Future

Unless we act now, the 2030 Agenda will become an epitaph for a world that might have been.
António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations

The Earth and Human Beings must Be Saved Together (6/10/2025)

Is This the Year We Doom Civilization? We may be losing our last, best chance to limit climate change
Paul Krugman (5/14/2025)

Major 'Population Correction' Coming For Humanity, Scientist Predicts (8/18/2023)

"Everything we learn about life in space makes it clear that we're not going to get a second chance there." Bill McKibben.

In the past fifty years we've doubled our irrigated cropland and tripled our water consumption to meet global food demand. In the next fifty, we must double food production again. Is there really enough water to pull that off ? In his book When the Rivers Run Dry environmental journalist Fred Pearce describes in vivid, firsthand detail the stark reality of impending water crises in more than thirty countries around the globe. We now withdraw so much water that many of our mightiest and most historic rivers - like the Nile, the Colorado, the Yellow, the Indus - have barely a trickle left to meet the sea. (From the World in 2050: Laurence C Smith

Anthropocene

Population will continue to grow. Fundamentalist religion including the Catholic church will exacerbate the problem denying women's rights, opposing abortions and demonizing LGBTQ people.

Fossil fuel use, necessary to support population, will continue to release carbon into the atmosphere.

The world will get warmer. Global warming will cause severe climate change.

Ice will melt. Arctic ice melt will make the North ice free and navigable. Antarctic ice will melt. Glaciers will recede. Greenland ice will melt and slow ocean circulation.

Reduced glacial melt and ground water depletion will cause droughts, crop reduction.

Coral reefs will decline. Oceans will be more acidic and threaten shellfish.

Exhausted fisheries will not recover.

Storms and hurricanes will intensify including monsoons. Warmer oceans will intensify El Nino. Natural disasters will be increasingly more destructive.

The Northern tundra will melt and release carbon.

The Amazon rain forest will collapse and no longer generate oxygen or be a carbon sink. Wetlands will dry out impacting many species such as migratory birds.

Fires and pests will damage forests.

Deserts will spread to areas that formerly had good soil and grassland. Dust storms in the Gobi and Sahara deserts will cause wide spread respiratory problems.

Species will migrate to higher ground when they can. Losses in species diversity will cause ecology to collapse.

Sea levels will rise flooding coastal cities: Venice, Amsterdam, London, New York ...

Famine in the poorest countries the result of higher grain costs and poor crop yields.

Media, Religion and government will distract people from the ongoing collapse.

Increasing areas will become uninhabitable.

Mass migration from uninhabitable areas is inevitable. Migrants will meet fortress-like borders where right wing government proliferate.

Violent Religious Extremism

Wheat yields in Canada and Russia will improve.

Mosquito born illnesses will head North: dengue fever, malaria, and others.

Human incursions into wildlife areas will bring new and deadly diseases.

Rapid transportation and increased population density will spread pandemics.

The gap between rich and poor will widen leading to extreme poverty, a few obscenely wealthy, and social instability.

Shanty towns will multiply. The wealthy will retreat to their bunkers.

More countries will acquire nuclear weapons. Non State Actors may get extreme weapons.

More intelligent machines will impact the labor market.

Wars that could end civilization may erupt over water as well as oil.

Humanity has a high probability of extinction in this century.

Authoritarian government could bring on a new Dark Age.

Governments, including the US, are unwilling and unable to deal with known challenges, is engaging in distraction, and speeding the path to destruction.

We will not get a second chance in space.

impacts of the climate crisis, the wars in Ukraine, Iran, a weak global economy, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed weaknesses and hindered progress towards the Goals. ...while lack of progress is universal, it is the world’s poorest and most vulnerable who are experiencing the worst effects of these unprecedented global challenges.
[The SDG Report] points out areas that need urgent action to deliver meaningful progress for people and the planet by 2030.

Speculative biology: understanding the past and predicting our future

What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill

https://x.com/UNStats/status/1658864958594064390