The Digital Civilizations Interviews

Paradigm Shifts

While the usual immediate consequences of such attacks unfolded – stock market crashes, sharp reduction in air travel, security measures than soon became permanent, economic ripple effects… – a most unexpected thing happened: Governments did not budge and renewed their commitments to greener growth.

Travel restrictions were converted into an opportunity to «Move less, do more», as UN ambassador Bono put it. In spite of intense lobbying by airlines and the aerospace industry, air travel was severely taxed and caps were imposed on air traffic towards several major destinations. As a substitute, governments and foundations encouraged research on «lifelike» remote communications and installed life-size teleconferencing rooms in developed and developing country metropolis alike, encouraging people to tele-act rather than move as much as possible. Results were initially mixed, but with the right financial incentives and penalties in place, as well as the progress in rich sensory interfaces, telework, telepresence and other forms of remote communications slowly picked up. Virtual universes that had spun off in different parts of the world started connecting through a «Metaverse», to become one of the most powerful means of organizing remote interactions and public forums with a real sense of common presence.

Managed by a deeply reorganized World Bank and funded through a special contribution by developed countries, the «Oil Severance Project» was launched. Its goal was to design and co-finance large-scale projects with the potential to make countries or industries less dependent on fossil energy: very large wind farms or solar panel fields, experimental sea-bottom turbines, ultra-fast train networks. The «New Paradigms in Resource Production and Use» research programme was another major international initiative, looking for out-of-the-box ideas for industrial processes and transportations that would use less energy and resources and produce less emissions and permanent waste. One of the programme's rules was that results should be public and open-source.

After some tough discussions, and not a few resignations, among its economists, the IMF and the World Bank even adopted the Human Development Index as a key indicator, and started linking all financing activities to total cost calculations, including environmental and social externalities.

A «Climate Solidarity Fund» was also created in 2013, and came to immediate use when cyclones of unprecedented strength, following an unusually wet rainy season, hit Bangladesh, killing or displacing millions and ruining most of the country's infrastructure. Coordinated by the UN's Fast Response Corps created along with the Fund, public and NGO relief actions worked miracles, although some areas would remain inhabitable for decades.