A Cautiously Optimistic Look at the Future

It's easy to get depressed when looking at the news and thinking that everything is getting worse. But there are some trends that provide some hope, at least in the middle and long-term futures. 

Science fiction author and futurist, Karl Schroeder, has published a blog post in which he highlights some things that might lead to cautious optimism about our future prospects. It's long but worth a read.  

Today I’m going to describe some hard, apocalyptic truths about our short-term future. Basically, using fossil fuels for geopolitical extortion is resulting in catastrophe. But then I’m going to make three unapocalyptic claims: first, that fossil fuel coercion is becoming structurally self-defeating; second, that future material scarcities that can be used to coerce weaker nations are shallower and shorter-lived than their predecessors; and third, that the limiting constraint on industrial civilization is ultimately ecological rather than technological or political. Finally, I’ll show how this is cause for a (cautious) optimism about our mid- to long-term future.

Changing Our Perspective On Time

Humans tend to be short sighted when it comes to planning for the future. Few of us look generations ahead, past our deaths, out into periods of time familiar to historians. That can have some serious consequences, as we're finding out when trying to deal with climate change.

The Long Time is an attempt to change that. It deserves your attention.

A few weeks ago, the IPCC released a report about climate change so devastating that some of its authors were in tears at the launch. It highlighted how our actions now will determine the kinds of lives future inhabitants of the planet will have, and ultimately whether they will have lives at all. We hold immense responsibility for the future, yet in these times of apocalyptic news cycles, it can feel that everything is extremely urgent but happening too fast to change. We hold immense power, yet feel impotent. In the face of global anxiety, we put our heads down and our horizons get closer and closer. The problem is that the tunnel vision of short-term thinking is leading to decisions that might mean we are only left with a short term as a species.

We’ve started the Long Time project as we believe that: Our capacity to care about the future is crucial to our ability to preserve it, developing longer perspectives on our existence will change the way we behave in the short term, and art and culture will be crucial to making the much needed transformative shift in attitudes and behaviours. Here we explain both why and how, proposing five paths to safeguarding the long-term…

 

Yes, There's Hope For Us

This is the first in what will be an ongoing series of posts contrasting my "We're Toast" series of posts, with links to articles that suggest that we might somehow pull through the coming crisis.

Climate Change and Environment

• Shutdown of US coal power facilities saved over 26,000 lives, study finds. "Shift to gas saved more than 300m tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide as nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide levels dropped."
• Once Doomed, America's Recovering Bison Are Saving US Ecosystems. "Today some 500,000 bison have been restored in over 6,000 locations, including public lands, private ranches, and Native American lands."
• In 2030, we ended the climate emergency. Here's how. "If words make worlds, then we urgently need to tell a new story about the climate crisis. Here is one vision of what it could look and feel like to radically, colle
• How to Stop Freaking Out and Tackle Climate Change. "Here’s a five-step plan to deal with the stress and become part of the solution."
• Scientists Fight Back Against Toxic ‘Forever’ Chemicals. The ubiquitous compounds known as PFAS are nearly indestructible. But scientists are learning to split their ultra-strong carbon-fluorine bonds.

Politics

• Why the Climate Movement's Next Big Target Is Wall Street. "Climate activists are taking on a new pipeline: The one that funnels money from Wall Street into planetary destruction."

Technology

• One Of Climate Change's Biggest Contributors Is In Your Car, But It’s Not Coming From The Tailpipe. Oddly, CO2 may be our saviour here.
• Against all odds. "The inside story of how scientists across three continents produced an Ebola vaccine."