Midterm project presentation

As The Great Derangement made the case, there is not nearly enough art grappling with climate collapse, the greatest challenge & opportunity humanity has ever faced. Of what we do have, there’s too much dystopian fear-mongering, and not nearly enough imagination put to how society could look in the best cases. Guilt & fear are terrible long-term motivators, and we need something better to work forward to.

My exact deliverable: a scrolling website describing urban life mid-century, if we tackle climate with urgency, thought, and care, and an eye toward improving what we have, not merely maintaining our current quality of life. It’ll incorporate writing/narrative, illustration/photography (some may be AI-generated or others’ concept art), animation, etc.

I want to make this world feel concretely real, with present-tense descriptions of the world in the future & lots of details. It doesn’t need to—it can’t—capture nearly everything, so I’ll zoom into a few specific areas. Transportation & energy are ones I intend to focus on, as I think our mindset could shift in unexpected ways with wholly new systems in those areas. The primary thing I noticed describing the sectors/transitions I could focus on is how easily this will spiral into massive scope, and I need to keep focused what I describe so it’s compelling.

One question still to resolve is how much to work on what the transition from now to then looks like, versus just the world then. I suspect capturing the world then is more original, and more captivating/engaging, then discussing the technical details of the transition. I could consider an “x-ray mode” or second half describing how it went down (from this future), but working on that may be lower-impact than making the world-building top-tier. One specific example: instead of talking about how we installed so much renewable energy capacity, describing how electricity is no longer a constrained/expensive resource but an abundant one, is more original & impactful in world-building than charts of the transition plans.