When asked, “Would you rather go ten years into the future and remain as healthy as you are now or go back 30 years in the past and be new again?” most people opt for the three decades younger look. Alas, we cannot relive our past, but we can make a better future. This is the premise of our book on making Earth the first-choice destination for the generations to come.
Let us rephrase the question: If you were to go back to being 10 years younger, what would you do differently? Today is that opportunity to start afresh. We are looking ahead to 2030, the goals for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). If “back” is now, we have an opportunity to truly foresee a future.
We don’t have a chance to go BACK, but an opportunity to go FORWARD! This is called Feed-forward.
There was a craze, as there always is for a new game, app, or product. This app was called FaceApp. Wikipedia explains FaceApp as a mobile application for iOS and Android developed by the Russian company Wireless Lab. The app generates highly realistic transformations of faces in photographs by using neural networks based on artificial intelligence. The app can transform a face to make it smile, look younger, look older, or change gender.
This craze took over social media with celebrity and family FaceApp memes all over the place. Some were outright silly, and some predictably funny, from Donald Trump to George Clooney. There were cheeky ones like the many-faced god of Arya Stark from Game of Thrones, and the nostalgic one from the movie FaceOff with Nicolas Cage transformed into John Travolta. The creative memes, where Roger Federer doesn’t age, were pure ingenuity!
Amidst these memes came one act of brilliance that painted a truly dark picture. It was of our Earth, blue and green as it is now, and then the future image was barren, brown, and desolate. Reality hit home. That’s what will happen to Earth if we ignore the issues. The “Elephant in the Room,” or rather “The Elephant on the Earth,” is a serious issue, and ignoring it will only lead to our own peril. Climate change, poverty, irresponsible consumption, and heartless poaching and fishing would make Earth darker and the future bleaker.
Let’s take action today to ensure a brighter, sustainable future for our planet. The time to act is now!
(This is part of the new book titled “SDGs at Home and in Classrooms” by Dawood Vaid, author of “Education Riddle.”)
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