Lifestyle NW - NW Visions
Exploring what they might get
Scenarios outline
F-0: High growth
Economic growth accelerates to a round 5% per year, and while the poor stay level, the wealthy shoot ahead. Much of the NW becomes a gated community with privatized health and education provision, where material affluence grows unabated. The global eco-footprint continues to double every 30 years.
F-1: Business as usual
The experts take over in this 'management' vision of society, organized by IT-savvy partnerships of government and business. While the region itself appears ever more clean and green, its footprint on the rest of the world continues to grow at 1 - 1.5% per year.
F-2: Low growth
Everything goes wrong that can go wrong, in this future of risk and paranoia. Total ecological footprint is halved, but for the wrong reasons - economic stagnation and social malaise. The rich consume avariciously while others tighten their belts, amidst a host of problems - climate change, urban unrest, toxic waste, mutant organisms, and international terrorism.
F-4: Factor four
As people reinvent a new kind of quality of life in local communities, true wealth spreads more evenly. The eco-footprint is reduced overall by a factor of four (75%), by combining increased efficiency, better distribution, and zero-waste closed cycle production and consumption.
F-10: Deep green
in a utopian society of peace and justice, people rediscover the real meaning of life, not so much in material possessions, but in relationships and spiritual development. This is more difficult to draw! There is also a possible F?? scenario. Radical breakthroughs in IT, bio or nano technology may create 'wild card' possibilities, pointing towards science fiction territory. But - 50 years ago, the internet was science fiction territory.
