| What will our world look like in 2020? |
The Challenge of Change As
I was sitting quietly in my living room, POWAH
appeared from nowhere — and told me some shocking secrets. I was
given visions of a world — ours in the future — that changed
my life forever. I then understood the powers behind the 'Program
Planet Earth'. The change of our biosphere Both Toon and Trevor pointed out that we are changing our planet and its biosphere in ways that were once unimaginable. We are also developing lifesaving technologies that would have appeared equally incredible a few decades ago. Everywhere we witness change. But what will this bring and how will it affect our world? Can we prophecy what our reality could look like in the year 2020? Often what humanity has believed to be true until now, has not always come true, But with todays communication technology being what it is, might it then not also be possible that we now can create our very own prophecy? "Climate change will become particularly noticeable at the poles," Toon remarked. "By 2020, the North Pole will be free of ice, and by the end of the decade we will be able to sail straight across it. At the same time, the great glaciers of the southern hemisphere and the West Antarctic ice sheet will be breaking up." We all know that the seas will rise dramatically, flooding Earth's low-lying areas. That means Hollland will be no more. At least the polder regions. By 2020, we will have a very good idea of the fate that is awaiting our planet: heat, flooding and desertification. "Essentially, for most people on the planet, it will be like living through war," warns Trevor. "It will be grim, but we are all going to have to stick together in our own communities." Hans predicted that around 90 per cent of people living today will still be alive in 2020, so these disturbances will touch almost every family on Earth. Neither can we do anything to halt them. Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide that have already taken place make them inevitable. Preventing even greater horrors should therefore be a scientific and political priority for the next decade and a half, says Toon. "It's now too late to avoid changing our world. But we still have time, if good policy is implemented, to avoid disaster." Will we have contacted other species from other universes? Very soon the skeptics will have found evidence of extraterrestrial life. The only issue to be decided is how we will actually make that monumental discovery. Radio telescopes will probe the skies to pick up signals sent out by alien civilizations– either deliberate 'here we are' messages or old episodes of their equivalent of TV show. Neighbours that have been leaking out across space since they were broadcasting to many on the planet already. Trevor says of all the instruments designed to detect these interstellar signals, the Allen Telescope Array – a joint project between SETI (which stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) – is now rated the machine most likely to succeed. What else will be changed for good? Our
lifestyle changes could also have striking effects on general health by
2020. "If there were serious reductions in cigarette smoking, then
overall cancer deaths would decline by 30 to 35 per cent; while serious
changes in diet, moving from meat to vegetarian diets, would produce another
10 to 15 per cent," adds Hans. There is hope that lifestyle-related
cancers will continue to slump over the next two decades. A cure for Aids
will be found and the option to live a lot longer will be discovered. The changes to our Homes FLOOR
SWEEPING, dusting, window cleaning, picking up after the kids, sorting
the laundry, folding clothes, ironing, tidying the house: such activities
are the banes of our lives. Yet if engineers are right, by 2020, we may
be able to forget such chores, thanks to the development of domestic robots. HUMANS WILL not be the only ones facing uncertain futures as changes sweep our planet: Earth's plants and animals are also in for a grim time over the next 15 years. "Basically, humanity has taken over nearly all the low-lying land that can be farmed on Earth today," says Toon. "Wild creatures have survived by holding on in highland areas, but now these are threatened; not by agriculture, but rather by climate change. And when these mountain refuges are destroyed as they warm up, there will be nowhere else for these creatures to go." "As the world warms, cloud cover will rise. It is a simple climatic fact. High rainforests get their moisture directly from clouds, not rain, and so will start to dry out, with unhappy consequences." Then
there is the case of the polar bear. Species losses will accumulate over the century until we reach a level equal to the wave of extinctions that destroyed the dinosaurs and so many other creatures 65 million years ago. That was one of the five great extinctions that have affected life on Earth over the past few hundred million years. We are now entering the sixth." The
Mayan calendar points to 22 December 2012 as being the end of our present
age, the last of five great ages. Our times during from 2008
- 2012 We have to wake up to our soul potential. POWAH
told me that genuine peace will never be attained by trying to eliminate
chaos, confusion and conflict. In fact all three are essential to the
continuance of life. Without chaos, there is no momentum for future possibilities.
This floored me at the time. So what would the world
look like in 2020?
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