2021 Draws To A Close: What Future Will We Choose?

That depends on many things. Circumstances, choices, opportunities, both good and bad. Of course Covid still looms, but for the purpose of these thoughts, let us move past the pandemic.

Overall there is now an underlying current driven by COP26, with much more widespread recognition of the threats posed by climate change and this will inform decisions. When you drill down into the need to reach the ultimate goal of zero carbon, the changes coming will not just be political. they will be personal.

As I am beginning to emphasise in blogs already published, this means we have to consume less of almost everything. That has unwelcome consequences for a consumer society with an economy based on consumption plus inflation of fixed assets.

So we will need to switch from using to making and much of the making will have to be about creating a green revolution of sustainable energy, communications, transport and housing, very different to what we have now. Everything will have to be built or made to last. Not to use once and throw away. Faults will be repaired not replaced, except for one exception, set out below.

If we pull this off, the outcome will certainly be sunlit uplands, but these must be for all, not just for the lucky or the pushy.  The mangled concept that the individual is everything, the state is a burden, the markets are masters and globalisation is good for all purposes and at any cost, is broken. This should not and cannot be repaired. To achieve the survival of humanity more or less a we know it, it has to be replaced.