Towards One Green World

TOWARD ONE GREEN WORLD

A Day in 2042

“Good morning, honey!“ Mira wakes up to these lovely words and turns to look into a smiling face. She knew Kim since high school and they just moved together to the green town of Weyarn, one of the emerging carbonzero community villages just outside of Munich. She stands up to take a quick look at the red sunrise out of the panorama window and notices the dimming street lights controlled by the smart grid system. “You wanna join me for a shower?“ she turns around and looks at Kim. “Not today. I will support a climate initiative of students in Chile this morning.“

As Mira enters the shower, she sets the water on cold and instantly feels a vibration on her wrist. “You just gained two carbon credits for saving on warm water“, her smart carbon watch prompts the good news. A smile wanders across her lips. She is proud that she gets along so well with her carbon credits since she decided to cut back on the energy consumption in her daily life. After the shower, she puts on an elegant blazer made of recycled plastic yarn and walks over to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. She opens the fridge and gets out her customized granola, curated by her smart assistant to suit her exact daily calorie needs. Sometimes she thinks back to the avocado toast she always used to have when she was still free to choose what to have for breakfast. On the one hand, she misses the subtle buttery taste, but on the other hand, she would feel irresponsible for consuming a product so harmful to the climate. As she grabs her laptop and gets ready to leave, she hears Kim’s voice through the hallway: “Lots of luck, darling, you will rock today!“ She leaves the house and takes a deep breath of the fresh air outside with a feeling of confidence.

Mira turns around, looking at the green facade of their penthouse apartment before heading toward the hyperloop station. At the terminal, she walks straight to the platform where the pod toward Maastricht is already waiting. The door slides open smoothly after scanning her face. The carbon watch vibrates gently, acknowledging that the payment of carbon credits was successful. Mira looks at her budget and realizes that the price must have increased again. Angrily, she thinks that one day the hyperloop will only be affordable for the privileged.

After making herself comfortable, the display in front of her seat turns on, showing the headline from the highly renowned founder magazine Shapers: “WastR in talks with investors for going global.“ A feeling of pride overcomes her: all the time and hard work during the last years she has put into her company WastR is finally starting to pay off. After the Circular Economy Act was adopted ten years ago, the Western world decided to commit to importing waste from developing countries, helping them to improve their living standards and slowly turn green. Mira recognized the opportunity and started WastR, a company specializing in separating and extracting scarce resources from waste.

As the company has proven successful in Europe, investors from the UN invited her for a meeting to discuss strategies to scale globally. While thinking about the investor meeting today, Mira has mixed feelings. She is excited but also a bit nervous about the chance to make the world even greener.

While approaching Maastricht, she looks out the window into the deep blue ocean next to the city. Years ago, the area north of Maastricht, where the rest of the Netherlands used to be, was swallowed by the rising sea levels. After arriving, Mira walks down the promenade and watches how gigantic hydrogen-fueled ships loaded with waste from Africa are approaching the harbor. She enters WastR’s large modern office, where her secretary awaits her with a freshly prepared oat-milk cappuccino and notes for the upcoming meeting with the UN representative. Lost in thought on how she wants to structure the pitch storyline, her secretary enters the room: “Mira, he is waiting for you in the conference room.“ Unsure about her feelings about the upcoming meeting, she pulls herself together briefly and walks through the door. “Welcome, Mr. Olivio! Nice to meet you. I hope you found your way here well.“ “Thanks a lot, Mira. I am very impressed by your resource separation technology and how precisely your robots can take apart electronic waste.“ “Yes, indeed! But that’s not our work alone, we are collaborating with a wide range of research institutes all across Europe and Africa and utilize the computer vision algorithms developed at the TUM facilities in Nigeria.“ – “That sounds fantastic. We are always thrilled to hear about global collaboration. As you might have guessed, we see WastR becoming a crucial player in the global resource ecosystem. Therefore, there is an increasing public interest in making it an UN-owned company. Are you open to discuss on that?“

Later that day, Mira heads home. In the hyperloop pod, she puts on her VR goggles to enter THE SPHERE. After the virtual world finishes loading, she quickly looks at her watch. She is late. Hurrying into the Countrymen Cow Club, she notices an old man sitting in the far corner of the dark and smokey place. “He is withering away“, Mira reflects, approaching the table. “I got us two rib-eye steaks with guacamole n’ some of that good ol’ whiskey“, he murmurs. “How are you?“ Mira asks. “Seriously? Look at this shitty new world. It’s not like in the ol’ days anymore when we went on a ride around the city with the biker gang. All of this new and so fancy climate tech and big-brother bullshit.“ – “But Dad!..“ Reinhold starts munching. Blood is running down the silver knife. Mira is not hungry. “This climate dictatorship dominates our life.“ he continues, “I want my freedom back!“ “But dad!“ Mira argues, “can’t you see what we have achieved with this already? I know living today might be challenging from time to time, but we are saving our planet, animals from extinction, and humanity.“ Reinhold sighs. “How many coins do you have left?“ Mira asks with a shallow voice. Silence. “Oh, dad!“ she shouts, “both of us know what will happen if you end up below zero! Don’t do that to me!“ Nothing. The sound of a completed coin transaction interrupts the noise of the frying pan in the background. “Thanks.“ Mira pulls off the VR headset. Her pod just arrived at Weyarn Central Station.

The sky was ablaze by the fire of the setting sun. Mira is looking forward to dinner as she hails a hydrogen-fueled air taxi. Minutes pass, and the jet silently descends to pick her up. When she arrives at the restaurant, Mira sees Kim draped beautifully in a sleek dress made out of pineapple leaf fiber. As Kim pecks Mira on the cheek, Mira breaks the big news about the government investment in WastR. “We make such a great couple“, Kim says proudly. She works at the UN, which is growing in power to enforce climate laws and introduce a global GHG emissions market. With companies like WastR collaborating with the government, the circular resource flow is now flourishing globally. She smiles, knowing that if there are even more businesses like Mira’s, slowly but surely, all countries will reach the UN’s sustainability goal of spending 2% of their GDP on climate action.

Kim tops Mira with an even bigger announcement: “You know that project I’ve been working on? I’m writing a blockchain smart contract for the UN!“ Mira nods in disbelief and tries to digest what she’s hearing. Kim explains further, “This is big. The Decentralized Autonomous

Organization, known as the UN DAO, is gonna be wild. It will let countries vote with their carbon budget so that people that act greener have more voting power. UN officials then no longer influence decisions any more than individual people!“

While Mira and Kim reminisce on their eventful day, they stroll out of the restaurant. They are greeted by a blanket of stars and the crescent moon that lights up the night. When the two first met, they could not see such a clear sky due to the horrid pollution. Now everything seems a lot greener as all countries are on track toward net-zero emissions. The Earth is better now than ever before as Kim and Mira move toward one green world.

Signposts

■ 40% of EU citizens follow a vegetarian diet, and only the minority eats meat more than once a week. ■ Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, and other climate action movements reach 50m supporters on all continents. ■ The UN uses its new competencies in climate politics to introduce a global GHG emissions market, consolidating existing local markets like the EU-ETS as well as voluntary markets. ■ A standardized CO2-Budget per person is introduced by the UN. People with a low carbon footprint can earn an extra income by selling their excess certificates on a global marketplace. ■ All EU countries are led by green party governments, and a pan-European green party coalition is leading the

EU. ■ The UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) states form an economic and monetary union with a shared currency. ■ The AU and the EU establish a climate action agreement. ■ EU countries import more waste than they export for the first time as they move towards a more circular economy. ■ As a joined global initiative, all UN countries commit 2% of their GDP towards climate action. ■ The global CO2 emissions are below 30Gt per year for the first time since they surpassed it in 2005