The 10,000 Year Plan

Picture the Earth from space, just as it looks today. So beautiful ...

Now make a tiny change. Imagine that the year is

Where are your descendents in this picture?

Most likely the Earth will still be orbiting the sun 10,000 years from today. But what will our home planet be like at that time?

Three Questions:

1. What will human life be like in 10,000 years (given our global situation and the current trends)?
   
   
2. What is the best case scenario for human life in 10,000 years -- if we start making truly wise choices now?
   In other words, if we did things right from now on, what might be the optimal achievable state of human life on Earth in 10,000 years?
   
   
3. What is required for humanity to achieve option 2 instead of option 1?

Many of us have trouble imagining a time so far distant. As we look to the future, 10,000 years might seem to be a nearly unimaginable span of time. But if humans manage to avoid complete annihilation, some kind of reality will define existence in that far-off time.

If we think about human existence 10,000 years in the past, we can dimly imagine our ancestors at the dawn of history. That time is long after the major changes to our species had been wrought by biological evolution.

If we can imagine human life 10,000 years in the past, why not imagine human life 10,000 years into the future?

The heart of the 10,000 Year Plan is the idea that we can - and must - start to envision a future that is sustainable for many thousands of years, if we care about the survival and wellbeing of the human species and our home planet.

It might be helpful to consider some significant milestones in the history of the planet. For a great overview of Earth's history, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth. That article employs an analogy of a standard clock, comparing a single 24 hour period to the entire 4.567 billion year history of the Earth, starting at 12:00 a.m.

• Based on that clock analogy, each "second" represents about 53,000 years.
• The earliest forms of life probably emerged about 4 billion years ago (about 3:00 a.m. by the clock analogy).
• Multicellular plants probably did not evolve until about 1 billion years ago (7 p.m.).
• The earliest multicellular animals probably emerged about 100 million years later (about 7:15 p.m.).
• Fish, the earliest vertebrates, evolved in the oceans around 530 million years ago (9:10 p.m). We are now over 21 hours into the 24 hour clock and the simplest vertebrates have just made their first appearance!

Considered in this context, 10,000 years is a very short time. It's about 0.2 seconds on our imaginary clock -- only1/5 of a second)!

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