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Course: Big History Project > Unit 10
Lesson 3: Looking Forward | 10.2- WATCH: A Big History of Everything - H2
- READ: Complexity and the Future
- WATCH: Bill Gates — Visions of the Future
- WATCH: The Deep Future
- READ: Satyendra Nath Bose - Graphic Biography
- READ: Biography of Sylvester James Gates, Jr.
- ACTIVITY: DQ Notebook 10.2
- ACTIVITY: The Future of Our Planet
- ACTIVITY: Threshold Card — Threshold 9 The Future
- Quiz: Looking Forward
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ACTIVITY: The Future of Our Planet
Purpose
This activity gets you to think about how to solve the problems that we may encounter in our future. It’s important not only to try to predict the challenges the Earth might face, but also to consider how we can either prevent those problems or discover ways to fix them if they’re inevitable.
Process
Think about the problem that you chose in Lesson 10.1 that you think will impact the planet in 100 years. Your job now is to come up with ways to solve the problem that you predicted is going to occur.
Think about the following two things:
1. A way to prevent the problem from ever occurring.
2. If the problem does occur, ways to either resolve or substantially lessen the problem.
For Further Discussion
Share your thinking in the Questions Area below. Then, expand upon someone else’s thinking to provide more ideas on how to prevent the problem or how to alleviate or resolve it in the future.
Want to join the conversation?
I choose Pollution.
Unfortunately the problem of pollution has already occurred, but there are ways to help eliminate it and possibly stop it. One of those ways would be making electric cars more affordable, which would mean making one generic model that didn’t take entirely too much to produce. It would have to take a short time to build so there was less money going into labor, the materials used would need to also be more affordable. By using electric cars we wouldn’t be using so much of the natural resource of gas and we wouldn’t be putting exhaust into the air.(6 votes)
problem is is that we don't have enough lithium to make a lot of electric cars.(1 vote)
Global warming. It's happening.
1) Well, you can try to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions, but chances are that carbon dioxide emissions will not be non-existent within 100 years.
2) I think that the released carbon dioxide could be used to create carbonic acid, which could be used in drinks, and possibly the purification of halogens. It could also be used to produce dry ice, or super-critical carbon dioxide, which has its uses in the dry-cleaning industry. Finally, to fix the global warming problem, I think that all buildings, monuments, vehicles, and whatever is on the planet should be painted white or yellow, and should be rather reflective. Maybe even people's clothes. Not only does this recreate a snowball earth, but it also helps with automobile safety. In the case that some person is driving a car, and is in a trajectory towards some object, the reflective properties will indicate an imminent crash to the driver. I think it could work.(3 votes)- The problem that I chose was also global warming and I chose this because it's not only taking its toll on us but it's hurting everything else including our animals. The only way to prevent the problem from happening would be to get a world wide following to make an effort on using environmentally safe energy and cutting down on our usage of fossil fuels. To deal with this problem occurring again would be seriously hard since these days no one wants to fix global warming and most people act like it's some governmental sham. The steps I would take to fix the problem if it ever happened again would be to organize yet another world wide following to gather help in using safe energy.(2 votes)
I am choosing global warming, since there's not really much else to talk about other than pollution, which is part of the reason of global warming anyways.
1. The problem won't ever not occur, since the sun gets more luminous and larger over time, there's just no way to eliminate the problem.
2. However, the problem is being accelerated by humanity. To help slow down the process, we could cut back on fossil fuels (especially when nuclear fusion plants are emerging, which are significantly more powerful and more stable than fission plants (as of 2024)). Also, we could see if we can extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to be used in products. CO2 is actually incredibly useful, just not in the atmosphere. Your favorite soft drink? Made from flavoring a mix of CO2 and H2O. You could attempt to separate the Oxygen and the Carbon, which kills two birds with one stone. A: Oxygen gets released into the atmosphere, and B: you get Carbon, which can be used for steel, pigment, and tons of everyday items. That's two uses for one of the many greenhouse gases that we could probably extract from the atmosphere.(1 vote)- The problem that I chose was global warming . The way to combat this global phenomena is to cut back on our use of fossil fuels by developing ways to harness and store sustainable energy such as energy from the sun and wind and water. From there we would work to preserve our forests so that they could continue to aid is in drawing co2 from the environment and prevent our ice caps from melting and the changes in the environment that could prove disastrous for our species and other species with whom we share this planet. If global warming does continue to occur and things get worse we would have to try and work to reverse the effects plant more, build upward not outward etc. it would be difficult but ultimately we have to take care of our planet.(1 vote)
- We can also try to protect the atmosphere by using technology to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it.(1 vote)
- The problem I chose was obesity. Exercise and clean eating should help with that.(1 vote)
- there's a lot of people who are fat, but there might not be any way to obliterate obesity though that's just a thing. Sorry to disappoint you.(1 vote)