Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, Bright Agrotech

As we enter the 2020s, many people will make resolutions and start working toward realizing their hopes for the year. Similarly, we can think about our hopes for the decades ahead and what we should resolve to do now as individuals and communities to bring about our vision for 2030, 2050, or 2100. This piece from NPR Morning Edition includes interviews with engineers, energy systems experts, professors, a city planner, and forestry and agriculture experts all imagining that it’s 2050 and they’re looking back at how humanity stopped emitting greenhouse gases and mitigated climate change. Widespread electrification, improved battery technology, carbon capture and sequestration, more people telecommuting to work, public transportation, more walkable neighborhoods, the sharing economy, and agriculture that returns carbon to the earth are just some of the ideas discussed in this article. 

What’s certain is that 2050 will be a different world than 2020. What remains to be decided is whether we envision and work toward a world that we want to live in or attempt to adapt to the world climate change will create. The sooner we act, the more say we will have in shaping a prosperous, healthy, fun, and inviting 2050.

“It’s 2050 and this is how we stopped climate change” Dan Charles, NPR, March 11, 2019 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/11/688876374/its-2050-and-this-is-how-we-stopped-climate-change