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The Future of the Earth

August 2000

Adapted from The Atlas of the Future

The Earth seems to be one of the constants in our life, always there, but it won’t always be the same. Let's consider its future.

In order to look at the future of the earth, we must first put it in the context of the future of rest of the universe, a subject most of us are obviously interested in but know little about. By the time the Earth ever existed, we believe the universe had already been around for billions of years, and will continue to exist long after the Earth has vanished. When we look into the night sky we look backwards in time, and with a telescope like the Hubble, we can look backwards billions of years. This gives us clues into how the universe was formed and into its structure, so that we can then figure out what will happen next. Our own Sun will only last another 5 billion years or so before it enters a red giant phase, expanding to burn up the Earth and all the other planets. If you didn’t want cremated, hard luck! The events of the first second of the universe's existence may be echoed at the very end, when it is even possible that the whole show may start again. Physicists think they now understand what probably happened in that first second. Certainly, knowledge of the first second contrasts with our lack of knowledge about even roughly how long the universe is likely to last, or even whether it will every collapse. For those who thought we were close to understanding everything, this should come as a much needed reminder – the more we find out about the universe, the more we find there is to learn.

Of course, our interest in the future is of little use if we aren’t going to be there. We are under constant threat of extinction caused by an asteroid or comet strike, something which we are only beginning to take as a serious possibility. We already have many technologies that can defend against missile strikes from other nations, blowing up missiles by shooting lasers or other missiles at them, or even catching them in a net. But the shear scale of nature puts our technologies rapidly in their place. Asteroids and comets can be several kilometers across and weigh billions of tons, travelling at thousands of kilometers per hour, so our missiles look feeble by comparison. Our best hope seems to be early warning and ingenuity. By pushing them slowly for a long time, we may be able to deflect them just enough to miss us, while blowing them to pieces may just make the damage more widespread. Many techniques have been considered, but the best solution may yet be waiting to be suggested, maybe by you. Even close to home, space is filling up with small pieces of junk, travelling much faster than any bullet, so much more potentially dangerous to space missions. Lasers and nets may offer much more realistic solutions here though – it will just take time.

Even here on Earth, we are reminded occasionally that the ground isn’t static, as earthquakes and volcanoes cause misery to millions of people as they slowly rearrange the earth’s surface. The long term evolution of the continents would make interesting fodder for territorial disputes too, were the timescales a little shorter, but I rather hope that if we are still here in 200 million years, we will have learned to live together happily without such conflict. Other events are almost unpredictable, such as future volcanic activity, since our current technology does not allow predictions of eruptions any more than a few hours or occasionally days ahead. For earthquakes, we can’t even normally go that far ahead.

The next ice age may be 100 000 years away based on the Earth's history, but more recent human activity has been shown to have significant influence on the world's climate, so we really have no idea. It is simply impossible to suggest what technologies we will have in the very long term, let alone their likely environmental impact. I would also think it likely that we will eventually have environmental management technologies, if we haven’t already made such a mess that we have left the Earth and migrated elsewhere.

However, global warming is a much shorter-term threat – much of the damage is already done. We still have time to avert disastrous environmental damage though, and the future is up to us. We must look carefully at alternative energy sources, and also at changing our lifestyle’s, while helping developing countries so that they can avoid making the problem even worse. The alternative is much of our land disappearing under sea as the ice caps melt, along with major changes in the weather. Everyone is affected, regardless of their degree of blame for the problem. If anything shows the interdependence of all the nations on this fragile planet, this is it.

The ozone layer depletion is the other big environmental problem of our time, again showing that the time of blindly using new chemicals or technologies without concern for the environment must end. Sadly the evidence is still that not everyone has taken this message on board, and again everyone pays, guilty or innocent. However, while old technology may have got us into this mess in the first place, without major changes in lifestyle it is only new technology that can get us out of it.