Earth 2100 Page #6

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The city was full of hope

and energy and promise.

You'd walk down the streets and meet each

other's eyes and see a sense of purpose.

It was a great place to

be a part of back then.

The first years we were there

were the best of our lives.

Josh was working as an engineer

on the Great Barrier Project.

I was at Bellevue Hospital, a historic

institution already more than 300 years old.

The building we lived in was

green in every sense of the word.

And Molly worked in the

gardens that grew our food.

They were a part of

the building itself.

You're going to see greenhouses,

multistory greenhouses.

And each floor will be growing,

you know, carrots and potatoes, etcetera.

And that will be

just considered normal.

The building supplied not just our food,

but most of our own energy.

Instead of having solar panels,

big heavy bulky things,

we can just put this thin film on rooftops,

on window panes and

generate electricity that way.

I rode my bike to work every day,

a mere 30 blocks.

We had designated bicycle lanes.

The traffic was manageable,

and you could breathe the air.

All the vehicles were electric.

You hook your car up to

a mega transport system.

It will move you a good bit of the

distance to your final destination.

Kind of a train of cars.

And then you get disconnected from

the mass combination transit

and drive the last little bit yourself.

Molly fell in love as

quickly as her parents had.

She married George, who was

studying to become a botanist.

A year later, my

grandson Daniel was born.

And a lovelier child I had never seen.

It was a happy time.

And when Molly told me they were

moving upstate to work on a real farm,

Josh and I understood.

It had always been their dream.

The city was getting a lot of attention.

And money flowed in,

both private and public.

The biggest and maybe the most important

project was my husband Josh's.

Since without the barriers,

the city was at risk.

It would be the biggest civil

engineering project in US history.

Be comparable to

putting man on the moon.

The project had been under way

for years,

and those who worked on it

had a tremendous sense of pride.

There was three barriers going up.

One at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge,

one at the top of the East River.

And one in Staten Island at Baton Hills.

You could see them rising a little every day.

Sea level was rising.

And without the barriers,

big storms would flood the city.

I think it would be like in medieval times,

people building a beautiful huge cathedral.

Took generations to build.

And there was a great sense of purpose,

and gave purpose and meaning to life.

The project drew thousands of

people into the city looking for work.

New York City was then, as it

had always been, a beacon of hope.

New York, it will be a magnet

as any viable city will be a magnet.

These cities where

become petri dishes for diseases and new

diseases and resistant forms of disease.

There are a number of infectious

diseases that are currently confined

to tropical and subtropical areas.

They're likely to

spread into temperate zones.

And this is something that

I'm very concerned about.

Keeping New York safe

from disease was crucial.

And Bellevue was busy.

I didn't feel as tired at end

of the day as I might have.

We were doing important work.

Keeping a close eye

on any new diseases.

I remember the night I was called

to the worker's camps in Flushing.

A young Ecuadorian family

had just arrived in New York.

And they all had high fevers.

And blisters on their hands and feet.

We sprung into action immediately,

closed off the neighborhood,

and called in the CDC.

They knew right away they

were looking at a new virus.

We set up a mobile clinic at the camps,

where we treated dozens of

workers and their families.

Everyone recovered.

And the disease was contained.

Imagine now the year 2070.

Things are in danger of unraveling.

Sea levels have risen nearly three feet,

redrawing the map of the world.

Island nations have disappeared.

Much of Bangladesh

reclaimed by the sea.

Some of California's

famous beaches gone.

The Florida Everglades, underwater.

Now, the richest countries are being

forced to come up with innovative

and expensive solutions.

Lucy's husband, Josh,

is one of the leaders.

Josh was an engineer on

the Great Barrier Project.

After 30 years in the making,

It was nearing completion.

Within a few months,

they would be testing the massive gates.

If I was the engineer in charge,

I would be very nervous.

But you would have practice runs.

And during nice weather, you would say,

all right, let's close the gates today

and make sure everything's working right,

it's not going to jam up.

Josh was worried about

something else, too.

New York City's barriers, like others around

the world, had been built on the assumption

that sea level rise would be gradual.

But it was becoming clear

that might not be the case.

Scientists say they

are detecting a massive spike

in the level of methane in the atmosphere.

Climate in general doesn't

change smoothly the way,

you know, we're used to seeing

projections from climate models.

We find that the transitions from

warm to cold or cold to warm,

some of those transitions can

be really, really abrupt.

Abrupt meaning within the

time scale of a decade,

or sometimes even less than a decade.

We knew there were certain things

that could rapidly turn up the heat.

But we didn't know what that tipping

point would be until it happened.

Maybe the tipping point is you heat up

the tundra and the permafrost so much

that there's a huge burp of methane and

carbon dioxide out of those northern soils.

Methane is a big worry in my mind because it's

some 20 to 30 times more potent than CO2.

An enormous

reservoir of methane,

produced by decomposing plants

and animals,

les burled beneath the frozen arctic tundra.

It has been there since the Ice Age.

If the tundra thaws and a large

quantity of the gas is released,

global temperatures would soar.

This is a bit like a light switch.

You push the light switch a

little bit and nothing happens.

You push a little bit

more and nothing happens.

Then you push it a little more

and it flips completely to a new state.

The methane emanating from the

arctic could raise temperatures worldwide.

A panel of experts is

convening to recalculate how warm the planet...

...drastically raise global temperatures...

This is what specialists call a

nonlinear flip or nonlinear change.

When that happens, we don't know

what the consequences will be.

Spiking global temperatures

are wreaking havoc with the Greenland Ice sheet.

Some fear that the colossal

sheet is on the verge of collapse.

Unless drastic measures are taken,

low lying coastal cities around the world

could expect to see disastrous flooding.

Citizens are demanding

their governments respond

to the impending temperature...

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