I am hoping that some of you caught the ABC News Special ‘Earth 2100’. Part worst case scenario environmental report, part dystopian sci-fi choose your own adventure, it was truly an amazing piece of journalism. A two-hour, prime-time special, hosted by Bob Woodruff, speculated on what the world may look like if humans take no action on addressing present environmental concerns. The program invited historians, economists and scientists to make projections on the state of various locations in the world in the years, 2030, 2050 and as far ahead as 2100. (I highly recommend that you check out ABC’s site, you will be amazed.)

Most of the scientists seemed to agree that the world was indeed heading for a kind of collapse, unless something was done right away to address existing concerns.
Experts pointed out that it will take only a hundred years before the dramatic man-induced climate change, shrinking natural resources, famine and war make for a world that may be uninhabitable. It was a pretty dark view, but one that I think is fairly realistic and pragmatic. What I found most interesting was how they showed the ramifications of how global politics will effect things.

The interviews, statistics, and reports were intertwined with a fictional narrative following a woman that was born in 2009 that lives through the earth’s eventual collapse. It used a graphic novel style that was a brilliant choice to portray the possible outcome on at a intimately human lever, much more so than if it would have been a live-action film.

Even though the vast majority of the special focuses on the gloom and doom scenario, the last ten minutes focus on the fact that this future is not set in stone and that we have the ability to make the changes needed to change our, and the Earth’s, future. I just hope that we choose to follow the correct path.