Creating a Better Earth: Share Your Vision

Nov. 20, 2008— -- Imagine you are living on planet Earth in the year 2100. What will it look like?

Prominent scientists caution that if we continue on our current course, we will certainly see a devastated landscape. Recent reports from groups, like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, depict a future that is bleak at best, terror-inducing at worst.

But not everyone is resigned to a disastrous fate.

"It's a fascinating time to be alive," marveled Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute. "We have a chance to move from a disconnected, inefficient, badly designed world of fighting populations, to a sustainable planet."

If we take immediate global action to shift our patterns of emission and consumption, Gleick said, we could be looking at a future full of possibilities.

Optimistic experts agree, seeing our current crisis as a pivotal moment in the human narrative.

"It's really hard for us to re-imagine the world," said Heidi Cullen, a senior research scientist with Climate Central. "But by virtue of tackling the climate change problem, you can actually create a world that looks so much better."

"Imagine a city," she added, "where there's no traffic, because the transportation infrastructure is perfect. It's quiet, the air is clean. We can build all of this."

And more.

In order to solve the problems facing our species, we will have to re-imagine the ways we construct our homes, grow our food, use our water. International relations, family structures and our core values all have the potential to shift during the coming century.

There is a new path to imagine -- one to a cleaner, more equitable, more interesting world. That's a future few people have examined in detail.

"Even in the best case, if we make all the right choices, we're still going to be living through difficult times," author Richard Heinberg said. "They will be exciting times because they will be times of enormous change and challenge."

"We have a chance to move in the right direction now," Gleick said, "and I don't think that window of opportunity's going to be open very long."