A new Dark Age is upon us. This may sound like science fiction, but a nightmare scenario may be closer than you think.We are at a crucial turning point in the Earth’s history, according to Dr. James Martin, and survival lies in the hands of our children.

Dr. Martin is on a mission to help save the planet, but mention global warming to him and he will tell you this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The British-born technology expert and futurist has now taken his 2006 book ‘The Meaning of the 21st Century: An Urgent Plan for Ensuring Our Future’ and turned it into a documentary film.

The film follows the book’s premise that if we allow our 21st century problems to worsen, then “a transition unique in human history will occur”.

The younger generation — the Transition Generation, or T-Generation, holds the responsibility as to whether this will succeed or fail.

Dr. Martin, who lives in Bermuda, says: “If the transition goes well, humanity has a magnificent future. If it goes badly, we may be thrown into a new Dark Age — or worse.”

The T-Generation is more global in its thinking, having grown up with the Internet, and is more likely to understand that big issues cannot be solved by one country.

“Global cooperation is needed,” says Dr. Martin. “The T-Generation needs to be thoroughly educated about the solutions that will make their future work.”

To this end he advocates classes on the future of the planet in every school in every country.

“Our children need to be taught about how to save the planet, they should be taught these 12 problems and what the solutions are,” says Dr. Martin.

In ‘The Meaning of the 21st Century’ he identifies the 12 ‘21st century nightmares’ as: severe climate change; excessive population growth; water, soil and farm shortages; ocean destruction; failed nations (such as Zimbabwe); mass famine; automated global triage; religious extremism; future weapons of mass destruction; terrorism with atomic weapons; war; and existential risks.

Although some may brush aside suggestions that such events could happen in their lifetime, this is the same author who predicted the September 11 attacks in his 1987 book ‘Technology’s Crucible’.

Dr. Martin is, however, an optimist and details 12 targets to alleviate these issues.

“These are all big problems but all have solutions,” he says.

“The problem is no one is thinking about the solutions, so the state of the planet needs to be addressed a lot more by government.

“If we set a target and move towards that target then 50 years from now most of these problems will be solved.”

The success of Al Gore’s documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ has already raised awareness of environmental issues, but Dr. Martin says that although the former US Vice President’s film illustrates the effects of global warming, it offered few solutions.

Dr. Martin’s documentary looks at the whole picture, examining climate change, unsustainable population growth, destruction of ocean fisheries and weapons of mass destruction.

He says he decided to turn the book into a film as “the stuff in it is so important and a lot of people don’t read books so the idea is to make the subject matter a lot more broadly understood”.

“Al Gore is just talking about global warming but doesn’t talk about solutions, and there are far more problems than global warming — some of them much worse and more difficult to solve,” says Dr. Martin.

“We could get it all wrong and the planet could become a terrible mess, like a new version of the Dark Ages.

“But if we could get everything right — if we could get environmental issues, war issues and religious problems all under control, then mankind could build a civilisation greater than anything we have seen so far.”In this era of transition, the small island of Bermuda has a crucial role to play, particularly in the conservation of water. Dr. Martin says: “The world is running out of water and so there will be a shortage of farm land. There are also a lot of places where top soil is being blown away by the wind and so desert is spreading.“A lot of countries do not have enough water, they are ‘water stressed’, but if the whole world managed its water like Bermuda there wouldn’t be a problem.

“Bermuda is amazingly different from anywhere else on the planet. If we look at Bermuda, it catches water on the roofs and puts it into tanks. We have to live on rainwater but people here live well.

“It would be amazing if other parts of the world can do what we’ve done here, and live on rainwater. I’ve gone all over the world, travelled to six continents, but there’s nowhere that handles water like Bermuda. So we’ve got that to teach to the world.”>He says the Island should also set an example to other countries by employing more alternative sources of energy.“It’s outrageous to look at this landscape and not see a wind generator,” he says.

“They generate a huge amount of power and Bermuda is a very windy place. They could be put out to sea and that would create clean energy.”

He adds: “There are white painted buildings everywhere on Bermuda, yet you can’t see a single solar panel.

“We need new types of energy systems such as solar panels and wind generators.”

Dr. Martin says that although recycling helps, global warming can only be reduced by finding new energy sources.

He cites the expansion of coal-burning power stations in China and American cars as major polluters of the Earth’s atmosphere.

“We need fundamentally new energy sources. It’s quite easy to build a non-petroleum car but no one is doing it.

“If the public wanted cleaner cars then the car industry would change very fast, so we need to teach the younger generation,” he says.

Mission: Save our planet