[Satire] When Generation-X leaves the work force - a "time capsule" from 2006

I wrote this on July 31, 2006 on my personal blog, at a site which has since gone belly-up. Mostly, it was intended as a satirical dig at the scientifically illiterate media. I was reminded of it (paragraph 12, specifically) on Tuesday when I came across the headline, Offshore Wind Farms Altering Marine Ecosystems: “Sufficiently Potent To Redirect Existing Currents”. As long as I wrote it, I thought I'd bring it back to the Internet (with a couple fixed typos) for posterity's sake.

At the time when I wrote it, of course, the media was predicting an economic disaster on the horizon because of an approaching wave of baby boomer retirements, so I imagined what they might be writing about when my own generation starts retiring.

In the [fill in the blank] Times - 2031

As the children of the American "Baby Boomer" generation begin retiring in mass, we thought it would be interesting to look at the legacy that this generation leaves behind. In so doing, we are struck by the vivid contrast between the promise and the reality.

This generation accepted the mantel of science and technology passed to it by the baby boomers and extended it to suit their whims; accomplishing feats previously unimaginable. This reporter is old enough to remember the dawn of this century, when the promise of what this generation could achieve appeared limitless. Indeed, the promise was kept in part when they extended the reach of permanent human settlement from our original planet, Earth, to permanent space stations and to Earth's moon with permanent settlement on Mars accessible in the foreseeable future.

As did their parents, they eliminated disease after disease, finally even overcoming the problem of bacterial resistance, creating "miracle drugs" that could cure disease without encouraging bacteria to mutate into harder to cure varieties. Gone now are AIDS and malaria and other diseases, diseases which once decimated continents.

World hunger and poverty have also been reduced to small fractions of previous best levels.

Still, on a whole, we look back with a sense of missed opportunities. This generation has selfishly and irresponsibly created a class system previously unseen in human history. There is now a seemingly irreparable energy divide and the Earth's climate is spinning into a new, human induced ice age.

When this generation took the helm, all Americans had equal access to energy. Anyone with $3.15 in their pocket could purchase a gallon of gasoline to drive to the grocery store for a loaf of bread. Now, however, with so few of our energy needs being fueled by gasoline, that has all changed. This new energy divide favors the large land owners. Who else can own solar collectors or wind mills? Free energy from the sun and wind and ocean are now being doled out by a few wealthy land owners with access to much needed energy collectors of various types.

These few benefactors claim that this is fair, because they invested large quantities of time, energy and money to get the collectors into today's efficient state, thus freeing America from the once derided state of dependence on foreign energy sources. Everyone benefits from their investment, but since they took the risk, they should benefit in proportion to the risk taken.

However, the poor, who are forced by irreversible circumstances to rent property or to live on small lots, say that energy from the sun, wind or waves doesn't come with a charge and everyone should have equal access to it.

A future congress now has to decide on the unresolved question of energy-neutrality being left to them by today's retirees. Clearly, the only solution to this stand-off is for the government to tell us what to do. Another important task left undone by the post-boomers.

As to the climate, global warming, feared by previous generations has been vanquished, replaced by a much different and starker reality. Man is no longer producing greenhouse gases in large quantities. 10% of the energy which reaches the Earth from the sun is captured by solar collectors and wind speeds are diminished by 20% due to massive wind-farms scattered across land and sea.

These facts are conspiring to induce catastrophic cooling. The greenhouse gas of the 20th century created warming. Warming and C02 together led to more plant growth, in forests and at sea. These more efficient CO2 consumers are now cleansing CO2 from the atmosphere at unprecedented rates. This phenomenon is further aggravated by our immense appetite for ethanol, satiated by an increase in crop production and a corresponding decrease in C02. CO2 levels are still higher than historical averages, but they are declining fast. This, coupled with the human use of solar energy has already led to average global temperatures not seen in four decades. As C02 is further filtered by the forests and sunlight is increasingly consumed by the few richest nations, this trend will only accelerate.

And it's worse at the poles. The Atlantic Gulf current, driven largely by the trade winds, is slowing because the wind farms are slowing those winds. As with CO2, this trend is expected to grow exponentially and to continue into perpetuity. We expect NY City, Boston and Philadelphia to be covered in massive glaciers, ice 20 or 30 meters thick, within 100 years. Agriculture is expected to be impracticable on 50% of today's farm land. Scientists warn against developing new properties anywhere north of the Mason Dixon line.

Further, our seas are being polluted by our hydrogen power addiction. Fresh water is produced as a biproduct of hydrogen power generation. When this water flows into the sea, it lowers the salinity. Eventually, this lowering will render the ocean completely uninhabitable for all marine life.

Of course, there are some who argue that the observed changes in climate are part of a naturally occurring cycle and others who argue that nature is a robust system which will react gracefully to most stimuli to maintain a balance, but reputable scientists warn us that these skeptics are simply crackpots.

So in summary of the post-baby boomer legacy, we close by saying it's a good thing they gave us an escape path into nearby outer space because we might well need it.

:-)

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Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".

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Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.

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^{Pixabay license, source}

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