Can Antarctica Survive?
Antarctica 2041: My Quest to Save the Earth’s Last Wilderness by Robert Swan with Gil Reavill. Broadway. 2009. 290 pages. $24.99.
Antarctica’s long-term survival is in question, warns Robert Swan, a researcher who has led expeditions to both the North and South poles. In 2041, he explains, the international treaty protecting Antarctica from human development is up for review. He fears that human development might win, due to the continent’s vast oil, natural gas, and mineral resources, and the likelihood that—if current consumption trends continue—existing oil wells will be mostly drained and no longer sufficient to sustain industrialized civilization.
Swan tells of his ventures on the tundra and his observations about its already-troubled health: disintegrating ice, accumulating trash, and the permanent discoloration of his own eyes from the solar radiation that penetrated the depleted ozone layer above. He expresses his hope that human civilization will find the will to protect this last wilderness.
Space-Based Energy Solutions
Energy Crisis: Solution from Space by Ralph Nansen. Apogee. 2009. 203 pages. $24.95.
An energy source that is nondepletable, available to everyone, environmentally clean, and in a form we can easily use—we have yet to find it on Earth, but it is there for the taking in space, argues space engineer Ralph Nansen. He presents a bold and far-reaching plan to deploy satellites that will capture solar radiation from the sun and beam it to earth for use in generating immense new quantities of electricity.
Plans for such satellites have been under way since the 1970s, he explains, relating the historical background of America’s space program and technical details of the structures that a hypothetical solar-satellite system would include. It would be a very long-term solution, he cautions: Government agencies and businesses would have to commit many years of development and huge initial investments. But if human beings muster the foresight to go through with it, the reward will be a new era of low-cost energy that the entire world can enjoy.
Futurism, Kid-Style
2030: A Day in the Life of Tomorrow’s Kids by Amy Zuckerman and James Daly Dutton. 2009. 32 pages. $16.99.
Kids in 2030 will still have to eat their vegetables, but genetic engineering will make those greens taste far yummier. School will still be in session, but most kids will be excited to go. What child wouldn’t look forward to teacher-led holograph tours of the pyramids of Egypt; multimedia centers where talking computers help students create dynamic video presentations; and gym classes replete with virtual-reality baseball and “smart” trampolines?
In 32 richly illustrated pages, business writer Amy Zuckerman and education writer James Daly give young readers a snapshot of daily life as it might look when they grow up. Dogs “speak” to people via voice simulators, kitchen appliances interact with users, and humanoid search agents converse with you and help you find whatever information you need.
Other, less far-fetched amenities include energy grids powered mainly by wind and solar generators, recycling of nearly all garbage, and suburban “eco-villages” whose buildings are specially insulated to keep out excess heat.
Many of these marvels will be familiar concepts to career futurists, but they will come alive for the first time to young readers—and maybe inspire them to engage in their own futures thinking.
Career—and Life—Hunting
What Color Is Your Parachute? 2010: A Practical Manual for Job Hunters and Career Changers by Richard N. Bolles. Ten Speed Press. 2010. 311 pages. $18.99.
The job search as career coach is not a matter of looking for available positions; it is one of self-discovery and personal futuring.
In this “hard times” edition of the job-search guide that Richard Bolles has published annually since 1970, he explains that job seekers will have the most success if they undertake a “life-changing job hunt”: taking a thorough personal inventory of what one enjoys, brainstorming of job environments where one will use these skills and interests, and planning to contact individuals who can help find jobs that offer opportunities to use these skills and interests.
With anecdotes, step-by-step instructions, and engaging charts and graphs, Bolles shows how to undertake this introspective job hunt. He maps out the multitude of available aids one can find along the way, such as Web sites, unemployment agencies, networking groups, and many others.
On a Lifetime of Community Building
Odyssey of a Practical Visionary by Belden Paulson. Thistlefield Books. 2009. 757 pages. $24.95.
In the mid-twentieth century, while communists and anticommunists across the world were locked in ideological warfare, futurist and community organizer Belden Paulson went about his own peaceful quest to change the world. Now he tells his story, with all the people who shared in it and the history he witnessed.
Paulson relates his post-college journey to Sardinia in 1950 as a work-camp humanitarian helping towns rebuild from the lingering damage of World War II. He then decided to stay and co-found Italy’s first settlement center and resettlement camp to help Sardinia’s war refugees join the neighboring towns as self-sufficient working citizens.
Paulson continued his community-building in Wisconsin, where he helped establish High Wind, a community powered by renewable energy and designed for maximum cooperation and closeness to nature among its residents. While at High Wind, he established the Plymouth Institute, a futurist think tank.
Paulson’s activism as a futurist led him to participate in the World Future Society’s 1980 globla conference in Toronto, an account of which is included in this memoir.
Through his lifelong “adventure,” as he calls it, Paulson has held fast to the conviction that anything is possible, and that all of us are bound by the ties of global interdependence. He challenges readers to rethink how they see the world and realize the opportunity that each of us has to commit to building a more perfect world.
New Leadership Skills
Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World by Bob Johansen. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 2009. 191 pages. $26.95.
Self-serving leadership is about to become obsolete, according to Institute for the Future scholar and board member Bob Johansen. He expects the next 10 years to be a “threshold decade” of greater volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Leaders who wish to steer their organizations through all the turmoil will need to be able to look beyond their own personal interests and collaborate with the broader system of which they are parts.
Johansen identifies 10 fundamental skills that every leader will need to possess to be effective, and he explains how he or she can implement them into everyday practice. These skills include the “maker instinct,” clarity, dilemma flipping (turning problems into opportunities), and quiet transparency (being open and authentic without advertising).
Making Education More Effective
The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity by W. Norton Grubb. Russell Sage Foundation. 2009. 400 pages. $35.
Increased funding does not guarantee improved school performance, according to Berkeley education professor W. Norton Grubb. Despite lavish funding, he says, many U.S. school districts lag far behind others in the quality of education they offer their students. Those students will consequently be at a steep disadvantage throughout their adult lives.
Grubb cites evidence that schools often waste or misallocate the resources they have, in part because they operate by outmoded top-down management styles in which leadership does not work in tandem with teachers and the communities. With more collective decision making, schools might function more effectively.
Grubb describes new approaches to reorganize schools and school districts to make them more collegial, democratic, and equipped for meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.