Earth 2100 Page #9

---

than the present that we're

living in right now, to be sure.

If we took the measures we should take,

that we, today, would regard as paradise.

We have a chance to get it right,

to move from a disconnected inefficient world

of fighting populations,

to a sustainable planet.

The problem we face today is

how do we get from here to there?

The world that Lucy was

born into is our world today.

There are plenty of signs

that it's in trouble.

But there are hopeful signs as well.

The problems that we face,

water, soil, climate change,

they're all problems caused by humans.

So we're capable of

solving those problems.

It could be overwhelming if we let it.

I just try to take it one brick,

one chunk at a time.

I think that's how you

have to deal with it.

So what should we do

right now to chart another course?

How do we avoid

ending up in Lucy's world?

Many experts say the first step should

be transforming how we use energy.

Much of what we need

to do we already know.

Plant a garden.

Use compact fluorescent bulbs.

More mass transit for people.

Insulate your homes.

Smaller cars.

There's no simple solution,

but 100% of the Earth's population

doing a very small thing

makes a big difference.

But individuals alone

won't be able to turn things around.

Governments and industries are going

to have to change on a massive scale.

We're going to have to come up with more solar,

more wave power, more geothermal energy.

Beyond the familiar technologies,

amazing new ones are already in the works.

Fields of solar balloons that

could power thousands of homes a day.

A nuclear fusion facility that could

produce the energy of a tiny manmade star.

We can't drill and burn our

way out of our problems,

but we can invent and invest our way out.

Getting enough of these

projects up and running will take people.

And that means jobs.

And If we can put more people

back to work, then by 2015,

instead of communities disintegrating,

they could start to rebound.

You could fight pollution and

poverty at the same time.

You can beat global warming and the economic

downturn with the same dollar bill

that you invested in green jobs,

green energy, green technology.

If we start those investments today

there wouldn't be gas lines

and flights as in Lucy's world.

Instead, there would be electric cars

that could run 300 miles per charge.

But completely redesigning our energy

system would require rapid change.

It would mean both sacrifice and

hard work for the whole country.

But we have done it before.

The thing I would

compare it to is World War ll.

After Pearl Harbor,

FDR turned to Detroit, the automakers,

and said, you will now make tanks.

You will now make Jeeps.

Just like that.

That was like overnight almost,

and they did it.

And we won that war.

It's going to take that

same level of commitment.

Imagine that all of us did enough things that

it made a real difference in our country.

What effect does that have on China,

on India, on other nations?

Well, if we don't set an example as

the strongest and most important

what do we expect them to do?

They're not going to follow if we don't lead.

World leaders

are gathering in Washington, DC,

to attend an emergency global summit meeting.

A turning point in

Lucy's world was the global summit of 2015.

When the world leaders failed to agree

on actions to slow climate change.

We do not accept the offer.

They set in motion all the

disasters that would follow.

But what If they had agreed?

For the first time ever,

China, India, the US and Europe

have reached an agreement that could

avert catastrophic climate change.

By tackling climate change,

you end up tackling energy,

you end up tackling food,

you end up tackling water resources.

You could change this vicious

cycle I think into a virtuous cycle.

Then what we could see is

actually billions of people

coming into far more stable

sustainable prosperous economies.

As we move forward in the

century, we will see the investments

and hard choices we made

early on begin to pay off.

A positive scenario is fossil

fuels will be disappearing.

We're growing more food with less water.

We've restored ecosystems.

By the middle of the century,

we would be using water and other resources

much more carefully.

Farmers would be

planting drown resistant crops.

Water would be recycled, and there would

be enough to support the US Southwest.

In 2050, places like Las Vegas could survive.

The hope is that once we figure

out how to solve these problems,

we'll be in a much better position

to help the rest of the world.

If we can actually raise the prospects

of the bottom few billion people,

we actually make global stability possibility.

We reduce mass migration.

Refugee movements.

Desperation.

Actually slow the population growth.

And if we do all those things,

we just bring a sustainable world

prosperity closer to hand.

There's a very good chance by about 2050,

the worst part of the crisis having passed,

doesn't mean there aren't going to

be big problems still to face.

But it means that we will have

avoided sailing right off the cliff.

By 2100,

our world could be transformed.

Just imagine a city that is not polluted,

that has a great transportation infrastructure.

Stackable cars or cars that are

folding and then they would charge

and be a shared ownership model

and you would just pull out the one

that's available that's fully charged.

Everything happens inside the city itself.

That means our food production,

our waste and recycling, our energy.

We're going to have joint management of

water resources, of energy resources.

We're going to be living on a

planet where we don't see things

at a national level,

but we see things at a global level.

By the time we get to 2100, the challenge

of building a global green economy,

where we're sharing technologies,

not fighting wars over water and oil,

that's going to bring out the

best in the human family.

Humanity will be relatively disease free.

Children will be treated as rare treasures.

Most people don't realize not

only can we change, we must change.

And I think that's

how you own the future.

That's how you take control

of your destiny.

I have huge faith in humanity.

We will be able to create a world that will have

a livable planet for our kids and their kids,

that is our opportunity.

That is our obligation.

Kids born today will see us navigate past

the first greatest test of humanity,

which is can we actually be smart enough

to live on a planet without destroying it.

In December this year, nearly 200

countries plan to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Their mission, to draw up a strategy to

finally come up with a global agreement

to slow climate change

and safeguard the planet.

If you'd like to learn more

about "Earth 2100" or if you want

go to our web page at abcnews.com.

I'm Bob Woodruff.

For all of us here at ABC News,

Rate this script:5.0 / 1 vote