What do you think the future world of 2100 will be like? We all have different views of about how different our world will be almost 100 years from now, but advancements in the fields of science and technology, faster and more efficient ways of travel, a deeper understanding of space, and the prospect of longer lives tend to be pervasive ideas in most of our conceptualizations.
These hopeful speculations are encouraging and have the potential to be actualized several decades from now, but none of these can be known for sure. There is only one undeniable truth is that our planet will have undergone some drastic changes primarily brought about by exponential human population growth.
By the end of this century, anthropogenic climate change would have caused average global temperatures to rise between 1.5 to 3 degrees Celsius above 19th century pre-industrial temperatures. Arctic sea ice and part of the Greenland Ice Sheet will melt, triggering an enormous sea level rise, intensification of ocean acidification, and the fuelling of severe arctic cyclones. The entire web of life in the Arctic Ocean will be dismantled (ranging from single-celled algae to massive polar bears), and a similar fate will eventually befall our world’s oceans.
Story by Alex Rose Photography by Mark Goyen ( see OG Issue 27)