If you were to ask your archetypal pessimistic doomsayer about how we may, or should be living in the future, there answer is likely to be "What future?". It is a sad fact that although we are living in a time when ecological issues are on the agenda more than at any other time in history, and governments and corporations are pressured more than ever to do something, that there is still a climate of pessimism, and often reading the ecologist and other similar media can make us feel disillusioned and powerless when we consider what we have done to the environment and what we are up against if we are to have a future at all.
Although this may seem irrelevant on the surface, people such as Arthur C. Clarke and cult writer Robert Anton Wilson were, amongst other things, futurologists. In a way the same could be said of Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame. If the concept of futurology was applied to ecological issues, the chances are that instead of feeling useless at the end of an article, we may feel inspired. Back in the sixties and seventies, the future seemed like something better, where technology, experimentation and space travel were to take us to areas exciting and inspiring. That may be a romantic nostalgic view on my part, but I cannot help but think that in this era of awareness of ourselves killing the planet, we have become less futurological in that positive, exiting and innocent way.
In my own humble opinion the Earth has been rendered somewhat derelict, and like a derelict building needs to be covered in scaffolding so that a major restoration job can take place. I intend for this article to be based on positive if somewhat innocent futurological ideas based on technology we already have. Picture an ecological infrastructure revolution. Never mind the whys and wherefores. As you read this article please resist the desire to be cynical, nor to worry about how it could possibly be done. The only thing in the human condition which could save us is inspiration and will. It helps to retain a childlike innocence in order to feel that way.
Firstly consider desalination technology. During the hot summer in 2006 which affected London, there was a lot of talk about hosepipe bans and drought orders. At one point, Thames Water suggested building a desalination plant only to be derided and shouted down by Ken Livingstone. I could not believe how short sighted he was. Here we are on island in which it is impossible to be any more than 65 miles away from the sea, and rising sea levels are threatening us with TOO much water! Meanwhile our oil obsessed governments in the pockets of big corporations think nothing of starting wars in order to build miles of oil pipelines in the Middle East. If oil pipelines can be built then why can't desalinated water pipelines be built too? They would, to coin a phrase, have 101 uses.
In Britain we would never have droughts again, and we would be encouraged to drink more water, have more baths, and even leave the taps on during times of rain drought in order to raise the water table. We would never have hosepipe bans ever again, and using hosepipes to keep the grass green would be encouraged because we would be perceived to be lowering the sea levels! Some of the salt could be returned to the sea, especially in areas where melting ice caps are diluting the sea with fresh water. The remaining salt could be sold as table salt in order to discourage people buying rock salt.
One third of the world's land is desert, and desertification is becoming a symptom of global warming. How long may it be before 40% of the world is desert? Could Spain and Southern Italy be part of that? Certainly areas where once there were vast rainforests are in danger of becoming deserts.
Large scale desalination plants combined with pipes containing strategically placed sprinkler holes linked up to computers with 'meteorological' software could over time transform designated parts of deserts into manmade rainforests – a kind of Kew Gardens and Eden project style set up, but on a grand scale. Money could be generated by NGO's and charities to pay for this. It may take decades to establish areas like this but if it was done on a vast scale, the moisture from the forests would generate rain clouds in otherwise dry areas, cooling down parts of the Earth and also contributing to lowering sea levels or at least redistributing the world's water. Imagine 'the Sahara Rainforest'. Preposterous?
Also with alpine regions of the world suffering from receding snowlines, these pipes could be brought to areas where melt water in spring is threatened. This of course may sound like a more challenging use of this technology, but it could work on the same principle as the window cleaners 'water fed pole' system which uses high pressure to force water up a vertical pipe. A flexible but firm foam lining could be placed on the inside of these pipes to allow for expansion as, during the winter, the water in the pipes freeze. This would prevent damage to the pipes. As temperatures rise in spring, the pipes would mimic the natural melt water effect, and the foam would slowly expand.
My next futurological idea is what I call white sea blankets. As we are all aware, the melting ice caps are speeding up the global warming of the world by reducing the amount of white visible from space needed to reflect heat back. Imagine if vast areas of the sea had white tarpaulin-like canopies made out of non petroleum vegetable plastics. There could be holes to let sunlight in, for the benefit of marine life in that part of the sea, but from space it would look like uninterrupted white. Over a big enough area this could reduce the temperature of the sea by 1 or 2 degrees Celsius.
Thirdly, floating islands could be used as clean energy power stations, evolving the idea of offshore windfarming to its next stage of evolution. Kansai International Airport in Osaka bay, Japan is built on a man-made island. It appears that the Japanese have been very innovative in this way, but imagine a floating island off the coast of Britain the size of the Isle of Man specifically for clean energy generation. The entire floor could be made out of solar panelling, wind turbines could be densely packed on this island, and the skirts of the island's coast line could have devices harnessing wave power. Artificial lakes could be built in order to minimize the impact on marine life, and an enormous amount of electricity could be generated by, to coin a phrase, killing three birds with one stone. Excuse the inappropriateness of that phrase – it's the best metaphor I could muster!
Ever since I visited the Eden Project in Cornwall, I imagined how this botanical garden could set a model for a new form of farming. I called my fourth idea 'permaculture biomes' – a way of producing fruit from foreign climates without the food miles. Using heat or cold air conditioning (depending on the indigenous climate) from clean energy, Dubai could produce English apples and strawberries, and England could grow coconuts. If permaculture biomes based on tropical, warm temperate and cold temperate models were built in as many countries in the world, imagine the reduction in food miles? If we are struggling to stop people travelling the world, getting food to travel less would at least have some significant impact. Also if the biomes contained large enough forested areas, this could offset some if not all of the carbon generation from the energy used to produce food in this way. Another good reason to have as many botanical greenhouse gardens and permaculture biomes as possible is that if greed took us to the point that rainforests became extinct due to excessive logging and vast areas of monocultural farming, or even worse, deserts sprung up in place, we would at least have saved the biodiversity of the world, meaning that we could create new rainforests from just the botanical garden samples alone.
Finally I would like to sum up by pointing out that a lot of cynical naysayers reading this article may be tempted to pick holes and say why all this ideas cannot be realised, or wish to be the devil's advocate and be deliberately disagreeable – especially those from a more academic background than the author of this article. I would say to these people that if you are so clever, use your cleverness usefully, positively and constructively. Maybe you would be more accurate in your research and statistical information than I am, but retaining facts, and knowing things alone will not save us. As I stated at the beginning of this article, inspiration and the will to carry on are more likely to save us than anything else, and there are plenty of people without an education who have these qualities. The educated people could contribute so much with what they have learned by surrendering their rigid dogmatic approach to knowledge, and following their hearts to wisdom. If this article raises cynical questions for you then come up with your own answers out of inspiration. If you think about the bigger picture, these models could be made workable if the will was there. The outcome would mean combating to some degree the rising sea levels and transferring that self same water to parched land, helping prevent desertification and floods, creating new jungles which would absorb more greenhouse gases, reflect excess heat out of the Earth, thus slowing down the melting ice sheets, reducing food miles, and vastly reducing the need to use and eventually eliminate fossil fuels.
But more important than all that, we would be creating a new paradigm in human consciousness where modern technology would be used in a way that was symbiotic with nature rather than exploitative and parasitic. By setting ourselves impossible goals we ultimately achieve what we would not have done otherwise. Creating that new world infrastructure and putting it in place could be costly and time consuming but once it is finally there who knows where it could lead? One day we could 'take the scaffolding down' because we would have succeeded in balancing out the climate so well.
For us as a species that would be a very rewarding feeling.
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