Inventing the Future in 12 775 Days- It’s All in Your Imagination

What a Difference 12 775 Days Makes

35 years ago, I was 30 years old and had just emigrated from South Africa to London, England, having tasted life in the northern hemisphere as a young lad in Canada. That was 12,775 days ago. In another 35 years, if I live that long, I will have lived another 12,775 days, and reached the ripe old age of 100. Yes, I hope to make it past 2050— that wonderful date beloved by climate scientists, politicians, sustainability experts, and governments and corporations seeking to delay eliminating fossil fuels for as long as possible.

Today is a day like many others — I’m taking my lunch break in the gardens enjoying a small Don Tomas cigar, something I do once a week, sometimes twice, if the weather is particularly good. It’s another beautiful sunny day here in Perpignan in the Pyrenees-Orientales in the South of France. The Spanish border is 30 kilometers from where I’m sitting — in 80 minutes I could be in Barcelona on a carbon-neutral high-speed train powered by the sun and wind communicating with the world on 5G at warp speed. What an amazing world, yet also one with so many tough challenges right now as we enter the post COP26 phase of negotiating with each other for our future. And doing well to remember one cannot negotiate with mother earth or physics.