Delighted with this short video on our latest thinking, thanks to our friends Atlas of the Future and as part of our evolving Project Breakthrough initiative with the UN Global Compact.
Journal
Hope In A Grave New World
The electoral upset, for all it may, just possibly, open up prospects of a softer stupidity in terms of Brexit, has once again amped up the uncertainty. That said, the skewering of the Hard-Brexit-as-our-first-and-obvious-choice camp gives me a modicum of hope.
Once again, a strong sense of an old order coming apart at the seams – and new ones struggling even harder than normal to be born. Am reading Stephen D. King’s Grave New World at the moment, which also amps up the sense of impending something. Britain a nation at sea and at odds with itself. But at least young people are voting, even if they’re now yet reading the small print on the pack.
In the midst of all this, a few photos that sum up my June to date:
On the subject of books, one I read and enjoyed recently was The Adventures of John B lake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship, by Philip Pullman, with art by Fred Fordham. Great fun – and interesting to see something in the news within the past few days about the new breed of autonomous vessels, a new form of ghost ship.
And then this morning, I stumbled across Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s book, Sputnik’s Guide to Life on Earth, published last year. Love the central idea that we have to think of 10 reasons why Earth should not be destroyed by aliens. Working on it …
Into The U-Bend
Delighted to see UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner using our Waves 5-to-6 diagram from our recent Breakthrough Business Models report. With thanks for the heads to Kevin Moss of WRI, who co-hosted our Breakthrough session in Washington, DC in January, see 29 January entry.
Radical Visions Of Future Oceans
Oceans back from the brink. Source: Radical Ocean Futures/Simon Stålenhag
When I was finishing off my postgraduate degree in city planning in 1973-74, I was fascinated by the future of oceans – including as a future human habitat. I devoured books like Arthur C. Clarke’s Deep Range. And explored avenues into the aquaculture industry, although sensible advice I got at the time persuaded me to head in different directions.
Then when I did a short report for Herman Kahn’s Hudson Institute in the late 1970s, while I was still with John Robert’s TEST, I forecast four big environmental issues in the early 21st century. The first, now largely under control, we are told, was stratospheric ozone depletion. The second climate change. The third new forms of genetic toxicity. And the fourth revolved around the health of the World Ocean.
Talking with the CEO of a major environmental NGO a week or two back, I focused on the fourth of these again – arguing that the oceans are make or break for the rest of the planet. Then The Economist ran its ‘Ocean Warning’ front cover, plus other coverage, a few days later.
Then today I came across the Radical Ocean Futures #ArtScience project developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Am hoovering bring it up. Have long found sci-fi fascinating – and particularly when accompanies with powerful visualisations. That’s exactly what we get here.
I love the Lovelace idea in the first of the four scenarios, in which the oceans are hauled back from the brink. And here’s some the text explaining how that future plays out:
It all started with Lovelace – an outstanding innovation in artificial intelligence. Lovelace was based on a neural network created by a wily collective of hackers and whistle-blowers but very soon supported by tech companies, progressive governments, and ordinary citizens from 100 countries. Lovelace ripped through corporate empires and their shell companies within shell companies within shell companies exposing their rotting cores, one by one. For the first time the world had fulfilled the promise of big data in support of citizenship. Lovelace achieved the improbable, near total transparency of information.
Unsurprisingly, there are dark scenarios, too. One, The Rime of the Last Fisherman, is accompanied by the image below. We really don’t want to go there.
Rime of the Last Fisherman. Source: Radical Ocean Futures/Simon Stålenhag
#MakeThePlanetGreatAgain
A week of ups and downs. Read Yael Neeman’s wonderful, haunting book We Were The Future, a memoir of being raised on a kibbutz in the heyday and then relative decline of the movement. and there have been moment this week when some in the climate action movement must have felt the same, as the Donald ducked out of the Paris climate accord – or at least signalled his intention to leave.
Ironic to hear him say he was doing it for Pittsburgh, not Paris, and then see Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto say his city wanted to remain.
I very much like President Macron’s line, now a hashtag: #MakeThePlanetGreatAgain.
Paul Krugman has suggested that Trump may even have done this out of spite, which his eyes (above) would suggest is not impossible. Some even suggest that it’s pay-back for the infamous white-knuckle hand-shake with President Macron. And I wondered who initiated that …?
Are the politics of the playground playing out in climate change?
*****
On the upside, work continues apace on our impending Carbon Productivity Basecamp, slated for 14 June. And I did my latest round of blogs on Geoffrey West’s insightful new book, Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies.
Encouraging sense of scientific rigour throughout the book, a useful counter-blast to all those CEOs and others who say they are on a sustainability trajectory simply because they think so.
And intriguing to think through what we can do to keep the sustainability movement scaling, in ways that the kibbutz movement didn’t. One shared barrier may be the sense of inevitable sacrifice in pursuit of a higher cause, though just maybe the exponential growth in the affordability of renewable energy might tip the scales over the next generation or three.