On the other end, nasal New Yorker Beasties : “Oh My God, Get It Together, Let’s See What’s Happening.”

So we embraced the seriousness of climate change a bit more in 2006 – thanks partly to Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and thanks mostly to two decades of scientific evidence and sweat from public campaigners. Climate change itself however, and it’s energy related cousin – peak oil, are both mere symptoms of a broader problem – humans are simply consuming too much, are living unsustainably. Even a brief dip into the statistics and graphs related to resource use & availabilities, deforestation and habitat loss, fresh water, pollution, and species extinction – shows an alarming, intensifying world picture. So given we’re expecting to swell to 9 billion human appetites by 2050, how do we get it together?

The pathways to avoiding some kind of mid 21C meltdown are many. And there are no shortage of bright-brained online writings outlining these, hoping to help us step with purpose into the new year. How do we translate this awareness into action, into tangible improvements that will leave future generations better rather than worse off?

Edgy Optimism
Provocateurs The Edge, at the end of each year ask a range of the Internationally esteemed thinkers one question. Below are a few snippets from the responses to: ‘What are you optimistic about and why?’

Geoffrey Carr from the Economist noted that “population growth is not exponential – it tends to flatten out when people get more prosperous,” explaining that rather than continue at today’s growth, worldpopulation will level out at around 9 billion by 2050.

Stephen Schneider, climatologist, believes that “Just as we have shifted and made progress with The Ozone Hole, we can do this too with climate change…”

Alun Anderson from New Scientist was feeling the sunshine: “70 per cent of current world annual energy use comes from burning fossil fuels… but the Sun is providing 7,000 times as much energy as we are using.. and there are plenty of radical new ideas for a future in which sunlight is turned straight into the forms of energy we need… just three of my favourites – First, reprogramming the genetic make-up of simple organisms so that they directly produce useable fuels. Second, self-organizing polymer solar cells – which could be ink jetted onto plastics by the hectare, creating dirt cheap solar cells the size of advertising hoardings. Third, there’s artificial photosynthesis. Nature uses a different trick from silicon solar cells to capture light energy, whipping away high-energy electrons from photo-pigments into a separate system in a few thousand millionths of a second. We are getting much closer to understanding how it’s done, and even how to use the same principles in totally different nano-materials. Although the consensus view is that the sunlight-powered future won’t be taking over until 2050, I’d place an optimistic bet that one of the many smart ideas being researched now will turn out to be an unforeseen winner much earlier.”

Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs finds hope in that ‘The tools for cultural production and distribution are in the pockets of 14 year olds’.

John Gottman, psychologist, noted a major study of 186 hunter-gatherer cultures which found that when men are involved in the care of their own infants the cultures do not make war. “This greater involvement of men with their babies may eventually contribute to a more peaceful world.”

Brian Goodwin, biologist, was optimistic about ‘our ability as a species to respond to the challenge presented by peak oil, the end of the cheap energy era that has lasted about 200 years, and to enter a new cultural phase in our evolution.. (via) the proliferation of new technologies, and experiments in trading and monetary systems, that could result in robust local communities that are self-sufficient and sustainable in energy, food production, and other human needs.

Esther Dyson believes that the attention of the world’s rich will turn to solving the problems of the poor : “some people will still get rich by being first and smartest, but most will get rich by implementing well and serving broader markets. For the first time in history, power is really moving to the masses, not as a power block, but as a market.”

See also ‘Resolutions for a Post-Peak New Year‘

May your ollies be high in 07~!