A look into the future

Will we achieve the 1.5-degree climate target by 2040?

Marc Elsberg: If a miracle doesn’t happen soon, then yes, things are looking bad at the moment. But that need not be the case: over the past 200 years, we have seen what affordable and seemingly low-cost energy sources can achieve. Powered by fossil fuels, the population exploded from 1 to 8 billion people and wealth skyrocketed. However, we now know that these energy sources have major disadvantages. At the same time, we have discovered new, regenerative energy sources. If we switch to these, we could see a new explosion in prosperity. We need to abandon narratives like “We must be careful that transition to clean energy does not jeopardise our prosperity”. On the contrary, the transition to clean energy is a huge opportunity and could boost prosperity even further! Once we truly understand this, we can achieve even our most ambitious climate targets by 2040.

Will we still be able to travel in good conscience?

Marc Elsberg: I don’t think travelling will be much different in the future than it is today. We will probably be on the move even more than we are now. However, many modes of transport will be powered by renewable energy. Perhaps, for example, we will be able to make sure that more and more planes can be operated competitively using green hydrogen. Rail traffic could increase globally if more investment is finally made in infrastructure. There are entire continents on which there is currently no suitable rail network, for example in Africa. In the longer-term, self-driving vehicles will prevail on the roads. When this happens also depends on costs, insurance challenges and how strictly we stick to what we are used to.

Will we consume even more energy than we do today – so where will it come from?

Marc Elsberg: If in the future water, the sun, and the wind are our main sources, or even derivatives like green hydrogen, then we can consume as much energy as we want. That’s another reason why the transition to clean energy holds great opportunities. We just have to seize it. Because where there is a will, there is a way. If, for example, we produce green hydrogen in North Africa, where there is a huge amount of space and the necessary climate conditions, this would also be an economic opportunity for such developing regions. The challenge will be to avoid becoming dependent on dubious regimes again. Nevertheless, I consider the development opportunities to be enormous!

How will we manage our economy?

Marc Elsberg: We have to change the environmentally destructive and often socially exploitative system by which we operate. We need to move towards a circular economy and work with the environment instead of against it. The question here is how to design products so that they last longer and can be sensibly recycled. At the same time, we can look into how they can become cheaper, less burdensome and more efficient – this is another opportunity. To achieve this, we need to move away from the often prevailing loss and preservation thinking and focus instead on the positive aspects that such a transformation offers. This also applies to the transition to clean energy. In the future, there will probably also be tankers that transport certain energy sources and raw materials. But you can begin to look at how these tankers are built, without having to keep digging new raw materials out of the ground.

How will we look back on 2023 in 2040?

Marc Elsberg: It's going to be the way we look back at 2006 today – a little amused, a little nostalgic. In those days, we didn’t even have Facebook, and now it’s a dying relic. The internet was still relatively young, and websites looked very different than they do today. By 2040, this will be similar: by then, a whole new generation will have grown up and will wonder at much of what is self-evident today. As far as climate change is concerned, I hope that 2040 will be a more positive year. Austria had already developed good climate policy approaches in the 1990s. Unfortunately, there was far too little use for them. Germany started the transition to clean energy in the noughties, but later stopped it. Good approaches were and are in place. On the whole, I am confident that there will be momentum in the right direction. But time is short and we have to step on the gas pedal now!

Marc Elsberg is an internationally bestselling author from Vienna. In his books – including Blackout, °C – Celsius, Helix, and Zero – he addresses pressing (future) issues such as energy supply, Big Data and data protection or genetics