The following is an extract from the book VISIONS 2100: Stories from Your Future. The book, to be launched in Adelaide and Sydney this week, is compiled by John O’Brien, managing director of Australian CleanTech and a regular contributor to RenewEconomy. It comprises 80 short visions from authors including Mary Robinson, Christiana Figueres, Bill McKibben, Connie Hedegaard, Yvo de Boer and many others. Their visions tell what they want to see in their future and they are passionate about achieving that world.
The following vision is by Claus Pram Astrup, advisor to the CEO, the Global Environment Facility.
87 years old, he was born in ’13. An unlucky number, he thought, smiling to himself. But at the eve of Y2K.1 it seemed that the world had actually been lucky.
Although too young to experience it himself, Paris 2015 had started something. A spirit of global solidarity, responsibility and ambition was kindled. A global movement, where he spent most of his working life, had inevitably gathered momentum.
People had since changed their way of life. Beef became the exception not the norm. Across the globe, households rapidly switched electricity demand to wind and solar, and power producers were more than happy to oblige.
Amazing improvements in battery technology revolutionized the transport sector: In 2027, the hundredth anniversary of the last Model T Ford, production of combustion engine vehicles in the US had ceased.
Governments eventually caught on, and began taxing fossil fuels aggressively. Demand for crude oil and coal eventually collapsed – the current price of $8 per barrel a clear indication of excess supply – and neither were traded internationally anymore.
The world could proudly look back at a century of vision and determination. And even if there had been painful losses along the way – the great African Rhino that he had never seen in its natural habitat came to his mind – overall, the planet Earth had proven more resilient than humanity perhaps deserved.
A note from John O’Brien: Claus Pram Astrup plays a key advisory role at the Global Environment Facility in Washington DC. The GEF has 183 member countries working together to address global environmental issues. Since 1991, the GEF has provided $US13.5 billion in grants and leveraged $65 billion in co-financing for 3,900 projects in more than 165 developing countries. Both developed and developing countries alike have provided these funds to support activities related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, and chemicals and waste in the context of development projects and programs.
Claus’ vision foresees ‘a century of vision and determination’ where our way of living is transformed. He sees governments playing a big part in the transformation by unleashing the ideas that were developed. He pins his hopes on the Paris conference in 2015, but that is just the first step in how governments ‘eventually caught on’.
Claus’ eight dollar per barrel of oil is a measure of how much the world has changed once the last internal combustion engine was made. Showing his optimism, he sees that our planet will be ‘more resilient than humanity perhaps deserved.’
One thing that governments can do immediately is to build an innovation ecosystem that encourages and supports its citizens to build a better world. This of course also has economic benefits as it encourages new businesses to grow, create jobs and provide increased efficiency solutions to existing industry. Where its real value lies however is in its ability to help transform its country to be a global leader in the new way of living; to become one of Frans Nauta’s winners.
This dichotomy is the reason for so much innovation policy being poorly designed and eventually failing. The civil servants are given the task of designing a foolproof system that will guarantee success so they design something that filters anything that involves risk – or indeed innovation. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, we need to remind our policymakers that, ‘It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.’
The Adelaide launch of Visions 2100: Stories from your future will be held on Tuesday November 17 at 5:30pm at The Historian Hotel, 18 Coromandel Place. The Sydney launch will be held on Wednesday November 18 at 6pm at the THE Bonython, 52 Victoria St Paddington. For more information, click here.
