I Am a Time Traveler With a Message of Hope: The Best Time To Be Alive Is Yet To Come
By: Yoann Berno
Tags: Sustainability, SciFi, Utopia, Climate Change, Science Fiction

I am from the year 2107. Things are looking bright here, and your grand children’s future is safe.

All I can say is that we made it past the Great Climate Crisis.

I am sending you this message as the departing wish from our venerated Mother Yika. You don’t know her yet, but she will play a central role in humanity’s transition as the founding member of the Children of Gaia.

“What are the Children of Gaia?” you might wonder.

I can’t stress enough how critical this movement has been for our survival. Consider them as all the engaged citizens of the world that carried a new collective narrative. They grew from a pocket of activists to the masses that convinced the rest of the world to embark on a salvatory transformation.

If you’re reading this, you might already be a Child of Gaia without knowing it.

There’s so much I’d like to tell you and I’m sure I’ll leave you with many unanswered questions. But time is precious and I’m merely going to explain what happened and its consequences.

Today, our children get taught at school the traumas of the Great Climate Crisis.

I feel for you. Things must start looking pretty bleak from where you stand in the 2020s.

Sorry to disappoint but the tragedy of global warming will perdure for another 30 years.

The melting of the poles, the flooding of cities, the acceleration of climate catastrophes, and the destruction of our biosphere will speed up until 2050. Luckily things will bottom-up thereafter.

Remember the impact and consequences of World War II? Well, the Great Climate Crisis will leave much deeper scars and will reshape the global order in more dramatic ways.

But today, most of our scholars agree that it was a necessary evil to operate the profound shift that humanity needed in order to survive.

Yes, you will face a survival threat.

But keep hope, it will get better!

Today, our living conditions are stable and we live in balance with our planet’s biosphere. We have finally embraced a model that is conducive to life and not destructive. Birds and mammals are back, plants are everywhere, and the air is much cleaner.

We even recently spotted a family of koalas and observed salmons swimming up the river.

All these are the fruits of the work from the past three generations.

That’s right, most of you reading this will likely witness the start of this deep transformation.

How transformed is our world from yours?

The change is profound.

Illustration from Juliana Tekova

In my world, soon-to-be yours, most countries no longer exist. Nationalism has disappeared. We evolved to live in smaller and more decentralized communities. A few ancient mega-cities still exist but have been severely depleted.

Today’s cities mimic forests and we are much better off this way. Humans were never meant to get stacked up in concrete jungles.

Economic growth today is 0% per year.

Why is that?

We no longer monitor GDP. Our measure of success lies in sustainability and optimization, not growth and maximization.

There is no inflation, and thus no incentive to invest your money. Just like human civilizations had no significant economic growth before the Industrial Revolution, our society doesn't look to maximize economic growth anymore.

Our objectives and ideals are much different than yours. We value preserving balance with the living, self-actualization through our connection with Nature, and happiness.

What happened to your high-tech mega-corps: Google, Apple, or Amazon?

Numerous of their employees joined the Children of Gaia and pressured their leadership to decentralize the governance and spearhead the transition towards a sustainable model. After seeing the enormous damage done to our society and our planet burning, they sought to leverage their war chests and billions of users to accelerate the transition.

You might be surprised to hear that this transition didn’t go against the free market principles. Innovation never disappeared.

From the late 2030s, new businesses flourished based on new ecological incentives. That was the start of a new paradigm. It was not a mere transformation but a complete green renaissance.

For this, we had to implement profound structural changes, starting by counting what we didn’t count before in our economic models, the use of natural resources.

That led to a mechanical drop in the value of all the organizations dependent on natural resources and causing climate degradation. It also led to the bankruptcies of all the agrochemical, energy, and extractive corporations.

If economic growth and inflation have disappeared, what happened to central currencies?

Cryptocurrencies became one of the largest accelerators of our decentralized living. They dematerialized exchanges, removed frontiers, and challenged the dominance of government currencies, which were the stronghold of the status quo.

But most importantly, the solutions were not monetary nor technological but social. Education was the biggest driver of climate resilience.

Ever since the Great Climate Crisis, humanity has entered the age of maturity and humility. No longer predators. No longer extractors. We reached another level of awareness. Humanity came of age.

We are now at peace with ourselves and with all the beings. Humans are part of a whole, and we are all interconnected. All creatures that surround us belong to the same living organism. We had that tribal intuition buried deep inside us. But it never entirely went away. It finally resurfaced.

And trust me, we are much happier that way!