The Good Future Project

Finland wants to transform how we make clothes

October 3, 2022

This article is available at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62806565

Petri Alava used to wear pressed suits and leather shoes to work, managing large corporations selling everything from magazines to gardening equipment.

Now he runs a Finnish start-up where socks are the norm on the office floor, and he proudly sports a round-neck T-shirt spun from recycled clothing fibres, tucked into some baggy shorts.

His firm, Infinited Fiber, has invested heavily in a technology which can transform textiles that would otherwise be burned or sent to landfills, into a new clothing fibre.

Called Infinna, the fibre is already being used by global brands including Patagonia, H&M and Inditex, which owns Zara. “It’s a premium quality textile fibre, which looks and feels natural – like cotton,” says Mr Alava, rubbing his own navy blue tee between his fingers. “And it is solving a major waste problem.”

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Collapse, Renewal and the Rope of History

September 21, 2022

This article is available on https://futurecrunch.com/collapse-renewal/

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

A great darkness has settled on the land. As the plague enters its seventh season, a virulent new strain has emerged, threatening all our hard won gains. Once again our hospitals buckle under the pressure and the science of mask-wearing regresses into hapless debates about freedom. Once again our doctors and nurses are asked to do the impossible, despite having done it hundred times over. From Algeria to Mexico to Indonesia, the body counts rise and the curves bend in all the wrong directions. Charlatanism, conspiracy and political propaganda thrive, moving at light speed through the networks. Once again, our political leaders are exposed as utterly inadequate to the task at hand.

Catastrophe is in the air. Days ago, the largest peer-reviewed process of all time confirmed that we are in the midst of the greatest planetary crisis we’ve faced since we came down from the trees. July was the hottest month ever recorded; the Earth is hotter than it has been at any moment since the beginning of the last Ice Age. Heat waves settle across entire continents, floods rip through Germany, China and Japan, drought stalks Myanmar, Venezuela and Mali, wildfires explode across the Pacific Northwest, the Mediterranean and Siberia. Our scientists tell us humanity is unequivocally responsible for these events. “In the past, we’ve had to make that statement more hesitantly. Now it’s a statement of fact.”
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12 futuristic cities being built around the world, from Saudi Arabia to China

September 15, 2022

As the world changes, so must our cities.

With the global population continuing to increase and climate change drastically affecting our environment, many metropolises are struggling to grow, develop and even support citizens within current and traditional urban designs.

Governments, entrepreneurs and technology companies are employing some of the world’s leading architects and designers to rethink the idea of cities, as well as how people interact and live within them.

From reclaimed land, groundbreaking skyscrapers in the desert and metropolises rising in the metaverse, here are 12 incredible futuristic cities redefining the urban spaces we live in.

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How One Rust Belt College Is Transforming Its Local Food System

September 15, 2022

This article is available at on https://civileats.com/2022/09/12/how-one-rust-belt-college-is-transforming-its-local-food-system BY DOUGLAS HAYNES Photo Courtesy of Kalamazoo Valley Community College.

In Michigan, Kalamazoo Valley Community College has built a rare model aimed at connecting people through growing food, supporting local farmers, and educating a wide variety of community members.

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The World Really Is Getting Better

September 15, 2022

This article is available at https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/bill-melinda-gates-foundation-goalkeepers-report-poverty/671415/

The World Really Is Getting Better

Some days or decades, everything in the world seems to be getting worse. Global warming is unstoppable. Political polarization is tearing us apart. Women’s rights are backsliding in Afghanistan and, American liberals might argue, in the U.S. as well. European energy costs are skyrocketing, China is heading into recession, Ukraine is locked in existential war, and many African countries face a growing food crisis.

The list of sorrows goes on and on. So what is there to be optimistic about?

Today, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released its Goalkeepers Report on global progress. Seven years ago, 200 world leaders agreed to 17 development goals, including the elimination of deep poverty and world hunger by 2030. The report finds that although the world is on track to achieve “almost none” of its ambitious goals, the planet is still better off than it was 30 years ago in almost every category.

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A Swedish Company Wants to Transform Offshore Wind With Vertical-Axis Turbines

September 15, 2022

This article is available at https://singularityhub.com/2022/09/14/a-swedish-company-wants-to-transform-offshore-wind-with-vertical-axis-turbines

Even as more offshore wind projects launch and the turbines they use get bigger, there are questions around offshore wind’s economic viability. Unsurprisingly, hauling huge equipment with multiple moving parts out to deep, windy sections of ocean, setting them up, and building lines to transmit the electricity they generate back to land is expensive. Really expensive. In our profit-driven capitalist economy, companies aren’t going to sink money into technologies that don’t deliver worthwhile returns.

A Swedish energy company called SeaTwirl is flipping the offshore wind model on its head—not quite literally, but almost—and betting it will be able to deliver cheap renewable energy and make a profit along the way. SeaTwirl is one of several companies developing vertical-axis wind turbines, and one of just a couple developing them for offshore use.

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Decolonisation: A crucial prerequisite to environmental justice in Africa

September 12, 2022

This article is available at https://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/publications/52224/decolonisation-a-crucial-prerequisite-to-environmental-justice-in-africa/

All across the African continent a colonial approach of extraction and exploitation continues to plague and paralyse economies. It pushes ecosystems to the edge and puts pan-Africanism on a back burner.

From Somalia to Nigeria, from South Africa to Algeria, households across Africa are facing a worsening climate crisis, with floods, extreme heat waves, wildfires, droughts and rising food prices. Yet our leaders are making a case for more oil and gas exploration at the upcoming climate conference in Egypt, an absurd choice that is bound to turn a bad situation even worse.

Fortunately, there’s an opportunity to outline a green and fossil-free development path for the continent when 54 African Environment Ministers meet in September in Senegal. Their ultimate test would be to look beyond the temptation to auction their natural resources for servicing a carbon intensity lifestyle in wealthier economies.

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Regenerative Development: Going Beyond Sustainability

September 8, 2022

This article is available at https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/regenerative-development-going-beyond-sustainability/

Sustainable Development is a half-vast approach to vast problems. Its purpose, to make life on this planet sustainable, is a noble disguise for the maintenance of the status quo. When the status quo includes hundreds of millions of acres of degraded to destroyed farmland and leveled rainforest, depleted to exhausted fisheries and aquifers, toxic-choked streams, decreasing biodiversity, and a changing climate, sustainability is simply not acceptable. In short, sustainable development is like the bromide ‘do no evil’; it does not set the bar high enough. We can, and need, to do better than just sustain the unacceptable—or accept the present as the best we can do.

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Revolutionary new Swiss ‘water battery’ will be one of Europe’s main renewable sources of energy

August 31, 2022

This article is available at https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/06/30/enormous-water-battery-in-switzerland-will-help-prevent-power-shortages

A water battery capable of storing electricity equivalent to 400,000 electric car batteries will begin operating in Switzerland next week.

The pumped storage power plant was built into a subterranean cavern in the Swiss canton of Valais. With the ability to store and generate vast quantities of hydroelectric energy, the battery will play an important role in stabilising power supplies in Switzerland and Europe.

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Climate-Smart Agriculture Needs Better Planning For Weather Aberrations

August 31, 2022

This article is available at https://thewire.in/agriculture/climate-smart-agriculture-predicting-weather

In many respects, weather and climate look like the stock market – ups and downs on various time scales; no one can predict them with 100% accuracy. But predictions are useful for a country like India, where more than 50% of agricultural land is rain-fed and consequently, about 60% of rural livelihoods depend on monsoons.

Traditional weather forecasts tell us what is likely to happen within the next 24 hours and up to two weeks ahead, whereas climate prediction tells us what will likely happen in the coming seasons, years and decades. Both weather and climate forecasts are very important to develop adaption and mitigation strategies to maximise returns from agriculture and improve livelihoods.

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