Skip to main content

Beyond Blue Sky 2025 - Chapter 9 - Predicting The Future

 It is inherently difficult to predict what the future will hold, but sociologists such as Urry (Climate Change & Society, 2011, Polity Books, Cambridge) attempted to define different scenarios:

- Utopia of the sustainable society - he called this unrealistic

- Extrapolating from existing societies, he believed these lacked vision

- Scenario building - accepting that there is no single best future

Scenario-building examples that Urry advanced in his book include:

- Perpetual consumerism (problem with exponential growth)

- Local sustainability (requires population reduction and a global economic crisis)

- Regional warlordism (a retreat from globalisation).  The Global South would suffer.

- Low-carbon, digital networks (techno-future).  Urry preferred this scenario.

In concluding, Urry noted that, without planning, none of the above scenarios were certain since each entailed vulnerabilities and risks to human life..

Each scenario must be treated with a healthy degree of scepticism.  None of us can predict entirely the future, and certainly not the next 25 years.  It is clear, however, that as a result of the threat of climate change, many profound changes are necessary, and some of these have been highlighted here.

What Is Certain

What is certain is that the high-carbon life of the 20th Century is coming to an end, and in the 21st Century, we must all, to some degree, consider the future.  What we do or don't do in the next 25 years will determine the sustainability of the planet for the rest of the 21st Century and beyond, notwithstanding the Return of Jesus Christ.

Yet even this timescale belittles the fact that the next 3-5 years are critical in determining our futures, given that, to get us on the 'right path', we very much need to make sensible choices in the coming years.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Beyond Blue Sky 2025 - Chapter 3b - Life!

Live life abundantly!  (John 10:10). What To Do About Climate Change? The fundamental problem is that carbon emissions are so inexorably linked to economic activity (IT, housing, agriculture, manufacturing, and transport) that reducing them and operating a 'green' economy is no small task.  Thinking negatively, economy derailment could be the solution - although to be positive the focus should be a major change along the continuum of slowing, stabilizing, and reducing CO2 emissions within a fully functioning economy, which runs counter to many environmentalists' thinking.  However, we definitely need a new economy based on a clean-energy future. We are, truly, in a Climate Emergency.  As outlined throughout, unless bold action is taken to change the economic system while carbon budgets allow, we may well be facing a long drawn-out equivalent of the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago - and certainly the worst set of circumstances since The Flood i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beyond Blue Sky 2025 - Chapter 2b

Climate Sensitivity Quantifying temperature increase in relation to CO2 volume depends on 'climate sensitivity'.  Commonly, this refers to temperature increase resulting from CO2 doubling since the pre-industrial times atmospheric baseline of 280ppm to approx. 550ppm.  The IPCC models predict a range of 2C to 4.5C above 1900, with a best estimate of 3C.  As of June 2024, the world is currently at 427ppm and 1.55C above 1900. Although both temperature and atmosphere water vapor will continue to increase, specific impacts will depend on geographical location.  For example, higher latitudes together with mid-continental locations are expected to warm sooner and faster.  Also, high rainfall areas should get wetter contrasting drier drought-prone regions.  Much modeling is in progress to predict these regional impacts in greater detail, although we mustn't also forget that it is ultimately God who sends the rains.  The challenge of climate change, particula...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beyond Blue Sky 2025 - Chapter 3a

Dangerous Climate Change Based on the best available scientific evidence, it is clear that increases in CO2, and other greenhouse gases in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent), which constitute F in the Kaya Identity (see earlier), result in temperature elevation.  The relationship between the two is known as climate sensitivity.  It is accepted by most scientists that a CO2 doubling (from pre-industrial 280ppm to 550ppm) will probably lead to a roughly 3C temperature rise.  The IPCC calculated a range of 1.5C and 4.5C depending on the emission scenario.  Unfortunately, this is far from exact since fossil records estimate that climate sensitivity could be as high as 6C (Hansen). Are temperature increases dangerous? The overriding consensus is a resounding yes.  There is no question that biomes, including pathogenic species, would survive and even proliferate.  The concern is that widespread ecosystem collapse would occur specifically concerning biomes on which ...
Post a Comment
Read more