Fast forward to World Environment Day 2050!

Dairy Entry - June 5th 2009: The theme for World Environment Day 2009 is 'Your Planet Needs You - UNite to Combat Climate Change'. It reflects the urgency for nations to agree on a new global green deal at the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen some 180 days later in the year, and the links with overcoming poverty and improved management of forests. But for me a Post-Carbon future would be a time in human history when no more oil is drilled, no more coal is mined and no more gas is piped in our planet. It would also mean a time when the remaining fossil fuels in stock globally are only burned with 100% Carbon Capture and Storage technologies. In a Post-Carbon future I see a world where apart from energy, no fertilizers, no plastics, no drugs, no foodstuffs - nothing will be manufactured from using fossil fuels. Lastly, as President Obama, promised that he will create 5 million new jobs in the new green economy - I see a Post-Carbon future where other politicians and leaders from around the world have come on board following Obama's leadership and within five decades they have together created 500 million green jobs in about 100 countries with a global annual turnover of USD $50 trillion.


Dairy Entry - June 5th 2050: So here I am 75 years old, still fit and strong - celebrating World Environment Day 2050 with my 9 grandchildren and my extended family inside the Lyngdoh Sacred Forest where 395 species of plants have been protected and preserved by my clan for centuries in Mawphlang Village, India. The theme of WED 2050 is 'Indigenous People - Celebrating their Resilience to Climate Change'. I am one of those old indigenous warriors from my Khasi Tribe who like others from across the planet have fought the good fight against climate change and managed to preserve our culture, our identity, our environment and our planet for generations to come. So I am enjoying my life in this Post-Carbon world where the global human population has stabilized at 9 billion, each with an annual carbon footprint of about 1 ton. I recall the time when it all started 41 years ago while I was at the historic climate change negotiations of COP 15 in Copenhagen where world leaders put a price tag on the emissions of carbon and all green house gases. Since then the price of carbon has gone up from $10 to $500 per ton and so over the years we have learned to measure it, price it - like a tax - and this has encouraged people across the planet to produce less of these GHGs. Under international climate law we also introduced legally enforceable ‘caps’ or limits to the amounts of GHGs any one country can emit in the course of a year. This has resulted in the transfer of appropriate clean technologies from the developed to the developing world and over time we have build a global green economy with a non-carbon consuming or emitting energy infra-structure.