It’s easy to be gloomy about the future.
Dystopias are ten-a-penny.
It can seem harder to imagine a society transformed for the better. Challenges to business-as-usual are dismissed as ‘unrealistic’, ‘impractical’ – and it’s never quite the right scheme for this neighbourhood, is it? But to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown, the IPCC report (2018) called for ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes to every aspects of society’. Business-as-usual is not an option!
So here, to inform and inspire, are some resources from visionaries and experts, daring not just to dream but to offer practical pathways to a zero carbon future.
(click on the images for more information)
Rob Hopkins calls for an unleashing of our imaginations to revive communities and the planet. If any book captures the spirit of Imagine2030, this is it!
Film maker, Damon Gameau, imagines the low-carbon world that his daughter may grow up to enjoy in 2040. But this is no utopian dream: all the innovations are happening somewhere now.
Project Drawdown explores the many technologies and policies - from smart thermostats to engineered carbon sinks - needed to achieve drawdown (i.e. greenhouse gases declining) by 2050.
Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, architects of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, set out their super-positive manifesto for change.
The Guardian asked four architects/designers to envision a post-pandemic city. Check out the ‘garden street’ imagined by Foster and Partners – and ask: why not?
In this book, Chris Goodall (an economist working in energy technology) explores the actions, policies and technologies needed for a zero carbon UK.
In this book, Paul Chatterton, Professor of Urban Futures, draws on new ideas adopted in cities around the world to offer a radical manifesto for the sustainable city.
Radio 4 series, in which academics, writers and imaginative types like Jarvis Cocker share one radical change they’d like to see in the post-coronavirus ‘new normal’.
From Copenhagen to Bogota, Charles Montgomery shows how cities designed for people rather than, say, cars or corporations, can make us healthier, saner and happier.
Imagine is a free newsletter from the excellent online journal The Conversation, exploring what a future beyond climate change might look like. Subscribe here!
The website of Rob 'From What Is to What If' Hopkins has blogs, videos – and his podcasts, From What If to What Next, in which guests explore a ‘what if…?’ question.