San Francisco prides itself on its futurist qualities. When I visited last summer, Tesla’s bizarre, starship-esque Cybertrucks seemed comfortably at home on its streets, as did Google’s self-driving cars.
But despite the impressive show of electric vehicles, this metropolis is no utopian blueprint for change.
This article first appeared in the Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.
So I was thankful to have with me Rob Hopkins’ latest book, How to Fall in Love with the Future. In this extended essay, the author promises to show readers how to envisage an aspirational world – to “time travel”, as he puts it, to a future we would truly want to inhabit.
Liberating
Hopkins knows a thing or two about community-led world-building. He is a co-founder of Devon’s Transition Town Totnes, where he lives, as well as the wider Transition Network, which supports local restructuring in the face of climate and economic instability.
His work includes five previous books and the podcast series From What If to What Next, in which he interviews innovators about the various transformations they hope to unearth.
Totnes is a very different proposition from San Francisco: it is small, wild and woolly. I know because I grew up there, and on visits back I have seen the change the Transition movement has unleashed. Community orchards, climate book groups and energy-saving initiatives have all flourished.
Knowing such transformation exists can unlock change elsewhere, Hopkins suggests. His book is thus full of examples of locally led greening, including a Marseille restaurant run entirely on solar power, car-free districts in Paris, and beaver reintroduction in Britain.
There’s even a quote from an article published by the BBC Science team, which I also write and edit for, on the people “de-paving” urban concrete and tarmac and replacing it with earth and plants: “It feels like you’re liberating soil.”
Catnip
You don’t have to know the exact details of the future you want to build to get started, Hopkins implies. All you need is to connect with your own inner compass: what do you already know that feels good to you?
Hold it in your mind’s eye – then channel the motivation it sparks. “I inhale deeply and attempt to identify the different nuances and aromas,” Hopkins writes of his personal vision of 2030. “It smells like honey, like damp earth, like a forest. It smells of good food cooking.”
Thought experiments like the above can be intellectual catnip – a bulwark against despair over the current state of political and planetary health.
Future
Hopkins cites a fun example of Star Trek popularising the idea of motion-activated sliding doors years before infrared sensors were invented.
More seriously, he also shares details of the numerous communities that, with his help, have already begun harnessing their imaginative reach.
From Cumbria to Devon, new visions for investment and management have been conjured through “time-travelling” workshops and art.
The book is not, however, to be confused with a how-to guide for change. Hopkins provides enough tips to begin a romance with the idea of a greener future: “to fall in love”, as the title claims.
Endeavour
But staying in love, let alone achieving a lasting union, is another matter. He does not, for instance, dwell on what might happen if one person’s dream for the future – say, a rural landscape reminiscent of their youth – clashes with another’s – a solar or wind farm.
And while he rightly advocates involving as many diverse views and voices as possible, he does not explore what happens when those views appear at odds.
At a time when politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are setting out ever more polarising visions of the future, and when corporate giants are honing their own claims on our desires, Hopkins’ book gives much-needed encouragement to imagine the change you really want to see.
I only hope his next endeavour shows us how to hold the faith when those same imaginings get shot down, undermined and pulled – almost – out of reach.
This Author
India Bourke is a freelance environment journalist. She writes and edits regularly for BBC Future Planet. This article first appeared in the Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.
How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveller’s Guide to Changing the World by Rob Hopkins is available from Chelsea Green Publishing.