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A review by msgtdameron
The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future by Laurence C. Smith
4.0
A good view of four major forces that will drive our future. Peak oil, population growth, lack of water, and climate change. Any one of these would not be a problem if we weren't past peak oil. Population grow more food and provide more stuff using cheap oil. Lack of water, desalination or drill to deeper aquifers using cheap oil. Warming build dikes around the vulnerable cites including the third world countries, Bangladesh, who are most vulnerable to sea level rise and the heavy down pours of the new normal, using cheap oil. Peak oil, there is no substitute for oil. Not at a price the consumer is willing to pay. Also oil just adds to the warming issue but, one could use cheap oil to build the infrastructure needed to protect low lying areas. Even if by doing so we condemn our future children to a world of purple, sulfur eating algae as the dominant species in 3000 years. The world, earth will survive.
Our planet has been around for 4.5 billion years. Our planets life expectancy is around 12 billion years. If we do fall back to a purple algae planet and Hominids have a massive die off, the planet will survive. It took around 500 million years for the planet to go from purple algae to us today. The planet can cycle through this rebuild of life from simple purple algae to Hominids 14 times. Maybe what we should be looking at, as a back up plan, is how to tell some future Hominid that this warming you are seeing from the release of Carbon into the atmosphere, we did this 500 million years ago and killed our selves off. Maybe you can do better. I would suggest, just spit balling, that we engrave binary code on human bones and if we do enough some will fossilize. If they fossilize then some scientist in the future might just get the massage and save the future from the fate we seem bound and determined to inflict on our selves.
The second part is mine not the author's. Smith is actually hopeful that we slow our use of Carbon, slow population growth, and by doing so peak oil, and lack of water impacts can be minimized on life. By doing so 2050 will be harder but livable. I'm not as confident in our ability to do what is best for the species.
Our planet has been around for 4.5 billion years. Our planets life expectancy is around 12 billion years. If we do fall back to a purple algae planet and Hominids have a massive die off, the planet will survive. It took around 500 million years for the planet to go from purple algae to us today. The planet can cycle through this rebuild of life from simple purple algae to Hominids 14 times. Maybe what we should be looking at, as a back up plan, is how to tell some future Hominid that this warming you are seeing from the release of Carbon into the atmosphere, we did this 500 million years ago and killed our selves off. Maybe you can do better. I would suggest, just spit balling, that we engrave binary code on human bones and if we do enough some will fossilize. If they fossilize then some scientist in the future might just get the massage and save the future from the fate we seem bound and determined to inflict on our selves.
The second part is mine not the author's. Smith is actually hopeful that we slow our use of Carbon, slow population growth, and by doing so peak oil, and lack of water impacts can be minimized on life. By doing so 2050 will be harder but livable. I'm not as confident in our ability to do what is best for the species.