Back in 2025

Nostalgically poking around in old files, I found a couple of pages of a diary of mine written about 30 years ago, the year 2025… it is touching to see how life was back then and the enthusiasm and opportunities we had in embracing purposeful changes… it was only the very beginning.

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Paolo’s diary

Thursday 5th September 2025

My birthday! My wife gave me the perfect present: a new sweater, well not really new, it has been owned already by 3 different people and she told me she bought it online from Armani Impact. It is top quality, and it feels so exclusive and elegant – Armani does such stylish refurbishments. I really love it!

My son found for me a new impact calculator. It’s much better than the previous one, much more precise in showing the environmental cost of every single product and service that I am considering buying. It is really intuitive, plus it integrates with all our other apps and systems.

Calculators like this are great for us as a family. We always check out two price for each purchase: the euro price and the impact price. As of this year, we have decided that we will only buy when the impact price is positive. At first it wasn’t easy because we had to give up several things - things that we thought we couldn’t live without. But we’ve found that the second life market offers a lot of great vintage old-style products refurbished again and again, at low or zero emission.

Saturday 6th September

It’s bread making day! This is my job, once a week. I use different types of regenerative organic flour that I get locally. What I love most is the absence of plastic in the process and my children are so proud of me when they use their CO2 calculators and see that our breakfast is really in tune with the idea of giving them and their descendants a livable future. Home-made bread is so delicious especially with the fruit spread that my wife makes from seasonal fruit, pears in this case.  

Actually, going fully plant-based has been one of the best decisions of my life: food has never tasted so good, has never been so varied and rich in nutrients before, as well as reducing my eating footprint to the bare minimum.

 Sunday 7th September

Today I want to finish planning our next family holiday. It is now almost 6 years since I took a flight. Wow, it is so strange to think that before that I was taking on average at least one flight a week, creating tons of deadly emissions. This year we are treating ourselves to an intercontinental flight - the only way for us to go and visit Asia. Given that flying is a luxury we plan to stay in Asia for two months, having a holiday but also each of us being able to work and study remotely from there. We are glad to fly with www.ZeroCarbonArline.com, and happy to pay the green premium that one needs to pay to be responsible. What we like about this airline is that not only have their emissions been reduced to the bare minimum with new technology but also, they offset two times their emissions with direct air carbon sequestration technology, meaning that the net outcome of our flight is an immediate and certified carbon sequestration.

We plan to stay in an energy passive resort in the middle of a tropical landscape regeneration project. For each day that we go on sustainable sightseeing trips and adventures, we will do another day of pro-bono work for a landscape regeneration project, helping to build the largest tiny forest in the world with the highest density one can ever imagine. When we are back home, each of us will sequester at least one ton of CO2 net of what we have emitted during our stay. Our holidays will sequester carbon from the atmosphere and support local communities and environments. 

My favorite activity probably will be to learn new vegan recipes from the local community with whom will spend quality time, a good way to spend money: help the local community, learn and probably have lot of fun with them.

Tuesday 8th September

Yesterday my daughter bought a bike with the frame made of carbon sequestered from the atmosphere here in Sterrebeek by the local CO2- craftsman. She has her own mechanical tree that sequesters CO2 directly from the atmosphere and turns it into a solid carbon-based material from which she makes useful and beautiful products. All the other components have a C02-zero certificate. My daughter has been saving money for two years to be able to buy such a luxury product, but now, when she bikes around the neighborhood, she gets such admiring glances. 

Friday 9th September

Wow! Great news. The dividend from my investments in renewable energy bonds is more than enough to pay the loan installments for the retrofitting of my home to make it energy efficient. Today our house has less than 10% of the impact of only 5 years ago. It has to be said that we have got used to a temperature of 17.5 degrees Celsius in the winter: now we cannot stand warm houses any longer, they suffocate us! Such a waste of energy!

 After everything we’ve been through with the pandemic and the effects of climate change, I really feel that this is going to be a good year!

 END

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Well, now we are in 2055, not everything went well in these last 30 years, but could have been much worse. For example, I might have lost the respect of my grandchildren… instead they are proud that I did not turn my head to the other side but have instead studied the issue, embraced change, influenced communities and supported new technologies even when this was, by far, not yet the new normal.

Paolo Senes

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