Every year around this time, you’re bludgeoned with blogs predicting what the year ahead will bring. Instead of adding another piece to the pile, I decided to be more ambitious and offer up predictions for 2032.
As luck would have it, my friend, futurist Guy Dauncey, did all the heavy lifting for me. In fact, he just published an incredible book titled Journey To The Future which documents an incredible voyage to 2032 Vancouver. Journey is a page turner, but also incredibly well-researched. Guy isn’t proffering a half-baked vision here.
I called Guy for a 30 minute podcast to chat about 2032 (you’ll find the podcast here). The results were both thought-provoking and entertaining.
To spread the love, I transcribed the interview to print. Sure, it’s longer than the average blog post. But hey, we aren’t talking your average shop-grade 12 month predictions here. Enjoy!
Marc: Guy, welcome. Tell us about 2032.
Guy: Thank you. Journey To The Future is a four-day visit to Vancouver in the year 2032, by a 24-year-old called Patrick Wu. By the magic of fiction…
Marc: And a sneeze.
Guy: He finds himself transplanted…
Marc: I’ve got to talk about the sneeze.
Guy: The sneeze. Ah, yes. As an author there is no rational way to get to the future, so you have to invent one. In this case, Patrick sneezes himself into 2032.
Marc: Thank you. Personally, I thought the sneeze was hilarious.
Guy: At any rate, Patrick finds himself in 2032 for four days. And he learns so much! I had to do 20 drafts of this book because there was so much happening. I dug into the findings of scientists, picked out every future related story, but also thought of major new themes of social and political change, which led me to question all the ideas in my head.
Marc: You just mentioned the findings of scientists. One of the things remarkable about this book…you want to call it a work of fiction, fine, but you’ve got pages and pages and pages of bibliography and end notes in here just like a scientific review.
Guy: Yes. It’s the only work of technical fiction that’s got an index; it’s got a full bibliography and 940 endnotes. So whenever I’m bringing something in from the future, such as instead of Wi-Fi, talking about Li-Fi, when the digital communication signal comes through light instead of through an Internet hub, that’s as real as it gets for something that isn’t yet invented, if that makes any sense.
This book is as real as it gets when it comes to profiling things that haven’t yet been invented
Marc: It’s somewhere between here and Star Trek. When I was a kid and watched James Kirk flip open his communicator, I thought “Never in the world will anything like this ever exist.” And here we are, talking on smartphones with facetime. This book does the same thing. It’s not that far out, but far enough to capture your imagination.
Guy: That’s true. Especially so when we bring art into it. At one point, Patrick, my central character, and his friends are walking down the sidewalk, and there is poetry written into the sidewalk. It’s a poetry walk but the poetry is all digital and backlit, and there’s a website where you can go and submit your poems and recommend other people’s poems and they change every month. And there’s three-dimensional holographic art. You can walk through and it changes as you walk through it. That stuff isn’t happening today, but there’s nothing technically to stop it from happening.
Marc: Great fuel for anyone in advertising or media looking for a new business idea.
Guy: The book is certainly full of arts and culture, but it also goes into some very profound stuff about the nature of civilization itself and how it’s evolving or not, and how capitalism gets transformed.
Marc: Let’s talk about capitalism.
Guy: Well, there are two dimensions in the book. First, growth. The word growth is a very clumsy word. You and I, if we didn’t grow from the time we were children, we’d never reach adulthood. But if we didn’t stop growing physically we’d be 12 ft. tall and life would be crazy.
Marc: And we’d fall over.
Guy: You want physical growth to end in the late teenage years. But emotional growth, growth in wisdom, mental growth, you want that to continue on. The same goes for economies. Unabated growth in size does not equate with growth in happiness or wisdom.
Unabated economic growth does not equate with growth in happiness or wisdom.
Marc: The happiness index, right?
Guy: There’s a happiness index built into the story.
Just as important, though, we’re going to the core of capitalism, the DNA of corporations. Right now the core DNA equates with “As a director, it’s your legal duty to maximize the share value and returns of your company,”
In the story, we’ve changed that DNA, so now the director is under a dual mandate to maximize financial returns and also to maximize returns to the community, the environment and social returns.
Now, in the post capitalist economy, which I actually call “the corporative economy” — a green, entrepreneurial economy — you see a different breed of corporation. That includes the benefit corporation. It also includes an interesting model of public banking that can operate alongside private banking. Today, when credit is created and credit is then shared around on a scale of 10:1 (because you can maximize your credit when you do that) the interest goes back to the private banks. When you have public banking as they do in North Dakota, the interest returns to the public purse, which can be used to finance business development, to finance education, health care and other things.
Imagine public banking, where the interest returns to the public purse to finance things like education.
This model of public banking is not replacing current banking but it’s creating a parallel structure. It allows us to share in the creation of credit, and bring things like green business into the mainstream. So green accountancies become mainstream in the future because without green businesses certification, every business that’s not making an effort to consciously protect or restore the environment is unwittingly destroying it.
Marc: Now, hold on a minute. What is holding our feet to the fire in 2032? Because concepts like green business — that’s something that’s very easy to give lip service to.
Guy: Two big things. Number one — the ongoing climate crisis. So even though there’s been phenomenal progress in this scenario, the impacts of the crisis continue. Because the impacts we are experiencing today comes from fossil fuel emissions 40 years ago. So when we drive a car today in 2015–2016, people experience the result of that in 40 years’ time.
The other big impact is that there’s been another big economic crash that has happened, but with a far larger impact than the last one because the public willingness to bail out the banks is dramatically reduced. So that leads to what I actually call a real upgrade of the Occupy movement, called the ‘OMEGA days’. The problem with the Occupy movement was when you asked them what they want, they said, “We want the end of capitalism, or the end of greed.” which is just dumb. It’s like saying you want people to be nice.
OMEGA days are actually a much more sophisticated thing, where O stands for open democracy, M for meaningful work, E for a new economy, G for a green future and A for affordable living. Each of those five pieces has highly tangible organized solutions. So you’ve got a platform of 25 core practical solutions that the public can really get behind.
Marc: You mentioned carbon emissions. We know what we’re emitting right now people are going to be eating 40 years from now. Even if we pull back way back, we’re still going to be doing adaptation versus mitigation. What do the people in the future think about us who are emitting like crazy, like there’s no tomorrow?
Guy: They’re saying “If only we’d started 20 years earlier”.
Marc: Yeah.
Guy: The Paris Climate Conference is not referenced in the book but the Houston Climate Treaty, which happens in 2020, is referenced. By 2020, the impacts of storms and floods and droughts has become so heavy, and the data has become convincing around how the zero carbon 100% renewable energy economy is so much more beneficial in economic and financial terms. So people are no longer being dragged reluctantly to decrease carbon emissions — they’re rushing toward getting 100% renewable energy.
This is the beginning of what’s called the third grade energy revolution, and it’s driving change. At the Houston Conference, an agreement to have a global carbon cap, limiting in gigatons how many emissions the whole world puts out, has come into force. So each country has its cap, each country has to ration out the ability to produce and import fossil fuels, and individuals have carbon rationing because we need to reduce our use of carbon by 10% a year in order to stop.
People are beginning to register what this means. They’ve seen suffering and death, but also the financial costs.
Marc: Just the other day, the big headline in the New York Times was “Shanghai Under Water”. This is something that’s already on the front page of the newspaper.
Guy: That’s why I find the book was so encouraging for me write. It references things like the fossil fuel divestment movement. In last year there was $50 billion of investment capital divested. This year the commitment is $3.4 trillion. It’s like a 60-fold increase in one year, so there’s a real sea change happening.
Marc: Climate deniers, where are they?
Guy: Gone.
In 2032, climate deniers are gone. But the lobby against helping the planet has taken on a new, more sinister persona.
Marc: Lobby groups lobbying for things that aren’t helping the planet, where are they?
Guy: There’s an active tension throughout the book, and this actually I had to evolve into the book while I was writing it. In the one chapter I suddenly found my character going out to the garden and falling asleep and having a dream, and in this dream he saw this big black hole. As the author, I didn’t know what it was but it came to me. It’s the shadow of fascism and simplistic, fear-based right-wing thinking that comes in response to threat when you don’t have a clear pathway for progress for those who are suffering and are on the rough end of change.
So if you’ve got people on the rough end of change — those with lower incomes, those getting past the age when they can re-skill for a new economy, those who feel politicians have got nothing for them — they feel threatened.
Marc: Sounds familiar.
Guy: And they turn their threats against…in the past it was against the Jews or the Irish. Now, it’s against the Muslims or the blacks. It happens in every country where 10 to 15% of people feel a high level of threat and fear, where they don’t want to be dragged into an uncomfortable future. They’d rather stay with a lousy present than a future they fear is organized by people like tree huggers. In the book, a lot of attention is paid to social justice, economic change, and economic transformation to do with poverty and inequality. For instance, it references a basic income. Once you’ve lived in Vancouver for 10 years, you qualify to get a free monthly basic income, and other benefits. It’s all part of the OMEGA ‘E’ for a new economy.
Marc: Let’s move on to another big issue: food. We’ve strayed the past 50 years into processed food high on craving and low on everything else, What does it look like in 2032?
Guy: One of my characters is a nurse in her 20’s called Aaliyah. She’s a Syrian-Canadian who was a Syrian refugee and trained as a nurse. She’s able to tell Patrick about the whole change in healthcare towards functional medicine based around maintaining a strong immune system, building up a strong dietary base for the way we live.
At one point, Patrick asks how much farming has gone organic. Aaliyah replies, “Well, it’s all organic.” She explains that the government ordered a study into the financial costs to Canadians of conventional farming. The cost turns out to be shocking, as it is in real life.
The cost of conventional farming turns out to be shocking, as it is in real life.
So the government basically took that cost, and translated it into a tax on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, giving 100% of the income from that tax back to the farmers to help them with the transition to organic. The farmers realize that the yields are just as good under organic as non-organic. Eventually, the tax disappears, all these negative environmental impacts disappear, and all the farmers turn organic.
Today, we have 800 gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere, and we’ve got to get it down to 500 gigatons in order to eventually hit 350, where it is in my book. We do that with organic farming, changed forestry and changed pasturing for animals, to name a few. All of the meals in the book — I’m vegetarian myself, so there’s definite bias in there — but the meals are all delicious vegetarian food.
There are other little things, too. Aaliyah does online grocery shopping with delivery by bicycle the next day. And she uses an app which allows her to know where she’s buying it from, calories, micronutrients, all the goodness. So she can see if after a week’s shopping she’s really short on vitamin A, for example…
When we do our online grocery shopping, an app allows us to track where we’re buying from, calories, micronutrients, all the goodness.
Marc: It’s like wearing a Fitbit, but for nutrition.
Guy: And when Aaliyah is growing food herself in the garden, she can input that into the app, and it will tell her after a week you’re going to be short on this, you need to buy that, and here are recipes to go with what your garden produces. She can use this in the store as well. You can actually scan food barcodes with your phone and it’ll immediately tell you what nutrients you’re getting.
At one point she orders a tub of ice-cream and then it throws her over her limit, so she has to cancel it and get a fruit yogurt instead.
Marc: Again, not far removed from reality. Anybody an innovator…
Guy: There’s money to be made, innovators! I googled the particular apps covering this stuff and they’re covering a quarter of where I’m going but there’s nothing that’s not do-able. What I’m talking about right now — someone will make a million picking up that idea alone.
There’s money to be made, innovators!
Marc: I see health insurance companies today getting into how people eat. Bad food = bad risks = big payouts.
Guy: In the functional health insurance model, everyone’s paying a basic premium but to the extent that you make an effort and your total health improves, you get a discount on your premium.
Marc: Great gamification.
Guy: What’s more, instead of having a family doctor, your primary practitioner is a nurse practitioner. And they cover 90% of what most people need. They have the hands-on relationship that restores the sense of personal relationship which is rapidly disappearing when doctors go, “I’ve got 10 minutes only to spend with you, and I haven’t got the the financing to sustain a personal relationship.”
Marc: Oh, man. We could go on forever…
Guy: We could go on for 34 chapters! Want to talk physics and biology? There’s a whole new theory called ‘Centropy’, which is an organizational principle, self-organizing the universe through consciousness.
Marc: That’s definitely not a 30-second conversation. Let’s finish on energy. What does energy look like in 2032?
Guy: Most of the fossil fuels have been wound down entirely.
I mean right now, BMW has put out a market statement this year that by 2025 they will really cease making conventional cars altogether. All of their vehicles will be electric or hybrid electric. The whole world’s car market is in transition. In my book, electric cars with a 250 mile range are everywhere. They’re super comfortable, have fabulous acceleration, and cost almost nothing to run. Who’s going to buy a regular gasoline car when you can have the best electric car?
The entire world car market is in transition.
What’s more, we’ve seen a hundredfold fall in the price of solar since the 1970’s. So right now if you’re putting a 4-kilowatt system on your roof, you’re paying around $3 a watt. In 2032, it’s down to $1.50 a watt, which is an equivalent of 5 cents a kilowatt hour, for the cost of electricity, whereas most electricity right now is 10 to 12 cents a kilowatt.
The Fraunhofer Solar Institute in Germany has forecast solar will cost 2 cents a kilowatt hour by 2050. The impact of this is just phenomenal. Then you add in floating wind turbines, deep ocean wind turbines, floating solar on the lakes and oceans, and passive energy house design which needs 90% less heat energy.
Even today, every new building going up in Brussels is a passive energy building. So the heating needed is basically through one’s heat exchange transfer system in the roof and you don’t need fossil fuels anymore. You’re phasing fossil fuels out of building heat, you’re phasing them out of transport, you’re passing them out of electricity. There’s still an ongoing issue in the book around the full development of long distance transportation, trucking, flying, shipping. But right now, we don’t have any solutions at all.
One of the characters says, “The power of our vision must be stronger than the power of our fear.” That’s what motivates change — when people have a vision they’re excited about and then they move towards it with enjoyment and anticipation and not dread.
Marc: You hit a core point there. People are fearful of what’s coming, so they’re bunkering down. What you’re saying is that the future is worth it.
Guy: Absolutely. The right wing response of trying to ramp up the fear is it’s a very, very bad sign for a future economy and a future country because you never have creativity along with fear. You’ve got to have vision. When Kennedy said, “We’re going to the moon in 10 years’ time” he did not know how we were going to do it, but if you voice that vision, then all your best creativity, your teamwork, your innovation, your technology engages.
If you voice a bold vision for the future, then all your best creativity, teamwork, innovation, technology engages.
All the great social achievements — getting votes for women, stopping the slave trade, stopping children down the coal mine — they’ve been premised on a vision of success.
Marc: I can’t imagine a better note to end on.
Guy: My pleasure, Marc. Thanks so much. Take care.
Read more from Marc Stoiber in our Clubhouse.
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