Matt Rilkoff

JUDGE’S COMMENTS

MATT RILKOFF

RESEARCH ARTICLE

It is common to believe the future is out of our control. A time which is both unknowable and yet inevitable and of which we are not responsible.

But the research articles submitted this year demonstrate our relationship with the future cannot be so removed. We must understand the future is the one kind of time over which we have the greatest control and the greatest responsibility.

We are morally obligated to imagine a better future and start work now to make sure that future becomes real.

Change dominated this year’s entries. The need to change how humans interact with their environment or risk losing everything. Flying and driverless cars, new farm technologies and new social constructs, are discussed not in terms of making our life more fantastical but in terms of reducing our burden on the planet, its flora and its fauna.

Cows eating seaweed is not so they can produce more milk, but so they will produce less methane. The rise of veganism is not because of taste but to reduce animal and environmental suffering. Growing vegetables in the back garden is not to save money but to slow down, appreciate life and in doing so notice the beauty inherent in it.

The future is ours to control. We are not victims of it. This year’s entries do not shy away from that responsibility and in that awareness there is great hope. And hope is what will make it all possible.