As experts weigh in with predictions for the year 2030, one thing is clear: We’ve gone too far

The 1980s have gone down in history as the decade of excess (as if the gas-guzzling V8 cars of the 1970s or the rise of fast fashion in the 1990s never happened). But the 2010s have put it all to shame.

This was the decade where convenience crushed everything else. Prime two-day shipping became not a luxury, but a way of life—that would give way to one-day shipping, then same-day shipping. Grubhub, Doordash, and Uber Eats became the ubiquitous, on-demand service to have any delicacy delivered. We had the explosion of smartphones, built from rare, mined materials. These were the supercomputers in our pockets, but due to planned obsolescence, fundamental fragility, or just the promise of “thinner, faster, better,” they still mandated upgrades every 12 to 24 months (no matter the consequence). Over the past decade, so many of the consequences of consumption became invisible: We forget that every search we make or song we stream has a cost: The cloud is really a server farm that needs impossible amounts of energy—though that did nothing to quell the cryptocurrency boom.

None of this hit home until the last days of 2019, when I reached out to experts—who specialize in everything from packaged food to airline travel to architecture—asking them to share their predictions for their industries in 2030. And while I said nothing about the environment, it was top of mind for almost everyone.

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