The digital shift creates threats and opportunities.
Information technology, artificial intelligence and big data have the ability to greatly accelerate business-as-usual, which could mean more inequality, surveillance and overconsumption. But the intelligent use of digital technology can also coordinate, mobilise and speed up progressive change.
Big issues are who owns and controls the digital economy, what its priorities are and who has access to it. The potential of ‘open source’ software and hardware, and whether the technologies and sector themselves are environmentally sustainable, are just two of the big questions. But there are communities, groups and enterprises around the world who are taking the best that the technology has to offer and turning it to the task of rapid transition.
Story of change
Making waves: Electric ships are sailing aheadQuietly, at the tail-end of 2021, the Yara Birkeland set sail from Porsgrunn, a town in the south-east of Norway. The 80-metre, 3200-tonne ship is the first...
Story of change
Keeping cool without costing the earthIn May 2022 temperatures in India and Pakistan reached 50°C. Heat this fierce causes chaos to infrastructure, water security and also triggers irreversible...
Story of change
European sleeper trains are waking upAfter a slow and steady decline, the sleeper train – a vital link to more sustainable, connected transport systems – is waking-up and getting back on...
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Commentary
Rapid transition to beat the heat – InfrastructureAll the wonders of human civilisation were conceived of, and created in, a climate that no longer exists. Nowhere is this clearer than in the infrastructure...
Commentary
Rapid transition to beat the heatCan we respond to extreme heat to protect human health and shore up infrastructure in such a way that actually accelerates a rapid, low carbon transition to...
Reset series
Pandemic epiphaniesEat, sleep, work, shop. Sometimes in consumer societies it seems there’s not much more to life. In pre-pandemic days, the old economic system wanted...
Reset series
Commuting (not) to a healthier and happier futureThe global pandemic not only transformed how we work, but also where and how we get to work. For many people that were instructed to work from home, and...
Story of change
Large-tired and tested: how Europe’s cargo bike roll-out is deliveringAcross Europe, as cities get to grips with road congestion, air pollution and meeting climate targets, the manual and electric cargo bike is rapidly...
Commentary
A Rapid Transition is underway – but will it happen fast enough?After 33 years working at Alliance member, Centre for Alternative Technology, Paul Allen reflects on his journey. The Centre for Alternative Technology...
Story of change
Building back better: South Korea shows the challenge and opportunity of green stimulus spending for Covid recoveryIs the world poised to learn from the missed chance of 2008 and take the opportunity of rebuilding after a huge economic shock to make a rapid, low carbon...
Report
Cambridge Sustainability Commission report on Scaling Behaviour ChangeA major new report by the Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change calls on policy makers to target the UK’s polluter elite to...
Resource
Sweat not oil: Why sports should drop advertising and sponsorship from high-carbon pollutersThe global sports industry was worth an estimated $471 billion in 2018. Corporate sponsorship in sport is a multi-million dollar business but do we really...
