundant knowledge culture" means it will soon be "more difficult to find out what's true than to just find out what's convenient".

Fake characters designed to spread misinformation or promote viewpoints for political or economic ends is already quite common, playing out in real time during the US election campaign with  Joe Biden and Donald Trump  both impacted.

The biggest problem in not identifying what is fake, it is whether the whole nature of reality becomes uncertain. It's a lesson brought into sharp relief with the controversy over an altered image of the Princess of Wales and her children this month. 

"I'm not sure we are ready for it," Walsh says. "We are used to trusting what we see and hear. Now I say to people unless you are physically in the room you've got to entertain the idea that what you're seeing or hearing is a digital fake."

Pesce says while AI is powerful it is also unreliable: "These machines don't know when they are making things up. They don't know when they're running off the rails. They don't want to stop."

4. We will all have a 'zombie self'

Digital personal assistants, a "zombie self",  a digital twin — call it what you like — will become common. 

It will be trained to learn the inflections in our voice, our turns of phrase and opinions, so it can stand in for us to answer emails, texts and phone calls, Walsh says.

Our digital twin will know exactly how we will respond on any topic, will know everything about us and sound just like us because we will all clone our voices: "I've already cloned mine," says Walsh. "It took me a few minutes."

Our zombie self can exist in the cloud but it leaves something important behind — there is so far no way to replicate human consciousness.

What happens to our zombie self when our physical self dies? 

"It will be challenging for our loved ones to ask: 'Do I turn that thing off now or do I leave it?'," says Walsh.

5. Moral dilemmas will multiply

Without human consciousness, AI is not yet equipped to understand ethics or make moral decisions.

A Melbourne company, Cortical Labs, has shown clusters of neurons have intelligence by teaching brain cells to play computer games. If brain cells in a science lab can "think" well enough to learn to play a computer game does that mean they are sentient? If so, can they ethically be left to die?

To grapple with such dilemmas every company will likely hire a CPO — a Chief Philosophical Officer — Walsh believes, to answer the ethical questions AI brings with it.

One of those may be as simple as access to AI.

Access to a robot carer may be a privilege — offering new levels of independence and quality 24/7 assistance to the elderly or those with disability. On the other hand, if the cost of robot care is low then access to human contact will become a luxury. If a person receives only robot care loneliness could become a threat. 

So-called " AI ageism " is another red flag referring to the way facial recognition software, for example, fails to capture data on people older than around 70. This risks a bias developing in data that assumes older people are less valuable as employees or customers.

A lack of diversity in clinical trials means most AI is trained on data taken from white and often privileged males. Biases can also emerge that make robot decisions relating to women, minorities and those of lower economic status less reliable. This is of particular concern when using AI to make medical decisions, says Lauren Oakden-Rayner, a radiologist and medical AI researcher at the University of Adelaide's Australian Institute for Machine Learning, because it can increase the risk of medical errors.

6. The work we value most will change

Any job that can be completed according to an algorithm will be at risk. Around 25 per cent of jobs will be lost, even some in prestigious fields like law.

But this brings us to a fascinating twist: some of what are now the lowest-value tasks may also be some of the hardest to automate, increasing their value in the future.

"A bike messenger, who is among the lowest-paid people in the culture, is paradoxically performing one of the tasks that's most difficult to automate," Pesce says, noting the moment-by-moment requirements to dodge people and other traffic, consider weather and more.

Drone tech may offer alternatives for some of this work but "[bike couriers] have much more bargaining power than they know," he believes.

This need for agile thought is the same reason you probably won't be buying a driverless car any time soon.

Driverless cars will become ubiquitous but it's going to take more time, Walsh predicts.

And he believes that even when driverless cars are available companies like Uber will continue to hire humans. But not as drivers. Humans will be employed to open and close the car door, carry bags and offer conversation. He has even drummed up a name for this extra service: "Uber Chauffeur".

Professor Sharon Parker, an Australian Laureate Fellow who heads Curtin University's Centre for Transformative Work Design, agrees: "Perhaps the work humans do will be more creative, producing artisan food and crafts, or perhaps it will be more caring, so that as people aged they had someone to look after them properly. Technology would be used for work that is dull, dirty or dangerous," she says.

AI will not be able to speak to the human experience so we will re-value human creativity and connection — art, people skills or jobs requiring reflexive thought.

"The oldest job on the planet, being a carpenter, will also be the safest job on the planet," Walsh believes. "At the end of the day, we prefer to talk to a human doctor than a machine doctor and elect a human politician."

Although forays into an era of fake politicians are already underway ( Leader Lars in Norway and New Zealand's SAM ), Parker believes robots can't replicate a human's empathetic and moral perspective and robots will never be able to understand the human experience.

"Leaving humans out of the loop had catastrophic consequences," says Parker, citing the  robodebt scandal . "There is lots of evidence suggesting algorithms accelerate and deepen bias."

She says the question of whether AI will allow us to become a leisure society remains up for debate.

"That hasn't happened [with previous technological advances] but it could well be that AI does allow people to work a lot less," she says.

We might work less each week but we will retire later. "We can't really afford a scenario where people are retiring at 65," Parker says.

What motivates older workers to keep working, including maintaining a career trajectory "so they do not enter a nether world where you can no longer put your hand up for interesting projects past a certain age, will become really important if we want to make the most of the talent pool that exists in the future," she says.

7. Homes and cities will swap roles

Pesce says the pandemic has sped up a permanent fracturing of the labour force that has "changed the way we think about work, how we do it, where it gets done".

By 2050, Pesce believes an overwhelming percentage of the workforce will be making money from home.

As Pesce tells it, the office was a quaint historical anomaly: human society was built on home-based agricultural, handicraft or hospitality jobs like running the local pub or corner store while living upstairs.

“And then we get this 100-year period where people are going into the factory or the office,” Pesce says. “The pandemic comes along and now that trend is reversing. We're going to start to see a rebirth of partners who are participating in a business together that's run out of the home."

This model will have an impact on gender equality as the 20th century's stereotype of the women providing care is "up for negotiation", he argues.

So where does that leave our cities if office culture is wiped out?

"When you work at home you don't want to party at home," Pesce says. "The way we think of our cities will change. Rather than the place of work, cities will become the pleasure garden."

It's a shift, Pesce says, already underway, citing the growing numbers of city-based arts festivals from Sydney's Vivid and Adelaide's WOMAD to Melbourne's Comedy Festival and Hobart's Dark Mofo.

Peter Poulet — director of UNSW Cities Institute — agrees: "Our future cities will need to be reorganised to allow for more integration and community living."

Parker from Curtin says that the basic needs of humans don't change even though technology is changing rapidly. "Humans want to connect with other people. We want to be part of something bigger. We want to have some control and influence over our destiny."

8. Climate change will reshape communities 

Poulet believes natural disasters like floods and bushfires have demonstrated the importance of community.

"It's a matter of people understanding they are part of a larger group and not just individuals," he says. "I think the future lies in us developing that as a way of living and our cities need to reflect that."

But rather than reliance on AI and tech, Poulet advocates a focus on "the human condition" and suggests smaller district-level systems.

"What's the advantage of a city that takes an hour to drive across?" he asks. Part of this shift would include moving away from cars to more public or collective transport and creating buildings with multiple uses.

"You're not prescriptive in the way people use four walls, a ceiling and a floor, but you allow them to organise their building according to their way of organising themselves," he says.

Humans are collective animals and we need cities to generate a sense of being part of a group, he says.

"People feel lost and lonely because they are at the end of a cul-de-sac somewhere with a great view and a European kitchen but that's not the future. That's a prison," Poulet says.

9. Healthcare will transform

Nanobots in our blood , machines reading our ultrasounds and a better understanding of how our genetic makeup can predict disease — in 50 years all of these technologies will be mainstream. 

But Lauren Oakden-Rayner , an expert in machine learning, says while AI is currently able to do things like read an MRI or an X-ray it's rarely approved to do so autonomously. 

"That's because of the risk of a mistake," she says. "There's evidence AI models can be really good at these tasks but they still tend to do them in a way that's not particularly human."

Both AI and humans may make a mistake reading a scan on average one time out of 10. The question for researchers deciding whether AI is trustworthy is whether the errors they make are the same kinds of errors that humans make. The answer is no, according to Oakden-Rayner. 

"A lot of my work is arguing we should be testing along demographic lines. That's not currently required, unfortunately. So we don't know that these systems work well on everyone," she says. 

Yet we will still trust AI for other aspects of our healthcare.

Wearable tech will be ubiquitous and along with our zombie self we will all have a bio-identity of medical data that stays with us and could be recorded via a stick-on patch that uploads information to the cloud and is monitored for irregularities or concerns that can be transmitted to your doctor. 

The question is: will that doctor be human or robot? 

But notwithstanding all this technology one of the greatest health threats in the future will be from nature. Climate change is predicted to kill about 250,000 people each year by 2030 , disproportionately affecting disadvantaged populations. 

This will in turn lead to a speeding up of forced migration.

Predicting the future is difficult: Maybe none of this will happen

You only have to watch a few movies or read a few books to get the idea that predicting the future is imprecise.

Thankfully no one who lived through 2019 will find much from the original Blade Runner movie — filmed in 1982, based on a book from 1968 and set in 2019 — that chimes with what happened in real life. And 1984's The Terminator doesn't look to have been an accurate predictor of what's ahead in 2029.

"I'm reminded of the saying that predicting the future is very difficult," says Parker from Curtin University.

Walsh says the immediate future could well be difficult: "I'm pessimistic in the short term and optimistic in the long term," he says. "I think it's going to be a very challenging time. We're the first generation that hands the planet on to the next generation in worse condition according to pretty much every measure that you can think of. And that has not been true since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

"But equally I am optimistic in the sense that humans will persevere through whatever it is and technologies are arriving like AI and biotech to help us address these really profound challenges. But I think it's going to be a very difficult 40 or 50 years."

Words: Catherine Taylor

Illustrations and photographs: Emma Machan and Unsplash 

Production and editing: Leigh Tonkin

• X (formerly Twitter)
• Artificial Intelligence
• Climate Change
• Science and Technology

Chasing Life

Many of us are setting new personal goals in the new year – like exercising, eating healthier or even trying to lose weight. what does our weight really tell us about our health is it possible to feel healthy without obsessing over the numbers on the scale are our ideas about weight and health based on outdated beliefs on this season of chasing life, cnn’s chief medical correspondent, dr. sanjay gupta is talking to doctors, researchers, and listeners to take a closer look at what our weight means for our health. plus, what you need to know about the latest weight loss drugs and how to talk about weight and better health with others, especially kids..

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• iHeart Radio

Back to episodes list

Thirteen years ago, Seattle-based writer Lindy West wrote an essay that took the internet by storm called “Hello, I’m Fat.” That essay would become the 2016 New York Times best-selling memoir, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, and later a Hulu television series. On today’s episode, Lindy, who is still writing and hosts a podcast , sits down with CNN’s Chief Medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta for a candid and honest conversation about living as a self-described “fat” person, and how the way she thinks about weight has changed since writing Shrill. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Letter of Recommendation

I Used to Cringe at Self-Help Books. Until This One Changed My Life.

How a best-selling classic from 1992 helped me rediscover my creativity.

By Jillian Steinhauer

I have written about art my whole career. I find it and its creators endlessly fascinating, but I’ve always seen myself as something of a different kind — a journalist and critic, yes, but never an “artist,” with all the imaginative power that word conveys. Recently, though, I conducted a particularly poignant, intimate interview. The artist and I talked about childhood and the struggle of making oneself heard. There were tears. Afterward I had a thought: What would it be like if I were the one being interviewed? Could I be the artist, possessed of creative vision, like one of my subjects? The prospect was equally thrilling and terrifying.

These questions grew out of a long period in which I had been feeling alternately adrift and stuck. I regularly write about contemporary art for publications like this one, but for a while I’ve been in creative limbo. At first I wasn’t sure why, or even how, to describe it. Sometimes I said I felt disconnected from my voice; other times that my work and life, which was then filled with death and illness, seemed to have grown far apart.

I tried to address this through my usual methods: talking to friends, family, my therapist. When those didn’t work, I turned to a remedy several people had suggested: the 1992 book “The Artist’s Way,” by Julia Cameron. Structured as a 12-week course that leads the reader on a spiritual journey of “creative recovery,” the book began as a class and a collection of typed-up pages that Cameron photocopied and sold in bookstores, until she found a publisher willing to take it on. “We didn’t know where to put it on the shelves,” Joel Fotinos, who published the book at Penguin, said in a 2019 interview. “Eventually there was a category called ‘Creativity,’ and ‘The Artist’s Way’ launched it.” The book has sold more than five million copies since its publication, and Cameron has become a kind of guru.

I knew none of this when I ordered “The Artist’s Way,” only that it was some kind of woo-woo self-help book, and that it had popularized the phrase “morning pages” (which seemed like journaling, in the morning?). When I sat down to read, I almost immediately cringed. On the first page of the introduction, Cameron invokes “The Great Creator,” a.k.a. capital “G” God. That immediately set off my internal alarm; I underlined it wavily and wrote “Mmm” alongside. Turning the page, I realized to my horror that random inspirational quotes set in the margins were going to be a recurring feature. (An example: “I shut my eyes in order to see,” credited to Paul Gauguin.) The following chapters brought a bewildering jumble of metaphors.

I like to think I’m receptive, but I am also a critic — someone who prides herself on her discerning taste, at least in certain realms, including books. This was like a compendium of questionable taste. It took me back to the days of being a preteen, when I pored over the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series and published my bad poetry in school magazines. That version of me was so earnest that in retrospect I found her a bit embarrassing. But I also envied her nerve. She seemed a lot less self-conscious than the person I had become.

As it turned out, the beauty of “The Artist’s Way” was in asking people like me to set aside matters of taste entirely. Instead, Cameron prompted me to turn inward. One of her two core practices is the morning pages, writing three longhand pages upon waking up, which Cameron says “get us to the other side: the other side of our fear, of our negativity, of our moods” by creating space to contend with them. The other is the “artist date,” a weekly solo excursion or activity meant to cultivate inspiration. I didn’t always manage to do these tasks, but I recognized their value. I had arranged to do “The Artist’s Way” with a small group of women, and as one of them put it in a meeting, the exercises offered a way of witnessing ourselves.

There was something refreshing about a text that didn’t need to be perfect, that came from a place of urgency.

Cameron’s writing encouraged that exploration. She spoke plainly and directly, without elaborate flourishes and conspicuous erudition. I came to appreciate the book’s many flaws: There was something refreshing about a text that didn’t need to be perfect, that came from a place of urgency. She said what needed to be said — and when she did, I often felt as if she were seeing and dragging me simultaneously. “Most blocked creatives have an active addiction to anxiety,” she wrote. “We prefer the low-grade pain and occasional heart-stopping panic attack to the drudgery of small and simple daily steps in the right direction.” “My god,” I responded in the margins.

Cameron seemed at home in her voice; her tutelage made me think about mine. I realized that after 17 years as a journalist and critic, the balance was off: I had allowed my professional taste-making — an inherently public concern — to obscure other interests and curiosities. I had honed my professional voice at the expense of my private one. Loving “The Artist’s Way” feels strangely embarrassing — because it’s less rational than it is sincere. But as Cameron knows, authenticity is the best place for an artist to begin.

Jillian Steinhauer is a critic and reporter who covers the politics of art and comics. She won a 2019 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant and was previously a senior editor at Hyperallergic. More about Jillian Steinhauer