The Long Time Project is focused on finding new ways to help us care about the long-term future, so that we take responsibility for it in the short-term.
It aims to galvanise public imagination and collective action to help us all be good ancestors.
Short-termism is rapidly becoming an existential threat to humanity. Short-term mindsets and structures across business, government and society are threatening our collective future.
The next few decades will be pivotal for the billions who have yet to be born. If we act wisely, humanity will survive; the Earth may remain habitable for at least a billion years; what has occurred so far could be a tiny fraction of possible human history and achievement. But, there is a darker alternative too. One where we don’t make the necessary changes in time and where we wipe ourselves out as a species, taking many others with us.
The tunnel vision of short-term thinking is leading to decisions that might mean we are only left with a short term as a species.
Long time project
Our short-termism means we are effectively colonising the future, prioritising our own short-term gains over the future collective good.
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EC:
Food Waste
Many of you are probably already aware that about 30-40% of our food supply is trashed, and are trying to do better, since this wastes about two thousand trillion BTUs per year in the US, enough for AC to 200 billion living rooms. http://sciencenetlinks.com/...
Extreme weather just devastated 10m acres in the midwest. Expect more of this
Art Cullen
Unless we contain carbon, our food supply will be under threat. By 2050, US corn yields could decline by 30%
"A few weeks ago the IPCC released a report about climate change so devastating that some of its authors were in tears at the launch. It highlighted how our actions now will determine the kinds of lives future inhabitants of the planet will have, and ultimately whether they will have lives at all. We hold immense responsibility for the future; yet in these times of apocalyptic news cycles, it can feel that everything is extremely urgent but happening too fast to change. We hold immense power, yet feel impotent. In the face of global anxiety, we put our heads down and our horizons get closer and closer. The problem is that the tunnel vision of short-term thinking is leading to decisions that might mean we are only left with a short term as a species." medium.com/…
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The next few decades will be pivotal for the billions of people who have yet to be born. If we act wisely, humanity will survive
"There is a growing movement that recognises the dangers of this short termism. New institutes have been established like the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge to help us manage these risks to our species from a scientific and technological perspective. The international network of Commissions for Future Generations is addressing this from a parliamentary angle, and there is an active movement of urban developers and financial investors using cathedral thinking to plan long term.
INTERCONNECTED WORLDVIEWS: Valuing the long-term is also about understanding our place in the wider web of life, fostering a sense of connection to the non-human. Again we can learn from indigenous cultures here, many of which have worldviews which foster deep relationships with all species."
medium.com/…
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Read more here:
The Long Time
Another two years lost to climate inaction,
says Greta Thunberg
Two years on from her first school strike, activist attacks ‘ignorance and unawareness’
Looking back [over two years], a lot has happened. Many millions have taken to the streets … and on 28 November 2019, the European parliament declared a climate and environmental emergency,” Thunberg said in an article for the Guardian with fellow strikers Luisa Neubauer, Anuna de Wever and Adélaïde Charlier.
“But over these last two years, the world has also emitted over 80bn tonnes of CO2. We have seen continuous natural disasters taking place across the globe. Many lives and livelihoods have been lost, and this is only the very beginning.”
They said leaders were speaking of an “existential crisis”, yet “when it comes to action, we are still in a state of denial. The gap between what we need to do and what’s actually being done is widening by the minute. Effectively, we have lost another two crucial years to political inaction.”
www.theguardian.com/...
"The question is: will the changes be on our terms, or on Nature’s terms?”
Solar Power Is Booming. But It’s Putting Desert Wilderness At Risk.
How renewable energy projects in the Mojave Desert threaten local species — and how to fix that.
