What Earth in 2050 could look like - Shannon Odell

While we’re already feeling the devastating effects of human-caused climate change, governments continue to fall short on making and executing emissions pledges that would help thwart further warming.

So, what will our world look like in the next 30 to 80 years if we continue on the current path? While it’s impossible to know exactly how the next decade will unfold, scientists and climate experts have made projections, factoring in the current state of affairs.

This future we’re about to describe is bleak, but remember there’s still time to ensure it doesn’t become our reality.

It’s 2050. We’ve blown past the 1.5 degree target that world leaders promised to stick to. The Earth has warmed 2 degrees since the 1800s, when the world first started burning fossil fuels on a mass scale. Reports on heatwaves and wildfires regularly fill the evening news. Summer days exceed 40 degrees in London and 45 degrees in Delhi, as extreme heat waves are now 8 to 9 times more common.

These high temperatures prompt widespread blackouts, as power grids struggle to keep up with the energy demands needed to properly cool homes. Ambulance sirens blare through the night, carrying patients suffering from heatstroke, dehydration, and exhaustion. The southwestern United States, southern Africa, and eastern Australia experience longer, more frequent, and more severe droughts.

Meanwhile, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Japan face more frequent heavy rainfall as rising temperatures cause water to evaporate faster and trap more water in the atmosphere. As the weather becomes more erratic, some communities are unable to keep pace with rebuilding what’s constantly destroyed. Many move to cities, where they face housing shortages and a lack of jobs.

A resource squeeze is felt in newborn intensive care wards, as the rising temperature and air pollution cause higher rates of premature and underweight births. More children develop asthma and respiratory disease, and rates balloon in communities regularly exposed to forest fire smoke. The global emissions added to the atmosphere each year finally start to level off, thanks to government action, but it’s decades too late.

We fail to reach net zero in time. As a result, by 2100 the Earth has warmed another 0.5 to 1.5 degrees. Over half of our remaining glaciers have melted. As the sea heats up, its volume increases due to thermal expansion. Together, this elevates sea level by well over a meter. Entire nations, like the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, are uninhabitable as large swaths of their islands are submerged.

Some islands, like the Maldives, spend billions building interconnected rafts that house apartments, schools, and restaurants that float above its drowned cities. Resettled climate migrants in Jakarta, Mumbai, and Lagos are forced to abandon their homes once again, as rising tides and extreme storms flood buildings and crumble infrastructure. Overall, 250 million people are displaced.

Some affluent cities like New York and Shanghai attempt to adapt, elevating buildings and roadways. Ten-meter-tall seawalls line the cities’ coasts. Children learn about extinct sea life which once inhabited the ocean’s reefs, all of which have vanished thanks to rising surface water temperatures. Grocery prices skyrocket, as food and water scarcity touch all communities.

Fruits and products long grown in the tropics and subtropics rarely show up on shelves, as intense heat waves paired with increasing humidity make it deadly for farmers to work outdoors. Unpredictable heatwaves, droughts, and floods cripple small-scale farmers in Africa, Asia, and South America, who previously produced one-third of the world’s food. Hundreds of millions of people are pushed into hunger and famine.

Climate predictions can feel overwhelming and terrifying. Yet many of the experts responsible for these assessments remain optimistic. Since countries have first begun taking steps to lower their emissions, warming projections have shifted downwards.

In less than a decade, we’ve reduced our projected emission rates so that we’re no longer on track to hit nearly 4 degrees of warming. Policies that invest in renewable energy sources, cut fossil fuel production, support electric transportation, protect our forests, and regulate industry can help mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

But climate experts have also stressed that current policies and pledges don’t go far enough—in speed or scale. Enacting real change will require bold solutions, innovations, and collective action. There’s still time to rewrite our future, and every tenth of a degree counts.