Humanity faces existential threats from natural planetary forces and its own unsustainable growth, necessitating radical technological interventions, including geoengineering and space-based infrastructure, to ensure long-term survival and a stable planet.
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In 1815, a mysterious veil of dust began
to spread over the Earth.
The culprit was a remote East Asian volcano:
Mount Tambora.
It was the largest eruption in modern history,
spewing out 80 cubic kilometers of debris
and taking up to 100,000 lives.
But even this was just a fraction
of what Earth is capable of.
Super Volcanoes, like the ancient eruption of Mount Toba in Indonesia,
can unleash 50 times the power,
and 30 times the amount of debris.
An eruption of this scale today would be catastrophic,
potentially claiming up to 1 billion lives.
There are about 20 active Super Volcanoes on Earth today,
sleeping beasts that present an
even greater threat than asteroid strikes.
Instead of waiting for them to explode
what if we could steal their energy
and use it for ourselves?
One NASA engineer has a proposal for exactly that.
The idea is to drill a series of boreholes
several kilometers deep around the outside of the magma chamber.
Cold water would then be injected down into the rock,
become superheated,
then get pumped back to the surface to carry the heat away,
gradually cooling the magma.
The location of the boreholes will be critical:
Drilling too close to the chamber itself
would risk triggering an accidental eruption.
But if done right,
the superheated water removed from below
would provide a continuous source of renewable energy.
And over tens of thousands of years,
the energy removed may eventually be enough
to cool the chamber completely.
To fully protect civilization,
we will have to neutralize
not just every existing Super Volcano,
but all future ones.
Magma plumes from Earth's mantle
are continually bubbling to the surface.
These plumes will continue to trigger
super volcanic eruptions as often as every 50,000 years.
Learning to harness these forces
could mean the difference between
catastrophic collapse,
and the long-term survival of humanity.
But it's not just Super Volcanoes
we will have to manage.
From the lithosphere to the atmosphere,
each of Earth's layers are prone to shocks
that can threaten civilization and life itself.
Our job is to protect and manage these layers with the power of technology,
to build a safer, more livable planet where life and humans
can thrive together for millions of years.
And creating a safer planet
starts with creating a safer climate.
In 1991,
the eruption of Mount Pinatubo
ejected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere,
reflecting sunlight around the world,
and causing global temperatures to fall
up to half a degree celsius for nearly two years.
The cooler temperatures even slowed the pace
of sea level rise for the next decade.
With global temperatures and climate catastrophes on the rise,
this event inspired a bold idea:
artificial volcanic eruptions.
Like putting sunscreen on the Earth,
spraying sulfur dioxide high in the stratosphere
would reflect sunlight and temporarily cool the planet.
A single ounce of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere
can offset the warming effects
of several tons of carbon dioxide for a year.
Dusting the sky would have an immediate effect,
buying us time to decarbonize the global economy.
But there’s a catch.
The exact effects may be unpredictable and uneven.
Weather patterns could become erratic
and threaten food supplies.
With so much at stake, the fight for control over Earth’s climate
could even escalate into armed conflict.
A team at MIT has developed a concept
for a giant solar shield out in space,
thousands of kilometers across.
Placed where the gravitational pull
from the Sun and Earth balance out,
it could reduce sunlight by 1.8%,
just enough to bring temperatures down to pre-industrial levels.
The shield would be made of silicon bubbles,
inflating out in space to ease their transport,
and deflating if the solution needed to be reversed.
To block enough sun,
this solar shield would have to be absolutely massive...
about the size of Brazil.
Others have proposed systems of space mirrors
to precisely redirect sunlight,
which could be used to increase solar radiation
if temperatures drop too low in the future.
Large-scale ecosystem engineering
can go a long way in securing the stability of Earth’s systems.
In 2007, The United Nations
launched the Great Green Wall Initiative:
a huge effort to plant a 5,000-mile belt of trees
across the entire African Continent.
This vast new forest will not only suck up
a quarter billion tons of carbon,
but also combat desertification,
increase food security
and create millions of jobs.
Managing our planet effectively will require
forging deep alliances with the biosphere.
That includes preservation of natural carbon sinks
like the amazon rainforest,
which are a critical ecological counterweight
to human activity.
But in some cases,
that may also mean bioengineering new forms of life itself.
By tweaking the machinery of photosynthesis,
scientists have recently created plants
that grow up to 40% larger than their natural counterparts,
hinting at a future of radically enriched crops and plant life.
They have also begun to engineer algae
that convert sunlight into clean-burning hydrogen fuel...
And microbes that have been reprogrammed
to generate electricity from mud and wastewater.
But most dramatically,
we are now on the path to creating
a hybrid woolly mammoth,
by tweaking the genes of asian elephants.
These creatures could be reintroduced to the arctic,
where they would help keep the permafrost frozen
and prevent billions of tons of C0² from leaking into the air.
Genetic engineering could become
our most potent tool for managing the planet...
maintaining ecological balance
and making the biosphere more diverse and resilient.
The wonders of the future may not be built
with concrete or circuits,
but with cells.
These are mechanical trees.
They mimic the real thing by soaking up carbon
onto special plates that act like leaves…
once captured, the carbon can be buried or recycled,
and the cycle repeats.
A single one of these machines
can sequester as much carbon as a thousand living trees.
Vast forests of artificial trees
could be deployed in inhospitable regions,
and with 100 million of them,
we could offset our entire carbon emissions.
Excess carbon dioxide in the oceans is weakening food chains
by causing the water to become more acidic.
Pulverizing a part of barren sea bed would allow rock particles
to soak up the excess C0² and restore balance to the waters.
A single nuclear bomb, placed 5 kilometers beneath the sea bed,
could shatter enough rock to sequester 30 years of carbon emissions.
The bomb would have to be massive.
potentially over a thousand times more powerful than Tsar Bomba,
the largest nuclear bomb ever dropped.
But the deep sea water pressure
would contain the blast and minimize fallout.
The best location could be
the remote Kerguelen plateau,
where the seafloor is mostly barren, and rich in basalt rock.
This is geoengineering at its most extreme,
and most dangerous.
But preserving the oceans and millions of human lives
makes even the most extreme ideas worth considering.
For a safer way to manage the seas,
we don’t have to go far from shore.
Artificial reefs, built from sunken ships and man-made materials,
can become bustling marine cities,
with some studies showing fish abundance
increasing up to 20 times compared to bare seabed.
Widespread artificial reefs could boost
the ocean's natural carbon drawdown by offering habitats
for trillions of corals, shellfish, and seaweeds
that capture carbon during their growth.
On a massive scale,
these reefs could offer powerful natural defenses,
reducing erosion and storm surges
by absorbing wave energy.
But managing our planet’s hydrosphere
is about more than protecting our oceans...
it means preserving the glaciers and ice sheets
that cool the world and hold back rising seas.
This is the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica,
a massive ice sheet that spans 75 miles…
Rising ocean temperatures are causing warm oceanic currents
to wind their way underneath the glacier,
causing it to crack and destabilize.
If it collapses into the sea,
it could trigger up to 10 feet of sea level rise,
flooding coastal cities around the world.
To avert disaster,
a geoengineer at the university of Lapland has a bold plan.
The idea is to construct a massive 100 kilometer long
underwater curtain around the glacier,
designed to block warm ocean currents
from reaching the underside of the ice.
This vast undersea barrier would be engineered
to withstand collisions with icebergs,
and could be removable if problems arise.
At the opposite pole of the planet,
ambitious proposals are being made
to stop the loss of arctic sea ice.
Vast fleets of wind-powered pumps
could draw seawater to the surface during the winter,
and spray it over the arctic surface,
where it would rapidly freeze in the frigid air.
An american architect has recently designed a polar umbrella,
which would float in arctic seas,
using solar power to harvest sea water and create new ice.
Deployed in the fastest melting regions,
these umbrellas would cast a cooling shade
that would lower surface temperatures
and rejuvenate the arctic ice.
But most of these grand solutions have a common problem:
they each require enormous amounts of resources and energy.
Where do we get the power and materials?
and how will the insatiable demand for energy
shape Earth’s future?
For the last two centuries,
our energy use has been growing exponentially,
surging over 7,000% and fueling a one-hundred fold increase
in global economic output.
Continuing this level of growth will eventually require
generating hundreds of trillions of additional watt-hours every single day.
But thanks to revolutions in solar power efficiency,
covering just 0.3% of the Earth’s surface in solar panels
would be enough to power all of civilization.
And the frontier for our solar powered future
will be one of the least livable regions of the planet:
the deserts.
Deserts provide ideal conditions for solar power
with their vast, flat landscapes, abundant silicon, and constant sunlight.
There are now proposals for massive scale solar farms in the Sahara,
capable of generating four times our current global energy usage.
But covering over 20% of this desert
could have dramatic side effects.
The increased heat absorbed by the dark solar panels
could disrupt global weather patterns
and cause a spike in temperatures, especially at the poles.
No matter how or where we get our energy,
producing too much on-planet will eventually be deadly.
If our consumption grows at just 2% per year,
we will use up all the energy available to Earth
in as little as a few hundred years.
But the real problem is that
the waste heat from energy production at this scale
would heat the Earth by over 20 degrees Celsius,
which would make large parts of the planet uninhabitable.
This will be the defining challenge
of the coming millennia.
How do we balance continuous energy growth
with a safe stable planet?
By placing large-scale solar power arrays in space,
we could capture uninterrupted sunlight
nearly 24 hours a day,
then beam the power down as lasers or radio waves.
Orbital power systems would shed their excess heat
into the cold expanse of space,
instead of heating up our atmosphere.
China is now planning a 1 kilometer wide solar array,
with the long-term goal of beaming gigawatt-levels
of clean electricity down from orbit.
And a team from Oxford is planning an even bigger station,
1.7 kilometers across, called Casseiopia,
designed to be built in orbit.
But collecting the power in space and beaming it down
still has its own waste heat problems,
as energy is still being added to the Earth system.
The solution is to move our power hungry industries entirely
into space.
This way, the energy can be collected,
spent, and radiated completely
outside of Earth’s fragile system.
And to get all this material into space efficiently,
we need something incredibly audacious:
Like a highway to the skies,
a space elevator would open safe and easy passage
to the next technological frontier,
enabling the buildout of next-generation space infrastructure.
To build it, a cable over 36,000 kilometers long
would be lowered from a counterweight out in space,
then anchored to a port station on the equator.
A space station could then be positioned at geostationary orbit,
at the point where the gravitational and centrifugal forces balance out.
Laser or nuclear powered rail cars
would ascend the cable, carrying multiple tons of cargo at a time,
which could drive launch costs down
to under a hundred dollars per kilogram,
fifty times cheaper than today.
This could accelerate the mass production of solar power arrays,
orbital data centers, research stations, and space ports,
laying the foundation for a new orbital frontier.
But building this beanstalk to the heavens
would be a daunting engineering prospect,
requiring tether materials far stronger
than anything that exists today.
And moving human industry into space
comes with its own major risks,
especially space debris.
Tiny pieces of scrap metal as small as a fleck of paint
can tear through satellites and infrastructure,
creating even more debris,
and causing a chain reaction of destruction
known as the Kessler Syndrome.
To solve this,
A.I. guided laser systems could rapidly identify
and deflect small debris,
while larger pieces could be safely captured and deorbited.
If we can neutralize these risks,
then a space elevator could be just the beginning
of an even greater vision for our planet’s future.
This is the crown jewel of space infrastructure:
The orbital ring.
This superstructure could become
the backbone of our future civilization,
a hub for everything from energy and transportation
to climate management and tourism.
In its basic form, a simple ring of wire
would orbit the Earth around 200 kilometers up,
with a stationary platform magnetically levitated
above the spinning ring.
It could be built as a free-floating structure,
or be tethered to the Earth at multiple points.
Skyhooks and even hanging skyscrapers
could dangle beneath the ring, serving as launch points,
research hubs, or cities in the sky.
Rotating the inner side independently
would generate gravity through centrifugal force,
making the area habitable, and offering spectacular views.
While no current technology can simulate gravity on the outer edge,
it could still serve as a zone for microgravity industries
and research habitats.
An intricate network of rings could be built at different inclinations,
offering rapid point-to-point travel
almost anywhere on the planet.
These layers could extend far outwards,
even potentially networking with the moon.
But the sheer size of orbital rings would pose their own dangers.
A shadow the width of the ring itself
would sweep over the Earth each day.
For narrow rings,
this would have little impact on ecosystems below.
But wider rings, stretching over 1,500 kilometers,
could cause major disruptions to the climate,
blocking out the sun for an hour or more daily.
Building one would be a towering engineering feat,
as the ring would require tens of billions of tons
of raw materials,
and constant active computer control to prevent collapse.
To avoid impacting the Earth,
the resources could be mined from asteroids.
This may all seem like a far off dream.
But there are already proposals for prototype orbital rings
that cost as little as 9 billion dollars.
People and heavy cargo could be transported
along the ring networks to anywhere on Earth
in only a few hours.
Vast orbital cities and arable land could circle the planet,
and serve as new human frontiers.
And with energy and heavy industry woven into the ring,
we could scale our growth without disturbing the planet,
preserving Earth as a sanctuary for life.
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