A brilliant commencement by Paul HawkenYou are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

 In November 2009 AISEC along with Kairos Futures conducted a survey of over 3,000 young people from around 122 countries about their views on climate change. The results were telling. 73% of respondents believe climate change to be a greater threat to society than the war or terrorism, and nearly all see their main responsibility as being to leave the world in better shape than their parents did. Here is a run down of their findings.

Crises are normal and of all times: they are always generally unexpected, with the next one quite different from the previous one (as we have put the breaks and stress-tests in place to prevent the previous one from occurring again), and more difficult to contain, manage and resolve. What the current crisis has taught us is how interdependent the world has become;

 The 2007-2009 financial crisis was a perfect "black swan" event: unexpected, a rarity, with broad and deep impacts; and, with the benefit of hindsight, it was also retrospectively rationalised by many "experts". We got it all "sensationally" wrong: bankers (like myself), policy-makers, supervisors, auditors, research analysts, economists, civil society itself. And even as the crisis was unfolding, many initially did not consider its seriousness. We saw dangers of shocks, but underestimated the confluence and impact thereof.  

This is the contents page for the Tomorrow's Company Briefing Documents. You can use the links below to reach the various Documents stored on forceforgood.com. The Tomorrow's Company Briefing Documents are intended to provide the reader with a comprehensive introduction to a particular topic. Please get in touch if you have any ideas for further briefings at admin@forceforgood.com.