When you envision your future, what do you imagine? Have you graduated from high school and gone on to college? Do you see yourself in a dream job, working hard at something you enjoy? Where do you want to live? What’s most important to you in life? Whatever your vision for the future, chances are good that climate change—and how humanity responds to it—will have an impact on many aspects of your future.

We know that climate change is transforming natural and human systems around the world. Still, it’s hard to see how the rise of sea levels by a couple of millimeters or temperature by half a degree affects you personally. Unless you’re caught in a big storm or a major drought, a lot of those impacts can be hard to detect. People become used to gradual changes and accept a new normal. But as we move toward a future with climate change, we will start seeing more dramatic changes, changes that will be harder to overlook. Thanks to new scientific modeling and forecasting, we can imagine our future with better accuracy. These predictions aren’t perfect, but they give us a sense of what the future may hold if we continue on our current path. In this article, we envision the ways our health, our jobs, and the systems we use to manage a complex world will shift in the future with climate change.

Our Health

Even though a warming planet is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events like major floods and storms, there’s still some important good news to keep in mind: In the last 100 years, deaths from natural disasters have fallen by more than 75 percent relative to global population. This steep decline is the result of the improved warning systems and more resilient infrastructures that we continue to develop.

While these trends are promising, we also know that disaster prevention and relief are often expensive, and low-income countries are facing the most extreme impacts of climate change. Wealthy countries like the United States will be well-equipped to deal with natural disasters. On the other hand, the world’s poorest nations lack the resources to implement adaptation strategies and will continue to bear the most extreme impacts of climate change.

It’s also likely that climate change will increase the spread of disease as warmer temperatures push species into new areas. For example, tropical bats seeking cooler temperatures may introduce a new virus to animals hundreds or even thousands of miles away. And it’s not just bats—scientists predict that climate change will cause thousands of animals to shift their ranges. Diseases like malaria and dengue, which today are primarily confined to the tropics, could affect more people in new areas in the coming decades. We’re already seeing the spread of diseases like Lyme as climate change allows ticks to move further north.

We also know that climate change will make most places hotter. Extreme heat events will become more common. Today, around 8 million Americans experience temperatures above 125 degrees Fahrenheit ((51.7 degrees Celsius) at least once a year. (The National Weather Service issues a heat advisory when temperatures reach 105 degrees Fahrenheit or 40.6 degrees Celsius.) Scientists predict that by midcentury, over 100 million Americans will see that level of extreme heat—about a 13-fold increase.¹ That level of heat affects human health, but it also changes the types of plants and animals we can raise for food. Extreme heat can lead to crop failure and food shortages, which will push up the price of food. This will be bad for everyone, but it will be devastating for the hundreds of millions of people who already spend more than half their income on food. Mass starvation is not inevitable, however. Innovations like drought-tolerant seeds and new farming methods can improve food security.

Our Jobs

Addressing climate change will impact nearly every aspect of our economy, and these changes already present new opportunities for the workforce. Of course, some companies and jobs will go away, particularly those based in the fossil fuel industry. But many more opportunities will be created. We will see a massive expansion of jobs in the renewable energy sector, jobs with titles such as wind turbine technician and solar installer. Demand for zero-carbon electricity will likely create entirely new industries around green hydrogen and nuclear fusion. Nuclear facilities and hydroelectric plants will require large workforces to build and maintain them. We’ll also need many more climate- related scientists, such as hydrologists, soil and plant scientists, and atmospheric scientists, to research and address climate change. And we’ll see the medical sector expand to meet the need for more nurses, scientists, and public health officials to respond to the changing nature of health and disease.

We’ll need experts in every sector to manage climate change adaptation and mitigation. Climate change will affect every part of our economy, and many existing jobs will change along with the climate. Insurance agents, for example, will need to assess risks in areas prone to flooding. Business leaders, marketing experts, and lawyers will all have a role to play in adapting the economy to climate change.

Some of these jobs—like those of the engineers needed to drive innovation in hard-to-decarbonize areas like cement production—will require advanced degrees. Many other jobs will require skilled technicians or tradespeople, like the electricians needed to electrify heating and cooling systems in homes and buildings. To manage this new economy, we need a generation of people with the relevant skills. Our education system needs to be more flexible and aimed at training workers to participate in this new economy.

Our Systems

Climate change and the ways we choose to address it will touch nearly every aspect of the complex human systems that govern our modern world. It will require completely rethinking our energy, transportation, infrastructure, and food systems to meet the need for them to operate without releasing greenhouse gases. It will also affect the social, political, and economic systems not directly responsible for emissions, but nonetheless intertwined with the effects of climate change.

As we respond to climate change, we will transform our energy systems. You’ve probably already seen signs of this transformation in the form of renewable energy sources, like solar and wind. But to meet climate goals in the future, we need to massively increase our ability to produce zero-carbon electricity. This will mean expanding renewables like offshore wind and geothermal and will likely include other zero-emission sources like advanced nuclear fission or fusion.

A clean energy transformation will have widespread effects as we electrify industries that have previously run on fossil fuels. Take electric vehicles (EVs), for example. Today, EVs make up around 18 percent of all the new passenger cars sold globally. Experts predict that by 2030, they will make up two-thirds of new car sales.² The batteries needed to power these EVs require minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel, and the mining industry is predicted to grow significantly in the coming years. But the process of mining for these minerals is often harmful for the surrounding environment and communities. An electric future likely includes innovative ways of harvesting minerals, like extracting lithium from seawater or new styles of battery chemistry that don’t need minerals at all. And we’re not confined to solutions that are easily within reach—already, we’re seeing researchers explore mining minerals from the Moon.

Climate change will impact other forms of movement as well. Just like animal species are migrating in search of more hospitable habitats, humans will move, too. By 2050, scientists predict sea-level rise will displace 150 million people from their homes.³ The majority of “climate refugees” relocate within their own countries, often to urban areas, but climate change is increasingly pushing people across international borders.

Our Role In Shaping The Future

While this article has laid out some of the likely outcomes—and opportunities—that lie in front of us, our future is by no means set in stone. Already, our planet has warmed enough to cause serious changes in our environment. But the future doesn’t have to be one of chaos and suffering. That’s because the impacts of a changing climate are just one part of the story. The other part is our collective response to it—the ways we adapt, innovate, and cooperate to envision and build a livable and sustainable future. Climate change presents some of the biggest challenges humanity has ever had to face, but history has shown that we can solve hard problems. It’s up to us to take the urgent action needed to shape the future we want to inhabit.

1 First Street, “2022 Heat Model Launch,” 2022 (press release). https://firststreet.org/press/2022-heat-model-launch
2 RMI, “EVs to Surpass Two-Thirds of Global Car Sales by 2030, Putting at Risk Nearly Half of Oil Demand, New Research Finds,” 2023 (press release). https://rmi.org/press-release/evs-to-surpass-two-thirds-of-global-car-sales-by-2030-putting-at-risk-nearly-half-of-oil-demand-new-research-finds/
3 New York Times Magazine, Jul. 23, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/climate-migration.html