Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Obligatory ride sharing, less living space, more facility sharing, less ownership of goods, no car, far less privacy.
This is what 2030 could look like if we win the war on climate change
31 Oct 2019
Ida Auken Member of Parliament, Parliament of Denmark (Folketinget)By 2030, your CO2 emissions will be greatly reduced. Meat on your dinner table will be a rare sight. Water and the air you breathe will be cleaner and nature will be in recovery. The money in your wallet will be spent on being with family and friends, not on buying goods. Saving the climate involves huge change, but it could make us much happier at the same time.
Right now, we are losing the fight against climate change – but what would winning look like? What is life like in a green world?
Here’s one version of a “CO-topia”:
You walk out of your front door in the morning into a green and liveable city, where concrete has dwindled and green facades and parks are spreading. If you choose to call a car, an algorithm will calculate the smartest route for the vehicle and pick up a few other people on the way.
Since the city council’s ban on private cars in the city, lots of new mobility services have arrived. It is cheaper for you not to own your own car, which, in turn, reduces congestion so you arrive at your destination more easily and quickly and don’t have to spend time looking for somewhere to park. You can also choose to travel by bike, scooter or public transit.
The air you breathe in the city is cleaner because there are far fewer cars on the streets and the rest are electric – all electricity is green in fact. There is less noise and much more space for parks and pedestrian streets since all the parking space became available. For lunch you can choose from dozens of exciting meals – most of them are plant-based, so you eat more healthily and are more environmentally friendly than when lunch meant choosing between five types of burger.
Single-use plastics are a distant memory. You still grab a to-go coffee, but it comes in a reusable cup that you turn in at the next coffee shop to get your deposit back. The same system applies to plastic bottles and other take-away containers. At home, all of your household appliances have been turned into service contracts. If your dishwasher is about to break down, it is no longer your problem. The service provider already knows about the problem and has sent someone to fix it. When the machine no longer works, the provider picks up the old machine and installs a new one.
People are trying out new types of living arrangements with more shared functions and spaces. This means that more people can afford to live in cities. More houses are built with wood, which makes them nicer to live in and much better for the climate than concrete buildings.
When you buy something, you buy something that lasts; you buy it because you really need it and want to take care of it. But because you buy far fewer things, you can actually afford products of better quality and design. “Refuse, reuse, reduce, recycle” is the new way of looking at products: if you don’t need it, you refuse; if you buy it, you will use it again and again; and in the end, you recycle it. All packaging is made from three types of plastic or other new materials, so recycling is easier these days.
Agriculture has changed dramatically, as the new plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy products have made it harder for traditional animal-based products to compete. Much of the land formerly used to produce animal feedstock has become available. As people in cities have started to value going into nature, tourism, hunting and angling now offer new types of income for people living in rural areas. Forests and nature are again spreading across the globe. People travel more in their region and by train, so air traffic has started to decline. Most airlines have switched to electrofuels, biofuels or electricity.
Best of all, because citizens have stopped buying so much stuff, they have more money to spend on other things. This new disposable income is spent on services: cleaning, gardening, help with laundry, healthy and easy meals to cook, entertainment, experiences and fabulous new restaurants. All of these things give the average modern person more options and more free time to spend with their friends and families, working out, learning new skills, playing sports or making art – you name it and there’s more time to do it.
If we consider what the future could be, picking up the mantle against climate change may not seem so bad after all.
License and Republishing
Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/10/what-happens-if-we-beat-climate-change/
World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.
Written by
Ida Auken, Member of Parliament, Parliament of Denmark (Folketinget)
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
Lots of wood and recycled materials used for construction, more shared facilities, lower cost of residency, less use of electricity, no private car ownership and less private ownership of goods.
What author Ida Auken is describing is a slum or tent city.
Here’s a hint for you Ida; most people don’t choose to live this way, of their own free will.
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So long, Denmark. If you don’t want your own damn country, I’m sure another one will.
It’s better to look at the root cause of the environmental issues we’re facing than to be looking at carbon taxation that simply allows corporations to win twice.
The biggest cause of global pollution is excessive production for consumerism.
Put simply this is because they produce far in excess of what is actually needed the global needs can be sustained with production levels of at least half of their current rates.
Why?
Because of the use of “planned obsolescence” a mechanism that artificially reduces the functional life of a product such that you are forced to replace it frequently , for example a washing machine can easily be designed to run for 25-30 years, but in fact fails in as tittle as sis years, just after the five year warranty runs out! This is deliberate design function to ensure future sales of replacement product.
It is also exasperated by the fact that spares are often difficult to obtain and with many products are impossible to repair due to the design of the product that prevent basic repairs from being carried out.
LED lamps are another example, after 40 years of electronics experience, I know that LEDs have an extremely long life if the electronics are properly designed 30,000 hours plus should be expected, but manufacturers are now bringing that down to less that 10,000 by designing the power supply to fail earlier with underrated components that will fail in about 10,000 hours.
These are just two examples of domestic devices that are designed to fail before their time to increase the profit margins for businesses and their shareholders.
In other areas, millions of plastic products are made with plastics that are designed to deteriorate far quicker than necessary to produce repeat purchases,
Shoes have soles made of materials that wear much faster than they should.
Cars used to be really bad before there was a consumer backlash in the 1970-80s after many deaths caused by cars that were designed to rust quickly getting involved in crashes and causing deaths by completely crushing as they were weakened by corrosion, or in some cases causing crashes by breaking up while being driven.
Then there is “perceived obsolescence” where consumers are being pressurised into replacing stuff that is perfectly functional with the latest and greatest model, which is usually the same as the previous one except for some more go-faster stripes or similar. The fashion industry is the worst offender here.
Then there is all the “single use” plastics to reduce costs in a fast food restaurant for example, to avoid paying for someone to wash dishes afterwards.
Finally to add insult to injury, there is a whole “recycling & waste management” industry created to get rid of all this rubbish.
People just need to know what is happening in the world, whinging about climate change is a cop out, they need to be looking at their own consumerism and the corporate greed that is feeding it.
And, before anyone talks about unemployment, that’s what UBI (universal basic income) is for, with so much work being done by macgines whese dats, there is little need for actual employees, so provide a universal income for them to spend to keep the economic engine turning over. The difference being that money trickles UP instead of DOWN
You try and suggest to a Green idiot that sustainability means what it says, that things should “sustain”.
Their eyes glaze over they do not understand. Nice idea Phil but you are dealing with those who think anything technical is basically capitalist evil, but still expect the lights to come on.
Unfortunately, I think that you’re correct. Most people are totally “sold” on the idea of consumerism that they simply cannot see that their purchasing habits are actually promoting the “throwaway society” that we live in.
Also businesses, retailers and manufacturers will try to suppress the awareness of planned & perceived obsolescence as much as possible as consumer awareness would be bad for business.
The message really needs to get out there:-
Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence, and anyone who can read without moving his lips should know it by now: Brooks Stevens.
Moving materials from the quarry to landfill as fast as possible while consuming vast quantities of energy is just about the worst thing mankind can do to the environment.
They even believe that Math is a tool of white supremacy. Seattle school district is going to mandate as part of their math curriculum propaganda how math has held ‘people of color’ down.
Dear oh dear.
I have been comparing my current lifestyle with the one outlined, and I think I would prefer to stay as I am. My house is already built of wood, over 100 years ago, and I wouldn’t say it’s more comfortable than a modern house, but it’s OK. I am greeted by nature as I walk out the door already. Much more might be too much. The trees spreading through the landscape are already there 20,000 acres of them wall to wall behind me and copious others in other directions.
I’m about to mow the lawn today. This will use a pint of fossil fuel l’m afraid, but the 26 year old mower must have been of reasonable quality when I bought it second hand, as it’s still going. I had to make a repair to it this morning as the seat bracket had busted. I somehow doubt whether a service provider would have noticed that and got me a new mower in time to mow the lawn today, so probably better off doing it myself.
I use the car once a week or so, sorry. As for your fabulous restaurants- no thanks, I prefer my homegrown meat an d vegetables.. this outline of yours does not seem to offer me any improvements.
It’s pretty easy spending time with family when your entire extended family and grandparents are forced to live in a single small apartment with communal bunk beds and mattresses made from recycled enhanced karma wood chips on the floor. Quality time indeed. And it cuts down that pesky procreation stuff… a known threat to the peace of the beloved Gaia.
“Buy less things” why not start by telling Apple, Google, etc to stop releasing new devices every year (make it 5 years instead) and demand they have minimum ten year full replacement warranties on products? Good luck.
In the US, most single-family residences are already built with wood. Works great but limited by current building code to 5 stories. Without private automobiles suburbia collapses and people have to live in higher-density housing, which is likely to require steel and concrete in place of wood.
Looking forward to share a tree house. Californians prefer those houses burned into the redwood tree trunk – right?
It must be nice to be an empty-headed SJW. Problems are so simple to solve. No worries about physics, chemistry, biology or engineering. Someone will figure everything out and do all the work.
A popular song recorded by a lot.
I’m up in the world
But I’d give the world to be where I used to be
A heavenly nest, where I rest the best
Means more than the world to me
It’s only a shanty in old Shanty Town
The roof is so slanty it touches the ground
But my tumbled down shack by an old railroad track
Like a millionaire’s mansion is calling me back
I’d give up a palace if I were a king
It’s more than a palace, it’s my everything
There’s a queen waiting there with a silvery crown
In a shanty in old Shanty Town
In truth not many would want to return to poverty, lack of privacy and privation. And no one in their right mind would want what this con job suggests. Excellent posts fun to read.
This article describes the world they want. People are squashed together in concentrated hovels and tenements. Every movement is controlled. You are only allowed to have enough to barely survive.
Genesis did have it right in the following portion of “Get Em Out By Friday.”
I always imagine a giant screen on the side of the building with Al Gore’s head spewing these words:
This is an announcement from Genetic Control
It is my sad duty to inform you of a four foot restriction on
Humanoid height
I hear the directors of Genetic Control have been buying all the
Properties that have recently been sold, taking risks oh so bold
It’s said now that people will be shorter in height
They can fit twice as many in the same building site
They say it’s alright
Beginning with the tenants of the town of Harlow
In the interest of humanity, they’ve been told they must go
Told they must go-go-go-go
Remember, only the government can have this kind of power.
What an utterly uninformed and stupid article. Most feed used for animal agriculture is leftover stock and forage from food produced for humans. Only 10% of feedstock is suitable for human consumption and that’s pushing it. Ruminants graze on land not suitable for growing crops and replenish that land making it suitable for growing. The person who wrote this was most definitely a city dwelling bubble dweller.
“If you choose to call a car, an algorithm will calculate the smartest route for the vehicle and pick up a few other people on the way.”
This sentence alone is enough to show that this is all PC b*llsh*t. I’ve seen a number of versions of this claim over the years. There is just one problem. This “algorithm” is one of the classic unsolved problems of mathematics, the so-called “travelling salesman” problem.
There is NO known solution except “exhaustion”, i e trying random solutions for X million times and choosing the best (or least bad) you happen to find. Which takes time. It is worthwhile for routeing ships where you have a few days to get a “solution”, but definitely not for cars.
Meanwhile, out here in flyover country…..
I live in the country. I commute about 25 miles to work each day, the first 5 miles of which are dirt and gravel road. No busses or trains. Many of us would not ride share even if we lived close to a coworker. I work in an R&D group with a lot of other salaried engineers whose hours don’t always conform neatly to “nine-to-five.”
This past winter we had far more snow than the previous many winters with many parts of the gravel road piled high on both sides and only one vehicle’s width to get through. Then we had a rapid rapid warm up simultaneously with heavy rain. No place for the water from the melting snow to go as the ditches were still full and frozen. The roads were by far the worst in the 9 springs I have lived where we do now. If I had not had my 4-wheel drive truck and had to get by with my small commuter car, I may well have been unable to even get to town for groceries for nearly 3 consecutive weeks. (BTW, I do love living in the country, so I’m not complaining.)
Here’s the thing, though. My 25 mile commute takes, on average, about 28 minutes. Besides 5 miles of gravel road, I have 17+ miles of lightly-traveled 4-lane highway and then a couple of miles (in a town of about 20,000) from the off ramp to the parking lot at work. So even in my diesel Super Duty, I’m using a lot less fuel and spewing a lot less evil CO2 into the atmosphere than millions of people who commute daily in the big cities. I’m pretty sure the 100 amp service to the farmhouse would be a little overtaxed trying to charge a worthless EV while trying to do anything else in the house too.
My point… every solution these idiots put forward re: transportation are completely unworkable where I live and work and likely always will be. And I like my lifestyle just fine as is and I plan to keep it.
Windparks in Denmark:
https://www.google.com/search?q=windparks+denmark&oq=Denmark+windparks+&aqs=chrome.
“Do Danes have the highest personal debt?
Danish households have one of the highest gross debt levels in the world. … Standing at 280 per cent of net disposable incomes, no other OECD has more indebted households than Denmark. However, that is only one side of the equation, as high debt levels are balanced by large assets. Nov 28, 2018”
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNQat3vR5Z2gWcD_Wzm20LwiGzJ7fA%3A1574344122573&ei=upXWXeLEIq76qwGJ05TgDw&q=Denmark+private+debtors+population&oq=Denmark+private+debtors+population&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
Drug City in Denmark:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Denmark+drugs+capital&oq=Denmark+drugs+capital&aqs=chrome.
– aka Christian Denmark Freetown:
https://www.google.com/search?q=denmark+christiania+freetown&oq=Denmark+Christiania&aqs=chrome.