The Moment We Are In

We believe we are at the doorstep of a phase shift

We believe the window runs to 2030

We are not predicting a date. We are naming a window, and we believe it is the one that matters most for laying foundations.

• Technology is converging. We believe AI, robotics, cheap clean energy and new forms of money are arriving together, much as the smartphone appeared once touchscreens, batteries and mobile internet converged.
• Nature's deadlines point to the same date. Many of the world's climate, biodiversity and Sustainable Development Goal targets are set for 2030, and tipping points may be closer than we think.
• Systems are fluid now and will harden later. We believe the relationships, habits and institutions in place when the dust settles will shape the decades that follow.
• Trust cannot be built in a crisis. We believe community has to be woven before the hardest years arrive.

Abundance captured, or abundance shared

For two centuries, fossil energy and successive waves of technology, from steam to electricity to computing, created extraordinary abundance. Billions of people were lifted out of poverty, and life expectancy roughly doubled. We believe that story is real, and worth celebrating.

There is another side to it. Much of that abundance was captured by a small number of people rather than shared. Energy, food and shelter should have become steadily cheaper for everyone. For most households, they didn't. The gains flowed upwards, and the vast majority were left working harder just to stay in place.

Now a new general-purpose technology has arrived. We believe artificial intelligence could bring the greatest gains yet: faster science, better medicine, cheaper clean energy, and expert help for everyone. It is spreading in years rather than decades, though, and we believe the transition is likely to be chaotic.

The societal breakdowns, as we see them

• AI disruption
  Jobs, industries and institutions are being reshaped faster than they can adapt, and power is concentrating in fewer hands.
• Monetary instability
  Record debt, rising living costs and widening inequality are straining households and governments alike, while AI threatens the old link between work, wages and tax revenue.
• Future of work
  Sitting between these two, AI is now taking on knowledge work, from writing and analysis to coding and design, while robots are increasingly taking on physical work in factories, warehouses, farms and homes. For the first time, both the office and the shop floor are changing at once. We believe many people face not just losing income but losing purpose, meaning and identity as we move towards a post-labour world.
• Geopolitics
  Conflict, fragile supply chains and an AI race between nations are pulling the world apart just when cooperation matters most.
• Democracy
  Our institutions are struggling to keep pace, with regulation lagging technology and short-term politics crowding out long-term thinking.
• Cohesion and trust
  Polarisation, misinformation and loneliness are eroding the trust that holds communities together.

Our frame builds on Sebastian Dienst (The Initiation podcast), who describes a phase shift driven by converging breakdowns in AI, money, climate and geopolitics.

Disintegration and possibility arrive together

None of us knows exactly when these forces will peak. We believe we are approaching a point of convergence, and that the window to 2030 will be decisive.

We believe the choice ahead leads either to hardship, anxiety and people turning on each other, or to a great simplification, where everyone's basic needs are met and people have time for what they care about, what they love doing, and the people they love.

We believe advanced technology can make our lives simpler, not more complicated.

People

We believe what tips us towards the better path is people. The good people are out there, though scattered and disconnected. By weaving them together through real human relationships, sharing ideas, skills, introductions and passions, we rebuild community.

The Holocene: a stable climate that made civilisation possible

For most of the last few million years, the Earth's climate swung between deep ice ages and warmer periods, often violently. Around 11,700 years ago we entered the Holocene, a period of extraordinary climate stability, with global average temperatures varying by only around a degree either way.

We believe that steady climate was nature's great gift of abundance. It allowed farming to emerge independently in many parts of the world, and with it towns, cities, writing, trade and every civilisation that followed.

Tipping points

We are now leaving that stability, and we believe the greatest worry is what we cannot see. Think of leaning back on a chair: it feels under control right up until it goes too far, and then it is very hard to come back. Earth's systems have tipping points like that.

A major 2022 study in Science led by Armstrong McKay, with Johan Rockström, identified 16 of them, from Greenland's ice to the Amazon, and found five may already be triggered at today's warming of about 1.3 °C. Warm-water coral reefs have probably already passed theirs. Nobody knows exactly where the other thresholds lie. We believe that when a loss cannot be reversed, we cannot afford to wait for certainty.

We believe the years ahead are a race between the two.

Stored sunlight, spent in two centuries

The fossil fuels that powered our modern abundance are an extraordinary inheritance: the stored sunlight of hundreds of millions of years of nature's patient work, as ancient forests and sea life were slowly buried and compressed. In barely two centuries, we have spent a vast share of it. It funded remarkable progress, and it also released that ancient carbon back into the air.

This is why the world talks about keeping warming to 1.5 degrees. We believe it isn't an arbitrary number. It marks the edge of the stable band that every civilisation in history has grown up within, and we are now pressing right up against it. Here too, the benefits were enjoyed by some while the costs were spread across everyone, including generations not yet born.

The nature breakdowns, as we see them

• Climate disruption
  Heatwaves, floods, droughts and fires are becoming more frequent and more severe. Farmers, insurers, towns and cities are already feeling it, and the costs are rising every year.
• Biodiversity loss
  Wildlife populations have fallen sharply within a single lifetime. Insects, birds, soils, rivers and oceans are under strain, and with them the pollination, clean water and fertile land our food depends on.
• Planetary boundaries
  Scientists have identified nine boundaries that keep the Earth stable and liveable, and we have now crossed most of them, from climate and land use to freshwater and chemical pollution. These pressures interact and compound, so the risk is greater than any one of them alone.

As with society, no one knows exactly when tipping points will arrive. We believe the years to 2030 are the window in which our choices will shape what follows for decades. We track progress against every 2030 goal on our 2030 goals scorecard, including the ones going backwards.

Nature heals when we give it the chance

We believe there is real hope here. Clean energy is now the cheapest power in history across much of the world. Solar, wind and batteries promise a future of energy abundance without the pollution. Nature has a remarkable capacity to heal when we give it the chance, as regenerative farmers, restored wetlands and returning wildlife show. Less food waste, better land care and smarter use of materials all ease the pressure while saving money.

The same choice applies: abundance captured or abundance shared. Cheap clean energy could flow to a few, or it could lower the cost of living for everyone while giving nature room to recover.

We believe a thriving society and a thriving natural world aren't competing goals. They rise or fall together.

Here too, the turning point is people. Farmers, gardeners, businesses, local groups and neighbours are already caring for their patch of the Earth. Connected, we believe they become a movement strong enough to steer us towards a future where people and nature both flourish.