2072: Climate and Health, a vision of the future
Looking at the world in 2072 through the lens of a historian looking backwards.
In 2072, mean temperature rises are 1.9c and stable as effective Net Zero has been achieved. Global life expectancy has also reached 97.
Let’s examine how humanity achieved this. Let’s take a review of the innovations and inventions, the quirks and stories; the great, the good, the bad and the ugly that took us from 2022 to 2072.
When innovation and climate historians look back, it was perhaps not too surprising that this was achieved given the scale of innovation and policy that moved the temperature and climate models from 2015 to 2022 from 3.9c rise to 2.7c rise in 2022 on only stated policies, but 2.1c for all pledges and targets. 1.9c Narrowly missed the median optimistic scenario forecast made by the independent Climate Action tracker in 2021*. 1
There were hundreds, if not thousands of factors, but the important ones were:
-New forms of governance and decision making processes (eg deliberative democracy) allowed: more effective solving of coordination problems
-Innovations across (1) land use and food (2) power and electrification (3) transport (4) buildings (5) industry such as manufacturing, cement, steel, aluminum, and (6) carbon capture. As 2072 historians note, the human tribes mainly involved with these endeavours were mainly forms of techno-optimists
-Supportive policy at the local and National levels in particular focusing on sector specific regulatory standards - the human tribes involved with these were mainly progress-policy wonks. These were a left-right coalition of policy makers focused on abundance and building.
-The Just Enough (JE) movement curbed the consumer excesses of certain populations, in particular parts of the US - the tribes most associated with these derived from degrowth and Malthus but also has allied with some techno-optimists and the Just One Bad Day (JOBD) movement.
Let’s review these factors in more detail.
Governance and Democracy, Decision Making and Accountability.
It started with a bet. In 2024, Audrey Tang*2 met Elon Musk in Switzerland, by accident. Near Zug, for a robotics and medicine conference. Musk was interested in brain robotics. Tang on the future of medicine.
Tang – although digital minister of Taiwan - lacked a touch screen device. Tang argued touch screens become destructively addictive. Tang )being a form of conservative anarchist) had a surprising amount in common with Musk. But Elon bet Audrey, he could do this too (no phone) and was not addicted to social media or the Bird App.
The prize was a mass open democracy event – supported by digital media and Elon’s social media assets – that combined Open Space Techniques* (OST)3, with Polis4 and quadratic voting. Democractic governance techniques that had helped Taiwan resolve policy over same sex marriage, and (adjacent techniques such as Assemblies) helped Ireland with its abortion laws in the years previous5.
The success and publicity around these open events had unheard of consequences for shaping the projects and interests of several countries, organizations and influential people. These events were direct insights into the type of projects and ideas people from all over the world found important, and the Polis techniques found a remarkable number of consensual ideas amongst the conflicting themes.
This lead to a much stronger, faster and responsive decision making framework across different types of organization, city and state level.
This lead to, in essence to more democracy and better accountability, in what scholars dubbed the Open Space Democratic (OSD) movement. Academics believe this greater freedom was a foundational innovation that catalyzed the increases in GDP, human and social capital that we saw.
OSD enabled faster planning decisions, more building, more sustainable design and, for instance, lead to selective building on London’s (in)famous “green”belt (which super charged the UK’s innovation hubs) and more enablement of direct citizen participation to solve problems such as the building of parklets in San Francisco.* 6(Readers, SF citizens when asked via Polis had much agreement they wanted parklets and that planning restrictions were too onerous).
Innovations on Food and land use.
The major factors were:
New crops were discovered that were more productive and more environmentally resistant. This would be an entire set of books dedicated to this. Suffice to say the modern “Asian Brassicas” lead by the Pak Yo plant and derivatives that we all enjoy now came about in the 2030s. The two themes of better “resilence and adaptation” as well as better “mitigation” were well seen in the crop science. Again, incidentally, these science discoveries were very much helped by sophisticated AI (see section on AI later) and spurred by the Deep Mind breakthroughs in protein folding* made in 2020-20227. The resilient water stress capabilities came from research led by ABI InBev one of the world’s largest alcoholic drinks makers (and thus cementing its business despite the health problems related to alcohol that partly continue in 2072, see below).
Animal feeds were discovered that reduced methane emissions from cattle. In 2022 this was already in progress by companies such as DSM*8
We need to look at a weird and wonderful chapter in food use here. Former Crypto Billionaire, SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried)*9 before the the Great Crypto Crash, GCC of 2035, managed to move many of his assets into real impact ventures.
Around 2031, there was a rationality and futreu conference in the Bahamas hosted by SBF and the Future Fund. Aella*10 attended. Together that was the start of the Just One Bad Day (JOBD) movement. SBF was a committed vegan. Reports suggest psychedelics lead to a deep bonding between the founding memebers of JOBD, but no historian can confirm.
This movement called for animals to have JOBD before death, if humans were to eat them. A good life, and the only one bad day, the day the animals died.
At the same time, there was a venture capital conference. One of the sons of Paul Graham was in attendance believed to be interning but also doing very well off the royalties of his co-authored Graham11 book: “What I taught my sons | What I learned from my parents” Paul + Jessica being legendary start up investors, and Paul’s on going tweets on his sons live growing up becoming a an on-going best seller.
This conference was the break through gathering the the start-up cultured meat company, Just Meat. Graham’s son led this company so that by around 2055 most of the world’s meat was cultured, and the remaining farmed meat was bred in accordance to the JOBD principles.
The by-product of all this were plant-rich, cultured meat diets that had about a 100 gigaton carbon saving (about 10% of the saving needed to reach 1.9c).
There were job changes for traditional farmers and landowners as they moved into regenerative cropping, peatland protection and rewetting and conservation agriculture.
Reduced Food Waste. There were also considerable efforts on food waste, both in the supply chain in emerging economies (policy + startups + OSD solved this) on responsible consumerism via the JE movements.
The JE and JOBD movements found common ground here. If you were going to eat a pig, then it was going to be respectful not to waste any of the animal. Long-term historians will note this brings back today’s culture to an earlier time when “nose-to-tail” eating was habitual. This in in the 0 to 1900 AD period was due to food poverty, but from 2050 was due to JE and JOBD, a cultural shift. This shift as we all know was also caused by an Elon Musk bet this time involving a dance competition with Greta Thunberg. The Elon Greta dance-off. But this event is well covered and better left to social science historians. Suffice to say, people at the time thought it amusing that TikTok servers broke under the strain.
We should also finally note on food use that there was a significant advance in rice production and intensification. This was also AI aided, but this type from a DAO lead research organisation (RICE DOO), which was one of the fruits coming out of the GCC of the 2030s as Crypto 1.0 crashed.
Power and Electrification advances.
Wind and Solar continued the great advances seen in 2000 to 2020*12, around 2030 there was also a break through in “mini-nukes” small nuclear reactors, SMRs. (A Bill Gates sponsored company, and Rolls Royce both finally announcing break throughs). These SMRs helped decarbonise shipping, and produce “pink hydrogen”. (Note Fusion has not yet materialized as a viable technology in 2072 but deep tech start ups are still trying)
This pink hydrogen was an important innovation that helped decarbonise steel, cement and aluminium making. Other forms of hydrogen technology helped, but pink was the step change break through.
As a geopolitical aside, Germany looked silly for many years for closing its nuclear programme, but the long stand off with Russia forced Germany and other EU countries to invest heavily. And, frankly, the Germans were not going to be outdone by the Brits who had started to innovate heavily here.
Green Grids and Battery Storage became more more affordable in the 2030s as innovation continued to scale. (Again this was a mix of public and private investments, the public sector investment having been decided by OSD)
Decarbonisation of heat and cooling was a little slower, but was solved by the introduction of “heating districts” which while around in the 2000s and earlier were slow to take off. This again is where OSD enabled the building of heating pipes, much like gas pipes were built in many nations in the 1970s. ( Perhaps surprisingly the UK was the lead here for larger nations, based on Scandinavian templates.) Heat pump / exchange technology improved; and there was a significant advance in building materials, especially high performance glass.
Of side note, methane digesters and landfill methane capture also play a small part (around 10 gigatons, or 1% of the total solution).
Transport in 2072, totally electrified
The heavy lifting was done by the electrification of transport, especially trains, cars and trucks, (20 gigatons) but better design of cities (5 gigatons) , and more bicycles (5 gigatons) played their part. Electrification was driven by policy makers who used rising standards to bring about change.
Historians note that a carbon tax was not needed. While carbon prices in places helped drive better decision making for policy, it was not a needed policy. This was helped by OSD given democratic accountability where needed. This was in part predicted by certain policy makers back in 2022 already (for instance, Chris Stark of the UK’s climate change committee*).13
Also, of note, China achieved most of the same as Europe and the US but via more autocratic policy making. However, spillover impacts from innovations from all countries ended up as global benefits. This was also foreseen in some policy thinking in 2018 to 2022 (see Stian Westlake, Diane Coyle in the UK on the nature of intangibles.)14
Another footnote is that both private sector and public sector made advancements here. With certain drone, electrification and logistics advancing done by Stripe, Amazon, Microsoft and tech plates of 2030s and 2040s. (Also see the Advanced Climate Commitments which helped carbon capture technology). While innovation agencies, and certain basic research led breakthrough cames from US (DARPA), UK (ARIA), European innovation government funding.
Aviation was helped by better designed airplanes, more efficient engines, and much better flight paths and landings. Short haul up to 3 hours can be done by electric plane in 2072 but long haul still needs fossil fuel. Aviation fuel is “greener” and some made by food waste but still has a hydrocarbon base. On the other hand, the aviation industry pays for the carbon capture we use today. This is an example of the “Net” in NetZero.
Of note, Climeworks in 2021 could already capture carbon at around a $1000 - $1500 / tonne basis.15 And note a long haul flight eg US to Europe would on average cost about 1 tonne of CO2 per passenger.
Aviation uses man- made carbon capture a derivative of the clime works technology of 2022, along with genuine land sink projects these include abandoned farmland restoration (as less cattle etc. are bread), forest restoration on degraded lands, and tropical forest restoration and silvopasture.
Travellers also pay and fund bamboo and tree intercropping projects (supported by cement, steel and other heavy industries that while using pink hydrogen still have residual carbon to offset).
(This essay is becoming lengthy so will touch on the rest of industry briefly). There were major innovation in bioplastics, alternative cement and building materials, and refrigeration / cooling management. The industry elements that did not manage to decarbonise funded the carbon capture project noted above.
In approximate terms to hit the 1.9c temperature rise target the world had to reduce and, or, sequester 1,000 gigaton of CO2 equivalent from 2020 to 205016 and it achieved that through a mix of innovation, policy and cultural change.
A note on the GCC and crypto crash: AI, Crypto and DAO/DOOSs
The 2030s saw crypto 1.0 fail. Most cryptos simply were not designed to handle the speed that networks and apps required, and the 1.0 cryptos failed to iterate fast enough. There were too many scammers in crypto 1.0 and not enough genuine innovators. Bitcoin went to a sub $100 value (compared to 10,000 to 60,000 in the 2020 – 2022 range) as a residual store of cultural historic value (like gold). The bust of crypto 1.0 around 2035, led to the Great Reset.
But, out of the rubble of crypto 1.0 came two intertwined technologies that shape our future in 2072
Much like how fertilizer was invented out of the hunger crisis in the 1800s, so did DAOs evolve to DOOs (or DAO 2.0). These digitally native contracts and “organisations” came to be the organizational backbone of the internet 4.0. Not quite as originally envisaged in the 2010, they embodied governance ideas arising from the OpenSpace Democractic movement but embodied into digitally native applications.
The second application was “intelligent” AI.
As an aside, there was a movement that had grown in the 2020s worried about rogue AI (called the alignment problem). This turned out – thank fully – to be a great big nothing. It was mostly resolved when a passing computer scientist mentioned it to the mathematical genius, Terry Tao*, around 2029.17
In the language of mathematics this type of rogue AI was simply proven to be impossible the way our digital coding was built. And Tao proved this. Tao ended up proving or disproving many of the mathematical problems of the 200os to 2050s, and ideas of which we still in 2072 have not found a use for.
This AI intelligence was unlike human intelligence. In some ways, it was much greater for it could perform calculations and “expected value” calculations surpassing humans. But it was still limited in other ways, but it proved astonishingly efficient at solving problems that DAO/DOOs could then implement on the web 4.0 backbone.
So crypto 1.0 failed, but DAO/DOOs were born and AI flourished but with no rogues. These DOOs helped solved many of the innovation climate challenges mentioned above.
Health: Global life expectancy hit 97 years old
Global life expectancy hit 97 in 2072, and the leading nations have life expectancy in the 100 – 110 range. Health experts show that this was a trend that started in 1950 and added in an almost linear fashion 6 – 12 months of added life a year.
Certain major diseases were eradicated close to zero including malaria, HIV, hepatitis C and most viral infectious diseases. The breakthrough for these came via mRNA which came of age in the COVID pandemic of the 2020s.
This was accelerated by the near miss of the 2033 Red Death Pandemic (and the 2035 Nuclear Near Miss). The 2030s were a type of great upheaval in technology and innovation.
Other notable healthcare interventions stemmed from the 2021/2022 breakthroughs in protein folding (cf Deep Mind), and the continuing advances in cell therapy and gene therapy.
This lead to a <1% death rate for childhood cancers in 2072 (although it was already <20% by 2022 in many countries) which were many blood cancers whose biology became well understood by 2040.
The breakthrough in understanding came from a combination of enhanced computing power, AI directed learning and three particular individuals who made break through understandings in immunology-inflation pathways.
Obesity rates dramatically fell from 40 - 50% in 2022 in the US, to <10% in 2072. (Helped by the JE and LOBD movements noted above). However, obesity was not completely eradicated. A mix of understanding of the leptin-GLP-1-insulin pathways (starting with the anti-obesity drugs that were launched in 2021 – 2022) to treat obesity, and enhanced food behavior understanding (with the eradication of un-nutritious fast food by 2040) lead to this drop. However, it remains the case that certain people have genetics that predisposes them to obesity challenges, which medicine has not yet solved.
Dementia and Alzheimer’s is another area where there has been partial success. We understand the biology of certain types of dementia – in particular the degradation from inflammatory pathways – and we can identify in advance those at risk and have medication that slows to an almost halt this type of degeneration. However, some types of neuro-degeneration we do not yet still understand and once it starts, we can not prevent.
Looking at these causes of death in 2019, cardiovascular death rate halved, as did cancers, diabetes, nutrition related and neonatal.
The leading cause of death has become mechanical organ failure due to wear and tear and degradation for long life. Ie most people in the world in 2072 are now dying of old age.
A few side notes on risks avoided.
There were a few challenges. Some of our great advances against infectious diseases came post the Great Red Death, when the death toll (along with persuasive OSD polling) lead to significant health investments. The Great Nuclear Near Miss led to a de-escalation of nuclear weapons (China persuaded Russia, and all nuclear arms holders were compensated for de-escalation). These “get worse before it gets better” it terms of risk was outlined by Leopold Aschenbrenner back in 2020-2021*.18
The world in 2072
The world has made amazing progress both in terms of social progress (how it treat non-human animals; disability, social opportunity), in its arts and culture, in its wealth and perhaps most importantly in its health and climate challenges.
People in 1972 could not imagine the world of 2022. People of 2022 could not imagine the world of 2072. People in 2072 can not imagine the world of 2122. Thus do humans progress.
Audrey Tang, 2022 Podcast https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/audrey-tang-what-we-can-learn-from-taiwan/. Tang’s view on touch screen available on YT videos.
More on OST: Here https://openspaceworld.org/wp2/what-is/
Polis https://pol.is/home
Irish Citizens assembly: https://citizensassembly.ie/en/
This was noted by Ezra Klein in 2022 and discussed by Alec Stapp (progress policy wonk): https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2022/2/28/alec-stapp-policy-for-progress-under-researched-areas-science-of-science-biosecurity-podcast
Short blog noting Deep Mind: https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2021/8/22/speed-of-technological-progress-in-some-areas
PG: http://www.paulgraham.com/
Podcast on it here: https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2021/11/22/zeke-hausfather-state-of-climate-science-energy-systems-post-cop26-tipping-points-tail-risks-podcast
But covered well by many eg Carbon Brief, Noah Smith.
Drawdown has a number of solutions and approximate CO2 savings: https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions