Global Scenario Planning

From the dystopian management consulting files, i.e., the stories used to rationalize operational changes, rather than the substantive changes in how we do what we do, "Future scenarios is intended to help both policy makers and activists come to terms with the end of the era of growth."

While the end of growth is so unthinkable to many policy makers and economists that they use the term ‘negative-growth’, we now face less and less available energy each year, coupled with a destabilized climate. The simultaneous onset of climate change and the peaking of global oil supply represent unprecedented challenges for human civilisation. Each limits the effective options for responses to the other.

Future Scenarios uses a scenario planning framework to bring to life the likely cultural, political, agricultural and economic implications of peak oil and climate change. Scenario planning uses stories about the future as a reference point for imagining how particular strategies and structures might thrive, fail or be transformed. Future Scenarios depicts four very different futures. Each is a permutation of mild or destructive climate change, combined with either slow or severe energy declines. Scenarios range from the relatively benign Green Tech to the near catastrophic Lifeboats scenario.