New Scientist magazine’s chief reporter Adam Vaughan recently published “Net-zero living: how your day will look in a carbon-neutral world.” Here, he imagines what a typical day would be like in the future—through the lens of Isla, “a child today, in 2050”—after we’ve cut carbon emissions. Vaughan says “most of us are lacking a visualization of what life will be like at net zero” and acknowledges the writing is fiction: “By its nature, it is speculative – but it is informed by research, expert opinion, and trials happening right now.”

Isla lives in the south of the United Kingdom—will it still be a united kingdom in 2050?—and her life looks pretty much like life does today: She has a house, a car, a job, and a cup of tea in the morning. There are wind turbines, great forests, and giant machines sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It all sounds like a green and pleasant land, but it didn’t sound like the future to me.

It’s an interesting exercise, imagining what it will be like in 30 years. I thought I would give it a try: Here is some speculative fiction about Edie, living in Toronto, Canada in 2050.

The New Scientist article is illustrated with an image showing people walking and biking, turbines spinning, electric trains running, with kayaks, not cars. This is not an uncommon vision: There are many who suggest we just have to electrify everything and cover it all with solar panels and then we can keep on with the happy motoring.

I am not so optimistic. If we don’t keep the global rise in temperature to under 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) then things are going to get messy. So this story was not just a speculative fantasy but based on previous writing about the need for sufficiency and worries about the embodied carbon of making everything, with some notes from previous Treehugger posts:

  • Thanks to climate change, “Coffee plantations in South America, Africa, Asia, and Hawaii are all being threatened by rising air temperatures and erratic rainfall patterns, which invite disease and invasive species to infest the coffee plant and ripening beans.” More in Treehugger.
  • “Dwindling water supplies and below-average rainfall have consequences for those living in the West.” More in Treehugger.
  • “We’re witnessing the Third Industrial Revolution Playing out in real time.” More in Treehugger.
  • Tiny heat pumps for tiny spaces are probably going to be common. More in Treehugger.
  • Electric cargo bikes will be a powerful tool for low-carbon commerce. More in Treehugger.