A starting note: ABC clearly took the position that the reality of climate change is accepted by pretty much everyone with any sense at this point. What the effects will be and when they will hit us, is another question, and one that ABC recently attempted to answer in “Earth 2100: Is this the final century of our civilization?”

I watched this show expecting to be disappointed. I expected sensationalized nonsense as the best case scenario, and pseudo-scientific claptrap and questioning of global warming as the tired and most likely case.

Earth 2100 was neither. It was a pleasant surprise, in a truly depressing way. First, there were no scientific surprises. The producers used mainstream science on topics like climate change and peak oil, and extrapolated what our world would be like over the coming century if we continue as we are. The results are not pretty or comforting, but they do correspond with current scientific expectations.

And second, the future is truly frightening. Perhaps the most chilling effect was the population countdown, which unwound from almost 9 billion people to well under 3 billion in a very short time. Few of those people died of old age.

Is it credible? Unfortunately, yes. Numerous climate scientists were consulted and appeared in the two-hour special. In addition, respected and prominent people gave their time and put their reputation on the line to appear in Earth 2100, including:

• John Holdren – On leave from Harvard  to be Obama’s Science Advisor
• Jared Diamond – Author of Collapse, a study of civilizations that have collapsed throughout history
• James Woolsey – Former head of the CIA who considers threats to national security

It certainly fit with my research on what we can expect if oil were in permanent short supply, and with the progression of climate change.

Wise parents worry about the habits of their children, because our habits can be difficult to change as adults. Parents know that good habits set us on a path toward success and happiness, but bad habits can lead any person astray to a dark future.

This is why, for example, parents are embarrassed when their child won’t share toys; greed (selfishness) is damaging to us as individuals and as a society. While nobody can precisely predict the future, the habits our society has developed have set us on a selfish, greedy course towards self-destruction.

The alarming realities that Earth 2100 summed up were:

• Climate change: Humans have pumped enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to cause climate change.
• Peak oil: There is a fixed amount of oil buried in our planet – the earth isn’t magically making more – and at some point it will start to run down. That point appears to be roughly now, and will result in significant increases in the price of oil – and therefore almost everything else.
• Pandemics: The reason the swine flu recently caused such concern among health organizations worldwide is that killer viruses and plagues sweep the planet regularly, and it’s their job to worry about – and hopefully prevent or at least limit – the next one. When you consider that the last big one – the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918 – killed 50-100 million people, that it infected approximately one-third of the entire human population, and that it primarily killed healthy young adults, you can appreciate their concern.
• Population overshoot: There are too many people on the planet for us to live the way we do. This is not about the American Way of Life™, but how we achieve it. We treat the planet as a limitless resource and garbage dump, and that is folly.

Let’s set aside pandemics and the population problem. The former are somewhat random, and we may develop vaccines or other defenses – or not. 

Either way, smart people are working on it, and there’s not much more can be done. Population is expected to peak at 9 billion in 2050, and we may or may not find a way to support all of us. If not, there will be a die-back.

The key to whether we survive and thrive, regardless of population or pandemics, is how we react to climate change and the end of cheap fossil fuels.

Earth 2100 depicted oil shortages and price spikes as larger-scale repetitions of the oil shocks of the 1970’s. There were line-ups for gas, and sometimes gas stations sold out, at times resulting in violence. People bought smaller cars, moved closer to work, insulated their homes – all of this happened before, but this time it would be permanent.

Less easy to depict are the economic problems that would result. Our entire economy is based on cheap oil, and price increases would be devastating to the American Way of Life. Everything from tractors to transport trucks to ships run on oil; if the price goes up, so does the price of everything they produce or carry, from food to clothes, televisions to building materials. James Howard Kunstler has described this well in The Long Emergency, and was interviewed for Earth 2100.

Overall, I thought ABC made a pretty decent first attempt to picture a future taking the realities of climate change and peak oil into account. There is no comparison to the ridiculously sensationalized The Day After Tomorrow, which was essentially The Poseidon Adventure planet-wide.

With Earth 2100, ABC is telling the truth. These really could be our twilight years, ready or not, if we continue on this path. As Earth 2100 also pointed out, we still have options, but our choices narrow and become much more costly – in lives and money – the longer we wait. ABC hinted at a better way, and it is true that the solutions are all ready to be rolled out. That we’re not doing so, given the consequences, should be a crime.

“All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations.

Check out Earth 2100 on ABC's website here.  

More stories you may enjoy on Celsias:

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? The Environmental Dooms Day Clock.

How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth.

Follow us on Twitter: Celsiastweets.