What Will 2050 Be Like?

Close your eyes and imagine what you think the year 2050 would look like. What do you see?

Flying cars?

High-rise buildings over smooth green lawns with beautiful flowers surrounding them?

Do you often think about the future and sigh with relief for you imagine it would be free from all the modern-day problems like pollution, disoriented garbage, and poverty?

I’m sorry to burst the bubble but the real 2050 would be exactly opposite to all of that. Imagine waking up and walking up to the window.

You won’t find a single leaf-laden tree. You proceed to make yourself a morning tea and switch on the 10-layer filter water purifier in your kitchen.

All the untreated chemical residues released from industries have settled their way into drinking water sources, so your water purifiers are now super smarter, better, and COSTLIER.

The lesser, richer sections of society have to either adjust or suffer from bad drinking water quality.

Why don’t they just boil the water?

If only natural gas was affordable. That is also a luxury left to the rich, who need to bid on auctions held exclusively to subscribe to natural gas!

You feel lucky about yourself, for you were born into a family that could manage these expenses.

You go for a walk outside your home to walk alongside a seashore rather than a so-called seashore.

You have made yourself used to seeing the carcasses of aquatic animals, the sight that once disgusted you as a kid.

You read in your history books that the color of the sea is colourless, but it’s visible as blue because of the colour of the sky.

Well, the sky still remains blue, but the colour of the water is now pale green, and the majority of it is covered with foam. By the way, no one eats fish nowadays.

Plantations now take place using soil rites instead of soil because wastewater run-offs have unfortunately spoiled the nature of soils and contaminated them.

For the same reason, a very high-quality, expensive diet is administered for farm animals who need to be taken care of with extreme care and control so they don’t run away to the ‘contaminated nature’ spoil their health and consecutively ruin the farmer’s business.

How does that feel? I haven’t even forecast what your skin looks like now.

All the chemicals that you use for cleaning at your homes have gradually harmed your skin so badly that ‘skin colour’ is now generic for green.

This is what 2050 is going to be like. And we are already taking steps toward this kind of future. I leave the conclusion to you.

The solution is not far, you know; it’s right in your hands, within the soil you stand on.

If you still haven’t figured it out, let me enlighten you about the oldest inhabitants of Earth, and I am not talking about cockroaches here.

The answer is in microbes, and we, among several others, are taking baby steps to avoid the future that was predicted up there.

Biotechnology is a promising field, and it is our only hope for a safe future and a safe existence.

And the future has always been in your hands, but now, it is in your choice.

Choose to shrug this article off like it’s just another piece of dramatic illusions of the future, or take it seriously and mend your ways by making the right choice.

The choice is yours.