This is what I really want to believe - that technology will ride in and save the day. I even think it is likely that new tech will emerge that can do it, but (and maybe this is my cynicism showing through) I believe powerful interests that stand to be harmed by the "new tech" will make sure it never gets off the ground. I sure hope I am wrong though!
I was at Disney World last week, and they have this neat thing called the Carousel of Progress. It basically shows a household in the early 1900's through to present time.
The interesting thing is how little has changed since then. There have been huge changes in communication, but other than that, the family of 100 years ago had an ice box, running water, etc. There were 130,000 cars in the country.
We marvel at our advances in medicine, but the biggest advances in life expectancy, from relatively simple techniques combatting child mortality, are long behind us. Life expectancy at age 65 has increased only 4 years (from 12 to 16) in the last 100 years.
In any given field, we see technology progress rapidly than plateau. Aerospace plateaued in the 1960's, for example. Even semiconductor technology, which has progressed at a breathtaking pace over the last half century, has improved markedly slower in this decade.
I think the faith in technology to save the day is misplaced. Improvements in energy technology peaked in the 1950's with the invention of nuclear power. Indeed, we still get most of our electricity from coal power plants that aren't dramatically different than they were 100 years ago (the city of Chicago just shut down two coal plants that are 100+ years old).
I have no doubt that technology will solve these problems, eventually. But the scenario in the article isn't something that might happen hundreds of years into the future. The projection is for 2050. I won't even have retired by then. We need a revolution to happen in the next 38 years, and I don't think one is forthcoming.
Life expectancy of a white male at 20 yrs was 62.1 in 1900 , 76.7 in 2004[1]. that's 14.5 years. And that's under somewhat harsher health conditions: more stress, bad diets, pollution and chemicals.
And don't forget what medicine for quality of life. for example the pill.
Other changes that happened in that time span: personal cars, affordable international travel, home air-conditioning, home cleaning automation, the microwave, pre cooked food,walmart prices.
The reason I looked at life expectancy at 65 is that it tells you how far medicine has come at addressing the fundamental biological limits on life--the answer is not very far. The premise behind the "technology will solve our climate change problem" is exactly that sort of science that will let us overcome what we now perceive as fundamental limits. It's breaking the sound barrier, not moderate improvements in life expectancy through better treatment of contagious diseases.
The other examples you mentioned don't come anywhere near the sorts of technologies that are necessary, and also happened quite long ago. The personal car was well on its way by 1910--almost a million cars on the road by 1912. The first regular international airline service was in 1919. Buildings were air conditioned starting in the 1920's. Frozen food dates to 1929. There have been dramatic in making these advancements cheaper since then, but they were already quite prevalent more than 80 years ago.
The time scale of global warming projections are not hundreds of years from now. In that time scale I can imagine revolutions in energy technology. 2050 is only 38 years away. For reference, NTT rolled out the first cell network in Japan about 33 years ago. The Xerox Alto came out 39 years ago, with most of the basic elements of modern GUI's: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/Alto_Neptune_F...
I meant that if we lived in the environment of 1900(most people living in villages in the u.s.?) and use current health and sanitation technologies , we would live even longer.
