Our civilization is at a crucial turning point. We currently experience various systemic crises such as climate breakdown, a failing economy, extreme biodiversity loss, rampant inequality, soil erosion, deforestation, pollution, overpopulation, and spiritual apathy. We therefore believe that humanity is facing existential social and ecological challenges.
At the same time, we are optimistic about humanity’s ability to solve complex challenges. There is plenty of evidence in the past stemming from our technical ingenuity and our curious and daring explorations of unknown places. The enormous scientific progress that has been achieved, successful social movements like the abolition of slavery, the criminalization of genocide, and successful civil rights movements are just some examples.
Below you can find our succinct analysis of the challenges we face. They are categorized in nine themes. We believe this context is important before declaring something a “sustainable solution”.
One of the conclusions of our analysis is that many challenges are connected, which makes them complex to solve. What’s more, there is not much time. It is pivotal for our generation to address these challenges by making smart choices that determine our future. Together we must live in harmony with nature and with each other. We simply don’t have another option.
The BUILDINGS in which we live and work significantly impact on our environment.
The CLIMATE on our planet has always been variable. However, these natural cycles have occurred over thousands of years allowing ecosystems to adapt. What makes human-induced climate disruption so dangerous is the speed at which it occurs.
We all live in COMMUNITIES that have changed significantly in recent history. Traditional communities were primarily organized around local resilience.
The Western free-market linear ECONOMY can perhaps best be described as a system where we “Buy stuff we don’t really need, using money we mostly don’t have, in order to impress people we don’t really like”.
Humanity has always turned to the sun for its ENERGY needs, directly or indirectly. We started using “current” sunlight with firewood for cooking and heating and wind power – also a form of solar energy – to move our ships.
In the wake of globalization and increased material wealth, individualism and capitalism have triumphed, while SPIRITUALITY has taken the back seat. GDP growth is worshipped as the main indicator of global prosperity.
Modern TRANSPORTATION for both goods and people is heavily (93%) dependent on petroleum-based fuels. Most planes, ships, cars, trucks and motorcycles use oil and their numbers are growing.
