Australians want a future of sustainable self-sufficiency and a healthy environment supporting a robust democracy — free of poverty and inequity.
That was one of our projections, as part of the Australia project for the Australian Academy of Science. Equally, Australians fear a future in which the stability of day-to-day life has been eroded by a degraded environment, depleted resources, lawlessness or warfare, limited access to health-care and education, extreme or even increased economic or political inequity and the fragmentation of social cohesion. But that future depends on decisions made today, and that means it is important to get some early insights into what the alternatives really are.
Of course, the future is uncertain and the projections discussed here may change as the different components are finally linked together. But some of them run contrary to current expectation and desires.
They require careful thought in any personal, community, regional or national planning exercises. The proportion of the population living in the north and west is projected to increase at the expense of smaller southern states.
A low-carbon future became the stated goal. The dirtiest methods of power generation become uneconomical faster than many anticipated: the market developed pricing certainty, and choice of energy source for the customer flourished. Research and development dollars flooded into energy generation, transmission and storage. The size of Australia meant the government made it a national priority to have primary, secondary and contingency energy sources for the entire population: the mindset of the individual energy user became smarter.
Innovative companies then sold these products to the Asia-Pacific, and the world. Like Israel for military hardware and Germany for auto manufacturing, Australia became known as the country that took climate technology more seriously than anyone. Along with these shifts in vision came practical reforms: a paid fire service, national relief rosters, weather education in schools, free early-warning technology to households, and the most comprehensive buyout program in the world for at-risk properties.
The year mortgage stopped being the norm: the Australian Dream of owning a home continued, but the relationship to fixed property became different, with people having less stuff and always being able to relocate or adapt. The most courageous idea? An acceptance that climate security was national security.
The Australian Fire Authorities Council and other emergency services were merged into a Climate Resilience Corps, a world-first expansion beyond the tri-service apparatus of the military. In the same way the US Army Corps of Engineers spent the 20th century building roads, dams, canals, flood defence systems in jungles, islands and deserts around the world, Australia decided to become the climate engineers of this century.
Treasury was too busy to produce an intergenerational report last year when Australia battled the first and second waves of the coronavirus pandemic, so the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, released the latest odd page instalment on Monday. This is a big shift. As well pointing to the looming shift in the composition of Australian exports, Treasury says global heating will potentially make it more difficult for households to get adequate insurance because of an increase in climate-related natural disasters.
Previous IGRs have done an effective job of demonstrating that demography is destiny. According to the current IGR, between and , the number of Australians aged 65 and older will double to 8. In , there were 6, centenarians, but by , that cohort is projected to be 40, That shift has implications for the economy and for fiscal policy.
Among them was the prediction that sex robots will have begun tearing marriages apart by , as men and women opt for a more satisfactory cyborg partner.
The dramatic report received plenty of media attention but was based more on radical sci-fi speculation than solid trends. The anticipation of flying cars has long been a mainstay in any vision of the future but the advent of commercial drone technology could actually make it happen soon. Well before he expects Australian roads to be filled with autonomous cars and eventually any nostalgic car lover who wants to keep their steering wheel will have to pay a highly expensive government license for the privilege.
Already Dubai has made plans to begin using drone taxis to ferry people over the city. Beat the traffic to work. Here is your own personal two seater drone with more than 1 hour of battery life. Jetsons anyone?
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