REMEMBER OIL? We used to be strung out on the stuff,
like junkies plugged into our Hummer engines. (And does
anyone recall those gas guzzlers?) Now we’re building
carbon-free nuclear power plants and carpeting the Sunbelt
with photovoltaic panels. We still use coal and oil, but we’re
much closer to attaining the Holy Grail of clean energy.
POWER
TURNING
UP
DOING IT 2.0
DOWNLOAD 2020’s BEST NEW FILM TO
YOUR IMPLAN T! SEX IN THE CI TY 10:
It’s the age of “teledildonics”—realistic
virtual sex that lets us be intimate
with long-distance partners via the
Internet (meaning Carrie doesn’t have
to be in the same room with Big). A variety
of libido-centric innovations have given humanity
new kinds of kink and altered the ways we have sex.
Drugmakers have yet to
find an effective treatment
for low sexual desire in
women, but computer pro-
grammers are making up
the difference. “We’ve done
things a certain way for
100,000 years, and now so-
cial networking is opening a
tunnel into our once private
homes and making a big
dent in our rituals,” says
British futurist Ian Pearson,
who believes artificial intel-
ligence and next-genera-
tion robotics could offer
amazingly realistic sexual
relations between man and
machine. That could mean
restoring sexual health to
people unable to have sex
via traditional methods; it
could also challenge our
definitions of monogamy.
That, at least, is the optimist’s version. Experts disagree on
what will actually keep the lights on in 2020. Nuclear is poised
for a comeback, though it’s unlikely that by 2020 the atom will
provide much more than the 8. 3 percent it offers today’s
domestic energy market. There are lots of innovative renew-
able options—biofuels from pond scum? kites in the jet stream
that harvest subspace winds?—but so far the race to commer-
cial viability hasn’t produced one cheap enough to compete
with coal, oil, and gas. So expect more of a slog than a race in
the next decade. We’ll generate more renewable energy by
2020, yet it won’t account for more than 10 percent of what
we need, according to the National Research Council. The
U.S. Department of Energy concurs—its 2010 Annual Energy
Outlook forecast for 2035
actually sees gains in fossil-
fuel usage.
Here’s the pessimist’s ver-
sion: The world’s thirst for
oil (and our sluggish invest-
ment in alternative energy)
means we will be caught
short when global crude
production reaches its lim-
its—and some experts say it
has already happened. That’s
the forecast of the Peak Oil
scenario, which posits that
the sharp decline in oil sup-
plies will trigger a sudden
economic collapse. “The era
of happy motoring is over,”
says social critic James
Howard Kunstler; his 2005
book, The Long Emergency,
describes a grim post-oil
world. Bottom line: Buy
sturdy shoes, because you’ll
be walking a lot. “Life in the
U.S.A. will become deeply
local and austere,” Kunstler
says. Ominously, he adds,
“The younger generation
will punish the boomers for
destroying their future.”
LOVE
& SEX
Says Pearson: “If people
can have great sex without
someone else present—or
with an image of, say, Clau-
dia Schiffer—they might
not want to develop long-
term relationships, or even
go to work. It’s dangerous.”
Others see another
twist on the birds and the
bees: “By 2020, break-
throughs in stem cell tech-
nology will allow
same-sex couples
to have their own
children,” says Eric
Klien of the Life-
boat Foundation, a
Nevada-based
think tank. “The
same goes for
people who are 70.”
