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Chapter 11: Changing behaviour

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posted on 2023-05-22, 21:57 authored by Barry BrookBarry Brook
The great 'power-down' never did happen. Yes, there were short-term supply crises with oil and gas, and increasingly dogged protests as each new coal project was pursued. But the hydrocarbons kept flowing, and stacking up, at least for the first few decades of the twenty-first century, as we found ever more inventive ways of squeezing and milling it out of ancient geological traps.

But set against this dismal' progress' was an emerging realization of the astounding potential of nuclear fission. When finally done right, it proved to be cheap, safe, massively scalable and inexhaustible. By the 2060s, we had an abundance of zero-carbon power, Which was just as well, because planetary rehabilitation was an energy-hungry task.

We geo-engineered, we intensified agricultural production, we built upwards, and virtually. Space-'cyber' and 'outer'-were the vast vistas of the next economy. And it was the visionary entrepreneurs that ended up taking us to space-permanently-opening up a virtually unlimited supply of raw materials and living space for the future of humanity. On Earth, our footprint shrank, as we pulled back from our encroachment of wildlife and habitats and let nature gradually reclaim large swathes of the planet. We simply didn't need it anymore, and it was time to give back.

History

Publication title

Visions 2100: stories from your future

Editors

J O'Brien

Pagination

153

ISBN

9781925341522

Department/School

School of Natural Sciences

Publisher

Vivid Publishing

Place of publication

Fremantle, Australia

Extent

23

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Ecosystem adaptation to climate change

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