This Is How We Will Live in 2029

With this issue, OnEarth is launching an occasional series that will examine what our world will look like in, say, the year 2029. And we begin with our cover story, "Selling the Sun," by Michael Behar. The topic of solar energy may seem a bit ho-hum. If solar is so great, so promising - as we've been told all these years - why hasn't it really caught on? Why aren't there solar panels on every roof in America? The sun is free, right?

Behar found some intriguing answers lodged inside the brain of Jigar Shah. Shah is not a scientist. He's a businessman, an entrepreneur - and a visionary. He understood that a fundamental obstacle to the widespread adoption of solar energy was not primarily technological (although there are still significant hurdles here), but economic. The key is to remove the financial roadblocks: his customers don't have to buy expensive equipment that can take years to budget and pay off, that require endless hassles to obtain and maintain. No, the company he founded, SunEdison, takes care of all that. His customers simply sign on the dotted line, stand back as panels are installed, and then pay their (solar) electric bills like every other Tom, Dick, or Harriet. Suddenly, solar becomes affordable - and competitive with conventional forms of energy. This groundbreaking business model, along with falling prices for raw materials and, inevitably, federal limits on fossil-fuel carbon emissions, convinces Shah and others that we are finally seeing the true beginning of the solar era.

Contributing editor Craig Canine has also seen the future. Although, to be honest, in Europe and Asia that future already exists: it's called high-speed rail. But in the United States, it has yet to arrive - until right around now, give or take a couple of decades. It's a matter of simple necessity. If we are to cut greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to preserve a livable planet, we will have to travel fewer miles in cars and planes. We will have to take trains - sleek, fast, luxurious, quiet, efficient, punctual, electric-powered machines that will transform our hoary concepts of rail travel.

What we eat could soon be revolutionized too. Richard Manning examines one particularly controversial and difficult item in our diet: beef. Let's face it - the razing of our lands to produce vast amounts of corn for cattle feedlots and our polluting, fuel-intensive farming methods, all orchestrated to produce a juicy steak or a medium-rare burger, are clearly unsustainable. Most Americans are not going to stop eating beef. But Manning shows us that we can have the beef without the environmental havoc. Natural, grass-fed beef can break into the mass market for exactly the same reason solar energy can: it has become profitable for those who produce it. More profitable, in fact, than the cruel and destructive practices of the past.

OnEarth will continue to explore the ways our world will soon change. If all of us make the right choices, we'll be able to say: you know, 2029 was a pretty damned good year. And you will have heard it here first.