As we celebrate Jamestown's 400th birthday, it's worth considering what Virginia's Quincentennial-it's 500th birthday-will be like.History is a helpful guide. When the first English settlers arrived at the mouth of the James River in three small, rickety wooden sailing ships in 1607, there were approximately 13 million people living on the North American continent, mostly in tribal units, some of which had formed impressive federations covering thousands of square miles of territory. Those North American natives had been here for the better part of 12,000 years, gradually spreading across the continent in self-sustaining enclaves that sometimes prospered and traded with each other, and other times fought and clung to survival.
Who would've thought that a couple hundred pallid, ill-clothed English people who could barely feed themselves-three quarters died of illness and starvation-would displace those native masses in a matter of only a few decades.
Clearly, in considering where we'll be a century from now, a hundred years makes a big difference.
At Jamestown's tricentennial, in 1907, most Virginians had never seen an airplane or automobile. Electronic communication was virtually unheard of, apart from the occasional telegram. Approximately 1.9 million citizens lived in the state, and they were lucky to reach a 50th birthday, the average life expectancy at birth being about 48 years.
In 1907, Virginia's economy, centered in the state capital at Richmond, was still reeling from the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Jim Crow laws assured that Negroes, as former slaves and their descendants were called in polite company, could not vote and had little role in the economy and commerce of the state. The races were strictly segregated in all aspects of life.
A lot can change in a century.
By 2007, the biggest political issue in the state had become what to do with all those automobiles clogging the state's roads. The electronic revolution and the massive growth of the federal government had turned Northern Virginia into the state's economic engine. And the Civil Rights revolution had freed African-Americans to become full participants in the state's political, economic and commercial life.
So what will Virginia look like in 2107? No one can say for sure-could anyone in 1907 have predicted where we'd be today? Still, making a guess is fun, if for no other reason than to see (when our great-grandchildren read this-if people still read then, rather than simply absorb information) how far off we are.
Today's population of 7.5 million will have grown to 20 million, of which 5 million-25 percent-will be of Latino heritage (most, however, will be of mixed race and ethnicity, reflecting the continued melding of American ethnic identity). The oldest citizen is 141 years old, and 15 percent of the state's population is more than 90 years old. Many of those older citizens still remember the intensely unpopular President of the United States from 100 years ago, still regarded as the worst in history.
The original Jamestown settlement-and the visitor center, and Yorktown, and Williamsburg-have long been underwater, victims of the global warming crisis that peaked in about 2060 before the nations of the world finally stabilized the environment.
The Hampton Roads region, vibrant in the early part of the century, has never fully recovered from the effects of the four mega-hurricanes that struck between 2020 and 2045, which, combined with rising sea levels, left the region devastated. With the new floodgates and the offshore wind and wave energy facilities, the region is starting what is likely to be a long road to a comeback.
Northern Virginia, with 9 million residents, is also struggling. Life is not safe outside the Washington Security Zone, which encompasses what used to be known as Arlington and the remnants of Alexandria (after the Great Chesapeake Floods). Residents are generally constricted to the 80-140 story high-rise enclaves that dot the region, it being too dangerous and time-consuming to travel much beyond those crowded self-contained cities.
Western Virginia is booming, although it is fighting sprawl. The million residents of Roanoke are proud of their model city, where one and two person robotic electric vehicles zoom quietly along carefully engineered thoroughfares. The cities of Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Lexington and Harrisonburg-with a combined 2 million residents-are hubs of modern commerce in the new industry that uses molecular building to create customized items of every shape, size and description.
In Richmond, state political leaders are preparing to welcome the Premier of China, leader of the world's largest and most powerful nation, to the Quincentennial celebration. Recent archaeological evidence that an ancient Chinese treasure fleet visited the Virginia coast and explored the Chesapeake Bay in 1421, possibly interbreeding with some of the natives, has fueled speculation that Virginia shares a special bond with China.
As the Governor prepares his speech, to be beamed directly into the chip implants in most Virginians' brains, he thinks about his great-grandfather, a "blogger" who, it was reported, had to use his fingers to input letters into one of those ancient devices known as a "computer." Thank goodness, the Governor thinks, we are not so backward in this modern day and age of May 2107.
The key fact about life in 2107 is that the petroleum is gone. That fact has had enormous consequences. Not only are there no traffic congestion problems (such as those that concerned our ancestors a century ago), but agriculture has been radically transformed by the loss of cheap petroleum-based fuel for machinery. Food production, which was easy a century ago, is once again a persistent hard problem.
Petroleum is not the only fossil fuel that is gone: as a practical matter, the coal is gone too.
Today's population of 7.5 million will have grown to 20 million
Predictions of growth forever were popular in the early years of the 21st century, but long before the end of the century we knew that such growth would be impossible without petroleum. In fact, we learned that we could not even sustain the population level of 2007 (6.5 billion in World, 7.5 million in VA) without petroleum. We now know that we must support the World's population with agricultural production as it was 200 years ago, before petroleum. After we realized that fact, it was easy to achieve the Global Population Treaty of 2027. This Treaty, signed by representatives of every nation at a special meeting of the United Nations, specified that for the next century (until 2127), each human on the planet aged 10 or above would be given 0.5 Reproduction Rights. The Treaty specified that they could sell their right to any other person in the World. Effectively, this Treaty implemented a global 1-child-per-woman policy, with the goal of reducing the World's population. By now, in 2107, global population is only 3.5 billion and is beginning to decrease rapidly, as many people born before 2027 are reaching the ends of their lives. Viginia's population has been decreasing rapidly in recent years, and is now only 2.5 million. Efficient food production, efficient and equitable food distribution and food economy have been absolute necessities to avoid mass starvation. Artificial food, especially artificial meat of several varieties (introduced in 2032 after much anti-GMO debate), has greatly aided in this process. Luckily the Treaty has worked, and it now appears that the World is approaching sustainablity in food. The debate on the renewal of the Treaty has already started, even though that event is still 20 years away. Some people are arguing that it would be safe to increase the Reproduction Right in the renewed Treaty, perhaps to 3/4 of a person per person.
A major demographic change is that people living on or working on farms are now about 25% of the population of Virginia, a fraction ten times higher than a century ago. There has been a migration of population from large cities back to smaller rural towns. Small industries have returned to small towns. These trends of the 21st Century have reversed the migration pattern of the 20th Century. We are not back to where we started 200 years ago, circa 1907, but small-town Virginia is definitely alive and well in 2107.
The oldest citizen is 141 years old, and 15 percent of the state's population is more than 90 years old.
The high ratio of retired people to working people, a ratio that rose steadily all through the late 21st Century, especially as the Population Treaty became more and more effective, has had shocking economic consequences. Yes, of course, retirement age was raised steadily also, but the fundamental problem of paying for the large fraction of elderly people now dominates governmental operations at all levels. A major difficulty is that actuarial tables, on which life insurance and pension plans are based, were made obsolete by the medical advances. After much litigation and a series of special legislative actions, equitable solutions have been found, but bankruptcy of several major financial institutions was narrowly averted.
The original Jamestown settlement-and the visitor center, and Yorktown, and Williamsburg-have long been underwater, victims of the global warming crisis that peaked in about 2060 before the nations of the world finally stabilized the environment.
President Gore, elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, led the World in reducing greenhouse gas emissions such that global average temperatures only rose about 1.5-degC late in the 21st century. Fossil CO2 emission is heavily taxed today, so heavily that US emission is only 10% of what it was in 2007. (Achieving this level was a huge problem for the manufacture of Portland cement; concrete is much more expensive today than it was a century ago.) Methane emissions have also been greatly reduced. It is now predicted that climate will return to 20th century levels by late in the 22nd century. The sea level has risen somewhat, and some coastal areas have been flooded, but the worst effects that were predicted in 2007 now appear to be unlikely to occur.
.. Roanoke .. proud of their model city, where one and two person robotic electric vehicles zoom quietly along carefully engineered thoroughfares.
Transportation is drastically changed by the loss of petroleum. People now use bicycles to go everywhere in the cities and towns of Virginia. Four-lane streets have been converted to two-lane streets so that bicycle travel will be safer and easier. People walk far more than they did a century ago. All towns of 5,000 population or more in Virginia now have extensive electric trolley systems, and the trolleys have priority in use of the street lanes that remain. High fees on parking spaces, and reduction in the number of parking spaces in urban areas, have encouraged people to use the trolleys and their bicycles. Use of powered vehicles by individuals decreased steadily all through the 21st Century, until now we have only 0.2 vehicles per person of driving age. Many people today never get a driver's license. Many of the people who do get licenses share vehicles with their neighbors.
Electrified railroads of several types now dominate long-distance transportation in the USA, just as they did before petroleum. This change began with the Railroad Electrification Act of 2013 (the highest priority of Gore's second term), by which the US government gave loan guarantees to facilitate financing the huge capital costs of electrification and double- and triple-tracking of all Class-1 railroads; the Act also forbade state and local property taxes on both the electrification facilities and the extra tracks. Later in the century many secondary freight railroads were also covered by the Act. Finally, in 2037, the Steel Interstate Act authorized conversion of the Interstate highway system to our national network of electrified interurban railroads for passengers and package (not bulk) freight. The Interstates, which had become a huge maintenance burden that falling fuel tax revenues could not support, were saved: half of each divided highway became superb roadbed for the interurban track (with grade separation!), and the other half reverted to 2-lane national highway, but with limited access, which meant that the Interstates were still superior to ordinary national highways.
We still have air travel, but it is greatly scaled back. The subsidies are mostly removed, and service has been cut back to the levels that the USA had 150 years ago, circa 1957. The problem is fuel costs; we don't have cheap petroleum anymore. Air travel is a luxury item today, just as it was in 1957. Many people today have never flown in an airplane, because fares are so expensive. Of course, the service is terrific, with superb meals on transcontinental flights.
..cities of Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Lexington and Harrisonburg..
Charlottesville and Blacksburg are still university towns, as they were 200 years ago, but many of the other university towns of 100 years ago have lost that status. With reduced population, and reduced economic activity, especially activity requiring higher education levels, many smaller universities reverted to trade schools in the middle years of the 21st century. This change was controversial, of course, but it was necessary.