Things are just a wee bit unstable right now 鈥� environmentally and politically 鈥� so I decided to call up some experts and find out what will be happening on Earth in 25 years. Perhaps sounding a little desperate, I asked each of them what I would see if I flew over our future planet, peering down on humanity like a sentient satellite. Would it be a blasted wasteland?
Their answers were a lot weirder than I expected.
Despite everything, most nations are transitioning at least partly to sustainable energy, using periodic sources like wind, solar and waves. That, according to science fiction author and reservoir engineer , means we are going to be doing more mining for rare earth metals to make batteries. But those mines won鈥檛 look like deep cuts and holes in Earth鈥檚 surface. Talabi, who works on liquid resource extraction in Australia, says future mines might be almost invisible from the air.
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鈥淚nstead of bringing up earth to extract what鈥檚 inside, we could extract it without blasting or digging at all,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou would drill a hole or several holes into target rock, inject chemicals, concentrate [the minerals] in situ and bring up what you need.鈥� These 鈥渋n situ鈥� mines would have a small footprint and could even be surrounded by trees to make them blend into their environment.
He imagines mining operations that essentially clean up after themselves in a process he calls 鈥渃oupling鈥�, or 鈥渓inking whatever energy-intensive process you鈥檙e doing to a carbon drawdown process and doing them almost at the same time鈥�. One company, , is already doing this in Australia. The firm binds carbon dioxide to rocks pulled up during mining in a process called carbon mineralisation 鈥� it is a natural phenomenon, but usually takes thousands of years.
Talabi says a similar coupling technique could utterly transform offshore gas platforms. Instead of gray slabs of steel, the platforms might be covered in glittering solar panels, surrounded by fields of green algae that feed on CO2. Excess CO2 could also be reinjected into the ground, says Talabi. From the air, we might see two pipelines running between the coastal industrial complex and the platform 鈥� one carrying gas to land, the other carrying CO2 to an injection site deep beneath the seafloor, where it would dissolve and mineralise over time.
The idea of gray infrastructure going green was also appealing to Deb Chachra, a professor of materials science at Olin College in Massachusetts and the author of . Chachra sees a future where concrete is abandoned because cities need to absorb water runoff. City blocks will become porous, edged by lawns and bioswales, open patches of soil and plants that will capture water from floods, which will come more often due to climate change.
This soft, green infrastructure could help with aquifer recharging too: 鈥淚t would make sense for Mexico City to do that to regain water,鈥� says Chachra. 鈥淵ou might see Mexico City is weirdly green because they鈥檙e managing water the same way they did when it was Tenochtitlan. The axolotls will come back too.鈥�
Chachra says we might not need conventional batteries at all: 鈥淚 can imagine seeing grid-scale infrastructure that鈥檚 a ziggurat of concrete blocks next to the solar plant. You鈥檙e stacking the blocks and unstacking them as potential energy.鈥� She points out that the container ship port in Kodiak, Alaska, has a that stores the energy from putting containers down and discharges that energy to stack them back up. are another example of storage that banks gravitational potential energy in stacked water reservoirs.
Imagine a city surrounded by huge batteries that look like hills gushing with sparkling streams. Its ports are connected to offshore drilling platforms that are piping in oil for power and algae for food, while also removing excess CO2 to inject deep below the ocean floor.
But how will people get around this future city? Will we have flying cars? To find out, I talked to Jinhua Zhao, professor of cities and transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is dubious about flying cars, but does think our ways of getting around would change dramatically. Your mode of transit would depend on the density of the area you were in. If you looked at Zhao鈥檚 ideal city of the future from above, downtown would be full of bicycles, scooters and pedestrians. Robo-taxis would help people get around less dense residential areas, and regional corridors would have frequent, high-speed trains, travelling at 480 kilometres per hour, he says. Travel would be utterly transformed.
I鈥檓 ready for squishy cities and green mining and robo-taxis that drop me off at the bikeshare. I鈥檓 not looking for utopia. Just something better than this.
Annalee Newitz is a science journalist and author. Their latest book is Stories Are Weapons: Psychological warfare and the American mind. They are the co-host of the Hugo-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. You can follow them @annaleen and their website is techsploitation.com
Annalee鈥檚 week
What I鈥檓 reading
Premee Mohamed鈥檚 novella We Speak Through the Mountain, a far-future tale of cities under domes.
What I鈥檓 watching
The new season of punk feminist dramedy We Are Lady Parts.
What I鈥檓 working on
Getting rid of my teetering pile of ancient laptops, phones and tablets.
