Jamais over at OpenTheFuture developed a set of four possible future scenarios describing ways of responding to the challenges brought about by global climate change. The scenarios for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies were constructed on the basis of two core questions:

1. Who makes the rules? (centralized vs. distributed)
2. How do we use technology? (precautionary vs. proactionary)
   

… and feature elements from three main approaches to tackling the climate crisis: prevention, mitigation, remediation (read also here).

Functional Green (centralized & precautionary): “a world in which top-down efforts emphasize regulation and mandates, while the deployment of new technologies emphasizes improving our capacities to limit disastrous results. ”

Power Green (centralized & proactionary): “a world where government and corporate entities tend to exert most authority, and where new technologies, systems and response models tend to be tried first and evaluated afterwards. “

We Green (decentralized & precautionary): “a world in which collaboration and bottom-up efforts prove decisive, and technological deployments emphasize strengthening local communities, enhancing communication, and improving transparency.”

Hyper Green (decentralized & preactionary): “a world in which things get weird. Distributed decisions and ad-hoc collaboration dominate, largely in the development and deployment of potentially transformative technologies and models.”

Read here for more detailed scenario information.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 18:51 and is filed under foresight, future, scenarios, science, society, sustainability, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.