Challenge

We are, as communities, cities and nations, faced with an unprecedented sequence of changes that will impact how we live and potentially the future of modern civilization. These changes are diverse in nature and potential impacts, but systemic in their relationship to virtually all people and businesses. These changes involve very personal issues such as increasing credit card debt; very costly issues such as the restoration of environments; very comprehensive problems such as the transition away from fossil fuels; and very pervasive problems with global climate change being the most profound.  

The specific results of these changes are impossible to predict, largely because of the sheer complexity of relationships between the various trends. For example, organic farming is supplanting fossil fuel-based farming strategies, but this transition will be affected by increasingly uncertain weather conditions and variables having to do with marketing, distribution and land use. Similarly the transition to renewable energy will have a raft of impacts on everything from travel patterns to plastics production.  Given the specialization that permeates society few people can comprehend how such a transition can happen, or that similar transitions have happened.