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The Transcript
Shiny Future Video
Hello! I hope you’re all doing well in 2020. Or, as well as you can! To be honest it was a great time for my family. That’s when the real hustle began. People like my parents began working harder even though there was a pandemic, focussing on making money and to be honest had me quite late in their lives. That didn’t matter to them though. The goal was to make a living.
With everyone just putting their heads down and working it meant we started coming up with some shiny new technologies that would help get us through a climate crisis. Carbon capture, reduction of food waste and fast fashion, wholesale adoption of renewable energies like wind turbines and solar power… was all developed because the consumers in 2020 finally woke up and demanded it. Where the consumers lead, the governments followed, and soon world-wide policies were driving the pace of change too.These all came with a price tag of course, but that’s literally the price you pay for a decent future. Some might say that we lost our humanity in it all but they were usually the people that couldn’t afford it.
Growing up, I did think there were a couple of problems. On the surface, it seemed like the government were choosing ‘green’ energy options and solutions that would help us. But then you’d hear reports about how they were being charged three times more than they should have, or how the companies that won government contracts weren’t the best in their fields. But I ignored that. As long as I was comfortable, I was fine.
Some of the smaller countries struggled more than others because they didn’t have enough people to buy what they were selling. Or the resources needed. But that just meant most people moved to the countries where there was money. Sure, it got crowded but it just added to that hustle and work mentality.
Of course, we haven’t managed to save the environment in every single bit of our planet – it’s a big place after all! No-one lives in the ‘lost zones’, but that’s ok. I say no one – what I actually mean is very few people. You do hear of some favela countries – too big to be called towns – that have grown up. I guess that’s where those who can’t keep up go to live, the dispossessed and displaced. How they survive there, I’ll never know.
At the other extreme, you’ve got the ‘west end’. It’s not actually in the west or at the end of anything - it’s just the ‘best bit’ of every country where the super-rich accumulate and charge an arm and a leg for outsiders to enter. One of these days, even if just for a day trip, I’d love to visit! I hear they get to eat steak every day (3d printed of course!), all the infrastructure is self-repair and self-clean, so all the towns are immaculate the whole time. Not to mention the nanotech manufacturing companies always fulfil the west end orders first, so we have to wait our turn when we buy shiny new gadgets. The recycling and sustainability industries have their work cut out for them trying to reduce and recycle all the waste that we create, but amazingly, they seem to be managing so far – lots of robots seems to do the trick.
If you’ve got a head for business and want to fix the future with technology solutions, you’d better fight to make this future a reality!