This year I am embarking on a new, additional mission. You may have already noticed in my Twitter feed and via my Facebook updates that I am expanding my work into various 'green' topics such as sustainability (in particular what has been termed 'sustainable capitalism), climate change and global warming, and renewable energy. While investigating these new topics I am also hard at work on my new book "From Ego to Eco" which will cover some of these issues (in addition to media, culture, politics and what I call 'the networked society) as well.
My new site / blog at GreenFuturist.com was launched a few months ago and is shaping up pretty well, already; I am using it primarily to share updates and interesting snippets culled from my research and 100s of RSS feeds that I scan for the latest developments. Please take a look, read the announcement (also below), comment, follow me on Tumblr, or subscribe to the GreenFuturist RSS feed. You may also want to visit (and like?) my new Facebook 'Green Futurist' page, or check out my new @AGreenFuturist Twitter channel.
I also recommend you follow my new public Kindle notes on Amazon - this is starting to be a good resource and I am sharing notes on 30+ books there.
My work in media, content, communications and the Future of Business will continue, of course; both with my esteemed colleagues at The Futures Agency as well as by myself. Stay tuned via TFA's Facebook page.
I have just confirmed my first public appearance as 'Green Futurist' at the EcoSummit 2012 in Berlin, on March 22nd (first thing in the morning), and look forward to maybe seeing you there (on-location or virtually) if at all possible.
See you soon! Gerd Leonhard
PS: be sure to follow and use this new Twitter hashtags #greenfutures and #mission12
Here is the official announcement of my new Mission 2012.
ANNOUNCING GREEN FUTURIST
I have worked in digital music, media and in the Internet business since 1995. Since 2001 I have worked as an independent Futurist with a focus on media, content, entertainment and publishing, technology, telecom as well as in marketing, branding and communications.
In 2012, I will expand my activities into a new direction which I like to call ”Green Futures”, encompassing issues such as sustainability, climate changeand carbon reduction, alternative and renewable energies, the future of transportation, a new type of capitalism that is not (just) based on profit and growth (as I call it, shifting from EGO to ECO), environmental action, eco-tourism and the future of the tourism, the ‘greening’ of business; and in general, the radical changes that a post-growth society will certainly demand of us, very soon.
Venture capitalist John Doerr said in his seminal and deeply moving 2007 Ted talk on green technologies, quoting KPCP Founder Eugene Kleiner: “there are times when the appropriate response is panic”. Without wanting to push the panic button even more frequently, or harder, than other futurists before me, I must admit that I also feel that we urgently must consider sweeping changes in how we live, work and do business.
I therefore want to use my somewhat tried-and-tested speaking and presentation skills to address perhaps the most important issue there is: how we can we change the way we live, how we operate our businesses, define our policies and direct our governments; and how we will use and replenish our planet’s resources, going forward.
I believe that if we don’t stop borrowi ng from our own future, and if we don’t start paying the real price for what our ever-increasing consumption actually costs (or maybe even curtail our consumption??), we have a very good chance at losing everything we value, today, in the next 20-50 years. We may lose our oceans, our forests, our glaciers, our rivers, our wildlife, our breathable air and our clean water - and this is not a world that I want my children, or grand-children, to live in.
Maybe we can no longer be content with ‘tinkering around the edges’, making only minor dents into this rapidly widening path to destruction. Maybe we need large, sweeping actions that will require significant sacrifices from us. It is these conversations and actions I want to further with my work as Green Futurist.
Gerd Leonhard, January 2012
Recent Comments