MARCH 2022 IN
RICK ASTER’S WORLD
Recent news items may be making people more open to the idea of change, even where the specifics of change are not yet clear.
Two official estimates on climate change effects in the next few decades were jarring enough to cause people to stop and rethink things. One predicted a rate of sea level rise of 10 millimeters per year. We got used to the idea of 0.4 millimeters of sea level rise per year, and this new estimate says we will see what we might have thought would be a lifetime of sea level rise every three or four years. The other repart predicted a global total of climate refugees above 20 million per year for the foreseeable future. The world has never been ready for refugees at that rate, so it is clear that we will have to up our game.
Around the same time that we got those stories — as if that wasn’t enough — we got word from one of the world’s larger countries that it was taken the first steps toward a nuclear missile strike on multiple cities. It did not appear that the country would go through all the steps of launching the missiles, nor that the missiles would reach their intended targets if launched, but still, imagining the potential for a nuclear strike affecting millions of people was enough to make people feel less complacent in the way things are.
These news stories and others have made people more ready to look for opportunities to change. This is not the same as embracing specific changes, but it means that collectively, we are more ready to hear about the changes that might be ahead for us.
We might hear the details of a change, for example, that the current generation of aircraft will have to be replaced by new designs, and balk, saying, “How is that ever going to work?” but it is still valuable that we are ready to hear about possible changes.
With the greater openness to change, changes are happening faster. I can’t count the number of policies that have stagnated or needs that have gone ignored for half a lifetime that have suddenly changed this year. With many people new expecting and looking for change, there can be no doubt that more surprising changes are on the way.
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