A perfect storm is upon us, and to confront it designers must this year help to lead a fundamental shift in the way we see the world, writes Pooran Desai.
“We have two years to save the world.” So said Simon Stiell, United Nations climate chief, in April last year. We are now nine months – more than a third of the way – into those two years. We have run out of time. We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish.
“Reimagine”. Take this option and by 2050 we’ll be enjoying a planet where the living systems on which we depend are regenerating and able to support a population of 10 billion.
We are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points
We will be improving our personal health and the health of our communities. We will have transformed from a consumer species, consuming the rest of nature, to a regenerator one, working as part of the rest of nature and returning the living planet to a healthy state.
The second option is far less comforting. In this option we continue with our consumer economy with some incremental moves towards circularity and targets like net zero.
They avoid saying it in public, but multiple scientists have told me they genuinely fear that if we follow this path, by the middle of the century we will be trying to survive on a planet only able to support maybe one or two billion people. A stark choice.
Why two polar outcomes? It is because we are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points which interact and cascade in ways that move us away from a stable state. Climate change leads to drought, collapse in food production, mass migration and war.
The big question we need to ask ourselves: can we tip from a degenerating to a regenerating state? I think so, and I believe it is simple.
The good news is that a paradigm shift in science, culture and consciousness is emerging. This rebalancing from reductionism to holism, from rationality to intuition, from science to art, and from materialism to a sense of the sacred will be essential for resolving the polycrisis.
Leading scientists are calling for us to fundamentally change how we teach science
Architects and designers work at the nexus of art and science, and so will be critical in manifesting the reimagining.
In science the paradigm shift is a revolution every bit as dramatic as when Copernicus deposed our planet the centre of the universe. There is a growing and profound dissatisfaction with reductionism and materialism. Focusing on the detail and the parts, we are realising, fails to explain how the world hangs together.
In medicine, contradicting all reductionist hopes, we now know that genes predict only 5-10 per cent of disease at most, and that the expression of our genes is affected by the wider environment, culture and, ultimately, the state of the whole planet.
In biology, scientists have been confronting the limitations of seeing the natural world as separate competing individuals and are instead now applying new mathematics that enables us to understand how species organise collaboratively to create a whole living planet. So serious are the shortcomings of conventional reductionist understanding that leading scientists are calling for us to fundamentally change how we teach science, particularly biology, at school and university.
Increasingly hailed as the greatest thinker of our time, Iain McGilchrist, psychiatrist, neuroscientist, philosopher and author of The Matter with Things ascribes our polycrisis to a metacrisis, and how the two halves of our brain deal with, or attend to, the world. The left brain, which is dominant in our culture, sees the world as made up of parts which it literally cannot put together and lacks the intuition fundamentally needed to make complex decisions.
Continuing on our current path will fail to see us through the perfect storm upon us
The right brain, by contrast, understands context and can see the world as an indivisible interconnected whole, which is closer to the ultimate truth and which is beyond reductionist understanding. The right brain opens us up to a sense of awe and the sacred – vital for a healthy relationship with the rest of the life on this planet.
“Reimagine” shifts us to being led by our right brains. It will be arts- and meditation-led, supported by science, reconnecting us to each other, our communities and the rest of nature.
Interconnectedness is key to the reimagining, and will gently corral us to collaborate to build resilient, regenerative communities. Already we see all this emerging around the world in artistic and community movements, from indigenous peoples to Brian Eno’s Hard Art.
Designers, of course, balance both brain functions – seeing possibilities and collapsing those into forms, or parts, which in turn transform the whole. They will play a central role: reimagining products and services so that they build the health of people, community and planet, replacing our consumer economy with a regenerator one. It will be a playful and joyful process, bringing us together.
In contrast, continuing on our current path will fail to see us through the perfect storm upon us. Carbon emissions are rising. Climate change is accelerating. Insect populations are collapsing. Ninety-six percent of all mammalian biomass is now human or our livestock. The oceans have heated to record levels. Crustaceans and molluscs are dissolving as the seas acidify.
And it’s not just about collapse in climate and ecology. It’s also about mass migration, economic instability, nationalism, geopolitical tension and nuclear war. Attempting to solve any of these problems without solving them all will mean a complete failure in our efforts. Unless we solve them all, we fail completely.
It’s all or nothing, and only imagination can take us there
Holism and “reimagine” is about how we want to live. It requires imagination and intuition beyond left-brain capacity. It’s about imagining how we put together renewable energy, rewilding, peace, organic agriculture, joy, circularity, social equity, community, worship and thriving local economies.
Like it or not, it’s all or nothing, and only imagination can take us there. The choice is ours. Let’s make 2025 the year of reimagining.
Pooran Desai is a social entrepreneur, consultant and author with a background in neuroscience, medical science and sustainability. He co-founded Bioregional, an environmental organisation that created BedZED, the world’s first zero-carbon urban village, as well as the One Planet Living framework, which formed the basis for the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. He founded sustainability-focused digital platform One Planet in 2018 and is currently working on a planet-regenerating artificial intelligence system. He was named an Officer of the British Empire in 2004 for services to sustainable development.
The photo, showing the aftermath of flooding in Valencia in autumn 2024, is by Vicente Sargues via Shutterstock.
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