A Positive Outlook on 2209

To fully appreciate the time span of 200 years I thought back to what it must have been like living in 1809. No widespread use of electricity, slow transportation (horse and buggy), and expensive local foods. To think what we as a species have created in 200 years is absolutely mind blowing, I bet Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t even have the capacity to imagine such inventions as a hybrid car or the emergence of globalized trade.

Due to the fact that “going green” has become a more popular trend, if you will, I don’t think that we will be continuing on our current path for the next 200 years. In terms of population I don’t think that Washington DC will be home to an exorbitant amount of people based on the evidence we have looked at that population has begun to reach somewhat of a plateau. I think that because of where we are now in terms of becoming more environmentally friendly, the only way forward for us is up and out of the path of our own destruction. While progress has been slow, 200 years is quite a bit of time to see significant changes in the way we choose to live our lives. I think that by 2209 we will have encountered such a shortage in oil supply that we will have already developed and implemented widespread use of alternate energy sources. As we have discussed, it is difficult to change mass society’s habitual lives, but I think that DC along with the rest of the world will have made small incremental changes by 2209 resulting in a very different reality than ours today.

Transportation will probably become a balance between personal electric or solar-powered vehicles and energy efficient public transit. DC and New York are already becoming less hospitable to personal cars in terms of parking, and I think that an eventual phase-out of personal vehicles is imminent. As Ashley brought up, this may lead to less travel and decreased global contact, however I think that it is equally possible to foresee global travel switch over to a yet uninvented form of efficiency (i.e. solar powered planes?)

I choose to look more positively on the next 200 years. I have faith that our society will change its ways on a mass scale for the better, if not because we want to then because we will have no other choice.