The conflict of our era – a few questions

In an effort to think about the cultural transformation that is required in order to regenerate the natural ecosystems of Earth’s biosphere at an exponential pace within the short window of ten years we have to avert catastrophic planetary collapse, I came up with the following questions: 

1. Given that technology –most particularly, digital technologies– are the only industry growing exponentially, what should be the role for tech to play in this transformation? 

2. Which industries would be listed among the biggest losers in terms of traditional economic terms such as monetary value, market share, stock price, etc., and how best to incorporate them in the process?

3. How should we deal with traditional economic rules of capitalism that perpetuate the causes of environmental degradation, such as the ideology of endless GDP growth in a planet with natural limits? 

4. How to deal with very strong market forces deeply engrained in the system such as fisheries subsidies, fossil fuel subsidies, and other market-distorting forces? 

5. How to incorporate negative externalities to have a more precise and assertive figure of the real cost of production and consumption of goods in the marketplace? 

6. What role should customs play to measure and account for embedded CO2 emissions in products intended for the international marketplace? 

7. How should we best incorporate the powerful force of the youth in this equation –or better, how to best incorporate our efforts into theirs?

8. How should we deal with the complacency syndrome, in which a person feels good to know someone else is doing something about the problem so they can continue with their business-as-usual mentality and behavior?

9. How do we tackle the instant gratification mentality in which a person does not care as much about the future, long-term, holistic impact of her actions as getting what she can and wants and believes she deserves right here, right now?

10. What successful efforts are already being done that could be interconnected to form synergies and speed up the transformation? 

11.  What are good business and policy practices that can be shared quickly and easily and adapt them swiftly into diverse cultural, geographical and political settings? 

12. How can we make climate action “cool”, pretty much in the same fashion as NASA made space exploration “cool” through their multiple social media outlets? 

13. What kind of leadership skills need to be brewed and cultivated in order to produce better leaders at the convergence of climate action and the fourth industrial revolution? 

14. What other questions would you add? Even better: would you suggest any answers?