New Enlightenment

Summary

After installing regulations on the use of all resources and the outputs of all harmful substances, resources continued to decrease and the environment continued to deteriorate. Initially, it was easy to reduce harmful pollutants and reduce the use of some resources. However, as time progressed it became more difficult to reduce green house gasses and further limit the use of resources. The original reductions had consumed all of the low hanging fruit. The regulations needed to maintain sustainable levels became impossible to enforce. The inevitable collapse of the environment or loss of resources had only been delayed by market regulation. Long term-orientated people foresaw this collapse and changed from being less bad to being good. This means changing from reducing CO2 to producing something else that was not harmful, like water. This is cradle to cradle thinking.

Description

2010

The world faced serious threat from global warming, which also had negative effects on the ecosystems and biodiversity. Natural resources were reaching or had already passed the peak and became more and more scarce. The world had begun to move on from the era of high resource prices. Growth in population and consumption per person through the past fifty years put severe demands on the supply of commodities such as oil and food. Many people and countries were already aware of the situation and ready to resolve the problems through global cooperation instead of former individual and less effective efforts.

The leaders of governments with the largest economies meet and acknowledge that the climate is changing due to human influence. They set more stringent regulations on Carbon Dioxide production that included more industries and more countries. Unfortunately, the number of storms, sea levels, and the temperature continue to increase during the 2010’s. People move away from regions where storms are a constant threat, like Southern United States and Southeast Asia. The insurance prices are too high and they are tired of rebuilding after every storm or worrying about when the next one will hit. Droughts in other areas like Western North America and Australia begin to be unbearable. People move from dry areas to more stable environments. These conditions create massive movements of people. These movements cause businesses to collapse and local governments to miss budgets in the areas that people move from. Businesses prosper while local resources and governmetns are strained in the areas where people move to. Also during this period, resources and species begin to disappear, most notably blue fin tuna and the polar bear.

Watching these resources disappear wakes up several long-term thinking countries like China, Japan, and Europe. They begin to meet to review their regulations and agree to lower their requirements even more. They also agree to set market regulations like the cap and trade system for Carbon Dioxide. These market regulations bring other short-term thinking countries into the discussions. Short-term thinking countries use the size of their economies to weaken the original meaning of the new regulations and the new trading system.

2020

Unfortunately, the result of these weakened agreements is that nothing changes. The number of storms, temperature, and sea levels continue to rise. Refugees multiply and resources dwindle. The long-term oriented people realize that the collapse of the environment is still inevitable with market regulation. They make a conscious change from reducing pollution to not polluting at all. This is cradle-to-cradle thinking. Instead of burning less fossil fuels that produce Carbon Dioxide, they don’t use any fossil fuels. Instead of eating less over-fished species they eat none. This is not easy to do alone. The increase in people wanting this lifestyle starts several social networks that share information about which products contain pollutants or limited resources. These social networks start to lobby both businesses and governments to include an easy to read symbol system that simply shows whether the product is sustainable or not.

Some companies realize the demand for cradle-to-cradle products and come up with their own labels. The first companies in each industry to set their own standards for non-pollution have the best chances to set the standards for their industry. These first movers lobby the government to spread their standards across their industry. The government follows with cradle-to-cradle regulation of the industries.

2030

The world temperature, storms, and sea level growth became close to flat. People shared an attitude of acting together in order to prevent a further drive towards ‘runaway’ climate change. Resources are consumed more rapidly by the short-term thinking nations for a short period due to low prices caused by the complete drop off in demand from long-term thinking nations.

Due to business transformation and alternative energies application, fossil fuel consumptions are not as high as EIA expected in 2008. For example, oil consumption increases only 20%. Since the climate change effect is mitigated and the world’s efforts of building water projects and pollution management to preserve available freshwater, the total freshwater supply increases. The rainforest is able to be saved from massive felling. Production and consumption of key wood products and wood energy are diverted to trees which are planted specifically for commercial purposes. Global food prices are less volatile and tend to stabilize. Due to China and India’s new invention on new crops, worldwide hunger and poverty are reduced by 70%. It’s very likely that in the near future, farmers will produce enough grain for both food and biofuel. China and India have become leaders of the developing world in the pursuit of a sustainable world. They continue to push for global cooperation in the future. Local and regional regulations are aligned with national and international regulations due to the strong top-down initiatives. Technologies have a focus on meeting people’s underlying functional need with as much productive a use of energy and resources as possible. Electric engines and pumps were extraordinarily efficient and closer to ‘theoretical maximums’ than ever before. Energy came from a variety of sources, but the vast majority of generation provided no overall emission of carbon into the atmosphere – it is simply too expensive to do so. The cost of energy had inevitably been passed on to consumers and businesses.

Environment

The deterioration of the environment slows but does not stop. There is a continual battle between the environment. Even when there is a gradual awakening of consumers to cradle-to-cradle living, there will still be a large part of the population that will want to continue to live as they once did before. The largest part of the population that will oppose the cradle-to-cradle movement will be the Americans with their high consumption lifestyle. The largest segment of the population that will push for the largest change are the Chinese with their high long-term orientation and collective movement.