Hello. 

My name is Anderson.  I am from the future. 

Or, better yet, I am your future you.

Don't worry too much about how I got here, and why. There's a lot about the universe that your brand of physics is still not yet able to explain. Let's just leave it at that. I am not here to talk about my world. I'm here to talk about yours.

Let's start with a simple mental exercise. I want you to try to imagine the situation that I describe to you in as much vivid detail as you can manage. 

Try to live what you read. Take the time to pause and let your mind fill in the details. If i tell you to imagine driving down a dirt road, I want you to ask yourself if the window is down; what the weather is like; if there are fields, ponds, or swamps to your sides. Don't approach this as a race or a "task" that you must "finish." It's leisure. No one is going to give you a bad grade if you don't read from start to finish. Take your time. It doesn't matter if you ever finish.

Enough chatter. It's due course that I give you a look into your future, but first, the present:

This planet, and the people on it, are undergoing a period of tremendous change. Few can argue against the benefits of the scientific revolution, democracy, industrialization, internet, and the rise of globalization...

... but there are two sides to every coin. You are just starting to learn of the harmful side affects of our technological advancement. The negative consequences of our technologies stand to have an equal or greater impact on future generations(me) as the technologies themselves. 

 If you don't act soon, you should expect see many of our greatest social, technological, and biological achievements, which in some cases took the whole span of known history to create, to vanish-- or even reverse--in your lifetime. 

Impossible? Improbable? 

Likely. 

Read on...

Imagine snow in the middle of August. 

This is followed by a 3 week flood and then an eternity of dry heat days that cook the earth into a fine powder until november, just before 110 mile an hour hurricane winds carry the Arkansas' topsoil 3 states west to smother the entire spinach crop in Nebraska.

Imagine that you're on your way to the supermarket. It's hard not to forget your sunglasses, but the sun is not bright. When you get in your car, the first thing you do is turn on your windshield wipers, but it's not raining. 

It's the dust.  

You're in wisconsin, but who knows where it came from: 100, 300, 1000, 2000 miles away. The storms can blow 3 inches off the top of the earth and send it half way around the world almost as fast as a passenger airline. Imagine that microscopic flight crashing into your eye 300 times per second... That's why you never forget your sunglasses. 

Now, imagine walking into the supermarket... and seeing the isles empty.

There is no food.  

At least, not any fresh, anyway. We haven't had that for some time.

Just before things got really bad, all of the world's governments convened in Shanghai and decided that all of the world's harvests must be frozen and rationed from here on out. So all you can remember eating has been frozen and reprocessed.  What little fresh food that exists is usually fabricated in specially fortified, weather-proof, hydroponic labs, using seeds with the latest in gen-mod technology. Hardly natural, but the closest thing you can get to the truth.

It's much too expensive for us regulars, as they call them. Most of us have never felt the crunch of fresh, raw, dirty spinach. 

Our grandparents lamentfully remark, more often than we would like, that before things got really bad, the earth had a different.... 

...smell.

After a rain. Go outside and stick your fingers in the earth. Take a good whiff.