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What Will Life Be Like in 2050?

By mid-century there will likely be 9 billion people on the planet, consuming ever more resources and leading ever more technologically complex lives. What will our cities be like? How much will artificial intelligence advance? Will global warming trigger catastrophic changes, or will we be able to engineer our way out of the climate change crisis?

Making predictions is, by nature, a dicey business, but to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Smithsonian magazine Big Think asked top minds from a variety of fields to weigh in on what the future holds 40 years from now. The result is our latest special series, Life in 2050 . Demographic changes in world population and population growth will certainly be dramatic. Rockefeller University mathematical biologist Joel Cohen says it’s likely that by 2050 the majority of the people in the world will live in urban areas, and will have a significantly higher average age than people today . Cities theorist Richard Florida thinks urbanization trends will reinvent the education system  of the United States, making our economy less real estate driven and erasing the divisions between home and work.

Large migrations from developing countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Mexico, and countries in the Middle East could disrupt western governments and harm the unity of France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, and the  United Kingdom  under the umbrella of the  European Union .

And rapidly advancing technology will continue ever more rapidly. According to Bill Mitchell, the late director of MIT’s Smart Cities research group, cities of the future won’t look like “some sort of science-fiction fantasy” or “Star Trek” but it’s likely that “discreet, unobtrusive” technological advances and information overlays, i.e. virtual reality and augmented reality, will change how we live in significant ways. Self-driving cars will make the roads safer, driving more efficient, and provide faster transports. A larger version of driverless cars—driverless trucks—may make long haul drivers obsolete.

Charles Ebinger, Director of the Energy Security Initiative at the Brookings Institution also thinks that by 2050 we will also have a so-called “smart grid” where all of our appliances are linked directly to energy distribution systems , allowing for real-time pricing based on supply and demand. Such a technology would greatly benefit energy hungry nations like  China  and India, while potentially harming fossil fuel energy producers like Canada and .

Meanwhile, the Internet will continue to radically transform media , destroying the traditional model of what a news organization is, says author and former New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent, who believes the most common kinds of news organizations in the future will be “individuals and small alliances of individuals” reporting and publishing on niche topics. 

But what will all this new technology mean? Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, the director of the Information & Innovation Policy Research Center at the National University of Singapore, hopes that advances in technology will make us more empowered, motivated and active , rather than mindless consumers of information and entertainment. And NYU interactive telecommunications professor Clay Shirky worries that technological threats could endanger much of the openness that we now enjoy online , perhaps turning otherwise free-information countries into mirrors of closed states like China and Turkey.

Some long view predictions are downright dire. Environmentalist Bill McKibben says that if we don’t make major strides in combating global warming, it’s likely we could see out-of-control rises in sea levels — particularly dangerous in island nations like the Philippines — enormous crop shortfalls, and wars over increasingly scarce freshwater resource s. But information technology may yield some optimism for our planet, says oceanographer Sylvia Earle, who thinks that services like Google Earth have the potential to turn everyday people into ocean conservationists .

In the financial world, things will be very different indeed, according to MIT professor Simon Johnson, who thinks many of the financial products being sold today, like over-the-counter derivatives, will be illegal —judged, accurately, by regulators to not be in the best interests of consumers and failing to meet their basic needs. If economic growth rates remain steady, however, it may present a challenge to regulators.

We will live longer and remain healthier. Patricia Bloom, an associate professor in the geriatrics department of Mt. Sinai Hospital, says we may not routinely live to be 120, but it’s possible that we will be able to extend wellness and shorten decline and disability for people as they age . AIDS research pioneer David Ho says the HIV/AIDS epidemic will still be with us , but we will know a lot more about the virus than we do today—and therapies will be much more effective. Meanwhile, Jay Parkinson, the co-founder of Hello Health, says the health care industry has a “huge opportunity” to change the way it communicates with patients by conceiving of individual health in relation to happiness.

In terms of how we will eat, green markets founder and “real food” proponent Nina Planck is optimistic that there will be more small slaughterhouses, more small creameries, and more regional food operations—and we’ll be healthier as a result . New York Times cooking columnist Mark Bittman, similarly, thinks that people will eat fewer processed foods , and eat foods grown closer to where they live. And Anson Mills farmer Glenn Roberts thinks that more people will clue into the “ethical responsibility” to grow and preserve land-raised farm systems . And what will our culture be like? We may not get rid of racism in America entirely in the next 40 years, but NAACP President Benjamin Jealous predicts that in the coming decades the issue of race will become “much less significant,” even as the issue of class may rise in importance. Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, says it’s even likely that we’ll see a black pope , reversing centuries of Euro-centrism in favor of Catholics in  Africa. Nigeria is one such country with a large Catholic population. Meanwhile, prisons expert Robert Perkinson says he thinks there will be fewer Americans in prison in 2050 , because we will realize that the current high levels of incarceration are out of sync with our history and values. Historian and social scientist Joan Wallach Scott worries, however, that unless the countries of Europe figure out how to accommodate Muslim immigrant populations, t here will be more riots, and increasing divisions along economic, religious and ethnic lines , such instability could have knock on effects in countries ranging from Egypt and Iran to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. —

What Will Life on Earth Be Like in 2050?

Scientists Look Ahead Five Decades In State-Of-The-Planet Report, Explore Ways To Solve Earth's Problems

Washington, D.C.

January 19, 2006

Megan Rabbitt

[email protected]

The number of extreme events, such as hurricanes and famine, affecting at least one million people will increase over the next 45 years if a certain scenario of world development plays out. Demand for water will increase enormously — between 30% and 85% — especially in Africa and Asia, by the year 2050. But human health may improve as public health measures advance vaccine development and lessen the impact of epidemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS. These are just a few of the many findings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) published in a 4-volume set by Island Press and released today.

The MA is the product of a 4-year global research initiative, commissioned by the United Nations, in which 1,300 scientists from 95 nations explore the complex interactions between human well-being and the environment.

“The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment tells us that there is an inextricable link between the health of humans and the health of the planet. We can no longer ignore the enormous economic and social benefits, such as climate regulation and water purification, provided by nature’s fragile ecosystems,” said Timothy E. Wirth, President of the United Nations Foundation. “The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is an extensively researched, scientifically grounded roadmap for why and how we should slow or reverse today’s ecosystem degradation and chart a path toward sustainable human development.”

The MA looks ahead 50 years from the year 2000 to paint four alternate pictures, or scenarios, of life on earth. Current estimates of 3 billion more people and a quadrupling of the world economy by 2050 show that our consumption of biological and physical resources will skyrocket putting much more pressure on ecosystems. But the scenarios demonstrate that the condition of ecosystems in the future could be significantly worse or better than in the present – depending on policy choices. For example, wise use of environmental technology, investing in education and health, and reducing poverty can reduce pressure on ecosystems.

“Despite what looks like steady global decline, this is a story of hope. The MA gives us a powerful way to explore the possible impacts of broad policy directions for life on Earth and tells us that changes in policy can make a difference,” said Dr. Stephen Carpenter, Professor of Limnology at the University of Wisconsin and one of the chief authors of the MA.

For example, MA scientists examine how the problem of excess nutrients in the Gulf of Mexico will change under each of the scenarios in order to identify the best approach to reducing the Gulf’s dead zone, caused by decades-old land use decisions. With more sophisticated management of the delta and main stem and better coordination between upstream and downstream, the dead zone would shrink, according to one scenario. Another scenario shows that a decrease in global trade would boost agricultural production in the U.S. and, combined with other factors, would mean that more nutrients would enter the Mississippi River and flow to the Gulf, widening the dead zone.

“Many of the policies identified by the MA as positive for both the environment and mankind are used somewhere today. So if we have the political will, we have the ability to implement them on a global scale,” added Carpenter.

The four scenarios are descriptions of plausible futures – based on changes in such factors as economic and population growth, climate change, and trade – told from the point of view of someone looking back from 2050 at what has happened in the world since 2000.

If certain assumptions play out by 2050, according to the MA, water will be more plentiful in nearly all regions because of climate change, but pressure on ecosystems to provide water to meet growing demand increases. Food security is likely to remain out of reach for many people, despite increasing food supply, but child malnutrition, while not eradicated, will likely drop over the coming decades.

By the end of the century, climate change may be the predominant driver of biodiversity loss and changes in ecosystem services globally. The Earth’s surface temperature is projected to increase 2.0 – 6.4 degrees Celsius bringing more incidents of floods and droughts. Sea levels will rise (50 – 70 centimeters by 2100). Biodiversity damage will grow worldwide as the rate of change in climate escalates.

“Ecosystem services have dramatically improved human wellbeing over the past centuries. People are better nourished and live longer and healthier lives than ever before, incomes have risen, and political institutions are more open,” stated Dr. Walter Reid, Director of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and Professor with the Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. “But these gains have been achieved at a growing cost. It’s now time for us to measure the economic value of these services so we can make better decisions about our future.”

“Payments for ecosystem services can be an effective way to protect services that people rely on, such as clean water, while also protecting the environment,” said Dr. Prabhu Pingali of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “By placing a monetary value on these services, we will be smarter about using them while creating alternative sources of income for people, from farmers in the United States to tribes in developing countries.”

Three parts of the world may undergo faster changes in ecosystems than other regions and should be closely monitored by scientists, according to the MA. For example, Central Africa could see a rapid increase in demand for food and water which will intensify farming and raise the risk of water contamination from fertilizers and pesticides. Other hot spots are the Middle East, where rapid population growth could increase dependence on food imports, and South Asia where deforestation and industrial farming may “break” the region’s ecosystems.

The MA represents the first time scientists have looked at how the health of the environment contributes to human well-being and how policy decisions we make today shape the world of tomorrow. It is also the first time that scientists have examined changes – not just to nature – but to the benefits people receive from nature (identified as ‘ecosystem services’ in the MA), such as providing food, filtering air and water, controlling disease, building soil, pollinating crops and aesthetic and spiritual benefits.

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• climate change

Hello From the Year 2050. We Avoided the Worst of Climate Change — But Everything Is Different

L et’s imagine for a moment that we’ve reached the middle of the century. It’s 2050, and we have a moment to reflect—the climate fight remains the consuming battle of our age, but its most intense phase may be in our rearview mirror. And so we can look back to see how we might have managed to dramatically change our society and economy. We had no other choice.

There was a point after 2020 when we began to collectively realize a few basic things.

One, we weren’t getting out of this unscathed. Climate change, even in its early stages, had begun to hurt: watching a California city literally called Paradise turn into hell inside of two hours made it clear that all Americans were at risk. When you breathe wildfire smoke half the summer in your Silicon Valley fortress, or struggle to find insurance for your Florida beach house, doubt creeps in even for those who imagined they were immune.

Two, there were actually some solutions. By 2020, renewable energy was the cheapest way to generate electricity around the planet—in fact, the cheapest way there ever had been. The engineers had done their job, taking sun and wind from quirky backyard DIY projects to cutting-edge technology. Batteries had plummeted down the same cost curve as renewable energy, so the fact that the sun went down at night no longer mattered quite so much—you could store its rays to use later.

And the third realization? People began to understand that the biggest reason we weren’t making full, fast use of these new technologies was the political power of the fossil-fuel industry. Investigative journalists had exposed its three-decade campaign of denial and disinformation, and attorneys general and plaintiffs’ lawyers were beginning to pick them apart. And just in time.

These trends first intersected powerfully on Election Day in 2020. The Halloween hurricane that crashed into the Gulf didn’t just take hundreds of lives and thousands of homes; it revealed a political seam that had begun to show up in polling data a year or two before. Of all the issues that made suburban Americans—women especially—­uneasy about President Trump, his stance on climate change was near the top. What had seemed a modest lead for the Democratic challenger widened during the last week of the campaign as damage reports from Louisiana and Mississippi rolled in; on election night it turned into a rout, and the analysts insisted that an under­appreciated “green vote” had played a vital part—after all, actual green parties in Canada, the U.K. and much of continental Europe were also outperforming expectations. Young voters were turning out in record numbers: the Greta Generation, as punsters were calling them, made climate change their No. 1 issue.

And when the new President took the oath of office, she didn’t disappoint. In her Inaugural Address, she pledged to immediately put America back in the Paris Agreement—but then she added, “We know by now that Paris is nowhere near enough. Even if all the countries followed all the promises made in that accord, the temperature would still rise more than 3°C (5°F or 6°F). If we let the planet warm that much, we won’t be able to have civilizations like the ones we’re used to. So we’re going to make the changes we need to make, and we’re going to make them fast.”

Fast, of course, is a word that doesn’t really apply to Capitol Hill or most of the world’s other Congresses, Parliaments and Central Committees. It took constant demonstrations from ever larger groups like Extinction Rebellion, and led by young activists especially from the communities suffering the most, to ensure that politicians feared an angry electorate more than an angry carbon lobby. But America, which historically had poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other nation, did cease blocking progress. With the filibuster removed, the Senate passed—by the narrowest of margins—one bill after another to end subsidies for coal and gas and oil companies, began to tax the carbon they produced, and acted on the basic principles of the Green New Deal: funding the rapid deployment of solar panels and wind turbines, guaranteeing federal jobs for anyone who wanted that work, and putting an end to drilling and mining on federal lands.

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Since those public lands trailed only China, the U.S., India and Russia as a source of carbon, that was a big deal. Its biggest impact was on Wall Street, where investors began to treat fossil-fuel stocks with increasing disdain. When BlackRock, the biggest money manager in the world, cleaned its basic passive index fund of coal, oil and gas stocks, the companies were essentially rendered off-limits to normal investors. As protesters began cutting up their Chase bank cards, the biggest lender to the fossil-fuel industry suddenly decided green investments made more sense. Even the staid insurance industry began refusing to underwrite new oil and gas pipelines—and shorn of its easy access to capital, the industry was also shorn of much of its political influence. Every quarter meant fewer voters who mined coal and more who installed solar panels, and that made political change even easier.

As America’s new leaders began trying to mend fences with other nations, climate action proved to be a crucial way to rebuild diplomatic trust. China and India had their own reasons for wanting swift action—mostly, the fact that smog-choked cities and ever deadlier heat waves were undermining the stability of the ruling regimes. When Beijing announced that its Belt and Road Initiative would run on renewable energy, not coal, the energy future of much of Asia changed overnight. When India started mandating electric cars and scooters for urban areas, the future of the internal-combustion engine was largely sealed. Teslas continued to attract upscale Americans, but the real numbers came from lower-priced electric cars pouring out of Asian factories. That was enough to finally convince even Detroit that a seismic shift was under way: when the first generation of Ford E-150 pickups debuted, with ads demonstrating their unmatched torque by showing them towing a million-pound locomotive, only the most unreconstructed motorheads were still insisting on the superiority of gas-powered rides.

Other easy technological gains came in our homes. After a century of keeping a tank of oil or gas in the basement for heating, people quickly discovered the appeal of air-source heat pumps, which turned the heat of the outdoors (even on those rare days when the temperature still dropped below zero) into comfortable indoor air. Gas burners gave way to induction cooktops. The last incandescent bulbs were in museums, and even most of the compact fluorescents had been long since replaced by LEDs. Electricity demand was up—but when people plugged in their electric vehicles at night, the ever growing fleet increasingly acted like a vast battery, smoothing out the curves as the wind dropped or the sun clouded. Some people stopped eating meat, and lots and lots of people ate less of it—a cultural transformation made easier by the fact that Impossible Burgers turned out to be at least as juicy as the pucks that fast-food chains had been slinging for years. The number of cows on the world’s farms started to drop, and with them the source of perhaps a fifth of emissions. More crucially, new diets reduced the pressure to cut down the remaining tropical rain forests to make way for grazing land.

In other words, the low-hanging fruit was quickly plucked, and the pluckers were well paid. Perhaps the fastest-growing business on the planet involved third-party firms that would retrofit a factory or an office with energy-efficient technology and simply take a cut of the savings on the monthly electric bill. Small businesses, and rural communities, began to notice the economic advantages of keeping the money paid for power relatively close to home instead of shipping it off to Houston or Riyadh. The world had wasted so much energy that much of the early work was easy, like losing weight by getting your hair cut.

But the early euphoria came to an end pretty quickly. By the end of the 2020s, it became clear we would have to pay the price of delaying action for decades.

For one thing, the cuts in emissions that scientists prescribed were almost impossibly deep. “If you’d started in 1990 when we first warned you, the job was manageable: you could have cut carbon a percent or two a year,” one eminent physicist explained. “But waiting 30 years turned a bunny slope into a black diamond.” As usual, the easy “solutions” turned out to be no help at all: fracked natural-gas wells were leaking vast quantities of methane into the atmosphere, and “biomass burning”—­cutting down forests to burn them for electricity—was putting a pulse of carbon into the air at precisely the wrong moment. (As it happened, the math showed letting trees stand was crucial for pulling carbon from the atmosphere—when secondary forests were allowed to grow, they sucked up a third or more of the excess carbon humanity was producing.) Environmentalists learned they needed to make some compromises, and so most of America’s aging nuclear reactors were left online past their decommissioning dates: that lower-carbon power supplemented the surging renewable industry in the early years, even as researchers continued work to see if fusion power, thorium reactors or some other advanced design could work.

The real problem, though, was that climate change itself kept accelerating, even as the world began trying to turn its energy and agriculture systems around. The giant slug of carbon that the world had put into the atmosphere—more since 1990 than in all of human history before—acted like a time-delayed fuse, and the temperature just kept rising. Worse, it appeared that scientists had systematically underestimated just how much damage each tenth of a degree would actually do, a point underscored in 2032 when a behemoth slice of the West Antarctic ice sheet slid majestically into the southern ocean, and all of a sudden the rise in sea level was being measured in feet, not inches. (Nothing, it turned out, could move Americans to embrace the metric system.) And the heating kept triggering feedback loops that in turn accelerated the heating: ever larger wildfires, for instance, kept pushing ever more carbon into the air, and their smoke blackened ice sheets that in turn melted even faster.

This hotter world produced an ongoing spate of emergencies: “forest-fire season” was now essentially year-round, and the warmer ocean kept hurricanes and typhoons boiling months past the old norms. And sometimes the damage was novel: ancient carcasses kept emerging from the melting permafrost of the north, and with them germs from illnesses long thought extinct. But the greatest crises were the slower, more inexorable ones: the ongoing drought and desertification was forcing huge numbers of Africans, Asians and Central Americans to move; in many places, the heat waves had literally become unbearable, with nighttime temperatures staying above 100°F and outdoor work all but impossible for weeks and months at a time. On low-lying ground like the Mekong Delta, the rising ocean salted fields essential to supplying the world with rice. The U.N. had long ago estimated the century could see a billion climate refugees, and it was beginning to appear it was unnervingly correct. What could the rich countries say? These were people who hadn’t caused the crisis now devouring their lives, and there weren’t enough walls and cages to keep them at bay, so the migrations kept roiling the politics of the planet.

There were, in fact, two possible ways forward. The most obvious path was a constant competition between nations and individuals to see who could thrive in this new climate regime, with luckier places turning themselves into fortresses above the flood. Indeed some people in some places tried to cling to old notions: plug in some solar panels and they could somehow return to a more naive world, where economic expansion was still the goal of every government.

But there was a second response that carried the day in most countries, as growing numbers of people came to understand that the ground beneath our feet had truly shifted. If the economy was the lens through which we’d viewed the world for a century, now survival was the only sensible basis on which to make decisions. Those decisions targeted not just carbon dioxide; these societies went after the wild inequality that also marked the age. The Green New Deal turned out to be everything the Koch brothers had most feared when it was introduced: a tool to make America a fairer, healthier, better-educated place. It was emulated around the world, just as America’s Clean Air Act had long served as a template for laws across the globe. Slowly both the Keeling Curve, measuring carbon in the atmosphere, and the Gini coefficient, measuring the distribution of wealth, began to flatten.

That’s where we are today. We clearly did not “escape” climate change or “solve” global warming—the temperature keeps climbing, though the rate of increase has lessened. It’s turned into a wretched century, which is considerably better than a catastrophic one. We ended up with the most profound and most dangerous physical changes in human history. Our civilization surely teetered—and an enormous number of people paid an unfair and overwhelming price—but it did not fall.

People have learned to defend what can be practically defended: expensive seawalls and pumps mean New York is still New York, though the Antarctic may yet have something to say on the subject. Other places we’ve learned to let go: much of the East Coast has moved in a few miles, to more defensible ground. Yes, that took trillions of dollars in real estate off the board—but the roads and the bridges would have cost trillions to defend, and even then the odds were bad.

Cities look different now—much more densely populated, as NIMBY defenses against new development gave way to an increasingly vibrant urbanism. Smart municipalities banned private cars from the center of town, opening up free public-transit systems and building civic fleets of self-driving cars that got rid of the space wasted on parking spots. But rural districts have changed too: the erratic weather put a premium on hands-on agricultural skills, which in turn provided opportunities for migrants arriving from ruined farmlands elsewhere. (Farming around solar panels has become a particular specialty.) America’s rail network is not quite as good as it was in the early 20th century, but it gets closer each year, which is good news since low-carbon air travel proved hard to get off the ground.

What’s changed most of all is the mood. The defiant notion that we would forever overcome nature has given way to pride of a different kind: increasingly we celebrate our ability to bend without breaking, to adapt as gracefully as possible to a natural world whose temper we’ve come to respect. When we look back to the start of the century we are, of course, angry that people did so little to slow the great heating: if we’d acknowledged climate change in earnest a decade or two earlier, we might have shaved a degree off the temperature, and a degree is measured in great pain and peril. But we also know it was hard for people to grasp what was happening: human history stretched back 10,000 years, and those millennia were physically stable, so it made emotional sense to assume that stability would stretch forward as well as past.

We know much better now: we know that we’ve knocked the planet off its foundations, and that our job, for the foreseeable centuries, is to absorb the bounces as she rolls. We’re dancing as nimbly as we can, and so far we haven’t crashed.

This is one article in a series on the state of the planet’s response to climate change. Read the rest of the stories and sign up for One.Five, TIME’s climate change newsletter.

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September 10, 2021

What will the planet look like in 50 years? Here's how climate scientists figure it out

by Margo Rosenbaum

Climate change scientists don't like to use the term "prediction." Rather, they're making "projections" about the future of the planet as sea levels rise, wildfires sweep the West and hurricanes become more ferocious.

There's a good reason for that.

In a world awash in misinformation—about medicine, politics and climate, and pretty much everything else—part of a scientist's job now involves teaching the public about how science works. Convincing the public to have faith in science means making precise, measured projects about the future.

They've got to overcome the big question: Can you really make accurate projections about what the planet will look like in 50 years, a century from now?

Climate scientists think they can, based on the past five decades of climate science that has proven accurate. Futurists, such as Jamais Cascio, a distinguished fellow for the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit foresight group based in Silicon Valley, study present trends and available data to lay out plausible outcomes for the future.

Today, a lot of Cascio's work is centered around climate change, helping people prepare for the future and make informed decisions for a warming world.

"Everything in the world," Cascio said, "every future outcome will have to be examined through the lens of climate."

In the future, climate change may only get worse. But how much worse will it get?

Scientists have relied on climate models for over 50 years. To people who aren't scientists, it's challenging to understand the calculations that go into these projections. So, what exactly is a climate model?

Meteorologists can make weather predictions for the next hour, or even week, based on weather data and forecast models that use humidity, temperature, air pressure, wind speed, among other current atmospheric, land and oceanic conditions. But with climate, a specific region's weather averaged over decades, is a little more challenging to project and understand.

An extension of weather forecasting, climate models factor in even more atmospheric, land and oceanic conditions to make longer-term forecasts. Using mathematical equations and thousands of data points, the models create representations of physical conditions on earth and simulations of the current climate.

Climate models predict how average conditions will change in a region over the coming decades as well as how the climate appeared before humans recorded it.

Researchers can then understand how these changing conditions could impact the planet, which is useful especially for understanding climate change, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center based in the Bay Area.

"Perhaps the most important (purpose) is to try to suggest the types of changes that might occur as the world continues to emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases," Hausfather said.

The first climate model, developed over 50 years ago in the early days of climate science, helped scientists gauge how the ocean and atmosphere interacted with each other to influence the climate. The model predicted how temperature changes and shifts in ocean and atmospheric currents could lead to climate change.

Today, these models are much more complicated and run on some of the world's most powerful supercomputers. A decade ago, most models broke up the world into 250-kilometer segments, but now the models are 100 square kilometers. More regional patterns emerge when simulations are at a finer scale.

"People aren't drawing a picture of temperature and carbon dioxide and drawing a line through it and then extrapolating that into the future," said Gavin A. Schmidt, a senior climate adviser at NASA.

Through these advancements in technology, these models are becoming even more useful to scientists in understanding the climate of the past, present and future.

"Fortunately, they don't do such a terrible job," Schmidt said.

All of this works toward convincing the public and businesses to take action.

A majority of Americans already notice the effects of climate change around them, according to a Pew Research Center survey from 2020. But individuals, businesses and politics must "adapt to a radically and dangerously changing climate," Cascio said.

On the individual level, people must consider the climate in all of their monumental decisions: whether to have children; which car to buy; how to invest; when and where to buy a house. Governments are tasked with climate decisions that impact the future of entire nations, such as whether to invest in alternative energy or write policy curbing emissions.

Are climate models useful?

Instead of thinking about climate models as whether or not they are right, Schmidt said climate models should be considered as to whether they provide useful forecasts.

"Do they tell us things? Do they get things right more than you would have done without them?" Schmidt said.

Usually, the answer is yes, and what these models inform scientists is crucial for their understanding of the future climate.

Hausfather knows this better than anyone, as he led a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters analyzing the accuracy of early climate models. Some of the findings were included in the latest report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in August.

Hausfather, along with co-author Schmidt, compared 17 model projections of global average temperature developed between 1970 and 2007 with actual changes in global temperature observed through the end of 2017.

Hausfather and his colleagues found promising news: Most of the models have been quite accurate. More specifically, 10 of the model projections show results consistent with observations. Of the remaining seven model projections, four projected more warming than observed while three projected less warming than observed.

But Hausfather and his colleagues realized this wasn't telling the whole story. After accounting for differences between modeled and actual changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other factors driving the climate, it turns out 14 of 17 model projections were "effectively identical" to warming observed in the real world.

"That was strong evidence that these models are effectively right," Hausfather said. "They're doing a very good job of predicting global temperatures."

The accuracy was particularly impressive in the earliest climate models, Hausfather said, especially given the limited observational evidence of warming at the time.

But not all of the early models were error-free. One of the first climate models, created in 1971 by climate scientists Rasool and Schneider, projected that the world would cool due to the cooling effect of atmospheric aerosols.

"(The researchers) thought that the cooling effect of these aerosols from burning fossil fuels that would reflect sunlight back to space would be much stronger than the warming effects of the greenhouse gas," Hausfather said.

While the 1970s were still in the early days of climate research, most of the scientific literature of the time was still pointing toward a warming future as much more likely. Yet, Rasool and Schneider's model still spurred a slew of news stories about a potential ice age. Even today, the model "still gets trotted out every now and then by folks trying to discredit climate science today," Hausfather said.

Now the model is proven to be wrong. It's a consensus among climate scientists that the planet is not cooling—instead it's warming at an alarming rate.

Even today, despite the promise of climate models shown by Hausfather's study, these models still have their limitations, especially with regard to the uncertainty of future emissions. Climate scientists are physicists—not economists or political scientists, and it's challenging to understand how policy will shape emissions standards.

"We don't have a crystal ball that can predict the future human behavior in terms of how much our emissions will change," Hausfather said. "We can just predict how the climate will respond to the emissions."

Issues of accuracy in climate models also still arise when models are pushed outside of their specific parameters. To combat this, climate models focus their projections on physical conditions seen in the natural world, instead of statistical probability, Schmidt said.

Researchers have more confidence in the predictability of physics than statistics, because physics doesn't change into the future. Researchers can have confidence that they can use these models outside of the time period where they have observational data, such as looking at climate during the last ice age, Schmidt said.

"How things get expressed might be different but the basic physics ... the underlying processes don't really change," Schmidt said.

Hausfather said there's still a lot of work still to improve climate models, but they are consistently getting better over time. Simulations of the Earth become sharper as more physical processes are added and computer power grows.

Why make projections for the future?

While climate scientists focus on physics to make forecasts for the future climate, Cascio and other futurists place scientific data in a larger context, making foresight based on climate change, new technological developments, as well as political and social movements. Futurism is "essentially anticipatory history," Cascio said.

"The idea is to take the science and embed it into a historian's understanding of how the world works to try to get a sense of what are the possible outcomes that we see going forward," Cascio said.

But, just like with climate models , uncertainty is inherent to the nature of projections. Futurists do not want to over-promise, but they provide a forecast of what could happen and reasons why it could happen, Cascio said.

Most of Cascio's work with climate change projects a grim future. In his perspective, an "absolutely radical" and "transformative" climate plan is necessary to make the necessary change. Plans that are "sensible and acceptable (are) almost definitely not enough."

"I really want to be wrong about all of this stuff," Cascio said, "because there are no futures that are not really depressing for the next generation."

Despite the despair projected by many climate scientists and futurists, there's still hope. If global emissions can be brought down to zero, Hausfather said the best climate model estimates illustrate that the world will stop warming.

"It's not too late to act," Hausfather said. "The world is not locked into a particular amount of warming."

Cascio still tries to consider himself a long-term optimist for the future, because the changes necessary to mitigate climate change will also lead to a much more "transparent and equitable" world, he said.

"If we can make it through the second half of this century, there's a very good chance that what we'll end up with is a really wonderful world," Cascio said.

Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Yuval Noah Harari on what the year 2050 has in store for humankind

Forget programming - the best skill to teach children is reinvention. In this exclusive extract from his new book, the author of Sapiens reveals what 2050 has in store for humankind.

Part one: Change is the only constant

Humankind is facing unprecedented revolutions, all our old stories are crumbling and no new story has so far emerged to replace them. How can we prepare ourselves and our children for a world of such unprecedented transformations and radical uncertainties? A baby born today will be thirty-something in 2050. If all goes well, that baby will still be around in 2100, and might even be an active citizen of the 22nd century. What should we teach that baby that will help him or her survive and flourish in the world of 2050 or of the 22nd century? What kind of skills will he or she need in order to get a job, understand what is happening around them and navigate the maze of life?

Unfortunately, since nobody knows how the world will look in 2050 – not to mention 2100 – we don’t know the answer to these questions. Of course, humans have never been able to predict the future with accuracy. But today it is more difficult than ever before, because once technology enables us to engineer bodies, brains and minds, we can no longer be certain about anything – including things that previously seemed fixed and eternal.

A thousand years ago, in 1018, there were many things people didn’t know about the future, but they were nevertheless convinced that the basic features of human society were not going to change. If you lived in China in 1018, you knew that by 1050 the Song Empire might collapse, the Khitans might invade from the north, and plagues might kill millions. However, it was clear to you that even in 1050 most people would still work as farmers and weavers, rulers would still rely on humans to staff their armies and bureaucracies, men would still dominate women, life expectancy would still be about 40, and the human body would be exactly the same. Hence in 1018, poor Chinese parents taught their children how to plant rice or weave silk, and wealthier parents taught their boys how to read the Confucian classics, write calligraphy or fight on horseback – and taught their girls to be modest and obedient housewives. It was obvious these skills would still be needed in 1050.

In contrast, today we have no idea how China or the rest of the world will look in 2050. We don’t know what people will do for a living, we don’t know how armies or bureaucracies will function, and we don’t know what gender relations will be like. Some people will probably live much longer than today, and the human body itself might undergo an unprecedented revolution thanks to bioengineering and direct brain-computer interfaces. Much of what kids learn today will likely be irrelevant by 2050.

At present, too many schools focus on cramming information. In the past this made sense, because information was scarce, and even the slow trickle of existing information was repeatedly blocked by censorship. If you lived, say, in a small provincial town in Mexico in 1800, it was difficult for you to know much about the wider world. There was no radio, television, daily newspapers or public libraries. Even if you were literate and had access to a private library, there was not much to read other than novels and religious tracts. The Spanish Empire heavily censored all texts printed locally, and allowed only a dribble of vetted publications to be imported from outside. Much the same was true if you lived in some provincial town in Russia, India, Turkey or China. When modern schools came along, teaching every child to read and write and imparting the basic facts of geography, history and biology, they represented an immense improvement.

In contrast, in the 21st century we are flooded by enormous amounts of information, and even the censors don’t try to block it. Instead, they are busy spreading misinformation or distracting us with irrelevancies. If you live in some provincial Mexican town and you have a smartphone, you can spend many lifetimes just reading Wikipedia, watching TED talks, and taking free online courses. No government can hope to conceal all the information it doesn’t like. On the other hand, it is alarmingly easy to inundate the public with conflicting reports and red herrings. People all over the world are but a click away from the latest accounts of the bombardment of Aleppo or of melting ice caps in the Arctic, but there are so many contradictory accounts that it is hard to know what to believe. Besides, countless other things are just a click away, making it difficult to focus, and when politics or science look too complicated it is tempting to switch to funny cat videos, celebrity gossip or porn.

In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.

In truth, this has been the ideal of western liberal education for centuries, but up till now even many western schools have been rather slack in fulfilling it. Teachers allowed themselves to focus on shoving data while encouraging pupils “to think for themselves”. Due to their fear of authoritarianism, liberal schools had a particular horror of grand narratives. They assumed that as long as we give students lots of data and a modicum of freedom, the students will create their own picture of the world, and even if this generation fails to synthesise all the data into a coherent and meaningful story of the world, there will be plenty of time to construct a good synthesis in the future. We have now run out of time. The decisions we will take in the next few decades will shape the future of life itself, and we can take these decisions based only on our present world view. If this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random.

Part two: The heat is on

Besides information, most schools also focus too much on providing pupils with a set of predetermined skills such as solving differential equations, writing computer code in C++, identifying chemicals in a test tube or conversing in Chinese. Yet since we have no idea how the world and the job market will look in 2050, we don’t really know what particular skills people will need. We might invest a lot of effort teaching kids how to write in C++ or how to speak Chinese, only to discover that by 2050 AI can code software far better than humans, and a new Google Translate app enables you to conduct a conversation in almost flawless Mandarin, Cantonese or Hakka, even though you only know how to say “Ni hao”.

So what should we be teaching? Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs” – critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. More broadly, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasise general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, to learn new things and to preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations. In order to keep up with the world of 2050, you will need not merely to invent new ideas and products – you will above all need to reinvent yourself again and again.

For as the pace of change increases, not just the economy, but the very meaning of “being human” is likely to mutate. In 1848, the Communist Manifesto declared that “all that is solid melts into air”. Marx and Engels, however, were thinking mainly about social and economic structures. By 2048, physical and cognitive structures will also melt into air, or into a cloud of data bits.

In 1848, millions of people were losing their jobs on village farms, and were going to the big cities to work in factories. But upon reaching the big city, they were unlikely to change their gender or to add a sixth sense. And if they found a job in some textile factory, they could expect to remain in that profession for the rest of their working lives.

By 2048, people might have to cope with migrations to cyberspace, with fluid gender identities, and with new sensory experiences generated by computer implants. If they find both work and meaning in designing up-to-the-minute fashions for a 3D virtual-reality game, within a decade not just this particular profession, but all jobs demanding this level of artistic creation might be taken over by AI. So at 25, you introduce yourself on a dating site as “a twenty-five-year-old heterosexual woman who lives in London and works in a fashion shop.” At 35, you say you are “a gender-non-specific person undergoing age- adjustment, whose neocortical activity takes place mainly in the NewCosmos virtual world, and whose life mission is to go where no fashion designer has gone before”. At 45, both dating and self-definitions are so passé. You just wait for an algorithm to find (or create) the perfect match for you. As for drawing meaning from the art of fashion design, you are so irrevocably outclassed by the algorithms, that looking at your crowning achievements from the previous decade fills you with embarrassment rather than pride. And at 45, you still have many decades of radical change ahead of you.

Please don’t take this scenario literally. Nobody can really predict the specific changes we will witness. Any particular scenario is likely to be far from the truth. If somebody describes to you the world of the mid-21st century and it sounds like science fiction, it is probably false. But then if somebody describes to you the world of the mid 21st-century and it doesn’t sound like science fiction – it is certainly false. We cannot be sure of the specifics, but change itself is the only certainty.

Such profound change may well transform the basic structure of life, making discontinuity its most salient feature. From time immemorial, life was divided into two complementary parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. In the first part of life you accumulated information, developed skills, constructed a world view, and built a stable identity. Even if at 15 you spent most of your day working in the family’s rice field (rather than in a formal school), the most important thing you were doing was learning: how to cultivate rice, how to conduct negotiations with the greedy rice merchants from the big city and how to resolve conflicts over land and water with the other villagers. In the second part of life you relied on your accumulated skills to navigate the world, earn a living, and contribute to society. Of course, even at 50 you continued to learn new things about rice, about merchants and about conflicts, but these were just small tweaks to well-honed abilities.

By the middle of the 21st century, accelerating change plus longer lifespans will make this traditional model obsolete. Life will come apart at the seams, and there will be less and less continuity between different periods of life. “Who am I?” will be a more urgent and complicated question than ever before.

This is likely to involve immense levels of stress. For change is almost always stressful, and after a certain age most people just don’t like to change. When you are 15, your entire life is change. Your body is growing, your mind is developing, your relationships are deepening. Everything is in flux, and everything is new. You are busy inventing yourself. Most teenagers find it frightening, but at the same time, also exciting. New vistas are opening before you, and you have an entire world to conquer. By the time you are 50, you don’t want change, and most people have given up on conquering the world. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. You much prefer stability. You have invested so much in your skills, your career, your identity and your world view that you don’t want to start all over again. The harder you’ve worked on building something, the more difficult it is to let go of it and make room for something new. You might still cherish new experiences and minor adjustments, but most people in their fifties aren’t ready to overhaul the deep structures of their identity and personality.

There are neurological reasons for this. Though the adult brain is more flexible and volatile than was once thought, it is still less malleable than the teenage brain. Reconnecting neurons and rewiring synapses is damned hard work. But in the 21st century, you can hardly afford stability. If you try to hold on to some stable identity, job or world view, you risk being left behind as the world flies by you with a whooooosh. Given that life expectancy is likely to increase, you might subsequently have to spend many decades as a clueless fossil. To stay relevant – not just economically, but above all socially – you will need the ability to constantly learn and to reinvent yourself, certainly at a young age like 50.

As strangeness becomes the new normal, your past experiences, as well as the past experiences of the whole of humanity, will become less reliable guides. Humans as individuals and humankind as a whole will increasingly have to deal with things nobody ever encountered before, such as super-intelligent machines, engineered bodies, algorithms that can manipulate your emotions with uncanny precision, rapid man-made climate cataclysms, and the need to change your profession every decade. What is the right thing to do when confronting a completely unprecedented situation? How should you act when you are flooded by enormous amounts of information and there is absolutely no way you can absorb and analyse it all? How to live in a world where profound uncertainty is not a bug, but a feature?

To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance. You will have to repeatedly let go of some of what you know best, and feel at home with the unknown. Unfortunately, teaching kids to embrace the unknown and to keep their mental balance is far more difficult than teaching them an equation in physics or the causes of the first world war. You cannot learn resilience by reading a book or listening to a lecture. The teachers themselves usually lack the mental flexibility that the 21st century demands, for they themselves are the product of the old educational system.

The Industrial Revolution has bequeathed us the production-line theory of education. In the middle of town there is a large concrete building divided into many identical rooms, each room equipped with rows of desks and chairs. At the sound of a bell, you go to one of these rooms together with 30 other kids who were all born the same year as you. Every hour some grown-up walks in and starts talking. They are all paid to do so by the government. One of them tells you about the shape of the Earth, another tells you about the human past, and a third tells you about the human body. It is easy to laugh at this model, and almost everybody agrees that no matter its past achievements, it is now bankrupt. But so far we haven’t created a viable alter- native. Certainly not a scaleable alternative that can be implemented in rural Mexico rather than just in upmarket California suburbs.

Part three: Hacking humans

So the best advice I could give a 15-year-old stuck in an outdated school somewhere in Mexico, India or Alabama is: don’t rely on the adults too much. Most of them mean well, but they just don’t understand the world. In the past, it was a relatively safe bet to follow the adults, because they knew the world quite well, and the world changed slowly. But the 21st century is going to be different. Due to the growing pace of change, you can never be certain whether what the adults are telling you is timeless wisdom or outdated bias.

So on what can you rely instead? Technology? That’s an even riskier gamble. Technology can help you a lot, but if technology gains too much power over your life, you might become a hostage to its agenda. Thousands of years ago, humans invented agriculture, but this technology enriched just a tiny elite, while enslaving the majority of humans. Most people found themselves working from sunrise till sunset plucking weeds, carrying water buckets and harvesting corn under a blazing sun. It can happen to you too.

Technology isn’t bad. If you know what you want in life, technology can help you get it. But if you don’t know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aims for you and take control of your life. Especially as technology gets better at understanding humans, you might increasingly find yourself serving it, instead of it serving you. Have you seen those zombies who roam the streets with their faces glued to their smartphones? Do you think they control the technology, or does the technology control them?

Should you rely on yourself, then? That sounds great on Sesame Street or in an old-fashioned Disney film, but in real life it doesn’t work so well. Even Disney is coming to realise it. Just like Inside Ou t’s Riley Andersen , most people hardly know themselves, and when they try to “listen to themselves” they easily become prey to external manipulations. The voice we hear inside our heads was never trustworthy, because it always reflected state propaganda, ideological brainwashing and commercial advertisement, not to mention biochemical bugs.

As biotechnology and machine learning improve, it will become easier to manipulate people’s deepest emotions and desires, and it will become more dangerous than ever to just follow your heart. When Coca-Cola, Amazon, Baidu or the government knows how to pull the strings of your heart and press the buttons of your brain, could you still tell the difference between your self and their marketing experts?

To succeed in such a daunting task, you will need to work very hard on getting to know your operating system better. To know what you are, and what you want from life. This is, of course, the oldest advice in the book: know thyself. For thousands of years, philosophers and prophets have urged people to know themselves. But this advice was never more urgent than in the 21st century, because unlike in the days of Laozi or Socrates, now you have serious competition. Coca-Cola, Amazon, Baidu and the government are all racing to hack you. Not your smartphone, not your computer, and not your bank account – they are in a race to hack you , and your organic operating system. You might have heard that we are living in the era of hacking computers, but that’s hardly half the truth. In fact, we are living in the era of hacking humans.

The algorithms are watching you right now. They are watching where you go, what you buy, who you meet. Soon they will monitor all your steps, all your breaths, all your heartbeats. They are relying on Big Data and machine learning to get to know you better and better. And once these algorithms know you better than you know yourself, they could control and manipulate you, and you won’t be able to do much about it. You will live in the matrix, or in The Truman Show . In the end, it’s a simple empirical matter: if the algorithms indeed understand what’s happening within you better than you understand it, authority will shift to them.

Of course, you might be perfectly happy ceding all authority to the algorithms and trusting them to decide things for you and for the rest of the world. If so, just relax and enjoy the ride. You don’t need to do anything about it. The algorithms will take care of everything. If, however, you want to retain some control of your personal existence and of the future of life, you have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, don’t take much luggage with you. Leave all your illusions behind. They are very heavy.

Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Vintage Digital) is published on August 30

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

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Perspectives

The Science of Sustainability

Can a unified path for development and conservation lead to a better future?

October 13, 2018

• A False Choice
• Two Paths to 2050
• What's Possible
• The Way Forward
• Engage With Us

The Cerrado may not have the same name recognition as the Amazon , but this vast tropical savannah in Brazil has much in common with that perhaps better-known destination. The Cerrado is also a global biodiversity hotspot, home to thousands of species only found there, and it is also a critical area in the fight against climate change, acting as a large carbon pool.

But Brazil is one of the two largest soy producers in the world—the crop is one of the country’s most important commodities and a staple in global food supplies—and that success is placing the Cerrado in precarious decline. To date, around 46% of the Cerrado has been deforested or converted for agriculture.

Producing more soy doesn’t have to mean converting more native habitat, however. A new spatial data tool is helping identify the best places to expand soy without further encroachment on the native landscapes of the Cerrado. And with traders and bankers working together to offer preferable financing to farmers who expand onto already-converted land, Brazil can continue to produce this important crop, while protecting native habitat and providing more financial stability for farmers.

The Cerrado is just one region of a vast planet, of course, but these recent efforts to protect it are representative of a new way of thinking about the relationship between conservation and our growing human demands. It is part of an emerging model for cross-sector collaboration that aims to create a world prepared for the sustainability challenges ahead.

Is this world possible? Here, we present a new science-based view that says “Yes”—but it will require new forms of collaboration across traditionally disconnected sectors, and on a near unprecedented scale.

Download a PDF version of this feature. Click to see translated versions of this page.

I.  A False Choice

Many assume that economic interests and environmental interests are in conflict. But new research makes the case that this perception of development vs. conservation is not just unnecessary but actively counterproductive to both ends. Achieving a sustainable future will be dependent on our ability to secure both thriving human communities and abundant and healthy natural ecosystems.

The Nature Conservancy partnered with the University of Minnesota and 11 other organizations to ask whether it is possible to achieve a future where the needs of both people and nature are advanced. Can we actually meet people’s needs for food, water and energy while doing more to protect nature? 

The perception of development vs. conservation is not just unnecessary, but actively counterproductive to both ends.

To answer this question, we compared what the world will look like in 2050 if economic and human development progress in a “business-as-usual” fashion and what it would look like if instead we join forces to implement a “sustainable” path with a series of fair-minded and technologically viable solutions to the challenges that lie ahead.

In both options, we used leading projections of population growth and gross domestic product to estimate how demand for food, energy and water will evolve between 2010 and 2050. Under business-as-usual, we played out existing expectations and trends in how those changes will impact land use, water use, air quality, climate, protected habitat areas and ocean fisheries. In the more sustainable scenario, we proposed changes to how and where food and energy are produced, asking if these adjustments could result in better outcomes for the same elements of human well-being and nature. Our full findings are described in a peer-reviewed paper— “An Attainable Global Vision for Conservation and Human Well-Being” —published in  Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment .

These scenarios let us ask, can we do better? Can we design a future that meets people’s needs without further degrading nature in the process?

Our answer is “yes,” but it comes with several big “ifs.” There is a path to get there, but matters are urgent—if we want to accomplish these goals by mid-century, we’ll have to dramatically ramp up our efforts now. The next decade is critical.

Furthermore, changing course in the next ten years will require global collaboration on a scale not seen perhaps since World War II. The widely held impression that economic and environmental goals are mutually exclusive has contributed to a lack of connection among key societal constituencies best equipped to solve interconnected problems—namely, the public health, development, financial and conservation communities. This has to change.

The good news is that protecting nature and providing water, food and energy to a growing world do not have to be either-or propositions. Our view, instead, calls for smart energy, water, air, health and ecosystem initiatives that balance the needs of economic growth and resource conservation equally. Rather than a zero-sum game, these elements are balanced sides of an equation, revealing the path to a future where people and nature thrive together.

II. Two Paths to 2050

This vision is not a wholesale departure from what others have offered. A number of prominent scientists and organizations have put forward important and thoughtful views for a sustainable future; but often such plans consider the needs of people and nature in isolation from one another, use analyses confined to limited sectors or geographies, or assume that some hard tradeoffs must be made, such as slowing global population growth, taking a reduction in GDP growth or shifting diets off of meat. Our new research considers global economic development and conservation needs together, more holistically, in order to find a sustainable path forward.

What could a different future look like? We’ve used as our standard the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 measures for “a world where all people are fed, healthy, employed, educated, empowered and thriving, but not at the expense of other life on Earth.” Our analysis directly aligns with ten of those goals. Using the SDGs as our guideposts, we imagine a world in 2050 that looks very different than the one today—and drastically different from the one we will face if we continue in business-as-usual fashion.

A sustainable future is possible.

To create our assessment of business-as-usual versus a more sustainable path, we looked at 14 measurements including temperature change, carbon dioxide levels, air pollution, water consumption, food and energy footprints, and protected areas.

Over the next 30 years, we know we’ll face rapid population growth and greater pressures on our natural resources. The statistics are sobering—with 9.7 billion people on the planet by 2050, we can expect a 54 percent increase in global food demand and 56 percent increase in energy demand. While meetings these growing demands and achieving sustainability is possible, it is helpful to scrutinize where the status quo will get us.

The World Health Organization, World Economic Forum and other leading global development organizations now say that air pollution and water scarcity—environmental challenges—are among the biggest dangers to human health and prosperity. And our business-as-usual analysis makes clear what many already fear: that human development based on the same practices we use today will not prepare us for a world with nearly 10 billion people.

To put it simply, if we stay on today’s current path, we risk being trapped in an intensifying cycle of scarcity—our growth opportunities severely capped and our natural landscapes severely degraded. Under this business-as-usual scenario, we can expect global temperature to increase 3.2°C; worsened air pollution affecting 4.9 billion more people; overfishing of 84 percent of fish stocks; and greater water stress affecting 2.75 billion people. Habitat loss continues, leaving less than 50 percent of native grasslands and several types of forests intact.

However, if we make changes in where and how we meet food, water and energy demands for the same growing global population and wealth, the picture can look markedly different by mid-century. This “sustainability” path includes global temperature increase limited to 1.6°C—meeting Paris Climate Accord goals—zero overfishing with greater fisheries yields, a 90 percent drop in exposure to dangerous air pollution, and fewer water-stressed people, rivers and agricultural fields. These goals can be met while natural habitats extend both inside and outside protected areas. All signatory countries to the Aichi Targets meet habitat protection goals, and more than 50 percent of all ecoregions’ extents remain unconverted, except temperate grasslands (of which over 50 percent are already converted today).

Behind the Science

Discover how TNC and its partners developed the models for 2050.

III. What's Possible

Achieving this sustainable future for people and nature is possible with existing and expected technology and consumption, but only with major shifts in production patterns. Making these shifts will require overcoming substantial economic, social and political challenges. In short, it is not likely that the biophysical limits of the planet will determine our future, but rather our willingness to think and act differently by putting economic development and the environment on equal footing as central parts of the same equation.

Climate, Energy and Air Quality

Perhaps the most pressing need for change is in energy use. In order to both meet increased energy demand and keep the climate within safe boundaries, we’ll need to alter the way we produce energy, curtailing emissions of carbon and other harmful chemicals.

Under a business-as-usual scenario, fossil fuels will still claim a 76 percent share of total energy in 2050. A more sustainable approach would reduce that share to 13 percent by 2050. While this is a sharp change, it is necessary to stanch the flow of harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The reduction in carbon-based energy could be offset by increasing the share of energy from renewable sources to 54 percent and increasing nuclear energy to one third of total energy output—delivering a total of almost 85 percent of the world’s energy demand from non-fossil-fuel sources.

Additionally, we will only achieve the full extent of reduced climate impacts if we draw down existing carbon from the atmosphere. This can be done through greater investment in carbon capture and storage efforts, including natural climate solutions—land management strategies such as avoiding forest loss, reforestation, investments in soil health and coastal ecosystem restoration.

The net benefit of these energy redistribution efforts is twofold. First, they lower the rate at which greenhouse gases are flowing into the air—taking atmospheric carbon projections down to 442 parts per million, compared to business-as-usual estimates that put the level closer to 520 ppm.

Second, these energy source shifts would create a marked decline in particulate air pollution. Our models show that the higher fossil fuel use in the business-as-usual scenario is likely to expose half the people on the planet to poorer air quality by 2050. Under the sustainable scenario, that figure drops to just 7 percent of the world’s inhabitants, thanks to lower particulate emissions from renewable and nuclear energy sources.

Case Studies: 

• Forests That Fight Climate Change: Brazil’s Serra da Mantiqueira region demonstrates how reforestation can tackle climate change, improve water supplies, and increase incomes in rural communities.  Learn More
• Can Trees Be a Prescription for Urban Health?:  Conservationists, community organizations and public health researchers joined forces to plant trees in Louisville, Kentucky and monitor their impact on air quality and residents’ health.  Learn More

Food, Habitat and City Growth

Meeting the sustainable targets we propose requires a second front on land to shift how we use available real estate and where we choose to conduct necessary activities. Overall, the changes we include in our more sustainable view allow the world to meet global food, water and energy demands with no additional conversion of natural habitat for those needs—an outcome that is not possible under business as usual.

While transitioning away from fossil fuels is essential to meet climate goals, new renewable energy infrastructure siting will present land-use challenges. Renewable energy production takes up space, and if not sited well it can cause its own negative impacts on nature and its services to people. In our more sustainable path, we address this challenge by preferencing the use of already converted land for renewables development, lessening the impact of new wind and solar on natural habitat. We also exclude expansion of biofuels, as they are known to require extensive land area to produce, causing conflicts with natural habitat and food security.

Perhaps most encouraging, we show that it is possible to meet future food demands on less agricultural land than is used today. Notably, our scenario keeps the mix of crops in each growing region the same, so as not to disrupt farmers’ cultures, technologies, capacity or existing crop knowledge. Instead, we propose moving which crops are grown where within growing regions, putting more “thirsty” crops in areas with more water, and matching the nutrient needs of various crops to the soils available.

Unlike some projections used by others, for this scenario we left diet expectations alone, matching meat consumption with business-as-usual expectations. If we were able to reduce meat consumption, especially by middle- and high-income countries where nutritional needs are met, reducing future agricultural land, water and pollution footprints would be even easier.

Meanwhile, on the land protection front, our analysis is guided by the Convention on Biological Diversity, the leading global platform most countries have signed. Each signatory country has agreed to protect up to 17 percent of each habitat type within its borders. While many countries will fall short of this goal under business as usual, it can be achieved in our more sustainable option.

By making changes in food, water and energy use, we can better protect nearly all habitat types.

We acknowledge 17 percent is an imperfect number, and many believe more natural habitat is needed to allow the world’s biodiversity to thrive. Looking beyond protected areas, we see additional differences in the possible futures we face. Our more sustainable option retains 577 million hectares more natural habitat than business as usual, much of it outside of protected areas. Conservation has long focused on representation—it is not only important to conserve large areas, but to represent different kinds of habitat. Under business as usual, we will lose more than half of several major habitat types by mid-century, including temperate broadleaf and mixed forests, Mediterranean forest, and temperate grassland. Flooded and tropical grasslands approach this level of loss as well.

But with the proposed shifts in food, water and energy use, we can do better for nearly all habitats in our more sustainable scenario. The one exception is temperate grasslands, a biome that has already lost more than 50 percent of its global extent today. In all, the more sustainable scenario shows a future that would be largely compatible with emerging views that suggest protecting half of the world’s land system.

 Case Study:

• Managing Sprawling Soy:  A partnership between businesses and nonprofit groups in Brazil will help farmers plant soy in the areas where it is has the smallest impact on natural habitats.  Learn More

Drinking Water, River Basins and Fisheries

Water presents a complex set of challenges. Like land, it is both a resource and a habitat. Fresh water resources are dwindling while ocean ecosystems are overburdened by unregulated fishing and pollution. Business-as-usual projections estimate that 2.75 billion people will experience water scarcity by 2050 and 770 water basins will experience water stress. Africa and Central Asia in particular would see fewer water stressed basins in the sustainable scenario.

Changes in energy sources and food production (see above sections) would lead to significant water savings by reducing use of water as a coolant in energy production and by moving crops to areas where they need less irrigation. Thanks to these changes, our more sustainable option for the future would relieve 104 million people and biodiversity in 25 major river basins from likely water stress.

Meanwhile, in the seas, we find an inspiring possibility for fisheries. Continuing business-as-usual fisheries management adds further stress to the oceans and the global food system as more stocks decline, further diminishing the food we rely on from the seas. But more sustainable fisheries management is possible, and our projections using a leading fisheries model shows that adopting sustainable management in all fisheries by mid-century would actually increase yield by over a quarter more than we saw in 2010.

And, while we know that aquaculture is a certain element of the future of fish and food, many questions remain about precisely how this industry will grow, and how it can be shaped to be a low-impact part of the global food system. Given these unknowns, we kept aquaculture growth the same in both our views of the future.

 Case Studies:

• Cities and Farmers Find Common Ground on Water: Smarter agricultural practices in the Kenya’s Upper Tana River Watershed are resulting in better yields for farmers and more reliable water supplies for the city of Nairobi.  Learn More
• Technology Offers a Lifeline for Fish:  A new mobile application being piloted in Indonesia is helping fill a crucial gap in fisheries management—providing accurate data about what species are being caught where.  Learn More

IV.  The Way Forward

This analysis does not represent a panacea for the growing need for economic development across the planet or for the environmental challenges that are ahead. But it does provide an optimistic viewpoint and an integrated picture that can serve as a starting point for discussion.

Our goal is to apply new questions—and ultimately new solutions—to our known problems. We present one of many possible paths to a different future, and we welcome like-minded partners and productive critics to share their perspectives with us. We encourage people from across society to join the conversation, to fill gaps where they exist, and to bring other important considerations to our attention. Most of all, we call on the development (e.g. energy, agriculture, infrastructure), health, and financial communities—among others—to work with us to find new ways of taking action together.

Ultimately, by illustrating a viable pathway to sustainability that serves both the needs of economic and environmental interests—goals that many have long assumed were mutually exclusive—we hope to inspire the global community to engage in the difficult but necessary social, economic and political dialogue that can make a sustainable future a reality.

Protecting nature and providing water, food and energy to the world can no longer be either-or propositions. Nature and human development are both central factors in the same equation. We have at our disposal the cross-sector expertise necessary to make informed decisions for the good of life on our planet, so let’s use it wisely. Our science affirms there is a way.

Join us as we chart a new path to 2050 by helping people and nature thrive—together.

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Life in 2050: A Glimpse at Education in the Future

Thanks to growing internet access and emerging technologies, the way we think of education will dramatically change..

Matthew S. Williams

Welcome back to our “Life in 2050” series, where we examine how changes that are anticipated for the coming decades will alter the way people live their lives. In previous installments, we looked at how warfare , the economy , housing , and space exploration (which took two installments to cover!) will change by mid-century.

Today, we take a look at education and how social, economic, and technological changes will revolutionize the way children, youth, and adults go to school. Whereas modern education has generally followed the same model for over three hundred years, a transition is currently taking place that will continue throughout this century.

This transition is similar to what is also taking place in terms of governance, the economy, and recreation. In much the same way, the field of education will evolve in this century to adapt to four major factors. They include:

• Growing access to the internet
• Improvements in technology
• Distributed living and learning
• A new emphasis on problem-solving and gamification

The resulting seismic shift expected to occur by 2050 and after will be tantamount to a revolution in how we think about education and learning. Rather than a centralized structure where information is transmitted, and retention is tested, the classroom of the future is likely to be distributed in nature and far more hands-on.

To the next generations, education in the future will look a lot more like playtime than schooling!

A Time-Honored Model

Since the 19th century, public education has become far more widespread. In 1820, only 12% of people worldwide could read and write. As of 2016, that figure was reversed, where only 14% of the world’s population remained illiterate. Beyond basic literacy, the overall level of education has also increased steadily over time.

Since the latter half of the 20th century, secondary and post-secondary studies (university and college) have expanded considerably across the world. Between 1970 and 2020 , the percentage of adults with no formal education went from 23% to less than 10%; those with a partial (or complete) secondary education went from 16% to 36%; and those with a post-secondary education from about 3.3% to 10%.

Of course, there remains a disparity between the developing and developed world when it comes to education outcomes. According to data released in 2018 by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the percentage of people to graduate secondary school (among their 38 member nations) was 76.86% for men and 84.82% for women.

The same data indicated that among OECD nations, an average of 36.55% of the population (29.41% men and 44.10% women) received a post-secondary degree. This ranges from a Bachelor’s degree (24.07% men, 36.91% women) and a Master’s degree (10.5% men, 16.17% women) to a Ph.D. (less than 1% of men and women).

Despite this expansion in learning, the traditional model of education has remained largely unchanged since the 19th century. This model consists of people divided by age (grades), learning a standardized curriculum that is broken down by subject (maths, sciences, arts, social sciences, and athletics), and being subject to evaluation (quizzes, tests, final exam).

This model has been subject to revision and expansion over time, mainly in response to new technologies, socio-political developments, and economic changes. However, the structure has remained largely intact, with the institutions, curricula, and accreditation standards subject to centralized oversight and control.

Global Internet

According to a 2019 report compiled by the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs — titled “ World Population Prospects 2019 ” — the global population is expected to reach 9.74 billion by mid-century. With a population of around 5.29 billion, Asia will still be the most populous continent on the planet.

However, it will be Africa that experiences the most growth between now and mid-century. Currently, Africa has a population of 1.36 billion, which is projected to almost double by 2050 — reaching up to 2.5 billion (an increase of about 83%). This population growth will be mirrored by economic growth, which will then drive another sort of growth.

According to a 2018 report by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 90% of the global population will have access to broadband internet services by 2050, thanks to the growth of mobile devices and satellite internet services . That’s 8.76 billion people, a 220% increase over the 4 billion people (about half of the global population) that have access right now.

The majority of these new users will come from the “developing nations,” meaning countries in Africa, South America, and Oceania. Therefore, the internet of the future will be far more representative of the global population as more stories, events, and trends that drive online behavior come from outside of Europe and North America.

Similarly, the internet will grow immensely as trillions of devices, cameras, sensors, homes, and cities are connected to the internet — creating a massive expansion in the “ Internet of Things .” Given the astronomical amount of data that this will generate on a regular basis, machine learning and AI will be incorporated to keep track of it all, find patterns in the chaos, and even predict future trends.

AI will also advance thanks to research into the human brain and biotechnology, which will lead to neural net computing that is much closer to the real thing. Similarly, this research will lead to more advanced versions of Neuralink , neural implants that will help remedy neurological disorders and brain injuries, and also allow for brain-to-machine interfacing.

This means that later in this century, people will be able to perform all the tasks they rely on their computers for, but in a way that doesn’t require a device. For those who find the idea of neural implants unsettling or repugnant, computing will still be possible using smart glasses, smart contact lenses , and wearable computers .

From Distance Ed to MOOCs

In the past year, the coronavirus and resulting school closures have been a major driving force for the growth of online learning. However, the trend towards decentralization was underway long before that, with virtual classrooms and online education experiencing considerable growth over the past decade.

In fact, a report compiled in February of 2020 by Research and Markets indicated that by 2025, the online education market would be valued at about $320 billion USD . This represents a growth of 170% — and a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.23% since 2019 when the e-learning industry was valued at $187.87 billion USD .

What’s more, much of this growth will be powered by economic progress and rising populations in the developing nations (particularly in Africa, Asia, and South America). Already, online education is considered a cost-effective means to address the rising demand for education in developing nations.

As Stefan Trines, a research editor with the World Education News & Reviews, explained in an op-ed he penned in August of 2018 :

“While still embryonic, digital forms of education will likely eventually be pursued in the same vein as traditional distance learning models and the privatization of education, both of which have helped increase access to education despite concerns over educational quality and social equality.

“Distance education already plays a crucial role in providing access to education for millions of people in the developing world. Open distance education universities in Bangladesh, India, Iran, Pakistan, South Africa, and Turkey alone currently enroll more than 7 million students combined.”

While barriers remain in the form of technological infrastructure (aka. the “digital divide”), the growth of internet access in the next few decades will be accompanied by an explosion in online learning. Another consequence will be the proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other forms of e-learning, which will replace traditional distance education.

Here too, the growth in the past few years has been very impressive (and indicative of future trends). Between 2012 and 2018 , the number of MOOCs available increased by more than 683%, while the total number of students enrolled went from 10 million (in 2013) to 81 million, and the number of universities offering them increased by 400% (from 200 to 800).

Between 2020 and 2050 , the number of people without any formal education will decline from 10% to 5% of the global population. While the number of people with a primary and lower secondary education is expected to remain largely the same, the number of people with secondary education is projected to go from 21% to 29% and post-secondary education from 11% to 18.5%.

For developing nations, distributed learning systems will offer a degree of access and flexibility that traditional education cannot. This is similar to the situation in many remote areas of the world, where the necessary infrastructure doesn’t always exist (i.e., roads, school buses, schoolhouses, etc.).

New Technologies & New Realities

Along with near-universal internet access, there are a handful of technologies that will make education much more virtual, immersive, and hands-on. These include augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), haptics , cloud computing, and machine learning (AI). Together, advances in these fields will be utilized to enhance education.

By definition, AR refers to interactions with physical environments that are enhanced with the help of computer-mediated images and sounds, while VR consists of interacting with computer-generated simulated environments. However, by 2050, the line between simulated and physical will be blurred to the point where they are barely distinguishable.

This will be possible thanks to advances in “haptics,” which refers to technology that stimulates the senses. Currently, this technology is limited to stimulating the sensation of touch and the perception of motion. By 2050, however, haptics, AR, and VR are expected to combine in a way that will be capable of creating totally realistic immersive environments.

These environments will stimulate the five major senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) as well as somatosensory perception — pressure, pain, temperature, etc. For students, this could mean simulations that allow the student to step into a moment in history and to see and feel what it was like to live in another time and place — with proper safety measures (let’s not forget that history is full of violence!).

This technology could extend beyond virtual environments and allow students the opportunity to visit places all around the globe and experience what it feels like to actually be there. It’s even possible that this technology will be paired with remote-access robotic hosts so students can physically interact with the local environment and people.

Cloud computing will grow in tandem with increased internet access, leading to an explosion in the amount of data that a classroom generates and has access to. The task of managing this data will be assisted by machine learning algorithms and classroom AIs that will keep track of student tasks, learning, retention, and assess their progress.

New & Personalized Curriculums

In fact, AI-driven diagnostic assessments are likely to replace traditional grading, tests, and exams as the primary means of measuring student achievement. Rather than being given letter grades or pass/fail evaluations, students will need to fulfill certain requirements in order to unlock new levels in their education.

The ease with which students can connect to classrooms will also mean that teachers will no longer need to be physically present in a classroom. By 2050, “ virtual teacher ” is likely to become an actual job description! Ongoing progress in the field of AI and social robotics is also likely to result in classrooms that are led by virtual or robotic teachers and education assistants.

Speaking of robotics, emerging technologies and the shifting nature of work in the future will be reflected in the kinds of tasks students perform. For this reason, students are sure to spend a significant portion of their lessons learning how to code and build robots , take apart and reassemble complex machines, and other tasks that will enhance their STEM skills.

Other professions that emerge between now and 2050 are also likely to have an impact on student education. Given their importance to future generations, students are sure to learn about additive manufacturing (3D printing), space travel, renewable energy, and how to create virtual environments, blockchains , and digital applications .

In addition to adapting to new demands, school curriculums are likely to become a lot more decentralized as a result of technological changes. On the one hand, schools are likely to abandon compartmentalized study — math, science, language, literature, social studies, etc. — in favor of more blended learning activities that cut across these boundaries.

Gaming, Problem Solving, & Incentives

Another major change is the way education is expected to become “gamified.” This is the philosophy behind Ad Astra , a private school created by Elon Musk and educator Joshua Dahn for Musk’s children and those of SpaceX’s employees. Since then, this school has given way to Astra Nova , which follows the same philosophy, but is open to the general public.

With their emphasis on destructured learning and focus on problem-solving, these schools provide something of a preview for what education will look like down the road. As Musk remarked in a  2013 interview with Sal Khan, founder of the online education platform Khan Academy :

“What is education? You’re basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain. And it’s actually amazingly bad in conventional education because it shouldn’t be like this huge chore… The more you can gamify the process of learning, the better. For my kids, I don’t have to encourage them to play video games. I have to pry them out of their hands.”

This approach is similar to the Montessori method of education , where students engage in self-directed learning activities in a supportive and well-equipped environment. While many practices have come to be included under the heading of “Montessori school,” the general idea is to avoid using highly structured and transmission-based methods.

Combined with cutting-edge technology, this same philosophy is projected to become far more widespread and will be possible without the need for physical classrooms, schools, textbooks, etc. In this respect, it is the Synthesis School , another spin-off of Ad Astra, that provides the closest approximation of what the future of education will be like.

The Synthesis School is an open-access educational platform that takes the problem-solving and gamified approach of Ad Astra and Astra Nova and makes it available as an enrichment activity to the entire world (for a fee). In the future, children and youths from all over the world could be following the same process: Logging in from just about anywhere, forming groups, and playing games that develop our faculties.

The growing use of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will also have an effect on schooling. In terms of the future economy, these technologies could replace traditional fiat money and banking. But in education, they could facilitate an entirely new system of reward and punishment.

Here too, Ad Astra and Astra Nova offer a preview of what this might look like. In these schools, students are encouraged to earn and trade a unit of currency called the “ Astra .” This system is designed to reward students for good behavior while also teaching them about money management and entrepreneurship.

By 2050, the majority of students around the world may no longer have to physically go to school in order to get an education. Instead, they will be able to log in from their home, a common room in their building, or a dedicated space in their community. From there, they will join students from all around the world and engage in problem-solving tasks, virtual tours, and hands-on activities.

For hundreds of millions of students, this will represent a chance to at a brighter future for themselves and others. For many children, it will be an opportunity to learn about the world beyond their front door and how to facilitate the kind of changes that will benefit us all.

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For others, the transformation of education that is anticipated in the coming decades is a chance to fulfill the dream of countless generations. As long as education has existed as a formal institution, educators have wrestled with questions regarding the best way to impart knowledge, foster intellectual acumen, and inspire future leaders.

As Socrates famously said, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” Through technology that allows us to create education that is tailored to the individual, universal in nature, and decentralized in structure, we may finally have found the means for ensuring that every student finds their path to success.

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ABOUT THE EDITOR

Matthew S. Williams Matthew S Williams is an author, a writer for Universe Today, and the curator of their Guide to Space section. His works include sci-fi/mystery The Cronian Incident and his articles have been featured in Phys.org, HeroX, Popular Mechanics, Business Insider, Gizmodo, and IO9, ScienceAlert, Knowridge Science Report, and Real Clear Science, with topics ranging from astronomy and Earth sciences to technological innovation and environmental issues. He is also a former educator and a 5th degree Black Belt Tae Kwon Do instructor. He lives on Vancouver Island with his wife and family.  

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• Looking to the Future, Public Sees an America in Decline on Many Fronts
• 1. America in 2050

Table of Contents

• 2. Worries, priorities and potential problem-solvers
• 3. Views of demographic changes
• 4. Retirement, Social Security and long-term care
• 5. The future of work in the automated workplace
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

Americans are narrowly hopeful about the future of the United States over the next 30 years but more pessimistic when the focus turns to specific issues, including this country’s place in the world, the cost of health care and the strength of the U.S. economy.

Overall, six-in-ten adults predict that that the U.S. will be less important in the world in 2050. While most key demographic groups share this view, it is more widely held by whites and those with more education. About two-thirds of whites (65%) forecast a diminished role in the world for the U.S. in 30 years, a view shared by 48% of blacks and Hispanics. Roughly seven-in-ten adults with a bachelor’s or higher degree (69%) see a lesser role internationally for America. By contrast, six-in-ten of those with some college education (but no bachelor’s degree) and 52% of those with less education are as pessimistic about the country’s future world stature.

The current partisan political debate over the country’s proper role in the world is mirrored in these results. About two-thirds of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic (65%), but closer to half of Republicans and Republican leaners (52%), think America will be a diminished force in the world in 2050. These differences are even greater among partisans at opposite ends of the ideological scale: 72% of self-described liberal Democrats but 49% of conservative Republicans say the U.S. will be less important internationally in 30 years.

As they see the importance of the U.S. in the world receding, many Americans expect the influence of China will grow. About half of all adults (53%) expect that China definitely or probably will overtake the United States as the world’s main superpower in the next 30 years. As with U.S. standing in the world, large party differences emerge on this question. About six-in-ten Democrats (59%) but just under half of Republicans (46%) predict that China will supplant the U.S. as the world’s main superpower.

The public predicts another 9/11 – or worse – by 2050

For an overwhelming majority of Americans, the 9/11 terrorist attacks stand as the most important historic event in their lifetimes. As Americans look ahead to 2050, six-in-ten say that a terrorist attack on the U.S. as bad or worse than 9/11 will definitely (12%) or probably (48%) happen.

This troublesome prediction is widely expressed by most major demographic groups. Roughly equal proportions of whites (61%), blacks (56%) and Hispanics (59%) say such a terrorist attack is likely sometime in the next 30 years, and so do 57% of men and 62% of women. While Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say such an attack will definitely or probably happen, majorities in each group express this view (63% of Republicans and 57% of Democrats).

At the same time, some demographic differences do emerge. Those with some college or less education are more likely than college graduates to expect another 9/11 (64% vs. 49%) by 2050. And Americans who are 50 or older are more likely than younger adults to say this will happen.

Narrow majority sees a weaker economy in 2050

Just over half of the public (54%) predicts that the U.S. economy in 30 years will be weaker than it is today, while 38% say it will be stronger. Similarly, larger shares of most key demographic groups forecast a less robust rather than a more vigorous economy in 2050.

Whites are somewhat more pessimistic than blacks or Hispanics about the future financial health of the country: 57% of whites compared with 48% of blacks and 43% of Hispanics predict a weaker economy in 30 years.

Roughly half or more of every income group predict a weaker economy in the next 30 years. However, Americans in higher-earning families are somewhat more likely than lower-earners to say the economy will be better in 2050 than it is today. About four-in-ten adults (43%) with family incomes of $75,000 or higher say the economy will be stronger, a view shared by 35% of those earning less.

The partisan divides on views about the future of the economy are substantial. Roughly six-in-ten Democrats (58%) predict a weaker economy in 2050, while a third say it will be stronger. By contrast, Republicans are divided: 49% forecast a worsening economy, but 45% expect economic conditions to improve over the next 30 years.

The public is also pessimistic about the future course of the national debt. About six-in-ten (63%) say the national debt – the total amount of money the federal government has borrowed – will increase, while just 16% predict it will be reduced or eliminated. Two-in-ten (21%) say it will stay relatively unchanged from what it is today.

These predictions of a growing government debt are consistent with recent history. According to the Congressional Budget Office , the federal debt held by the public is projected to reach 78% of the U.S. gross domestic product in 2019 – up from 34% in 2000.

Similar to projections about the overall economy, virtually every key demographic group is more likely to predict that government debt will grow larger than to predict it will shrink. Higher- and middle-income adults are more likely than those with lower incomes to expect the debt to rise: 67% of Americans with family incomes of $30,000 or more say the debt will grow larger by 2050, compared with 55% of those with incomes under $30,000. Whites also are more likely than blacks or Hispanics to say the national debt will rise (67% vs. 54% for both blacks and Hispanics). At the same time, virtually identical shares of Republicans (64%) and Democrats (63%) forecast a growing national debt.

Among the other looming threats to the U.S. economy: a major worldwide energy crisis, which two-thirds of the public say will definitely (21%) or probably (46%) occur in the next 30 years. While substantial majorities of every major demographic group predict a global power emergency, Hispanics and lower-income adults are particularly likely to see this occurring. About three-quarters of Hispanics (76%) and adults with family incomes of less than $30,000 (73%) expect a major energy crisis in the next 30 years. By contrast, 64% of whites and 60% of those with household incomes of $75,000 or more share this pessimistic view.

Differences on this question between political partisans are particularly large. About three-quarters (76%) of Democrats but 55% of Republicans expect a serious global energy crisis in the next 30 years.

Public predicts growing income inequality and an expanding lower class

About three-quarters of all Americans (73%) expect the gap between the rich and the poor to grow over the next 30 years, a view shared by large majorities across major demographic and political groups.

Differences between some groups do emerge, but only the size of the majorities differ and not the underlying belief that income inequality will grow. About three-quarters of whites (77%) but smaller majorities of blacks (62%) and Hispanics (64%) expect income inequality to increase by 2050. Similarly, about three-quarters of those who attended or graduated from college (77%) say the gap between the rich and the poor will increase, a view shared by two-thirds of those with a high school diploma or less education. Roughly equal shares of Republicans and Democrats expect income inequality to grow (71% and 75%, respectively).

The growing rich-poor gap is not the only cloud the public sees on the economic horizon. About six-in-ten Americans (62%) say the share of people in the lower class will increase by 2050. At the same time, just under half (46%) predict that the relative size of the middle class will shrink, while 28% say it will grow larger, and about the same share (26%) say it will not change.

Americans are less certain about future changes in the share of Americans in the upper class. The predominant expectation is that the upper class will remain about the same relative size that it is today, a view held by 44% of the public. A larger share predicts that the proportion of Americans in the upper class will increase than say it will get smaller (33% vs. 22%).

Race and family income are closely associated with these views. Whites are significantly more likely than blacks to predict that the relative size of the lower class will increase (66% vs. 50%) and that the middle class will shrink (50% vs. 34%). Whites are less likely than blacks to say the upper class will grow (30% vs. 43%). Hispanics’ views on the future of the lower class are similar to those of whites and blacks, but in their perceptions of the future relative size of the middle and upper classes, Hispanics are closer to blacks (38% say the middle class will get smaller; 39% predict the upper class will increase).

Regardless of their income category, majorities of Americans predict that the size of the lower class will increase as a share of the total population. But those closer to the top of the income ladder are somewhat more likely to forecast a growing lower class than those who are closer to the bottom. Two-thirds (67%) of Americans with annual family incomes of $75,000 or more say the lower class will grow, a view shared by 57% of those with incomes of $30,000 or less. Higher-earners also are more likely than those with less family income to say the relative size of the middle class will shrink (51% vs. 40%). At the same time, Americans with a family income of $75,000 or more are less likely than those with annual family incomes under $30,000 to expect a larger share of Americans to be in the upper class in 2050 (29% vs. 41%).

Partisan differences on these questions are relatively modest. Democrats are somewhat more likely than Republicans to say that the share of Americans in the lower class will grow (65% vs. 59%) and the middle class will shrink (50% vs. 42%). About a third of both parties predict that the relative size of the upper class will increase.

Divided views on the future of race relations but some hopeful signs

The public is uncertain whether the troubled state of race relations today will still be a feature of American life in 2050. About half (51%) say race relations will improve over the next 30 years, but 40% predict that they will get worse.

Unlike the large differences that mark views of blacks and whites on many race-related questions, the racial divide on this question is narrower. A slight majority of whites (54%) predict that race relations will improve in the next 30 years, while 39% say they will worsen. Blacks split down the middle: 43% predict better relations between the races and the same percentage predict they will be worse. Hispanics also split roughly equally, with 45% expecting improved relations and 42% saying they will get worse.

Optimism about the future of race relations is closely related to educational attainment. Six-in-ten adults with a bachelor’s or higher degree predict that race relations will improve. By contrast, 47% of those with less education are hopeful about the future of race relations.

Other findings suggest the public thinks barriers that have blocked some groups from leadership positions in politics may ease in the future. Nearly nine-in-ten (87%) predict that a woman will be elected U.S. president by 2050 (30% say this will definitely happen; 56% say it probably will). And roughly two-thirds (65%) expect that a Hispanic person will lead the country sometime in the next 30 years (13% definitely; 53% probably).

Expectations of a female president are broadly shared. Eight-in-ten or more men and women, whites, blacks and Hispanics, and Republicans and Democrats predict there will be a woman in the White House by 2050. Roughly two-thirds of whites (67%) and Hispanics (65%) and 55% of blacks say that a Hispanic person will be president; Hispanics (23%) are more likely than whites (11%) or blacks (7%) to say this will definitely happen.

Few Americans predict a higher standard of living for families, older adults or children in 2050

When Americans predict what the economic circumstances of the average family will be in 2050, they do so with more trepidation than hope. More than four-in-ten (44%) predict that the average family’s standard of living will get worse over the next 30 years, roughly double the share who expect that families will live better in 2050 than they do today. About a third (35%) predict no real change.

Women are somewhat more likely than men to think the average family’s standard of living will erode over the next 30 years. Some 47% of women are pessimistic about the economic future of families, while only 16% are optimistic. By contrast, 42% of men expect the typical family’s standard of living to be worse, while a quarter say it will improve.

While comparatively few Americans predict a better standard of living for families, minorities are somewhat more likely than whites to be optimistic. About a quarter of blacks (25%) and Hispanics (24%) say the average family’s standard of living will be higher in 2050 than it is today, compared with 17% of whites. And while nearly half of all whites predict things will get worse for families, only about a third of Hispanics (35%) are as pessimistic.

When younger adults look ahead to 2050, they are more likely than their older counterparts to see a brighter future for America’s families. About three-in-ten (28%) of adults ages 18 to 29 but 19% of those age 30 and older say the average family’s standard of living will get better over the next three decades. Still, about a third (36%) of 18- to 29-year-olds predict harder times ahead for families compared with 46% of those ages 30 and older.

The public also is broadly pessimistic about the economic fortunes of older Americans during the next 30 years. A 57% majority says adults ages 65 and older will have a worse standard of living in 2050 than today. The public is somewhat less negative about the economic prospects of children; half say children will have a worse standard of living in 30 years than they do today, while 42% predict that their standard of living will improve.

When it comes to the future economic prospects of older adults, young adults and those ages 65 and older are more upbeat than their middle-aged counterparts: 44% of those ages 18 to 29 and 40% of those 65 and older say older adults will have a better standard of living 30 years from now, compared with 31% of those ages 30 to 49 and 27% of those 50 to 64.

The public does see at least one bright spot ahead for older Americans. About six-in-ten (59%) expect that a cure for Alzheimer’s disease will definitely or probably be found by 2050. Adults ages 65 and older are among the most optimistic about this: 70% expect an Alzheimer’s cure in the next 30 years. By contrast, about half (53%) of those younger than age 30 predict such a breakthrough.

However, the public is broadly pessimistic about the trajectory of health care costs over the next 30 years. Nearly six-in-ten (58%) predict health care will be less affordable in 2050 than it is today, a view shared across most demographic groups.

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What Will America Look Like in 2050?

A Smithsonian/Pew poll finds optimism about science and social progress despite worries about the environment and population growth

Within the next 40 years, most Americans believe, the United States will get the bulk of its energy from sources other than oil. Computers will converse like people. Cancer will be cured, and artificial limbs will outperform natural ones. Astronauts will land on Mars, and ordinary people will travel in space.

But that optimistic outlook on scientific achievement—documented in a nationwide opinion poll conducted by the Pew Research Center and Smithsonian —does not extend to the environment. A small majority of those polled said most of the United States would face severe water shortages by 2050. Six in ten said the oceans would be less healthy than they are now, and seven in ten foresaw a major energy crisis. Overall, fewer than half expected the quality of Earth’s environment to improve.

“If the U.S. has a national religion, the closest thing to it is faith in technology,” said Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Research Center . But “technology is not seen as a panacea for fixing the environment.”

The poll, occasioned by the magazine’s 40th anniversary and designed to assess attitudes about the next 40 years, also documented a drop in expectations. Americans remain generally positive, with 64 percent of those surveyed saying they were somewhat or very optimistic about what the next 40 years holds for them and their families; 61 percent said the same about the nation’s future. But in a Pew poll taken in May 1999, the questions garnered response rates of 81 percent and 70 percent, respectively.

Of course, the 1999 poll was taken at the height of the high-tech boom and on the eve of a new millennium. Since then, terrorists attacked the United States, the nation has engaged in two wars, the cost of living has outpaced wages and a recession has damaged the economy, among other things.

In the new survey, 58 percent of respondents said a world war would occur in the next four decades, 53 percent said terrorists would attack the United States with nuclear weapons, and the same majority said the nation would be less important in the world than it is now.

The Smithsonian /Pew poll was conducted April 21-26—just after the BP oil spill began in the Gulf of Mexico, but well before its magnitude became apparent. The survey included 1,546 adults in the United States reached by residential telephone or cellphone. The margin of error for the total sample is no more than plus or minus 4.5 points.

The documented belief in technological advancement extended from the laboratory (half said an extinct species would be resuscitated through cloning) to outer space (half said evidence of life would be found elsewhere in the universe) to the marketplace (a small majority said gasoline-powered cars would go out of production).

In an exception to the pessimism about the environment, the poll found a ten-point drop in the percentage of respondents who say the earth will get warmer: from 76 percent in 1999 to 66 percent in 2010.

That trend “is very consistent with data we've gathered on the issue of global warming more generally,” Keeter said. “There are many possible explanations, but one thing is quite clear: there is a strong partisan and ideological pattern to the decline in belief in global warming.” The vast majority of the change since 1999, he said, has occurred among Republicans and independents who lean Republican.

Because the U.S. population is expected to increase by more than 100 million by 2050, the poll asked about such growth. More than twice as many respondents (42 percent) said it would be more harmful than beneficial (16 percent). And there was ambivalence about immigration. Roughly a third of respondents said legal immigration had to be decreased to keep the economy strong, but a slightly higher proportion said legal immigration had to be kept at current levels; a quarter said it should be increased.

A clear majority expected race relations to improve (68 percent). Even more expected a Hispanic candidate to be elected president of the United States (69 percent). And 89 percent—the largest majority in the entire poll—said a woman would be elected president.

There was broad agreement that the cultural landscape, however else it changes over the next 40 years, will have less paper. More than six in ten respondents said they believed that paper currency and printed newspapers would disappear and personal letters sent by mail would be exceedingly rare.

And a hopeful outlook on the U.S. economy—56 percent said it would be stronger in 2050 than it is now—came with a caveat: 86 percent said Americans would have to work into their 70s before retiring. Those longer careers, in the respondents’ view, would not be accompanied by longer lives. Those who thought more people would live to be 100 (42 percent) were outnumbered by those who did not (50 percent).

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T.A. Frail | READ MORE

Tom Frail is a senior editor for Smithsonian magazine. He previously worked as a senior editor for the Washington Post and for Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

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What will America look like at mid century? US 2050, an initiative of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and the Ford Foundation, examines and analyzes the multiple demographic, socioeconomic, and fiscal trends that will shape the nation in the decades ahead. Engaging leading scholars in the areas of demographics, poverty, labor economics, macroeconomics, political science, and sociology, US 2050 creates a more comprehensive view of our economic and fiscal future — and the implications for the social and financial well-being of Americans.

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No trend is destiny...Multiple alternative futures are possible... A new social contract for education needs to allow us to think differently about learning and the relationships between students, teachers, knowledge, and the world.

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What is the future of the Welsh language?

"The language has faced its challenges, but people are still here celebrating and using the language now more than ever"

• 04:00, 11 AUG 2024

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It's National Eisteddfod week. Thousands of visitors have spilled onto the Ynysangharad War Memorial Park in Pontypridd to celebrate Welsh culture, the arts and the language.

It's a festival where people come and compete, but it has become so much more than that over the years. It's a place where you meet up with old friends, a place where you take your family for a day out, a place where you can hear 'shw'mae', 'wyt ti yma am yr wythnos?', 'mae'n neis dy weld ti'.

It's impressive to see that 850 years of tradition has led to this, especially considering that the beating heart of the festival - yr iaith Gymraeg, has faced its fair share of challenges within the centuries that have passed. The 2021 census has reported a drop in the number of Welsh speakers, which has cast doubt on the Welsh Government's aim of reaching one million Welsh speakers by 2050.

READ MORE: This man's family lost their Welsh language for generations - until he decided to change that

LATEST: 'We don't speak Welsh - this is why everyone should still come to the Eisteddfod'

There have also been calls for better strategy and policy-making in order to protect the language. On Thursday, August 8, Dr Simon Brooks unveiled a report suggesting designating "areas of higher density linguistic significance" amongst Welsh language strongholds - following an earlier report published last year.

The Welsh Language Commissioner has "welcomed" the report. Meanwhile, the language campaign group, Cymdeithas yr Iaith, has called on the Welsh Government to "acknowledge the crisis" outlined in the report and to take urgent action on its recommendations in areas such as housing and planning, as well as education.

Joseff Gnagbo, the national chair of Cymdeithas yr Iaith, said: "We welcome the report's recognition of the principle that the sustainability of Welsh-speaking communities is crucial to the future of the language across the whole country as a living community language.

"The report also emphasises the fact that the language in our Welsh-speaking communities is facing a crisis and that the action taken in the next few years will decide their fate. It is now the Welsh Government's responsibility to acknowledge the crisis and to take action to reverse it."

Amid the celebrations of the Eisteddfod, it is arguably hard to see why there are concerns about the language. But perhaps the key to its future lies in this special place where it thrives. On the Maes, we spoke to Welsh speakers and learners to find out what the language meant to them and what they would like to see happening to help increase the numbers of speakers in Wales.

Kathy Jones from Merthyr Tydfil decided to learn Welsh at the age of 27. Years later she became a Welsh language tutor, a development officer and a supporting officer at Dysgu Cymraeg (Learn Welsh) - an organisation that helps Welsh learners.

On a wet and rainy Thursday on the Maes, Kathy is working at the Dysgu Cymraeg stall. On such a day it would be easy to see why the mood might be dampened, but not here - various groups are coming and going, asking for advice on how to find Welsh language lessons in the area.

Growing up, Kathy said that she had very limited use of the language in school , only the simple 'bore da', 'shw'mae' or 'diolch'. She remembers her dad, who was born on Anglesey but moved down south at a young age, talking to her aunt and neighbours in Welsh.

"I lost my dad in the month of March, and then I decided to learn Welsh that September," she recalled. "I'm not sure if it was a conscious decision or not. But I also wanted to learn Welsh because I was thinking of starting a family.

"That was the goal really, to become fluent before I had children, but it didn't happen that way. I started on an entry-level course, but then took a break when my daughter was born. I then went back to learning Welsh in 2004, I would have two lessons a week and that was the start of it really."

By now, Kathy is a confident Welsh speaker and is using her skills and experiences to help others. "It's important that I am confident in Welsh, especially when I'm speaking outside my comfort zone," she said. "Because that is how I encourage others to do the same thing. It's important that I practise what I preach".

Two years ago it was revealed the number of Welsh speakers in Wales had fallen by 24,000 over the last decade, according to the 2021 census. Data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that in 2021 an estimated 538,000 usual residents, or 17.8% of people in Wales aged three years and over, reported being able to speak Welsh . This was a decrease from 562,000 usual residents or 19.0% of the population that could speak, read, and write in the language in 2011. For the latest Welsh news delivered to your inbox sign up to our newsletter .

Kathy admits that the census findings were a "shame", but believes there is more to it. "I don't think it was down to the fact that the number of speakers had decreased," she said. "I think it was down to the fact that the number of people who felt confident speaking in Welsh had decreased. I think they weren't confident in ticking that box to say that they could speak Welsh. I think that was the biggest problem there."

But what can help change that around? "I think people who are thinking of learning Welsh need to realise that it's nothing like being back at school or a lecture. It's something relaxed and a lot of fun," Kathy said.

"I think there's a responsibility on Welsh speakers as well to wear their orange badges or lanyards just to show that they speak the language. It's as simple as that, because it's a visual representation that shows you can engage in the language and it opens the conversation.

"But ultimately, to get a million speakers by 2050, we all need to work together - on a community level and in our schools. I think there's a gap there between 16-year-olds and becoming a parent. Children leave schools believing that Welsh is the language of the school, but they don't consider the language until they want to have kids. But there are ways of learning Welsh in between then and you can even learn it alongside your children. It's not something your children just do, it can be for everybody".

Llantrisant-born Anita Cook, who is volunteering at this year's Eisteddfod, remembers campaigning for more Welsh language schools as a child. She recalled marching down Cathedral Road, alongside her mother, and the rest of the Cymdeithas yr Iaith members. Today, Cardiff has three Welsh language secondary schools and 15 Welsh-medium primaries.

"I think the language is steering into the right direction," she said. "I think we've come really far. I remember as a child protesting about getting Welsh language schools in our area. By now, I am working in a brand new school in the Splott area of Cardiff that's Welsh and there are so many new Welsh language schools in the city and further afield. I think we can achieve the one million target.

"This week alone as well, at the Eisteddfod, I have met so many people that are learning Welsh, even people from outside Wales. So for that, I am really confident that we will reach our goal."

She added: "The language is very close to my heart, always has been, it's a part of my culture, my identity, it's my way of feeling connected to Wales, although of course you don't need to speak Welsh to be able to feel Welsh.

"It's important to me - I send my children to a Welsh school, and it's important to them too. We are here to show that the language is very much alive. The language has faced its challenges, but people are still here celebrating and using the language now more than ever."

Fellow volunteer Mariyah Zaman from Cardiff is currently learning Welsh. She admits that finding time to learn the language hasn't been easy and feels more should be done in investing in the social side of learning the language. She said: "I think having more social activities and events, like the Eisteddfod, would really help. I personally struggle with my work schedule to keep up with classes - I have dropped in and out of them.

"But just by being at the Eisteddfod, I have picked up more Welsh than anywhere else. So, we need more social environments, more local hubs, to just come along and speak Welsh or have more events that just offer Welsh language alongside English as one. Integrating it more to public life, beyond the formal learning, would be key - that's how most people learn, in an organic environment."

Siôn Tomos Owen is of the same opinion. The Treorchy-born author was born and bred through the medium of the Welsh language. The language means a lot to him and has helped him cultivate a career in writing. "It has opened a lot of doors for me," he said. "I have now written a book to help Welsh learners. I feel really passionate about the language. I was always proud of it, but I campaign for it even more so now."

When asked what would help increase the number of speakers, Siôn said: "Confidence. I think confidence to be able to use the language outside of school will help. I think some people have this idea that Welsh only belongs in our schools. Luckily, that attitude is changing. For me and my friends, we see the language as something we use every day, to talk about everyday things, not an academic thing.

"And have the confidence to not worry about treiglo [mutation], I have met a lot of people throughout this week, I've met Welsh learners too, who are starting to realise that if they make a mistake in the language, it doesn't matter. Just to hear people speaking Welsh is enough, having the confidence to start a conversation in Welsh is enough."

One person who lives outside of Wales but has learnt the Welsh language is Matt Spry from Plymouth - or Aberplym, as he will often call it. Matt started taking interest in the Welsh language and its culture thanks to his love for Super Furry Animals and Datblygu. But it wasn't until he moved to Cardiff in 2013 that he started seriously considering taking lessons to learn the language.

"Even though I come from England, my grandmother was born in Neath," Matt said. "She sadly died when I was very young, I have no memory of her, but there was something in my blood. There was something about Wales and its language that really captivated me."

He added: "My friends in Cardiff told me: 'Matt, you have a keen interest in everything Welsh, why not give a Welsh lesson a go?' And that's exactly what I did," he explained. "I remember going to my first ever lesson, and feeling so motivated by my tutor's passion. That was it then for me - I decided I was going to be fluent."

Matt began learning the language in 2015, before then working at Dysgu Cymraeg where he taught Welsh to refugees. In 2018, for his first Eisteddfod, Matt decided to compete for the Welsh Learner of the Year title and won. He said: "People were asking: 'What's going on? A man from England is teaching refugees how to speak Welsh. This is fantastic!'.

"That was a fantastic experience, one of my pupils was Joseff Gnagbo [of Cymdeithas yr Iaith]. After winning at that Eisteddfod I was welcomed into the Gorsedd of the Bards, and this year Joseff has also been welcomed to the Gorsedd. It was rather an emotional moment seeing him there with me. He is now teaching refugees how to learn Welsh.

"You see people like Joseff and what he is doing with the language, it just goes to show how inclusive the Welsh community can be. People celebrate Welsh culture, we celebrate our country but it's inclusive at the same time. That's how it should be."

By now, Matt lives back in Plymouth and is learning Cornish. He has found two other people who speak Welsh in the port city and meets up with them regularly. The Welsh language still holds a very special place in his heart. "It means everything to me," he said. "Even though I have moved back to Plymouth, I still read in Welsh, I still listen to Welsh radio, I will watch S4C and listen to Welsh language music. I try and come back whenever I can."

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You are here, iaea milestones guidance updated to include considerations for smrs.

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A new version of the IAEA publication ‘Milestones in the Development of a National Infrastructure for Nuclear Power’ is now published and has been revised to address issues related to small modular reactors.

The updated document, the IAEA's foundational guidance on how to prepare to introduce a nuclear power programme or expand an existing nuclear power programme, includes an annex outlining aspects specific to the deployment of small modular reactors (SMRs) and highlights the recent experience of several countries which have completed or made major progress in all three phases with other reactor types as defined by the IAEA’s Milestones Approach .

The release of this second revision is timely as nuclear power has momentum and is increasingly acknowledged as a necessary element of the net zero transition. A major increase in nuclear power deployments is needed for the world to hit net zero carbon goals by 2050, meaning  it must both scale up in existing markets and expand to new ones.

This new edition of the milestones publication, originally produced in 2007 and revised in 2015, is provided within the context of the IAEA’s other guidance and materials relevant to nuclear power development in areas including nuclear safety, security and safeguards. This publication also incorporates lessons learned from recent Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR) missions to countries introducing or expanding nuclear power programmes.

While most new capacity is still expected to come in the form of large water cooled reactors in the coming years, there is a growing opportunity for SMRs to play an important role in reducing emissions and supporting sustainable prosperity. Designed to produce typically no more 300 MW(e), SMRs could be ideal for deployment in remote areas as well as regions with smaller electric grids. SMRs will feature modular designs, enabling systems and components to be factory-assembled and. This could help reduce the time required for construction. And with new end users such as data centres considering nuclear power to meet their growing electricity needs and a range of industrial applications requiring decarbonization, there is no shortage of potential applications. SMRs may be able to be deployed faster and play a larger role depending on how quickly they are licensed and achieve commercial readiness.

“As the nuclear power landscape continues to evolve, so too must the assistance we provide. This latest update of the IAEA milestones guidance comes at a pivotal moment when an increasing number of countries are considering nuclear power for their energy mix to achieve their net zero pledges,” said Aline des Cloizeaux, Director of the IAEA’s Division of Nuclear Power. “It is clear that SMRs will be a vital component of the clean energy transition, and we must ensure that countries interested in this technology have a solid understanding of what is needed to successfully implement SMR projects.”

SMRs are in many ways very similar to their larger counterparts. They comprise many of the same systems and operate according to the same principles that have driven nuclear power reactors for decades. The needs for SMRs are also mostly the same as for traditional reactors, such as strong legal and regulatory frameworks, proactive stakeholder engagement and environmental protection considerations. But due to their unique features, including lower power output and simplified designs, a few of the specific infrastructure requirements may vary.

Some SMRs, particularly those using coolants other than water, may generate new forms of radioactive waste, and so countries planning to deploy SMRs must plan to manage these new waste types. If new fuel types are employed, it will be important to establish a supply chain to secure the consistent availability of fuel. And new safeguards approaches may need to be developed to address certain novel design features of SMRs, ensuring that robust nuclear material accountancy and control measures are not hindered.

There are currently around 30 newcomer countries either considering nuclear power or moving forward with plans to construct their first nuclear power plant. Bangladesh, Egypt and Türkiye are constructing their first nuclear power plants and several more countries are expected to build their first plants over the next decade or so.

Argentina, China and Russia have SMRs under construction, with the latter two countries having deployed their first SMRs in 2019 and 2021 respectively. Several newcomer countries, including Estonia, Jordan and Poland, have identified SMRs as part of their future clean energy systems. An INIR mission focused on SMRs was conducted in Estonia last October, and Jordan is examining how SMRs could be used to address its seawater desalination needs after meeting with IAEA experts last August.

The IAEA will host the first International Conference on Small Modular Reactors and their Applications from 21 to 25 October in Vienna. The conference will provide an international forum to take stock of progress and discuss opportunities, challenges and enabling conditions for the accelerated development and deployment of SMRs. All persons wishing to participate in the event must either be designated by an IAEA Member State or should be a member of an organization that has been invited to attend.

About the IAEA Milestones Approach

The IAEA Milestones Approach enables a sound development process for a nuclear power programme. It is a phased comprehensive method to assist countries that are considering or planning their first nuclear power plant or seeking to expand an existing nuclear power programme. The Milestones Approach splits the activities necessary to establish the infrastructure for a nuclear power programme into three progressive phases of development, with the duration of each dependent on the degree of commitment and resources applied in the country. The completion of each phase is marked by a specific “Milestone” at which progress can be assessed and a decision can be made about the readiness to move on to the next phase.     

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Related resources

• International Conference on Small Modular Reactors and their Applications, 21–25 October 2024
• Milestones in the Development of a National Infrastructure for Nuclear Power
• Milestones Approach
• Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR)
• Energy planning
• Infrastructure development
• Nuclear power reactors
• Small modular reactors
• Design of nuclear power plants
• Nuclear power and climate change: Decarbonization
• Regulatory infrastructure
• Division of Nuclear Power
• Nuclear Power Technology Development Section
• Nuclear Infrastructure Development Section
• Division of Nuclear Installation Safety
• Department of Nuclear Safety and Security

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