Week 8 - Eric Valero

I was born in Houston, and at my birth the city was near the Gulf of Mexico, but not a coastal city. It took some time to travel from the city to the beach. When I returned 5000 years in the future, the situation was quite different. In 5000 years, the environment on Earth is still teeming with life- the atmosphere is similar to the Pliocene period of Earth's history. Rising levels of CO2 have allowed plant life to flourish by nourishing plants and raising global temperatures, resulting in a more tropical-like environment further from the equator. Sea life has struggled, on the other hand, as a result of rising ocean acidity, also from excess C02. Many coral reefs have died off as a result. Most notably, even with a modest 3M of sea level rise from partially melted glacier runoff (in the early Pliocene, sea levels were 40 M higher than today), Houston is now a coastal city. It is possible that further runaway greenhouse warming may some day submerge much of the world in oceans, reclaiming the land which was revealed as global temperatures dropped and sea levels plummeted in the ancient past. This is not likely though, as fossil fuel use has dropped entirely out of human behavior, it ran out long ago. Instead, nuclear, solar, wind, and other renewables power human activity. These carbon neutral power sources do not contribute to global warming. The beef industry also became economically unsustainable as the human population grew, and has been replaced by meatless alternatives for the vast majority of human consumption. This has also reduced the effects humans have on global warming. So, as it is, I can sit back in my future chair on my future coast in future Houston, enjoy the rising tide and warm weather, and take pleasure in the fact that the Earth did not provide us with enough resources to self destruct before scarcity forced us in another direction.