Sneak Peeks into the Future
Being new to trendspotting, I felt a little out of place at this year’s WorldFuture 2010 conference, put on by the World Future Society—as if I was the only person not developing some type of artificially intelligent machine in my basement. But I soon realized that there is a lot to learn and understand now that could help us gain a better grasp on what will happen in the years to come.
Climate Change
Two seminars were particularly interesting to me. The first, “Where Is It All Going?” led by Dennis Bushnell of NASA, addressed climate change and its implications. It used to be predicted that the icecaps would melt by 2040, but humans have sped up the process so much that now the targeted date is a frighteningly soon 2013. Because the ocean could rise about 250 feet, this would affect more than 8 billion people living in coastal locations.
This is but one of the reasons to take a good, hard look at the way we treat our environment. Bushnell said we can still change the outcome if we start altering our behavior now. New technologies are also being developed to help slow this process; saltwater technologies, for instance, are being developed in the Sahara Desert so that we can save our freshwater supply, since it’s already so scarce. This technology harbors the power to grow food and even materials to help make plastics without using crude oil. And creating agriculture in the desert opens the possibility that there will one day be rainfall in this almost lifeless land.
July 20, 2010 | by Ella Greenstein | Share This | tagged Wikipedia, climate change, economy, millennials | Post a Comment Social Media, Trends 
