ENVIRONMENT
Air
Air quality will continue to degrade well into the next century. By 2050, many businesses will be doing more to the air their employees are breathing inside their buildings than cooling or heating it. After 2025, new forms of air scrubbers will be designed to remove toxins, carbon dioxide, and other elements that are building up in the atmospheres of our homes, workspaces, and areas in which we congregate.
By then, allergies will be so severe in children, it will be considered a national epidemic.
Initially, air scrubbing will only be affordable in areas where large groups congregate: workspaces, shopping centers, movie theaters, meeting halls, restaurants, hotels, and the like. But by mid-century, they will be utilized in at least a fourth of the privately owned homes in America.
By 2040, disposal of the air scrubber filters will become a major problem, almost equaling nuclear waste. In fact, in some areas, the air filters will be stored with or eliminated in conjunction with nuclear waste.
A major effort at "greening" the planet will begin around 2015. Initially it will have very little effect, but eventually (2080-2090) it will have caught up to and repaired much of the damage done in this next century. The greening effort will begin in China with a single week of planting trees. This event will be the largest of its kind in the history of mankind. Over a single week, the Chinese people will plant over 125 billion small saplings, or what will become known as the "trees of life." This effort will be followed by like efforts in Russia, Southeast Asia, South America, North America, India, Africa, and the Middle East. In a two-year period, the human race will replace all the trees cut over a two-hundred-year period. More than half will be properly cared for and survive.
Aerosols considered harmful to air quality will be slowly eliminated from products between now and the year 2060. The greatest difficulty in this elimination will come from North Americans.
A way of using an electromagnetic-magnetic wave-front to clarify air will be discovered by 2022. It will be formally tested on upper-atmosphere air regions by the year 2051. Much controversy will surround this methodology, as it will also prove harmful to migratory birds.
The air quality index will have a major impact on whether or not we venture from our houses by the year 2033.
Biology
In 2025, there will be a concerted effort to genetically alter/manufacture new species of birds—specifically songbirds.
By the year 2030, techniques will exist for the creation of "designer animals." Originally developed for the pet industry, there will be toy goats, toy deer, toy (half the size of miniature) horses, palm-sized raccoons, etc.
Farmers will realize the technology's value for producing more for less, and leaner meat, per acre. In 2010, flightless chickens weighing more than thirty pounds will appear on the market.
By 2050 new, designer-type meats like a super snake, a cross between a camel and a horse, and something akin to a fur-covered pig will appear.
By 2015, scientists will develop a new form of bacterium through gene splicing. This bacterium will be able to consume large amounts of petrochemical toxins and agents at waste disposal sites, converting them into an effluent solution that can be electromagnetically separated and filtered from the containment medium at a very cheap rate.
When we reach the year 2075, mankind will have lost so many biological species that the continued existence of biodiversity itself will be threatened. Legal action will be taken to protect what remaining biological species there are from any further damage as a result of individual action. Species deliberately harmed by individuals will result in stiff punishments and heavy fines. This will carry over into the world court.
Genetic reproductive problems in mankind will reach a significant level by 2035. The eventual destruction of our own species will become a major topic as a result. Because the Human Genome Project will have been completed by then, efforts to develop methods for reintroducing important gene structures into our offspring will be undertaken. In other words, we will be able to shop for intelligence, physical strength, height, or good eyesight by the year 2050.
This genetic manipulation will not be without its problems. Sometime between 2022 and 2028, a researcher will be tried in a court of law for producing a surviving human nightmare in her lab, using her own body as the breeding ground.
Bridges
Early in the new century, between 2008 and 2010, a decision will be made to replace over half of the nonsuspension bridges in America. Over half of those will be replaced with single-strand suspension bridges.
A section of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, in New York City, will collapse sometime between 2012 and 2016.
Following a disastrous fire above the twenty-fifth floor of a New York high-rise building in 2022, a decision will be made to interconnect all buildings above fourteen floors whenever possible, with an enclosed walkway. Originally intended as an emergency fire escape to an adjacent building, people will begin to use them for day-to-day living and refer to them as skybridges.
The last remaining wood-covered bridge will cease to exist in extreme north-central Vermont sometime between the years 2021 and 2023.
The interconnecting bridges between the various keys south of Miami will be abandoned between 2038 and 2040, due to rising tides.
Cities
Cities are already going underground. Interconnected walkways, stores, restaurants, etc., are ideally maintained in the underground environment, especially where climatic conditions require it. By the middle of the next century, almost all cities with a population exceeding 1 million people will have centralized underground complexes with controlled climate conditions.
The single greatest threat to modern cities along the coast is the continuing rise in average tides. By 2025, high tide will breach the current sea wall heights along most of the northeast United States. Cities located along the edges of the Great Lakes, as well as the Gulf and West Coasts of the United States are also at risk. By 2050, sections of Boston; New York; New Jersey; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Miami; New Orleans; Houston; Los Angeles; San Francisco; and Seattle will be abandoned. Buildings subjected to saltwater soaking will self-destruct through decay in less than ten years' time.
The city of Key West will be all but abandoned by the year 2045.
Cities along the coastlines of Europe and the Far East will suffer the same fate within the same time window. Attempts to build dikes to prevent the rise in water levels will generally meet with disaster.
The first and largest underground city in the world will be constructed in Western Australia along the coast north of Perth by 2035. The desert building techniques polished and perfected in Australia will be exported to the Middle East and North Africa beginning around 2019.
Cities built on platforms will begin to appear very early in the next century. The first will be completed in Japan by the year 2030. Well, actually it will never be completed, because they will work on it continuously once it is started. It will be a city constructed on a platform that floats on water but that cannot be moved. Only the very wealthy will live on this platform, as the day-to-day fees for maintaining this first effort will be extremely high.
Miniature floating cities will be constructed in the form of ships, beginning around 2015. The first of these will actually be launched in 2025 amidst great fanfare.
About the size of two aircraft carriers lashed side to side, it will be twin-hulled, with no less than sixty watertight compartments. Powered by nuclear engines, this monster ship will be capable of moving from port to port. Its greatest attractiveness will be the number of oceanfront condos and the fact that it can move from north to south or vice versa, for winter or summer living. Maintenance and service support personnel will live in the bowels of these floating cities, which will number nine by the end of the century. These endeavors will require new forms of international treaties and oceangoing passports will evolve as a result.
Buildings
More and more recyclable materials will be going into both new and old buildings by 2010. Nearly all new construction will use frameworks of recycled metals and plastics. By 2020, about 45 percent of new construction will contain recycled materials—by 2050, over 90 percent. Common features in the houses of 2025 will include the following:
1) Windows that not only go from fogged to clear with the touch of a dial, but also change colors, and are capable of producing a background picture; e.g., sunny day with a garden, night view of a large cityscape, etc.
2) Rudimentary garbage and sewage processing and recycling; e.g., brownwater production capability, rainwater collection and purification capability, natural heat collection and storage, and supplemental electrical energy collection. Extra energy collected but not used will be automatically fed back into the energy delivery system (power grid).
3) Shared, or common, walls with another home; e.g., duplex, triplex, or quadriplex living.
4) High-impact, easy-to-clean, interior walls made from recycled materials that have built-in finishes; e.g. rough, pebbly, sandy, woven, etc. Recycled materials will be molded one into the other, eliminating many of the now well-defined 90-degree joints found on most walls at corners, replacing them with smooth, multidegree curves instead.
5) All lighting will be low voltage and use long-duration bulbs.
6) Wood flooring and wall-to-wall carpeting will be two of the most expensive options in the house of tomorrow.
7) Foundations will be monolithic pours of a new material that will combine cements with recycled materials, to include reprocessed automobile tires. They will provide for a 40 percent increase in insulation value, extreme protection against water seepage, and virtually eliminate ground pollutant problems.
8) Interior or exterior use of wood will begin to disappear, except for specific trim purposes, about this time.
By the year 2075:
1) Housing will all be multi-unit; single-family dwellings will be terribly expensive to own and operate.
2) Nearly 100 percent of the home will be constructed from recycled materials.
3) The average square footage will have been reduced to approximately 1,100 square feet for a family of four in America—probably 900 square feet in Europe.
4) Houses will be 100 percent electronically controlled by voice, as well as by sensing the needs of the family's bodies. Furniture, heat, light, and ambient music will be automatically modified for preset conditions fitting the specific person who is using them, or the room, at the time.
5) False windows and doors will present images of the outdoors, and create an impression of a single-family dwelling for most condos and apartments.
6) You will be able to communicate with your home from a distance, and the home electronic system will arrange for necessary cleaning, or preparations required for entertaining guests. As an example, the cleaning person will have a prearranged security pass that the house recognizes and the house will make all arrangements for cleaning itself, without your required participation.
7) All homes will have a "Virtual Room," where one can go to seek entertainment, visit almost any place in the world, or participate in a personal game selection. So, one could arrange to enter the room on Fridays, as an example, for a weekly poker night, where you might interact with a group of virtual or holographic players.
For most people who are occupied in information-oriented types of jobs, the home and workspace will be the same by the year 2025. Companies will exist completely within cyberspace. You'll be able to visit with your employees or observe what they are doing at any time electronically.
People with severe medical problems will have their bodies electronically wired into the local 911 systems. The house will monitor their physical condition and automatically notify emergency personnel when it senses distress that may lead to a severe medical problem. This will be in place by 2040.
Also, by 2045, most people will make trips to their doctors for routine checkups via cyberspace. Sitting in the control chair and inserting one's arm into a "reader" will be all that is required for doctors to do this normal checkup. (See under medical technology for more.)
Forests
We will begin to eliminate most of the now-existing roads into our national forests by the year 2018. This will be an attempt at bringing them back to their natural ecological state.
We will begin to section off our national forests with 1/2- to 3/4-mile-wide strips or fire breaks in 2025. The idea is that when fires begin as a result of natural causes (lightning), we will let nature take its course—and let them burn.
The hunting laws in America will be nationalized by 2020. This will result from a need to control the populations of certain animals within national forests. This will also be a result of a rash of overreactions to bear attacks, which will take place along the eastern Blue Ridge Mountains between 2017 and 2019. Gun control will have a strong bearing on these issues as well as on enforcement, cross-state hunting, and licensing.
There will be a 30 percent increase in protected wetlands as a result of the rise in average tides by 2030.
By 2030, only half the current number of lumber mills will survive; by 2050, only a third. Aside from "manufactured" timbers, expect raw lumber to be excessively expensive by the beginning of the second half of the next century. An exposed beam within a house will be looked on with disdain instead of in a positive way—much as people currently view fur coats.
By 2075, visiting a forest will be the same as visiting a zoo. We will slowly begin to eliminate man-controlled zoos by 2060. The only zoos existing in 2100 will be breeder farms run by researchers. They will not be open to the public.
The American chestnut tree will once again be growing strong in most areas of America's deciduous forests by 2070. The sugar maple, most species of elms, and longleaf pine will be near extinction.
Large sections (20 percent) of deciduous forests in the northeast will be taken over by pines before 2060. As if on cue, hardwoods will begin springing up below snow lines across many of the evergreen forests of the Southwest and Northwest by the end of the next century.
In 2050, the greatest importer of wood in the world will be China. Second greatest will be Germany. As an added note, the Black Forest of Germany will cease to exist by the year 2075. The primary cause will be a need for space, followed by the poor condition of the forest itself.
In the second decade of the new millennium, a new international organization will come into existence, with the sole purpose of managing the remaining world's rain forests. They will accomplish this by setting up and controlling funds for the payment of lease fees to the governments who control the rain forest territories.
These management responsibilities will include the setting of strict rules, requirements, and fees for other interests taking place within the rain forests, such as the removal of minerals, erosion from adjacent farming, or access by pharmaceutical research companies, etc.
Geology
New diamond mines will be discovered in South America by 2020. There will also be a diamond discovery in central Australia by the year 2025.
The largest and oldest gemstone mines in the world will be discovered just east of the Ural Mountains in Russia beginning in 2014. Within ten years of discovery, they will produce the world's largest garnet, emerald, and pigeon blood ruby ever cut and polished.
The largest yellow diamond in history will be discovered in the mountains of Arkansas, between 2031 and 2035.
A new string of islands will begin to form in the middle of the Pacific Ocean halfway between the islands of Japan and Hawaii. The first will break the surface around 2041, following a huge underwater eruption that will essentially go on for a period of nine years.
Following the discovery of heavy metals, and copper, between 2016 and 2018, six nations will agree to begin exploring Antarctica for the purposes of mining by 2020. This will lead to a territorial treaty that cuts Antarctica up into small states, one of which will be United Nations controlled.
China will begin to reclaim desert in the next century, through the development of hybrid grasses that can be fed with seawater pumped from the ocean (around 2023). This slow but successful reclamation program will be the model followed by most of the Middle Eastern nations which will begin their own efforts in earnest by 2030. All these innovative practices will have been developed and shared with the East by the scientists of Israel.
Highways
Fully automated, or computer controlled highways, will be tested by 2005. The first of these highways will be introduced for use in 2010. It will be a road somewhere in the Southwest, probably in the state of Texas, or New Mexico. Most roads in America as well as Europe will be fully automated or run by computers by the year 2050.
What I am referring to here are roads that automatically interact with the automobile. The driver will essentially give over control of the vehicle to the road itself, which will modulate speed, lane, and egress at a preselected or chosen point. The driver will be required to simply monitor the activities of the automobile.
A new surfacing material will be introduced to highways by 2015. It will be made from a 50/50 mixture of new and recycled materials. This new surface will wear considerably longer than any in existence today, and be able to withstand weathering much better than current roads.
One of the reasons this surface will wear better will be the invention of a new rubber/metal alloy, from which tires will be constructed beginning in 2010. These new tires will grip the road better, operate 30 percent more efficiently on wet surfaces, and require no air. The air will be integral to its constructed form, sort of like bubbles in egg whites.
Nearly all trans-state roads, that is roads crisscrossing states will be four lanes by 2050. There will only be ingress/egress points approximately every five to eight miles. Secondary or parallel roads will be constructed along their sides for local access.
Speed limits on all state roads will be 80 MPH by 2025. Speed limits on side or parallel service roads will never exceed 40 MPH.
Highway emergency notifications, advertisements for gas, lodging, restaurants, or updates on traffic will be automatically relayed to the car radio from a subsurface wire along both sides of the road by 2028. Information will differ depending on the direction in which you are traveling.
General directions and maps will all be electronic and displayed on a heads-up windscreen display beginning in 2015. These displays will be delivered by satellite automatically for a small service fee, and coordinated by Global Positioning Systems overhead. Emergencies will be automatically reported to local service stations by the automobile, and these will be monitored by the highway patrol.
By 2020, most vehicles will also be able to respond to identity checks by police. They won't give out personal information, like name or occupants, but they will say whether or not they are operating under a privately registered (maybe AAA) drive plan (DP). In the case of a specific criminal event within an area, warrants could be obtained at a later date to study site- and time-specific DPs. Lack of a registered DP would automatically notify police of the vehicle's immediate location and direction of travel.
DPs, as described above, will be used for tracking inter-state commerce by truck before 2020. Based on the information obtained, licensing and trucking usage fees will be reduced for those who do not do as much hauling, and increased for those who do.
Large trucking companies will be using this system of tracking before it is generally accepted by the public.
By 2030, the federal government will require states to provide a one-mile section of highway every thirty miles that can be used as an emergency runway for aircraft. This means the section of road will have to be nearly flat, straight, and have collapsible center divider stanchions. It will also be marked with solar- and battery-powered low-wattage lamps.
Nearly all cities above 20,000 population will have cameras mounted on lights at intersections by 2020. These will be used to monitor traffic, and photograph both speeders as well as red/caution light runners. Most of these cameras will have a remote control capability for scanning adjacent sidewalks and business storefronts as well, and will be undetectable as an integral part of the streetlight.
All multipassenger speed lanes, regulated for rush hour traffic, will be computer controlled by 2025.
Land
The single greatest return on investment in 2050 will be land. Buy dirt now!
By the year 2025, farming land will be reduced by 20 percent.
Wetlands will increase substantially by 2050, mainly due to the rise in tides.
By 2025, the states with
1) The greatest land problems will be Arizona and Florida.
2) The greatest amounts of available land will be Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington State.
3) The greatest number of lost persons will be in New York, especially in the upstate area and the Catskill and upper Adirondack Mountains. It will hold that honor because of its naturally rugged and inaccessible terrain, which prevents normal search-and-rescue operations being used in other states.
4) The most expensive land in America will be Connecticut, California, and Oregon.
5) The cheapest land in America will be Texas and Montana.
There will be a great push to reopen to private sale land currently held by the federal government. This will result in the Great Land Act being passed around 2029. About half the land will be sold in twenty-five-acre plots to nonbusiness citizens, the other half will go to a land trust, which can be commonly utilized through a new form of licensing.
Marine
Privately owned and operated submarines will be in vogue by 2010. These will be diesel powered, but capable of ninety-day journeys. They will be operated like private motor yachts.
The first fully automatic, nonmanned, atomic-powered, self-contained robotics research submarine will be launched around 2025. Its job will be to cruise the bottom of the sea in search of minerals. It will surface only once a month, when it will burst-transmit its location and findings, and receive its new instructions from its mother ship via satellite.
Eight new sources of food products will be discovered through marine biology by 2020. However, the real accomplishment will be the discovery of sixteen new medicines before 2040. Most of these new medicines will be useful in the treatment of bone diseases, neurological disorders, and cancer.
Permanent underwater fish farms will be constructed by 2030, and will be manned in one-month shifts. Fish will be grown, harvested, and shipped via submersible tube to the surface cleaning facilities, much like oil is now pumped from ships offshore through long underwater pipes.
By 2025, a new kind of oil platform will be designed that can be operated while totally submerged. These will be towed into place by boat, and serviced with utility submarines. By anchoring these to the seabed, they will not be exposed to surface weather. They will, therefore, be much smaller and cheaper to operate.
Fishing rights will become a very major issue in the first third of the twenty-first century. There will be symposiums hosted by the United Nations before 2010, to discuss the possible partitioning of the oceans for marine resources. These meetings will initially be called to address fishing rights beyond what are now considered coastal limits along national boundaries. Resources will be addressed as a separate issue from requirements for transportation, policing, or defense. Concerns will center on those countries that have no natural access to the sea. These problems will initially be addressed by the issuing of dividends for certain import materials—like fish, magnesium, or other ores. This will only be a temporary fix, however, as these issues will continue throughout the next hundred years.
The hunting of whales will continue till approximately 2015, when at least two species will be declared extinct. A world moratorium will be put into effect, which will last until 2050. There will be violations of this moratorium in the first fifteen years, during which "resource pirates" will be caught and tried for these offenses. Eventually, by the year 2050, whales will no longer be hunted on the high seas.
Half the current species of sharks will be near extinction by the year 2030. No one will care. The balance of those remaining will be hunted well into the '70s. Eventually, the hunting will cease and some species of shark will regenerate, only because there are so few fishing for them by then.
Because natural reefs will continue to degrade, mankind will make a concerted effort to increase the creation or building of new offshore reefs. This will be done primarily through the sinking of boats and barges, and the dumping of concrete and other debris that is essentially fish and water friendly.
By 2033, scientists will have learned to breed and raise some of the great game fish, adding a great deal back into the natural stocks.
General marine ordinances will be adopted by the United Nations between 2019 and 2025. These will be enforced by the navies of the UN membership. Violators will have their ships confiscated and will be tried in world court.
Natural Disasters
When you open the book to natural disasters, you are opening one of the greatest areas of human fear. I don't know why that is true, but it seems to be so. Over the years I have probably gotten more questions about pending natural disasters than any other area or topic. People are worried about how their money, homes, lives, or jobs might be directly affected by what happens naturally.
First, let me say that no one on the face of the planet is immune from natural disasters. Those who live where earthquakes are rare may be prone to flooding. Those who never see any flooding can be devastated by tornadoes overnight, and so on and so forth.
The place in which I live, Nelson County, Virginia, lies within the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and is one of the least threatening places you can imagine. However, in 1969, over a hundred and fifty people were killed by Hurricane Camille, which crossed half the continent to dump twenty-seven inches of rain in eight hours here. The flash floods that this rain started were horrible. Whole sections of roadway, steel and concrete bridges, and the sides of mountains were literally swept away. Some people's cars, trucks, and houses disappeared into the night and were literally never seen again. Who would have suspected? Miami maybe, or the Florida Keys, but never the foothills of Virginia.
Well, Mother Nature doesn't work that way. As a living and breathing entity, our Earth is expected to grow, change, and sometimes become violent. Earth has a right. We as fleas on the Earth's back will usually suffer the consequences.
I generally don't like making predictions about natural disasters for the following reasons:
1) Such predictions sometimes create severe anxiety in people who then go off and do drastic things as a result, like selling their homes or quitting their jobs and moving.
2) While many times the predictions will be true, many times they aren't. Time is very difficult to pin down when it comes to Mother Nature, as any geologist or vulcanologist will tell you.
3) There is too much focus on the negative, or on something we can do very little about.
Having said all this, I must now talk about natural disasters, or most of my friends won't buy this book. I'll begin with earthquakes.
I can tell you with near certainty that there will be significant earthquakes over the next one hundred years in southern Alaska; the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego areas of California; Mexico City; Guatemala; Northern Peru, Bolivia; and southern Chile on the American continent. Other sites will include North Africa, Sicily, the Black and Caspian Sea areas, Iran, Pakistan, India, South and Central China, the Philippines, and Japan. What do I mean by "significant"? They will register at least 8.5 to 8.8 on the Richter scale. They will be killer quakes.
Attaching years to them, I can say that in all probability they will occur within five years, plus or minus, of the following dates: