The UN have published “GEO-3” – the planet’s regular medical.
“The choices this generation makes will be crucial for our descendants, according to a United Nations report.
Published by the UN Environment Programme (Unep), established 30 years ago, the report details some real improvements since then.
But it says the overall trend is adverse, especially in poor countries.
By 2032, it predicts a planet likely to have been largely affected by human hands.”
Okay, cool. If this is true, and I keep my technoidealist beenie-cap on, then it means that we have moved into the stage where fixing the planet is a design problem.
I say we put Brenda Laurel in charge of the design committee. Here’s the transcript [PDF, 30k] of her talk at AIGA:Voice02. She ended with this:
“We are only the victims and servants of business as usual if we choose to be.
This work of transformation which I have come to think of as culture work must be approached carefully but with great conviction and effort.
The tactic of culture work is not straight-ahead revolution; rather it is to inject new genetic material into the culture without activating its immune system. By intervening in the present, we are designing the future.
Petafloptimism 