The Year 3000

I'm a few days late for my weekly posting. I was waiting for some sort of inspiration and I just found it: Global Warming: Dire Prediction for the Year 3000.  The timing of this article is ironic because just yesterday I found myself pondering the year 3000. I'm not sure why; it's not something I regularly consider. I'm a young and spry 34 years old and I think about everything that's changed in my lifetime. I started out using a rotary phone and had a tiny black and white TV that had four fuzzy channels: 2, 3, 5, and 9. Now it seems like no one can live without their flat screen TV's with 500 channels, their internet, or their cell phones. When I was in grade school and saw my first computer is was an enormous, imposing machine that most people never used. Now they are the size of a piece of paper and we can't live without them. And our enviroment has changed so much in my 34 years. We've lost so many species and destroyed so much land. Until relatively recently industries were freely allowed to pollute our land, air, and water. On the other hand, we are more aware of environmental issues now. We recycle, we have laws in place lessen environmental pollution, we have NGO's advocating on behalf of animals, plants, ecosystems... It's overwhelming to even comprehend where (or if) we will be in the year 3000. What will Earth be like? From what I've read of this article, computer models show there is little hope for our world, even if we completely stop creating excess carbon dioxide. Luckily, researchers seem a smidge more optimistic and I am too. We can change things for the better. Just think about my 34 years-- where we quickly jumped from low tech to high tech, from mass consumerism to eco-friendly. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the 989 more years we have to go until 3000. The prediction doesn't have to be dire. Things certainly will be different but hopefully not dire.