First thing ive only done this to my son, i mess it up. You cast or not the queen of technology. You guys have cell phone, turn it off. No cell phones ring, no lights flashing. Here we go. Phones off. You know how i am about phones. All right. He we go. So the topic today is my in the 22nd century, and you know im an engineer. Theres a phone on back to turn off the light or a computer or something. Thank you. When people talk about the future of the 22nd century on sort of like i go into a engineer mode and go well, what are you going to back cosmic rays when you fly to outer space and what he going to do about the time problem . Im kind of a wet blanket. But these three panelists are very wellqualified with actual facts to talk about the 22nd century and what we might anticipate. So our three speakers, going to induce an indie order adequately speak and the new get ten to 15 minutes and if they talk too long, i cut them off. So our first speaker is David Grinspoon whos in astrobiologist which is super cool. Its like you do, biology space. Very weird. So thats what he does. Our second speaker, Michelle Thaller is director of science for communications at nasa so shed is all about the Rocket Science program. And our third speaker is seth shostak who works looking for extraterrestrial life. So there we talk but what we can expect were going to start with david, all right. Good morning. Thank you for coming here and having us here in boulder. I disabled or height is a mythical place for me. Its a first time think of i been to but i but i lived in boulder for number of years, and i had a lot of friends whose kids went to boulder high and as a result knife a lot of friend who are graduates of the boulder high. Yeah, so now i get to be here on stage. And also im just realizing i think the last time i was maybe on stage of High School Auditorium was when i was in high school in our talent show my band was playing like free bird or something. If i have a flashback and get up and do an air guitar solo, you have to forgive me. I of course want to start out with a requisite, obvious but necessary point that nobody can predict the future. And there that are not experts on the future. None of us can really tell you whats going to happen in the 22nd century. But its also true that all of us are people who in our careers think a lot about the future in various ways, and we can give you some insight into how to think about the future, hopefully. And when i was your age, when i was in junior high and high school i was really obsessed with certain kinds of visions of the future. I was definitely a teenage scifi geek. And this was by the way it was cool before deep. It was uncool but i still was. And i was really enthralled by, one of my earliest memories was the apollo landing on the moon when i was in the fourth grade, then i grew up just obsessed with space and the future. The movie 2001 a space odyssey which came out in 1969, 1968 . Make it 68, was very influential and i just assumed that by the 21st century humans would be living in space and that was connected with this idea of sort of utopian view of what would happen with our societies that the cold war would wind down and we would basically have a peaceful and Equitable Society on earth. You know, it hasnt completely worked out that way, and so reflecting on that now when i was your age, my visions of the future the way things have worked out so far. One thing i think human beings cant help but doing is projecting into the future in a sort of linear way. I think its built into us cognitively that we see Current Trends and we assume the continuation of those trends, and thats what forms are via the future. That sort of makes sense on the short timescale, but on the lawn timescale is never the guide because there are these nonlinear Game Changers that ultimately determine the way things are. So in the sciencefiction of the 1940s and 1950s and early 60s, which some people call the golden age of Science Fiction which were the stories i grew up reading, a lot of times just to give one example, they were written before apollo. And so a lot of those stories had people finally getting to the moon in the year 2010, are finally getting to the moon in 1999. So because people were not actively engaged in that effort, people saw that, thought it would be a long way off. And then of course 1960s, apollo program, john f. Kennedy, we choose to go to the moon, inspirational speech at the beginning of the decade. And this massive effort and, of course, we did it. And then you look at the sciencefiction written during and around the time of the apollo project, and he it was the opposite. They projected that things would happen very fast because things are happening very fast in that they could so then you have 2001 invited will be out of jupiter and be doing, they were over overoptimistic if you consider technological advance goods. Because they were extrapolating from the rapid, the rapid acceleration that was going in there, external think that in the future so the overshot the other way. You see this and a lot of other areas that we cannot help but extrapolate our Current Trends. And thats one of the reasons why we are always wrong when we predict the future. I was recently, i got to spend a year at the library of Congress Working on a project out a book project about the future, considering our time on earth, the human time and geological history and how humans are changing the planet and how that fits into the longterm story of the planet. Part of what i did for the project on trying to get a handle on how we think about the future was i read a lot of predictions about now that were written in the past to collect predictions of the future that were written a long time ago. Theres a section in my book thats called a brief history of the future where i summarize this. Its interesting because you read essays by these really smart people that were written 100 years ago, 200 years ago about what they think the early 21st century is going to be like. Its an interesting combination of some really pressing and really smart how the hell did they know that . People predicted that we would run out of fossil fuels and that we would be running things by solar power, and people kind predicted the internet. Really smart. And then combined with some just like really wacky, ridiculous stuff. We be talking to the spirits of the dead and its always some combination of that. But what they miss is the Game Changers, you know, the things that really changed our world, the internet which nobody really predicted. Communication satellites which clark did predict but was so sure it wouldnt happen in his lifetime. He didnt bother to patent them, and, of course, they happened way before the end of his life. And so forth. We just, we see things in a nonlinear way, and histories very. History is very nonlinear the big anxieties about the future when i was a teenager were, well, the cold war of course seemed like it would never end because just this intractable thing, and nuclear war between the superpowers was the big anxiety. That was how the world, might possibly end. And then when the cold war ended it was just this very kind of surprising thing. And then, but then same, people extrapolated, while knocking everything will be fine, they will be no more war. We overshot any other direction and have the cold war is over but we still havent gotten rid of those darn nukes and are are still some existential worry there. Another, just to give you another example, when i was in college, one of our big issues, i was an activist and help form a group, i i went to Brown University and help form a group called the brown disarmament group. The other guy who formed that group with me was david corn for you now see on msnbc a lot. He was my classmate in college and we formed this group and so we were worried about nuclear war but were also active in the antiapartheid movement, south africa was under a system of apartheid in. Im sure you know that. That also seem like something that would never ever end and it was intractable and Nelson Mandela would die in jail and it was tragic and sad. And then that also rather suddenly ended. And again south africa has to publish up what theyre not living under apartheid and Nelson Mandela died a free man and president of this country. So all im saying is things that seem attractive can change is really sideways. Well, now were at this time, this strange time in Human History where there are these seemingly contradictory trends and reason for optimism and pessimism. If you look at many longterm trends, this is the best time ever to be a human being at a random place on earth do we live in this type of very scary headlines and a lot of anxiety, justifiable anxiety about the future but we also live at this tremendous time of human opportunity and possibility. What i mean by those trends, things like infant mortality is half what it was 30 years ago on earth, the average infant mortality. If you are a random person born into vande place on today your chances of living to be, a healthy life and living to adulthood are twice what they were 30 years ago. That trend is increasing. Same thing with extreme poverty. It is a drastically decreasing around the world. And all kinds of health trends, the longterm trends are very good and very promising. Of course all these things are related when extreme poverty is alleviated. It helps with, thats the Silver Bullet for population because fertility goes down when, in particular when women have more choices than poor countries, and educator education levels are on the rise globally in a pretty steady way over the decades. A lot of these positive trends but at the same time we are in this phase that some geologists and planetary scientists are calling the intro the scene where human influence on the planet is exploding and theres a time. Recall the great acceleration that started in the 1950s where all these measures of human activity have been shooting of the charge. If you look, if you plot all these measures of human influence on the planet, amount of co2 in the atmosphere, the damning of rivers over time, the various changes in land use, extinction rates, all the sorts of quantitative measures of documents are changing the planet, during the 20 century they sort of slowly go up and it wiggles and then in 1950, in the 1950s the allstar shooting up your still in the face of the cover for our influence has been shooting at. Its a scary way that is unsustainable. You have the circulation of these two kinds of trance. Theres a longterm all these are legitimate positive Trends Recent trial and then theres this shorterterm just really jarring influence on the planet which, that humans have been causing the most of the one we are most aware of his Climate Change of course. I think that something will talk about a little bit this morning, but its part of this whole set of changes. And so thats unnerving but at the same time we had this explosion in knowledge about the planet. Around the same time, the beginning of the space age i can succeed we started launching observation satellites. Before that we were blind to the way our planned works. We have this explosion and knowledge of where our planet works and i believe we are in the midst of a kind of phase change of consciousness about our role on the planet. And to me thats the key to connecting these two curves. Theres the positive curves of all these indicators i was talking about. Theres a scary acceleration of human influence, socially optimistic or pessimistic recs its really a question of whether that awareness of ourselves as a planetary entity can propagate to the point when it becomes integrated into the way we manage ourselves from the planet. And i think that you guys are really the Second Generation in essence, generations is squishy but the Second Generation to grow up and live your life in an awareness of human beings as a global entity. It started in the way with the whole earth pictures from space, that the Space Program provide us with. I think thats new and i think its global and its hard to receive its frustratingly slow, but thats the key i think is to propagate a sense of ourselves as a global entity. And i think it is happening. I did myself 50 50 minute anderson i have one minute and half laps, selassie i will say is that nobody can predict the future but now im going to. I think in the 22nd century we will become distant we will be completed all fossil fuels. We have to be. Even if we are as dumb as duncan b and would literally burn up every single freaking molecule of reduce carbon, dig them all up and burned them, we will be off fossil fuels in the 22nd century. Buthopefully we wont do it that way. And human populations clery going to stabilize and start to come down by the end of this century, for the right reasons. Not because of starvation and famine but because education levels are on the rise and women are getting more choices in the fertility, their choosing, toys, choosing to lower fertility rates. So i think what would you get to a 22nd century where we have a more stable population and with Global Energy systems which are not ranking than Natural Systems upon which we depend. Im optimistic about that. The problem is how do we get there . We need to go through a transformation in a relationship with the Natural World and propagate this realization that we do live in a finite planet, and integrate that into how we achieve energy and i would run a global civilization. Here are Technical Solutions to do this, and so there may be technical, there will be technical breakthroughs that help us do this, energy breakthroughs, theres other game changes like Artificial Intelligence. We might even discover extraterrestrial life. I think well hear about that possibility, there are things go nonlinear game changes we cant predict, but even without relying on those, if we go through, continue what i believe the start the social transformation of proceeding ourselves accurately as a species, a global species on a finite planet, and integrate that into the way we run our systems call our energy into other systems that will make that transformation. Were in the process. Its just how quickly we make that transformation will determine how much pain and displacement and suffering that there is in the 21st century. Lastly i will succumb if we do this or i think the 21st century will be as bad as the 20th century. When i say that people say what are you talking about . 20 century was great but it really wasnt. It wasnt for the hundreds of millions of people died in wars and famines and so forth. To me thats scale of tragedy wherewere facing in the 21st century if we dont make this transformation in our Energy Systems quickly. But im optimistic that we are going to accelerate that change and avert, avoid the worst Case Scenarios. [applause] thank you. Wonderful to be here. I think youre going to hear sort of this thing from all of us today that there are things were very optimistic about, things were concerned about, and with the humility of knowing that we cannot predict what would happen in 100 years. I think some some stuff uncle to talk about is more nearterm than that. Things make you like to see happening is the next 50 years, the things would be continuing into the 22nd century as well. I was, these are two of my favorite people in the world on either side of it. These are both by the scientist scientist and wonderful human beings and i was thinking the things that i think about, its true. And i think that want to talk about, thinking the things that concern me and encourage me are the search for extraterrestrial life that would be this guy, Climate Change which is an expert in that. So ive wondered how will i position myself . I think ill talk to both of those but i wanted to do some of the social changes i i wanted to come in the next 100 years and i think all of us need to actively work to do that. Not just wait for them to happen. Starting with some of the optimism, i worked for nasa, im an astrophysicist but i do a lot of work with planetary scientist can with astrobiologists. We are going to have a press release tomorrow, after nasa tomorrow about an environment without on in minnesota which im quite optimistic could support life. I think there are probably four places in the solar system that nasa is hoping to explore that we very strongly suspect life could exist now. And this is something that, sethi seth luster to the buckham while theres a lot of them tend with cert for extras like that nasa does, nasas mainly looking for smaller microbial life. Etc were looking for hans gumpert i pretty say that. You can look for civilization we look for positive. But i will take alien pods come. I totally will. I think, this is all a bit of an audacious prediction but a lot of this depends of course on whether we get funding for our missions and whether with Political Support for what we want to do but i am really serious helping to have solid proof of extraterrestrial life in the next ten years. By the time you guys get to graduate school, those of you going into college or chemistry physics, i want there to be a sample. It will probably be remotely detected but well send a rover to mars or a probe to the moon europa arent you put and will have evidence that something is a live down there. I think once we have that there would be a a great impetus to go and study. We, it will be wonderful to go to the national zoo in washington, d. C. , and see in a very, very well isolated padded chamber a little come under microscope and actual alien. Something that came from ours or came from saturn or jupiter, moons of those planets. I really think thats true. Then we have so many wonderful questions to ask. Do they have dna . Today have the same sort of chemistry we do . Could you even eat it with a chemistry pass right through you . For those you know chemistry, either amino acids the same way, put together the same way as ours . There such a wonderful diversity available in the universe. A typical carbon rich meteorite, which stud