Green Design » Imagining the Future

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Ethan Zuckerman — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:34:36 +0000

I thought I knew William Kamkwamba’s story. I was in the audience at the TED Global conference in Arusha, Tanzania when William took the stage to introduce himself and the remarkable windmill he’d built at his family’s house in rural Malawi. Like dozens of others in the audience, I was moved first to laughter, and then to tears by William’s explanation of how he turned some PVC pipe, a broken bicycle and some long wooden poles into a machine capable of generating sufficient current to power lights and a radio in his parents’ house: “I try, and I made it.”

And I’ve watched William’s life undergo an amazing set of changes – moving to Lilongwe to attend a top Malawian high school, being accepted to a pan-African academy in Johannesburg, travelling to the US to accept awards and visit friends he made through TED. I follow his blog, and get regular updates from Tom Rielly, one of TED’s organizers, who’s spent time with William in Malawi and the US, and taken responsibility for coordinating the amazing opportunities he’s now faced with.

On some level, I’d assumed that William’s story began on that stage in Arusha that day. In his new memoir, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, William makes very clear that nothing could be further from the truth. Written with journalist Bryan Mealer, a celebrated chronicler of African conflict and hope, William takes us to the small farming village where he grew up, to the maize and tobacco fields he tended with his father and sisters, and to the joys, sorrows and challenges of growing up in one of the world’s poorest nations. It’s a story about magic and science, hunger and hardship, creativity and discovery. The story I knew – a young man whose natural engineering talent and willingness to try our ideas everyone thought was crazy – is little more than a coda to his remarkable story.

Where William comes from, magic is alive and well – wizards steal men’s head at night to use as balls in soccer games, and a gumball given by a friend might be poisoned by witchcraft. Given the powers rural Malawians are buffeted by – drought and rainfall which can wipe out a year’s harvest, a government which can’t seem to figure out how to support farmers, crippling prices for seeds and fertilizer – it’s not hard to see how one could develop a belief in unseen forces. Respectful of his culture, William worries that magic holds back his fellow Malawians from embracing science and solving persistent development problems… and discovers that a suspicion of the new can extend to his work as well, when villagers wonder if his windmill is responsible for a persistent drought.

But William makes clear that this environment was a fertile one for scientific discovery. His narrative is filled with the sort of creative hacking afrophiles know and love – toy cars made from wire and bottle caps, dysfunctional radios brought back to life, and a disturbingly effective slingshot trap for bird hunting. What emerges is the portrait of a young man learning to be a Malawian Thomas Edison, carefully and methodically trying different solutions to problems.

The most amazing aspect of William’s story is not the unlikely sequence of events which brought him from obscurity to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, but the fact that his creativity and ambitions were not crushed by circumstances. Roughly half his narrative focuses on a famine that gripped the nation in 2001 and 2002. Kawkwamba was in his early teens, anxious to start secondary school, but widespread hunger and its ancillary effects kept him out of school for five years. His portrait of hunger, its ability to drive his neighbors and himself to do things they wouldn’t have imagined, and the way it saps the energy and life of a community, is harrowing and powerful. His remarkable achievements are all the more impressive given the circumstances he and his family faced, and a testament to his parents’ wisdom and strength, as well as to his remarkable intellect.

I suspect William sees the book as a challenge to fellow Africans to innovate and achieve. As William encounters a wider world, he’s endlessly asking, “Why can’t Africans do this as well?” and challenging himself to transform his community and the world. I took a different challenge away from the book. It’s clear from William’s story that there are remarkable individuals in every corner of the world whose potential is smothered by circumstances. For every William who finds a path, there are thousands who don’t. Figuring out how to make it possible for remarkable invididuals, anywhere in the world, to reach their potential is one of the more difficult challenges of international development – this remarkable book makes it clear that it’s one worth tackling.

This piece originally appeared on ...My heart's in Accra
CC photo credit

Learn more in the WorldChanging archives:
Wind Power, Blogging and Innovation in Malawi
Innovation from Constraint (the extended dance mix)
The Kind of Science Africa Needs

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(Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Imagining the Future at 11:34 AM)

The Lessons of Katrina: Global Warming Adaptation is a Cruel Euphemism and Prevention is Far, Far Cheaper

Joe Romm — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:46 +0000

I’m updating this post from August 29, 2007, along with pieces of the adaptation trap — Part 1 and Part 2 from March 2008.

The L.A. Times has brought to prominence (and fallen for) what I call the “adaptation trap”:

The adaptation trap is the belief that 1) “it would be easier and cheaper to adapt than fight climate change” [as the Times puts it in the sub-head] and/or 2) “adaptation” to climate change is possible in any meaningful sense of the word absent an intense mitigation effort starting now to keep carbon dioxide concentrations below 450 ppm.

G. Gordon Liddy’s daughter repeated that standard denier/delayer line in our debate: Humans are very adaptable — we’ve adapted to climate changes in the past and will do so in the future.

We know that fighting climate change — stabilizing below 450 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide — has a low cost, according to IEA, IPCC, McKinsey and every major independent economic analysis (see “Intro to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar“).

What is the cost of “adaptation”? It is almost incalculable. The word is a virtually meaningless euphemism in the context of catastrophic global warming. That is what the deniers and delayers simply don’t understand. On our current emissions path, the country and the world faces faces multiple catastrophes, including:

Staggeringly high temperature rise, especially over land — some 10°F over much of the United States

Sea level rise of 5 feet, rising some 6 to 12 inches (or more) each decade thereafter

Permanent Dust Bowls over the U.S. SW and many other heavily populated regions around the globe

Massive species loss on land and sea — 50% or more of all life

Unexpected impacts — the fearsome “unknown unknowns”

More severe hurricanes — especially in the Gulf

I think Hurricane Katrina gives the lie to the adaptation myth. No, I’m not saying humans are not adaptable. Nor am I saying global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, although warming probably did make it a more intense. But on the four-year anniversary of Katrina — and the three year anniversary of Climate Progress’s initial launch — I’m saying Katrina showed the limitations of adaptation as a response to climate change, for several reasons.

First, the citizens of New Orleans “adapted” to Hurricane Katrina, but I’m certain that every last one of them wishes we had prevented the disaster with stronger levees. The multiple catastrophes — extreme drought, extreme flooding, extreme weather, extreme temperatures — that global warming will bring can be suffered through, but I wouldn’t call it adaptation.

Second, a classic adaptation strategy to deal with rising sea levels is levees. Yet even though we knew that New Orleans would be flooded if the levees were overtopped and breached, even though New Orleans has been sinking for decades, we refused to spend the money to “adapt” New Orleans to the threat. We didn’t make the levees able to withstand a category 4 or 5 hurricane (Katrina was weaker at landfall than that, but the storm surge was that of a category 4).

Third, even now, after witnessing the devastation of the city, we still refuse to spend the money needed to strengthen the levees to withstand a category 5 hurricane. We refuse to spend money on adaptation to preserve one of our greatest cities, ensuring its destruction, probably sometime this century.

If we won’t adapt to the realities of having one city below sea level in hurricane alley, what are the chances we are going to adapt to the realities of having all our great Gulf and Atlantic Coast cities at risk for the same fate as New Orleans — since sea level from climate change will ultimately put many cities, like Miami, below sea level? And just how do you adapt to sea levels rising 6 to 12 inches a decade for centuries, which is the fate we risk by 2100 if we don’t reverse greenhouse gas emissions trends soon. Climate change driven by humans GHGs is already happening much faster than past climate change from natural causes — and it is accelerating.

The fact is, the deniers don’t believe climate change is happening, and the the delayers don’t take the climate change impacts above seriously, so they don’t believe in spending serious money on adaptation. The Center for American Progress has written an important paper on hurricane preparedness, which is a good starting point for those who are serious about adaptation.

But don’t be taken in by heartfelt expressions of faith in human adaptability. If Katrina shows us anything, it is that preventing disaster would be considerably less expensive — and more humane — than forcing future generations to “adapt to” an unending stream of disasters.

Finally, a major new study finds the cost of adaptation — and the costs of inaction — are far, far higher than anyone thought. Duh! Since it provides strong economic and analytical support for my analysis here, I will blog on it soon.

This piece originally appeared on Climate Progress

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(Posted by Joe Romm in Imagining the Future at 4:00 PM)

A Bright Green Argument for Geoengineering

Alex Steffen — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:54:02 +0000

Jamais wrote an excellent opinion piece in the WSJ arguing for geoengineering research and experimentation.

While I disagree with his conclusion and find geoengineering a poor strategy for getting us out the the troubles we're in, his piece is really worth reading. He manages to steer clear of offering political cover to denialists (who have been using the idea of geoengineering to deny the need for emissions reductions), yet make a really cogent, clear argument about what he thinks geoengineering itself means and can and cannot do. It is, when all's said and done, a bright green argument for engineering the Earth:

With all of these drawbacks, why would I consider myself an advocate of geoengineering, no matter how reluctant? Because I believe the alternative would be worse.
The global institutions we rely on to deal with a problem like climate change seem unable to look past short-term roadblocks and regional interests. At the same time, climate scientists are shouting louder than ever about the speed and intensity of environmental changes coming from global warming.

In short, although we know what to do to stop global warming, we’re running out of time to do it and show no interest in moving faster. So here’s where geoengineering steps in: It gives us time to act.

That’s if it’s done wisely. It’s imperative that we increase funding for geoengineering research, building the kinds of models and simulations necessary to allow us to weed out the approaches with dangerous, surprising consequences.

Good job, Jamais!

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 8:54 PM)

A Bright Green Argument for Geoengineering

Alex Steffen — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:54:02 +0000

Jamais wrote an excellent opinion piece in the WSJ arguing for geoengineering research and experimentation.

With all of these drawbacks, why would I consider myself an advocate of geoengineering, no matter how reluctant? Because I believe the alternative would be worse.
The global institutions we rely on to deal with a problem like climate change seem unable to look past short-term roadblocks and regional interests. At the same time, climate scientists are shouting louder than ever about the speed and intensity of environmental changes coming from global warming.

In short, although we know what to do to stop global warming, we’re running out of time to do it and show no interest in moving faster. So here’s where geoengineering steps in: It gives us time to act.

That’s if it’s done wisely. It’s imperative that we increase funding for geoengineering research, building the kinds of models and simulations necessary to allow us to weed out the approaches with dangerous, surprising consequences.

Good job, Jamais!

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 8:54 PM)

Earth 2100, Tonight

Alex Steffen — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:22:40 +0000

So a ways back I was interviewed pretty extensively by ABC in preparation for their special "television event" Earth 2100. It airs tonight:

It's an idea that most of us would rather not face -- that within the next century, life as we know it could come to an end. Our civilization could crumble, leaving only traces of modern human existence behind.
It seems outlandish, extreme -- even impossible. But according to cutting edge scientific research, it is a very real possibility. And unless we make drastic changes now, it could very well happen.

Experts have a stark warning: that unless we change course, the "perfect storm" of population growth, dwindling resources and climate change has the potential to converge in the next century with catastrophic results.

ABC has gathered an impressive list of planetary futurists, including John Holdren, Joseph Tainter, Janine Benyus, Thomas Homer-Dixon and others. I'm honored to be in their company.

The show airs tonight, June 2, at 9 p.m. E.T. I'll be watching, if I can find a place with a TV.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 4:22 PM)

Earth 2100, Tonight

Alex Steffen — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:22:40 +0000

So a ways back I was interviewed pretty extensively by ABC in preparation for their special "television event" Earth 2100. It airs tonight:

It's an idea that most of us would rather not face -- that within the next century, life as we know it could come to an end. Our civilization could crumble, leaving only traces of modern human existence behind.
It seems outlandish, extreme -- even impossible. But according to cutting edge scientific research, it is a very real possibility. And unless we make drastic changes now, it could very well happen.

Experts have a stark warning: that unless we change course, the "perfect storm" of population growth, dwindling resources and climate change has the potential to converge in the next century with catastrophic results.

ABC has gathered an impressive list of planetary futurists, including John Holdren, Joseph Tainter, Janine Benyus, Thomas Homer-Dixon and others. I'm honored to be in their company.

The show airs tonight, June 2, at 9 p.m. E.T. I'll be watching, if I can find a place with a TV.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 4:22 PM)

Scanning The Foothills Of The Future

Green Futures — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:33:22 +0000

By Jemima Jewell

"A fantastic tool for people to lift their eyes from the daily doom and gloom, to the foothills of the future – where the view is breathtaking."

That’s how our recent vision for the West Midlands region was described by Dr Simon Slater, who commissioned the project as Director of Sustainable Development at Advantage West Midlands.

But what exactly is a vision, and why are we so keen on them here at Forum for the Future?

A vision can take many shapes and forms, but essentially describes what an organisation, product or place will look like in the long-term future if it achieves its goals. Even if the exact means of getting there is as yet undetermined, a vision sets out the essential features of success in an evocative, inspiring manner.

It may seem difficult to justify planning for the next 20 years when getting through the next quarter is at the front of everyone’s mind. But setting out a future vision is a productive exercise for a number of reasons. When talking about the long-term future, people are often willing to discuss important or sensitive issues more positively, focusing more on solutions than they otherwise might. Developing a vision can give members of an organisation a common sense of purpose.

It’s not always the case, however, that visions have to be agreed. In the ‘safe space’ that is the future, hopes, fears and ambitions can be discussed more openly, and without recrimination. People’s different underlying assumptions can be brought to light and talked over. Indeed, often the most useful part of having a vision is that it acts as a tool to stimulate debate.

One caveat. A vision cannot be a concrete, immovable thing. As Peter Drucker said: ‘If there is one thing we know about the future, it’s that it will be different’. There are few certainties facing organisations today – the last 12 months has surely taught us that. It’s therefore vital that any vision includes built-in flexibility to enable resilience in the face of a potentially turbulent world. Regular ‘horizon scanning’, looking out for hints of future change, is an important step to build into any long-term planning process.

Forum’s recent vision for the West Midlands region was commissioned by the Regional Development Agency Advantage West Midlands, and explores what the region might look like in 2020 if it is successfully travelling the path to a low-carbon economy. The people, businesses and places described in the vision demonstrate that decarbonising an economy, or a region, isn’t all about cutbacks and sacrifice. Becoming a low-carbon region can and should be a positive journey that genuinely improves quality of life, and works with, rather than against, other policy goals around health, productivity and innovation.

Dr Slater, now Executive Director at Sustainability West Midlands, says: “We will be using this tool to help stimulate debate, about what is possible now, and how to get there. We will challenge our leaders to look at this vision, improve on it, and ultimately use it to help make the birthplace of the industrial revolution a better place for its five million plus residents, forging a new identity based on our low-carbon industrial success”. The ball is rolling and the West Midlands’ Sustainable Housing Action Programme has already used the vision to inform the contribution it can make to reducing carbon emissions by retrofitting housing.

This is exactly what visions are for. If a vision lives and breathes, becomes a focal point for discussion, and is used to influence short-term decisions on investments, strategies and partnerships, then it can be an invaluable tool to help drive the transition to the sort of life we want – and need – in the future, making that ‘breathtaking’ view a reality.

Download the West Midlands vision here – and join the debate.

“The Rocketship Wonder of Earlier Decades is Gone”

Alex Steffen — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:26:25 +0000

A great round-up of the talks at worldchanging ally and writer Geoff Manaugh's London conference, Thrilling Wonder Stories. Here are some interesting tidbits (all quotes are paraphrases):

Peter Cook: "He stood up to talk about “Weird Shit International” as a much-needed movement in architecture across the decades. ... He lamented “up and down” building design philosophy, and laughed that the Oslo school of architecture was pumping out such boring graduates of that philosophy, when a solar-powered autonomous robot was mowing the grass-lawn roof above their heads."
Viktor Antonov: "Then he showed us how altering a couple of architectural parameters - increasing the height of the ground floors of Paris, and the monumental size of the smokestacks - could instantly render a real city in a science fiction oeuvre."

Iain MacLeod: "The rocketship wonder of earlier decades is gone, and our children write dystopias by default: a fascinating, terrifying realisation. He seemed rather earthy and upbeat, and talked of how problems mean invention, and creativity, but I couldn’t help think about a generation of kids for whom there is no bright imagined future: only Bladerunner, eco-death, the Drowned World, apocalypse. MacLeod talked about the problems for idealistic sci-fi now, and I wonder if there was something about the hip nihilism of modern fantasy, combined with relentless terror-cancer newsmedia shit, that really will stop future generations bothering to climb out of their doomed shrug."

"Then the most extraordinary storm of science-madness came from Francois Roche (of architects R&Sie) whose thick accent masked incredible phrases: “strategies of sickness”, “protocolising the witch in the forest”, “the necrosis of the building”, “the penis of the wall”… he talked about feeding death and traditional fairy tales into design, and about creating a machine that would build an un-navigable glass maze in the courtyard between buildings, into which people would wander, and then die, unable to escape without GPS. “They die to become part of the building,” he said, grinning, and propping expensive sunglasses on his styled bonce. He talked about a building in which would be constructed from vast, moulded versions of bullet holes on wet clay, covered in rotting vegetation collected from the Korean de-militarized zone by a purpose-built “witch” robot, referencing Tarkovsky’s Stalker on the way. Oh and this electrified hairy skyscraper that would suck pollution from the Thai atmosphere, and only be a little bit dangerous. Roche’s firm seems like one of the world’s most valuable imaginative resources: technically accomplished, with a healthy streak of insanity. He would be the guy the evil genius would go to for the Volcano base plans. “Ten billion in blood money, what can you build me?” “A death-maze constructed from recycled local materials and plutonium!” Something like that."

And, since I can't top that, I'll leave it there. Well done, Geoff!

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 11:26 AM)

The Worldchanging Star Trek Challenge

Jon Lebkowsky — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:21:06 +0000

Classic space operas ignore the difficult realities of space travel, assuming that all the potential kinks have been worked out through and that future societies have developed new "black box" technologies (as in wormholes and their navigation, warp speed leaps through space, handheld devices that translate alien languages and diagnose obscure ailments on the fly, transporters that disassemble human bodies and reassemble them many miles away). Suspension of disbelief is willing but often strained.

With a new Star Trek film in theatres this week, I've been thinking about the question that most challenges my own suspension of disbelief. As someone who thinks more and more about the need for systems to be sustainable, and as someone primed by the "Spaceship Earth" metaphor, I want to understand how the Enterprise maintains a viable internal ecology. The ship spends most of its time in space, there seem to be few returns to planet Earth, and while much is made of the search for dilithium crystals, it's never obvious how basic life support issues - air, water, food, waste disposal - are handled.

As I was straining to engineer the sustainable Starship Enterprise in my head, I realized there must be an easier way: crowdsource! So we're having a contest, the winner of which will get a no-prize (nodding to Stan Lee and Marvel Comics) and be featured in an upcoming Worldchanging "roundup" post.

To win a no-prize, just describe a credible system for overall environmental sustainability and stability within the Starship Enterprise. Send your description to contest //at// worldchanging.com. Send no later than May 11, 2009. We'll post the winner by May 22.

Photo credit: flickr/jeffc5000, Creative Commons license.

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(Posted by Jon Lebkowsky in Imagining the Future at 9:21 AM)

Where There Is No Vision, The People Perish 2

WorldChanging Team — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:11:29 +0000

In this sequel to Part 1, Bill Becker lays out some key goals and principles for a sustainable future.

We are on the edge of a carbon revolution. Everything is going to change. This will matter to you… There is no high-carbon future. -Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Great Britain
When we give voice to our visions, we identify the destinations we want to move towards. And by describing the steps we can take, we prepare ourselves for action.
- Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook.

In many ways, the future is an intensely personal thing. Every person, family, neighborhood, community and region is unique. A one-size-fits all plan for progress would be profoundly unsatisfying. It would impoverish us culturally by stifling invention and ignoring the richness of our diversity.

But what if the many communities engaged in envisioning America’s future, and the many organizations helping them, rallied around a common set of criteria for the society we must build for the 21^st century? Not a common blueprint, mind you, but common goals that must be met society-wide if we are to successfully survive the economic, climate and energy crises?

Individuals and communities would invent their own ways to achieve the goals, but common goals would help us achieve necessary national and global objectives. They would guide local investments, including the new infusions of stimulus money going to states and communities for work on energy and climate. In the bargain, each participating community would become a laboratory and demonstration project for all the others.

What would that common set of goals look like? One list is being considered by the U.S. Green Building Council in its new LEED for Neighborhoods rating system. Neighborhoods win points by fulfilling as many as possible of these criteria:

Proximity to water and water infrastructure

Protecting imperiled species

Conserving water and wetlands

Conserving farmland

Avoiding development in floodplains

Redeveloping brownfields

Reducing dependence on automobiles

Creating bicycle networks

Designing so that housing is near jobs and schools

Avoiding steep slopes

Restoring wildlife habitat

Compact development

Diversity in uses, housing types and housing affordability

Walkable streets

Reducing footprints for parking

Providing good access to public spaces

Ensuring accessibility for people of all abilities

Local food production

Involving the community in neighborhood development

Preventing pollution, waste and site disturbance during construction

Achieving high levels of energy efficiency, water and materials efficiency in buildings

Reusing historic buildings

Reducing in urban heat islands

Achieving good wastewater management and comprehensive waste management

Smart Growth America proposes 10 principles for community development:

Provide a Variety of Transportation Choices

Mix Land Uses

Create a Range of Housing Opportunities and Choices

Create Walkable Neighborhoods

Encourage Community and Stakeholder Collaboration

Foster Distinctive, Attractive Communities with a Strong Sense of Place

Make Development Decisions Predictable, Fair and Cost Effective

Preserve Open Space, Farmland, Natural Beauty and Critical Environmental Areas

Strengthen and Direct Development Towards Existing Communities

Take Advantage of Compact Building Design and Efficient Infrastructure Design

If I were chief adviser to all the architects of our future, my list would be similar in many ways, and tougher in others. It would include these goals:

Beauty, a goal too often neglected as we talk about new technologies;

Levels of resource efficiency so high that waste becomes an obsolete concept;

Designs, zoning, and building codes that minimize the use of nonrenewable and carbon-rich energy resources;

Use of distributed renewable energy systems wherever possible – for example, building integrated and community-scale solar, wind and geothermal systems;

A community-wide goal of zero greenhouse gas emissions, with regular performance measurement and reporting;

Equal and abundant opportunities, manifesting not only as diverse employment, education, cultural and housing opportunities, but also as diverse mobility options that allow all residents – including those who are too young, too old or physically unable to drive -- easy access to vital services and opportunities;

Local business climates that attract and nurture the goods, services and industries essential to a green economy;

Development patterns that maintain each building’s access to sunlight; An emphasis on environmental restoration as well as conservation – for example, natural corridors to accommodate wildlife forced northward by climate change and creation of “urban forests”;

Features that enable communities to cope with the effects of climate change that already are likely. An example would be community shelters for those who need them during natural disasters and heat waves;

Changes in behavior as well as technology – for example, community agriculture and food production;

Ample social gathering places;

Additional measures to reduce vehicle miles traveled, including incentives for location-efficient development, progressive parking policies and facilities for e-government, remote learning and telecommuting;

The use of natural systems for infrastructure – for example, replanting watersheds for flood control, using swales to guide storm drainage, and constructed wetlands for water treatment;

Features that maintain the connection between human beings and nature;

Ample recreational and cultural opportunities for all ages;

Some will argue that specific goals such as these would stifle local initiative and creativity. I don’t think so. These are goals important to national and global well-being, in effect a responsibility of citizenship, and they leave enormous room for innovation and localization. But if you believe this list is too detailed and prescriptive, what would you subtract?

Others will judge these lists to be woefully inadequate to achieve desirable communities and quality of life in a time of energy insecurity and climate change. If you’re in that category, what would you add?

Some will argue that any list is bogus and that there is no climate crisis or energy crisis ahead. But as I’ve argued before, solutions to climate change are beneficial whether or not you believe in global warming. You need only believe that wasting money, childhood asthma, mercury poisoning, traffic jams, skyrocketing gasoline prices and seeing your energy dollars go to terrorist organizations are bad things.

Whether the list gets longer or shorter, it would be a good thing to “imagineer” around a common set of basic goals that are sufficiently bold to meet the challenges of this time. With your help, perhaps we can construct a list that meets the test.

This piece by Bill Becker originally appeared in Climate Progress.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Imagining the Future at 1:11 PM)

Plan To Produce Clean Power And Water In Sahara Desert

Green Futures — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:53:29 +0000

By Chris Alden

Solar power and seawater to produce energy, food and water in Sahara Desert

Mention the words “Sahara Forest” to anyone over the age of 20, and they’ll soon recall the old joke about the woodcutter who says that’s where he learnt his trade. “Surely you mean the Sahara Desert?” his questioner replies. “Ah,” says the woodcutter, “That’s what they call it now.”

These days the Sahara Forest Project is the ambitious name given to a British proposal which aims to produce clean energy, food and water in coastal desert regions such as North Africa or the Middle East – while helping to revegetate desert land.

The idea is to exploit synergies between two technologies: i) the “Seawater Greenhouse” designed by Charlie Paton (part of the Sahara Forest team), which evaporates and distils seawater, at the same time producing cool, humid environments for plants; and ii) concentrating solar power (CSP).

“Both work well in hot, sunny conditions,” said Michael Pawlyn, Director of Exploration Architecture, also part of the Sahara Forest team. “CSP needs a supply of demineralised fresh water to keep mirrors clean – and that’s what the Seawater Greenhouse produces.”

“And CSP produces a lot of waste heat – [which] we could use to heat seawater going into evaporators, [which] can create more fresh water.” He added that if a CSP plant were on the downwind side of the greenhouses, less dust would accumulate on the mirrors, making power generation more efficient.

Pawlyn declined to give potential figures on costs for the project, but said it could take eight months to a year to become operational, after which payback on the investment would take between six and twelve years. He said the team was in “fairly advanced” discussions with two clients over a demonstration plant.

As for the delivery mechanism for power, Pawlyn said a small-scale plant would probably be built close to a population centre – and speculated that a larger-scale scheme might be linked to a high-voltage DC supergrid, if one is built.

Reese Tisdale, a solar and renewables analyst at Emerging Energy Research, said the scheme was “innovative” but warned that in the current financial climate, investors were risk averse. Even more straightforward CSP projects, he said, could have trouble raising money from a bank in the near term.

Meanwhile in Israel, construction has begun on the “world’s first hybrid solar-gas turbine”, developed by Aora Solar in Kibbutz Samar. The 100kW plant (which also burns biofuels at night) will heat air to 1,000°C to drive its turbines. The company, which hopes to expand in the future, says its modular, “decentralised” business model means small-scale plants can be built in a matter of weeks.

Tisdale said the heated-air design is currently third in the CSP development curve behind the most established method, heating water for steam, and a further innovation, heating salts. In Seville in Spain, Torresol Energy has secured €171 million to build a 17MW CSP plant which will use molten salts, and is set to be operational in 2011.

Green Futures is published by Forum for the Future and is one of the leading magazines on environmental solutions and sustainable futures. Its aim is to demonstrate that a sustainable future is both practical and desirable – and can be profitable, too.

Photo credit: Green Futures.

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(Posted by Green Futures in Imagining the Future at 1:53 PM)

Plan To Produce Clean Power And Water In Sahara Desert

Green Futures — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:53:29 +0000

By Chris Alden

Solar power and seawater to produce energy, food and water in Sahara Desert

Mention the words “Sahara Forest” to anyone over the age of 20, and they’ll soon recall the old joke about the woodcutter who says that’s where he learnt his trade. “Surely you mean the Sahara Desert?” his questioner replies. “Ah,” says the woodcutter, “That’s what they call it now.”

These days the Sahara Forest Project is the ambitious name given to a British proposal which aims to produce clean energy, food and water in coastal desert regions such as North Africa or the Middle East – while helping to revegetate desert land.

The idea is to exploit synergies between two technologies: i) the “Seawater Greenhouse” designed by Charlie Paton (part of the Sahara Forest team), which evaporates and distils seawater, at the same time producing cool, humid environments for plants; and ii) concentrating solar power (CSP).

“Both work well in hot, sunny conditions,” said Michael Pawlyn, Director of Exploration Architecture, also part of the Sahara Forest team. “CSP needs a supply of demineralised fresh water to keep mirrors clean – and that’s what the Seawater Greenhouse produces.”

“And CSP produces a lot of waste heat – [which] we could use to heat seawater going into evaporators, [which] can create more fresh water.” He added that if a CSP plant were on the downwind side of the greenhouses, less dust would accumulate on the mirrors, making power generation more efficient.

Pawlyn declined to give potential figures on costs for the project, but said it could take eight months to a year to become operational, after which payback on the investment would take between six and twelve years. He said the team was in “fairly advanced” discussions with two clients over a demonstration plant.

As for the delivery mechanism for power, Pawlyn said a small-scale plant would probably be built close to a population centre – and speculated that a larger-scale scheme might be linked to a high-voltage DC supergrid, if one is built.

Reese Tisdale, a solar and renewables analyst at Emerging Energy Research, said the scheme was “innovative” but warned that in the current financial climate, investors were risk averse. Even more straightforward CSP projects, he said, could have trouble raising money from a bank in the near term.

Meanwhile in Israel, construction has begun on the “world’s first hybrid solar-gas turbine”, developed by Aora Solar in Kibbutz Samar. The 100kW plant (which also burns biofuels at night) will heat air to 1,000°C to drive its turbines. The company, which hopes to expand in the future, says its modular, “decentralised” business model means small-scale plants can be built in a matter of weeks.

Tisdale said the heated-air design is currently third in the CSP development curve behind the most established method, heating water for steam, and a further innovation, heating salts. In Seville in Spain, Torresol Energy has secured €171 million to build a 17MW CSP plant which will use molten salts, and is set to be operational in 2011.

Green Futures is published by Forum for the Future and is one of the leading magazines on environmental solutions and sustainable futures. Its aim is to demonstrate that a sustainable future is both practical and desirable – and can be profitable, too.

Photo credit: Green Futures.

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(Posted by Green Futures in Imagining the Future at 1:53 PM)

A Green Future Where You Can Borrow Cars And Drink Rainwater

WorldChanging Team — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:29:43 +0000

By Alok Jha

A low-carbon economy will be the culmination of thousands of decisions by governments, businesses and individuals about how we choose to balance environment and economy. There isn't one correct future but many, with each detail in each country dependent on the will of its people.

One thing is certain, though. Anyone concerned about having to give up their modern lifestyle for an austere existence can rest easy. The big differences between now and the low-carbon future will not be the way the world looks or what we will be able to do in it, but how it is arranged.

The biggest hurdle is electricity. Three-quarters of our global electricity needs come from burning fossil fuels. The low-carbon future will demand that none of that electricity emits carbon dioxide. So every gas or coal-fired power plant, of which there will be many in China and India, will have carbon-capture technology to trap and store CO2 underground. Renewable sources including wind, tide, wave and sun will, through investment in basic research in the coming decades, be commercially viable. Far from being forbidding installations belching out carbon dioxide, renewable power stations will be smaller, emit no CO2 and tap into near-limitless supplies of free fuel.

Clean electricity will have a knock-on effect on the other modern carbon nasty - transport. When electricity is cheap and clean, there is no reason not to use its power as much as possible. Electric cars, buses, lorries and high-speed trains will move us and our goods, yet make no contribution to global warming. Though mass public transport will be the travel mode of choice, personal cars will remain. You might not own one yourself, instead borrowing from clubs when needed. By planning towns around pedestrians and investing in cycle lanes, local councils will encourage travel under two miles to be under your own steam or by hydrogen buses.

Flying will be a problem. Improved aerodynamics, lighter aircraft and mixing biofuels into jet fuel will bring down the carbon cost of air miles. Carbon reductions in energy production and road transport will mitigate some of the rise in emissions from the growth in flights in China and India, but environmental campaigners will not be satisfied. Expect punishing taxes on plane tickets, tied to their carbon cost, to discourage flying unless there really is no alternative. In these situations, a personal carbon-rationing system, linked to national CO2 emissions targets, will allow individuals to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

But the number of long journeys, particularly for work, will drop dramatically as high-speed internet connections enable high-quality video conferences and easy communications for people on different sides of the world. Many people will stop commuting to their offices or factories, preferring to work from home.

Homes might look the same, for nostalgic reasons, but will be fundamentally different. Bricks coated with solar paint will be held together with cement that soaks up CO2 from the air around it. Triple-glazed windows will reduce the need for heating in winter and cooling in summer.

Only the most energy-efficient fridges and washing machines will be available to buy while LEDs in lamps and displays will turn electricity into light efficiently instead of wasting most of it as heat. Automatic controls will warm rooms only when needed and switch appliances and lights off when they're not needed.

Our throwaway culture will disappear. By encouraging people to re-use as much as possible, less waste will end up in landfill and the carbon in our possessions (the stuff emitted to make our clothes, toys or furniture) wil not be wasted. Products will be made to last and, when they come to the end of their useful life, be repaired rather than thrown away. Packaging will be virtually nonexistent and, where it exists, will be recyclable or compostable.

People will use water more carefully. Rain will be collected from home and office rooftops and filtered using carbon-free electricity so that it is drinkable. Any water drained away in a building will be recycled and treated locally to wash clothes or flush toilets. Bottled water will be banned.

Food will come from local farms or factories to reduce the carbon cost of transport. Meat lovers, because of their high-carbon diets, will have to use up their personal carbon rations whenever they bite into a steak or else make sure their food comes from local, sustainable farms that produce meat artificially.

Locally-produced electricity will also play a big part in keeping homes carbon free. Solar thermal panels, community-based combined heat and power plants running on carbon-neutral wood chips, micro wind turbines and ground source heat pumps mean that local districts won't need all their power from today's centralised power stations. Local heat and power networks could even feed into the national grid during times of great demand.

This is one of many visions for a low-carbon world in 2050. It seems a long way off and whether we get there depends on decisions made over the next few years.

This piece originally appeared in The Guardian.
Photo credit: flickr/iChaz, Creative Commons License.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Imagining the Future at 4:29 PM)

A Green Future Where You Can Borrow Cars And Drink Rainwater

WorldChanging Team — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:29:43 +0000

By Alok Jha

A low-carbon economy will be the culmination of thousands of decisions by governments, businesses and individuals about how we choose to balance environment and economy. There isn't one correct future but many, with each detail in each country dependent on the will of its people.

One thing is certain, though. Anyone concerned about having to give up their modern lifestyle for an austere existence can rest easy. The big differences between now and the low-carbon future will not be the way the world looks or what we will be able to do in it, but how it is arranged.

The biggest hurdle is electricity. Three-quarters of our global electricity needs come from burning fossil fuels. The low-carbon future will demand that none of that electricity emits carbon dioxide. So every gas or coal-fired power plant, of which there will be many in China and India, will have carbon-capture technology to trap and store CO2 underground. Renewable sources including wind, tide, wave and sun will, through investment in basic research in the coming decades, be commercially viable. Far from being forbidding installations belching out carbon dioxide, renewable power stations will be smaller, emit no CO2 and tap into near-limitless supplies of free fuel.

Clean electricity will have a knock-on effect on the other modern carbon nasty - transport. When electricity is cheap and clean, there is no reason not to use its power as much as possible. Electric cars, buses, lorries and high-speed trains will move us and our goods, yet make no contribution to global warming. Though mass public transport will be the travel mode of choice, personal cars will remain. You might not own one yourself, instead borrowing from clubs when needed. By planning towns around pedestrians and investing in cycle lanes, local councils will encourage travel under two miles to be under your own steam or by hydrogen buses.

Flying will be a problem. Improved aerodynamics, lighter aircraft and mixing biofuels into jet fuel will bring down the carbon cost of air miles. Carbon reductions in energy production and road transport will mitigate some of the rise in emissions from the growth in flights in China and India, but environmental campaigners will not be satisfied. Expect punishing taxes on plane tickets, tied to their carbon cost, to discourage flying unless there really is no alternative. In these situations, a personal carbon-rationing system, linked to national CO2 emissions targets, will allow individuals to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

But the number of long journeys, particularly for work, will drop dramatically as high-speed internet connections enable high-quality video conferences and easy communications for people on different sides of the world. Many people will stop commuting to their offices or factories, preferring to work from home.

Homes might look the same, for nostalgic reasons, but will be fundamentally different. Bricks coated with solar paint will be held together with cement that soaks up CO2 from the air around it. Triple-glazed windows will reduce the need for heating in winter and cooling in summer.

Only the most energy-efficient fridges and washing machines will be available to buy while LEDs in lamps and displays will turn electricity into light efficiently instead of wasting most of it as heat. Automatic controls will warm rooms only when needed and switch appliances and lights off when they're not needed.

Our throwaway culture will disappear. By encouraging people to re-use as much as possible, less waste will end up in landfill and the carbon in our possessions (the stuff emitted to make our clothes, toys or furniture) wil not be wasted. Products will be made to last and, when they come to the end of their useful life, be repaired rather than thrown away. Packaging will be virtually nonexistent and, where it exists, will be recyclable or compostable.

People will use water more carefully. Rain will be collected from home and office rooftops and filtered using carbon-free electricity so that it is drinkable. Any water drained away in a building will be recycled and treated locally to wash clothes or flush toilets. Bottled water will be banned.

Food will come from local farms or factories to reduce the carbon cost of transport. Meat lovers, because of their high-carbon diets, will have to use up their personal carbon rations whenever they bite into a steak or else make sure their food comes from local, sustainable farms that produce meat artificially.

Locally-produced electricity will also play a big part in keeping homes carbon free. Solar thermal panels, community-based combined heat and power plants running on carbon-neutral wood chips, micro wind turbines and ground source heat pumps mean that local districts won't need all their power from today's centralised power stations. Local heat and power networks could even feed into the national grid during times of great demand.

This is one of many visions for a low-carbon world in 2050. It seems a long way off and whether we get there depends on decisions made over the next few years.

This piece originally appeared in The Guardian.
Photo credit: flickr/iChaz, Creative Commons License.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Imagining the Future at 4:29 PM)

Collapse Forward

Alex Steffen — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:16:56 +0000

It's reasonable to worry about collapse these days. From resource peaks to food scarcity, financial meltdowns to climate change, the news seems uniformly ominous.

We certainly could blow it badly enough to trigger irrecoverable collapse (for instance, by triggering climate tipping points), but I'm dubious that most of the collapses we fear will in fact occur, or, even if they occur, that they will last as long or be quite as catastrophic as we think.

That doesn't mean that big shake-ups aren't coming. They are. The question is, how do communities and regions prepare themselves to sail as gracefully through that turbulence as possible?

One possible answer: prepare to collapse forward (Jer prefers "collapsing upwards").

Collapsing forward means investing now in solutions that will aid the functioning of the current system of doing things, withstand its collapse and soften its impact, and provide constituent parts for a better replacement system. Our goal should always been to avoid collapses in general, but where we see them coming, our goal should be to collapse as intelligently as possible.

Industrial-age water supply and drainage systems, for instance, are already inclined to break, and climate change is going to quickly steepen that inclination. Water conservation, rainwater harvesting, graywater reuse, green infrastructure: all of these ease the burden on the present system, lessening the likelihood of catastrophic collapse, while also providing pieces of what might one day become a new, more sensible water system. Employing them could allow the water system to collapse forward when it goes, becoming a more sustainable version of itself.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 2:16 PM)

Fifth Scenario Thinking

Alex Steffen — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:16:48 +0000

Heard this nice buzzphrase: "fifth scenario planning."

In much conventional scenario planning, two essential questions are turned into axes on a graph, creating four sectors, each of which becomes a world or scenario. By finding strategies which perform well in each of these worlds and comparing them, planners can find the set of strategies which are most robust in all of the worlds, and thus, hopefully, most vigorous in real life.

The idea of fifth scenario planning is to anticipate a realistic event or a series of events which is low-probability but highly disruptive, and then test the assumptions from the other four scenarios against it. By doing so, planners can find strategies which are not only robust but rugged. In theory, it introduces not only vigor, but resilience.

By extension, fifth scenario thinking is being ready for things to change rapidly (not necessarily to collapse: the Fall of the Wall and the collapse of Apartheid were both rapid changes, after all) in previously unbelievable ways. If that isn't a needed skill these days, I don't know what is!

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 9:16 PM)

Ponzi 2: What Year Will Coastal Property Values Crash?

Joe Romm — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:30:55 +0000

Coastal property values won't wait to (permanently) fall until sea levels have actually risen 4 or 5 feet, as they almost certainly will by the end this century on our current CO2 emissions path (see Startling new sea level rise research: "Most likely" 0.8 to 2.0 meters by 2100 and Report from AGU meeting: One meter sea level rise by 2100 "very likely" even if warming stops?).

Coastal property values will crash when a large fraction of the financial community and of opinion-makers -- along with a smaller but substantial fraction of the public -- realize that it is too late for us to stop 4 to 5 feet of SLR. And remember, if we don't get on the sustainable sub-450-ppm path soon, then people will quickly come to understand that SLR won't stop in 2100. Seas will continue rising post-2100 perhaps 10 to 20 inches a decade (or more) for centuries until we are ice free and seas are 250 feet higher. And that makes protecting most coastal cities very, very difficult and expensive.

One of the points of my post "Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme and what comes next? Part 1," of course, is that we haven't hit that critical mass of knowledge yet. If we had, the world would be engaged in a massive, desperate effort to avert catastrophe.

And so I pose the question in my talks: What year will coastal property values crash?

I am certainly interested in your thoughts on this.

I pose the question mostly to stimulate thinking. And certainly the collapse is unlikely to happen in just one year -- so perhaps the better question is, What year will U.S. coastal property values peak?

I tend to think the peak comes some time in the 2020s.

The peak will probably be linked to one or more major climate disasters of a kind that I enumerated in "What are the near-term climate Pearl Harbors?" Note that the growing fear of a hurricane damage has already been made getting new insurance for coastal homes in places like Long Island difficult (see here).

But awareness on SLR is growing (see US Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely "substantially exceed" IPCC projections). And it is poised to grow even more quickly in the coming years, as yesterday's article in UK's Guardian newspaper, "Scientists to issue stark warning over dramatic new sea level figures" makes clear:

This week's climate change conference in Copenhagen will sound an alarm over new floodings -- enough to swamp Bangladesh, Florida, the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary.
Scientists will warn this week that rising sea levels, triggered by global warming, pose a far greater danger to the planet than previously estimated. There is now a major risk that many coastal areas around the world will be inundated by the end of the century because Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than previously estimated.

Low-lying areas including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives and the Netherlands face catastrophic flooding, while, in Britain, large areas of the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary are likely to disappear by 2100. In addition, cities including London, Hull and Portsmouth will need new flood defences.

"It is now clear that there are going to be massive flooding disasters around the globe," said Dr David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey. "Populations are shifting to the coast, which means that more and more people are going to be threatened by sea-level rises."

It certainly bears repeating that it is not too late to prevent the worst, were humanity to engage in an all out effort to stay below 450 ppm, but time is running out for that option very quickly.

This post originally appeared in Climate Progress.

Photo credit: flickr/nattu, Creative Commons license.

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(Posted by Joe Romm in Imagining the Future at 3:30 PM)

Bill Clinton: We Must Embrace Clean Energy or We Will “End Vast Prospects of Civilization for Our Grandchildren”

Joe Romm — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:20:39 +0000

I am here liveblogging the clean energy and green grid summit sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund — see Watch Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Steven Chu, John Podesta on how to build a smart, green grid — 10 am EST Monday.
UPDATE: It was very heartening to hear so many top leaders and opinionmakers who are so knowledgeable about and committed to action on clean energy. And who get the need to focus on transmission.
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) decried the $500 billion in imported oil last year.

Former Senator Tim Wirth (the moderator): Why didn’t we get action earlier?

Bill Clinton: “We didn’t have the votes before.”

Clinton said we had to act or we would “End vast prospects of civilization for our grandchildren” (see “How likely is it that Global Warming will destroy human civilization within the next century?“).

He urged everyone: “Don’t undersell efficiency.” He noted we create 6,000 jobs per billion dollars spent on efficiency, retrofits

But with using that money to fund the SBA loan guarantee we could achieve 10 to 20 times the impact (see “A blueprint for greening small businesses and SBA“).

Then former VP Al Gore spoke:

Al Gore: “My reading of the science over the past 20 years,” the IPCC reports “they always come out with ranges … best cases, worst cases” but when they look years later, it is always at or near worst level.

There are feedbacks in this system. The tundra has as much carbon as has been released to date.

On oil prices/peak oil: “This roller coaster is headed for a crash and we’re headed for a crash.”

We must have a price on carbon and renewable energy standard.

UPDATE — Van Jones: “Green stimulus dollars are the most fiscally conservative thing we have ever done.”

They do “triple time.” Put people to work, lower energy bills, take on global warming.

“We can fight pollution and poverty at the same time.”

We need to get kids in the inner city to “Put down hand guns and pick up caulking guns.”

Steven Chu: I hope you heard his remarks — very solid, very knowledgable on clean energy, transmission issues.

“All the news on climate in the past five years has essentially been bad news.”

“We’ve got to start acting.”
This piece originally appeared on Joe Romm's blog, Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics and solutions.
Image credit: Flickr/Lollie-Pop, CC License.

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(Posted by Joe Romm in Imagining the Future at 2:20 PM)

Ice Age Bay Area and the Longer View

Alex Steffen — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:50:23 +0000

Knowing your history gives you a tool for understanding change, especially big planetary and ecosystem changes. The San Francisco Bay Area is my home town, but I have to admit that I had only the fuzziest of ideas of what the Bay's landscape and wildlife looked like 12,000 years ago, during the last ice age.

I watched this short KQED documentary this weekend (it was recommended by our allies at Long Now), and was pleasantly transported outside the boundaries of our present day into a longer view of time.

I, myself, find maintaining that longer view however I can is critical to a healthy outlook in a time when so many of our decisions are monumental and long-lasting, and our moment is so unique.

Plus it's fun to see CGI of Columbian Mammoths running around California.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 9:50 AM)

βoyfriend (Part 1)

WorldChanging Team — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:40:42 +0000

This is the first part of an original piece of science fiction written exclusively for Worldchanging by author Madeline Ashby. The story imagines a series of futuristic technologies, and explores ways their application might impact society and human life.

The story first ran as a miniseries on Worldchanging Canada in December 2008. It's unique for its ability to tell an engaging story while intermingling technologies that we are only beginning to imagine, but that might one day become a part of our everyday lives. Although pure fiction is not our usual fare here at Worldchanging, we found this story -- and the discussion it inspired on Worldchanging Canada -- to be both imaginative and entertaining, and wanted to share it with our global audience.

Violet snapped three photos of herself from various angles, sent them, and waited for her boyfriend's response. He rang her up—a slow vibrating purr, unlike the staccato door-knocking of her mother's ringvibe—and said: "Me likey. Now take it off."

Violet frowned. "You were supposed to dig up the backstory on the dress."

"Well, you can't blame me for getting a little distracted. Besides, isn't it bad luck for me to see?"

"That's only for weddings, not prom."

"I thought prom was basically a training module for weddings," he said. "But what do I know? I'm just a humble partner app."

"You see?" Violet slowly ran her phone's lens over the smart tag still pinned to her dress. "Humility. That's why I love you so much. You can admit when you're wrong."

"I'm nothing if not honest," he said. "Speaking of which, I regret to inform you that your dress was manufactured in Laos by twelve year old girls, on the site of what was once biodiverse wetland."

He sounded so cheerful about it, all trace of tragedy absent from his voice, as though things like sweatshops and species disappearance were just another fact of life—painful but predictable, like cramps or midterms. He didn't get sad about these things. But then, that was why she had downloaded him into her phone. Flesh and blood emo was just too much.

Violet sat down on the little bench inside her fitting room and swung her legs. The silk rustled in time to her movement. "Are you sad?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"For the wetlands?"

"And the little girls. And the fact that I can't buy this dress anymore."

"It is very pretty."

"You really like it?"

"What's not to like? It's you, and it's tight. Also, you never wear green. It's a nice change."

He would know. He'd seen all her bills, search histories, and browsing patterns since grade 10. He regularly alerted her about sales on her favourite hemp-based jeans and organic bubble bath—the real stuff, not the kind where the "70% organic" label just meant purified water. He knew every stitch of her wardrobe, every tint of eyeshadow, every song, every book, everything. Not bad, for a boyfriend in beta.

"It looks like somebody scattered emeralds all over me," she said. "I'll really miss it. But at least you got to see the pictures."

"Who needs dresses, anyway?" he asked. "Go to prom naked."

"Um, no."

"Lingerie?"

"Still no."

"Oh, come on. Please? For me?"

"We're buying some plasilk, and fabbing our own," she said, locating the dresses' zipper. "Now help me find a good deal."

*******

Meegan twisted around in the chair in front of Violet's desk. "So you're going by yourself, in a homemade dress?"

Violet winced. She had not really been talking to Meegan, but trying to keep a secret in an advanced placement classroom was about as easy as trying to erase incriminating videos online. "I know. Don't remind me."

"What's wrong with going by yourself?" Colin asked. He was the one she'd really been talking to. He was safe—he had a girlfriend in Arizona, and he was taking her to her own prom next week. "I mean, you make big bunny eyes at somebody and you won't be by yourself anymore."

"Wouldn't that mean stealing somebody else's date?" Meegan asked.

"Survival of the fittest," Colin said. "And there's nothing wrong with printing your own dress, either. You plug in your measurements, and you'll get something that actually fits."

"But it'll be really plain," Meegan said.

"Better than being uncomfortable," Colin said.

"Boys," Meegan said, rolling her eyes and seemingly waiting for Violet to do the same. When she didn't, Meegan gave her a tiny frown and twisted back in her seat just in time for the ASB rep to take centre stage at the head of the classroom.

"Prom is next week!" the rep said. Her curls trembled as she spoke. "So if anybody still needs to get tickets, you'd better hurry. And remember, the theme this year is-"

"Don't worry," Colin whispered in Violet's ear. "Meeghan's just mad she doesn't have a date, either."

The rep's face crinkled. "Um, yes, Ted?"

Violet—and most of the class—twisted back to look at Ted. Ted was one of those kids who had no right being in advanced classes; he showed up fried every day, showered maybe four times a week, and got by solely on the strength of off-the-charts test scores. Whatever he was about to say had a fifty percent chance of being brilliant—or hopeless. "There are a lot of people this year without dates, right?"

"So we've heard," the rep said. "But there's still time!"

"So, like, why can't there be a prom for all the single people?" Ted asked.

The rep offered a delicate snort of mock exasperation. "Well, Ted, that would have been a great idea, months ago, when we were still planning things."

"I'm just sayin'," Ted said. "Lots of single people. Something oughtta be done."

"Free condoms," Colin said. "In little crystal dishes. Instead of those stupid flameless candle things. You know, as a centrepiece."

"And take-home gift!" Ted added. Everyone laughed.

"We will not be handing out free condoms," the rep said. "And there will not be a special prom just for all the people without dates. It's going to be really fun, though, whether you're single or-"

"Why not?"

Jon was speaking. Jon, the sick kid—scoliosis, encephalitis, asthma, gluten allergy—never spoke. The class froze. Even Mrs. Stewart jerked away from her monitor and blinked. The prosthetics clinging to his neck clicked softly as he turned his owl-like gaze on the rep. She seemed to shrink, suddenly, the massive infoboard behind her now dark and huge like a yawning mouth.

"Why not?" he asked, again. Violet realized that his voice had changed—she had not really heard it since grade 9.

"It's just not the way we do things," the rep said. "You'd know that if you paid more attention."

"I'm always paying attention."

The rep rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right."

"Was that sarcasm?" Jon's chair creaked as he leaned forward. "Are you being sarcastic with me?"

"Well-"

"Because if you could pay more attention, you would know that our district's federal funding for reproductive health education has been cut for the third time in as many years, this region's teen pregnancy rate is rising, and Colin's suggestion is a cynically accurate diagnosis of our school and its students." Jon's head twitched to the left, a little. "Ted's suggestion is also good."

"Thanks, buddy," Ted said. He sounded humble. He had folded himself inside his shoulders.

"Well, Jon, if you'd contributed your vast intellect earlier-"

"I have a phone call," Jon said, and promptly tuned out. His eyes de-focused, and he resumed his normal position: staring at the desk, hands in his lap, perfectly still and quiet.

For a while, nobody moved. Then one of the two girls who regularly sat on opposite sides of him raised her hand and waved it in front of his face. "Nope," she said. "He's gone again."

"Thank God," Mrs. Stewart muttered. "Okay, prom news is over. Crack open your Conrad."

Part 2

Notes:

The use of smart tags as backstory drives actually came from a conversation with WorldChanging Canada editor Mark Tovey and contributor Jordy Gold, while talking about green-washing. Mark argued that smart tags could tell the story of an object, effectively open-sourcing the item. This may come true to some extent, depending on what kind of smart tagging we're talking about: RFIDS or smart cloth. Our appliances may dictate how we choose: our washing machines will keep us posted.

Keep reading: βoyfriend (Part 2)

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Imagining the Future at 10:40 AM)