It is the year 2038.
The global warming problem has been conquered, but environment crises still plague mankind.
You all know the history. The first breakthrough was the construction of the first large-scale viable fusion energy plant by
Helion Energy of Seattle. Who can not remember the day in 2022 when Dr. David Kirtley, CEO of Helion, announced the first successful test of their system, producing 50 MW of energy for 4 cents per KW hour from a device the size of a truck (see below). It turned out that pulsing the magnetic containment fields, coupled with substantial computational resources and rapid-response control systems, was the secret.
Image courtesy of Helion Energy
It didn't take more than a decade for Helion's system and others like it to replace most fossil fuel power plants in the world. The emissions of CO2 plummeted, radically reducing the growth of CO2 levels.
And the advent of inexpensive 3D mixed perovskite solar modules in the mid-2020s, improving collection efficiency to over 30%, the advent of next generation graphene and silicon-anode Li-Ion batteries around 2025, the explosion in the use of smart-appliances that dealt with the issue of solar radiation variability, and the increasing dominance of electric cars, played an important role in reducing fossil fuel use as well.
A national revenue-neutral carbon tax, passed by Congress in 2025, provided additional incentives for the quick transition to non-carbon energy.
But stabilization of CO2 concentrations was not enough, we had already emitted enormous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, CO2 that had produced and would continue to sustain significant warming. In 2023, a firm from Squamish, British Columbia (
Carbon Engineering, Inc.) demonstrated a highly efficient system for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, one that sequesters atmospheric CO2 into a carbonate solution that could be injected deep into the earth (see below). But it required a substantial amount of energy to function, a problem that was solved by Helion's fusion reactor and less expensive solar power.
Image courtesy of Carbon Engineering, Inc
With the massive deployment of Carbon Engineering's technology around the world in the early 2030s, heavily supported by the Gates and Bezos foundations, CO2 levels around the world begin to fall. Based on international agreement, CO2 levels reached 350 parts per million in 2036, roughly where it was in 1985. As expected, the earth is now starting to cool and should reach an equilibrium temperature around 2080, close to the observed conditions of the late 20th century.
So today in 2038, the global warming crisis is over. The planet's climate will stabilize.
Bill Gates was right: the global warming problem was a technical one that could be solved by technical and scientific solutions.
But with the anthropogenic global warming problem solved, global environment crises did not end.
In fact, the environmental threats to mankind have never been so serious and pervasive. Some examples:
Wildfires
Wildfire area and intensity have continued to increase, with some of the worse fires in 2035-2036, destroying large sections around Oakland and Los Angeles California. And the great fire of 2033 in north Idaho, eclipsed the infamous Big Burn of 1910.
Such fires were mainly the result of fire suppression over the prior century, mismanagement of our forests, the spread of flammable invasive species, and the huge increase of human population into the wildland-urban interface. For decades, governors of major western states (e.g., WA and CA) neglected dealing with this issue, being more interested in blaming global warming, which only made a small contribution to the problem.
Loss of Soil
The loss of top soil and the loss of agricultural productivity in many of the world's breadbaskets has become acute. Accord to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) the global amount of arable and productive land per person in 2050 will be only a quarter of the level in 1960. Poor farming practices around the world has led to this crisis, which was never a priority of national and local leaders.
Polluted Oceans and Overfishing
The world's oceans have become filled with plastic and other long-lived debris, resulting in massive deaths of sea birds, marine mammals, and other fauna.
But it is far worst than than. The levels of pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, detergents, oil, sewage, pharmaceuticals, and nano-particles have begun to accumulate in the oceans. Increasing number of sick, deformed sea life have been observed, with the collapse of some species in heavily polluted coastal waters.
Coupled with unsustainable overfishing, the availability of fish protein has collapsed around much of Asia and portions of the north Atlantic.
In Washington State, politicians and some advocacy groups were fixated on the impacts of CO2 acidification (a minor issue at best during this period), while Puget Sound and our coastal waters degraded due to toxic run-off, sewage filled with pharmaceuticals and chemicals, fish farming waste, and the favored shell-fish industry, which sprayed pesticides and herbicides over our water, while churning up and altering our coastal zone.
The Fresh Water Crisis
The increasing demands of fresh water of a growing world population, coupled with the depletion of ground water resources in many locations, has resulted in a fresh water crisis in 2038. Massive investments in reduced water-agriculture, water storage facilities, and desalinization facilities are needed. The availability of fusion power and efficient solar generation, offers the energy resources for the requirements of desalinization in coastal locations. Pollution of aquifers has been an increasing problem that has not been effectively dealt with.
Sustainability
The environmental community of the early part of the 21st century became fixated on global warming, as if that was the only problem. They lost track of the real environmental crisis: the sustainability of the human race on this planet.
Few talked about increasing population and the impacts of the parallel yearning for a better lifestyle among billions. Few talked about moving to a steady state, rather than a growth model of prosperity. It was easy for politicians and those with social agendas to latch on the easy-to-communicate meme of a global warming earth as the key environmental crisis. And it was particularly convenient that while a lot of folks talked, few did anything meaningful about global warming anyway.
Global warming was a technical problem and it is solved.
Sustainability of human (and other life) on this planet is the real problem. Today, in 2038 the excuses are over, with global warming being a solved problem. Will we now step up to the plate to take on the critical environmental problems facing our species?
