Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/blazing-the-path/5023038/
What Does a Sustainable Future Look Like?
We are very good at conceiving futures in which machines, aliens, zombies, asteroids and/or human folly bring about the end of the Earth. We imagine a myriad of scenarios in which human ingenuity can produce intelligent robots, spaceships, glass-encased houses, impossible hairstyles, very shiny clothing and laser weapons of every sort, but we still have not figured out how to care for each other and the natural environment. While these dystopic adventures make for exciting movies, they are not very helpful in charting the course towards a sustainable future.
What Does that Other Future Look Like?
Have you ever considered what your community would look like if we chose to relate to each other in peaceful and productive ways, while respecting the limits of nature? Try to imagine your community in 2090, 75 years after the adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, if our aspirations to move towards a sustainable world succeed.
I have posed this challenge to hundreds of people, all over the world. Invariably, it is easier for them to describe a world that fails than to imagine a community that attends to the needs of people and nature. After a decade of struggling ...