With the reality of climate change, thinking about the future can be depressing. It’s far too easy to go down the rabbit hole of climbing temperatures, rising sea levels, mass extinctions, food shortages, and climate refugees.
That’s why I so appreciated two recent films that offer alternate views of what might be possible – A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough, and 2040 by Damon Gameau.
In A Life on Our Planet, Attenborough starts by sharing what he’s learned in his lifetime of traveling the world and exploring nature. He does share a darker vision of the future, of what happens if we continue the path we’re on. But in the second half of the film, he looks at some of the encouraging things people are already doing, and how we could expand on that moving forward.
In 2040, Gameau doesn’t imagine the worst at all. As he said, we’ve heard plenty of doom and gloom about climate change – and rightfully so. But he was more interested in looking at other possibilities. He also took an unusual approach of addressing the film to his four-year-old daughter and projecting what her future could be by 2040.
Both of these hopeful visions of the future are based on technologies and solutions that already exist today, with some key things to focus on.
Energy
Not surprisingly, energy is one of those key points. Attenborough showed how Morocco has the world’s largest solar farm, and it’s already producing 40% of its energy needs locally. By 2050, they could even produce enough to export energy.
Gameau looked at another approach in Bangladesh, which has one of the largest domestic solar programs in the world. Homes that have solar panels can connect with other homes to form a mini energy grid, allowing people to buy and sell solar between their homes. If everyone in a community becomes connected, they can then connect their grid to another mini-grid. That interconnection helps build a sense of community, and these smaller grids also keep the jobs and profits local.
This type of micro-grid is currently illegal in some countries, but if it could expand, it would provide a lot more energy independence to individual communities.
Plus, as Attenborough pointed out, renewable energy is cleaner, quieter, and it never runs out.
Food
What we eat and how we grow food was another common theme, with both advocating for a more plant-based diet. This doesn’t mean not eating any meat but rather reducing it so that we get more of our nutrition from plants.
As Attenborough noted, our planet doesn’t have many pure carnivores because it takes so many resources to sustain them. From a human standpoint, if everyone ate a plant-based diet, we wouldn’t need as much land for the animals, and we wouldn’t need to produce as much food for those animals.
He also pointed out that we can be creative in how to grow plants, using the Netherlands as an example. They’ve learned how to increase their yields tenfold, all while using less water and fertilizer and lowering their carbon emissions.
Gameau took this one step further by talking about regenerative agriculture. This would allow us to put more carbon back into depleted soil. This approach also introduces more variety in crops, which in turn keeps the soil healthy – and healthy soil can also absorb more water, something that helps prevent erosion and flooding in times of heavy rain.
Transportation
Attenborough didn’t talk about transportation, but Gameau called out the need to reduce the number of cars, especially in cities. So much land in our cities is used for roads and parking, and if we reduced that, we’d have much more available space.
He envisioned a future where we have community-owned vehicles in cities, as well as driverless, electric on-demand cars to get us around. This would reduce emissions, as well as providing space for things like sustainable, affordable housing, and urban food farms.
Additionally, growing more food in cities would lower emissions by reducing the distance food needs to travel.
Forests
The importance of forests also came up in both films, and one big reason is carbon sequestering.
Gameau was the most specific about the need for carbon sequestering. He spoke with Paul Hawken, author of Drawdown, who emphasized that reducing carbon emissions alone is not enough. We already have so much carbon in the atmosphere that we need to find ways to draw it out and store it.
One very effective way of doing that is with forests. Attenborough noted that if we could increase the number of trees globally, those trees could absorb two-thirds of the emissions that we’ve already put into the atmosphere.
This is also well within our reach. He talked about how Costa Rica went from having three-fourths of its land covered in forests to only one-fourth forests. To change that, twenty-five years ago the government offered grants to encourage farmers to plant native trees, and now Costa Rica is back up to one-half forest.
And if we reduce meat consumption and the amount of land needed for transportation, we could use much of that reclaimed space to plant trees
Oceans
Having healthy oceans was another key point, for a couple of reasons.
One is diet. Healthier oceans produce more fish, and eating more fish would contribute to reducing meat consumption. That goes back to the point about freeing up land for other uses, such as forests.
Additionally, oceans can also absorb carbon, but only to a point. If they take in too much carbon, the water becomes acidic and ocean life suffers. But if we can increase the alkalinity of the water, it will balance out the acidity.
Marine permaculture is one way to do that. This is already happening in some places, where a frame of recycled material is put into the ocean and used to grow seaweed. That seaweed can be harvested for many uses, and it restores the alkalinity. Gameau also suggested that we could retrofit old oil rigs to housing for marine workers.
Empowering Girls and Women
Perhaps the most surprising item on the list was this one – the importance of empowering girls and women. It may even be the single most important thing we can do.
As the 2040 website notes: “By ensuring that all girls and women have access to education and family planning, they are empowered to earn higher wages, become more independent, actively manage their reproductive health and have fewer and healthier children, consequently slowing down the population growth.”
And that population growth is key. That was one of the first things Attenborough talked about, commenting that other species reach a “peak population” when they hit the limitations of their environment.
So far we haven’t had anything to limit us, but if we can hit our peak sooner, and at a lower number, then we can find ways to live sustainably with the resources we have, in a way that reduces poverty and increases opportunities and care for everyone.
Staying Positive About Our Future
Trying to keep a positive outlook in the face of climate change isn’t easy, which is why I’m grateful for these two films for providing a glimpse of what that could look like. We need that vision of a better possibility as a reminder of what we want to head towards, not only what we want to avoid.
Of course, we need to acknowledge the reality of climate change and the damage it can do. We’re already seeing it with more extreme weather and higher temperatures. But it’s not the only thing we need to think about.
Personally, I know that by focusing on what I can do to help, I’m more motivated and energized to act. And right now, action is what we need.