Less babies, trains and solar energy

What will the U.S. look like in 100 years? That is a tough question to answer. There are so many factors to consider with this question that someone can spend years trying to describe the country 100 years from now. Therefore, I am going to focus on three issues, population, transportation and use of energy. First let us address the issue of population. I believe that 100 years from now the average family will have one to two children. I think that the population size will either be steady or slightly declining. However, I feel uncomfortable assigning a number or rate of decline to the population. This is because there are too many factors that affect population size, for example, health-care. Health care will continue to improve with time. This means that people will live longer. Therefore, the question is will birth rates drop low enough and quick enough to counter the increase in life expectancy? The population will definitely be an aging population, but will it be a smaller population? I feel that I don’t know enough about health-care advancements to answer those questions.

However, I do believe that, however many Americans there will be they will be using more public transportation. In a sustainable society the train network in the U.S. will have been reinvigorated. The U.S. is a large country and it needs a viable public transport system across the country in order to be sustainable. In terms of local transportation, I believe that people in cities will take more public transportation or even ride a bike or walk. This does not mean that there will be no more cars. The number of cars will go down, but some will still be there. However, these cars will no longer be using oil as their source of energy. Cars will be battery powered with solar panels on the roof that charge the battery during the day and a plug in option for nighttime recharging. The battery technology in the cars will also be much more advanced than today’s battery powered cars allowing for greater millage per charge. Also for truly long trips Americans will use the train not their cars.

This brings us to the issue of energy consumption and sources for energy. Coal-burning power plants will be a thing of the past. All of electricity in the U.S., which includes what the trains run on, will be from renewable energy sources. This includes solar, wind and some other technologies that we do not yet know about. Houses and apartment buildings will have their own solar panels but energy plants will have solar plants to make up the difference in needed and provided energy. This brings us to energy consumption. 100 years from now the average American will use less energy than they do now. This is largely due to that fact that buildings will be constructed and retrofitted so that they use much less energy than before. This is also true of appliances of all sorts. The less energy an appliance uses the more valuable it becomes. The U.S. in 100 will have changed into a society that takes sustainability as a major factor in life.