Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism

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The study shows that the irrelevance of historical data and the long time horizon of risk materialisation make traditional risk modelling ineffective, with the only certainty being that climate risks grow with continued inaction. The success - and survival - of humanity now depends on how we rein in the first and accelerate the second. As with many disruptive ideas, it starts with Rejection, the phase in which people simply reject the possibility of a Green Swan happening (think “people will never give up combustion engines”).

Given the vast scale of a potential climate catastrophe and the substantial uncertainty surrounding climate risk, the rationale for such an approach lies in the precautionary principle. I’ve been asking myself these questions for a while now about Future-Fit, as I try to identify gaps in our efforts to accelerate adoption of the Benchmark. Nobody was under the illusion that efforts so far to re-tool the financial system were anywhere near helping the world meet the Paris Agreement goal of capping temperature rises to 1.

In this ‘Hitchhikers’ Guide to the impact galaxy’ we wander through our green future in good company. We spent some time exploring the important insights that Frank Herbert shared in his science fiction novel ‘Dune’ ( dedicated “To All the Dry Land Ecologists of the Future”). Anyone who has watched Bill Gates’ 2015 Ted Talk on the urgent need to prepare for pandemics — which now seems eerily prescient, but to experts at the time was merely stating the obvious — will realise that the current COVID-19 crisis fits the Gray Swan profile. I have not done many book reviews for a while, so I was looking forward to reading this as anything that John puts his name to is normally high quality.

John asked me what I personally plan to do based on “seeing the nature and scale of the challenge our species now faces” (1:04) … and I might have surprised him by speaking to my personal commitment to re-localise and re-regionalise my work and my renewed commitment to focus on the bioregional scale and how this prompted me to choose the island of Mallorca 10 years ago as the place to explore how to bioregional regeneration can be catalysed.Its quirky appearance, however, means that its potential evolution into a Green Swan can be hard to detect early on. So, please step up and play your part in this transition by submitting your suggestions via the forms below .