It’s Earth Day — yawn — and the Biden administration is doing all it can to ensure we leave future generations with a habitable planet. They just need to ban gas stoves and gas-powered cars and meat and have us all driving electric cars. No, forget the electric cars — we won’t need them, because we’ll all live in pod cities where everything we could ever need is within biking distance. Campaigning for Ron Fetterman, President Joe Biden told Pennsylvanians that he’d dedicated “over a billion 200, a trillion, 200 billion dollars” to halt climate change in its tracks.
USA TODAY has imagined what the U.S. could look like in 2050 if the country simply embraced green living. We’d been assured it was too late to do anything, but that goalpost has shifted several times.
For Earth Day 2023, USA TODAY invites you to envision the best instead of imagining the worst.
This is what life could look like in 2050 if the U.S. embraces green living. https://t.co/jSwTxiTMbn pic.twitter.com/Zb9vPvDrIJ
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 22, 2023
Even if America does embrace green living, it will be too late to save all the coastal cities (and Barack Obama’s house on Martha’s Vinyard).
Problems still remain, of course.
👉Many coastal cities are gone due to rising seas.
👉Multiple plant and animal species are on the brink.
👉Hotter, drier and more erratic weather has hurt farmers.
👉Migration is an ongoing social calamity.But it could have been much worse.
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 22, 2023
This is the bright side of achieving zero-emission economy:
🌡️ It was possible to keep global temperature rise below 2°Celsius (3.6°F).
🌊 Slower sea level rise provided more time to shift people inland.— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 22, 2023
How do Americans live in 2050?
🏙️ Cities are more compact and walkable, with easy access to green areas and transit.
🏠 Homes are cheaper to heat and cool.
🥩 Meat is less common in our diets.— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 22, 2023
Getting around in the zero-emission future:
🚗 Cars don’t fly but they are all-electric and increasingly self-driving + carsharing is more common in cities.
🚅 The U.S. focuses on building high-speed rail.
🛫 Air travel is expensive.— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 22, 2023
2050 carbon-neutral power mix:
🌞 A house without solar panels is as unthinkable as one without windows.
🌬️ Midwestern states become energy powerhouses due to their wind resources.
🌾 Agrovoltaics = growing crops and grazing cattle and sheep among solar panels or wind turbines.— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 22, 2023
Now, the million-dollar question: How much of a fantasy is this vision?⁰
The necessary technology already exists and is currently being deployed. But there’s a lack of political will to speed the process.https://t.co/F18qsotrEO
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 22, 2023
Do fuck off.
— Chica'sBailBonds (@IrinaMoises) April 22, 2023
Just a one-time donation of eleventy trillion dollars and we can LITERALLY stop hurricanes.
— DuncanDowntown (@DuncanDowntown) April 22, 2023
I'm a risk taker. I'll take my chances. Slow news day here.
— Brian Bosheff (@BrianBosheff) April 22, 2023
— Les Clay (@LesClay) April 22, 2023
Just had a plate of bugs for breakfast. I'm doing my part!
— StephenDouglas40 (@StephenDouglasZ) April 22, 2023
End goal…Communism.
— ClintReno1965 (@CReno196584801) April 22, 2023
End goal: Force the poors to live on top of each other in one bedroom apartments away from the coasts with no ability to commute alone or travel or eat healthy food while Party members get the prime land, food, and complete freedom to travel.
— Monkey (@salubrious_monk) April 22, 2023
They really think moving the great unwashed into the cities will cure everything. No one should own a house.
I imagine nuclear power being our primary energy source and @Tesla being the largest car manufacturer. But for some reason ya'll don't like that idea.
— The New Adventures of Henry (@Car94Hen) April 22, 2023
If “multiple” coastal cities are “gone” then why isn’t Dutch or danish or Belgium or any low country city underwater at the moment. If anything coastal expansion is on the rise in these regions and I see it with my own eyes.
— The College Historian (@h1st0rybrah) April 22, 2023
We don’t have time for this. Ukraine needs another trillion.
— Adam Mahoney (@MahoneyAdam) April 22, 2023
Imagining 2050 without USA Today is nice
— Man with No Name (@PD_GTA) April 22, 2023
Earth Day is just about global warming now. Another tool of the powerful to control the rest of us. The natural world needs new allies and new traditions.
— CaptainEli (@MaineEli) April 22, 2023
Electricity is flickering in your pod – the windmills are gummed up with dead sparrows & the equity rioters broke the solar panels. Cricket steaks in the mini-fridge stink as they thaw and "climate refugees" are rattling your doorknob. You have no car & nowhere else to go. 2050!
— RealCleverName (@CleverName5378) April 22, 2023
Oh STFU. We’ve been hearing this for years.
— Melinda Chavez (@melinda_chavez) April 22, 2023
Here's to 53 years of lies and hysteria. pic.twitter.com/sdSgH3j3cW
— Jakov Gourevits 🇩🇪 (@solr22) April 22, 2023
And they use clown Michael Mann as one of their expert scientists on the issue.
***
Related:
Biden made a 5,000-mile Earth Day round trip in AF1 to announce ‘climate friendly’ US military (and more WTF moments) https://t.co/5HVdVyXh54
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) April 22, 2022
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