The World in 2030

The World in 2030 25
And that means that the heat-trapping gases we’re
pumping out now in the first decade of the 21 st century
will be the heat that is trapped in the oceans in the year
2030, heated water that will become the fuel for future
hurricanes and tornadoes. And that quantity of heat will be
considerable: since the industrial revolution began in 1751
roughly 305 billion tons of carbon have been released to
the atmosphere from the consumption of fossil fuels and
cement production. Half of these CO2 emissions have
occurred since the mid 1970s. 34
As a result of the oceans storing the heat trapped by our
present greenhouse gas emissions, in twenty-five years’ time
hurricanes of similar or even greater strength to Hurricane
Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005 will have
become far more frequent events, 35 even if global efforts
over the next quarter of a century to reduce future carbon
emissions have been heroic. The weather in 2030 will be
extreme.
3. The Looming Energy Crisis
It’s obvious if you think about it. We’re running out of fossil
fuels. Even as I write these words new technologies are being
announced that can further improve extraction capabilities 36
to mine fossil fuels, pushing back the point at which fossil
fuels will be priced out of the energy market. But all such
announcements miss the point. It is clear, not least for the
very pressing reasons of climate change, that we have to find
new and clean methods of providing our societies with the