History has knocked very loudly on our door. Will we answer? 

World Future Forum 2016 – Opening Speech by Jakob von Uexkull

March 15, 2016
We may all be doing our best but, as Winston Churchill said: “In a crisis, it is not enough to do our best – we have to do what is necessary”. Today we are heading for unprecedented dangers and conflicts, up to and including the end of a habitable planet in the foreseeable future, depriving all future generations of their right to life and the lives of preceding generations of meaning and purpose.

This apocalyptic reality is the elephant in the room. Current policies threaten temperature increases triggering permafrost melting and the release of ocean methane hydrates which would make our earth unliveable, according to research presented by the British Government Met office at the Paris Climate Conference.

Long before that point, our prosperity, security, culture and identity will disintegrate. A Europe unable to cope with a few million war refugees will collapse under the weight of tens or even hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

While scientists are increasingly in a state of panic about the state of the environment, the media – prone to exaggerate other news – downplay catastrophic threats to the planet. When the London “Times” provided a realistic overview recently (15.04.2015), it felt obliged to include the phone number of the Samaritans for those feeling distressed after reading it. One wonders how the Samaritans dealt with those calls!

Last month, N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman, after noting that climate change “just keeps getting scarier” asked: “So what’s really at stake in this year’s (US) election? Well, among other things, the fate of the planet.” A study by the US National Academy of Sciences last year concluded that claims of “de-coupling” economic growth from growing CO2 emissions and resource consumption, i.e. that we can consume more and conserve more at the same time, have been based on false accounting, 

underestimating the raw materials required to create the products counted. (The Guardian, 25.11.2015).

So why have we not already formed an emergency alliance to do everything humanly possible to stop and reverse course?

Why have we not identified a hierarchy of risks and developed a common narrative and strategy? These are questions I often hear, especially from the young, for whom the work of the World Future Council (WFC) and its members provides rare hope that they still have a future.

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