building the world our grandchildren will live in

My grandfather was born in 1876.
My father was born in 1918.
I was born in 1956.
My daughter was born in 1986.
My granddaughter was born in 2006.

My grandchildren are born. Five generations in 125 years.

The world I was born into looks nothing like the world my grandfather was born into.

What will the world my grandchildren will die in look like?

Now, that's a question? 

With current expectations, they should both live past 2075--quite a bit past that.

I would love for them to have a future with close family, lots of outdoor time in places that are peaceful and beautiful and teaming with a plethora of species of animals and plants. I would have them eating plentiful, healthy food and living in homes that are both safe and affordable and convenient and maintainable.  I would have them healthy, wealthy, and wise.  But not too wealthy.  I don't want them to ever feel that they must have more than everyone else to be successful and happy.  And not too unwealthy--as that is a stress that leads to soooo many problems, stress illnesses, mental illness, chemical dependency, and that nightmarish existence that involves pushing themselves to always compete, beat, be better than, make more money than, have a bigger career, a better marriage, a more impressive resume--always more, even after the original lack is gone.  The never reachable carrot is not the answer to happiness.  Everyone wants their loved ones to be healthy--even as they watch them make unhealthy choices.  I guess I want them to have those choices--not be forced into a lack of health by poverty, environmental contamination and ignorance.  And Wisdom--everyone is on their own on that one. 

It is projected there will be just under 9 billion people by 2075 (it is currently slightly over 7 billion) and that Nigeria will have more people than the United States. While the human population of the whole planet is slowing, the 12 countries resulting in that almost 2 billion  increase will be in Africa and Asia. The United states is only expected to grow about 2% and the US birth rate is expected to decline to about 0.2%.  That is a lot of couples choosing not to have children.  So my grandchildren are less likely to have children or grandchildren than I was.

Sea level should be about 34 inches higher than it is right now.  Since my house is about 600 feet above and a 1000 miles from any sea, seems safe enough.  But moving to the coasts may not be an option for them, or perhaps they will just need to stay back a few hundred miles when they buy that sea side property.

My state will be about 13 degrees hotter on average--so pleasant winter and roaring hot summer--123 degrees in the August shade, anyone????

It is expected that climate change impacts alone—hurricane damage (currently less than 12 billion/year but projected at 142 billion by 2075),real estate losses( currently less than 34 billion/year but projected at 173 billion by 2075), energy costs ( currently at less than 28 billion/year but projected at 82 billion by 2075) , and water costs (currently less than 250 billion/year but projected at 565 billion by 2075)—will come with a price tag of 1.8
percent of the U.S. GDP, or almost $1.9 trillion annually (in today’s dollars) by 2100.  Fortunately, for those of us in the middle of the country, we won't see so much of that--it will be a coastal, southwest thing.

So far, all I predict is a return of all those rural families to the farmland.  Of course, all those giant metropolitan areas were also once farmland, so while we won't be growing as fast, we definitely won't be growing out.  Skyscraper apartments in Kansas-anyone?  (what? tornados? what?)

 http://www.global-warming-forecasts.com/

 https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/cost.pdf

Forecasts from 2015 to 2100  illuminate converging trajectories, potentially colliding events,  which will compound multiple stress events and create information gaps about the availability of remedial resources and assets. 

For example:

• Disease rates  ( think Zika, and other mosquito vectored illnesses, ebola--considered tropical only, asthma, heat-stroke, water infestations like algae and protozoa)  extreme weather events (hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, snowstorms, droughts and floods) and heat wave forecasts (forest fires, outdoor workers collapsing in summer, poor people without air conditioners, old people without air conditioners being found with hyperthermia too late to fix) presented alongside forecasts of skilled workforce availability and the capacity to meet demand for health, medical and first-responder emergency services.( In this state, which chose not to take the federal medicaid expansion, there are still over 20% of the population without coverage.  What will happen in the next few years remains to be seen.  In hospitals that are already strained, financially and a current promise to do away with the affordable care act,  we may be facing a future of more closures of facilities in the face of more people needing care.)
• Projections of hospital and medical personnel shortages (already a reality and not getting better with healthcare going more toward for-profit conglomerates and away from community services are occurring concurrently with heat wave induced power outages and water shortages. If you have ever been in a hospital or even a nursing home with the power or water turned off, even 2 hours is a dangerous nightmare of trying to maintain patient safety.
• Water demand strains from droughts occurring simultaneously with wildfire mobilization and suppression efforts that drain water from reservoirs dedicated to meeting fresh drinking water and agriculture requirements endangering both human dwelling and the habitat of all other life in that area.
• Grid, energy and water infrastructure expansion forecasts juxtaposed to forecasts competing for the availability of sufficient-sized workforce resources for infrastructure construction, repair and maintenance--not to mention the resistance to taxes, to resistance to paying  people a living wage makes fixing and maintaining our infrastructure daunting.
• Food shortages alongside forecasts of feedstocks and raw materials for fertilizers necessary to meet food demands will make the purchase of basic foods as expensive as housing and healthcare (we may just cure that gross, Mall-rat consumerism after all and being overweight may once again become a sign of wealth.
• Critical and raw materials availability forecasts overlaid on projections for clean technology markets and the greenhouse gas control technologies required to mitigate and adapt to climate change  will create a balancing act. 
• Technology commercialization progress and market penetration forecasts juxtaposed to accelerating climate change impact forecasts?  Who will win?  I guess it will depend on how fast we start gasping for air or losing people en masse to dehydration.

 The biggest impact on all these projections is whether we decide to continue to deny Climate Change for the good of the people making money with the current directives or actually start working toward decreasing the things we do that are destroying our resources--not the gold in the ground, or oil, but the resources like the water we need to  live and the air that allows us to breath and the trees that provide our oxygen, and the ecosystems that fertilize the grounds with decomposing leaves and plants and animal waste/decomp, and unpoisoned earthworms and flies and other insects that allow that decomp and functional bacteria for finishing the processes.  We are in the odd position of not knowing if we will continue the current slow slog toward a greener, more responsible capitalism that admits we have to be better stewards, or if we will jump backward into a time where we pretended nothing we did for money had any impact on the world around us.  While I can also be crazy kid in a candy store and really love that whole treasure-hunter mentality that goes with found money--or with even with garage sale treasure with almost no cost.  I also know that candy will not only not sustain me--it will kill me if not moderated.  And found treasure always costs someone. 

There have been a lot of predictions about the future.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_100_Years

 http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a3120/110-predictions-for-the-next-110-years/

 http://www.sylviabrowne.com/g/The-Next-100-Years/172.html

 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16536598

 https://youthextension.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/predictions-for-the-next-100-years/

https://dailyreckoning.com/a-prediction-for-the-next-100-years/

and so on and so on eternally.

They are interesting and range from the Rapture (always in every century's predictions among the devout christians) to utopia on earth (picture the artwork of the watchtower pamplets) to dystopias so sinister not even Gaspar Noe could do it justice on the big screen in 3-D in whatever is juicier than Technicolor.

So what can I do to make sure they still have a place on this earth?  How can I make sure that if they have children or don't have children, it is their choice?

What kind of world do I want us to build to leave to them?

I want  them free and able to participate fully in their own governance.

I want them to be treated as well as any other person on the planet--equal opportunity, equal justice, equal voice.

I definitely don't want them worse off than we are now and would really like it if their world was better---for everyone. 

Any suggestions on how to get there from here?

It's closer than we think.  The last 60 years went by in a flash.