How Energy Consumption Will Change Our Planet Over the Next 500 Years

What's the future of Earth? Not humanity broadly, but Earth specifically. Conversations about interplanetary expansion are dime a dozen in Silicon Valley, mostly thanks to the work Elon Musk is doing at SpaceX. Everyone pretty much assumes that humanity will expand from Earth to Mars before moving on to the outer planets and moons. This process of solar expansion has been described in many science fiction stories, my favorite of which has to be the Expanse. But what about Earth specifically? Regardless of whether or not certain groups of humans move on to other planets or solar systems, it seems reasonable to assume that Earth will continue to grow as an ecosystem for life, barring, of course, an extinction level event. I'm John Coogan, and here's what Earth could look like in the future. In the middle of 2020, some researchers at the Strelka Institute created a framework for analyzing the future of Earth. Instead of looking at various technological developments and trying to analyze how they might compound, they instead focused entirely on energy consumption. Energy consumption is an extremely useful metric for understanding civilizational progress. In 1964, Nikolai Kardashev created a quantitative scale to describe three different types of civilizations. A type 1 civilization would be able to access all of the energy available on its planet. For reference, humanity is currently around 0.6 and should reach type 1 in the next couple of hundred years. Type II would be a civilization capable of harnessing all of the energy of its home star. While doing this would be incredibly complex, Freeman Dyson hypothesized it would be possible with a Dyson sphere.

Could this be a Dyson sphere? The object does fit the general parameters of Dyson's theory. A Dyson sphere. It's a very old theory, number one. I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of it. In the 20th century, a physicist called Freeman Dyson postulated the theory that an enormous hollow sphere could be constructed around a star. This would have the advantage of harnessing all the radiant energy of that star. And any population living on the interior surface would have virtually inexhaustible sources of power. Are you saying you think there are people living in there? Possibly a great number of people, commander. The interior surface area of a sphere this size is the equivalent of more than 250 million Class M planets.

A Type 3 civilization basically controls all of the energy in their entire galaxy. An alien race this advanced would probably appear godlike to us. Both type 2 and type 3 civilizations require massive expansion beyond the confines of Earth and could be thousands or even millions of years away. But getting to Type one is actually pretty feasible for Humanity, if current trends continue. Humanity is currently producing 18 terawatts of electricity, placing us around 0.6 on the Kardashev scale. While 06 may appear close to 1, the scale is logarithmic, so moving up one increment after the point means 10 times the energy. To get to Kardashev Level 1, our energy production will need to be 10,000 times higher than current levels. If we look backward at humanity's energy production, finding a time where humans controlled 10,000 times less energy than they do now requires going back more than 12,000 years to when we were hunter gatherers. But our growth in energy production is exponential, roughly 2% per year. So we're not 12,000 years away from reaching Kardashev 1 or K1 levels. If we extrapolate that 2% annual growth rate into the future, you can see that we should reach K1 levels of energy production within the next 500 years. But the exact date that we reach K1 depends a lot on the average growth rate, called gamma, that we assume for the future. Over the last 150 years, the growth rate has been 2.6%, but that has slowed to just 2% over the past 40 years. Regardless, if positive growth rates continue, meaning Gamma is positive, K1 is inevitable. So how will ever increasing energy consumption affect our planet? In order to answer this question, we need to consider the first law of Energy can be transformed from one form to another, but it can neither be created nor destroyed. This means that the energy we use on Earth is inevitably released as waste heat before it's radiated into space. This would create another form of climate change, completely separate from the greenhouse effect and much harder to counteract. Physicists estimate that a temperature increase of 12 degrees centigrade would create a doomsday scenario. And at K1 levels of energy consumption, the waste heat alone would raise Earth's temperature past this doomsday level and require massive structural changes in the way our world operates in order to survive. Even if we rely on solar energy exclusively, Earth will still reach a direct heating doomsday before reaching K1 levels of energy consumption. Unfortunately, the laws of thermodynamics are impossible to bypass directly, so we will have to adapt. There are tons of ways that Earth could adapt along the way to K1, but it's useful to consider two primary dimensions along which these adaptations could occur. The first dimension would be where we choose to use the majority of our energy on Earth or in space. Pushing energy usage into space via satellites would allow the Earth to maintain Livable temperatures while keeping energy consumption within the atmosphere would require significant changes to life on Earth. The second dimension we should consider would be the way in which we produce energy, as this affects the direct heating timeline. If we choose to focus on solar energy and cover the planet in photovoltaic cells, Earth becomes black. On the other end of this spectrum is a blue Earth, where the majority of energy is produced via fusion and leaves some of Earth's surface available for other uses. Based on these variables, we can imagine four extreme scenarios, each at the edges of these trade offs. The first is black marble, which represents the scenario most affected by direct heating. In this future, humanity has been extremely inefficient in energy production and unable to expand beyond our atmosphere due to space junk. Consequently, the Earth is now covered in solar panels and the entire society lives inside of a dome. The Earth is completely climate controlled and the majority of humans spend their time in virtual reality, much like the future depicted in Ready Player one. This outcome is possible if we don't optimize our technologies before it's too late. At a certain point, once the effects of direct heating are inevitable, the only solution is to use even more energy to control the climate artificially. The second scenario is the opposite of the black marble, and we'll call it Arcology. This is a future where most energy is used off Earth, thanks to the development of megastructures that extend into space. This leaves the remainder of the planet's surface for agriculture and the cultivation of biodiversity. This is an extremely efficient Society with just 2 billion human inhabitants, all focused on fighting against excess entropy in order to avoid destroying Earth's atmosphere from direct heating. Industry is located on the Moon, where a solar base beams energy back to Earth and new energy intensive construction can be completed off Earth. The third scenario, called Half Earth, considers what the world would be like if humans no longer existed at all. On Half Earth, an artificial General intelligence runs the planet, which is entirely robotic. This AGI is entirely focused on expansion at all costs and no longer needs to worry about direct heating or Earth's atmosphere at all. The goal is to mine materials until the construction of the first Dyson sphere can be completed, before moving on to other solar systems and continuing to expand from there. This is the most aggressive scenario by far, which with most energy generated by fusion, all resources are mere inputs, helping to expand and conquer the universe. The last scenario considers what would happen if humans were able to evolve into photosymbionts and overcome the limitations of traditional human forms. Photosymbionts are genetically modified humans that are capable of autotrophy through photosynthesis. This would obviate the need for traditional farming and allow humanity to use energy on Earth much more efficiently. In this world, energy is abundant and atmospheric engineering has redistributed sunlight more evenly across the planet's surface, allowing for higher biomass production efficiency. Temperatures are level across the Earth's surface, and 1 trillion sentients are flourishing in the tropical and subtropical zones. These four scenarios represent just two different the type of energy production and the location of its consumption. As you can see, the these variables allow us to predict radically different futures, and there are obviously many other possible futures. So what's the takeaway here? Well, this type of parameter driven projection methodology is useful because it shows us that the future is indeterminate and humanity still has an incredible amount of agency regarding how we progress as a species. It's quite common in Silicon Valley to hear particular thought leaders share singular visions of the future, often in service of the particular project they are working on at the moment. But I think it's more useful to imagine multiple scenarios and the decisions that might lead to each one, as for which future I think is most likely and which future I would most like to see. Personally, I'll be covering that in a future video, so please consider subscribing.