Can New Technologies Save Our Future?

Our future planet is facing many catastrophes including climate change, dwindling oil and gas energy reserves and widespread disease. Climate change is causing the polar ice caps to melt, changing weather patterns and leading to an increase in flooding around the globe. In terms of energy, as oil and gas based energy dwindles throughout the world there is a need to search for alternative energy sources. With respect to human health, diseases such as AIDS, amoebic dysentery and malaria are rampant and the latest new disease - swine flu has now reached a global pandemic stage threatening to infect and wipe out millions of people around the world as the Spanish Flu did when it killed 100 million people worldwide in 1918. So, how can we tackle these problems? One way forward is to develop new technologies to deal with these problems. Several new technologies are being developed across the globe.

Flights are particularly problematic as carbon dioxide released at high altitude causes 2-4 times as much warming as carbon dioxide released on the Earth’s surface. An exciting new project has been developed in France to create a solar powered plane which produces no carbon dioxide and therefore doesn’t contribute to climate change. Furthermore, since it is fuelled by the sun it doesn’t use up precious fossil fuels. The solar powered airship, due to be launched in August 2009, was built by students from schools in France as part of a project between engineers from INSA Lyon and ESSEC Business School known as Projet Sol’R. The 72-foot helium blimp has solar cells on top which are capable of generating 2.4 kW thereby powering a small electric motor and enabling it to reach speeds in excess of 25 mph.   In the future solar-powered airships could be used to carry heavy, bulky items like wind power turbines as well as being used for air travel and telecommunications.

To meet our land transport needs other new technologies are being developed such as hydrogen fuel cells. People are also more aware about using transport and eating locally produced food to avoid unnecessary carbon emissions.  As well as solar and wind power (see Wind Farms:The Enegy of the Future), other ways forward are to use carbon capture techniques, for instance using algae (see Microalgae Carbon Capture), wave and tidal energy and biomass energy. These energies can provide clean power indefinitely into the future.  The latest inspirational technology is to use algae to generate energy. The oil giant Exxon Mobil is funding research and development of bio-fuels from photosynthetic pond algae. And if effective, algae may be the energy of the future. According to Riggs Eckelberry, president and CEO of OriginOil Inc a couple years ago, the petroleum institute said there's only a couple of years left for oil, and now they're really finally acting on this knowledge. Algae is an eco-friendly alternative to petroleum.

What about other significant inventions? Multimillionaire inventor Dean Kamen has made significant technological contributions to help deal with the world’s problems. He designed the world's first mobile insulin pump to help support people with diabetes and he helped disabled people by creating wheelchairs that climb stairs and a robotic prosthetic arm.  As well as being used on a grand scale renewables can be used successfully on a small scale. For instance, biogas from animal manure can provide the energy requirements for cooking and heating water in the developing world thereby increasing the standard of living of poor people.  Fifty per cent of all human diseases are due to water-borne pathogens and a solution is to develop technologies that can solve the problem of giving people clean water without needing to transform their environment.

Deka's integrated and portable water purifier, codenamed Slingshot, and developed by Kamen, is one successful solution.  It is a box with two hoses one is dipped in dirty infected water or sea water and out of the other end one comes pure drinking water. This is ideal for the developing world where clean water is scarce and killer waterborne diseases are rife. So, technologies can be used to help save the planet and new technologies are being developed all the time. One recent invention, using bacteria in computers, may have profound uses for communication which in turn has multi-factorial uses. Computers can be useful in communication about and subsequently combating disease, bringing about education, communication in world financial markets and for architecture, building and design and other purposes. Biologists have created a living computer from Escherichia coli bacteria that can solve complex mathematical problems. The US scientists have engineered bacteria that could solve complex mathematical problems faster than any silicon based computer we know today. The research, published in the Journal of Biological Engineering, proves that bacteria can be used to solve the Hamiltonian Path Problem, a mathematical puzzle with over 3.5 million possible routes to the solution.  Let’s imagine you want to tour the 10 biggest cities in the UK the solution to the Hamiltonian Path Problem would be the route that takes in each city just once. An ordinary computer must try these 3.5 million routes out one at a time to find the one that visits each city only once. Alternatively, a computer made from millions of bacteria can look at every route simultaneously.

Furthermore, the biological world also has other advantages since a bacterial computer will actually increase in power as the bacteria reproduce over time. Will this speed up computer technology? What will be the implications to Our Future Planet for education and learning, health and communications be? With inspiration and new inventions from engineers we should be able to tackle some of the planets biggest problems including climate change, energy and clean water by developing carbon free travel, renewable energy using cow dung and solar power, hydrogen cells, algae and portable and inexpensive water purification devises. And who knows what other useful technologies the future will bring. What do you the planetary citizens of Our Future Planet think of these current inventions and what the future will hold? Add your comment below. Have your say. We welcome your thoughts and proposals. Not a Planetary Citizen? Sign up

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