What Some Crazy Smart Futurists at Shell Oil Predicted
And how makers can save the world
Shell Oil has some crazy smart futurists on staff. They scan the periphery for anomalies that will overtake the landscape of tomorrow. Well, in 2008, they found that something really big was going to happen. Here’s what they said:
There are 3 Hard Truths:
1) A huge increase in global energy use is coming.
2) There won’t be enough energy to keep up.
3) Climate change is real, and getting worse.
Wait a minute. This was 2008? From a major oil company? Was it kept under wraps by the Secret Service or something? No. Actually, Shell made a big deal out of it. They said: There are two ways this can go. One scenario is called “Blueprints.” The other is called “Scramble.”
In the Blueprints scenario, we get ahead of climate change.
People around the world start making the link between erratic, local weather and climate change. Grassroots demand for carbon reduction compels regional politicians to act. When the Kyoto treaty ends in 2012, it’s replaced with a meaningful carbon trading framework.
In Scramble, we royally screw up.
Discussion bogs down in ideological quagmire. National governments have no appetite for curbing growth. The paralysis leads to runaway carbon pollution.
Climate campaigners get louder and everyone else is beset by alarm fatigue. When resource scarcity and crazy weather become impossible to ignore, we then begin to curb the emissions. But it’s too late to go back. We can only adapt to what the world has already become.
Shell Oil came out loudly recommending Blueprints and asking governments to set carbon limits. Other Big Oil companies followed suit. Big Oil began to invest heavily in a Blueprints world. They did this in hopes that governments would provide the framework necessary.
It’s six years later. One of these two scenarios is the one we are now living out. Our world today is a Scramble world.
In the absence of any meaningful action by government, the people and organizations with the money are moving to profit off of climate change. While the TV networks air “debates” on the reality of climate change, those with money and power have long accepted the reality and are cashing in.
Makers: A secret weapon against denial.
On one hand we have the absurdity of Christian Right Denial. On the other hand we have a seemingly hopeless, tragic reality where our only recourse is to feebly put our emails into the black box of online petitions.
Not good enough, I say.
Why not apply our talents to this problem in a real way?
Creatives and Makers have an important role to play. We don’t need to have the answers now, just the willingness to roll up our sleeves.
For the past 20 years I’ve been designing and building things in and around Silicon Valley. The Makers in my neck of the woods don’t shy away from solving big problems.
When I tell this Big Oil story, no one seems to have heard anything of it. Consequently, I believe there must be an untapped talent resource we can bring to bear.
So I ask: “Are you in?”
If so, declare your talent with a tweet and #TalentVSdenial.
I will take it from there.
Here’s my declared talent:
Get started with these examples:
I write code. Eager to help but don’t know where to start.
#TalentVSdenialI teach chemistry in high school. Unleash students on this somehow?
#TalentVSdenialI facilitate all kinds of meet-ups
#TalentVSdenial
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Special thanks to McKenzie Funk. And to Kate Rutter and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
