I spent yesterday with my five little nieces and nephews – average age less than four years old. With modern medicine the forecast is they could live to an average age over 120 years. Even me, I’m only 20, could easily live another 100 years myself. That is a long time in a such a rapidly changing world.
Two days ago I was at Bay Meadows near Oakland looking across the San Francisco Bay at the Golden Gate Bridge. It is strange to imagine what drastic measures will need to be taken to protect the low-lying communities around the Bay as seas levels continue to rise at accelerated rates. The frontage road we took to the horse race track will be one of the first to be under water at every high tide. Then whole communities exist just a few feet above current seas level. So even in my lifetime and in the lifetimes of my nieces and nephews there is a major battle brewing to save coastal communities.
I could imagine the two land points north and south of the Golden Gate being extended until they met. Maybe cars would still be traveling on the bridge. Be below it and well above current sea level would be dam, perhaps earthen and looking like extensions of the current land points. Where else would be have to create levees to block out the ocean to save the Bay? Would the bay would eventually fill up with fresh water? Would that be some kind of solution to the fresh water storage problem for California?
The speed at which the world is changing is unprecedented. We are living through a mass extinction of species yet, life for us continues on as nothing much has changed. With our technological advances we have been able to deal with the environmental changes thus far, but will scientific innovation continue to exceed the challenges we face?
The world one hundred years from now There’s quite a bit to think about…
