A crisis is always an opportunity, and I love the entrepreneurship spirit before a crisis, disruptors become lifesavers and visionaries, but there are also poachers and crows, who wish to see a world where banning human interaction and working remotely forever, become a norm.
As you already noticed, the coronavirus crisis brings a new dynamic on how to make business. Remote solutions are popping up and Businesses are moving online: Educators, Managers, Doctors, etc….
Zoom, Google Hangout, Skype, Facebook Live, etc, etc, etc… are at their maximum capacity. And more are joining the “remote” fever.
No more waking up, dressing up, dealing with grumpy faces in the subway or bus. No more morning bad jokes, gossips and complaints at the office. Aleluya!
When 70% of people hate their job, it is obvious the option of remote work sounds a dream coming true…. till the chains of the routine traps you again.
Like Yoga was never mean to break the chains of your mind, trapped in a purposeless job of a broken economy, why then you think Zoom will replace a meaningless career or job?
Is remote work a real solution?
The tech world already declared war to humans a long time ago:
3. Uber Eats plans for replacing your hungry with gluttony.
4. Netflix plans for stoping you queuing at the cinema.
Edtech is already worth 43 USD Billions, and indeed they offer quality and affordable knowledge, but Education? With up to 80% dropouts in online courses, it seems the education is becoming a “drug” product for personal branding addicts rather than an added-value experience for your professional and personal development.
During times of pandemic, a face-to-face ban is capitalised by techno-anxious *I would add a facepalm here, but I’ve been advised against it*
When the crisis is over and the time to return to the office comes: the post homework depression might hit hard, and we should all no blame our workplace for that, instead we should rethink the purpose of our skills in the economy and wonder if we really do well to the planet and to ourselves.
Remote work is not a panacea, and this vision is shared by thousands: ONLINE CAN NEVER REPLACE HUMAN INTERACTION.
Yes, digital tools are great for collaboration and learning, but they will never provide you with authenticity, empathy, moral imagination, satisfaction and real systemic thinking through direct contact with real people, their struggles, their dreams, our planet, its beautiful nature and moreover its complexity.
Online tools provide with a great opportunity, but also with a trap of automatizing and disconnecting ourselves from others. Go 100% remote will not change the fact you hate your job. Do not get into the trap of “online” will save the world. Instead…
It´s time to defend our humanity, heal ourselves from our excesses and restore our relationship with our mother earth.
The day to defend humanity has finally arrived, time to re-build social contracts, reprioritise our values, and understand the fragility of our systems and our planetary boundaries.
There is a lot of disruption needed in the real world:
1. To move to a circular economy, we need to go out and talk to our farmers. 2. To build peace and justice, we need to go out and bring people together, listen and understand their pains. 3. To end poverty, we need to build alternative social systems and stop asking billionaires for charity. 4. To achieve sustainable development goals, We need to reconcile ourselves with our planet.
Our mother earth is shouting out for change and we need to listen.
This week looking for interesting readings, we find this piece that has motivated us to publish in our blog, the author Christiana Figueres, Former Executive Secretary of the Convention on Climate Change of the United Nations, Founding Partner of Global Optimism, Co-host of Outrage And Optimism podcast and Co-author of “The Future We Choose”. In this post Christiana, gives an interesting analysis about the situation of climate change and the effects it will have for the year 2050.
We are heading for a world that will be more than 3C warmer by 2100.
It is 2050. Beyond the emissions reductions registered in 2015, no further efforts were made to control emissions.
The first thing that hits you is the air. In many places around the world, the air is hot, heavy and, depending on the day, clogged with particulate pollution. Your eyes often water. Your cough never seems to disappear. You think about some countries in Asia, where, out of consideration, sick people used to wear white masks to protect others from airborne infection. Now you often wear a mask to protect yourself from air pollution.
You can no longer simply walk out your front door and breathe fresh air: there might not be any. Instead, before opening doors or windows in the morning, you check your phone to see what the air quality will be.
Fewer people work outdoors and even indoors the air can taste slightly acidic, sometimes making you feel nauseated. The last coal furnaces closed 10 years ago, but that hasn’t made much difference in air quality around the world because you are still breathing dangerous exhaust fumes from millions of cars and buses everywhere. Our world is getting hotter. Over the next two decades, projections tell us that temperatures in some areas of the globe will rise even higher, an irreversible development now utterly beyond our control.
Oceans, forests, plants, trees and soil had for many years absorbed half the carbon dioxide we spewed out. Now there are few forests left, most of them either logged or consumed by wildfire, and the permafrost is belching greenhouse gases into an already overburdened atmosphere.
The increasing heat of the Earth is suffocating us and in five to 10 years, vast swaths of the planet will be increasingly inhospitable to humans. We don’t know how hospitable the arid regions of Australia, South Africa and the western United States will be by 2100.
No one knows what the future holds for their children and grandchildren: tipping point after the tipping point is being reached, casting doubt on the form of future civilization.
Some say that humans will be cast to the winds again, gathering in small tribes, hunkered down and living on whatever patch of land might sustain them.
More moisture in the air and higher sea surface temperatures have caused a surge in extreme hurricanes and tropical storms.
Recently, coastal cities in Bangladesh, Mexico, the United States and elsewhere have suffered brutal infrastructure destruction and extreme flooding, killing many thousands and displacing millions.
This happens with increasing frequency now. Every day, because of rising water levels, some part of the world must evacuate to higher ground.
Every day, the news shows images of mothers with babies strapped to their backs, wading through floodwaters and homes ripped apart by vicious currents that resemble mountain rivers.
News stories tell of people living in houses with water up to their ankles because they have nowhere else to go, their children coughing and wheezing because of the mould growing in their beds, insurance companies declaring bankruptcy, leaving survivors without resources to rebuild their lives.
Contaminated water supplies, sea salt intrusions and agricultural runoff are the order of the day. Because multiple disasters are often happening simultaneously, it can take weeks or even months for basic food and water relief to reach areas pummelled by extreme floods.
Diseases such as malaria, dengue, cholera, respiratory illnesses and malnutrition are rampant.
You try not to think about the 2 billion people who live in the hottest parts of the world, where, for upwards of 45 days per year, temperatures skyrocket to 60C (140F), a point at which the human body cannot be outside for longer than about six hours because it loses the ability to cool itself down.
Places such as central India are becoming increasingly challenging to inhabit. Mass migrations to less hot rural areas are beset by a host of refugee problems, civil unrest and bloodshed over diminished water availability.
Food production swings wildly from month to month, season to season, depending on where you live. More people are starving than ever before. Climate zones have shifted, so some new areas have become available for agriculture (Alaska, the Arctic), while others have dried up (Mexico, California).
Still, others are unstable because of the extreme heat, never mind flooding, wildfire and tornadoes. This makes the food supply in general highly unpredictable. Global trade has slowed as countries seek to hold on to their own resources.
Countries with enough food are resolute about holding on to it. As a result, food riots, coups and civil wars are throwing the world’s most vulnerable from the frying pan into the fire. As developed countries seek to seal their borders from mass migration, they too feel the consequences.
Most countries’ armies are now just highly militarised border patrols. Some countries are letting people in, but only under conditions approaching indentured servitude.
Those living within stable countries may be physically safe, yes, but the psychological toll is mounting. With each new tipping point passed, they feel hope slipping away. There is no chance of stopping the runaway warming of our planet and no doubt we are slowly but surely heading towards some kind of collapse. And not just because it’s too hot.
Melting permafrost is also releasing ancient microbes that today’s humans have never been exposed to and, as a result, have no resistance to.
Diseases spread by mosquitoes and ticks are rampant as these species flourish in the changed climate, spreading to previously safe parts of the planet, increasingly overwhelming us. Worse still, the public health crisis of antibiotic resistance has only intensified as the population has grown denser in inhabitable areas and temperatures continue to rise.
The demise of the human species is being discussed more and more. For many, the only uncertainty is how long we’ll last, how many more generations will see the light of day. Suicides are the most obvious manifestation of the prevailing despair, but there are other indications: a sense of bottomless loss, unbearable guilt and fierce resentment at previous generations who didn’t do what was necessary to ward off this unstoppable calamity.
This is an edited extract from The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, published by Manilla Press (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15
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