A Brief History of the Future (2024) s01e01 Episode Script
Beyond the Now
1
We're in the Ancient
Bristlecone Pine Forest,
just over 11,000 feet,
home to some of the oldest
trees on planet Earth.
The trees in this forest that
are surrounding me right now
are older than
the pyramids in Egypt.
They were alive
when Jesus Christ was born.
Some of these trees were
already 4,000 years old
when the United States was born.
They go back further than
almost all recorded history.
When you're
at a place like this,
it changes your perspective
because these trees
are truly the great
ancestors of life on Earth.
They have been here for so long
and will more than likely
be here long after I'm gone.
And it's very rare
to be in a place
where you have
that sense of time.
It changes your perspective
on not only where we are
and what we've done
as a species on this planet,
but where we might
be able to go.
Set one Ari, take one.
Name and describe yourself.
What are you? Who are you?
Ha ha! My name is Ari Wallach.
I am a father, a husband,
and during the day,
when I'm not doing those
two probably most important
things, I am a futurist.
Growing up,
I remember feeling
so excited about the future,
impatient, actually because I
couldn't
wait for it to arrive.
Beam me aboard.
I watched
movies and TV shows
that told stories
of what felt like
inevitable human progress,
filling me with a sense
of hope and possibility.
And it wasn't just on TV.
We were launching rockets.
Markets were booming.
And the Internet
was coming online.
Hope is back in America.
We are on the right track
to the 21st century.
3, 2, 1.
Happy 2000!
The next generation
and the generations that follow
will live in a world
far better
than the one we have today.
I went to work
as a futurist,
helping governments
and major companies
around the world
better think about and plan
for the future,
not working
to predict the future,
but looking at long-term trends
and the impacts they were
go
\h
ing to have across society.
It was an exciting time.
And it really did feel like
we were on the brink
of something extraordinary.
New technology
was poised to bring about
unprecedented prosperity
and connection.
Less poverty, more peace,
and shorter work weeks
were all right
around the corner.
But then something happened,
or didn't happen.
And that future
never really showed up.
We are now working more,
not less.
We have become more
technologically connected
and yet more deeply divided.
The consequences
of long-overlooked
environmental destruction are
showing up in terrifying ways.
And the stories
we tell ourselves
about tomorrow
are now stories of dystopia
where everything falls apart.
Our feelings
about tomorrow have shifted
from excitement to dread.
And the future
has become something
to avoid rather than to build.
But over the years,
my work has convinced me
the future is not set in stone.
We have the power to shape it.
That's what's led me here
to making this show.
I'm looking for the people
wh
\h
o are building better futures
for themselves,
for their kids,
and for the world around them.
Because the truth is, we have
choices to make right now.
And these choices
are going to have
major, long-lasting effects.
So I'm headed out on a journey
to meet the brilliant minds
and brave pioneers
changing our world
and reinventing tomorrow,
people who believe that we have
everything we need
to create better futures--
not perfect, but better--
and something each
generation can build on,
those challenging
the status quo,
expanding our ideas
of what's at stake
and what's still possible,
from food to education,
from the cities we live in
to the ways in which
we organize our societies,
people using new tools
and ancient wisdom
to restore our relationship
with each other,
to ourselves, and to this
be
\h
autiful place we call home,
a journey to rediscover
how far we've come,
and where we could take this
whole thing moving forward.
What I'm really
mo
\h
st interested in doing here
is trying to find the people
and the ideas
that are going to kind of
show us what futures
could be and from there
figure out which ones we want.
So this is great.
So let's talk a little bit
about the science
of motivation.
What do we think--
As my journey begins,
I'm interested in why,
even with all these
tools and technologies
available, so many of us
find it difficult to think
about the future.
That's brought me
here to sit down
with a behavioral psychologist
named Hal Hershfield.
Our future selves
often feel like strangers to us.
They feel like sort of
different people altogether.
One of the big findings
in the early days
of what's called
"social neuroscience"
is that
the brain can tell
what's me
and what's not me,
which makes sense
in a way.
If I'm sitting in a scanner,
and I think about myself,
I see more activity
in what's called
my medial
prefrontal cortex
and certain parts
of the brain there
than if I, say,
think about you.
I was more
interested because I thought
that that finding held the clue
for maybe why we start thinking
about our future selves
as different, other people.
In other words, if I can
distinguish between me
and you in my brain,
would I see
a same sort
of disconnect between me
and my future self
in my brain?
So here's what we did.
We had our research
participants
go into the scanner.
They see a little screen
in front of them.
It's a really boring,
basic screen.
And they see a word
at the top.
And the word
represents a person
they need to think about.
So they say, "OK.
Think about current self or
think about your future self."
And what we saw was that the
brain activity from thinking
about your future self
was more similar
to the brain activity
when people thought
about another person.
What are the
implications of that?
It suggests that
on some deeper level,
we really do think
about our future selves
as if they are
other people.
When you take
that perspective,
if our future self
is some other person,
then the consequences
of my decisions right now
are going to befall
some other person.
All right.
So why don't you
look at me?
All right.
That's good.
All right.
Now keep that face.
All right. And let's
try this one more time.
We're going to do
something funny here.
All right. So let's
pull these up here.
And then here's the
Oh!
older ver--
Wow. All right.
So what do you think
when you see that?
I mean, I'm sure
people have
a somewhat
similar reaction.
That looks shockingly
like my dad.
Yeah.
It seems like I don't
totally know who that is.
Right.
Right. Right.
But it also doesn't
seem that far from now.
Right.
Which is, in a way,
true to form, right?
Like, when we think
about our future selves,
you know, they may not
be that far from now.
We don't totally know
who they are, but--
When I first see that,
like, it's jarring.
And then now
you think, "OK."
Once you get over
the initial kind of shock
of where things could go,
you think, like, "OK.
"Well, like, if these are
still the same individual,
"like, how
does this one now,
"like, befriend and
best-friend this one.
And what would you
do for a best friend?"
I think that's, like,
the exact right
perspective there.
Because they're
not the same.
Yeah.
But it is that same
sort of relationship
of a best friend.
In some ways, the work
that you're doing,
it's like
a wormhole, right?
It's like the "Star Trek"
wormhole to the future
and lets us kind of
see ahead.
But, like you said, it's
not just about vision.
It's actually
about the emotions
that pull us through.
And I think this
is a key insight here.
This is really a
conversation about empathy.
This is a vision that's
really hard to conjure up.
I can't picture
my grandkids.
I can barely
picture my own kids
when they're older
because I'm so stuck
on what they
look like right now.
But I have
a really easy time
knowing how
I want them to feel
and knowing how I want
their kids to feel
and on and on and on.
And so,
like you said,
that's the empathy
through line.
That's the sort of
empathy freeway
that we want
to consider.
It's powerful
to consider how we want
life to be for the generations
yet to be born.
And it forces us to think
beyond our own lifetime.
Today, we live
in a world in which
we're ill-adapted to inhabit.
That wasn't
the world, the space
and time, the environment
that we evolved in.
So a natural
consequence of that
is some of our
cognitive abilities
aren't necessarily tuned
for the world that we've
miraculously managed
to construct,
a world in which we have
a vast amount of information
and an amazing ability
to address future problems,
to invest in the future.
And that ability is
something that perhaps
we don't use to the extent
that we would like.
I like to think
of the future as a story.
It's really a set of ideas
that we all engage in.
And so in some sense,
th
\h
e future is very malleable.
And in other ways,
it kind of doesn't exist.
And so it's open terrain
for lots of new ideas
and new ways
of being in the world.
So when most people
ask me what's my story,
I actually start back in 1922.
This is the Holocaust
Oral History Project
interview
of Rachmiel Wolochwianski,
April 28, 1993.
I am born in the
city Baranowicze, East Poland.
1922 was the year
my father was born
in a small town called
Baranowicze in Poland.
Around the time
of his 18th birthday
was when the Nazis
invaded Poland.
These were the only
pictures made in the city
during the siege.
Many of the middle-aged
were sullen and angry.
Youngsters were
half-resentful, half-resigned,
while their elders
turned to prayer.
All the Jews were
pushed into a small ghetto.
Eventually, his mother and
sister were sent to Auschwitz,
and that's where
they perished.
Now, my father
and his brother and dad
were still in the ghetto.
And at one point,
they actually escaped.
And in the kind of escape
of leaving the ghetto,
my grandfather
wa
\h
s actually shot and killed.
And soon thereafter, my father
joined the Jewish underground,
the resistance,
and for several years,
basically he lived
in the forests of Poland
fighting the Nazis
day in and day out.
When I thought about what
I want to do with my life
I decided to choose a path
that would allow me
to kind of apply
the way I think
we should
be morally operating
as a species,
no
\h
t so much to just push back
against the Nazis of today,
wh
\h
ich is unbelievably important,
but in many ways to think
about what was happening
in the late 1920s
and late 1930s
before the Nazis came to power,
thinking about how
the world was in so much flux,
and why weren't there people
around to help steer us
towards a better path?
In many ways, that greatly
influences the work that I do.
I'm thinking about
where can we take this
in a positive way, right?
I'm not a futurist
who's saying,
"Look out for these different
icebergs on the Titanic."
I'm saying there are
icebergs out there.
We should navigate
through them.
But what is the harbor
that we're trying to get to?
There's a phrase called
"cathedral thinking."
And what that means is,
how do we go about
making decisions
in the same ways
that those who build
ancient cathedrals thought?
Because when they were
building cathedrals,
I mean, more often
than not, the architect
and the initial builders
of the cathedral
wouldn't even be around
to
\h
see it actually completed.
It wouldn't happen
in their lifetime.
So they had to make
these decisions in a way
where they were literally
laying the cornerstone
for something that they would
never actually see completed,
but they were doing it
for the next generation.
I came to Cordoba
to see firsthand
a project that has been
many, many generations
in the making.
It's awe-inspiring
to experience something
that those who started never
lived to see completed
built as a gift
to those yet to be born,
a reminder that
the future is being built
on our actions right now.
The future is a verb.
It's something we do.
We can become great ancestors.
And that is what
the future needs us to do
right now,
to think in a way
that places us in their shoes.
This idea of stepping
back to see ourselves
and the work we do in this
moment as a piece of something
larger is so powerful,
and it has the potential
to unlock bigger, better ideas
worth working towards
in the years to come.
It's my first time
in Morocco, and I've
read about this massive solar
power plant for a while now.
And to be able
to come and visit it
is kind of like
a dream come true.
It's a little bit,
you know, solar, alternative,
renewable energy geek in me.
But to see a plant
kind of come up
in the middle of
the desert using the latest
technology that can power
a huge part of the country
is amazing for me.
So tell me, where
are we right now?
So in this area
right here just alone,
how many of these
mirrors are there?
Two million?
Two million.
2 million
of these panels?
Yeah, in NOOR I.
The complex
here is the largest
concentrated solar power plant
in the world,
generating enough power
to supply a million
homes in Morocco
with renewable electricity.
And in a country that doesn't
ha
\h
ve a natural supply of oil,
natural gas, or coal,
they believe this is the start
of something even bigger.
What is kind of
your hope and your dream
for Morocco in terms of the
raw resources that are coming
to your land from the sky?
What could
an energy-independent future
look like,
not just here, but everywhere?
What impact will it have on
our politics, our health care,
and the well-being
of the natural world
when we create a future
independent from fossil fuels?
Solar technology
is just one piece of making
that future a reality.
But as large-scale facilities
are popping up in countries
all over the world, the goal
of powering major cities
and entire countries
is getting closer every day.
In Northern California,
scientists
are taking a similar approach
by applying long-term thinking
to the challenges
facing us today,
pursuing a long-held dream
of limitless clean energy.
I'm Annie Kritcher.
I was a lead designer
for the Ignition experiment.
We are at the National
Ignition Facility
in Livermore, California.
What we do here is,
we take two atoms,
and we smash them together,
and we make a heavier atom.
And that process
releases energy.
And so you're literally for
90 trillionths of a second
creating a mini sun.
That's correct.
The reason that we
ne
\h
ed to generate stars on Earth
is to reach
the extreme conditions
that are required to get
two atoms to fuse together.
So you need tens of millions
of degrees to do that.
We have 192
laser beams which enter
the ends of a hollow cylinder.
And then they hit the hollow
cylinder on the inside.
And that creates an oven,
a very hot X-ray oven,
which is
3 million degrees.
And inside of
the cylinder sits
a little, tiny capsule
the size of a BB.
And inside
of that little, tiny BB
sits the deuterium and tritium
that we want to fuse together.
And so this intense X-ray oven
heats the outside
of the capsule,
ex
\h
plodes that material outward,
and just like a rocket,
where the rocket fuel goes out
and that pushes
a rocket up,
we're squeezing
the material down
to half the size
of a human hair
from the size of a BB.
Because of that
outward expansion,
we get an implosion.
What is the goal of this
work in the big picture?
Nuclear fusion could
provide clean, limitless,
abundant energy
for mankind.
Fusion is really the
Holy Grail of energy.
That dream reached
a
\h
major milestone here recently
as Annie's team
led an experiment
that successfully created
ignition for the first time.
This is the target bay.
Here we have the target
chamber, which is in blue.
It's a spherical
chamber.
It's about 10 meters
in diameter.
And here, the laser beams
come into the chamber.
The laser beams are what
drives our experiments.
If it's
a 10-chapter book,
what chapter are we in
right now in this room?
I'd say we're not
in Chapter 1,
because we've been working on
this for quite a long while.
And we just had
the breakthrough.
I guess,
maybe Chapter 3.
The person that came up
with the concept to do this
did so before
I was born.
So it is really
a passing-the-torch,
multi-generation problem,
big-science problem.
How should
we be thinking
about challenges like this?
I think it's
really important to consider
the long-term benefits
and also
the generations
coming after us
to create a clean world
for them and to give them
the necessary means
to be able to generate
energy in the future.
So it's a really
important grand challenge.
And it's just
so important
for our future
generations.
One of the most
exciting things
about this moment
is that we have the tools
and potential to shape
the future in ways
that have never been
possible before.
The choices we make around
ho
\h
w we develop our technologies
here and now will set
a
\h
path for future generations
to build on.
In the great arc
of human history,
we are living in the midst
of an extraordinary time.
Deep time,
like, what is that?
How could the universe
have been here without us?
What does it mean
that we've only been around
for the tiniest sliver of time
relative to the universe?
This is a humbling revelation.
All animals
have clocks in our brains,
going back to
a circadian clock,
because it's very
important to tell time
and to predict what's
going to happen.
But humans have been
obsessed with time,
in many ways, throughout--
since the beginning
of civilization.
And if you go back
through human history,
it's been one long
quest to measure time
with more and more
and more precision.
Time--
our story is about men
who are attempting to defeat it.
Time is their enemy
in the search
for the ultimate origins of man.
If you take
a football field,
100 yards,
and that's the timeline
of the universe,
cave dwellers to the present
on a timeline
that begins in one end zone
and ends in the other,
the thickness
of a blade of grass
at the end of that timeline
is from present day
back to cave paintings.
In many ways,
one of the cognitive abilities
that makes Homo sapiens
sapien--or wise, if you will--
is our ability
to conceptualize time.
And this ability to engage
in mental time travel
seems to be pretty
unique to humans.
Over the years,
I've worked to help
various organizations think
about and plan for the future.
But recently, something
strange has started to happen.
Long-term plans
that were 20 or 30 years out
are now only focused
on the next 6 months.
As the pace
of the world gets faster,
our perspective
is getting smaller.
What does it take
to step back and develop
a long-term perspective?
How does our past
impact the future?
And what can we learn
from those who have faced
moments like these before?
I'm here
to speak with someone
who spent her life working
to ensure her community
holds on to the best
parts of their past
as they look
towards the future.
Hi, Ari.
Do not get up.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you for
your invitation.
And thank you for
joining us here.
Thank you so much
for having us.
Thank you.
This is my husband Tom.
Oh, hey.
I'm just going to go
around really fast.
Yes.
Grandson.
Hey. Ari.
Pleasure.
My English name
is Antonia Loretta Afraid
of Bear Cook.
When I go in the nation's
house and I address the nation,
I am Anpetu Luta Win.
I'm called Red Day Woman.
Loretta's work
began here with her own tribe,
where she works to pass on
the ancient ways of her people
to the next generation.
But that work quickly grew
as leaders around the world
recognized the wisdom
that these ideas held
for looking
at today's challenges
through a much wider lens.
When we
think about the future,
why is it so important
that we remember the past?
I think that the most
important thing
about that
question is,
we have to have
interconnectedness.
I have to know
where I came from
in order for me
to teach my grandchildren
so that we
can move forward.
This idea of time
as an entity,
how would you say
it's separate
than the way time
is practiced today,
kind of--
It's very different.
You practice time
according to a schedule
and according to,
"Oh, I got to get over here.
"I got to catch a plane.
I got to do this.
I got to do that."
And it's very stressful.
But if you were to set it up
in that spirit time,
OK, what are you
setting it up for?
There's definitive ways in
wh
\h
ich you approach that time.
If you're living
in a spiritual way,
then you have time
to pay attention
to the plants,
the trees, the animals,
the fish in the ocean.
And when you're doing
all of these things,
you begin to steward
what's around you.
But that's not
how we live today.
Today we live by that time
that's running on a clock,
and how much money can we make,
you know, doing this?
So you put profit over people.
Spending time with
Loretta and her family,
it's obvious that these
concepts are not just ideas,
but rather principles that
inform how she lives and works
to pass on the ancient
ways of their people
to the next generation.
For her, these ways
are not just about the past,
but about a way of being
in the present that
recognizes the impact
that our lives will have
on future generations.
What is seventh-generation
thinking,
and why is it
so important today?
Do you have children?
Yes.
OK. So can you recount
back to your beginning?
I can probably go back
two or three generations.
OK. It's a concept.
And it's a loving
concept that we
talk about
to our loved ones.
So you make it
your business
to know what it is
about yourself
that you're going
to engage in so you
can get to that
seventh-generation thinking.
So 7-generation
thinking
is making decisions
as if you think
about the impact
they will have
on 7
generations from now?
Exactly.
Every decision that
I make in this moment,
I should think
about the impact
that it will have 7
generations from now.
But people are--
they love convenience.
They don't want
to think about,
oh, 7 generations,
you know?
But we have so many social
ills all over the nation,
all over the country.
And those are the things
that we're trying our best,
I think, in this generation,
to make a difference.
What's your hope
for the future?
That we can all
si
\h
t together
at a spiritual table
and all of us be
to
\h
gether truly.
That's my prayer.
That's my prayer.
When we saw Earth
over our shoulders,
having visited the moon,
it was a firmware upgrade
in our sense of awareness.
Our first images
from the moon were 1968,
taken by astronauts.
That was the first mission
to the moon--Apollo 8.
They went to the moon,
orbited a dozen or so times,
and then came back.
One of those orbits,
they lifted the Hasselblad,
and there was Earth rising
over the lunar landscape,
just the way the moon rises
over the Earth's landscape.
Why do I call it
a firmware upgrade?
Because if you ask
any one of those people,
they're not
consciously thinking,
"I saw Earth from space,"
but they're feeling it.
Psychoemotionally,
they are reacting
to a cosmic perspective.
Humans are at their
be
\h
st when we're thinking bigger
than just ourselves,
when we look up and see
beyond this moment to remember
that we are part of everything
that came before us
and we're also laying
the foundation for generations
yet to come.
But why do so many
of the systems
that govern our world
today seem so locked
into short-term thinking?
I've come to Japan to meet
an economist named Dr. Saijo
who's challenging
this way of thinking
with remarkable results.
So we know we have
this problem
of shortsightedness,
and we want
to kind of solve
for intergenerational
justice
and how we think
about time differently.
Tell me
about your work.
Rather than just
writing about the problems
with short-term thinking,
Dr
\h
. Saijo started something here
called the Future Design Center
to test the impacts
of long-term thinking
in real-life situations,
bringing together
everyday people
from the town
to take part in creating
the future of their community.
Community members
put on these robes
to signify themselves
as representatives
of future generations.
With this in mind, they work
to address the needs of today,
but bearing in mind
the impact these actions
will have on those
yet to be born.
The results
have been incredible,
like when they
achieved together
what traditional policymaking
had failed to address
for years,
reaching an agreement
to raise the community's
water tax by 6%
in order to address the town's
decaying infrastructure.
Today, more than 80%
of the town's policies
are created by citizens who
ha
\h
ve become what they proudly
refer to as future designers.
I'm not even from Yahaba,
but already I feel--
Quick.
That's right.
It's a quick shift.
That's right.
See in there.
The work that you've
designed takes people
from being kind of
an individual by themselves
but instead starts
to make it like a chain.
You see yourself as part
of something that came.
Yeah.
Then you you're here.
But then you're connected
to something that will be.
That's right.
This idea of taking
a longer-term perspective
to the challenges facing us
today is beginning
to take shape around
the world, like in Wales,
where they recently
turned this thinking
into actual legislation,
appointing a new role
known as the future
generations commissioner.
I'm Sophie Howe, and I was
the first future generations
commissioner for Wales
and the first future generations
commissioner in the world.
Back in 2015,
our national parliament
passed a law called
the Well-Being
of Future Generations Act.
What we need to do is take
a systems approach to thinking
about the impact
of all of our actions,
what impacts they have today,
but crucially
in the context of this bill,
what impact
they have in the future.
They held a national
conversation with the citizens
of Wales where they posed
the question,
what's the Wales you want to
leave behind to your children,
your grandchildren,
an
\h
d future generations to come?
That dialogue
led to the government
identifying 7
long-term well-being goals,
and all of our
public institutions
must set objectives which
maximize their contribution
to all 7 goals.
Are you seeing sufficient
scale and pace of progress?
The guidance
made no reference
to the Future
Generations Act at all.
And this is part of
the challenge that we're seeing.
Built into
ou
\h
r legislation, the government
and our other
public institutions
have to take the advice
of the commissioner
or justify why not.
And they have to
justify that publicly.
So in Wales, because
we have this framework,
we've completely
transformed the way
that we're thinking
about transport planning,
for example, building
a new stretch of motorway
to deal with
the problem of congestion.
It's what we've always done.
But the commissioner's
intervention really
challenged the government
because you've never shifted
your investment to actually
giving people other means
of transportation--more walking,
cycling, safe routes
to those areas
an
\h
d public transport investment
to those areas.
We'll start to see
air pollution reducing.
We'll start to see
more people cycling,
which is good
for their health.
The long-term impact,
of course,
is that we want to see
an increase in life expectancy.
So I think people
are increasingly starting
to see those connections.
If we can embrace models
like we have in Wales,
that has the potential to have
a real trickle-down effect.
And imagine if we multiply
that by every decision
or every approach that a public
institution or a government
take to deciding how they're
going to roll out policy
and encourages them to--
well, not just
encourages them,
actually requires them
to join the dots
and think in a long-term way.
We struggle a lot
with long-term thinking,
and we tend to default
to short term-thinking
quite often.
And so we've kind of set up
multiple aspects of society
to work in
a short-term capacity.
One of the first
questions I like to ask is,
who's benefiting from
the system being this way?
Our systems
are not really broken.
That's a bit of a misconception
to say that.
I think our systems
are designed to work
exactly the way
they are.
They're just not
necessarily designed
to work for you and I.
Pollution is
co
\h
ntamination of the environment
that interferes
with the processes of life.
In seeking a better life
on Earth,
man in the 20th century
has created a great technology
at the expense of the
environment essential to life.
We like
identifying ourselves
as an intelligent species.
But who made that measurement?
We did.
We are polluting
our environment.
We are altering
the very ecosystem
that we need to survive.
We're creating a next wave
of extinction
across the tree of life
without knowing
what the long-term consequences
of that might be.
I could define
intelligence in such a way
so that there is no sign
of it here on Earth.
My biggest fear is that, though
we call ourselves intelligent,
that we might not be wise
enough to be the shepherds
we need to be
to assure the survival
of generations yet to be born.
Having anxiety
about the future
is not an unreasonable thing.
It's actually
very logical in some ways
when you look
at the data around
what we're seeing in the world.
But the important
thing is that we have
the opportunity to shape it.
And the hopeful part
of that is that
we actually have
all the solutions we need
to address the problems.
What we don't have is the
context for those solutions
to take hold.
I'm interested
in exploring
more of these new solutions
and meeting the people
who are creating them.
That led me here to New Haven,
where a former
fisherman-turned-ocean-farmer
named Bren Smith
has become a catalyst
fo
\h
r change in this community.
So, Bren, I have no idea
wh
\h
at a regenerative
ocean farmer is.
So both, I want you
to tell me what it is
and how you got into it.
Sure.
I was born and raised
in Newfoundland, Canada,
the edge
of North America.
All I wanted to be
was a fisherman.
That was my dream.
I didn't want
to be a politician,
didn't want to
be an astronaut.
So I dropped out
of high school when I was 14
and headed out to sea
and fished the globe.
Cod, crab, tuna--
you name it, I fished it.
As I moved through,
the problem was,
I was fishing at the height
of the industrial fishery
tearing up whole
ecosystems, you know,
the things that we know now.
But when I was in--
out in the Bering Sea,
the cod stocks crashed
in Newfoundland, Canada.
And that was such
a wake-up call
because I thought
environmentalism
was about birds
and bees and bears.
And to see 30,000 people
thrown out of work,
fishermen walking the streets
like hungry ghosts,
an economy built up
and a culture built up
over hundreds of years
around a fishery,
you realize, like,
"Oh, this isn't
about the environment.
"This is about the economies,
the kitchen-table issue.
This is that there will be
no jobs on a dead ocean."
Bren's path
led him to ocean farming,
where he now grows kelp
and trains hundreds
of other fishermen just like him
to look at the ocean
in a whole new way.
In a time of growing concern
around land-based agriculture,
he sees untapped
potential here at sea.
I might
come in again here.
Let's see, Ron.
So I've been farming
this patch of water
for almost 20 years.
And what you're
looking here at
is 10 acres
of kelp farm.
So we have anchors
on the side of the farm
and then just
rows of crop.
And the kelp is sitting
about, you know,
6, 7 feet below the surface.
And our job
as farmers is just to get
the right amount
of sunlight and nutrients
in order to grow.
So we care about the depth
and what time of year
we're planting,
what temperature.
So it's just simple as can be.
You know, I wish it
was more complicated.
I'd seem smarter.
But the idea is,
when you're working
with the ocean,
you need to be
a willow, not an oak.
And you need
to be something
that you can remove and
rebuild real easily.
Ron, now--
Hey, Ron, we got a lot
of pressure right here.
Here we go.
Now let me clean it.
All right.
There we go.
So what we're
going to do is,
you're just going
to grab a clump
with your hand here
and cut along.
But try to--
don't cut the rope.
So I'd rather
you go below.
And just lift it
on high.
OK. OK.
Do some more here.
I'm just
going to cut.
The power of kelp
is that it has so many uses.
Like, yes, we can eat it,
and we should eat it,
and it's going to be
the center of the plate,
because it's going
to be affordable.
We can make it delicious.
There's so much creativity
in the food sector.
You can use it
for biostimulants
and fertilizer and
land-based ag for feed,
cosmetics, pharmaceuticals.
Bioplastics
is a huge industry now.
The idea is really
to break down this sea wall
between land
and sea farming.
Nutrients are in the
waters--too much of it--
like phosphorus,
nitrogen, carbon,
all this sort of stuff.
It's collected,
use plants to do it,
bring it back,
and use it
for fertilizers,
biostimulants,
things like that
because there are all
these micronutrients
that apple
orchards need,
flower farms,
all this sort of stuff,
that it just is
very accessible
to the land-based
plants.
The old story, in terms
of humans and the sea is,
we go out there,
we take what we want.
We take as much as we want
as quickly as we want.
And then go back to land,
and we consume it.
What's the new story?
I think it's
a great question.
Like, we do need a story
for the future, right?
The biggest thing--
and I think this
gets missed in the
climate discussion a lot--
is that there needs
to be a cultural transition.
And you need to think about,
like, what motivates people.
What fills their soul and
gets them up in the morning?
This isn't necessarily
about money.
And that moment,
when I was a kid, and, like,
wanted to be a fisherman
because they had
self-directed lives
and the pride
of feeding
their communities,
that's what we need
to tap into.
That's what motivates folks.
And as a kelp farmer, yeah,
I've had to say good-bye
to rogue waves
and chasing fish.
But what I can embrace--
I own my own boat.
I succeed and fail
on my own terms.
I got to be, like,
an engineer, a scientist,
a farmer, all this
sort of stuff at once.
And I get to feed
the folks around me.
These are soul-filling jobs.
And that's the discussion
we have with fishermen.
Like, yes, we all have to
say good-bye to some things.
But do we get
the core of what makes us
wake up every morning?
And that's how you build
an army of innovation
at the end of the day,
a blue-collar innovation.
And quite honestly, you
get the politics right.
Like, if you can
tap into that,
where people
see themselves
as part
of the solution,
then the level
of innovation
and knowledge networks
and sharing and stuff,
I think that's where we
transition to a better future.
Because you just want
millions of minds
trying to figure this out.
But you got to tap
into the soul to do that.
Sometimes it can feel
like what we do doesn't really
amount to anything or doesn't
add to the bigger picture that
is unfolding or that we don't
have the ability to enact
change in the real world.
But the fact is that every
little action does add up.
The desire to talk about these
wonderful things in the future
that like, oh,
we'll have sustainability,
we'll have equity,
we'll have justice,
we'll have all
of these things,
what we need to do is borrow
those ideas from the future
and think about,
like, how we're
going to implement them today.
If you want a tree
to grow 20 years from now,
you have to plant a physical
seed to get that tree.
What sort of
future do you want?
And what's
the action you can take
right now to enable that
future to become a reality?
This idea
of planting seeds right now
for better futures
is an invitation
to all of us,
no matter where we are.
Here in the jungles
of northeast India,
I came to meet someone
who is doing just that,
leading a conservation
effort to challenge
how his community thinks about
the futures they are building.
For years, I read
bout these extraordinary,
natural-grown bridges,
where ficus tree roots
are trained to grow
into living crossings,
lasting for hundreds of years,
connecting the villages
throughout the jungle.
Morningstar leads the effort
to preserve these bridges,
and with them, an ancient
way of thinking about
modern progress and the past.
Building
a root bridge is, like,
a 1,000-year-old
traditional knowledge.
Mm-hmm.
So give me some facts
about the root bridges.
How many of them
are there?
What are
the longest one?
What are
the highest ones?
There are others
who are coming in
and saying, "That's nice,
but we can make
a bridge with concrete."
What's the threat
to you,
your way of life,
and really your
way of thinking
when these bridges
kind of go up
in your community?
How are you?
Sit down, please.
Please, sit down.
Yes, please sit down.
In addition
to his work on the bridges,
Morningstar travels to speak
with students in schools
around the region, encouraging
them to find and protect
nature-based solutions
to the problems
facing the communities
here today
and in the years to come.
There's so much we can
learn from these traditions,
as around the world,
people are beginning
to rediscover
that natural solutions
can have profound results.
There are projects under way
around New York City
to restore oyster reefs
that offset
erosion along the shorelines.
And in cities
across China,
there's work being done
to enable mangroves
to serve as natural
seawalls, preventing
flooding around major cities.
This is not a quick fix.
And the people who start these
projects, these root bridges,
know they are doing something
that is not just for them,
but it's going to be
for their kids and even--
hundreds of years out.
So we're,
in many ways, saying
to both of
our communities,
"We're going to be in this
together for a while."
When we started this,
I was thinking
that so many
of the conversations
would somehow revolve
around technology.
And yet as I talk about
what people are working on,
what do they want
to see happen in futures,
they talk about
being human again.
And what's most
surprising to me
is the desire
to kind of start making
some decisions about what
do we want to leave behind
and what do we want
to start creating
more of that we've lost.
What, right now,
gives you hope?
This is a wonderful
question because it's so easy.
It's so easy to only see
doom and gloom out there.
Even if we consider
the doom and gloom,
time still marches on.
There's no stopping
the progress of time.
So it gives me hope to
consider how we've done things
in the past to make
the present better
and what we might be
able to do now to make
the future better, as well.
We are small
in time and in space,
participating in
a great unfolding
of cosmic events,
a reminder that civilization
is precious,
life is precious.
We should do everything
we can to preserve it
in this one moment
we have
to experience the glory
of this universe.
Nature give me hope
because when you
look at the things
happening in the world,
the legislative, the war,
and the fighting,
the clash,
the rivalry,
the protests,
it's about, you know--
about human beings.
So, for me, the most
important thing about nature
give me hope because
the way you see nature,
you know, it's a good
thing to learn from nature.
So just go to nature
and sit there.
See the animals. See the ants.
See the birds. See the bees.
Just learn from them,
and then come back.
It will change your life.
You know, we can build
something from the bottom up
that we're proud of that's
beautiful that we can, like,
point to this moment
being, like,
"Yeah, we built
something to hand to you.
We started this for you.
Now you continue it."
10 centuries later,
when we open up
a kind of history book,
imagine, then,
are we the people
who destroyed our entire Earth?
That's the reason
wh
\h
y, see, we are short of food,
we are short of energy.
We don't want to be that
kind of ancestor, right?
Uh-huh.
Please think about
embracing our future.
That's my message.
For the first time
in human history,
we are now grappling
with a set of issues,
a set of decisions that we
have to make that will have
long-term consequences for
Homo sapiens, for our species,
and for this planet.
If we want to think about
where we might be able to go
tomorrow, what could happen,
and what do we want to see
happen, it's important for
us
\h
to be able to kind of look
back and see ourselves as
part of something much larger.
If we really want
to move forward,
we have to be
curious about what
those different forwards and
those futures could look like.
We're in the Ancient
Bristlecone Pine Forest,
just over 11,000 feet,
home to some of the oldest
trees on planet Earth.
The trees in this forest that
are surrounding me right now
are older than
the pyramids in Egypt.
They were alive
when Jesus Christ was born.
Some of these trees were
already 4,000 years old
when the United States was born.
They go back further than
almost all recorded history.
When you're
at a place like this,
it changes your perspective
because these trees
are truly the great
ancestors of life on Earth.
They have been here for so long
and will more than likely
be here long after I'm gone.
And it's very rare
to be in a place
where you have
that sense of time.
It changes your perspective
on not only where we are
and what we've done
as a species on this planet,
but where we might
be able to go.
Set one Ari, take one.
Name and describe yourself.
What are you? Who are you?
Ha ha! My name is Ari Wallach.
I am a father, a husband,
and during the day,
when I'm not doing those
two probably most important
things, I am a futurist.
Growing up,
I remember feeling
so excited about the future,
impatient, actually because I
couldn't
wait for it to arrive.
Beam me aboard.
I watched
movies and TV shows
that told stories
of what felt like
inevitable human progress,
filling me with a sense
of hope and possibility.
And it wasn't just on TV.
We were launching rockets.
Markets were booming.
And the Internet
was coming online.
Hope is back in America.
We are on the right track
to the 21st century.
3, 2, 1.
Happy 2000!
The next generation
and the generations that follow
will live in a world
far better
than the one we have today.
I went to work
as a futurist,
helping governments
and major companies
around the world
better think about and plan
for the future,
not working
to predict the future,
but looking at long-term trends
and the impacts they were
go
\h
ing to have across society.
It was an exciting time.
And it really did feel like
we were on the brink
of something extraordinary.
New technology
was poised to bring about
unprecedented prosperity
and connection.
Less poverty, more peace,
and shorter work weeks
were all right
around the corner.
But then something happened,
or didn't happen.
And that future
never really showed up.
We are now working more,
not less.
We have become more
technologically connected
and yet more deeply divided.
The consequences
of long-overlooked
environmental destruction are
showing up in terrifying ways.
And the stories
we tell ourselves
about tomorrow
are now stories of dystopia
where everything falls apart.
Our feelings
about tomorrow have shifted
from excitement to dread.
And the future
has become something
to avoid rather than to build.
But over the years,
my work has convinced me
the future is not set in stone.
We have the power to shape it.
That's what's led me here
to making this show.
I'm looking for the people
wh
\h
o are building better futures
for themselves,
for their kids,
and for the world around them.
Because the truth is, we have
choices to make right now.
And these choices
are going to have
major, long-lasting effects.
So I'm headed out on a journey
to meet the brilliant minds
and brave pioneers
changing our world
and reinventing tomorrow,
people who believe that we have
everything we need
to create better futures--
not perfect, but better--
and something each
generation can build on,
those challenging
the status quo,
expanding our ideas
of what's at stake
and what's still possible,
from food to education,
from the cities we live in
to the ways in which
we organize our societies,
people using new tools
and ancient wisdom
to restore our relationship
with each other,
to ourselves, and to this
be
\h
autiful place we call home,
a journey to rediscover
how far we've come,
and where we could take this
whole thing moving forward.
What I'm really
mo
\h
st interested in doing here
is trying to find the people
and the ideas
that are going to kind of
show us what futures
could be and from there
figure out which ones we want.
So this is great.
So let's talk a little bit
about the science
of motivation.
What do we think--
As my journey begins,
I'm interested in why,
even with all these
tools and technologies
available, so many of us
find it difficult to think
about the future.
That's brought me
here to sit down
with a behavioral psychologist
named Hal Hershfield.
Our future selves
often feel like strangers to us.
They feel like sort of
different people altogether.
One of the big findings
in the early days
of what's called
"social neuroscience"
is that
the brain can tell
what's me
and what's not me,
which makes sense
in a way.
If I'm sitting in a scanner,
and I think about myself,
I see more activity
in what's called
my medial
prefrontal cortex
and certain parts
of the brain there
than if I, say,
think about you.
I was more
interested because I thought
that that finding held the clue
for maybe why we start thinking
about our future selves
as different, other people.
In other words, if I can
distinguish between me
and you in my brain,
would I see
a same sort
of disconnect between me
and my future self
in my brain?
So here's what we did.
We had our research
participants
go into the scanner.
They see a little screen
in front of them.
It's a really boring,
basic screen.
And they see a word
at the top.
And the word
represents a person
they need to think about.
So they say, "OK.
Think about current self or
think about your future self."
And what we saw was that the
brain activity from thinking
about your future self
was more similar
to the brain activity
when people thought
about another person.
What are the
implications of that?
It suggests that
on some deeper level,
we really do think
about our future selves
as if they are
other people.
When you take
that perspective,
if our future self
is some other person,
then the consequences
of my decisions right now
are going to befall
some other person.
All right.
So why don't you
look at me?
All right.
That's good.
All right.
Now keep that face.
All right. And let's
try this one more time.
We're going to do
something funny here.
All right. So let's
pull these up here.
And then here's the
Oh!
older ver--
Wow. All right.
So what do you think
when you see that?
I mean, I'm sure
people have
a somewhat
similar reaction.
That looks shockingly
like my dad.
Yeah.
It seems like I don't
totally know who that is.
Right.
Right. Right.
But it also doesn't
seem that far from now.
Right.
Which is, in a way,
true to form, right?
Like, when we think
about our future selves,
you know, they may not
be that far from now.
We don't totally know
who they are, but--
When I first see that,
like, it's jarring.
And then now
you think, "OK."
Once you get over
the initial kind of shock
of where things could go,
you think, like, "OK.
"Well, like, if these are
still the same individual,
"like, how
does this one now,
"like, befriend and
best-friend this one.
And what would you
do for a best friend?"
I think that's, like,
the exact right
perspective there.
Because they're
not the same.
Yeah.
But it is that same
sort of relationship
of a best friend.
In some ways, the work
that you're doing,
it's like
a wormhole, right?
It's like the "Star Trek"
wormhole to the future
and lets us kind of
see ahead.
But, like you said, it's
not just about vision.
It's actually
about the emotions
that pull us through.
And I think this
is a key insight here.
This is really a
conversation about empathy.
This is a vision that's
really hard to conjure up.
I can't picture
my grandkids.
I can barely
picture my own kids
when they're older
because I'm so stuck
on what they
look like right now.
But I have
a really easy time
knowing how
I want them to feel
and knowing how I want
their kids to feel
and on and on and on.
And so,
like you said,
that's the empathy
through line.
That's the sort of
empathy freeway
that we want
to consider.
It's powerful
to consider how we want
life to be for the generations
yet to be born.
And it forces us to think
beyond our own lifetime.
Today, we live
in a world in which
we're ill-adapted to inhabit.
That wasn't
the world, the space
and time, the environment
that we evolved in.
So a natural
consequence of that
is some of our
cognitive abilities
aren't necessarily tuned
for the world that we've
miraculously managed
to construct,
a world in which we have
a vast amount of information
and an amazing ability
to address future problems,
to invest in the future.
And that ability is
something that perhaps
we don't use to the extent
that we would like.
I like to think
of the future as a story.
It's really a set of ideas
that we all engage in.
And so in some sense,
th
\h
e future is very malleable.
And in other ways,
it kind of doesn't exist.
And so it's open terrain
for lots of new ideas
and new ways
of being in the world.
So when most people
ask me what's my story,
I actually start back in 1922.
This is the Holocaust
Oral History Project
interview
of Rachmiel Wolochwianski,
April 28, 1993.
I am born in the
city Baranowicze, East Poland.
1922 was the year
my father was born
in a small town called
Baranowicze in Poland.
Around the time
of his 18th birthday
was when the Nazis
invaded Poland.
These were the only
pictures made in the city
during the siege.
Many of the middle-aged
were sullen and angry.
Youngsters were
half-resentful, half-resigned,
while their elders
turned to prayer.
All the Jews were
pushed into a small ghetto.
Eventually, his mother and
sister were sent to Auschwitz,
and that's where
they perished.
Now, my father
and his brother and dad
were still in the ghetto.
And at one point,
they actually escaped.
And in the kind of escape
of leaving the ghetto,
my grandfather
wa
\h
s actually shot and killed.
And soon thereafter, my father
joined the Jewish underground,
the resistance,
and for several years,
basically he lived
in the forests of Poland
fighting the Nazis
day in and day out.
When I thought about what
I want to do with my life
I decided to choose a path
that would allow me
to kind of apply
the way I think
we should
be morally operating
as a species,
no
\h
t so much to just push back
against the Nazis of today,
wh
\h
ich is unbelievably important,
but in many ways to think
about what was happening
in the late 1920s
and late 1930s
before the Nazis came to power,
thinking about how
the world was in so much flux,
and why weren't there people
around to help steer us
towards a better path?
In many ways, that greatly
influences the work that I do.
I'm thinking about
where can we take this
in a positive way, right?
I'm not a futurist
who's saying,
"Look out for these different
icebergs on the Titanic."
I'm saying there are
icebergs out there.
We should navigate
through them.
But what is the harbor
that we're trying to get to?
There's a phrase called
"cathedral thinking."
And what that means is,
how do we go about
making decisions
in the same ways
that those who build
ancient cathedrals thought?
Because when they were
building cathedrals,
I mean, more often
than not, the architect
and the initial builders
of the cathedral
wouldn't even be around
to
\h
see it actually completed.
It wouldn't happen
in their lifetime.
So they had to make
these decisions in a way
where they were literally
laying the cornerstone
for something that they would
never actually see completed,
but they were doing it
for the next generation.
I came to Cordoba
to see firsthand
a project that has been
many, many generations
in the making.
It's awe-inspiring
to experience something
that those who started never
lived to see completed
built as a gift
to those yet to be born,
a reminder that
the future is being built
on our actions right now.
The future is a verb.
It's something we do.
We can become great ancestors.
And that is what
the future needs us to do
right now,
to think in a way
that places us in their shoes.
This idea of stepping
back to see ourselves
and the work we do in this
moment as a piece of something
larger is so powerful,
and it has the potential
to unlock bigger, better ideas
worth working towards
in the years to come.
It's my first time
in Morocco, and I've
read about this massive solar
power plant for a while now.
And to be able
to come and visit it
is kind of like
a dream come true.
It's a little bit,
you know, solar, alternative,
renewable energy geek in me.
But to see a plant
kind of come up
in the middle of
the desert using the latest
technology that can power
a huge part of the country
is amazing for me.
So tell me, where
are we right now?
So in this area
right here just alone,
how many of these
mirrors are there?
Two million?
Two million.
2 million
of these panels?
Yeah, in NOOR I.
The complex
here is the largest
concentrated solar power plant
in the world,
generating enough power
to supply a million
homes in Morocco
with renewable electricity.
And in a country that doesn't
ha
\h
ve a natural supply of oil,
natural gas, or coal,
they believe this is the start
of something even bigger.
What is kind of
your hope and your dream
for Morocco in terms of the
raw resources that are coming
to your land from the sky?
What could
an energy-independent future
look like,
not just here, but everywhere?
What impact will it have on
our politics, our health care,
and the well-being
of the natural world
when we create a future
independent from fossil fuels?
Solar technology
is just one piece of making
that future a reality.
But as large-scale facilities
are popping up in countries
all over the world, the goal
of powering major cities
and entire countries
is getting closer every day.
In Northern California,
scientists
are taking a similar approach
by applying long-term thinking
to the challenges
facing us today,
pursuing a long-held dream
of limitless clean energy.
I'm Annie Kritcher.
I was a lead designer
for the Ignition experiment.
We are at the National
Ignition Facility
in Livermore, California.
What we do here is,
we take two atoms,
and we smash them together,
and we make a heavier atom.
And that process
releases energy.
And so you're literally for
90 trillionths of a second
creating a mini sun.
That's correct.
The reason that we
ne
\h
ed to generate stars on Earth
is to reach
the extreme conditions
that are required to get
two atoms to fuse together.
So you need tens of millions
of degrees to do that.
We have 192
laser beams which enter
the ends of a hollow cylinder.
And then they hit the hollow
cylinder on the inside.
And that creates an oven,
a very hot X-ray oven,
which is
3 million degrees.
And inside of
the cylinder sits
a little, tiny capsule
the size of a BB.
And inside
of that little, tiny BB
sits the deuterium and tritium
that we want to fuse together.
And so this intense X-ray oven
heats the outside
of the capsule,
ex
\h
plodes that material outward,
and just like a rocket,
where the rocket fuel goes out
and that pushes
a rocket up,
we're squeezing
the material down
to half the size
of a human hair
from the size of a BB.
Because of that
outward expansion,
we get an implosion.
What is the goal of this
work in the big picture?
Nuclear fusion could
provide clean, limitless,
abundant energy
for mankind.
Fusion is really the
Holy Grail of energy.
That dream reached
a
\h
major milestone here recently
as Annie's team
led an experiment
that successfully created
ignition for the first time.
This is the target bay.
Here we have the target
chamber, which is in blue.
It's a spherical
chamber.
It's about 10 meters
in diameter.
And here, the laser beams
come into the chamber.
The laser beams are what
drives our experiments.
If it's
a 10-chapter book,
what chapter are we in
right now in this room?
I'd say we're not
in Chapter 1,
because we've been working on
this for quite a long while.
And we just had
the breakthrough.
I guess,
maybe Chapter 3.
The person that came up
with the concept to do this
did so before
I was born.
So it is really
a passing-the-torch,
multi-generation problem,
big-science problem.
How should
we be thinking
about challenges like this?
I think it's
really important to consider
the long-term benefits
and also
the generations
coming after us
to create a clean world
for them and to give them
the necessary means
to be able to generate
energy in the future.
So it's a really
important grand challenge.
And it's just
so important
for our future
generations.
One of the most
exciting things
about this moment
is that we have the tools
and potential to shape
the future in ways
that have never been
possible before.
The choices we make around
ho
\h
w we develop our technologies
here and now will set
a
\h
path for future generations
to build on.
In the great arc
of human history,
we are living in the midst
of an extraordinary time.
Deep time,
like, what is that?
How could the universe
have been here without us?
What does it mean
that we've only been around
for the tiniest sliver of time
relative to the universe?
This is a humbling revelation.
All animals
have clocks in our brains,
going back to
a circadian clock,
because it's very
important to tell time
and to predict what's
going to happen.
But humans have been
obsessed with time,
in many ways, throughout--
since the beginning
of civilization.
And if you go back
through human history,
it's been one long
quest to measure time
with more and more
and more precision.
Time--
our story is about men
who are attempting to defeat it.
Time is their enemy
in the search
for the ultimate origins of man.
If you take
a football field,
100 yards,
and that's the timeline
of the universe,
cave dwellers to the present
on a timeline
that begins in one end zone
and ends in the other,
the thickness
of a blade of grass
at the end of that timeline
is from present day
back to cave paintings.
In many ways,
one of the cognitive abilities
that makes Homo sapiens
sapien--or wise, if you will--
is our ability
to conceptualize time.
And this ability to engage
in mental time travel
seems to be pretty
unique to humans.
Over the years,
I've worked to help
various organizations think
about and plan for the future.
But recently, something
strange has started to happen.
Long-term plans
that were 20 or 30 years out
are now only focused
on the next 6 months.
As the pace
of the world gets faster,
our perspective
is getting smaller.
What does it take
to step back and develop
a long-term perspective?
How does our past
impact the future?
And what can we learn
from those who have faced
moments like these before?
I'm here
to speak with someone
who spent her life working
to ensure her community
holds on to the best
parts of their past
as they look
towards the future.
Hi, Ari.
Do not get up.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you for
your invitation.
And thank you for
joining us here.
Thank you so much
for having us.
Thank you.
This is my husband Tom.
Oh, hey.
I'm just going to go
around really fast.
Yes.
Grandson.
Hey. Ari.
Pleasure.
My English name
is Antonia Loretta Afraid
of Bear Cook.
When I go in the nation's
house and I address the nation,
I am Anpetu Luta Win.
I'm called Red Day Woman.
Loretta's work
began here with her own tribe,
where she works to pass on
the ancient ways of her people
to the next generation.
But that work quickly grew
as leaders around the world
recognized the wisdom
that these ideas held
for looking
at today's challenges
through a much wider lens.
When we
think about the future,
why is it so important
that we remember the past?
I think that the most
important thing
about that
question is,
we have to have
interconnectedness.
I have to know
where I came from
in order for me
to teach my grandchildren
so that we
can move forward.
This idea of time
as an entity,
how would you say
it's separate
than the way time
is practiced today,
kind of--
It's very different.
You practice time
according to a schedule
and according to,
"Oh, I got to get over here.
"I got to catch a plane.
I got to do this.
I got to do that."
And it's very stressful.
But if you were to set it up
in that spirit time,
OK, what are you
setting it up for?
There's definitive ways in
wh
\h
ich you approach that time.
If you're living
in a spiritual way,
then you have time
to pay attention
to the plants,
the trees, the animals,
the fish in the ocean.
And when you're doing
all of these things,
you begin to steward
what's around you.
But that's not
how we live today.
Today we live by that time
that's running on a clock,
and how much money can we make,
you know, doing this?
So you put profit over people.
Spending time with
Loretta and her family,
it's obvious that these
concepts are not just ideas,
but rather principles that
inform how she lives and works
to pass on the ancient
ways of their people
to the next generation.
For her, these ways
are not just about the past,
but about a way of being
in the present that
recognizes the impact
that our lives will have
on future generations.
What is seventh-generation
thinking,
and why is it
so important today?
Do you have children?
Yes.
OK. So can you recount
back to your beginning?
I can probably go back
two or three generations.
OK. It's a concept.
And it's a loving
concept that we
talk about
to our loved ones.
So you make it
your business
to know what it is
about yourself
that you're going
to engage in so you
can get to that
seventh-generation thinking.
So 7-generation
thinking
is making decisions
as if you think
about the impact
they will have
on 7
generations from now?
Exactly.
Every decision that
I make in this moment,
I should think
about the impact
that it will have 7
generations from now.
But people are--
they love convenience.
They don't want
to think about,
oh, 7 generations,
you know?
But we have so many social
ills all over the nation,
all over the country.
And those are the things
that we're trying our best,
I think, in this generation,
to make a difference.
What's your hope
for the future?
That we can all
si
\h
t together
at a spiritual table
and all of us be
to
\h
gether truly.
That's my prayer.
That's my prayer.
When we saw Earth
over our shoulders,
having visited the moon,
it was a firmware upgrade
in our sense of awareness.
Our first images
from the moon were 1968,
taken by astronauts.
That was the first mission
to the moon--Apollo 8.
They went to the moon,
orbited a dozen or so times,
and then came back.
One of those orbits,
they lifted the Hasselblad,
and there was Earth rising
over the lunar landscape,
just the way the moon rises
over the Earth's landscape.
Why do I call it
a firmware upgrade?
Because if you ask
any one of those people,
they're not
consciously thinking,
"I saw Earth from space,"
but they're feeling it.
Psychoemotionally,
they are reacting
to a cosmic perspective.
Humans are at their
be
\h
st when we're thinking bigger
than just ourselves,
when we look up and see
beyond this moment to remember
that we are part of everything
that came before us
and we're also laying
the foundation for generations
yet to come.
But why do so many
of the systems
that govern our world
today seem so locked
into short-term thinking?
I've come to Japan to meet
an economist named Dr. Saijo
who's challenging
this way of thinking
with remarkable results.
So we know we have
this problem
of shortsightedness,
and we want
to kind of solve
for intergenerational
justice
and how we think
about time differently.
Tell me
about your work.
Rather than just
writing about the problems
with short-term thinking,
Dr
\h
. Saijo started something here
called the Future Design Center
to test the impacts
of long-term thinking
in real-life situations,
bringing together
everyday people
from the town
to take part in creating
the future of their community.
Community members
put on these robes
to signify themselves
as representatives
of future generations.
With this in mind, they work
to address the needs of today,
but bearing in mind
the impact these actions
will have on those
yet to be born.
The results
have been incredible,
like when they
achieved together
what traditional policymaking
had failed to address
for years,
reaching an agreement
to raise the community's
water tax by 6%
in order to address the town's
decaying infrastructure.
Today, more than 80%
of the town's policies
are created by citizens who
ha
\h
ve become what they proudly
refer to as future designers.
I'm not even from Yahaba,
but already I feel--
Quick.
That's right.
It's a quick shift.
That's right.
See in there.
The work that you've
designed takes people
from being kind of
an individual by themselves
but instead starts
to make it like a chain.
You see yourself as part
of something that came.
Yeah.
Then you you're here.
But then you're connected
to something that will be.
That's right.
This idea of taking
a longer-term perspective
to the challenges facing us
today is beginning
to take shape around
the world, like in Wales,
where they recently
turned this thinking
into actual legislation,
appointing a new role
known as the future
generations commissioner.
I'm Sophie Howe, and I was
the first future generations
commissioner for Wales
and the first future generations
commissioner in the world.
Back in 2015,
our national parliament
passed a law called
the Well-Being
of Future Generations Act.
What we need to do is take
a systems approach to thinking
about the impact
of all of our actions,
what impacts they have today,
but crucially
in the context of this bill,
what impact
they have in the future.
They held a national
conversation with the citizens
of Wales where they posed
the question,
what's the Wales you want to
leave behind to your children,
your grandchildren,
an
\h
d future generations to come?
That dialogue
led to the government
identifying 7
long-term well-being goals,
and all of our
public institutions
must set objectives which
maximize their contribution
to all 7 goals.
Are you seeing sufficient
scale and pace of progress?
The guidance
made no reference
to the Future
Generations Act at all.
And this is part of
the challenge that we're seeing.
Built into
ou
\h
r legislation, the government
and our other
public institutions
have to take the advice
of the commissioner
or justify why not.
And they have to
justify that publicly.
So in Wales, because
we have this framework,
we've completely
transformed the way
that we're thinking
about transport planning,
for example, building
a new stretch of motorway
to deal with
the problem of congestion.
It's what we've always done.
But the commissioner's
intervention really
challenged the government
because you've never shifted
your investment to actually
giving people other means
of transportation--more walking,
cycling, safe routes
to those areas
an
\h
d public transport investment
to those areas.
We'll start to see
air pollution reducing.
We'll start to see
more people cycling,
which is good
for their health.
The long-term impact,
of course,
is that we want to see
an increase in life expectancy.
So I think people
are increasingly starting
to see those connections.
If we can embrace models
like we have in Wales,
that has the potential to have
a real trickle-down effect.
And imagine if we multiply
that by every decision
or every approach that a public
institution or a government
take to deciding how they're
going to roll out policy
and encourages them to--
well, not just
encourages them,
actually requires them
to join the dots
and think in a long-term way.
We struggle a lot
with long-term thinking,
and we tend to default
to short term-thinking
quite often.
And so we've kind of set up
multiple aspects of society
to work in
a short-term capacity.
One of the first
questions I like to ask is,
who's benefiting from
the system being this way?
Our systems
are not really broken.
That's a bit of a misconception
to say that.
I think our systems
are designed to work
exactly the way
they are.
They're just not
necessarily designed
to work for you and I.
Pollution is
co
\h
ntamination of the environment
that interferes
with the processes of life.
In seeking a better life
on Earth,
man in the 20th century
has created a great technology
at the expense of the
environment essential to life.
We like
identifying ourselves
as an intelligent species.
But who made that measurement?
We did.
We are polluting
our environment.
We are altering
the very ecosystem
that we need to survive.
We're creating a next wave
of extinction
across the tree of life
without knowing
what the long-term consequences
of that might be.
I could define
intelligence in such a way
so that there is no sign
of it here on Earth.
My biggest fear is that, though
we call ourselves intelligent,
that we might not be wise
enough to be the shepherds
we need to be
to assure the survival
of generations yet to be born.
Having anxiety
about the future
is not an unreasonable thing.
It's actually
very logical in some ways
when you look
at the data around
what we're seeing in the world.
But the important
thing is that we have
the opportunity to shape it.
And the hopeful part
of that is that
we actually have
all the solutions we need
to address the problems.
What we don't have is the
context for those solutions
to take hold.
I'm interested
in exploring
more of these new solutions
and meeting the people
who are creating them.
That led me here to New Haven,
where a former
fisherman-turned-ocean-farmer
named Bren Smith
has become a catalyst
fo
\h
r change in this community.
So, Bren, I have no idea
wh
\h
at a regenerative
ocean farmer is.
So both, I want you
to tell me what it is
and how you got into it.
Sure.
I was born and raised
in Newfoundland, Canada,
the edge
of North America.
All I wanted to be
was a fisherman.
That was my dream.
I didn't want
to be a politician,
didn't want to
be an astronaut.
So I dropped out
of high school when I was 14
and headed out to sea
and fished the globe.
Cod, crab, tuna--
you name it, I fished it.
As I moved through,
the problem was,
I was fishing at the height
of the industrial fishery
tearing up whole
ecosystems, you know,
the things that we know now.
But when I was in--
out in the Bering Sea,
the cod stocks crashed
in Newfoundland, Canada.
And that was such
a wake-up call
because I thought
environmentalism
was about birds
and bees and bears.
And to see 30,000 people
thrown out of work,
fishermen walking the streets
like hungry ghosts,
an economy built up
and a culture built up
over hundreds of years
around a fishery,
you realize, like,
"Oh, this isn't
about the environment.
"This is about the economies,
the kitchen-table issue.
This is that there will be
no jobs on a dead ocean."
Bren's path
led him to ocean farming,
where he now grows kelp
and trains hundreds
of other fishermen just like him
to look at the ocean
in a whole new way.
In a time of growing concern
around land-based agriculture,
he sees untapped
potential here at sea.
I might
come in again here.
Let's see, Ron.
So I've been farming
this patch of water
for almost 20 years.
And what you're
looking here at
is 10 acres
of kelp farm.
So we have anchors
on the side of the farm
and then just
rows of crop.
And the kelp is sitting
about, you know,
6, 7 feet below the surface.
And our job
as farmers is just to get
the right amount
of sunlight and nutrients
in order to grow.
So we care about the depth
and what time of year
we're planting,
what temperature.
So it's just simple as can be.
You know, I wish it
was more complicated.
I'd seem smarter.
But the idea is,
when you're working
with the ocean,
you need to be
a willow, not an oak.
And you need
to be something
that you can remove and
rebuild real easily.
Ron, now--
Hey, Ron, we got a lot
of pressure right here.
Here we go.
Now let me clean it.
All right.
There we go.
So what we're
going to do is,
you're just going
to grab a clump
with your hand here
and cut along.
But try to--
don't cut the rope.
So I'd rather
you go below.
And just lift it
on high.
OK. OK.
Do some more here.
I'm just
going to cut.
The power of kelp
is that it has so many uses.
Like, yes, we can eat it,
and we should eat it,
and it's going to be
the center of the plate,
because it's going
to be affordable.
We can make it delicious.
There's so much creativity
in the food sector.
You can use it
for biostimulants
and fertilizer and
land-based ag for feed,
cosmetics, pharmaceuticals.
Bioplastics
is a huge industry now.
The idea is really
to break down this sea wall
between land
and sea farming.
Nutrients are in the
waters--too much of it--
like phosphorus,
nitrogen, carbon,
all this sort of stuff.
It's collected,
use plants to do it,
bring it back,
and use it
for fertilizers,
biostimulants,
things like that
because there are all
these micronutrients
that apple
orchards need,
flower farms,
all this sort of stuff,
that it just is
very accessible
to the land-based
plants.
The old story, in terms
of humans and the sea is,
we go out there,
we take what we want.
We take as much as we want
as quickly as we want.
And then go back to land,
and we consume it.
What's the new story?
I think it's
a great question.
Like, we do need a story
for the future, right?
The biggest thing--
and I think this
gets missed in the
climate discussion a lot--
is that there needs
to be a cultural transition.
And you need to think about,
like, what motivates people.
What fills their soul and
gets them up in the morning?
This isn't necessarily
about money.
And that moment,
when I was a kid, and, like,
wanted to be a fisherman
because they had
self-directed lives
and the pride
of feeding
their communities,
that's what we need
to tap into.
That's what motivates folks.
And as a kelp farmer, yeah,
I've had to say good-bye
to rogue waves
and chasing fish.
But what I can embrace--
I own my own boat.
I succeed and fail
on my own terms.
I got to be, like,
an engineer, a scientist,
a farmer, all this
sort of stuff at once.
And I get to feed
the folks around me.
These are soul-filling jobs.
And that's the discussion
we have with fishermen.
Like, yes, we all have to
say good-bye to some things.
But do we get
the core of what makes us
wake up every morning?
And that's how you build
an army of innovation
at the end of the day,
a blue-collar innovation.
And quite honestly, you
get the politics right.
Like, if you can
tap into that,
where people
see themselves
as part
of the solution,
then the level
of innovation
and knowledge networks
and sharing and stuff,
I think that's where we
transition to a better future.
Because you just want
millions of minds
trying to figure this out.
But you got to tap
into the soul to do that.
Sometimes it can feel
like what we do doesn't really
amount to anything or doesn't
add to the bigger picture that
is unfolding or that we don't
have the ability to enact
change in the real world.
But the fact is that every
little action does add up.
The desire to talk about these
wonderful things in the future
that like, oh,
we'll have sustainability,
we'll have equity,
we'll have justice,
we'll have all
of these things,
what we need to do is borrow
those ideas from the future
and think about,
like, how we're
going to implement them today.
If you want a tree
to grow 20 years from now,
you have to plant a physical
seed to get that tree.
What sort of
future do you want?
And what's
the action you can take
right now to enable that
future to become a reality?
This idea
of planting seeds right now
for better futures
is an invitation
to all of us,
no matter where we are.
Here in the jungles
of northeast India,
I came to meet someone
who is doing just that,
leading a conservation
effort to challenge
how his community thinks about
the futures they are building.
For years, I read
bout these extraordinary,
natural-grown bridges,
where ficus tree roots
are trained to grow
into living crossings,
lasting for hundreds of years,
connecting the villages
throughout the jungle.
Morningstar leads the effort
to preserve these bridges,
and with them, an ancient
way of thinking about
modern progress and the past.
Building
a root bridge is, like,
a 1,000-year-old
traditional knowledge.
Mm-hmm.
So give me some facts
about the root bridges.
How many of them
are there?
What are
the longest one?
What are
the highest ones?
There are others
who are coming in
and saying, "That's nice,
but we can make
a bridge with concrete."
What's the threat
to you,
your way of life,
and really your
way of thinking
when these bridges
kind of go up
in your community?
How are you?
Sit down, please.
Please, sit down.
Yes, please sit down.
In addition
to his work on the bridges,
Morningstar travels to speak
with students in schools
around the region, encouraging
them to find and protect
nature-based solutions
to the problems
facing the communities
here today
and in the years to come.
There's so much we can
learn from these traditions,
as around the world,
people are beginning
to rediscover
that natural solutions
can have profound results.
There are projects under way
around New York City
to restore oyster reefs
that offset
erosion along the shorelines.
And in cities
across China,
there's work being done
to enable mangroves
to serve as natural
seawalls, preventing
flooding around major cities.
This is not a quick fix.
And the people who start these
projects, these root bridges,
know they are doing something
that is not just for them,
but it's going to be
for their kids and even--
hundreds of years out.
So we're,
in many ways, saying
to both of
our communities,
"We're going to be in this
together for a while."
When we started this,
I was thinking
that so many
of the conversations
would somehow revolve
around technology.
And yet as I talk about
what people are working on,
what do they want
to see happen in futures,
they talk about
being human again.
And what's most
surprising to me
is the desire
to kind of start making
some decisions about what
do we want to leave behind
and what do we want
to start creating
more of that we've lost.
What, right now,
gives you hope?
This is a wonderful
question because it's so easy.
It's so easy to only see
doom and gloom out there.
Even if we consider
the doom and gloom,
time still marches on.
There's no stopping
the progress of time.
So it gives me hope to
consider how we've done things
in the past to make
the present better
and what we might be
able to do now to make
the future better, as well.
We are small
in time and in space,
participating in
a great unfolding
of cosmic events,
a reminder that civilization
is precious,
life is precious.
We should do everything
we can to preserve it
in this one moment
we have
to experience the glory
of this universe.
Nature give me hope
because when you
look at the things
happening in the world,
the legislative, the war,
and the fighting,
the clash,
the rivalry,
the protests,
it's about, you know--
about human beings.
So, for me, the most
important thing about nature
give me hope because
the way you see nature,
you know, it's a good
thing to learn from nature.
So just go to nature
and sit there.
See the animals. See the ants.
See the birds. See the bees.
Just learn from them,
and then come back.
It will change your life.
You know, we can build
something from the bottom up
that we're proud of that's
beautiful that we can, like,
point to this moment
being, like,
"Yeah, we built
something to hand to you.
We started this for you.
Now you continue it."
10 centuries later,
when we open up
a kind of history book,
imagine, then,
are we the people
who destroyed our entire Earth?
That's the reason
wh
\h
y, see, we are short of food,
we are short of energy.
We don't want to be that
kind of ancestor, right?
Uh-huh.
Please think about
embracing our future.
That's my message.
For the first time
in human history,
we are now grappling
with a set of issues,
a set of decisions that we
have to make that will have
long-term consequences for
Homo sapiens, for our species,
and for this planet.
If we want to think about
where we might be able to go
tomorrow, what could happen,
and what do we want to see
happen, it's important for
us
\h
to be able to kind of look
back and see ourselves as
part of something much larger.
If we really want
to move forward,
we have to be
curious about what
those different forwards and
those futures could look like.