Clara and the Sun

A short story about a bright future

This is an atypical post but one I very much enjoyed creating. It is a short story I wrote for Terra.do as a visioning exercise with the prompt “It’s 2040 and we are on the path to solving climate change.”

Created with DALL-E 2

I can feel the morning sun on my face. It must be time to wake up and go downstairs to help out with breakfast. It’s a different routine, being home for the holidays. Long walks in the woods, small town living, no chance to sleep in until lunchtime. I miss my friends, but I don’t miss the snow. When you grow up in the southern hemisphere you know that Christmas and New Years are best celebrated in the summer. Okay, enough procrastination. Lots to do. Must wake up. On the count of three: 1… 2… 3… get up, Clara.

Right, I almost forgot: happy new year! I can’t believe it’s 2042 already. Last year went by so blazing fast. A few more months as a student, then real life begins: a proper job, a cubicle in the city, a motorbike. Or maybe I’ll just sign up for a self-drive car share for a while and save some money. I won’t even need a license.

I am getting ahead of myself. I have to finish college first, and Prof. Shields gave us homework to do over the holidays, if you can believe that: “It's 2085 and we have climate change under control.” I know it’s important as a soon-to-graduate environmental engineer to set myself a vision of what I’ll have accomplished by the time I retire. But how on earth am I supposed to know what will happen 40-plus years from now? That's the stuff of science fiction. I'll be 65 then, an old lady surrounded by the grandchildren, confused about whatever new tech they’re wearing. Just like grandma. That’s if they don’t all decide to go study abroad like I did. What can I say, the travel bug and the obsession with climate run in the family. Both, actually, in the case of my uncle, who back when I was still a toddler decided he was going to save the world from the climate crisis, or some other grandiose vision. An inspiration for my own path, truth be told. At least I have someone to talk to who is as obsessed about it as I am.

So, let’s say it’s 2085 and we have it all under control. But what does ’under control’ even mean? People have done all the right things for twenty years and the heat waves keep coming. Wet-bulb 35 is such a regular occurrence that it doesn’t even register in the headlines anymore.

The weather has been punishing these past few years. They say it will get worse before it gets better, even with most targets on track. People were late getting started and we are paying for it now. Even though emissions peaked in 2040 we will blow past the 1.5C target in just the next few years and are heading to 2C of warming by the end of the century. That knowledge would have made people freak out in the early twenties, but as it turns out it’s not all doom and gloom. The latest models show that the feared 2C will be much less severe compared to early projections. True, we are seeing heat waves that are longer and hotter, the rains are heavier, and the tides are a little wackier than even I can remember. But almost everywhere people have learned to deal with the new climate, they’ve adapted. Cities are becoming more resilient, there is less flooding. The clean energy revolution of the twenties truly democratized access to cheap energy and led to the vertiginous pace of development we are seeing in Asia and Latin America. Much of Africa did lag behind (why does Africa always get the short straw?) but that is finally changing. Community microgrids have brought electricity to the remotest corners of the continent and everyone is saying that the forties will be Africa’s decade. Extreme poverty will be in the rearview mirror, consigned to a period one day to be seen as the first baby steps of civilization.

There is more good news: if we continue to do our homework we will hit peak warming before the turn of the century. After that, the climate should start to cool and we will at last hit the 1.5C target. Maybe cooling will go on further and some day the world will be back to the temperatures of the mid 19th century. Back to good old-fashioned climate change cycles on a geologic timescale. Normal Climate, they like to call it.

That’s it, that’s what I want to see in 2085: by then we’ll have ten years of net zero behind us and gone into net negative. In fact, scientists will have to start considering the effects of too little carbon in the atmosphere once we get back to 400ppm and it keeps falling. Maybe in the 22nd century they will have to start winding down those expensive direct air capture projects. My great-grandchildren will get to experience what the earth climate was like when my great-grandparents were young. It feels right, seeing myself at the center of that bell curve, having lived through the worst that climate change could throw at us, knowing that it wasn’t as bad as once thought, and knowing that it only gets better for future generations.

I want to paint a clearer picture of what I am seeing.

It’s easy to envision the energy side of things. As of now, solar is already everywhere. The same sunlight that shines through that tiny northeast facing window to wake me up each morning is also powering this entire old house. Many homes also have a battery backup (two if you count the car, of course.) Natural gas is still used for a lot of the heating and cooking but it is expensive so people are rushing to electrify to save money. And I have to ask, what genius ever thought that open flames and toxic flammable gas running through pipes in every building was a good idea? I am sure that in 2085 people will remember with horror how little thought we gave to preparing our meals on devices that leaked toxic gas and were liable to burn a house down. You don’t know how screwed up the situation you’re in is until you can look back on it.

Still, today we get a lot of the electricity from burning methane. It turns out that you can’t run a power grid on renewables alone because it’s not always sunny, and it’s not always windy. It’s now painfully clear that even rivers don’t flow all the time. At least coal was phased out in the thirties, what a win that was. We are now seeing the next generation of small and safe nuclear reactors finally come online to clean up the grid for good. The final triumph of uranium over hydrocarbons. And yet, fission will end up being transitory too: by 2085 those modular fusion reactors will be ready to power the entire globe. The sun in a box. Humanity will finally know what it’s like to live in a world of limitless cheap energy for everyone. And limitless cheap helium balloons too, now that I think of it.

At that point all manufacturing should be free of emissions too as there will be no reason to burn dirty and expensive fossil fuels. Since the cement problem was already solved a while ago, today people are working to decarbonize steel and by the end of the century we’ll have also solved plastics and moved on to other products. It will take some time to tick all the boxes, but sure enough we’ll have clean industrial processes all around and carbon will become circular, the little of it still needed captured and then reused to make other stuff.

It’s fun to imagine a completely decarbonized transportation industry too. In 2085 we will have solved the hard problem of long-distance and heavy loads with hydrogen and biofuels. Shorter flights might become the norm too. Last month when coming back for the holidays I took an electric short haul then a conventional long haul. Maybe one day I’ll get to fly electric exclusively by doing a few more hops along the way.

Cars, as you know, are already mostly electric after all countries managed to smash their own targets. It all happened pretty quickly once automakers realized there was no business sense in continuing to sell those noisy, smelly, clunky machines they used to make. People still drive them, of course. But it’s not always easy to get them refueled these days. Mom says that it was the other way around when battery cars first showed up. It’s difficult to picture that now, being so easy to get a top-up anywhere you go. There are rumors that the buybacks will start soon and that should do away with the remaining dirty fleet.

Once that happens, in 2085 the city air will get cleaned up. Quieter, too. Bliss! A revolution in urban design will follow: green buildings, green sidewalks and green fences will line the cityscape as plants finally have an urban environment where they can thrive.

Speaking of green, agriculture proved to be the hardest sector to decarbonize. Clean energy wasn’t enough, the problem was centuries and generations of practices that were difficult to unlearn. But there too we made progress: regen produce has gotten a lot cheaper after the global emissions tax went into effect. The rise in temperatures is worrisome for farmers but not as much as people initially thought. With all the innovation in plant genetics we were able to keep crops in the same places as before, even with all that fickle weather.

The biggest problem today is there are lots of mouths to feed, and most of those mouths want to be fed meat. Gross. At least none of my friends eat animals. There are so many great alternatives nowadays, not like when I was little. I am not proud to admit this, but I did eat animal meat growing up. No other good options back then, I guess. Today you can go to the store and buy real meat that doesn’t come from an animal and it’s impossible to tell the difference if you cook it right.

When we get to 2085 the impact of food production on the environment will be a fraction of what it is today. Quality protein consumption will be on the rise and meat from animals on the decline once societies wake up to the absolute horror show that is factory farming. The world will be growing a lot more food to feed two billion additional mouths, but on less land than was needed in 2020! We will have learned to grow more in less space, making more room for all the rewilding projects. Vertical indoor farms with circular use of fertilizer and water will be possible in every town, every village, every city block.

What’s more, subsistence agriculture will have made a big comeback as a lifestyle. Since it’s now easy for anyone to go live off the grid (or rather, have a grid of their own) and because cities will be so much denser, there will be more space for nature and for those who want to live in it.

Fin. That’s my dream for the future. Talk about having a grandiose vision!

I can smell breakfast. I’ll get scolded for not helping. So be it, at least the assignment is done and I get to stare at the sun shining through the window a while longer. So many formidable araucarias out there. Grandpa once told me that some of them are as old as the house. They bring to mind the joyous celebrations all over the country a year ago on account of five continuous years of growth for the Amazon. The forest is now on track to being restored to its original size and full glory in my lifetime. Except that’s not just a vision. It is happening right now because decades ago people chose to do things differently, to take action.

Okay, enough procrastination. On the count of three: 1… 2… 3… get up, Clara.

Clara is two years old as I write this. Whatever future we are building will be her generation’s to live in and build on. I hope her own vision for the future will be happier, grander, and kinder than anything I could describe here.

Clara, in the sun.

The title of this short story was inspired by Kazuo Ishiguro’s wonderful (and mostly unrelated) Klara and the Sun.

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