I often find myself standing at the turbulent intersection between human progress and planetary peril, asking: How on earth did we get here, and how do we find a way through? In the imposing story of our civilisation, we’ve reached a chapter where the old plotlines no longer make much sense. We humans – clever, ambitious, and sometimes a bit foolhardy – have built systems that now trap us into what was needed centuries ago but are wide of the mark today. Our economies span the globe, our technologies link minds instantaneously. Our governance, management and mindsets, however, remain stubbornly parochial, rooted in a bygone era. This mismatch has produced a double bind of our own making: on one hand the Earth’s biosphere, with its unforgiving laws and limits; on the other, human institutions, charging ahead as if those limits did not exist. The collision of these two logics defines the most crucial dilemma of our age. We can no longer afford the luxury of pretending they are separate. The question is whether we can evolve our ways of living – our politics, our values, our sense of “we” – fast enough to bridge this gap.
Let’s talk about necessity. Often, we cling to the status quo until reality gives us no choice. I believe we’re at that inflection point now. The litany of climate extremes, ecological breakdowns, contagions, and social upheavals is the planet’s way of telling us, “Change, or I will change things for you.” We have a saying in systems thinking: what can’t continue, stops. The trajectory of endless extraction, endless growth, endless competition from individual endeavours to national priorities – cannot continue. Therefore, something will change. This is not wishful idealism; it’s pragmatic observation. When a boat is sinking, debates about whether to patch the hull or bail water become secondary – you do whatever it takes to stay afloat. Humanity’s boat is taking on water. A growing chorus of voices around the world acknowledges this, from schoolchildren on strike for climate action to elders in science and spirituality who’ve warned us for decades. Surveys show an overwhelming majority of the world’s people want stronger action to protect our environment. Imagine that: nearly nine out of ten citizens of Earth, by some counts, yearning for bold change. As far as I’m aware, this is unparalleled in history – a silent, sleeping supermajority that if awakened, could drive transformation at breathtaking speed.
It gives me hope that amid the chaos, a global consciousness is stirring. It’s certainly patchy, but I see it in the way ideas and values are now shared instantaneously across borders. When tragedy strikes one part of the world, others send aid and learn from it. Young people everywhere, whether in Lagos or London or Lima, rally around shared calls for justice and sustainability. In quieter ways too, I sense a creeping realisation that our old stories – of limitless growth, of “might makes right,” of humans separate from nature – have impoverished us spiritually and jeopardised us materially. We’re writing a new story now. It’s one I hear in snatches: whispers of togetherness, of an economy of sufficiency, of a politics of all-life-on-Earth. True, these are just whispers against the din of the old guard clinging to power. But I recall how quickly the unthinkable became the inevitable in ages past – the Berlin Wall falling in a night, apartheid crumbling under global pressure, empires dissolving after centuries. When paradigms shift, they can do so with head-spinning speed. Why? Because once people see differently, the world changes accordingly.
Yet, I am not naïve. Vision alone doesn’t guarantee victory and hope alone is not a strategy. If necessity and consciousness are the winds filling our sails, there are also fierce headwinds blowing in the opposite direction. Let’s confront them candidly.
Our societies are deeply path-dependent – meaning the decisions of yesterday constrain the choices of today. We have vast industries and governments embedded in the fossil-fuel economy, in the militarised nation-state system, in patterns of consumption and competition that have defined “progress” for many centuries. These incumbents will not simply step meekly aside because the logic of survival demands it. Indeed, in times of stress, they often double down. We see that now: just as a more empathic, planetary worldview tries to emerge, reactionary forces gain ground with cries of “sovereignty” and “tradition,” as if clinging to a nostalgia that never truly existed. Populist nationalism – that siren song of “us versus them” – has reasserted itself in many places, threatening to derail collective action precisely when we need it most. I often warn that one of the gravest dangers we face is the resurgence of tribal politics armed with modern technology – a lethal cocktail of old-brain fear and new-age firepower. This mentality views any attempt at global cooperation as a threat to be quashed. It peddles the comforting falsehood that we can wall ourselves off from the world’s problems. We cannot.
Another challenge is mistrust – not just among nations but between people and any large institution, new or old. Frankly, we’ve been burned. Citizens have seen promises of a better future broken; they’ve witnessed institutions from banks to governments fail to put human and ecological wellbeing first. Now imagine proposing a new layer of governance tasked with overseeing the global commons – many will cringe, reasonably asking: “Who watches the watchers? Will this just be another distant bureaucracy, or worse, a green-police that tramples our freedoms?” These concerns must be addressed with empathy, not dismissal. If we proceed with a grand vision of togetherness but fail to involve and inspire everyday people in its design, it will meet justifiable resistance. People need to feel ownership of any new covenant – that it is by us, of us, for us (with “us” meaning all of life, not just all humans). Without that legitimacy, even the wisest plan will sit on a shelf, gathering dust while the crises intensify.
As a futurist, I toggle between optimism and caution daily. Optimism, because I know humans can be remarkably adaptable. We’ve reshaped our societies fundamentally several times – think of the agricultural revolution, or democracies replacing monarchies, often spurred by necessity and new ideas converging. Today, we have unprecedented tools at our disposal: real-time global communication, vast stores of knowledge, and technologies that, if repurposed, could foster regeneration rather than destruction. We also have living examples of more harmonious ways to live – indigenous communities who’ve stewarded their lands for millennia, local economies that prioritise wellbeing over profit, cooperative models of decision-making that include all voices. A new global system could draw from these wells of wisdom. The best future scenarios I envision are not a single homogenised world government imposing uniformity, but a symbiosis of global coordination and local autonomy. In complex systems (like a forest, like an ocean, like a human body), health comes from a balance of unity and diversity – a clear overall purpose and distributed, contextually-informed decision-making. If we design our future governance models with that principle, it could be both robust and responsive.
Now for the caution: complex systems have a way of humbling grand designs, especially when these are imposed by one group over another. They surprise us. Push here, something pops out over there. The history of well-intended interventions – in economies, ecologies, communities – is littered with unintended consequences. One concern I have is that in our fervour to establish new structures, we might neglect the arduous work of inner change. The danger is that we create the architecture of a new civilisation, but fill it with the old consciousness – the same egos, rivalries, and assumptions in greener uniforms. That would merely be a slower road to ruin. Any viable plan for realignment with nature requires, at its core, a shift in values. Reverence for life must cease being a slogan and become a felt guiding principle. This is spiritual as much as it is political. It means teaching ourselves and our children to see an elephant, a river, a stranger from another land, and to understand that in their wellbeing lies ours. Without this foundational shift, we risk acting out the same drama under a different banner. I often invoke the insight that “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.” It’s attributed to Einstein, but whoever said it, it remains piercingly true. If we bring the mindset of domination or zero-sum gain into a new world order, we will merely replicate empire by another name.
So, can we change our thinking in time? Here I find hope in tangible movements: the recognition of indigenous rights and knowledge, the rise of regenerative economics, experiments in deliberative democracy like citizen assemblies, the push for legal rights for the Earth and the “more-than-human” world. These may seem like disparate threads, but I see a tapestry forming. They all embody a shift from separation to connection, from exploitation to care. They are signs that the narrative is indeed changing. When I speak of metanoia, I mean this collective awakening to a new common sense. David Graeber once said the ultimate hidden truth of the world is that “it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.” I’ve taken that to heart. Much of what we consider unchangeable – our political boundaries, our economic goals, our social norms – are in fact stories we repeat ad infinitum. And we are, at last, beginning to tell a different story: that the Earth is one interdependent community of fate.
What might a future built on that story look like? Perhaps we establish some form of global forum or council – call it what you will – that has not only the authority but the obligation to safeguard our planet’s life support systems. Not a world government in the old sense, but a guardianship, a steward’s council that represents the voiceless: the forests, the oceans, the atmosphere, future generations. Its decisions would be guided by science and indigenous wisdom in equal measure, and its moral north star would be the long-term flourishing of the whole web of life. Beneath that umbrella, nations and communities would retain their diversity and freedom, but they’d operate within boundaries set by the Earth’s limits and the principle of fairness.
Enforcing such boundaries globally is a herculean task – I do not downplay it. It might involve policing of environmental crimes, financial incentives and disincentives, and mechanisms to ensure no nation can gain by undercutting others in a race to the ecological bottom. Cynics say humans can’t cooperate at that scale. I say, look at what we’ve already done: we’ve cooperated to build global trade systems, internet networks, scientific collaborations, even maintaining a peaceful (mostly) international order compared to centuries past. We absolutely can cooperate globally – we already do, just often for the wrong ends (like maximising short-term profit). The challenge is to redirect this capacity toward shared survival goals.
It comes down to a transformation of purpose. For so long, the implicit purpose of global affairs was competition – who can be the richest, the strongest, the first, the “best”. What if we made our overriding purpose cooperative custodianship – who can lift the most others up, who can heal the most damage, who can contribute best to our commons? I often muse that future historians, if there are any, will look back at our time either as the moment the great unravelling began, or the moment of the great turning. In the Great Unravelling scenario, we stick to our path until climate and conflict tear apart the delicate fabric of modern life. Nations turn inward in cynicism and fear, suffering surges, the dream of progress dies. In the Great Turning, we face the music and choose to dance a new dance. We reinvent our institutions to serve life, not vice versa. We accept short-term sacrifices for long-term security and joy. We come to see – viscerally, collectively – that “me” and “we” are not opposites but a continuum, and that even enlightened self-interest in the 21st century is indistinguishable from common interest.
Will it be easy? No. It will be the most complex, convulsive change possibly in human history. There will be setbacks and heartbreaks. There already have been. At times I, too, feel despair nip at my heels. But then I remember something about complex systems: they often seem impossibly jammed until, suddenly, they’re not. Change tends to percolate unseen, like tectonic plates quietly building pressure, until an earthquake reshapes the landscape overnight. All the conversations, experiments, grassroots efforts, and shifts in perception happening right now – they are that slow accumulation of pressure. I believe a threshold is approaching where quantity will become quality, and what was marginal will become mainstream almost in the blink of an eye. This is why I remain optimistic. The responsibility on those of us who see this possibility is profound. We must, in a sense, act “as if” the transformation is already underway – laying groundwork for new institutions, nurturing trust and relationships across borders, articulating the new narrative in every medium and forum we can. This way, when cracks in the old system widen – be it through crises or enlightened stewardship – the new can rush in like water through a burst dam, not to drown us but to cleanse and renew.
In my journey as a futurist, I’ve learned to hold dual vision: to see the glaring reality of what is, and simultaneously to envision what could be. Right now, reality is bracing: time is short, and the challenges are immense. But the vision of what could be – a world finally united in common cause, a renaissance of care for each other and the Earth, a wiser species that has finally understood its place in the cosmos – that vision is alive and compelling. It beckons us forward.
I will not pretend to predict the outcome. I’m no oracle. The future remains undetermined, to be shaped by our choices and perhaps a bit of luck. But I will say this: to abandon the effort because success isn’t guaranteed would be the ultimate failure of imagination and courage. We owe it to ourselves and to those who come after us to try – wholeheartedly, intelligently, and with humility – to build that “bridge over troubled waters”. Maybe it will take the form of a new global organisation, or a treaty, or a gradual networking of communities – likely all of these and more, working in concert. The form matters less than the function: creating a framework in which humanity can finally live in harmony with nature and with itself.
In closing, I often recall a simple principle: evolution favours the cooperative. Life on Earth, through billions of years, has thrived not by endless strife alone, but by striking equilibria, by symbiosis, by finding niches where mutual benefit becomes possible. Now that one of life’s species – us – has grown so dominant, we face a choice. We can cling to a mindset of separation, exceptionalism, and dominance until it destroys us, as it surely must. Or we can emulate life’s deeper wisdom and find our place in the pattern.
The very fact that we can contemplate this choice is remarkable. It means we have not only the self-awareness to see the peril, but the creative capacity to envision a way out. So let’s use that. Let’s rewrite what is “common sense” for our civilisation – recognising that the commons is our lifeline, and common cause our salvation. If we succeed, future generations might look back and say, “That was the moment we grew up.” And if we fail… well, I dare not dwell too long on that, as failure would be unimaginably bleak. But I remain convinced that, even in our darkest hours, humanity has a spark of wisdom and love that can light a path forward.
We stand at the edge of perhaps the greatest transition ever attempted. With clear eyes to see the hazards and full hearts to embrace the possibilities, we may yet become the ancestors that our descendants will thank, rather than curse. The task is immense – almost absurdly so. But then, so was the task of abolishing slavery, of landing on the moon, of ending great wars. We did those things when we aligned necessity with moral vision and collective will. Now the canvas is larger, the stakes truly planetary. It’s time to think as a species, act as a family, and live as part of the Earth community. Time, in short, to grow into the responsibility we’ve been given by this crisis: to re-imagine what it means to be human, and to make that imagination real.