I’m going to do a “month in review” post where I sort selected posts that talk about positive trends and ideas vs. negative trends, predictions, and risks. Just for fun, I’ll keep a score card and pretend my posts are some kind of indicator of whether things are getting better or worse. I’ll give posts a score from -3 to +3 based on how negative or positive they are.

Negative trends and predictions (-6):

• The “trophic theory of money”, which to oversimplify just says that economic growth will always add to humanity’s ecological footprint. I don’t buy this 100% but our footprint is certainly continuing to grow with no obvious signs that we are about to turn the corner. (-1)
• New dams on the Mekong, a hotspot of aquatic biodiversity, may block fish passage although some mitigation measures are being tried. (-1)
• A new book by Edan Lepucki describes a future where people “traverse a cross-section of mid-collapse landscape, framed by the gradual decline of civilization”. (-1)
• 100 years ago, exactly now, Europe was dissolving into the mostly unexpected chaos of World War I. Which led later to the extraordinary pain of the Great Depression. (-3)
• Artificial intelligence and robots are finally turning into a commercial reality, with positive and negative implications like crushing labor unrest. Also, they can identify dog breeds with some accuracy. (-0)

Positive trends and predictions (+4):

• Urban trees can mitigate a small, but not insignificant (around 2%), amount of a city’s carbon emissions. And that’s with business-as-usual practices – I speculate that this could be boosted to 5-10% with a concerted effort, which combined with emissions reductions could make an actual difference. (+1)
• “Blue Urbanism” gives some examples of how cities could be more aware of their impacts on the oceans (but clearly, those impacts are still huge so I’m not giving this any points). (+0)
• On the green infrastructure front, Biophilic Cities lays out a hopeful vision of how urban areas can be more integrated into the natural world. A new website, Falling Fruit, is trying to combine information on worldwide urban green infrastructure with a focus on edibles. (+2)
• Some EU cities are considering a complete ban on the internal combustion engine…by 2050. Stockholm however is envisioning a “single, supple mesh of mobility” by 2025. (+1)
• Autonomous vehicles are not quite a commercial reality, but they will be and there are both positive and negative implications of that. (+0)
• Dubai is building a gigantic, climate-controlled city-like mall under a dome. Children who grow up in places like this will be able to adapt readily to gigantic, climate-controlled mall-like cities in outer space. (+0)

So my Hope for the Future Index stands at -2.