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Club of Amsterdam Journal, September 2019, Issue 218
Content Food system needs a revolution, not tinkering around edges by the ultra-processed producers by Norah Campbell and Francis Finucane BioSolar Leaf The Future Now Show : Fashion Technology with Anina Net Sea Agriculture News about the Future: Kernza® Grain: Toward a Perennial Agriculture / Artificial Heart The future of sound, noise & music Recommended Book: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker Aquanaut, the Underwater Transformer Climate Change Success Story : Swedish Forests Futurist Portrait: George Friedman Club of Amsterdam SearchSubmit your articleContactSubscribe Welcome to the Club of Amsterdam Journal. The Future Now Show about Fashion Technology with Anina Net“Anina Net is a former international model now based in San Francisco and Beijing with 10 years’ experience creating a bridge between the east and west, fashion and tech. Based on permanent innovation 360Fashion Network, has been supporting fashion designers and companies with disruptive technologies including smart fashion maker kits, e-textiles, mobile apps, augmented reality, virtual reality shopping, 3D printing, among others.” Felix B Bopp, Founder & Chairman Food system needs a revolution, not tinkering around edges by the ultra-processed producers By Norah Campbell, Associate Professor in Marketing, Trinity College Dublin and Francis Finucane, Personal Professor of Medicine, National University of Ireland Galway Eating ultra-processed food is definitely bad for you, a recent study has confirmed. In the experiment, people were fed either ultra-processed or unprocessed food, with meals matched precisely for calories, salt, sugar, fat and fibre. Those on ultra-processed food ate more and gained more weight within two weeks. This finding puts two torpedoes in the notion that “all calories are the same”. Recent studies have linked ultra-processed foods to obesity, cancer, heart disease and early death. Most foods need some level of processing, such as freezing or pasteurisation in order to prolong shelf life, food safety and commercial viability, but “ultra-processed” products have little or no intact “food” remaining. Rather, they are made principally from already processed commodities, such as potent sugars, modified oils and salts and they undergo an array of further processes such as emulsification, thickening and carbonating. No longer really foods, they are better thought of as formulations. One strategy to make ultra-processed products less harmful is to reduce the amount of salt, sugar and unhealthy fats in them through what is known as “reformulation”: redesigning an existing processed food product with the objective of making it healthier. Reformulation could help if it had adequate scope and intensity – and it may act to bolster other sugar, salt and fat reduction strategies such as taxes or improved product labelling. But while about a dozen countries have mandatory salt and trans-fat limits, none have set legal limits for sugar and saturated fats in foods. Food reformulation has been around since the early 1980s, and it has always been a business opportunity for large food brands to compete for health conscious consumers. Only recently – since the mid-2000s – has it become a high-level strategy for food companies seeking to proactively adopt it to avoid mandatory nutrient limits. Countries all over the world now collaborate with the food industry to reformulate ultra-processed foods – a partnership that has received widespread and enthusiastic endorsement from senior policy makers. A recent food industry report to the Irish government on putative improvements in diet resulting from industry reformulation is a case in point. But we have found what we feel are selection biases, ecological fallacies and inappropriate study design that we argue make the inferences about the benefits of industry-led reformulation in this report unsound. Others have described how methodological weaknesses limit the policy “relevance” of similar industry reports. In seeking to lead and influence national dietary strategies, the food industry promotes two consistent narratives: that reformulation is enormously difficult and expensive, and that it must happen slowly because consumers will react negatively to dramatic changes in taste. So what exactly is wrong with industry-led reformulation? We think it has four serious dangers. 1. A PR strategy Because reformulation has been framed by industry as a series of voluntary commitments, big food actors across the world look like they are doing government and society at large a massive favour, all the while burnishing their corporate images. Indeed, the websites of ultra-processed food companies prominently feature reformulation. Consider, for instance, Mondelez’s “commitment to improve the nutritional content of our most loved brands”. We argue that this discourages faster progress towards the promotion of significantly healthier diets. 2. Industry saviours Industry-led reformulation stages the food industry as the saviour from our obesity problem. It places them as a central authority which can speak reliably and legitimately about nutrition goals with governments. Food brands speak convincingly about how much sugar, salt or fat they extract from national diets. The Irish reformulation report for example, states that between 2005 and 2017, beverage companies removed 10 billion calories from the annual diets of the country’s 4.8m people. But it is silent about how many calories the companies are responsible for introducing to the diet in the first place. This mirrors industry development of low tar cigarettes, which were an ineffective, tokenistic industry-led solution to the public health crisis that smoking presented. In the same way, voluntary reformulation of unhealthy food products that are making so many of us sick risks delaying more substantive strategies to get rid of the most harmful products altogether. Alexander Weickart/Shutterstock.com 3. A false picture The ultra-processed food industry reformulates existing products while adding more to the food system. It is constantly creating new products such as cereal bars or “snackfections”); new formats which masquerade as portion control but actually increase snacking (bites, thins, share size); new eating occasions (Domino’s World Pizza Day, Cadbury’s Friendship Day); new category expansions (biscuits for breakfast, meat snacks) and new retail concepts. A recent study by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland found that while there were indeed some decreases in the amount of salt and sugar in the category of “baby foods” in the country, there were whole new classes of foods created for babies that it deemed “inappropriate”: products that normalise snacking in babies and young infants. We need to measure not just reformulation at a product level, but how many new ultra-processed foods are being produced, to get a true picture of the changing food system. 4. Status quo bias Status quo bias happens when a baseline is mistaken for a standard to strive towards. The Irish reformulation strategy is a good example: if Irish children are eating 101g of added sugar per day, it will take about 300 years to reach the recommended intake of 25g at current rates of decline. Such bias contributes to policy inertia, where it is imagined that the food system can be tinkered around with, rather than needing to be fundamentally revolutionised. Industry-led reformulation has become a public relations strategy – a goodwill gesture that enhances the dominance and legitimacy of the ultra-processed food category. The ultra-processed concept is not challenged. It is inadvertently legitimated as attention is focused on changing the formulas of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods instead of working out ways to replace them altogether. Some of the ways that governments might intervene include subsidies for fruits and vegetables, tax breaks for local food co-operatives and food growers, school and adult education. Ultimately, cultural norms need to change so that people have more time to think about what they eat – and to cook it. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. BioSolar Leaf We all love food, but while our population is growing, Earth’s limited natural food resources are strained by climate change, leading to the current increase in global hunger, undernutrition and food prices.Our mission is to accelerate the global transition to sustainable food by producing the most sustainable and best healthy food ingredients through the most advanced organic cultivation system, driven by nature’s power! The world’s first ‘BioSolar Leaf’ has been developed to remove greenhouse gases from the environment by purifying the air through the photosynthesis of microscopic plants,whilst generating breathable oxygen. The innovative technology has been developed Imperial College London together with the start-up company Arborea The Future Now Show Shape the future now, where near-future impact counts and visions and strategies for preferred futures start. – Club of Amsterdam Do we rise above global challenges? Or do we succumb to them? The Future Now Show explores how we can shape our future now – where near-future impact counts. We showcase strategies and solutions that create futures that work. Every month we roam through current events, discoveries, and challenges – sparking discussion about the connection between today and the futures we’re making – and what we need, from strategy to vision – to make the best ones. September 2019 Fashion Technology withAnina Net Anina Net is a former international model now based in San Francisco and Beijing with 10 years’ experience creating a bridge between the east and west, fashion and tech. Based on permanent innovation 360Fashion Network, has been supporting fashion designers and companies with disruptive technologies including smart fashion maker kits, e-textiles, mobile apps, augmented reality, virtual reality shopping, 3D printing, among others. The Future Now ShowCredits Anina Net, Founder, anina.netwww.anina.netFounder, 360Fashion Network www.360fashion.net The Future Now Show Sea Agriculture An ever-growing demand for fresh seafood has pushed wild fish stocks around the world to the brink. In Florida, scientists and other experts are farming the sea in an attempt to alleviate some of these fishing pressures. “Aquaculture,” or “fish farming,” is the cultivation of marine or freshwater organisms. News about the Future Kernza® Grain: Toward a Perennial Agriculture Kernza® grain plants are deeply rooted. Walking through an established field of mature plants, they are about chest high above the soil. The roots can extend 10 feet or more beneath the soil surface, more than twice the depth of and in greater density than annual wheat roots. In good conditions, the long, slender seed heads can contain more seeds than an annual wheat head, but Kernza® seeds are currently about 1/5th the size of most conventional wheat seeds. Kernza® grain grows best in cooler northern latitudes. Although intermediate wheatgrass was consumed in ancient times, new varieties of Kernza® grain can enable farmers to grow it profitably at scale and bring its environmental benefits to modern farms and diets. Artificial HeartThe BiVACOR is a total artificial heart designed to take over the complete function of a patient’s failing heart. Smart controllers adapt the pump operation to changes in the patient’s activity.An anticipated device life of up to 10 years or more. Small enough for a child, powerful enough for an adult. A small external controller and batteries to give patients freedom The future of sound, noise & music DW Documentary Be it sound, music or noise, the future will be audible. In a world full of visual stimuli, human hearing is underestimated. As scientist Trevor Cox puts it: “Without the acoustic aspect, everything is nothing.” As soon as you hear threatening music or sound effects in a film, you know disaster is lurking, even if the onscreen images suggest nothing of the kind. Be they pure sound, music or even raw noise, acoustic events are powerful. “Brain Beats” visits researchers, musicians and other people who are particularly interested in sound. Our journey spans an arc from evolutionary research to the question as to the role the ear should play if mankind ever leaves the earth and sets off into outer space. Innovative musicians like Alva Noto or Simonne Jones talk about their experiences, as do deaf children who can now experience music holistically through newly available technologies. A sound walk with Trevor Cox demonstrates how complex and revealing even everyday sounds are. And we discover you may soon no longer have to rely on your own ears to hear things at all. Recommended Book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progressby Steven Pinker Explores how our increasingly evidence-based and cooperative societies, and science and technology themselves, are accelerating human progress around the world. In those places where it isn’t, we need better foresight, ethics, and collective action to rise to our challenges. Our next-gen web and personal AIs, as learning systems, will help us greatly in that regard. No book is perfect, and Pinker unfortunately downplays the corrosive effects of plutocracy. He also does not see the growing problem (and the solutions) for creating safe, moral artificial intelligence. Otherwise, this book is excellent. Aquanaut, the Underwater Transformer “It’s not a secret. The offshore industry pays way too much for subsea robotics service. That’s because the robot isn’t fit for purpose. We think that another class of vehicle is needed. It’s not an AUV. It’s not an ROV. We built an all-electric underwater transformer, Aquanaut. We then implemented novel technology in order to remove the need for a tether while still ensuring command authority with an operator. Welcome to subsea robotics 2.0. Turn a valve. Use a subsea tool. Scan structures. Aquanaut can accomplish these advanced subsea operations with just a few mouse clicks. Our operators use mouse clicks, not joysticks, to operate Aquanaut. Our multi-mode machine vision system is comprised of acoustic, optical, and laser based tools that are processed into a dynamic point cloud using the computing power available onboard the vehicle. The point cloud is then compressed using our revolutionary new compression technology which offers compression ratios between 5,000:1 and 75,000:1 (Depending on the scene quality). The operator maintains supervisory control over the vehicle whether onboard a support ship or from the comfort of our home office.” Houston Mechatronics is an innovative company driven to solve our customers’ most difficult problems. Started by former NASA roboticists who created the very technologies used in space today, we are on a mission to provide cutting-edge services and solutions that make work environments safer, improve processes and increase profits. Climate Change Success Story: Swedish Forests The Swedish Forest Agency is the national authority in charge of forest-related issues. Our main function is to promote the kind of management of Sweden’s forests that enables the objectives of forest policy to be attained. The forest policy places equal emphasis on two main objectives: production goals and environmental goals. As the administrative body in charge of implementing the forest policy, we cooperate with representatives from the forest industries and environmental sector towards the goals of economically and ecologically sustainable forestry. We are placed under the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation. Each year we receive direction from the government with goals and the financial framework for the organization Futurist Portrait: George Friedman Think of Geopolitical Futures as your world-wide risk support team. Founded in 2015 by internationally respected strategist and best-selling author, George Friedman. Geopolitical Futures tells you the continuing story of the future. We do that by charting the course of the international system. We have a model, a way of looking at the world, based on the assumption that impersonal forces – things like geography, politics, economics, military capability and demography – govern world leaders not the other way around. It’s an important distinction you don’t see anywhere else. Because when you know what compels and constrains a leader, you can predict how the nation they lead will behave. When you know how nations behave, you can anticipate how the international system will change. When you can anticipate how the international system will change, you begin to see world events as we do: in the context of a much longer and more interesting story than the mainstream media can tell, one that traces dispassionately the rise and fall of world powers. Why Does It Matter?Geopolitical Futures filters the noise, allowing you to focus on what’s important to move your lives and your business forward – allowing you to see the opportunities as well as risks. GPF provides geopolitical forecasts that allow you to understand what really matters in the world and what doesn’t.We give you a daily guide to understand the events around you.We help you monitor and react to global events to reduce your risk and maximize your investments. Our Track RecordOur track record speaks for itself. We have been able to accurately predict the economic and political crisis in the EU, the economic decline in China, the re-emergence of Russia, the confrontation over Ukraine. Everything we publish is rooted in geopolitics and flows from our forecast, which lays out our predictions for the year – or for the years ahead. We believe in transparency. We update the forecast regularly in our Forecast Tracker, mistakes along with successes, for all our readers to see. The Next 100 Years: A forecast for the 21st century by George Friedman2013 printable version
Club of Amsterdam Journal, October 2019, Issue 219
Content What if we ran society not based on the market but on evidence? by Spyros Samothrakis Regenerative Agriculture The Future Now Show : City Futures in the Asia Pacific with Shermon Cruz Vertical Farm News about the Future: Global EV Outlook 2019 / Puncture-Proof Tire System Law of Vibration by Michiko Hayashi Recommended Book: The End of Money and the Future of Civilization by Thomas H. Greco Jr. A smart artificial hand for amputees merges user and robotic control Climate Change Success Story: Solar Foods Futurist Portrait: Mark McCrindle Club of Amsterdam SearchSubmit your articleContactSubscribe Welcome to the Club of Amsterdam Journal. The Future Now Show about City Futures in the Asia Pacific with Shermon Cruz“Cities have emerged as change agents towards sustainable futures. Discussion about its size, food routes, transportation, health, climate change and community resilience has shifted the way cities are perceived into the future. Questions persist such as: How do we create the inclusive city? How do cities ensure spatial justice and equal access to urban resources and opportunities amidst the impacts of climate change? How do we link strategic foresight to urban governance and strategy development?” Felix B Bopp, Founder & Chairman What if we ran society not based on the market but on evidence? By Spyros Samothrakis, Lecturer in Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex Spyros Samothrakis, University of Essex Following the successful Brexit campaign, Dominic Cummings – the then campaign director of Vote Leave – published a series of blog posts describing how the campaign was run and what his plans were for a successful civil service. The last of these posts was released on June 26 2019, just before he became the special advisor to the current prime minister, Boris Johnson. The idea this post resurrects is a promise in public policy that has died since the 1970s – the use of hard scientific (knowledge-based) methods to guide policy choices. In what looks like to be Cumming’s version of public policy, an elite group of administrators trained in the disciplines of pure thought – mathematicians and philosophers – would run society based on evidence. Collected data points would be used to create a machine simulation (often called the model). Policy makers would then be able to test the simulations with hypothetical policies (“what if drugs were legal?”) and, according to the results, adjust public policy. A complete cybernetic version of economic policy was advocated, but not practised, in the Soviet Union by the likes of nobel-prize winning economist Leonid Kantorovich and mathematician and computer scientist Victor Glushkov. They hypothesised the possibility of taking things a step further – getting the machines to identify what actions to take to reach optimal outcomes. That is, policy makers would need to decide what they are looking to achieve (“maximise the production of butter”) and machines would come up with the the policy of how to allocate resources to achieve this. Outside the Soviet Union, this kind of thinking was actually enacted with Project Cybersyn, an effort put together by management consultant Stafford Beer in the 1970s for the government of Chile under the then president, Salvador Allende to help manage the economy (the project was dismantled following the coup by General Augusto Pinochet). Though Cybersyn was never fully operational, it was rushed into use so as to help break one of the biggest anti-government strikes, which was instigated by a right-wing union. Beer’s vision is far more decentralised and democratic than its Soviet counterpart, but it still falls within the same line of thought. As you will have gauged by now, the cybernetic vision tends to be securely located on the left of the political spectrum. The market Sitting on the opposite side of the cybernetic vision, one will find the fathers of modern liberal economics, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. Their arguments, taken more broadly, consider the cybernetic dream impossible from a computational perspective, either due to not being able to model the world efficiently, or not having appropriate signals to evaluate the quality of solutions. They argued that another mechanism that exists inside the real world (in their case, the market) needs to do the heavy lifting, by providing a signal – which, in the case of goods and services, is prices. For them, a good policy is not one that lays out what steps need to be taken towards a solution, but focuses more on setting a “game” of sorts with the right incentives and punishments. This basically just leaves room for one real public policy which can be summed up as “privatise everything, create a competitive arena, let the market sort the problems out”. Leaving all real policy decisions to the market has been a very traditional (post-1980s at least) right-wing idea. This raises the question as to why someone advising the current UK government is even discussing concepts that are not purely market-driven. In his latest post, Cummings laments the inability of the British state to do serious modelling. This seems a superb contradiction – shouldn’t the market be able to solve everything? It is worth mentioning that conceptions of planning methods differ a lot across individual thinkers – there are even advocates of socialist markets on the left. Though there is a clear left-right divide, in terms of actual party politics it seems that the idea of some planning has been partially accepted (somewhat grudgingly) by the historical right for some time. AI and public policy So, does the progress in AI and (the concurrent) massive increase in computational power and availability of data allow us to circumvent the liberal arguments? I would say yes, but only partially. One can easily envision a solution where the latest AI methods are used to affect policy directly. It’s quite plausible that one could plan and re-plan millions of products and services on a daily basis, find the optimal set of actions to help tackle social ills and generally push for an overall brighter future. This isn’t, however, trivial – delivering causal models to drive simulations is extremely hard, requires significant expertise, and can only be done in a limited capacity. On top of this, current AI methods lack a concept of “common sense”. A model created with a specific task in mind might be able to optimise for said task, but is prone to generating unwanted side effects. For example, an AI-optimised factory that aims to optimise production will do so without care for the environment. But the mother of all problems in AI is that a lot of the more modern probabilistic planning algorithms are not stable without excessive human tuning, due to a number of reasons that are beyond the scope of this article. In practice, this means that outside straightforward, traditional planning (such as linear programming), getting value from modern AI requires significant human expertise. At the moment this sits mostly within private AI research labs and some university departments. Any serious attempt to create a cybernetic state would need both significant human resources to be moved towards the project and some further algorithmic breakthroughs. Unfortunately, current AI deployments in public policy do not adhere to the ideas above. It seems that AI is mostly deployed only for simple predictive tasks (“will person X will commit crime Y in the future?”). For this reason, public bodies are finding this technology increasingly useless. But technological innovations almost always experience a series of failures before they find their pace, so hopefully AI will eventually be implemented properly. Back to Brexit What does Brexit have to do with any of this? My understanding is that Brexit (according to Cummings) is needed in order to help disrupt the civil service enough so as to allow it to be rebuilt. It would then be possible to deploy serious AI public policy solutions (which is another name for scientific planning). So the British state would be deploying projects that can model the future, with machines or civil servants probing the model for golden paths. What is truly surprising, in my view, is that such proposals don’t come from the broad political left (though there are, of course, extremely interesting takes on the topic of scientific planning) – but from the right. This might imply the use of AI to hasten the free-market agenda by asking questions like “what is the best propaganda to produce in order to get everyone on board with increasing state pension age to 95, privatising every public service and getting people to accept a ban on immigration?”. All this AI talk might be a red herring – the more traditional right-wing Brexit party policies are simply an intensification of a deregulation agenda, though again the signals are mixed. Alternatively, it might be the case that there is a split between One Nation Conservatives and free marketeers across the board. It’s hard to imagine the EU allowing for direct planning (it goes against most of the principles of the internal market), but it’s equally hard to envision post-Brexit Britain doing the same. Most institutions see the market as the only legitimate form of organisation. But some cracks in the consensus seem to be appearing. Perhaps we may end up in a position where actively planning using AI towards a “good society” is actively pursued. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Regenerative Agriculture Regenerative Agriculture is a system of farming principles and practices that increases biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds, and enhances ecosystem services. Regenerative Agriculture aims to capture carbon in soil and aboveground biomass, reversing current global trends of atmospheric accumulation. The Future Now Show Shape the future now, where near-future impact counts and visions and strategies for preferred futures start. – Club of Amsterdam Do we rise above global challenges? Or do we succumb to them? The Future Now Show explores how we can shape our future now – where near-future impact counts. We showcase strategies and solutions that create futures that work. Every month we roam through current events, discoveries, and challenges – sparking discussion about the connection between today and the futures we’re making – and what we need, from strategy to vision – to make the best ones. October 2019City Futures in the Asia Pacific withShermon Cruz Cities have emerged as change agents towards sustainable futures. Discussion about itssize, food routes, transportation, health, climate change and community resilience has shiftedthe way cities are perceived into the future. Questions persist such as: How do we create theinclusive city? How do cities ensure spatial justice and equal access to urban resources andopportunities amidst the impacts of climate change? How do we link strategic foresight tourban governance and strategy development? The Future Now ShowCredits Shermon Cruz, Founder, Executive Director and Chief Futurist of the Center for Engaged Foresighthttps://engagedforesight.net The Future Now Show Vertical Farm Growcer is setting up Switzerland’s first vertical farm in Basel. At the same time, it’s one of Europe’s most automated Vertical Farms using latest achievements in Robotics & AI. The farm is six floors high and can produce leafy vegetables, herbs, shoots and fruit all year round. How do we feed a growing population most of whom live in cities? The farm is fully automated to eliminate 90% oflabor costs, increase the consistency of production,and guarantee high quality produce. 95% of water saved Reduced transport costs Low cost (fully automated urban argiculture) Consistency in costs Consistent product quality Consistent quantity / yield No pesticides or herbicides Up to 3x longer shelf life Better taste profile — no artificial flavoring, the full natural taste. Locally produced, so a faster delivery and ensured freshness. No need to wash, ready to eat Why grow indoors? For most of human history, farming has been an outdoor operation. Plants need sunlight to live, and soil to get water and nutrients from, so it’s no surprise that the traditional farm is an outdoor farm. But as agriculture developed, farmers gradually realized that there were benefits to farming indoors. For one, it allowed certain crops to be grown all year long. For another, it kept pesticides at bay. And finally, indoor farming in ‘hot’ greenhouses could cause plants to grow faster than they would outdoors. By the late Roman Empire, greenhouse-like methods were already being used for these and other reasons. In the 1800s, Greenhouses hit their stride, as European farmers started using them to grow tropical plants that otherwise wouldn’t grow naturally on their continent. This fact illustrates the main benefit of indoor farming: it provides the ability to grow crops year round, in a controlled environment, free from pests. if you want it a bit shorter, this whole section can easily be cut. News about the Future Global EV Outlook 2019 provides a comprehensive review of the state of electric mobility, highlighting key developments in vehicle sales, charging infrastructure deployment, costs, energy use, CO2 emissions and demand for battery materials. This year’s edition features a specific analysis of the performance of electric cars and competing powertrain options in terms of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. A Puncture-Proof Tire System Uptis is a significant development in existing airless mobility technology. Uptis eliminates regular maintenance, such as pressure checks, and inspections for damage, such as punctures. This makes Uptis ideal for the vehicles of tomorrow, from self-driving shuttles to all-electric vehicles. Law of Vibration by Michiko Hayashi Dr. Masaru Emoto Michiko Hayashi Dr. Masaru Emoto was a Japanese water researcher who discovered after taking tens of thousands of water crystal photographs that when water is exposed to positive, beautiful words, thoughts, music and vibrations, it creates beautiful, hexagonal crystalline structures. On the other hand, when water is exposed to negative, ugly or destructive words, thoughts, music and vibrations it does not make these beautiful crystalline structures, instead forming ugly shapes. Because both the human body and Earth itself are about 70 percent water, it is essential that we all learn about water and how it is connected to our thoughts and words. Before his passing, Dr. Emoto founded The Emoto Peace Project (now registered as a non-profit children’s charity) with the aim to distribute 650 million copies of his children’s book, The Message from Water. Since his transition, Michiko Hayashi has been continuing Dr. Emoto’s life mission as the Ambassdor and Global Director of the Emoto Peace Project by continuing to distribute “The Message from Water”, spreading the valuable lessons of love and gratitude learnt from years of research into water structure. Dr. Emoto’s Law of Vibration, Resonance and Attraction by Michiko Hayashi Recommended Book The End of Money and the Future of Civilizationby Thomas H. Greco Jr. Like the proverbial fish who doesn’t know what water is, we swim in an economy built on money that few of us comprehend, and, most definitely, what we don’t know is hurting us. Very few people realize that the nature of money has changed profoundly over the past three centuries, or – as has been clear with the latest global financial crisis – the extent to which it has become a political instrument used to centralize power, concentrate wealth, and subvert popular government. On top of that, the economic growth imperative inherent in the present global monetary system is a main driver of global warming and other environmental crises. The End of Money and the Future of Civilization demystifies the subjects of money, banking, and finance by tracing historical landmarks and important evolutionary shifts that have changed the essential nature of money. Greco’s masterful work lays out the problems and then looks to the future for a next stage in money’s evolution that can liberate us as individuals and communities from the current grip of centralized and politicized money power. Greco provides specific design proposals and exchange-system architectures for local, regional, national, and global financial systems. He offers strategies for their implementation and outlines actions grassroots organizations, businesses, and governments will need to take to achieve success. Ultimately, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization provides the necessary understanding – for entrepreneurs, activists, and civic leaders – to implement approaches toward monetary liberation. These approaches would empower communities, preserve democratic institutions, and begin to build economies that are sustainable, democratic, and insulated from the financial crises that plague the dominant monetary system A smart artificial hand for amputees merges user and robotic control EPFL scientists have successfully tested new neuroprosthetic technology that combines robotic control with users’ voluntary control, opening avenues in the new interdisciplinary field of shared control for neuroprosthetic technologies. Climate Change Success Story: Solar Foods Solein, invented by Solar Foods, is a revolutionary natural protein source for the global food industry: suitable for varied consumer diets, and virtually for all food products and types. An innovation created by leading cleantech expertise of Finland and based on a concept by NASA, the unique and pure single-cell proteins of Solein are produced from CO2, water, and electricity. Independent from weather and irrigation, Solein is an unlimited protein source that is free from agricultural limitations and the boundaries of imagination. Founded in 2017, Solar Foods is a Finnish food tech company that creates innovations for producing food without agriculture. With its revolutionary biotech solution Solein, Solar Foods enables natural protein production anywhere by using air, water, and electricity. The unique bioprocess of Solein provides a new platform technology for nutritious food ingredients, plant-based meat alternatives or even cultured meat. With a vision to solve the world food crisis, Solar Foods creates tangible food industry solutions that can scale beyond agricultural limitations. Conventional food production wastes water at unsustainable and unreasonable levels. We wanted to fix that. Solein is 100 times more climate-friendly than any animal or plant-based alternative. Unlike conventional protein production, it takes just a fraction of water to produce 1kg of Solein. As with water use, the same game-changing effect applies to land use efficiency as well, with Solein being 10x more efficient than soy production by a metric of usable protein yields per acre. Futurist Portrait: Mark McCrindle Mark McCrindle is a social analyst with an international following. His passions lie in tracking emerging issues, researching social trends and analysing customer segments. Mark is an advisor to executive boards and committees across Australia. As a sought-after demographer, futurist and social commentator, he’s delivered over 100 keynotes in the last year. Mark McCrindle is founder and Principal of McCrindle Research – Australia’s social researchers.”We analyse and visualise the data we collect from research and use these insights to advise strategic decision-makers. We don’t just deliver the numbers. We bring them to life with imagery that stimulates interpretation and understanding. We deliver forecasts in ways that are compelling, memorable, and inspiring.” 5 Megatrends Reshaping Australia: GROWING While Australia’s population growth rate has recently slowed, we are still adding more than a million people every 3 years. Australia’s largest city, Sydney will also be the first Australian city to hit 5 million (by the end of 2016) however it is our second largest city, Melbourne which is growing the fastest and will take Sydney’s title in 2053 with both cities expected to reach a population of 8 million in 2055. In fact Melbourne is growing by more people every 5 days than the state of Tasmania adds in an entire year (1,400). Our third and fourth ranked cities will also change order over the next decades with Perth’s rate of growth set to see it overtake Brisbane in 2029 when they both reach a population of 3 million. While only these 4 cities currently exceed 2 million people, Adelaide will join the 2 million club but not until 2055, almost a century after Sydney reached this milestone in 1959.MOVING This population growth is leading to more densified living. While 3 in 4 households currently live in a detached home, almost half of all new housing approvals are in the unit, apartment or townhouse category. Australia’s communities are undergoing significant transformation from the horizontal suburbs to the growth of these vertical communities, and as people rent more, move more frequently, and transition across more communities than ever before. The average renter in Australia stays just 1.8 years per abode and even those who have bought a home are not putting their roots down deeply and staying for several decades like their parents did. Those with a mortgage stay on average just 8 years before they sell. While this growth, density and mobility is evident in the capital cities and larger coastal cities, Australia’s top 30 cities now include many inland regional cities that have a growth rate exceeding that of some of the capitals. It is the tree change and not just the sea change that rising capital city house prices is currently facilitating. CHANGING Cultural diversity is foundational to Australia- part of the DNA of our communities. More than 1 in 4 Australians was born overseas and almost half of all households (46%) have at least one parent born overseas. And our population mix is now more connected to our region with the top 7 countries of birth of Australians born overseas shifting in three decades from mainly European countries to now include China, India, Vietnam and the Philippines. There remains a deep affection for the traditional Aussie qualities of mateship, ironic humour and the larrikin spirit alongside the richness of our lifestyle which comes through the input of so many cultures. In a nation of world cities and global connectivity, gone is the cultural cringe, replaced with an international perspective that looks out not in.AGEING Three decades ago Australia’s average age had only just moved out of the 20’s to reach 30, today it exceeds 37 and in three more decades it will be 40. This ageing population though is a good news story- it means we are living longer, and consequently active later and able to work later in life than was previously the norm. In the last generation, Australians have added an average decade to their life expectancy at birth. Along with the ageing population goes an ageing workforce- which means that there are more generations in the workforce than ever before and leading teams in diverse times requires better people skills to bridge more gaps than ever before. TRANSITIONING Australia’s generations of Baby Boomers and Generation Xers are now sharing the leadership and workforce roles with the emerging Generations Y and Z. These new generations, born and shaped in the late 20th Century are increasingly becoming lifelong learners, multi-career workers with a focus on work-life balance, participative leadership models and a more varied job description. Along with this, the next generation of technology has, in less than a decade, transformed almost every area of business and consumer interactions. How we shop, where we get information from, when we connect and where we work from have all been fundamentally changed in this Wi-Fi-enabled, device-driven, app-based, social media-influenced decade.While it is self-evident that every business, product or idea is just one generation away from extinction, such is the speed of change today, we are now just a decade or perhaps a few years away from this point. While such change impacts us all, those who understand the trends can drive the change and shape the future. printable version
Club of Amsterdam Journal, November 2019, Issue 220
Content Science fiction offers a useful way to explore China-Africa relations by Nedine Moonsamy HeartMath Institute The Future Now Show : Intuition / Life Energies with Peachie Dioquino-Valera Biodesign News about the Future: Earth Archive / Bringing Embodied Carbon Upfront Noise Polution Recommended Book: Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control by Stuart Russell North Sea Wind Power Hub Climate Change Success Story: Freiburg Green City Futurist Portrait: Jerry Kaplan Club of Amsterdam SearchSubmit your articleContactSubscribe Welcome to the Club of Amsterdam Journal. The Future Now Show about Intuition / Life Energies with Peachie Dioquino-Valera“Scientists have always said: “In our physical plane, we have only discovered the tip of the iceberg.” When labels such as: “Esoteric Psychology”, “Esoteric Science/Scientist”, “Paranormal Psychology”, “Human Energy Science”, “Life Energies Science”, “Spiritual Metaphysics” are mentioned, most of us will either nod our heads in disbelief, violently shirk out of fear of the unknown, or fall into a curiosity muse. The above mentioned are claimed by some physicists, a few psychology professionals, and a minority of scientists to be emerging legitimate forms of knowledge-hopefully to be recognized in the future as a formal body of science with a definite set of universal laws. In Peachie’s talk she will delve on the recorded existence of Intuition, Life Energies, & Psychism based on her research and 16 years of experience taking on pro-bono cases that deal with real human (and spirit) cases in the Philippines. This will offer an insight too on why there is a booming economy and research on: alternative energy healing modalities i.e. Reiki, Pranic Healing, Crystal Healing, Sound Healing, etc.; paranormal investigators (who even aid organizations such as the FBI, CIA, or the police force and detectives); intuitive counsellors or therapists; and the like. This phenomenon of a topic has challenged humanity in the past, is still continuously being studied and recorded in the present, and will be discussed more in an academic and public setting in the Future, which will be considered highly evolutionary.” – Peachie Dioquino-Valera Felix B Bopp, Founder & Chairman Science fiction offers a useful way to explore China-Africa relations By Nedine Moonsamy, Senior Lecturer, University of Pretoria In 2007 the then President of China, Hu Jintao, delivered a speech to South Africans acknowledging the benefits of a strategic partnership. He also stressed that the connection is not merely pragmatic. It must, he argued, serve to honour and deepen the countries’ long abiding friendship in the future. The idea of friendship has undoubtedly informed the nature of Sino-African engagement. But if we use contemporary science fiction as a barometer, African sentiment towards China appears more inclined towards dystopian forecasts. Science fiction writing often serves as a thought experiment that explores shared and hidden beliefs whose material and political reverberations lie further in the future. Various short stories portray how China’s economic ascension, operating under the guise of African development, uses technology as a means to invade and control Africa. Narratives of this kind surface neo-colonial fears that a “new scramble for Africa” seems imminent. But they also provide a speculative arena to interrogate how we ultimately perceive the value, use and future of Sino-African political friendship. As I’ve explored in my research, this means that science fiction can serve as an imaginative production of political theory. It intercedes in ways that international relations cannot because of the confines of diplomacy. Three stories My research focused on three short science fiction stories from Africa. In the first, Tendai Huchu’s “The Sale”, China has taken control of Zimbabwe through the production of a corporatised state called CorpGov. It’s a surveillance state that leaves no room for political dissension. Zimbabwe has been purchased by China in a piecemeal fashion. It is now set to lose its last free portion of land in a final sale. When a young Zimbabwean man fails to prevent the sale of this remaining plot of land, he succumbs to despair and puts himself in the path of a Chinese bulldozer. His suicide evokes a sense of profound helplessness and warns that China will need to be vehemently counteracted in the near future to protect Zimbabwe’s already breached borders. Huchu’s narrative provides a sharp sense of clarity that makes the story incredibly impactful. The pathos of “The Sale” holds a mirror up to China. It communicates an earnest appeal for more humane engagement. Yet the heaviness of its dystopian narrative also breeds a spirit of nihilism or Afropessimism. This overrides any sense of African accountability in the degenerative state of future Sino-Zimbabwean relations. Abigail Godsell’s “Taal” (an Afrikaans word meaning “language”) is self-conscious in this regard. It’s set in the year 2050, after a nuclear war between China and America has left the entire globe in a state of desolation. As a result, the South African government willingly signed over ownership of the country to China in exchange for protection. The central protagonist, an especially resentful young woman named Callie, has joined a militant rebel group in a covert attempt to overthrow the Chinese. But after injuring a soldier, she pulls off his helmet and is surprised that he converses in Afrikaans because, to all other appearances, he is Chinese. The fact that he speaks Afrikaans implies he is a South African. She is stupefied by the exchange: it highlights her simplistic understanding of what the enemy should look like. This uncanny revelation undoubtedly draws attention to the spectral presence of Chinese-South Africans who have not received due recognition as bona fide citizens. Callie, who is initially critical of Chinese propaganda, begins to read her positionality as a South African freedom fighter on equally problematic terms. Her defensiveness drops and she confesses that South Africa was caught off-guard amid a global crisis. The country did not have a sufficient national security plan; China has offered significantly more protection than the South African government was capable of at the time. Godsell’s introspective narrative shift focus away from Chinese agitation. It allows the reader to consider the nature of South African apathy by conveying that the country may not lack a fighting spirit but, unlike China, lacks the necessary foresight and organisation to bolster the nation. Negative representations of China in the African imaginary gesture at the idea that a certain amount of envy informs the continent’s responses to China. They also suggest that African countries can benefit from emulating China’s uncompromising nationalistic and commercial drive. This possibility is more fully explored in Mandisi Nkomo’s “Heresy”. Nkomo’s narrative is set in the year 2040. South-South interactions challenge the global status quo. China has risen in global economic rankings. But South Africa has not fallen under its sway: the nations are caught up in a highly competitive space race. South Africa is determined to not be outdone by the Chinese and channels its resources in meeting this goal. “Heresy” conveys how Africans can construct an invisible enemy out of China by exponentially accelerating South African development. This light-hearted narrative assumes the challenge of imagining the current tension of Sino-African relations otherwise. It shows how friendly rivalry can inadvertently lead to African progress. Rethinking friendship In their book Friendship and International Relations, academics Andrea Oelsner and Simon Koschut write that it is: necessary to think of international friendship not as something that is merely being performed at the intergovernmental level but as something that is being enacted in the day-to-day activities and imaginations at all levels of society. This certainly includes science fiction narratives that present us with a “succession of literary experiments, each one examining a small part of a much larger image and each equally necessary to the greater vision”. Through these short stories, it immediately becomes possible to consider how China-Africa relations need not result in Chinese neocolonialism and African exploitation. They offer us more creative approaches to political friendship by reinventing and reinterpreting the roles of both parties in their narratives. Similarly, pursued in this way, the future of China-Africa relations need not be seen as a singular act of solidarity that demands repeating. Instead it could be viewed as a more fluid encounter that allows for mutual investment in world-building projects while also providing enough objective distance to nurture difference and autonomy. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. HeartMath Institute We are passionate and dedicated people, steadfast in our commitment to provide solutions for activating the heart of humanity. HeartMath Institute empowers individuals, families, groups and organizations to enhance their life experiences using tools that enable them to better recognize and access their intuitive insight and heart intelligence. HeartMath Vision A global shift is under way and people are sensing it involves a deeper connection with their heart. This desire for more heart connection is a growing movement, one that people are drawn to by a nudge from their own intuition or conscience to listen to their hearts more and to connect with their inner guidance. The voice or feelings of the heart have been referred to in writings and teachings throughout the millennia. HeartMath exists to help individuals, organizations, and the global community incorporate the heart’s intelligence into their day-to-day experience of life. Whether people mention speaking from the heart, connecting with the heart, or following the heart, there is an increased energetic awareness of the importance of the heart’s intelligent input in life’s discernments and choices. It’s being experienced by millions who are coming into expanded global awareness and feel an inner need for the deeper resonance and nurturing of spirit that comes from heart-based connections. These connections can be between a person’s own heart and mind, or between people trying to build community through cooperative interaction. HeartMath’s commitment is to help make these critical couplings possible. As these connections are established, the world we live in will be transformed. Coherent, heart-centered interactions will generate a higher vibrational consciousness field globally, increasing individual, social and global coherence and resonance. This will support co-creative alliances and draw in new intuitive solutions to our personal and global challenges. HeartMath shows us a way to remake our world. It provides tools to connect with our inner guidance and technologies to help us be still enough to listen. Its research shows us how we can be empowered to become masters of ourselves and the quality of our future. Together, the tools, technologies and research enable us to realize our full potential as individuals and as a species to serve as caretakers for our planet and generations to come. The Heart’s Intuitive Intelligence: A path to personal, social and global coherence Visit also HeartMath Benelux The Future Now Show Shape the future now, where near-future impact counts and visions and strategies for preferred futures start. – Club of Amsterdam Do we rise above global challenges? Or do we succumb to them? The Future Now Show explores how we can shape our future now – where near-future impact counts. We showcase strategies and solutions that create futures that work. Every month we roam through current events, discoveries, and challenges – sparking discussion about the connection between today and the futures we’re making – and what we need, from strategy to vision – to make the best ones. November 2019Intuition / Life Energies withPeachie Dioquino-Valera Scientists have always said: “In our physical plane, we have only discovered the tip of the iceberg.” When labels such as: “Esoteric Psychology”, “Esoteric Science/Scientist”, “Paranormal Psychology”, “Human Energy Science”, “Life Energies Science”, “Spiritual Metaphysics” are mentioned, most of us will either nod our heads in disbelief, violently shirk out of fear of the unknown, or fall into a curiosity muse. The above mentioned are claimed by some physicists, a few psychology professionals, and a minority of scientists to be emerging legitimate forms of knowledge-hopefully to be recognized in the future as a formal body of science with a definite set of universal laws. In Peachie’s talk she will delve on the recorded existence of Intuition, Life Energies, & Psychism based on her research and 16 years of experience taking on pro-bono cases that deal with real human (and spirit) cases in the Philippines. This will offer an insight too on why there is a booming economy and research on: alternative energy healing modalities i.e. Reiki, Pranic Healing, Crystal Healing, Sound Healing, etc.; paranormal investigators (who even aid organizations such as the FBI, CIA, or the police force and detectives); intuitive counsellors or therapists; and the like. This phenomenon of a topic has challenged humanity in the past, is still continuously being studied and recorded in the present, and will be discussed more in an academic and public setting in the Future, which will be considered highly evolutionary. The Future Now ShowCredits Peachie Dioquino-Valera, environmental activist, consultant, and speaker, and a Climate Reality Leader of The Climate Reality Projectwww.climaterealityproject.orgFutures Learning Advisor of the Center for Engaged Foresighthttps://engagedforesight.net The Future Now Show Biodesign House of the future Architects Ferdinand Ludwig and Daniel Schönle would like to revolutionize the way we build, or more appropriately “grow”, our buildings. Inspired by the ancient art of tree shaping – from Japanese Bonsai to India’s Living Tree Bridges – they have added modern materials, like metal scaffolding, to graft a 10-meter-high (33 feet) living tower near Germany’s Black Forest. The Plane-Tree-Cube Nagold is their largest living plant structure yet though Ludwig has spent years experimenting with “baubotanik” (bau= building + “botanik” = botany) techniques, inspired by historical examples. Plane-Tree-Cube Nagold Ludwig’s first biodesigned structure was the Baubotanik Footbridge planted in 2005 as an initial attempt to get people into the canopy of the trees. Biodesign relies on processes that occur in nature, such as inosculation: a grafting process where the limbs of separate trees grow together, shedding bark and outer layers so the inner tissue and vasculature combines to create one organism. Another technique inspired by the events in the natural world is “uberballung” where a limb “grows over” another element, normally a metal beam or rod. Baubotanik constructions evolve over time. As the trees grow together they become strong enough to be load-bearing and more and more of the metal infrastructure can be removed. Over time, the buildings become more tree and more alive. Ludwig believes his Baubotanik methods can scale to buildings as high as a tree can grow (about 30 meters or 100 feet). “We made some design proposals even for whole streets where all the street trees are fused with the building in this way,” explains Ludwig. “So the people don’t live in a house, they live in a tree. For sure there are some rooms behind there that are traditional in a way, but if you go out of the door you stand in the tree, in the canopy.” more atGreen Technologies in Landscape Architecture Baubotanik shapes living tree branches into building facades News about the Future Earth ArchiveThe Earth Archive is both a program of scanning focused on endangered landscapes and an open-source collection of LiDAR scans accessible to scientists around the world. LiDAR, Light Detection & Ranging, involves shooting a dense grid of infrared beams from an airplane towards the ground. It’s a high-resolution scan of the earth’s surface & everything on it. Not an actual image, but a dense three-dimensional cloud of points. Earth Archive builds a virtual, open-source planet accessible to all scientists so we can better understand our world. Archaeologists can discover undocumented settlements. Ecologists can study forest composition, tree size, age, and distribution. Geologists can study hydrology, faults, and disturbance. Modelers can project the future of our planet under many different climate scenarios. The possibilities are endless. The Earth Archive is a bet on the future of humankind. A bet that together, collectively, as people & as scientists, that we will face the climate crisis. And that we’ll choose to do right thing. Not just for us today, but to honor those who came before us, and to pay it forward to future generations who will carry on our legacy. Bringing Embodied Carbon Upfront The World Green Building Council’s pioneering report demands radical cross-sector coordination to revolutionise the buildings and construction sector towards a net zero future, and tackle embodied carbon emissions. Through the Advancing Net Zero project, and in partnership with European Climate Foundation, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, C40 Cities and Ramboll, WorldGBC has developed a ‘call to action’ report focusing on these emissions, as part of a whole lifecycle approach, and the systemic changes needed to achieve full decarbonisation across the global buildings sector. Buildings are currently responsible for 39% of global energy related carbon emissions: 28% from operational emissions, from energy needed to heat, cool and power them, and the remaining 11% from materials and construction. Towards the middle of the century, as the world’s population approaches 10 billion, the global building stock is expected to double in size. Carbon emissions released before the built asset is used, what referred to as ‘upfront carbon’, will be responsible for half of the entire carbon footprint of new construction between now and 2050, threatening to consume a large part of our remaining carbon budget. Therefore the built environment sector has a vital role to play in responding to the climate emergency, and addressing upfront carbon is a critical and urgent focus. In “Bringing Embodied Carbon Upfront: Coordinated action for the building and construction sector to tackle embodied carbon”, WorldGBC has issued a bold new vision that: By 2030, all new buildings, infrastructure and renovations will have at least 40% less embodied carbon with significant upfront carbon reduction, and all new buildings are net zero operational carbon.By 2050, new buildings, infrastructure and renovations will have net zero embodied carbon, and all buildings, including existing buildings must be net zero operational carbon. The report is critical to create a conversation around the value and importance of embodied carbon, with the aim of creating and stimulating market demand for transparency, improvements, and verification of embodied carbon reductions. WorldGBC engaged with over 200 stakeholders throughout the process to produce the report and at the time of release has garnered over 80 endorsements from across the entire building and construction value chain including developers and construction companies, financial institutions, city networks and government, as well as industry representatives from concrete, steel and timber and many more. Noise Polution The European Environment Agency (EEA) has launched the most comprehensive map of noise exposure to date, revealing the extent to which European citizens are exposed to excessive acoustic pollution. The NOISE (Noise Observation and Information Service for Europe) database provides, at the click of a mouse, a picture of the numbers of people exposed to noise generated by air, rail and road traffic across Europe and in 102 large urban agglomerations. Noise is ubiquitous but its role as a key form of pollution with serious human health consequences is still underestimated. Prolonged exposure to even low levels of noise can trigger hypertension and disrupt sleep. A first glance at Europe’s noise exposure map is far from soothing: it is estimated than half of the population in urban areas with more than 250 000 inhabitants endure levels above 55 dB Lden (the lower EU benchmark for an average 24-hour period) as a result of ambient road noise. Just over 41 million Europeans are exposed to excessive noise from road traffic alone in the largest cities. Noise Pollution Is Much Worse For You Than You Think Underwater noise polution For fish, whales and other marine animals, intense underwater noises from blasts can cause acoustic trauma and even death. More common quieter noise, such as construction or shipping noise, may not kill the animals directly, but can disrupt their ability to find food, mates or avoid predators. by OceanCare What are the sources of ocean noise pollution? Levels of anthropogenic (human-generated) noise have doubled every decade for the past 60 years in some regions. This destructive underwater noise is mostly caused by the military, the oil and gas industry and shipping traffic: Air guns Seismic airguns are primarily used for oil and gas exploration below the seabed and for geophysical surveys of the seafloor. Air is driven into the water at high pressure, sending intense and explosive sound pulses towards the seabed. These sounds can permeate thousands of metres of ocean before penetrating hundreds of kilometres into the ocean floor. Up to 40 airguns are fired in a tight sequence, each of them emitting sound every ten to fifteen seconds, often for 24 hours a day and for several weeks in the same area. Hydrophones are used to record and analyse the sound that reflects back to the sea surface. As easily extractable resources are already depleted, seismic surveys keep spreading into ever more sensitive marine habitats and into ever greater depths. Military sonar Active sonar is used by military vessels during exercises and routine activities to search for objects such as enemy submarines. These mid- and low-frequency sonar systems emit sound pulses of more than 100 seconds at a time for hours on end. These pulses are emitted with as much energy and in as narrow a range as possible. Low-frequency sonar serves as a way of putting large areas under surveillance and pervades thousands of cubic kilometres of water with sound. Mid-frequency sonar uses 0.1 to 10 kHz and can reach up to 230 decibels. Shipping traffic 90% of globally traded goods are transported by ships which are generating an ever-present and constantly rising acoustic “fog” that masks natural sounds. Ships tend to produce low-frequency sound between 10 Hz and 1 kHz that can spread over huge distances and is the most common source of ocean noise. Explosives Explosives are detonated in the ocean by the military, for demolition purposes, or for testing equipment – e.g., ship-shock trials, whereby ships are deliberately struck with explosives to test their durability. These explosions cause extremely high noise levels across a wide frequency range and are characterised by rapid rise times. Construction works Construction works in harbours as well as pile-driving for offshore wind farms and oilrigs are generating intensive noise emissions, too. Why the ocean is getting louder Recommended Book Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control By Stuart RussellCreating superior intelligence would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, according to the world’s pre-eminent AI expert, it could also be the last. In this groundbreaking book on the biggest question facing humanity, Stuart Russell explains why he has come to consider his own discipline an existential threat to our species, and lays out how we can change course before it’s too late. There is no one better placed to assess the promise and perils of the dominant technology of the future than Russell, who has spent decades at the forefront of AI research. Through brilliant analogies and crisp, lucid prose, he explains how AI actually works, how it has an enormous capacity to improve our lives – but why we must ensure that we never lose control of machines more powerful than we are. Here Russell shows how we can avert the worst threats by reshaping the foundations of AI to guarantee that machines pursue our objectives, not theirs. Profound, urgent and visionary, Human Compatible is the one book everyone needs to read to understand a future that is coming sooner than we think. North Sea Wind Power Hub North Sea Wind Power Hub vision The North Sea Wind Power Hub consortium has joined forces to realize climate goals. The consortiums work is based on research, stakeholder interaction and experience from earlier projects. Partners in the consortium are TenneT, Port of Rotterdam, Energinet and Gasunie. The North Sea Wind Power Hub Consortium initial study and test results are gathered in six concept papers. The goal of the concept papers is to inform North Sea stakeholders, and the general public, of the results the NSWPH has obtained working on the modular Hub-and-Spoke concept over the last two years. The six concept papers tell one story: from the challenge to meet the Paris Agreement, through the solution building on the modular Hub-and-Spoke concept, to the next steps required to meet the Paris Agreement timely and in a cost-effective manner. Juli 2019 – The international consortium partners of the North Sea Wind Power Hub (NSWPH) presented the results of the project’s assessment phase. Over the past months, the consortium has been analysing the possibility and conditions required to build one or several wind power hubs in the North Sea. The consortium has conducted a wide range of studies, investigated a number of different scenarios and conducted intense engagements with policy makers, leading offshore wind farm developers and Non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Summary of key findings The proposed Hub-and-Spoke concept is technically feasible A gradual roll-out of 10 to 15 gigawatts hubs is the next logical step towards a large offshore wind build-out A first Hub-and-Spoke project will likely be electrically connected to shore and with additional power-to-gas to provide energy system flexibility and could be operational in the 2030s While it is likely possible to build a first Hub and Spoke project within the current regulatory framework and market design, i.e. current EU and national legislation, significant changes are required in national practices, approaches, planning and policies in order to allow for integrated infrastructure projects such as the modular hub concept being part of the long term energy transition According to all international studies and scenarios the large scale roll-out rate of offshore wind is crucial to meet “Paris targets”. Acceleration is needed As the North Sea is hosting a large potential for offshore wind power, the implementation of 180 gigawatts offshore wind can be achieved by 2045 by the consortium’s approach An international coordinated approach could connect and integrate large scale offshore wind more effectively and with significant lower costs compared to a continued individual national planning Long term market security is needed for all stakeholders to invest and build-up the required supply chains Urgent agreements on developing sustainable energy from offshore wind after 2030 are needed Consortium has started and facilitates discussion with governments, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), policy makers and industry: close cooperation and support is needed by setting up consultation processes and international agreements Balanced decision making is required by policy makers and spatial planners to weigh the environmental impact of offshore wind farm developments against its techno-economic impact, and the urgency to meet the long-term climate goals Using power-to-gas conversion and transmission in combination with coupling with other sectors will bring benefits to the overall energy system The world’s first hydrogen wind turbine is to become a reality in the Wieringermeer area at the start of 2019. This is the objective of a partnership formed between initiator and sustainable hydrogen supplier HYGRO, wind turbine manufacturer Lagerwey and research institute ECN. Climate Change Success Story: Freiburg Green City It is with some justification that Freiburg regards itself as one of the birthplaces of the environmental movement. Freiburg‘s sustainability process began as far back as the 1970s with the successful action against the Wyhl nuclear power plant, one of the founding myths of the alternative-green movement. This was then continued by socio-civic initiatives that formed part of the „Local Agenda 21“ process and the signing of the Aalborg Commitments, as well as the associated sustainability targets set by the Freiburg Sustainability Council and adopted by the Municipal Council in 2009, which form the basis for any political action. The Sustainability Management unit was set up at the start of 2011 as a coordination and central control office, to systematically develop the ‚green profile‘ of the City of Freiburg for the future. Reporting directly to the Lord Mayor, its role involves developing an integrated sustainability management policy to steer the city‘s overall urban sustainability process, pooling experiences and acquiring new skills to meet future challenges. A wealth of projects and the innumerable activities and initiatives that help to implement Freiburg‘s sustainability targets, attest to the city‘s comprehensive commitment to sustainable development. For its commitment, the city of Freiburg was honoured with the German Sustainability Award in 2012, presented for the first time to towns and municipalities, as the most sustainable city in Germany. The prize was awarded specifically to reflect the city‘s unique sustainability infrastructure, comprising the Sustainability Management unit reporting to the Lord Mayor, as well as the commitment of urban societies, offices and agencies combined with an active body of citizens. Freiburg is regarded today as a model for the reconciliation of „soft“ ecology and „hard“ economics. Environmental policy, solar technology, sustainability and climate protection have become the drivers of economic and political growth along with urban development. And yet, what matters even more than prizes and global back-slapping, is the fact that the people of Freiburg identify strongly with this policy and their city. Green Revolution – The Freiburg Model | Made in Germany Futurist Portrait: Jerry Kaplan Jerry Kaplan is widely known as an Artificial Intelligence expert, serial entrepreneur, technical innovator, educator, bestselling author, and futurist. A renowned Silicon Valley veteran, Jerry Kaplan founded several storied technology companies over his 35-year career, two of which became public companies. Kaplan may be best known for his key role in defining the tablet computer industry as the founding CEO of GO Corporation in 1987. Prior to GO, Kaplan co-founded Teknowledge, Inc., one of the first Artificial Intelligence companies to commercialize Expert Systems, which went public in 1986. In 1994, Kaplan co-founded Onsale, Inc., the world’s first Internet auction website, which went public in 1997. In 2004, he pioneered the emerging market for social games by starting Winster.com, where he served as CEO for eight years. Jerry Kaplan is currently a Lecturer and Research Affiliate at CDDRL, a Visiting Lecturer in Computer Science, and a Fellow at the Center for Legal Informatics at Stanford University Law School. His research and teaching focusses on the social and economic Impact of Artificial Intelligence. He is an inventor on more than a dozen patents, and has published over twenty refereed papers in academic journals and conference proceedings. Kaplan holds a PhD in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Chicago. Jerry Kaplan is the author of three books, including the best-selling classic “Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure” (Houghton-Mifflin). Selected by Business Week as one of the top ten business books of 1995, Startup was optioned to Sony Pictures. “Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” (Yale University Press) was honored by The Economist as one of the top ten science and technology books of 2015. His latest book, “Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford University Press) was a 2016 Amazon new release #1 best seller in Artificial Intelligence. Jerry Kaplan has been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Week, Red Herring, and Upside. He is a frequent commentary contributor to major newspapers and magazines. He received the 1998 Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Northern California; served on the Governor’s Electronic Commerce Advisory Council Member under Pete Wilson, Governor of California (1999); and received an Honorary Doctorate of Business Administration from California International Business University, San Diego, California (2004). Jerry Kaplan: “Making Machine Learning Great Again” | Talks at Google printable version
Club of Amsterdam Journal, December 2019 / January 2020, Issue 221
Content Creative intelligence in organisations by Annedien Hoen Volumetric display The Future Now ShowDecember: Emotional Intelligence with Luis Daniel Maldonado FonkenJanuary: Content Creators with Katie King The Vegetarian Butcher News about the Future: First fully rechargeable lithium-carbon dioxide battery / MIT report examines how to make technology work for society Smile Recommended Book: Handbook of Collective Intelligence Edited by Thomas W. Malone andMichael S. Bernstein Light pollution Climate Change Success Story: TeamTrees Futurist Portrait: Richard Yonck Club of Amsterdam SearchSubmit your articleContactSubscribe Welcome to the Club of Amsterdam Journal. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web Contract for the WebA global plan of action to make our online world safe and empowering for everyone The Web was designed to bring people together and make knowledge freely available. It has changed the world for good and improved the lives of billions. Yet, many people are still unable to access its benefits and, for others, the Web comes with too many unacceptable costs. Everyone has a role to play in safeguarding the future of the Web. The Contract for the Web was created by representatives from over 80 organizations, representing governments, companies and civil society, and sets out commitments to guide digital policy agendas. To achieve the Contract’s goals, governments, companies, civil society and individuals must commit to sustained policy development, advocacy, and implementation of the Contract text. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web: “For a long time, 20 years, I thought all I had to do was keep it, just keep it free and open and people will do wonderful things, Then in fact if you look and talk to people on the street now there’s been a big change. I think this has been been a tipping point.” The Future Now Show December 2019 about Emotional Intelligence with Luis Daniel Maldonado Fonken“Technology and humanity can rise together and in harmony with each other. Technology-human interaction enables human brain performance enhancement and development of human competences. Artificial Intelligence cannot replace. Luis applies new human inclusive model for circular economy and provides measurement and enhancement of circular-innovation capacity. He talks about his insights in circular economy, gender equity, technology 4.0 and human competences (emotional collective intelligence).” – Luis Daniel Maldonado Fonken The Future Now Show January 2020 about Content Creators with Katie King Katie aka Miss Metaverse, content creator, podcast producer, futurist, speaker and media personality talks about her recent experiences with social media and content creation in the States, but also in Asia – what happened and what needs to happen. Felix B Bopp, Founder & Chairman Creative intelligence in organisations Insights for executivesby Annedien Hoen Setting the wheels of innovation in motion. The 21st century is in full swing. Change is picking up speed, becomes more complex and opportunities are emerging in places where we don’t expect them. CEO’s and senior executives have a lot on their plates. It is time to make sense of what is happening and adopt new mindsets and strategies. Which challenges are organisations facing now? Responding to the growing tidal wave of technological developments that is headed our way. Change happens within months instead of years now: the Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by velocity, scope and systems impact (Klaus Schwab). Kevin Kelly refers to this as the technium. Leveraging the potential that is in people, making them not just smart (they are highly educated) but also more creative, skilled and confident about navigating through chaos and uncertainty.Organisations are filled to the brim with intelligent people, but can they adapt quickly, thoroughly analyze problems and show initiative when it is and isn’t expected of them? They have to become able to navigate complex situations and uncertainty and do what is needed to move forward. Embodying innovation instead of treating it as an isolated activity with a pipeline bringing products to market. Organizational forms have to reflect the dynamics of the market and society and be fundamentally innovative, have all the relevant processes in place and be willing to become a fluid entity instead of a rigid vehicle. Attracting and retaining talent and highly skilled people.It is not possible to automate talent, the added value of sharp minds or the wisdom of highly specialized and experienced people. They will be in higher demand than ever. Creating new business models in a volatile economy.When the message is that ‘all bets are off’, how do you allocate your resources? When down is up and up is down, how do you create a blueprint for your future? Maybe business models are a thing of the past and perhaps organisations need business attitudes, business principles and business dynamics navigators. Creating a corporate culture that engages and challenges people as well as provides them with structure and security to hold the space for their growth.In order to truly activate people, sincere freedom is required. In order to learn and experiment an underlying texture of facilitation and direction is required. It is easy to be too lenient (“Just try some stuff, whatever!”) or be too controlling (“Experiment, but make sure it makes sense and is profitable from the beginning!”). Branding and marketing strategies fail, organisations have a hard time connecting with the market.Customers are an elusive element, loyalty is a thing of the past and it’s not as clear as it used to be how you add value and stay relevant. People are more educated, inform each other rapidly if something is off, it is hard to stay on top of all that is being said about your brand and conversations with customers or (potential) clients quickly seem awkward and artificial. Capacity building through the reskilling and upskilling of people.The call for developing additional skills in people is strong, but where to begin and how do you teach people things like ingenuity and imagination? Executives are trained and experienced in today’s (or worse: yesterday’s) economy.They have to prepare for the future and deal with the unprecedented. Seeing, acknowledging and leveraging emerging realities and the opportunities they represent.It is easy to see what is being dismantled by change — and all the harder to see which new paradigms are already there, showing themselves in their early forms. There are weak signals and small scale beginnings present though and they can be turned into business opportunities.A balance has to be found between activation, speed, agility and action and contemplation, relaxation, resting and allowing people to replenish, be open to inspiration, following a less artificial rhythm and reconnect with their natural ‘beat’.This means that people have to spend their time on things that matter without wasting it but are also not be frowned upon when they go hiking in the woods when they want to work on a tough problem that way or take a nap when they’ve expended a lot of mental energy. What others say According to the World Economic Forum the top 3 out of 10 skills you need by 2020 (which is around the corner) to be able to thrive in what they call ‘the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (#4ir) are: 1. Complex Problem Solving2. Critical Thinking3. Creativity How do you quickly teach people these skills without derailing your organisation in the meantime? How do you activate qualities in people that require a lot of practice, stamina and willingness to deal with inner resistance, fear, shame and prejudice? How does one unravel the mysteries of conceiving what is not yet a reality to be able to use this force? We believe that the way forward is by activating and cultivating creative intelligence in people and organisations. It allows individuals and systems to respond to change from deeper layers of human insight and potential. The fourth industrial revolution is a part of human evolution. What is creative intelligence? Creative intelligence is that which emerges when you combine intellect (ratio, reasoning, logic) with imagination (the ability to conceive something new, see in a different way and make connections) and you start applying this for progress and improvement. The combination of these two enables you to be a better problem finder, come up with relevant and often surprising new ideas, create experiments and implement new insights. Because of this you can respond to constant change but also be a proactive force in that change process. It is what allows humanity to progress. It is the capacity to thoroughly analyse a problem, come up with solutions that are imaginative and demonstrate ingenuity, combined with having the confidence and necessary skills to navigate through uncertainty and chaos. If any of these elements is missing it is not creative intelligence. Creative intelligence unifies and cultivates these skills and offers an integral approach to enhance all these skills at the same time. It is impossible to automate creativity, ingenuity or the ability to combine different fields, drawing from other disciplines to come up with novel ideas. It is a universally human principle that is present in people and systems. We need to learn how to gain access, amplify and cultivate our creative intelligence in order to become more future proof. The amount of creative intelligence present in individuals and systems is not a fixed given. People can learn the techniques needed and grow their process confidence. They can expand the amount of mental technology they have at their disposal, improving their cognitive flexibility, flow of ideas and problem finding capacities. How does creative intelligence help organisations face these challenges? Upskilling: it is an enrichment of people’s experience, thinking toolbox and ‘chaos navigation’ skills. It represents a universal concept, not an empty buzzword or promise of a silver bullet. It transcends roles, education, job titles, projects and objectives. It unifies and creates a shared language and approach. It is a method that promotes learning. In fact, it is a means of deep learning. It supports not just creating innovations but innovating the organisation continuously on a structural level. It transcends hierarchical, industrial age thinking. It does not focus on the result but on the process and deep problem finding, which is the way to go in times of fast paced change.Better problem finding is what sets creative intelligence apart from “just” intelligence or “just” creativity. Throughout history it is evident that people who made a profound change for the better were very good problem finders. Attacking problems with a solution oriented (problem solving) attitude takes away from the quality of processes that promote progress. It is a means of deep iteration, not just scraping the surface but continuously probing profound layers of the situation, systems and dynamics. It is fundamentally positive, pro-active, inspiring and growth oriented. It honours our humanity and looks for answers inside, not outside of us. It is, however, much like the Force: one can learn how to access and master it, but it can be used for either side. What is the business case for developing creative intelligence in people and organisations? An increase in creative intelligence yields (at least) the following results: Better problem finding resulting in better solutions. More engagement for employees, addressing more personal qualities and talents and offering a more integral approach. They can bring more to the table, they are invited to stay in a more interesting zone where there is more vivacity, provocation of resourcefulness, personal growth. More meta techniques to manage processes and troubleshoot. Greater flexibility because people have greater mental and practical flexibility. It is easier to deal with the inflow of information and change. Another great benefit is that you don’t have to recruit for new talent, high potentials and experts because you can upskill your existing workforce. What do organisations have to do in order to increase and cultivate creative intelligence, both systemically and in individuals? Organisations have to understand change has to happen in an organisation’s structure and system, not just in people or processes and procedures. Creative intelligence is a fundamentally deep approach. This requires commitment, openness and courage. Organisations have to install guiding principles rather than rules and procedures. They have to organize around intention and values rather than solely strive for quantifiable objectives. The physical space has to reflect the processes: war rooms, laboratories, meeting rooms that reflect the inner work, offices that are not designed for 20th century work, spaces that allow for introverted activity; contemplation, focus and sitting with concepts and ideas for an uninterrupted, continuous amount of time. They have to strike a balance between solidifying and fluidity. This is a complicated dance but it is the only path to becoming future proof. There is no recipe for this. Organisations have to learn how to keep pushing forward using techniques to start and guide processes of creative intelligence.An example of such a technique is the Heuristic for Creative Intelligence we have developed. They have to return to their battle plan again and again. Organisations have to be aware that the better the thinking tools and techniques for creative intelligence processes people have installed as ‘mental technology’, the better the results! It is a form of practical upskilling, not of introducing abstract concepts or myths. Organisations have to create symmetry: enhancing creative intelligence in people is useless if an organisation’s leaders don’t allow for these processes to have consequences and initiate and shape profound change over time. This means that leaders have to upskill themselves too, become learners, not knowers and lead the way through their example. Having people high in creative intelligence within the organisation will inspire others. It is a known phenomenon that ingenuity, creativity and original thinking is contagious. It is also about understanding that creative intelligence is not just about better problem finding and better ideas, but also about accessing the wisdom in people and processes, about a more human centered take on progress and innovation. The underlying shifting paradigms: What else can we observe when there is an increase in creative intelligence within the organisation? Culture:The organisation and people’s interaction and communication become more humanized. Language becomes richer, vocabulary reflects an expansion of mental technology. Conversation becomes richer, people are more courageous in sharing what is on their minds, presenting ideas they are working on before they are perfect.There is more room for the human experience; emotion, curiosity, wonder, vulnerability, fierceness, intuition, imagination, confusion, paradox, exploration and honesty.Challenges are met with heuristics and vigor instead of aversion and apathy.People have a shared language to work and communicate with each other; processes facilitate cooperation across all layers and disciplines within the organisation because creative intelligence and the associated mental technology can be used by everyone, everywhere. Strategy:Strategy becomes more sustainable because processes yield more profound insights about the market, needs and requirements.Experimentation is the norm.Strategy is not just created by CEO’s and senior executives, the entire organisation contributes with knowledge and insights. Leadership:The organisation becomes more attractive to employees because there is more engagement, more imagination, more good thinking and people can bring more to the table.Leaders leading by example by heightening their own creative intelligence and becoming a better, more inspirational and effective leader.Less artificial, pumped up language and objectives. More realness. Way of working:People approach challenges in fundamentally different and deeper ways, with more intensity and clarity. They will all become more effective chaos navigators, embarking on these explorations together and naturally. Through individual and shared mental technology more connections and information exchange are happening, creating better decisions and communication. Some of the risks involved in activating and navigating creative intelligence: One has to step away from the status quo in order to gain greater understanding of it and perform the interventions needed to revitalize the organisation. As any artist-scientist can tell you; it takes deliberation and wisdom to strike a balance between staying in the normal and venturing out into the extraordinary, to know which kind of ‘weird’ is the right kind of weird or the one that leads to too much alienation and confusion.Often people experience knee-jerk reactions to the unexpected, the unpredictable and the unknown, so snapping back into the groove of the familiar is very probable. It takes inner strength and commitment to stay with the process, to keep holding the space for change and ‘creative intelligence chemistry’. It is tempting to resurface and join in the echo chamber rhetorics again.Also, not everyone will enjoy a process in which they themselves, as human beings, become the subject of the process, where they will have to deal with their own inhibitions, ideas and convictions. They will just want to do their jobs and not be bothered with processes and challenges that are difficult and demanding.Furthermore, people will most probably go off on a tangent, wander without aim, lose confidence, be triggered and relive old pain. We are paying a price for not living fully, deliberately and wholly engaged and we have to overcome the pain associated with this when we bring it to the surface. We feel safe in predictable environments, with clear roles and assignments; we can stay away from a crippling fear of failure, dreading humiliation and losing our position in the hierarchy. We don’t want to break things that are still working and we most certainly don’t want to accidentally engineer our own redundancy.Hence, the mission critical attitude for activating and navigating creative intelligence is first and foremost one of earnesty and devotion, of deeply understanding that much is asked of us during this crossroads in human development. In its most elementary form, to initiate building an organisation with more creative intelligence means:Adopting the mindset that people can access and cultivate creative intelligencePreparing to transform the organisation by using different approaches for problem finding, generative processes and progressIntroducing creative intelligence processes within the organisation: experienced mentors, guides and exemplary people are a must or else you will get lost and lose the motivation needed to learn and growIntegrating this mindset and approach in the entire organisation and letting it be the new normal What do people need to start doing, changing and planning in order to heighten their creative intelligence? The main idea is that becoming better at a certain process means heightening creative intelligence. It is not a matter of learning some tricks and going through the motions once or twice. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with this process you can initiate and go through the process again and again.Mindset, mindset, mindset! The most important element of starting your quest is your attitude towards your own potential: you have to start assuming that your creative intelligence can grow, come to life if it is dormant, be enhanced, managed and cultivated. You can familiarize yourself with techniques and become more experienced in the type of processes that characterize artists, scientists, thinkers and entrepreneurs. You’ll have to endure confusion and resistance but if you stick to the plan you will learn and grow your creative intelligence. Mental technologyUsing different techniques will render different results. The more mental technology you have at your disposal, the better you become at approaching situations and dealing with challenges.This is a matter of personal preference and after a while it will become clear to you what works for you and what doesn’t. There are literally hundreds — if not thousands — of methods, tools and techniques that can be considered mental technology, ranging from entry level idea provoking tools to metaphysical interplay with fields and other layers of life, from systemic constellations with Playmobil dolls to vision quests in the forest, to association games in museums, to sitting with questions for long periods of time to improvisation or enquiry. There are card decks with questions to guide your journaling process, games to help you stretch your thinking and libraries filled with books about expanding your skills and insight. Collecting and using this mental technology is part of your journey to enhancing your creative intelligence. It does not come with a standard recipe. Find out what works for you. Explore. Practice. Learn. ProcessThe objective of all this is that you become experienced at processes that characterize people high in creative intelligence: what sets most people apart from people with exceptional insight and ingenuity is not just a matter of talent or privilege: these people do things differently and we can emulate their processes and attitudes to change our own experiences. Although emulating others comes naturally to us as humans (this is how we have learned a lot of life skills) we somehow believe that some things are out of our league or cannot be acquired. Most highly productive and original artists, scientists, thinkers, innovators and entrepreneurs have their own specific set of elements that form their processes. But it is always about finding your way through uncertainty, discovering new things about a subject or situation and being able to learn essential lessons or gain new insights. This can lead to a book, article, discovery, pinpointing a problem, crafting a new format or concept, a marketing strategy, a business model or a deep understanding of the needs of the people involved in a project — but because you have gone through fundamentally deeper layers you have found more and better experiences and insights. You have not just tried to generate solutions right off the bat but have intensified your quest. In conclusion:Human ingenuity is the answer to overwhelming technological advancements, the impact of which is changing our lives, organisations and business models, at a breakneck pace. It means that we have to start applying a universal principle as an answer to universal processes of profound change. It means our human ingenuity can be rekindled, enhanced and applied in an unprecedented manner. Annedien Hoen (1974) is a Creative Intelligence Adventurer and co-founder of Veld organisational development, together with Erwin Elling. She’s a kind of Indiana Jones who explores lesser-known areas of human potential in search of treasures in order to bring them back to the habited world and share them with people and organisations that want to function with more creative intelligence. Get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions or if you want to work with Veld to start enhancing the creative intelligence in your organisation. Volumetric display A volumetric display device is a graphic display device that forms a visual representation of an object in three physical dimensions, as opposed to the planar image of traditional screens that simulate depth through a number of different visual effects. About Voxon PhotonicsCreators of the world’s most advanced 3D volumetric display. Our 3D Volumetric technology brings digital content to life and helps empower people to visualise, communicate, learn and have fun in a collaborative manner with no barrier to the 3D experience. No special glasses are required. The Future Now Show Shape the future now, where near-future impact counts and visions and strategies for preferred futures start. – Club of Amsterdam Do we rise above global challenges? Or do we succumb to them? The Future Now Show explores how we can shape our future now – where near-future impact counts. We showcase strategies and solutions that create futures that work. Every month we roam through current events, discoveries, and challenges – sparking discussion about the connection between today and the futures we’re making – and what we need, from strategy to vision – to make the best ones. December 2019 Emotional Intelligence withLuis Daniel Maldonado Fonken Technology and humanity can rise together and in harmony with each other. Technology-human interaction enables human brain performance enhancement and development of human competences. Artificial Intelligence cannot replace. Luis applies new human inclusive model for circular economy and provides measurement and enhancement of circular-innovation capacity. He talks about his insights in circular economy, gender equity, technology 4.0 and human competences (emotional collective intelligence). The Future Now ShowCreditsLuis Daniel Maldonado Fonken, CEO, Consultant, Developer at MQ9 [Matrix-Quotient 9] Solutions B.V.https://human-capital.matrix-q.com January 2020 Content CreatorswithKatie King aka Miss Metaverse Katie aka Miss Metaverse, content creator, podcast producer, futurist, speaker and media personality talks about her recent experiences with social media and content creation in the States, but also in Asia – what happened and what needs to happen. CreditsKatie King aka Miss Metaverse, Futurist, content creator, podcast producer, speaker and media personalitywww.futuristmm.comyoutube:Miss MetaverseMiss Alterverse The Future Now Show The Vegetarian Butcher Jaap Korteweg is a 9th generation farmer and founding father of The Vegetarian Butcher. How does someone, having grown up on a farm among the cows in the Dutch countryside, decide to become a Vegetarian Butcher? When the swine fever and the mad cow disease were holding the Netherlands in their grip, Jaap was asked whether his cold storages could be used as storage for tens of thousands of cadavers. Having witnessed this disaster, Jaap considered investing in keeping cattle, in an organic and animal friendly way. This idea was great; until the day the cattle would have to be taken to the slaughterhouse. From that moment on he decided to become a vegetarian. But he missed the taste of animal meat so much, that he promised himself he would only eat meat when he went out for a meal. It was clear to him that he had to find something that could satisfy his craving for animal meat, without actually having to eat animals. After a three-year search, Jaap developed and found innovative meat substitutes with a spectacular bite and texture. With the help of top chefs, he added the flavour and experience of meat made from animals to the products. In addition, he saw a lot of potential in the protein rich and organic lupine from Dutch soil. Together with concept designer Niko Koffeman, chef Paul Bom and a devoted team, he is working on a big transition from animal to vegetable meat. Their ideal is to have meat enthusiasts experience vegetarian meat products and to realise they don’t have to miss out on anything if they leave animal meat out of their diet for a couple of days a week. Jaap and his team’s ambition is to become the biggest butcher in the world, in a short time. Values Culinary high-quality products Our ideal is to have meat enthusiasts experience our products and have them realise they don’t have to miss out on anything if they take meat out of their diet for one or more days. That is why we always try to capture the flavour of real meat and why we characterise ourselves as an entirely new generation of meat and fish substitutes that are, according to top chefs and culinary journalists, indistinguishable from the real thing. Ferran Adria (El Bulli) was convinced that he was dealing with chicken thigh of excellent quality and Mark Bittman, culinary reviewer of the New York Times couldn’t find enough superlatives to describe his experience. The Independent headlined: “Is this the end of meat?” Freeing animals from food chain Our mission is to free animals from the food chain by offering a complete and delicious alternative to meat. This will not only provide huge benefits in terms of efficiency, nature, environment, climate, bio diversity and the world food supply, but also in terms of animal welfare. The same way horses were once used to pull ploughs and have been replaced by mechanical horsepower, our products will make need for animals in our food chain a thing of the past. Freeing animals from food chain Our mission is to free animals from the food chain by offering a complete and delicious alternative to meat. This will not only provide huge benefits in terms of efficiency, nature, environment, climate, bio diversity and the world food supply, but also in terms of animal welfare. The same way horses were once used to pull ploughs and have been replaced by mechanical horsepower, our products will make need for animals in our food chain a thing of the past. Reducing carbon footprint Cattle emit the greenhouse gasses methane and nitrous oxide. Which are both a lot stronger (25 and 310 times ) than CO². On top of that, cows, pigs and chickens cause a huge manure surplus causing pollution of our soil and groundwater. Poultry farms produce a lot of particulates which cause air pollution and can damage our health. All of our ‘meat’ is free of the before mentioned environmental disadvantages. Our products based on soy, lupine and / or locally grown vegetables have a small carbon footprint compared to that of real meat. How could veganism change the world?by The Economist News about the Future First fully rechargeable lithium-carbon dioxide batteryScientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have designed a lithium-carbon dioxide battery that is fully rechargeable and which remained stable over 500 cycles – overcoming two major obstacles to the promising technology.Lithium-CO2 is among several battery technologies known to have the potential for performance and energy density up to seven times higher than today’s lithium-ion batteries, according to UIC, but maintaining stability with repeated cycling has proven problematic. MIT report examines how to make technology work for society MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future has released a report that punctures some conventional wisdom and builds a nuanced picture of the evolution of technology and jobs. Automation is not likely to eliminate millions of jobs any time soon — but the U.S. still needs vastly improved policies if Americans are to build better careers and share prosperity as technological changes occur, according to a new MIT report about the workplace.“At MIT, we are inspired by the idea that technology can be a force for good. But if as a nation we want to make sure that today’s new technologies evolve in ways that help build a healthier, more equitable society, we need to move quickly to develop and implement strong, enlightened policy responses,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif, who called for the creation of the Task Force on the Work of the Future in 2017. Smile Recommended Book Handbook of Collective Intelligence Edited by Thomas W. Malone and Michael S. Bernstein Experts describe the latest research in a rapidly growing multidisciplinary field, the study of groups of individuals acting collectively in ways that seem intelligent. Intelligence does not arise only in individual brains; it also arises in groups of individuals. This is collective intelligence: groups of individuals acting collectively in ways that seem intelligent. In recent years, a new kind of collective intelligence has emerged: interconnected groups of people and computers, collectively doing intelligent things. Today these groups are engaged in tasks that range from writing software to predicting the results of presidential elections. This volume reports on the latest research in the study of collective intelligence, laying out a shared set of research challenges from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Taken together, these essays-by leading researchers from such fields as computer science, biology, economics, and psychology-lay the foundation for a new multidisciplinary field. Each essay describes the work on collective intelligence in a particular discipline-for example, economics and the study of markets; biology and research on emergent behavior in ant colonies; human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence; and cognitive psychology and the “wisdom of crowds” effect. Other areas in social science covered include social psychology, organizational theory, law, and communications. ContributorsEytan Adar, Ishani Aggarwal, Yochai Benkler, Michael S. Bernstein, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Jonathan Bragg, Deborah M. Gordon, Benjamin Mako Hill, Christopher H. Lin, Andrew W. Lo, Thomas W. Malone, Mausam, Brent Miller, Aaron Shaw, Mark Steyvers, Daniel S. Weld, Anita Williams Woolley Light pollution Light pollution, also known as photo pollution, is the presence of anthropogenic and artificial light in the night environment. It is exacerbated by excessive, misdirected or obtrusive use of light, but even carefully used light fundamentally alters natural conditions. Wikipedia Brett Seymoure, behavioral ecologist , Washington University in St Louis: “Light is perhaps the most important abiotic factor driving biological functions. I study how animals have adapted to and are affected by light. How have different light environments selected for different visual traits such as coloration and vision? How and why have different visual systems evolved? How does anthropogenic light at night affect visually guided behavior in animals? I approach these questions from a sensory and behavioral ecological perspective to shed light onto evolutionary and conservation biology.” The use of artificial light at night is a major driver in declining insect populations. That is according to an international study, which examined the rapidly declining numbers. It is a joint venture by researchers from Tufts University, McDaniel College and Washington University in the US, Canada’s Université Laval and the University of Melbourne. The authors have published a paper in the SSRN. Climate Change Success Story: TeamTrees Team Trees, also known as TeamTrees or #TeamTrees, is a 2019 collaborative fundraising challenge aiming to raise 20 million U.S. dollars by 2020 to plant 20 million trees. The initiative was started by American YouTubers MrBeast and Mark Rober, and is mostly supported by YouTubers. All donations will go to the Arbor Day Foundation, a tree-planting organization that pledges to plant one tree for every U.S. dollar donated. The Arbour Day Foundation plan to begin planting in January 2020 and end “no later than December 2022”. It has been estimated that 20 million trees would take up 180 km2 (69 sq mi) of land. https://teamtrees.org Help us plant 20 million trees around the globe by January 1st, 2020. Futurist Portrait: Richard Yonck Seattle futurist Richard Yonck is founder and lead futurist for Intelligent Future Consulting where he consults to businesses, speaks to audiences and writes about artificial intelligence and other emerging trends and technologies, with a focus on their impacts on business and society. Richard explores short to long-range futures with an eye to how this knowledge can help prepare for potential eventualities and to promote preferred futures. Writing regularly about the future and emerging technologies, Richard’s work has appeared in numerous publications including The Futurist Magazine, Scientific American, World Future Review, Fast Company, Wired, Psychology Today, H+ Magazine, Mensa Bulletin, American Cinematographer and The Seattle Times. He’s been interviewed and quoted about foresight issues in numerous mediums, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC News, Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily, SAP Digitalist, Singularity Hub, Next Avenue and numerous podcasts and radio programs. His paper, “Toward a Standard Metric of Machine Intelligence” explores the need for a standardized intelligence test for artificial intelligences and was published in the peer-reviewed World Future Review. His cover story, “Connecting with Our Connected World” explores the developing ‘Internet of Things’ and was included in The Futurist magazine’s list of Best Stories of the Year. Richard’s perspective on the future is informed by over 25 years experience as a computer systems programmer-analyst, during which time he guided clients through the rapidly-shifting technological landscape. Formerly the Computing and Artificial Intelligence contributing editor for The Futurist Magazine, Richard is an executive board member of the Association of Professional Futurists, a member of the National Association of Science Writers and a TED speaker. His new book “HEART OF THE MACHINE: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence“ explores the emerging technologies allowing computers and robots to read, interpret, replicate, even influence human emotions. Now required reading in several college courses, it was well reviewed by Time Magazine and Ray Kurzweil in The New York Times Book Review. Richard Yonck – Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence: “In many ways it’s difficult to imagine communicating without any emotion whatsoever. What would communication stripped of its nonverbal components even look like? Perhaps messaging technology can give us a clue. After all, who hasn’t experienced a misunderstanding with someone when exchanging text messages? While there can be a number of reasons for this, many misinterpretations are in fact due to” – “Emotions will be critical in making machine intelligence more compatible with our own. This will be essential in order to facilitate healthier interactions as we move forward into our hopefully shared future.” “A device that “intuitively” alters its actions based on how we feel could offer tremendous potential benefits and uses. A vehicle that notifies its driver when alertness falls below a certain threshold. Educational software that recognizes when a student is becoming frustrated and alters the lesson accordingly in real time. A counseling program that detects the events that tend to trigger an individual’s anger or self-destructive behavior.” printable version
Club of Amsterdam Journal, February 2020, Issue 222
Content Batteries made with sulfur could be cheaper, greener and hold more energy by Mahdokht Shaibani Rinspeed’s “MetroSnap” The Future Now Show : 5G with Peter Cochrane Food and nutrition security News about the Future: A new way to irrigate crops tear-round ForesightAfrica: Top priorities for the continent 2020-2030 Existence of Fear Precedes Essence by Desh Subba– Recommended Book: There is no planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break by Mike Berners-Lee The pitfalls of eco-efficiency by Régis Chenavaz Climate Change Success Story: Impossible Foods Futurist Portrait: Sirkka Heinonen Club of Amsterdam SearchSubmit your articleContactSubscribe Welcome to the Club of Amsterdam Journal. The Future Now Show about 5G with Peter Cochrane“5G looks set to deliver more change into the mobile space than anything that has gone before. It is clear that 5G marks a new era in the evolution of wireless, but only if we dare to think and do different to the past.” – Peter Cochrane Felix B Bopp, Founder & Chairman Batteries made with sulfur could be cheaper, greener and hold more energy by Mahdokht Shaibani, Research Fellow, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Monash University Lithium-ion batteries have changed the world. Without the ability to store meaningful amounts of energy in a rechargeable, portable format we would have no smartphones or other personal electronic devices. The pioneers of the technology were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for chemistry. But as society moves away from fossil fuels, we will need more radical new technologies for storing energy to support renewable electricity generation, electric vehicles and other needs. One such technology could be lithium-sulfur batteries: they store considerably more energy than their lithium-ion cousins – in theory as much as six times the energy for a given weight. What’s more, they can be made from cheap materials that are readily available around the world. Until now, lithium-sulfur batteries have been impractical. Their chemistry allows them to store so much energy that the battery physically breaks apart under the stress. However, my colleagues and I have engineered a new design for these batteries which allows them to be charged and discharged hundreds of times without breaking down. We hope to have a commercial product ready in the next 2–4 years. What’s so good about sulfur? Lithium-ion batteries require minerals such as rare earths, nickel and cobalt to produce their positive electrodes. Supply of these metals is limited, prices are rising, and their mining often has great social and environmental costs. Industry insiders have even predicted serious shortages of these key materials in the near future, possibly as early as 2022. In contrast, sulfur is relatively common and cheap. Sulfur is the 16th most abundant element on Earth, and miners produce around 70 million tonnes of it each year. This makes it an ideal ingredient for batteries if we want them to be widely used. What’s more, lithium-sulfur batteries rely on a different kind of chemical reaction which means their ability to store energy (known as “specific capacity”) is much greater than that of lithium-ion batteries. Great capacity brings great stress A person faced with a demanding job may feel stress if the demands exceed their ability to cope, resulting in a drop in productivity or performance. In much the same way, a battery electrode asked to store a lot of energy may be subjected to increased stress. In a lithium-sulfur battery, energy is stored when positively charged lithium ions are absorbed by an electrode made of sulfur particles in a carbon matrix held together with a polymer binder. The high storage capacity means that the electrode swells up to almost double its size when fully charged. The cycle of swelling and shrinking as the battery charges and discharges leads to a progressive loss of cohesion of particles and permanent distortion of the carbon matrix and the polymer binder. The carbon matrix is a vital component of the battery that delivers electrons to the insulating sulfur, and the polymer glues the sulfur and carbon together. When they are distorted, the paths for electrons to move across the electrode (effectively the electrical wiring) are destroyed and the battery’s performance decays very quickly. Giving particles some space to breathe The conventional way of producing batteries creates a continuous dense network of binder across the bulk of the electrode, which doesn’t leave much free space for movement. The conventional method works for lithium-ion batteries, but for sulfur we have had to develop a new technique. To make sure our batteries would be easy and cheap to manufacture, we used the same material as a binder but processed it a little differently. The result is a web-like network of binder that holds particles together but also leaves plenty of space for material to expand. These expansion-tolerant electrodes can efficiently accommodate cycling stresses, allowing the sulfur particles to live up to their full energy storage capacity. When will we see working sulfur batteries? My colleagues Mainak Majumder and Matthew Hill have long histories of translating lab-scale discoveries to practical industry applications, and our multidisciplinary team contains expertise from materials synthesis and functionalization, to design and prototyping, to device implementation in power grids and electric vehicles. The other key ingredient in these batteries is of course lithium. Given that Australia is a leading global producer, we think it is a natural fit to make the batteries herea. We hope to have a commercial product ready in the next 2–4 years. We are working with industry partners to scale up the breakthrough, and looking toward developing a manufacturing line for commercial-level production. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Rinspeed’s “MetroSnap” Rinspeed’s “MetroSnap” displays innovative solution for the key question of modular vehicle systems and mobility options: Clever modular concept solves the issue of cost Frank M. Rinderknecht: “The crucial step towards series production has now been taken.” As the first company in the world, Swiss powerhouse of ideas Rinspeed demonstrated the “Snap” and the “microSNAP” at the CES in Las Vegas in the past two years, vehicles whose chassis and bodies go their own ways. With the revolutionary separation of the two vehicle components, Rinspeed confronts the increasingly diverging life cycles of hardware and software. And by doing so, creates a sustainable foundation for the transport of people and goods in the world of tomorrow. The future belongs to modular mobility systems. That is evident in the number of imitators in the industry that have picked up Rinspeed’s ingenious idea. However, the systems also have to make economic sense in order to gain broad acceptance. And that is precisely where Rinspeed is now once more taking a crucial step ahead: In the “MetroSnap”, Rinspeed presents a simple, fast, safe and inexpensive swapping system for the vehicle bodies for which the Swiss company has filed for patent protection. Modular vehicles can help solve a majority of the problems and questions posed by modern mobility that arise as the result of new IT technologies such as autonomous driving and of traffic congestion and the associated inefficiency and air pollution. Due to the flexible use of different vehicle bodies, these vehicles not only reduce the number of tremendously expensive and systemically short-lived automated vehicles, they also satisfy – depending on the time of day and current needs – the different transport requirements of people and goods. Thanks to the unique swapping system – inspired by aviation, and tried and tested there around the world in all weather conditions – entirely new applications become possible. Among other things, the desired service now comes to the customer quickly and simply, regardless where he or she may be at the time – at home or at work. This can be customer-accessible parcel stations that are dropped off in the customer’s neighborhood for a certain period. Even combinations with a “corner health food shop” are conceivable. Limited business hours, long drives and the endless and unpopular courier caravans are thus things of the past. And quite as an aside: no more unattended packages, no more thefts and failed delivery attempts – and no more associated pollution and traffic burden. And the really great thing about it is: This innovative way of getting parcels to the customer faster and easier can already be used today with a human driver. Parcel stations on wheels, right around the corner. Because the batteries are split up between the “Pod” (vehicle body) and the “Skateboard” (chassis), the vehicle does not need to be parked for charging. The charging process takes place elegantly and without wasted time while cleaning or loading the “Pod.” The Swiss drivers of innovation refer to this as “Hot Swap”, the swapping of the vehicle bodies including the batteries in a matter of seconds – the vehicle is ready to go almost as quickly as a racecar after a pit stop. The unique “MetroSnap” concept, which fuses together smart city, supply chain and passenger transport, is meeting with very strong interest in the industry even before its actual premiere. The Rinspeed motto at the CES 2020 is ‘customer focus.’ The customer – and thus people – take center stage. Because Rinspeed boss Frank M. Rinderknecht is sure: “People desire ever more convenience and simplicity in their lives, and we want to make this possible with our innovative transport solutions.” The electric vehicle – as always when Rinderknecht is at work – is full of technical and visual treats contributed by a reputable network of companies from around the world. In keeping with a proven tradition, Rinspeed’s 26th concept car was designed by Swiss company 4erC and constructed and realized technically at Esoro. When it comes to electric mobility, special attention is on the batteries. The heat conducting Keba-blend/TC plastics from Barlog Group based in the German town of Overath ensure optimized bat-tery cooling. The ‘Clean Energy Pack,’ the modular and scalable battery system of the “MetroSnap” skateboard, comes from Clean Energy Global based in Berlin. Speaking of energy supply: Thermal management specialist Eberspächer controls the temperature in the “Pax Pod” with its heating and cooling solutions by app and provides powerful heated and refrigerated containers for the “Cargo Pod” – both with autonomous power supply thanks to accumulators. A clever interface/plug-in connector from Harting ensures the transfer of data, signals and power as soon as “Pod” and vehicle body are interlocked. Various partners contribute the digital services for the “MetroSnap.” MHP focuses on the intelligent mobility ecosystem for automated multimodal transport solutions. SAP provides a digital plat-form, which orchestrates and optimizes future mobility concepts and transportation through data analysis, machine learning and the IoT. EY ensures the automated use-based settlement of transactions between platform participants as well as transparency on and trust in the supply chains with solutions based on blockchain technology. ESG Mobility focuses on smart connectivity apps, a fleet management system supported by AI, and on the development of the electronics architecture for swappable vehicle components. When it comes to easy, fast and secure payment and its processing, Wirecard from Aschheim comes into play. Thanks to state-of-the-art palm vein recognition, the access system is considered to provide ultimate security. Zürich Insurance Group is thinking intensively about new business models of the digital future. They include time- and use-dependent models for insurance premiums as well as insurance coverage as a service model. Harman is actively helping to shape the transformation of mobility with innovative user experiences. The focus of the advanced digital cockpit solutions is on greater safety and comfort as well as on productivity and entertainment. The latest project, the “MetroSnap”, runs on Borbet wheels, too. The perfectly shaped Y design of the 18-inch rims captivates in every aspect. Also, not commonplace on a concept vehicle: The “MetroSnap” uses a ‘Space Drive’ drive-by-wire system from Schaeffler-Paravan Technologie Company. Street-legal and triple-redundant steering and braking systems guarantee maximum safety. Ibeo Automotive Systems, the world leader in laser scanner sensors for the automotive field, with its Lidar sensors ensures that obstacles and people are detected early and correctly – while the vehicle is moving and during the “Pod” swap – and that the “MetroSnap” is traveling the roads safely in autonomous mode. The lighting technology comes from Osram. The exterior lights – for example the digital license plate – are used to communicate with other road users. In addition to no-dazzle high beams, the micro-pixel LED Eviyos also make it possible to project warning symbols onto the road. The interior lights are adapted to the mood of the driver with the help of health tracking functions. With regard to the headlights of the “MetroSnap”, Rinspeed relies on state-of-the-art LED technology as well as on the innovative product solutions from Prettl Lighting & Interior based in Pfullingen, which also make the visual messaging with other road users possible. Dekra, a globally leading experts’ organization, tested the security and proper functioning of the data and information transfer. TTTech Auto from Vienna contributes crucial components: Their In-Car Compute Platform (ICCP) combines all vehicle functions in a single high-performance control unit and in this way advances the transition to the software-based vehicle of the future. Rinspeed devotes great attention to the feel-good appointments of the interior. FoamPartner is the perfect address for this. The company contributes its expertise in acoustically and thermally effective foams. With Tencel fibers for automotive interiors in the “MetroSnap”, Austrian company Lenzing commits to the joint creation of an innovative transport concept of the future that strikes out in new directions in matters of sustainability, while elevating comfort to a new level at the same time. South Korean manufacturer Kolon Glotech sets visually appealing highlights with tradi-tional Korean Sanggam printing on the center console, the interior trim panels and on the “Skate-board” shrouds. Dutch chemical company Stahl, a specialist for sustainable leather, textile and various plastic surfaces in automotive interiors, likewise contributes its expertise. When it comes to innovative textile products, Rinspeed has been justifiably relying on its coalition partner Strähle+Hess for years. The knitted fabric used in the vehicle seat was manufactured from recycled PES. Stratasys from Rheinmünster supplies innovative single-operation 3D printing on var-ious materials for interior and exterior components. The Future Now Show Shape the future now, where near-future impact counts and visions and strategies for preferred futures start. – Club of Amsterdam Do we rise above global challenges? Or do we succumb to them? The Future Now Show explores how we can shape our future now – where near-future impact counts. We showcase strategies and solutions that create futures that work. Every month we roam through current events, discoveries, and challenges – sparking discussion about the connection between today and the futures we’re making – and what we need, from strategy to vision – to make the best ones. February 2020 5GwithPeter Cochrane “Philippe Gerwill talks mainly about digital transformation, focusing on how to use technology to better serve humanity and not the other way around. He illustrates his talk with interesting concrete examples and amazing people that he met on his journey.” The Future Now ShowCredits Professor Peter Cochrane OBE, Cochrane Associates Co-Founder, Sentient Systems University of Suffolk UKhttps://petercochrane.com The Future Now Show Food and nutrition security Food security is defined as the availability and the access of food to all people; whereas nutrition security demands the intake of a wide range of foods which provides the essential needed nutrients. It is estimated that the average dietary intake in India is 2280 calories. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations News about the Future A new way to irrigate crops year-round Startup Khethworks is deploying solar-powered pumps to help poor farmers in India irrigate crops all year long.Toward the end of 2019, startup Khethworks began selling what the team refers to internally as “version one” of its 320-watt solar-powered water pump. The pump allows farmers in India who rely on crop harvests to feed their families to farm year-round instead of being limited to the four-month monsoon season. In just a couple of months, the product has started to change the fortunes of underserved farmers in India, lifting up families and impacting entire villages.“We didn’t create this fancy technology at MIT and then think about where it was applicable,” Taylor says. “We were taking input from farmers from day one.” Foresight Africa: Top priorities for the continent 2020-2030 This special edition of Foresight Africa highlights the triumphs of past years as well as strategies from our experts to tackle forthcoming, but surmountable, obstacles to a prosperous continent by 2030. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. The state of play and policy options. … Deepening good governance. Inclusion, democracy, and security. … Leveraging demographic trends for economic transformation. … Combating climate change. … Bolstering Africa’s role in the global economy Existence of Fear Precedes Essence by Desh Subba, Philosopher, Author, Hong Kong Jean Paul Sartre, “Existence precedes essence.” Desh Subba, “Existence of fear precedes essence.” The ontological relationship of essence to existence is one of the controversial big topics in philosophical history. What is their right relationship? Is it merely a joke? Or is it a serious challenge in the human quest for truth? In my experience, readers mostly don’t want to enter into very serious thought of the inner core part of philosophy’s debates, and with essence and existence this is also the case. They usually either comment from a surface reaction or a mocking smile. It is a characteristic of mass general readers to not engage deeper into such queries because they read for the sake of reading itself. After reading, they do nothing. They are free in their choice, duty and responsibility, no pressure to go further because they are independent reader. Few readers have the deeper interest. They might think once about these two sayings above. I hope they will think beyond a mere blind belief of classical existentialism (e.g., Sartre). Erecting beliefs upon the Eifel Tower of Old Existentialism, cannot penetrate unveiling new logic, no, not even hammering with a new logical hammer will be enough. So to see through original existentialism’s beliefs we need to throw provocative light upon the old shadows of Existentialism and philosophy itself. I think an example of a challenging question for them is the case of the Mad Man. In original existentialism belief (e.g., Jean Paul Sartre) says existence precedes essence. It is a breath of Existentialist or Existentialism via their Land Mark? If existentialists are surviving in the philosophical world; Reason is their trusty Land Mark. But I think an example of a challenging question for them is the case of the Mad Man. Why a Mad Man doesn’t precede essence? He is an existence and he has consciousness. Existence of insane is like essence vice versa. In practical terms, Existence doesn’t directly precede essence. If we accept it then, why existence of Mad Man doesn’t precede essence? My conclusion is: Only existence of fear precedes essence. Exploring for food, shelter and practicing a worship of nature was not because of existence, it was because of existence of fear. Existence itself is virtually a senseless entity or state of being. It cannot activate towards essence without motivational drive(s); activation towards essence is made due to fear. Even Mad Man has some sense though he/she cannot precede any essence. We can take another example of an infant. Existence of Infant doesn’t precede essence because their consciousness, sense and knowledge are not ready to explorer essence. Until they don’t know themselves whether they are stone or man, how one can precede to essence. Condition of the infant and insane is more or less the same. In their condition existence precedes essence or essence precedes existence; it doesn’t make a difference to them. Later Kant mixed up empiricist and rationalist and developed critical philosophy. First existence is like nominal sense. Nominal means in the sense equal to infant and insane. Nominal sense processes towards more consciousness. Sense, step by step separates into consciousness and knowledge. Many philosophers have worked out how knowledge comes after consciousness(?). Later Kant mixed up empiricist and rationalist and developed critical philosophy. I have given a map of understanding life-consciousness-knowledge-fear as developmental. This knowledge is acquired from sense organs, incident, environment, necessity and conditional reflex in the stage of unconsciousness, semi-consciousness and consciousness accordingly. When it comes to age of knowledge, first stage is fear of existence. Fear of existence changes into existence of fear. Existence of fear precedes essence. Existence of fear means knowledge of fear. Knowledge of fear precedes essence. Thus existence of fear precedes essence not only existence precedes to essence. Article is edited by R. Michael Fisher Recommended Book There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years by Mike Berners-Lee Feeding the world, climate change, biodiversity, antibiotics, plastics – the list of concerns seems endless. But what is most pressing, what are the knock-on effects of our actions, and what should we do first? Do we all need to become vegetarian? How can we fly in a low-carbon world? Should we frack? How can we take control of technology? Does it all come down to population? And, given the global nature of the challenges we now face, what on Earth can any of us do? Fortunately, Mike Berners-Lee has crunched the numbers and plotted a course of action that is practical and even enjoyable. There is No Planet B maps it out in an accessible and entertaining way, filled with astonishing facts and analysis. For the first time you’ll find big-picture perspective on the environmental and economic challenges of the day laid out in one place, and traced through to the underlying roots – questions of how we live and think. This book will shock you, surprise you – and then make you laugh. And you’ll find practical and even inspiring ideas for what you can actually do to help humanity thrive on this – our only – planet. The pitfalls of eco-efficiency By Régis Chenavaz, Enseignant-chercheur en économie et marketing, Kedge Business School Régis Chenavaz, Kedge Business School The saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” can be applied to many situations, and among them are companies’ efforts to preserve natural resources. For example, changes intended to reduce resource use can in the end have the opposite effect. For a company, “eco-efficiency” means using fewer natural resources in the production process to obtain the same quality and quantity of a particular product. Coca-Cola and Nestlé, for example, strive to reduce their water use and Siemens is trying to use less electricity. This environmental effort is important, knowing that Coca-Cola needs 70 litres of water to produce 1 litre of soda and that they are responsible for considerable plastic pollution. While “greener” products are very much in vogue, energy savings have the advantage of lowering production costs. Offering consumers products that are less resource intensive also sends out a positive signal. Let’s take a closer look at the mechanics of such an approach and how it can sometimes backfire. Rebound effects Many believe that an eco-efficiency approach aligns business’ economic objectives with the environmental objectives of reducing the use of natural resources. However, it is not that simple. We need to distinguish between the natural resources used per unit produced – often highlighted by companies engaged in an eco-efficiency approach – and the natural resources consumed overall, which are linked to global demand for these resources. It is this last point that determines the environmental impact. For example, let’s examine the case of a car that is more fuel efficient, travelling more miles per gallon of gasoline. Less fuel is required to make the same trip, which also means that the same trip has now become cheaper. This money savings can encourage us to drive more, and therefore to consume more petrol – this is known as the “rebound effect”. We observe the same effect for LED bulbs, which cost less to use than incandescent bulbs. We can make fewer efforts to turn off these low-consumption lights than those with incandescent bulbs, which can paradoxically can increase energy use. By reducing production costs, eco-efficiency can thus have a “cost effect”: As production costs decrease, the selling price also decreases and, consequently, demand and production can rise. We consume more, which runs counter to our environmental objectives. This argument seems valid in mass markets. When total resource use increases as a result of an eco-efficiency policy, it is said that there is a “rebound”, with an ultimately negative impact on the environment. The case of luxury goods But there is also what we call a “negative rebound”, when resource use decreases more than expected. This is the case for luxury goods or niche markets, when companies use the green credentials of their products as a sign of differentiation. The consumer is then ready to pay more for greener products – for example for electric or hybrid cars or recyclable batteries. Today, hybrid cars are more expensive to produce than conventional ones, the process being relatively new and cost of development needing to be amortized. But at the same time, price is also higher because consumers are attracted to hybrid cars. If companies take advantage of this and increase their prices, this results in a decrease in the quantities demanded and therefore in the total resources consumed. In the end, the environmental benefit is greater than expected. Paradoxically, it is when companies raise their prices for more eco-efficient products that the environmental impact will be most favourable. To be genuinely beneficial to the environment, eco-efficiency policies must therefore not encourage demand too much and manage both the efficiency of resource use and the total amount of resources consumed. Such an holistic eco-efficiency management carefully balances the impact on price and demand, ensuring that good intentions become good environmental deeds. Stanko Dimitrov (Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada) and Frank Figge (Professor at Kedge Business School) contributed to this article. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Climate Change Success Story: Impossible Foods 2019 UN Global Climate Action Award winnerImpossible Foods is creating plant-based replacements for meat products that are more sustainable and help displace market demand for meat products. By replacing animal products, consumers have enormous power to spare land for biodiversity and carbon capture, halt greenhouse gas emissions at the source, and alleviate demand on fresh water needed for healthy ecosystems. Launched in 2016, Impossible Burgers are now served in more than 17,000 restaurants, including traditional fast food outlets like White Castle and Burger King. Their burgers have had proven successful in appealing to non-vegetarians, by converting them to Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat alternatives. For example, priced at only one dollar more than the Burger King Whopper, the Impossible Burger has the potential to replace meat products and cut greenhouse gas emissions in the process. “Hi. We’re Impossible Foods, and we make meat, dairy and fish from plants. Our mission is to make the global food system truly sustainable by eliminating the need to make food from animals. Why? Animal agriculture uses a tremendous amount of the world’s natural resources. In 2016, we launched our first product, the Impossible™ Burger. It’s delicious, nutritious, and made using but a small fraction of the land, water and energy required to make meat from a cow.” MISSION Our mission is to restore biodiversity and reduce the impact of climate change by transforming the global food system. To do this, we make delicious, nutritious, affordable and sustainable meat, fish and dairy from plants. Animal agriculture occupies nearly half of the world’s land, is responsible for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions and consumes 25% of the world’s freshwater. We make meat using a small fraction of land, water and energy, so people can keep eating what they love. FOUNDING STORY During a sabbatical in 2009, Stanford University Professor Dr. Patrick O. Brown decided to switch the course of his career to address the urgent problem of climate change. In particular, he wanted to make the global food system sustainable by making meat, fish and dairy from plants — which have a much lower carbon footprint than meat, fish and dairy from animals. Pat brought together a team of top scientists to analyze meat at the molecular level and determine precisely why meat smells, handles, cooks and tastes the way it does. Together, we developed a world-class archive of proprietary research and technology to recreate the entire sensory experience of meat, dairy and fish using plants. We debuted our first product, Impossible Burger, in 2016, and we plan to commercialize additional meat, fish and dairy products around the world. Futurist Portrait: Sirkka Heinonen Professor Sirkka Heinonen works as Senior Advisor, Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC) Professor emerita, Adjunct Professor, Guest Professor at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), PhD Peer-to-peer and circular economy principles in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) – New risks and opportunities Abstract:Exploring anticipated transformative changes must include a critical and holistic view. In the context of large-scale energy transitions, analytical approaches are often narrowly constrained around techno-economic, political and environmental aspects as drivers of change. Discussing renewable energy technologies in the context of an increasingly omnipresent peer-to-peer logic and the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) underscore the role of cultural change as a potential game changer. This paper focuses on the different modes and implications of peer-to-peer principles, as a means of organizing social interaction, assumed to have an increasingly important role in forthcoming energy transitions. In addition to these novel organisational principles, circular economy aspirations are gaining strength. Taken together, these socio-technical imaginaries can be interpreted as possibly converging building blocks for a desirable future society. Assuming a systems thinking view, this paper presents the key findings of foresight work. Such issues were discussed in a futures workshop organised in June 2018 in Finland, with the Millennium Project, a global futures think tank. The workshop explored the possible interactions of decentralised renewable energy, peer-to-peer and circular economy. The workshop results reflect new opportunities, risks, and the potential impacts of identified developments. The results indicate that synergetic advantages can be demonstrated, although a few notable caveats remain on the convergence of emerging peer-to-peer practices with circular economy. Furthermore, relevance to other geographic regions warrants urgent attention. Professor Sirkka Heinonen: Futures Studies and Corporate Foresight, Part I printable version
Club of Amsterdam Journal, March 2020, Issue 223
Content Critical minerals are vital for renewable energy. We must learn to mine them responsibly by Bénédicte Cenki-Tok Participatory democracy platforms gain traction in Switzerland The Future Now Show Human Digitalisation with Philippe Gerwill INVEST IN Matrix-Q Solutions News about the Future: Low-cost “smart” diaper / Innovation: Africa Can fashion ever be sustainable? | BBC Ideas Recommended Book: The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisisby Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac European Capital of Culture Climate Change Success Story: TECNARO – The Biopolymer Company Futurist Portrait: Tom Cheesewright Club of Amsterdam SearchSubmit your articleContactSubscribe Welcome to the Club of Amsterdam Journal. The Future Now Show about Human Digitalisation with Philippe Gerwill“Philippe Gerwill mainly about digital transformation, focusing on how to use technology to better serve humanity and not the other way around. He illustrates his talk with interesting concrete examples and amazing people that he met on his journey.” Felix B Bopp, Founder & Chairman Critical minerals are vital for renewable energy. We must learn to mine them responsibly by Bénédicte Cenki-Tok, Associate professor at Montpellier University, EU H2020 MSCA visiting researcher, University of Sydney As the world shifts away from fossil fuels, we will need to produce enormous numbers of wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles and batteries. Demand for the materials needed to build them will skyrocket. This includes common industrial metals such as steel and copper, but also less familiar minerals such as the lithium used in rechargeable batteries and the rare earth elements used in the powerful magnets required by wind turbines and electric cars. Production of many of these critical minerals has grown enormously over the past decade with no sign of slowing down. Australia is well placed to take advantage of this growth – some claim we are on the cusp of a rare earths boom – but unless we learn how to do it in a responsible manner, we will only create a new environmental crisis. What are critical minerals? “Critical minerals” are metals and non-metals that are essential for our economic future but whose supply may be uncertain. Their supply may be threatened by geopolitics, geological accessibility, legislation, economic rules or other factors. One consequence of a massive transition to renewables will be a drastic increase not only in the consumption of raw materials (including concrete, steel, aluminium, copper and glass) but also in the diversity of materials used. Three centuries ago, the technologies used by humanity required half a dozen metals. Today we use more than 50, spanning almost the entire periodic table. However, like fossil fuels, minerals are finite. Can we ‘unlearn’ renewables to make them sustainable? If we take a traditional approach to mining critical minerals, in a few decades they will run out – and we will face a new environmental crisis. At the same time, it is still unclear how we will secure supply of these minerals as demand surges. This is further complicated by geopolitics. China is a major producer, accounting for more than 60% of rare earth elements, and significant amounts of tungsten, bismuth and germanium. This makes other countries, including Australia, dependent on China, and also means the environmental pollution due to mining occurs in China. The opportunity for Australia is to produce its own minerals, and to do so in a way that minimises environmental harm and is sustainable. Where to mine? Australia has well established resources in base metals (such as gold, iron, copper, zinc and lead) and presents an outstanding potential in critical minerals. Australia already produces almost half of lithium worldwide, for example. In recent years, Geoscience Australia and several universities have focused research on determining which critical minerals are associated with specific base ores. For example, the critical minerals gallium and indium are commonly found as by-products in deposits of lead and zinc. To work out the best places to look for critical minerals, we will need to understand the geological processes that create concentrations of them in the Earth’s crust. Critical minerals are mostly located in magmatic rocks, which originate from the Earth’s mantle, and metamorphic rocks, which have been transformed during the formation of mountains. Understanding these rocks is key to finding critical minerals and recovering them from the bulk ores. Fuelling the transition For most western economies, rare earth elements are the most vital. These have electromagnetic properties that make them essential for permanent magnets, rechargeable batteries, catalytic converters, LCD screens and more. Australia shows a great potential in various deposit types across all states. The Northern Territory is leading with the Nolans Bore mine already in early-stage operations. But many other minerals are vital to economies like ours. Cobalt and lithium are essential to ion batteries. Gallium is used in photodetectors and photovoltaics systems. Indium is used for its conductive properties in screens. Critical minerals mining is seen now as an unprecedented economic opportunity for exploration, extraction and exportation. Recent agreements to secure supply to the US opens new avenues for the Australian mining industry. How can we make it sustainable? Beyond the economic opportunity, this is also an environmental one. Australia has the chance to set an example to the world of how to make the supply of critical minerals sustainable. The question is: are we willing to? Many of the techniques for creating sustainable minerals supply still need to be invented. We must invest in geosciences, create new tools for exploration, extraction, beneficiation and recovery, treat the leftover material from mining as a resource instead of waste, develop urban mining and find substitutes and effective recycling procedures. In short, we must develop an integrated approach to the circular economy of critical minerals. One potential example to follow here is the European EURARE project initiated a decade ago to secure a future supply of rare earth elements. More than ever, we need to bridge the gap between disciplines and create new synergies to make a sustainable future. It is essential to act now for a better planet. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Participatory democracy platforms gain traction in Switzerland © Alain Herzog / 2020 EPFL by EPFL, Sandrine Perroud An initial survey by researchers at EPFL has found that local and regional governments are increasingly turning to digital technology to understand the views of their citizens, especially on planning and development proposals. Governments across Switzerland are embracing civic technology. This is one of the headline findings of the first Civic Tech Barometer, a survey conducted by researchers from EPFL’s Urban Sociology Laboratory (LaSUR) in partnership with Geneva Canton’s Consultation and Communication Department. The team’s conclusions are based on responses to an online survey sent to municipal, city and cantonal authorities nationwide between August and November 2019. In total, 83 government employees from the French, German and Italian-speaking regions of Switzerland submitted answers. The idea behind civic technology, or civic tech, is to change the way citizens participate in democratic processes. The LaSUR survey found that the Swiss civic tech landscape is far from uniform. The most common platform types include websites, blogs, open-data repositories, social media, participatory spaces where citizens can submit ideas and suggestions, and open forums for discussion and debate. Yet half of the technologies mentioned by survey respondents are not truly participatory because they are designed more for one-way communication than two-way interaction. The survey did, however, reveal a handful of more collaborative platforms, including Crossiety (dubbed the “digital village square”) and Decidim. With such a wide variety of options available, governments are free to choose how involved they want citizens to be in the decision-making process. Planning leads the way“Swiss authorities use civic tech across a broad spectrum of policy areas,” says Armelle Hausser, a doctoral assistant at LaSUR who carried out the survey as part of her PhD research. “Chief among these are planning and development, youth services, sport, environment and social action.” In most cases, local executive bodies are the driving force behind civic tech usage – and legal requirements have little to no bearing on such initiatives. In fact, just one-third of the platforms and technologies reported by respondents were developed to meet a legal obligation. Conversely, other interested parties – such as project and department managers, citizens’ groups, charities and non-profits – rarely call for the use of civic tech in consultation and participation processes. “This finding is counter-intuitive,” says Professor Vincent Kaufmann, who heads LaSUR. “It suggests that, in Switzerland, citizens still prefer to voice their views through conventional channels, for instance by objecting to planning proposals or by taking part in popular initiatives and referendums.” Limited resourcesThe team also found that local governments currently allocate little in the way of funding and human resources to civic tech initiatives, preferring in the majority of cases to outsource the process to external providers. “Authorities don’t yet have a clear idea of the roles and skills required for this kind of initiative,” explains Hausser. Yet expectations were high among the respondents, who said they planned to use civic tech to produce more information for public consumption, keep citizens better informed and understand their views, improve transparency, secure public support and widen participation more generally. “There are many other plans in the pipeline, including online surveys and participatory mapping platforms,” adds Hausser. “In terms of technology types, a general direction of travel seems to be emerging. But we’ll need to run the survey again to make doubly sure.” What is certain is that Swiss authorities are keen to embrace civic tech, with no fewer than 31 high-priority initiatives planned for the coming year. Room to improveThe LaSUR team found clear room for improvement in two areas. First, although citizens’ views obtained using civic tech are reflected in accompanying reports, Swiss authorities still tend not to give these views due weight in the final decision-making process. And second, it is still too early to properly assess the impact of the technology on citizen participation. The researchers will have a clearer picture after running their second survey, scheduled for fall 2020. The results of the initial survey will be presented at a special event – open to practitioners and other interested parties as well as the wider public – on 3 February 2020 at the 3DD Espace de Concertation in Geneva. Hausser will incorporate the findings into her thesis, which focuses on wider issues around the use of civic tech for public participation in planning processes in Switzerland. Her research is supervised by Prof. Kaufmann and Boris Beaude, in partnership with Geneva Canton. «Résultat de l’enquête Baromètre des civic tech en Suisse 2019», Armelle Hausser and Prof. Vincent Kaufmann, 3 February 2020 1.30pm, in French, 3DD espace de concertation, Rue David Dufour 3, Geneva. Open to the public. The Future Now Show Shape the future now, where near-future impact counts and visions and strategies for preferred futures start. – Club of Amsterdam Do we rise above global challenges? Or do we succumb to them? The Future Now Show explores how we can shape our future now – where near-future impact counts. We showcase strategies and solutions that create futures that work. Every month we roam through current events, discoveries, and challenges – sparking discussion about the connection between today and the futures we’re making – and what we need, from strategy to vision – to make the best ones. March 2020 Human DigitalisationwithPhilippe Gerwill “Philippe Gerwill talks mainly about digital transformation, focusing on how to use technology to better serve humanity and not the other way around. He illustrates his talk with interesting concrete examples and amazing people that he met on his journey.” The Future Now ShowCreditsPhilippe Gerwill, Innovation KOL, Digitalization Humanist, Executive Advisor, Futurist, Speaker and Mentor/CoachFrancewww.linkedin.com/in/philippegerwill The Future Now Show INVEST IN Matrix-Q Solutions Create a positive impact in nature and people. Invest in circular economy: thinking and behavior change. A digital platform with capacity-building services for circular economy. SaaS: R&D Innovation : Data-Driven, e-Games, Learning Assisted by A.I. Engine “ We measure, enhance and optimize circular thinking and innovation capacity ” www.matrix-q-invest.nl News about the Future Low-cost “smart” diaper A new disposable, affordable “smart” diaper embedded with an RFID tag is designed by MIT researchers to sense and communicate wetness to a nearby RFID reader, which in turn can wirelessly send a notification to a caregiver that it’s time for a change. Pankhuri Sen, a research assistant in MIT’s AutoID Laboratory, envisions that the sensor could also be integrated into adult diapers, for patients who might be unaware or too embarrassed to report themselves that a change is needed. “Diapers are used not just for babies, but for aging populations, or patients who are bedridden and unable to take care of themselves,” Sen says. “It would be convenient in these cases for a caregiver to be notified that a patient, particularly in a multibed hospital, needs changing.” “This could prevent rashes and some infections like urinary tract infections, in both aging and infant populations,” adds collaborator Sai Nithin R. Kantareddy, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. Innovation: Africa Israeli innovation to African villages. Innovation: Africa has provided light, clean water, food, and proper medical care to more than 1.7 million people across ten African countries: Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania, South Africa, Ethiopia, DRC, Congo, Senegal, Cameroon, Zambia and eSwatini.In 2013 Innovation: Africa was awarded The United Nations “Innovation Award” for its efficient and sustainable Israeli technology, one of which allows its team and donors to track in real-time the energy produced, energy consumed and water flow output at each of its projects and at any time.We are a team of dedicated problem solvers with a mission to bring Israeli solutions and know-how to those in need living in rural African villages. We are using solar energy to pump clean water and provide schools, orphanages and medical clinics with light and refrigeration to store vaccines and medicines. Adopt a village Can fashion ever be sustainable? | BBC Ideas Can the fashion industry ever be sustainable? And what can you as a consumer do? Model Charli Howard, host of a new podcast, Fashion Fix, takes a look at the fast fashion industry and what’s possible with sustainable fashion. Recommended Book The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisisby Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac Climate change: it is arguably the most urgent and consequential issue humankind has ever faced. How we address it in the next thirty years will determine the kind of world we will live in and will bequeath to our children and to theirs. In The Future We Choose, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac–who led negotiations for the United Nations during the historic Paris Agreement of 2015 – have written a cautionary but optimistic book about the world’s changing climate and the fate of humanity. The authors outline two possible scenarios for our planet. In one, they describe what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris climate targets. In the other, they lay out what it will be like to live in a carbon neutral, regenerative world. They argue for confronting the climate crisis head-on, with determination and optimism. The Future We Choose presents our options and tells us what governments, corporations, and each of us can and must do to fend off disaster. European Capital of Culture Rijeka Galway As of 1 January 2020, Rijeka (Croatia) and Galway (Ireland) will hold the title of European Capital of Culture for one year. Rijeka – City in Motion Fáilte Gaillimh 2020 | Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture | TG4 Climate Change Success Story: TECNARO – The Biopolymer Company The TECNARO GmbH is an innovative company that develops and produces its own bioplastics and biocomposites based on renewable raw materials and markets them worldwide through ALBIS PLASTICS GmbH’s sales network, among others. TECNARO is among the leading technology companies with its thermoplastic biomaterials ARBOFORM®, ARBOBLEND® and ARBOFILL®. Customised solutions have been successfully completed for industrial series production in the three biomaterial families for years. With customers from the automotive, solar, construction, packaging, stationery, furniture, toys, household items, musical instruments and fashion industries the materials from TECNARO serve practically every market. The materials can be processed, for example, by injection molding, extrusion, calendering, pressing, thermoforming and blow molding. Users are therefore manufacturers of moulded parts, sheets and semi-finished products from the wood and plastics processing industry.TECNARO has already won several awards for sustainability, innovation and future technologies. Plastic for the Compost Heap — An Idea with a Future | Made in Germany Futurist Portrait: Tom Cheesewright Tom Cheesewright is one of the most respected consultants and commentators on tomorrow’s world. As an Applied Futurist, Tom helps people and organisations around the world to see what’s next and to build a coherent response. Tom is a frequent presence on TV and radio, explaining today’s world of high frequency change and the technology that drives it. He has appeared thousands of times over the last decade across the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky News as well as in many print and online publications including The Guardian, The Times, and The Evening Standard. Tom consults with clients looking for greater foresight into the near future, and teaches and licences a range of tools for building more agile organisations. He is a frequent speaker on the future across a range of industries. Customers include global corporations such as BASF. BP, KPMG, LG, Nikon, and Unilever, as well as universities, charities and public bodies. Tom’s first book, High Frequency Change, was published by LID Business Media in 2019. How to Avoid Dystopian Future of Climate Change and Mass Unemployment printable version
Club of Amsterdam Journal, April 2020, Issue 225
Content Climate disasters increase risks of armed conflicts: new evidence By Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany A Fast, Fair and Effective Solution to the Climate Crisis by Brigitte Van Gerven The Future Now ShowAfrica: A Ticking Bomb with Cristiana Benedetti Fasil Green New Deal for Europe News about the Future: Solar Windows / Energy self-sufficient households in Switzerland by 2050? 5G is Bad For Our Health – Not! by Peter Cochrane Recommended Book: Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing Worldby Brian Walker, David Salt The Animal Communicator Anna Breytenbach Climate Change Success Story: Sustainable Rubber by Seow Lye Lok Futurist Portrait: Ken Dychtwald Club of Amsterdam SearchSubmit your articleContactSubscribe Welcome to the Club of Amsterdam Journal. The Future Now Show about Africa: A Ticking Bomb with Cristiana Benedetti Fasil “The demographics of Africa are unique. Sixty percent of the population is below 25 years old. However, millions of youth lack employment and educational opportunities and cannot develop their full potential. Especially girls and young women are disadvantaged. Women are the backbone of the society. Their empowerment is the key to an inclusive and sustainable economic development. We cannot let down the youth of Africa and we need to act now to defuse the ticking bomb of youth unemployment. With Social Venture Africa we want to make our small contribution to address the challenge.” Felix B BoppFounder & Chairman, Club of AmsterdamUniversal Peace Ambassador Climate disasters increase risks of armed conflicts: new evidence The risk for violent clashes increases after weather extremes such as droughts or floods hit people in vulnerable countries, an international team of scientists finds. Vulnerable countries are characterized by a large population, political exclusion of particular ethnic groups, and low development. The study combines global statistical analysis, observation data and regional case study assessments to yield new evidence for policy-makers. “Climate disasters can fuel some smoldering conflicts – this is a worrying insight since such disasters are on the rise,” says Jonathan Donges at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, co-author of the paper now published in Global Environmental Change. “Ongoing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are, if unmitigated, destabilizing our climate. More frequent and more severe weather extremes are one of the effects. The new study adds important evidence and hence robustness to conflict analyses we’ve done in the past few years.” “One third of all conflict onsets in vulnerable countries” is affected The numbers are quite staggering. “We find that almost one third of all conflict onsets in vulnerable countries over the recent decade have been preceded by a climate-related disaster within 7 days,” says co-author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner from Climate Analytics in Berlin, Germany. “This does, however, not mean that disasters cause conflicts, but rather that disaster occurrence increases the risks of a conflict outbreak.” After all, conflict is human-made. The analysis of concrete cases of disaster-conflict co-occurences shows that most such cases are not mere coincidences, but likely linked by causal mechanisms – this is one of the key new findings. In Mali for instance a severe drought occurred in 2009 after which the militant Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb exploited the resulting state weakness and desperation of local people to recruit fighters and expand its area of operation. Other examples analyzed include China, the Philippines, Nigeria, and Turkey. India turns out to be the country with the by far highest number of disaster-conflict coincidences. The most surprising result of the study, says co-author Michael Brzoska from the University of Hamburg, was the prevalence of opportunities for armed violence over those related to grievances in post-disaster situations. “Measures to make societies more inclusive and wealthier are no-regrets options” “Climate-related disasters may act like a ‘threat multiplier’ for violent conflicts,” explains Tobias Ide from the University of Melbourne. A most important finding of the study is that only countries with large populations, the political exclusion of ethnic groups and relatively low levels of economic development are susceptible to disaster-conflict links. Optimistically, Ide concludes: “Measures to make societies more inclusive and wealthier are, therefore, no-regrets options to increase security in a warming world.” Weblink to the article:www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378019307307 A Fast, Fair and Effective Solution to the Climate Crisis By Brigitte Van Gerven, on behalf of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby Europe, Brussels, April 05, 2020Contact: brigittevangerven@citizensclimatelobby.be In her pre-election manifesto My Agenda for Europe Ursula von der Leyen outlined her ambition that Europe become the first climate neutral continent. She acknowledged that to make this happen, carbon emissions must have a price, that every person and every sector will have to contribute, and that what is good for the planet must also be good for the people of Europe. In particular she expressed the need for a “just transition for all.” The challenge of dealing with the climate crisis is therefore two-fold. The technical challenge of reducing CO2 emissions, and the social challenge of financing the transition in a way that citizens will see as “just.” An important idea which could go a long way to achieving these goals is the idea of a Carbon Fee and Dividend. Many economists are strongly in favor of this approach and have long advocated the introduction of this policy. In January 2019, an open letter on the subject was published in the Wall Street Journal. In the largest joint statement by economists in history, it was signed by more than 3,500 economists, including 27 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 former chairs of the Federal Reserve and 15 former chairs of the US Council of Economic Advisors. The principle is simple. A steadily rising fee is imposed on all fossil fuels, proportional to their CO2 emissions. This will drive down carbon pollution since companies, industries, the public sector and consumers will move toward cleaner, cheaper options. It will speed up the phasing out of fossil fuels, and will dramatically boost green investments, accelerating the development and large-scale commercialization of low-carbon technologies. The money collected from the carbon fee is then distributed equally among all citizens. This Dividend or Climate Income ensures that the average cost of living does not increase. The majority of households, among which most lower- and middle-income households, may even benefit from this policy. The Carbon Fee and Dividend is therefore a game-changer allowing politicians to pursue an ambitious climate policy widely supported by the population. The mechanism is self-funding, so no new budgets are needed to implement the policy. A major advantage in times of economic crisis and rising budget deficits. This idea is gaining popularity worldwide. Since 2008 it has been implemented in Switzerland. Since April 2019 it has being implemented in Canada. The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act is currently being put to the US Congress with bipartisan support. The idea has now spread to 13 countries. The Climate Fee and Dividend provides a fast, fair and effective response to the climate crisis. It needs to be given serious consideration in Europe. Citizens Climate Lobby Europe is leading a European Citizens Initiative, to do just that. The goal of the initiative is to put the carbon fee and dividend approach on the legislative agenda for Europe. But for this to work we do need something more. A comprehensive study of the feasibility and benefit of this scheme was carried out in the US in 2014 by REMI. It concluded that the approach would lead to a rapid decrease in CO2 emissions, the creation of 2.8 million new jobs, and the avoidance of 230 000 premature deaths due to a reduction in air pollution. We need to do a similar study for Europe. Citizens Climate Lobby in Europe is therefore advocating that a similar study be undertaken by European economists, to assess the impacts of this promising policy on the European economy, and to provide guidance on how it might be implemented across the EU and its member states. To find out more about the carbon fee and dividend, about the work of the Citizens Climate Lobby in Europe, there are 2 Facebook Live events coming up, on Saturday May 2 and Friday June 3, at 17.00hrs CET. You can also consult the following websites and sign the petition for a Climate Income Now.” CCL Belgium: https://www.citizensclimatelobby.be” CCL Europe: https://citizensclimateinitiative.eu” CCL USA: https://www.citizensclimatelobby.org The Future Now Show Shape the future now, where near-future impact counts and visions and strategies for preferred futures start. – Club of Amsterdam Do we rise above global challenges? Or do we succumb to them? The Future Now Show explores how we can shape our future now – where near-future impact counts. We showcase strategies and solutions that create futures that work. Every month we roam through current events, discoveries, and challenges – sparking discussion about the connection between today and the futures we’re making – and what we need, from strategy to vision – to make the best ones. May 2020 Africa: A Ticking BombwithCristiana Benedetti Fasil “The demographics of Africa are unique. Sixty percent of the population is below 25 years old. However, millions of youth lack employment and educational opportunities and cannot develop their full potential. Especially girls and young women are disadvantaged. Women are the backbone of the society. Their empowerment is the key to an inclusive and sustainable economic development. We cannot let down the youth of Africa and we need to act now to defuse the ticking bomb of youth unemployment. With Social Venture Africa we want to make our small contribution to address the challenge.” The Future Now ShowCredits Cristiana Benedetti Fasil, President and Co-founder of the NGO Social Venture Africa, www.svafrica.orgResearcher at the Directorate General Joint Research Centre of the European Commission The Future Now Show Green New Deal for Europe Striving to be the first climate-neutral continent Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world. To overcome these challenges, Europe needs a new growth strategy that transforms the Union into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 conomic growth is decoupled from resource use no person and no place is left behind The European Green Deal is our roadmap for making the EU’s economy sustainable. This will happen by turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities across all policy areas and making the transition just and inclusive for all. Von der Leyen: Outlining the European Green Deal Jeremy Rifkin at DLD Munich 20 Jeremy Rifkin has been an advisor to the leadership of the European Union since 2000. He has advised three presidents of the European Commission – Romano Prodi, Jose Manuel Barroso, and the current President, Jean-Claude Juncker – as well as the European Parliament, and numerous EU heads of state, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, on the ushering in of a smart green Third Industrial Revolution economy. News about the Future Solar Windows convert sunlight that passes through their tiny solar cells. These cells are placed at precise angles to collect light that comes through the window near the window frame. These panels, called “solar concentrators,” funnel light to capture ideal sunlight on the solar spectrum coming through the glass.See: Physee Energy self-sufficient households in Switzerland by 2050? Researchers from ETH Zurich investigated whether it would be technically and economically feasible for households to achieve energy self-sufficiency using photovoltaics alone in the temperate Swiss climate by the middle of the century. The analysis suggests that total self-sufficiency is technically feasible by 2050 for single- and multi-family buildings in Switzerland across a range of scenarios. Self-sufficiency is most easily attainable for single-family households that successfully lower their energy demand through behavioural change and urban vehicle use patterns, meaning less frequent use over shorter distances. The predicted financial feasibility of self-sufficiency depends on several factors, including (hypothetical) government incentives and the savings from the decreasing cost of energy-storage technologies. All fully self-sufficient buildings are more expensive than buildings that are fully electrified but still connected to the grid, but so are households that still use fossil fuels for heating and vehicles. “In other words, electrification is definitely economically beneficial for households, but complete self-sufficiency comes at a cost premium,” adds Stefan Pfenninger, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich 5G is Bad For Our Health – Not! By Professor Peter Cochrane OBE, Cochrane Associates Co-Founder, Sentient Systems University of Suffolk UKhttps://petercochrane.com Every paper that I have seen concerned with the adverse effects of wireless on humans and organisms under the broad banner of EM radiation employ words and phrases like: might, could, possibly, perhaps, and we think, it seems, and so on! Many also end with that fateful phrase; ‘further study is required,’ which I presume is a prelude to yet another grant application. As far as I can see the 100’s of such publications do not present concrete statements, demonstrations or conclusions and there is no real or verifiable risk in evidence! Now a small detail: Many/most studies employ energy densities far in excess of those we use in any of our wireless communication systems. They have to do this to demonstrate small biological changes, but they then proceed to extrapolate down to the far lower energy levels than are actually allowed in our wireless systems. The basis of the extrapolations tend to be linear simplifications of fundamentally exponential mechanisms! This is a gross error and does not constitute proof! More worrying is the lack of corroboration between groups of these bona fide researchers!The plot thickens! Complementing all this are ever more pseudo-scientific papers from people with impressive CVs in various magazines and dubious on-line publications. These are oft quoted as evidence by the already convinced, easily convinced, or wanting/needing to be convinced!What a travesty! Every one of these I have investigated has been nonsense, non-science, neo-science, a combining of belief, misconceptions, falsehoods and erroneous claims sans fact checking or corroboration!Now to some impressive empiricism! At every cell site, wifi-hub, microwave repeater station and radar facility I have visited there have been no dead insects, birds, mice or rats on or around the antenna or the tower base. Further, there has never been any recorded damage to humans using hand-held or vehicle mounted walkie talkies, and man-pack radios over the past 70 years…apart from back strain that is!The other side of the coin: Mobile technology has saved countless lives and lifted peoples out of poverty all over the planet. 5G and what follows will accelerate all this through low latency enabling tele-medicine, tele-care, tele-surgery, tele-robotics, and tele-manufacturing et al. Now, if only the single dimension/issue thinkers could balance the proven good/gain against some (still) fictitious danger/threat they may, just may, be able to stop panicking about a non-problem and think rationally!Now to the extremists and crazies burning down cell sites in the UK. Right now all the 5G systems being installed are using the same/similar frequencies to 3/4G and wifi hubs! But all microwave links and hubs, satellite broadcast, links and services and radar systems are in the frequency domains they worry about. And I think we can safely say that none of this magically created and propagated CV-19!So, how’s the down-side of their actions working out? They are most likely killing people! The loss of cell sites will prevent 999 calls, delay ambulances and fire service dispatch and control, and worse, disable sectors of the national emergency services network!How did all this madness get started? The rantings of a deranged, ignorant, crazy in the USA supposing to be a scientific expert appears to be the point of nucleation. So, in the home of the brave and land of the paranoid; where ‘Mary on FaceBook’ is an authority on everything and must be believed, where science has little or no value, until there is a pandemic or a war that is, the movement started a social media campaign and the planet wide spread of another crazy meme got underway.Sad to say that all this has now been picked up by uneducated vandals in the UK. But don’t worry! Next month they will be chasing the next big threat! Watch alsoThe Future Now Show5G with Peter Cochranehttps://clubofamsterdam.com/2020/06/15/5g/ Recommended Book Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing Worldby Brian Walker, David Salt Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet’s well-being. The response from most quarters has been for “more of the same” that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. “Resilience thinking” offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change, and seeks to understand the qualities of a system that must be maintained or enhanced in order to achieve sustainability. It explains why greater efficiency by itself cannot solve resource problems and offers a constructive alternative that opens up options rather than closing them down. In Resilience Thinking, scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt present an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience. The book arose out of appeals from colleagues in science and industry for a plainly written account of what resilience is all about and how a resilience approach differs from current practices. Rather than complicated theory, the book offers a conceptual overview along with five case studies of resilience thinking in the real worlad. It is an engaging and important work for anyone interested in managing risk in a complex world. The Animal Communicator Anna Breytenbach What if you could talk to animals and have them talk back to you? Anna Breytenbach has dedicated her life to communication. She sends messages to animals through pictures and thoughts, and receives messages back! Anna can feel the scars hidden under a monkeys fur or turn a snarling leopard into a contented cat. ENHANCING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUMANS, OTHER ANIMALS AND THE NATURAL WORLD Human and animal communication creates a valuable bridge between human and non-human animals. By connecting with our intuition, we can engage in meaningful dialogue and remember how to hear the subtle messages from those whose space we share in our lives and our natural environment. Coming from a place of respect and reverence for all life, we can learn to understand our wilder relatives, honour their truths and live in greater harmony. Anna’s role is communication, guidance and mentoring. She is based in the Western Cape, South Africa and offers workshops in various locations as well as consulting via phone and email for local and international clients. The goals of any consultations, public talks, animal communication workshops or nature retreats are increased awareness, empathy, compassion and mutual understanding. Climate Change Success Story: Sustainable Rubber By Seow Lye Lok, SingaporeCurrently in full-time employment with a local medical school as a media engagement specialist and research communication editor. Southeast Asia is responsible for 90 per cent of global natural rubber production, but the industry faces significant social and environmental challenges. World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a global, CEO-led organization of over 200 leading businesses working together to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world. We help make our member companies more successful and sustainable by focusing on the maximum positive impact for shareholders, the environment and societies. Our member companies come from all business sectors and all major economies, representing a combined revenue of more than USD $8.5 trillion and 19 million employees. Our global network of almost 70 national business councils gives our members unparalleled reach across the globe. Since 1995, WBCSD has been uniquely positioned to work with member companies along and across value chains to deliver impactful business solutions to the most challenging sustainability issues. Together, we are the leading voice of business for sustainability: united by our vision of a world where more than 9 billion people are all living well and within the boundaries of our planet, by 2050. What is sustainable rubber? Rubber is one of the world’s most widely used materials, but irresponsible farming methods have led to deforestation and human rights abuses as the sector has grown. Could there be a better way? Eco-Business explores the potential for sustainable natural rubber. Bouncy, elastic, compressible and moldable — the unique properties of natural rubber make it one of the most widely used materials, found in products from pencil erasers and birthday balloons to condoms and protective gloves.Today nearly 50 per cent of every auto tire and 100 per cent of all aircraft tires are made of natural rubber. Even the invention of synthetic rubber and rubber-like plastics has not stunted demand for this natural material made from a milky sap known as latex, harvested from a tree native to the Amazon region, the Brazilian rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis). In the last two decades, demand for natural rubber, 85 per cent of which is grown in Southeast Asia, has been increasing at a rate of 5 per cent a year.However, over the centuries since rubber plantations took root, life has not become much better for smallholder farmers, who produce more than 80 per cent of the crop worldwide. In Thailand, the world’s biggest rubber exporter, the country’s 2 million rubber farmers, many of them migrant labour from poorer neighbouring countries, earn as little as 200 baht (US$6) a day, and the use of methamphetamine is common as workers are pressured to harvest at ever faster speeds.Meanwhile tropical forests are being lost at an alarming rate as they are cleared to make way for rubber plantations, threatening biodiversity in the world’s most species-rich regions. “As global demand for rubber products shows no sign of slowing, models of ‘business as usual’ scenarios have predicted major habitat conversion to rubber plantations at a possible further five million hectares globally by 2024,” says Vina Dharmarajah, Asia director of Birdlife International.As consumers and the companies that buy rubber grow more discerning about rubber’s environmental and social impacts, so the pressure builds on the industry to produce sustainable natural rubber (SNR), grown in a way that protects forests while meeting rising demand for the commodity.Eco-Business looks at how rubber can be grown sustainably, who’s buying SNR, and how to build the movement for sustainable rubber cultivation. 1. The impact of rubber farming in Southeast Asia Farming rubber sustainably is complex and expensive, and requires an overhaul of traditional farming practices.Deforestation has historically been driven by high rubber prices, which is why it is critical that farmers increase yield to ensure that, when prices rise again, increased rubber production does not come at a cost for forests.Unsustainably-managed rubber plantations can create severe air pollution if, to clear land quickly and cheaply, it is slashed and burned, which has a major impact on forest flora and fauna.Due to the heavy use of herbicides to clear the land to manage the risk of snake bites, animal species that depend on the destroyed plants quickly succumb too. Furthermore, rain erodes the exposed earth, deteriorating the soil quality and exacerbating crop growth problems.Rubber trees are susceptible to blight. Scientists have cautionedthat a single spore of South American leaf blight reaching Southeast Asia could wipe out a substantial portion of the industry. 2. How can rubber be grown sustainably? The process for cultivating natural rubber sustainability involves a few key steps, from land preparation to planting and harvesting.To avoid the negative effects of expanding rubber plantations, land use planning should be based on a solid understanding of rubber farming constraints and their ecological impacts. Local governments and research institutes can use remote sensing studies as a reference point to promote sustainable rubber cultivation.Before establishing a plantation, growers need to obtain land use permission from indigenous communities who live on or near the land, a process the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues defines as free, prior and informed consent (FPIC).It takes about seven years for a rubber tree to mature before it can produce rubber for tapping, and how the crop is planted, harvested and cleared affects the sustainability of the plantation. For example, intercropping rubber with timber trees and medicinal plants counters the ill effects of monoculturing.In October 2018, an independent platform for sustainable rubber cultivation, the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPNSR), was set up with support from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to improve the sustainability of the natural rubber value chain.GPSNR director Stefano Savi, who joined the organisation six months ago from the palm oil industry’s lead certifier, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), said: “We work with players in the natural rubber industry, as well as NGOs to help a move towards sustainably produced natural rubber. GPSNR will consider the people, communities and natural resources touched by natural rubber production, in a global and truly multi-stakeholder effort to drive improvements in the socio-economic and environmental performance of the natural rubber value chain.”In a nutshell, sustainable rubber farming makes rubber cultivation profitable while minimising harm for people and the planet, and GPSNR aims to chart a course for the rubber industry that avoids the problems that have blighted the agricultural sector: deforestation, land grabbing and human rights violations. 3. What are the barriers to joining the sustainable natural rubber movement? Many of the problems with growing a responsible natural rubber sector come from the higher initial cost of growing rubber trees sustainably. It costs more to pay fair wages that buffer farmers from market uncertainties. But over the long term, higher pay ensures that farmers do not switch to other crops such as palm oil, or resort to unsustainable agricultural farming methods that lead to lower yield and greater environmental impact.Currently, rubber supply is higher than demand, which gives buyers the upper hand — including tire companies that want to reduce their environmental footprints. Some of the founding members of the GPSNR, including German carmaker BMW and tire manufacturer Bridgestone, are already leading industry-wide efforts to kick-start the SNR movement. 4. Where can I find sustainable rubber products? The low market prices paid to rubber tappers, plantation workers and smallholder farmers make it difficult for them to support themselves and their families. By supporting ethical procurement suppliers, companies may be paying a premium, but will help ensure the long-term sustainability in rubber supply and market stability. An early way to address the problem came through associations such as the Fair Rubber Association and World Wide Fund for Nature, which advocated for sustainable rubber production. GPSNR has emerged out of a desire from multiple stakeholders to define and implement a sustainable natural rubber system. 5. Who’s using sustainable rubber? By joining GPSNR, which is working on standards to protect biodiversity and water resources, improve yields, and increase supply chain transparency and traceability, rubber-buying businesses can get access to a broad network of resources and contacts for practical sustainability solutions for their supply chains.Some companies have already started on their journey towards sustainable rubber. GPSNR member rubber producers have committed to sustainable production, and a number of buyers have made ambitious pledges to source sustainable rubber. In 2017, General Motors became the first car firm to commit to responsible rubber sourcing. BMW and Toyota have since done the same.Tire manufacturer Michelin — the world’s largest buyer of natural rubber — was the first tire maker to commit to responsible rubber sourcing in 2016. Competitors Pirelli, Goodyear, Sumitomo, Continental, Yokohama, Hankook, Toyo Tires and Bridgestone have since followed.Bridgestone Americas’ senior counsel, environmental, health safety and sustainability, Andy Thompson, says his company has worked hard over the last year to understand how its suppliers are living up to sustainability standards. “Sustainable natural rubber across the value chain will come through collaboration with responsible partners within the value chain and civil society,” he says. Futurist Portrait: Ken Dychtwald Dr. Ken Dychtwald has assembled a highly skilled and enthusiastic team of seasoned professionals to work with the world’s leading corporations. The team provides innovative solutions for customizable presentations, a wide range of landmark research initiatives, the production of high-impact publications and media projects, and proven business-building tools for financial professionals. Individually and collectively, the Age Wave team brings to each project a wealth of knowledge and experience about the social, lifestyle, marketing, and financial implications of an emerging mature marketplace. Their talents and experience span a broad range of industry sectors from consumer goods to healthcare, manufacturing to retail, nutrition to financial services, advertising to media, and more. Over the past 35+ years, Dr. Ken Dychtwald has emerged as North America’s foremost visionary and original thinker regarding the lifestyle, marketing, health care, and workforce implications of the age wave. Ken is a psychologist, gerontologist, and best-selling author of 16 books on aging-related issues, including Bodymind; Age Wave: The Challenges and Opportunities of an Aging Society; Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old; The Power Years: A User’s Guide to the Rest of Your Life; Healthy Aging; Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent; Gideon’s Dream: A Tale of New Beginnings and, most recently, A New Purpose: Redefining Money, Family, Work, Retirement, and Success. He is currently writing two new books, What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life’s Third Age (to be released July 15, 2020) and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Lessons from an Irregular Life. He was the executive producer and host of the highly rated/acclaimed PBS documentary, The Boomer Century: 1946–2046. Since 1986, Ken has been the Founder and CEO of Age Wave, a firm created to guide companies and government groups in product/service development for boomers and mature adults. His client list has included over half the Fortune 500, and his explorations and innovative solutions have fertilized and catalyzed a broad spectrum of industry sectors—from pharmaceuticals and medical devices, to automotive design and retail merchandising, to financial planning and health insurance. He has served as a fellow of the World Economic Forum and was a featured speaker at two White House Conferences on Aging. Ken has twice received the distinguished American Society on Aging Award for outstanding national leadership, and American Demographics honored him as the single most influential marketer to baby boomers over the past quarter century. His article in the Harvard Business Review, “It’s Time to Retire Retirement,” was awarded the prestigious McKinsey Award, tying for first place with the legendary Peter Drucker. PBS Next Avenue named him a 2016 Influencer in Aging for his work pushing beyond traditional boundaries and changing our understanding of what it means to grow older. Ken was honored by Investment Advisor as one of the 35 most influential thought leaders in the financial services industry over the past 35 years. Ken and his wife, Maddy, recently received the Esalen Prize for their outstanding contributions to advancing the human potential of aging men and women worldwide. He was also awarded the Inspire Award from in the International Council on Active Aging for his exceptional and lasting contributions to the active-aging industry and for his efforts to make a difference in the lives of older adults globally. During his career, Ken has addressed more than two million people worldwide in his speeches to corporate, association, social service, and government groups. His strikingly accurate predictions and innovative ideas are regularly featured in leading print and electronic media worldwide and have garnered more than ten billion media impressions. In addition to his role at Age Wave, he is deeply involved in numerous activities for the public good including serving as a member of the XPRIZE Board of Trustees. How the Age Wave Will Transform Health, Longevity & Medicine with Ken Dychtwald printable version
Club of Amsterdam Journal, April 2004, Issue 22
Content Q&A with Bernard Vast about the future of Healthcare News about the Future Research Information Centre The Future of the European Union Questionnaire about ‘the future of Energy – the Hydrogen Economy?’ Recommended Book Club of Amsterdam Experts Group: Patrick Crehan Upcoming Events Club of Amsterdam SearchSubmit your articleContactSubscribe Q&A with Bernard Vast Bernard Vast, M.D., Healthcare ICT Specialist, 2Cure Club of Amsterdam: The subtitle of the next event is “The patient empowered”. How will technology empower the citizen/patient?Bernard Vast: It already does. Internet is currently the major provider of disease- and health-related information to patients. Many doctors still have to get used to patients entering the consulting room with a fresh printout. This doesn’t mean that information alone will bridge the knowledge gap between a patient and an experienced professional; you don’t bring your TV to a repair centre because you know it all yourself. This inherent gap is something the medical profession and patients will have to work out; Dr. Oderwald – one of the speakers – will elaborate also on this. Will Internet be the only or most important enabler in the future?Bernard Vast: The impact of Internet on information society can hardly be overestimated, but in a wider view patients get more knowledgeable through all media. They start to realise that healthcare should be a service industry, serviceable to them; after all, they pay the healthcare institution. They start to know that a healthcare insurance company has a contract with them that obliges the insurance to deliver, not put them on a waiting list. It’s public knowledge by now that in many other European countries waiting lists do not exist. Prof.Dr. Guus van Montfort will also address this topic. How about the more technological side of medicine, are there emerging technologies that could change the landscape of healthcare?Bernard Vast: Progress in genetics and probably also nanotechnology will gradually yield results. But to my opinion a currently underestimated emerging technology is that of bio-energetics, a.k.a. quantum-biology. This is the field where quantum-mechanics meets biology and medicine and it’s exciting. All matter (dead and living) is – on the smallest level – subordinate to quantum-mechanical laws. Current microprocessor technology has made possible affordable devices that measure the body’s sub-atomic activities and present conclusions. Devices like the Vegatest (Germany) or the QXCI (USA) are progressively used by for instance homoeopathic doctors and even laymen. This could very well revolutionise diagnosis and therapy. We might see the day where your doctor scans your body and reads the diagnosis, like dr. ‘Bones’ McCoy in Star Trek. Bernard Vast is the host of our Club of Amsterdam Event about‘the future of Healthcare & Technology on Wednesday, April 28, 18:30-22:15! about the future of Healthcare Cross-border healthcare after EU expands may prove problematic, warns WHO official 02 April 2004. The migration of patients as a result of the European Union’s forthcoming expansion could create problems for some countries that are unprepared, a World Health Organisation official told AFP on Friday.“We will undoubtedly see more patients seeking treatment in neighbouring regions,” Nata Menabde, director of the division of country support of the WHO’s regional office for Europe.“But some countries are not ready for that and are ill prepared for the implications of cross-border healthcare,” she said during a two-day conference of European health ministers in Prague.Freedom of movement to seek treatment abroad would necessitate the development of electronic patient records, for example, while the issue of the transfer of financial resources would have to be addressed, she said. eEurope Awards for eHealth – 2004 “Empowering the Citizen through eHealth Tools and Services”The eEurope Awards for eHealth – 2004 are to be presented at the High-Level European eHealth Conference and Exhibition, in Cork, Ireland 5-6 May 2004. News about the Future WiMAXWorldwide Interoperability for Microwave AccessRepresenting a significant step forward in catalyzing the growth and future viability of the global fixed broadband wireless market, leading equipment and component manufacturers have formed the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) Forum. As a non-profit organization, the objective of WiMAX is to promote wide-scale deployments of point-to-multipoint networks operating between 2.5 and 66 GHz by leveraging new global consensus standards and certifying the interoperability of various products and technologies from multiple manufacturers. WiMAX is promising long distance connection speeds of 70 megabits per second data rate over a 30 mile radius. Intel President and COO Paul Otellini: “The wireless industry is evolving from a web of independent networks into a single, integrated wireless network with multiple standards, and no single standard is sufficient anymore. There won’t be a battle of competing technologies. It will be a requirement that Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and 3G coexist; and that coexistence is going to enable a host of exciting new applications and business models.” Otellini predicts a WiMAX “inflection point” in the 2006-2008 timeframe similar to what happened with Wi-Fi over the past few years, and says WiMAX capability would be available in notebook computers by 2006, followed by handsets in 2007. MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT Peer-to-peer technology for content distributionBy Balázs Bakos, Jukka K. Nurminen; Nokia Research Center Peer-to-peer computing is a technology that uses the resources of many connected devices to either distribute large computing tasks or distribute content widely without the need for central servers. Up to now the successful peer-to-peer applications have been running on the fixed Internet, mainly on PCs. But as mobile phones and other small devices are gaining computing power, we started to question how the peer-to-peer activities could be scaled down to such devices. We wanted to see what is possible with the current technology and what are the most important limitations that have to be overcome.In order to understand what peer-to-peer computing would mean to mobile phone users we established the PerPhone project along with the Budapest Universtiy of Technology and Economics.Ubiquitous computing, location-awareness, and sensors coupled with phones will potentially make a large number of sensory data available. This data could be potentially used to provide some new services to users.The objective of the project is to create ideas and demonstrators of novel applications arising from the clustered use of a large number of mobile phones. In parallel, the project will create a better understanding of the technical requirements for phones and networks to support clustered, pervasive applications. Concrete results will include software prototypes, measurement results, reports, and publications.During the project period the university department can gain significant knowledge about open software platforms for mobile phones. The competence shall be utilized in curriculum development, so that a new course can be started or an existing software engineering course can be extended at the faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics at Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Research Information Centre Michel Claessens, acting head of the Communications unit at the Research DG, is confident the new service will help researchers and the general public better understand the European Union’s activities in this field. “For many people, the goings on in the European Union and the Commission are a bit of a mystery,” he admits. “What we hope to do with upgraded communication tools like the Research Information Centre is give people more insight into the research projects and priorities being supported by the Research DG.”The research information centre gives on-line visitors enhanced access to hundreds of articles and stories from several of the Research DG’s editorial sources, including RTD info, Research Headlines, ‘Success Stories’ and more. Articles have been carefully indexed under 14 themes and up to 70 sub-themes to help visitors find information on a specific research topic. The Future of the European Union The Future of the European Union – Debate Futurum is the interinstitutional site relating to the future of the European Union in general and the process of drafting the European Constitution in particular. This portal site, which is managed by the European Commission, is a source of reference and information on the debate.The objectives of Futurum are to renew and publish as many documents and links as possible about the process of drafting the Constitution, provide the information tools needed to understand it and give civil society the means to make its voice heard in a real European public forum. Questionnaire about ‘the future of Energy – the Hydrogen Economy? At our recent Club of Amsterdam evening about ‘the future of Energy – the Hydrogen Economy?‘ we asked the audience some questions: 1. Do you believe Hydrogen Technology will solve our energy problems? 55 % yes39 % no 2. Is Hydrogen a safe energy carrier? 86 % yes11 % no 3. Would you be willing to have less income in exchange for renewable energy? 83 % yes17 % no 4. Should Europe be leading in using renewable energies? 97 % yes3 % no 5. Do you prefer that The Netherlands should first be economically competitive before supporting renewable energies? 25 % yes75 % no 6. Are you already active reducing your energy consumption? 61 % yes39 % no 7. Would you buy a ‘Hydrogen’ car? 78 % yes17 % no Recommended Book Geographic Information Systems and Health Applicationsby Omar A. Khan, Ric Skinner The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the health sector is an idea whose time has come. The current applications of GIS in health are diverse and extensive. The present GIS environment is heavily driven by technology and such an approach is indeed logical for the most part. However, the needs of less-developed countries in utilizing the concepts and technologies of mapping should not be neglected in the continuing evolution of GIS. Supporter of the Club of Amsterdam event about ‘the future of Education & Learning’ on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 is: Club of Amsterdam Experts Group: Patrick Crehan Patrick Crehan Crehan, Kusano & Associates We have recently seen strikes by scientists in France over cuts in the funding of research positions. The most surprising thing about this is that it has not happened sooner and that it has not happened in other countries of Europe. Scientists spend just as long in education as people from domains such as law, engineering and medicine, yet science is different in that it is not a profession but a highly fragmented group of relatively closed communities devoted to highly specialised disciplines. The members of these communities are the product of a system of apprenticeship that passes though several phases – graduate studies ending in a PhD, a series of post-doc positions and eventually a junior position as a researcher or university lecturer that marks the start of a track to tenure. The post-doc part of the scientific career is based on an annual round of positions allocated by an arbitrary but competitive system. It is impossible for an individual to plan in this period. A new post-doc position usually means a change of address – often to a different country. Remuneration takes little or no account of experience. Limits are imposed on the length of time a position can be held by one person as well as on the age of candidates. The system is one of apprenticeship. Researchers get no formal training in how to carry out research. They carry out tasks that are useful to the laboratory in which they are placed. They observe and try to learn from what other colleagues do and get by on their own. Many scientists pursue post-docs for years on end. They rely on chance to land them in a good environment or provide them with a good supervisor. They are treated as ‘visitors’ not members of staff. They forgo pension contributions, bonus pay, raises and opportunities for personal growth through the assumption of responsibility. Eventually when they get their tenure track position they are engaged to ‘teach’ on the basis of their ability to carry out ‘research’ and they get no teacher training or other professional development. If promoted to ‘head of department’ this is based once more on an ability to carry out research although the primary function of the department is to teach. A university head of department will get no management training and will never have a chance to formally develop skills in strategic planning or in the development of human resources. Academic staff are often required to build links with industry. Having no experience in business they are asked to support the creation of spin-off companies and professors may be assigned to boards of new companies. Scientists in academia are required to do all of these tasks at once without any preparation and from an organisation whose primary function is to teach. Scientists are required to be supermen! No wonder few young people want a career in science? The member states of the European Union attach great importance to the role of science in developing new business and improving the competitiveness of old. The US has 8.08 scientists per thousand workers and Japan has 9.14. The European Union has an average of 5.7 scientists per 1,000 workers and this will drop to 3.5 after the accession of 10 new members states. Given the current conditions in Europe is this any surprise? Science needs to organise itself as a profession. It needs to ensure that its members are treated with respect and that their investment in undergraduate studies, graduate studies and peripatetic post-doc positions pays off. It needs to ensure that its members have opportunities for personal and intellectual development at all stages of their career. When will scientists be able to plan and structure a career in science instead of drifting like fruit-pickers from one seasonal harvest the next? I wonder if the strikes in France are the start of a process of change? Club of Amsterdam Upcoming Events April 28, 2004 the future of Healthcare & Technology May 19, 2004 the future of Architecture June 23, 2004 the future of Culture & Religion