My book launch is getting close…next Monday.
Meanwhile, I’ve been in Melbourne talking at Innofuture (www.innofuture.com.au). If by any chance you’re in Melbourne tomorrow get down there for the second and final day and hear Tom Kelley from Ideo speak about how the legendary design firm works.
I was speaking on future trends and caused a few sharp intakes of breath by suggesting that Climate Change was a fad. Actually I didn’t say that (although that’s how I’ll be quoted). What I did say was that the panic reaction to Climate Change was out of all proportion. Basically it’s a problem but we’ll solve it through a mixture of innovation, regulation and attitudinal change. It is also not our biggest long-term problem. Resource and materials scarcity (including people) will prove to be a much bigger challenge if the current rate of development continues.
What really interests me about Climate Change is this. Why do we currently take worst-case scenarios to be most likely outcomes and why do we run from one mad panic to the next all the time? Last year it was global flu pandemics and before that (in no particular order) we had deep vein thrombosis (on long-haul flights), asteroids impacting the earth, Y2K, acid rain etc etc. One theory is that, historically speaking, apocalyptic thinking tends to occur during periods of rapid social and technological change. Is that what’s going on?
Oh wow! I wish I had heard about this conference earlyer.
Are you familiar with Michel Bauwens, the founder of the P2P Foundation? He was recently in Australia and gave a pretty interesting talk regarding some of the matters of scarcity and its effect on our perceptions of the needs of modern humanity. Bellow is a link to a video of one of his presentations.
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU
Rings a bell! I’ll check him out. Thank you…
Richard.
I hear so much rhetoric and questioning over the ‘heist’ of Climate Change. People who discredit carbon trading because it is essentially a capitalist enterprise. For God’s sake, if it takes fear and panic to instigate action then bring it on. It can not be denied that the world is heating up. It can not be denied that we are in a flux of weather patterns that is wreaking havoc on our farmers and GDP. It can not be denied that I walk out the door into a smog filled city that reeks of over use and abuse.
Let the panic happen. Let the great ‘misinformed’ unwashed try to change their consuming ways. It can only benefit us all in the end.
See below for some food for thought.
http://www.peterrussell.dreamhosters.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
I hear so much rhetoric and questioning over the ‘heist’ of Climate Change. People who discredit carbon trading because it is essentially a capitalist enterprise. For God’s sake, if it takes fear and panic to instigate action then bring it on. It can not be denied that the world is heating up. It can not be denied that we are in a flux of weather patterns that is wreaking havoc on our farmers and GDP. It can not be denied that I walk out the door into a smog filled city that reeks of over use and abuse.
Let the panic happen. Let the great ‘misinformed’ unwashed try to change their consuming ways. It can only benefit us all in the end.
See below for some food for thought.
http://www.peterrussell.dreamhosters.com/Odds/WorldClock.php