What Climate Change Will Look Like 35 Years From Now

-Essay-

SAO PAULO — It's the future here, writing with a warning to brace yourself. How I would love to tell you that in 35 years you'll be able to go back in time, fix your mistakes and change history. Sadly, you won't be able to do that.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris is in just six months for you. I can tell you now that the summit won't be worth the effort or the cost. Consider this your preview: They'll reach a deal to contain greenhouse gas emissions, which is reasonable considering the political conditions of your time. But as only the future can tell you, that's insufficient to contain global warming in this century below the critical limit of 2 °Celsius.

I'm talking to you from 2050, and we're already close to breaking that barrier. That's despite the fact that carbon emissions have fallen almost to zero, a feat that owes more to UberTesla than to the targets set out in the São Paulo Protocol of 2020.

The self-driving electric cars that entrepreneur Elon Musk launched that same year, after he used the profits from his Powerwall home batteries to acquire Uber, brought traffic jams, public transport and air pollution to an end.

The fossil fuel industry, both car manufacturers and oil companies, went bust. The 2029 crash destroyed the industrial world as you know it, but it created a new, better one. Joseph Schumpeter would have loved to see wind turbines and solar panels spreading all over the world like cars did in the 20th century.

But life in megacities has worsened dramatically. In Brazil, heat waves are turning São Paulo into an inferno three or four times every...