The ESDA network

  The ESDA conference

  The vision so far

  S&D America, 2100

  What's a future search?

  Resources

  Join us!

  Credits

A Virtual Visit to a Sustainable and Desirable America, 2100

We met at the Lewis Environmental Studies Building at Oberlin College, one of the first of the current wave of "green" buildings in the US. The assembled group represented a cross-section of US society, with a few foreign represenatives thrown in. We used a new technology that allowed us to create a "shared vision" of the future that we would like to live in, and then allowed us to actually "visit" that future world.

The technology uses a very advanced virtual reality system (almost like the "holodeck" on Star Trek). The "reality" it is simulating is generated by a cross between a real time systems simulation model of the biophysical environment, an agent-based personality simulator (a super "Sims"), and an advanced "future search" consensus building system. It basically allows participants to create a future world which represents their overlapping hopes and dreams, tempered by the constraints of human natures and biophysical reality. Assumptions about these constraints are programmed in (by mutual agreement of the participants) at the start of the session. For our session, we agreed on a set of "realistic" assumptions both about people and the rest of the world that embodied the latest scientific research findings. We didn't assume any "major" technological breakthroughs, but rather assumed historical rates of technical change. We also assumed that people would not be fundamentally any different than they are now, but that the environments (both physical and social) that they lived in would be very different.

Without actually using the system and visiting the future world we created yourself, it is, of course, difficult to describe. Like a real world, our simulated future was rich in detail. What follows is an attempt to convey some of that richness and texture by allowing some of the participants to describe, in their own words, their own individual experiences in our future world. These experiences covered a lot of different ground, but, taken together, they allow the reader to gain a fairly clear image of the future world we created.

We decided to call this future world SDA (Sustainable and Desirable America) and we agreed on a rough target date of 2100. If it is a world that you would like your grandchildren to live in, then we, as a society, can begin now to take steps to achieve it. As we said, this future SDA does not require any fundamental changes in human natures or technology. But it does require that we have SDA clearly as a goal and actively take steps to achieve it. SDA will not happen by itself. Shall we go there?

Share a visit to the future with any of the following people by clicking on his or her name.

My name is Robert Costanza. I’m a professor at the University of Maryland.

What really stuck me about SDA was the overriding sense of calm and peacefulness, but without any tinge of boredom. The best way for me to describe it is the difference between adolescence and mature adulthood. Our current society is adolescent – fixated on physical growth, changing so fast it is difficult to adjust, frenetic, self-absorbed, self-conscious, irresponsible, insecure, taking. This future SDA was mature – not growing physically and therefore able to focus on development – improving quality not quantity – secure, long-term relationships, responsibility, nurturing, giving. For example, the average "work week" in SDA I understand is 20 hours but the distinction between "work," learning, and leisure has become pretty blurred, so it’s difficult to make this comparison directly, as you’ll see. But the bottom line is that life is not so hectic and people have more time for their families, each other, and the things that really interest them. That’s where the calm and peacefulness come from. Since people can pursue what really interests them, they are not bored and their mental health and sense of satisfaction with life is excellent.

The first person I met in SDA was Susan. I’d wandered into a coffee shop near what was almost certainly a University campus (latte was still on the menu). We struck up a casual conversation about the weather (very warm) and I innocently asked her: "what do you do?" I got a very quizzical expression. I quickly explained that I was visiting from another country and just wanted to know what kind of work she did. She said: "oh, you must be on a travel sabbatical" (I later found out this is a common practice in SDA where people exchange places for periods of 1 month to a year instead of taking "vacations" in the traditional sense). She told me she worked as a researcher and teacher at the University, but it quickly became apparent that people in SDA don’t define themselves by their job titles to the extent they do today, and at the same time that their lives and their work are more fully integrated. For example, Susan explained that all of her current research projects were also "courses" that she was "teaching." Teaching had become much more problem based, "learning by doing" rather than lecture based. Students and faculty participated in research projects together and everyone learned while attacking real problems. When I asked what department Susan was in at the University, I got that quizzical expression again. She explained that the University had become "transdisciplinary." There were research (and learning) centers focused on particular problems, but the traditional academic departments had disappeared. She suggested that I come along to a seminar she was going to on the "State of the World 2100" report that had just been released by the Worldwatch Institute.

As we walked through the campus on the way to the seminar, I noticed that the age distribution of the people we saw was much different than I’m used to seeing on university campuses. Instead of the mass of young faces punctuated by a few older professors, the population looked to be much more evenly spread over the full range of ages. Susan said that people in SDA considered learning a life-long activity and now had the time to actually implement that idea.

The seminar room was packed, and we arrived just in time to get seats at the back as the seminar got under way. I asked Susan how long the Worldwatch Institute had been around, and she said at least 100 years or so. It was one of the first NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that were formed at the end of the 20^th century. Many of these had survived, grown and diversified to the point where they were now equally, if not more, important, than formal governments in the actual governance of society. They represented one of the many forms of "strong democracy" that seemed to be the buzzword I kept hearing to describe the way society was now governed. More on that later.

The seminar got under way and the speaker spent about an hour summarizing the report. It covered an awful lot of ground, and I stared taking notes before I remembered that any notes I took would only be holograms that would disappear when I returned. Anyway some of the things that I can remember were:

• Global human population was stable at about 8 billion. This was happening because of better education everywhere, excellent elder care at the community level so that people no longer thought they needed many children to take care of them in old age, and a tacit multicultural norm of "replacement only." There was still quite a bit of international migration, but not so much as to stress national borders and in fact national borders were now for the most part open.
• The "material throughput" of the national and global economy was decreasing slightly but not nearly as fast as in the past (obviously the speaker thought we could do better here). At the same time, the "QOL" (Quality of Life) index was going up at about 2% per year on average. The QOL was assessed annually using a global internet survey that asked people to rank how well their needs in 9 key areas (subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity, and freedom) were being met. The US ranked near the top in subsistence, protection, and freedom, but was below average in the other areas. It’s overall QOL rank fell somewhere just above the median (but this had been improving in recent years). The real efficiency of the economy was now computed as the ratio of QOL to material throughput, and this was also increasing.
• Global biodiversity was making a comeback. Since the human population had stabilized and throughput was decreasing, pressure on the environment had also stabilized and there were concerted and well-funded efforts to protect and enhance biodiversity.
• The biggest problem seemed to be dealing with the continuing effects of climate change. Global CO₂ emissions were decreasing, but they had a long way to go before we were back to pre-industrial levels. New Orleans had already disappeared and the Netherlands was under constant threat. But cautious optimism seemed to be the message here.

As we left the seminar, I asked Susan about this "strong democracy" concept. The quizzical look again – where had I been? She said it was nothing really new, just the idea that everyone should participate directly in decision-making at all levels, rather than delegating that authority to elected representatives. When I expressed some skepticism that this could ever be practical, she just waved her hand said "well look around – it is working." I never got the full answer, but I think it was a combination of people having more time for participation in politics, a better communications infrastructure using the super version of the internet they had by then, a deep culture of participation that was inculcated from a very young age, and the general "maturity" of the whole system that I mentioned before.

Susan invited me to come over for dinner and meet her husband and children. I gladly accepted this chance to see how domestic life worked in SDA. Her house was an easy 10 min bus ride and 5 min walk from the campus. It was clustered in a group of about 50 houses, along with some shops, and small businesses in what she referred to as a "village" (even though it was in a large urban area). The village shared common green space, gardens, bike and foot paths, and a few other resources. All transport within the village was by bike or foot. She explained that (like most villages) they used an internal LETS (labor equivalent trading system) to keep track of shared labor services within the village. For example, if I spent some of my free time helping someone paint their house, I would rack up "hours" that I could cash in to get help on some project of mine. Again, an overriding sense of calm and peacefulness pervaded the place (probably due to the lack of car noise – replaced by the sounds of birds chirping and children playing in the green space).

Susan’s husband, Paul, and their two young daughters, Lisa and Jennifer shared a 3 bedroom house that seemed to be about average by today’s standards. In fact, she mentioned that the house had been originally built in 2001 and "retrofitted" with the latest in energy technologies, so that it actually produced more electricity than it consumed. By making almost all buildings into part of the energy production grid, and drastically reducing the need for transportation, the whole economy was now able to run on renewable, sustainable resources.

Susan had to back up Paul in his decision not to let the girls spend the night at a friend’s, and I had to inspect the books on their bookshelf while the girls threw a tantrum over this injustice (some things never change). After things settled down, we all sat down to dinner. I explained to the girls that I was on a "travel sabbatical" and was wondering what people did for fun in this part of the world. The answers were not very dissimilar from what you might hear today including movies, dances, parties, and concerts. The only difference I noted was that most of the activities mentioned were social – people seemed to spend more time interacting with each other rather than staying at home watching TV – and "shopping at the mall" did not come up as a favorite activity – even among teenage girls. In fact, I think malls had all but disappeared – replaced by a combination of internet shopping, local "village" shops, and a general lowering of consumption levels. The dinner, for example, was almost all food grown in the village gardens (the avid gardeners in the village were racking up lots of LETS hours), and the rest was available at the village shop, which was a 5 minute walk from the house. I asked if there were any big problems in the village, and got a litany of typical "neighbor" complaints – one was drinking too much, another had too many loud parties, etc. But in general, these problems were solved by talking with people at village events, rather than calling the police (come to think of it, I don’t think I saw a policeman or heard a siren the whole time I was there). People hadn’t changed, it seemed, but the "system" had – and this allowed them to solve their inevitable problems in more mature, friendly, and productive ways.

As I left Susan and Paul’s house, walking through the clear night back toward the campus, I was thinking that it just couldn’t be this simple. There must be a catch. Wouldn’t all this social serenity require a suppression of creativity and initiative? How could people be happy and productive in an economy that wasn’t growing? But after thinking it through, it was clear that in fact it could easily work. Just like an individual organism that goes through a stage of early rapid physical growth followed by later "development" without further growth, a whole socioeconomic system could do the same. And from personal experience, I could attest that the "teenage" years are often very difficult and not as happy as later years when growth had stopped and one could concentrate on the joys of development. I found that I really liked being an adult in the "adult" society I had been visiting. As I was thinking this, the simulation ended and I returned to the present.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

I saw the future, and as my daughters would say, it was so cool.

I was standing in woods--they seemed familiar. It was warm, and the foliage dense green. I noticed a small path a few steps away, and followed it upward. This path had the feeling of the path behind my house, but there were differences. Denser foliage, with species I didn't recall. It felt more like a rain forest. It was also quiet--no traffic noise from the Beltway, no sirens--just some insect and bird songs.

At the top of the incline the path emerged into a settlement. This was my old block--I could tell by the contours of the land, and the streets seemed to run the same direction. But the resemblance ended there. The neat grid rows of brick ramblers were gone, replaced by clusters of buildings that felt more like a village than a suburban subdivision. The streets were narrower, with lanes for bikes and pedestrians as wide as the center lane, which apparently was for motor vehicles. Yet there were no cars in sight--not even driveways or garages.

I walked toward the park I knew used to be at the end of the street. It was still a park, but it had become a living center for this village instead of a green space on the fringe of the subdivision. Most of the green space was still there, but a child care center had been added, along with some small shop-like buildings that were generating a lot of foot traffic. As I walked into this village center, I came by a young man pushing a toddler on a swing. "Hi," he said, "Can I help you?" He could clearly tell I was not from this village, yet his tone was welcoming rather than suspicious.

"Well, I used to live around here--years ago. Just wanted to see the old neighborhood."

"Would you like me to show you around? By the way, I'm Ned, and this is Alex."

"Hi--I'm Bill." We shook hands. "What do you call this place nowadays?"

"McKenney Village. What did you use to call it?"

"McKenney Hills. It wasn't really a village then--more like a subdivision."

"Subdivision--like in a suburb? I remember studying that form of development in school. Geez--how old are you, anyway?"

"Older than I look. Hey, when did you build up this center space anyway? This used to be a mostly empty park."

"I'll ask my grandmother. Hey, Nana!" He led us over to an older woman, sitting with some friends, teaching weaving to a group of children with small hand looms. Taking Alex on her lap, she greeted us warmly. "Bill here says he used to live here, and was wondering when this center got built."

"Well, let's see. They started building the housing clusters, a few at a time, when I was little, about '25 or so. Some of those homeowners sure put up a fuss, but when they started to see the quality of the new construction, the lower costs for energy and maintenance, and all the built-in smart features, they just couldn't say no. After about six clusters got done, then we decided to build up the center space. That would have been about, oh, in '40 or so. We finished out the housing clusters in '60. Course, we're always arguing about redoing or adding this or that. Seems like there's meetings about every night about some darned thing." She gave an amused sigh. Alex jumped down to join a playmate in the sand pit nearby.

Ned and his Nana (real name Emmaline Zaydah, I sooned learned) asked me to join them for tea in the commons house. We sat on a small terrace looking out over the woods. I commented on how tropical the forest looked compared to my day. I said that my grandparents had told me that in 2000, all the trees around here had been hardwoods.

"Well, now, that was before climate change took hold with a vengeance in 2012. When New Orleans went underwater during Hurricane George that year, people really woke up. That's when things started to change, when we made a real commitment to get off fossil fuels, and rebuild this place from the inside out. It took until about '40 or '50 before the climate scientists declared that we had rebalanced the climate, but by then it had already warmed up. I can grow things in my garden now that my grandmother had to grow in her greenhouse!"

"Amazing," I said. "So tell me how you rebuilt this community."

"Well, let's see. Starting in about 2020, my daddy told me, the federal, state, and local governments formed a new partnership for community redevelopment. Money for design, construction, and infrastructure was channeled down to the community level. To qualify for it, though, each community--that's anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 people depending on their existing circumstances--had to form its own governing body--usually a town meeting type of government with a few elected officials and some folks paid. The feds and the state and county governments stayed there, but they became more coordinators and distributors of resources than decision-makers. I understand it took a generation or more for people to really get this idea, that they had the power to take their community into their own hands. But now look at this place!"

"It looks great. But now I have more questions. How do you get around, and shop, and go to school and so on?"

Ned chimed in. " Well, down at the bottom of the hill, by the pool, we have the hypercar coop. People that want to use personal motor vehicles belong to the coop, and they use one of the hypercars for getting over to MetroRail, which you can ride around this metro area, or to the TransPort."

"What's a hypercar--and what's a TransPort?"

"Oh--hypercars run on hydrogen fuel cells. If I remember my science history, we converted to a hydrogen-solar economy starting in about 2025. TransPort--thats for intercity and international travel. AmRail runs magnetic-levitated trains to all the major city areas. And are they fast! The first ones, in about 2030, ran at like 400 km/h. The new intercoast lines run at 1200 km/h."

"Do you still fly in airplanes.?"

"Sure, but the third-generation hyper-turbines are pollution free and really quiet. And with the aeronautic designs now, they travel at over 4000 km/h. But we don't need to travel that much, except for education and visiting good friends. I went to Australia last year--that was great. We rebuilt wallaby habitat in New South Wales."

"Why don't you travel that much?"

"It's the net, mate. The inter-screen technology gives you real time information and video connection to anywhere. I was on the screen with my mate Byron from Sydney last night--had to stay up late because of the time difference. We had a blast."

"What do you do for work?"

"Oh, I do maintenance on the water recycling system about two days a week. I’m a customer service rep for the bank two days a week (course with inter-screen, I do that from home). And I’m a storyteller–do two storytimes a week here at the child care center, and I also perform at some events downtown, and a few times a year I do out of town bookings."

"Sounds nice. Tell me about these buildings. How do you get water and energy and such?"

"Right. Energy comes from the solar roofs–notice that cluster over there, how the roof is a bit shiny? That’s a PV-integrated roof. Generates up to 5 kilowatts at peak, and the excess flows into the local grid, which is backed up by a couple of hydrogen fuel cells. They’re tucked away under the school over there. Water we recycle about 75%; waste flows through our designed wetland system, and with a bit of ionizing purification is ready to use again. The remaining 25% comes from runoff; we collect it from rooftops and roads, and feed it through the system, with some membrane filtration for safety’s sake."

"This sounds like a Utopia. Don’t you have crime, or shortages, and so forth?"

"Oh, sure. But not so much as I read about in the 20^th century. We have community-based justice here. If someone gets in a fight, or steals something, we deal with it directly. Our peace officers know all the mediation techniques, as well as some martial arts if they need to act quickly to maintain safety. We haven’t had guns in this community since about 2045."

"So is every community like this? Don’t you have slums?"

"Slums?….Oh yeah, that was that term for poor communities. Well, not the same way. There are still some areas that have not been rebuilt quite as completely. Out west of here, in what they used to call Potomac, the owners of the big homes there were resistant to the community rebirth culture. Some of them still live out there, locked up in their mansions like self-made prisons. Kind of sad. And sometimes the new communities, or older communities that get set in their ways–they have trouble getting organized or staying cohesive. But we have the Community Futures Network to help them. Trained facilitators help them through a process of defining their vision, their systems, and such. Takes a while–every community is in some stage of birth, growth, stagnation, decline, and renewal. So we just deal with each stage as it comes along."

"Where would you say this community is right now?"

"Tell you the truth, mate, I think we’re heading into a stagnation phase. My Nana hasn’t changed her career for about five years now–and at 85 it’s about time she took up something new, eh? Ah, blast! Look, mate, I’m overdue to change the filters on the membrane purge tank. It’s been great talking with you. Come back again, soon, won’t you? And where did you say you live now?"

"It’s real close by….. I’ll come again, soon as I can. Better yet, I’ll go back and put what I learned here to work in my community."

And that’s when I woke up. And I’ve been awake ever since.