Earth 2100 - Plot

Plot

Lucy is born June 2, 2009 (changed to January 1, 2009 in subsequent airings), in the suburbs of Miami and is still alive in the year 2100. In 2015, she moves into an apartment in Miami and a few months later a powerful hurricane named Linda hits and levels much of Miami, killing thousands of people. She and her parents move to San Diego. She becomes an EMT and meets her husband, Josh, an engineer, during a protest against high water prices of California desalinated seawater in 2030 (Las Vegas had run dry).

In 2050, they and their 19-year-old daughter Molly move to New York City by car, passing desperate Texans begging for rides north. One pulls a gun on Molly, but fortunately, others in the car/truck convoy point automatic weapons on the desperate man, who backs down. While the others in the convoy make it to Canada, New York City is a marvel of clean power, clean transit, and community gardening. Josh sets to work building a flood barrier to hold back the ocean, but the CO₂ warming unleashes trapped methane in the Arctic, which causes even faster, non-linear warming.

An effort to use sulfur dioxide as a last resort to cool the planet is called off when it is found to destroy the ozone layer. Lucy finds and helps quarantine and neutralize a strange new disease, and Molly moves upstate to an agricultural community. During a storm at high tide in 2075, Josh is killed trying to fix a stuck gate, and New York City is flooded. Lucy refuses Molly's offer to live with her, her husband and son. Starving people among the rotting flood damage set the stage for the return of the disease Lucy saw, now called "Caspian Fever."

Caspian Fever soon becomes a pandemic and kills so many people on Earth that population growth starts shrinking, and eventually it dawns on Lucy and every American that there is no Federal response, no National Guard, no soldiers to keep order. Democracy and civilization at the national level have died in America.

Lucy leaves the city with some friends and a dog in 2081, and eventually finds her daughter, now a widow like herself, and her grandson. Initially there is no communication with the world, until someone set up a two-way radio. In 2100, Lucy ponders what wisdom to pass along to her grandson, now denied the education she took for granted, as she is the oldest person in the world.