FORBES - Nov 10, 2016 "Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better" written by the World Economic Forum

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Notation:  If you are unfamiliar with the World Economic Forum and its projects such as The Great Reset, Agenda 2030, "Pandemic" Event 201 of Oct 18th 2019, Davos, and other world policies which the WEF influences upon political leaders across the globe... then you don't know squat.  You better educate yourself or become more obedient slaves to your Masters.--Tom Nolan

https://archive.is/h8U1J

https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/?sh=fe2958617350

Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better

Nov 10, 2016, 04:26am EST  - World Economic Forum

Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city." I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes.

It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.

First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly. Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes. We started transporting ourselves in a much more organized and coordinated way when public transport became easier, quicker and more convenient than the car. Now I can hardly believe that we accepted congestion and traffic jams, not to mention the air pollution from combustion engines. What were we thinking?

Sometimes I use my bike when I go to see some of my friends. I enjoy the exercise and the ride. It kind of gets the soul to come along on the journey. Funny how some things seem never seem to lose their excitement: walking, biking, cooking, drawing and growing plants. It makes perfect sense and reminds us of how our culture emerged out of a close relationship with nature.

In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.

Once in a while, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy - the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. Since transport became free, we stopped having all those things stuffed into our home. Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.

This also made the breakthrough of the circular economy easier. When products are turned into services, no one has an interest in things with a short life span. Everything is designed for durability, repairability and recyclability. The materials are flowing more quickly in our economy and can be transformed to new products pretty easily. Environmental problems seem far away, since we only use clean energy and clean production methods. The air is clean, the water is clean and nobody would dare to touch the protected areas of nature because they constitute such value to our well-being. In the cities we have plenty of green space and plants and trees all over. I still do not understand why in the past we filled all free spots in the city with concrete.

Shopping? I can't really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.

When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people. The concept of rush hour makes no sense anymore, since the work that we do can be done at any time. I don't really know if I would call it work anymore. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and development-time.

For a while, everything was turned into entertainment and people did not want to bother themselves with difficult issues. It was only at the last minute that we found out how to use all these new technologies for better purposes than just killing time.

My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.

Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.

All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realized that we could do things differently.

This blog was written ahead of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils.

Ida Auken is a Young Global Leader and Member of the Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization of the World Economic Forum,

World Economic Forum

We are the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation and engage the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. On this account, we publish insights and analyses from our network of constituents on leadership, business and finance. We were established in 1971 as a not-for-profit Foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is independent, impartial and not tied to any special interests, working in close cooperation with the world's major international organisations. We connect leaders of business and government through research, high-level meetings, task forces and digital networks. Our communities are committed to finding solutions to the world’s most difficult challenges.

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Energy Journalist Irina Slav writes about proposed policy plans back in February

2021, well before a Natural Gas crisis...

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Absolute-Zero-Is-The-New-Net-Zero-For-Emissions.html

Absolute-Zero Is The New Net-Zero For Emissions

By Irina Slav - Feb 07, 2021, 5:00 PM CST

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The net-zero emissions goal of many governments has more or less become part of everyday life. We’ve all heard about these plans, and we may remember a few details. Still, life goes on. Now, a report from a UK research group is taking things a lot further: it has called for the country to aim for not net, but absolute zero in emissions by 2050. UK FIRES, a research program involving scientists from several reputable universities and businesses from resource-intensive sectors, says that net-zero is not enough. What’s more, waiting for breakthrough technologies to enable this net-zero scenario is not good enough.

According to a new report, today’s technology is sufficient for achieving absolute zero by 2050. At a cost, of course.

The plan that the authors of the report outline starts with moving to a 100-percent reliance on electricity as a source of energy. That’s hardly surprising —most net-zero plans involve a version of this heightened reliance. Naturally, critics would be quick to point out that a complete reliance on one form of energy may not be particularly smart, for which there is more than enough evidence from the fossil fuel era. Still, one of the tenets of the absolute-zero plan is an economy 100 percent powered by electricity generated by renewable sources.

The authors recognize this shift to 100 percent renewable electricity will require a significant boost in generation capacity and storage. Both of these are potentially challenging endeavors for a number of reasons. Challenges include—but are not limited to—cost and land availability. But unlike other plans for emission reduction, the FIRES plan does not factor in growing energy demand. On the contrary, the report prescribes that the UK must reduce its energy consumption—and reduce it substantially—in order for the absolute zero plan to work.

“We need to switch to using electricity as our only form of energy and if we continue today’s impressive rates of growth in non-emitting generation, we’ll only have to cut our use of energy to 60% of today’s levels,” the authors wrote. “We can achieve this with incremental changes to the way we use energy: we can drive smaller cars and take the train when possible, use efficient electric heat-pumps to keep warm and buy buildings, vehicles and equipment that are better designed and last much longer.”

Related: U.S. Rig Count Jumps Amid Rising Oil Prices

Making people buy certain products and not others would be difficult, but the UK government has already signaled it was ready to remove the option of choice to hit its climate targets: Downing Street said last year it would ban sales of gasoline and diesel cars from 2030. This has already caused disgruntlement among some Britons, but they still have ten years to embrace the change.

They will also have time to get used to the idea of beef and lamb disappearing from supermarkets because, according to the authors of the report, eating ruminants contributes unacceptably high levels of emissions to the global total.

But that’s just the beginning.

The FIRES report identifies air and maritime transport as major contributors to our species’ carbon footprint. Therefore, these must be phased out completely, the authors say, by 2050. What will replace them? Well, electric trains would be one replacement for air travel across Europe. They would not, however, be able to replace container ships carrying goods from and to Asia, for example. The authors admit there is no replacement for international shipping, and there won’t be for quite a while yet. At the same time, the UK imports half the food it consumes.

International shipping is just one sticking point in the FIRES plan. Another is cement. Cement production is a highly polluting industry, but we can’t build safely without cement. The authors of the report suggest alternative construction technologies but note that completely phasing out cement will be a challenge.

It will not be the only one in view of the report’s recommendations. One of these concerns is making equipment, clothing, and durable goods even more durable to reduce energy consumption associated with the making of new ones. That might not sit well with the companies producing these goods and equipment, which make money from making their products last shorter rather than longer. It may not be the fairest of all business models, but it has been employed for decades.

All in all, the report’s main message to both businesses and individuals is: consume less energy. It is an admirable message, by all means. However, the road that the authors suggest to this reduced consumption is unstable.

It involves the demise of industries that employ tens of millions of people who will not all be able to retrain for solar panel or wind turbine installation. It also involves some major changes to people’s behaviors. While far from impossible, these changes are contingent on the goodwill of enough people—or on several successive governments’ willingness to prescribe behaviors through bans. That might be even less smart than a 100-percent reliance on electricity for our energy needs.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com