Over a period of 3 years, Damon Gameau and a researcher interviewed a hundred different academics, researchers and scientists, to collect hundreds of different solutions to the world’s problems, and then traveled to 15 different countries to film these solutions to fight lack of food, demography problems, energy production and more. 2040 is a movie created by Damon to broadcast a different story, a different narrative about the Future.
Aren’t movies about the future always gloomy and dark? 2040 isn’t one of them.
2040 is a movie created by Damon Gameau to broadcast a different story, a different narrative about the Future. He and a researcher interviewed a hundred different academics, researchers and scientists, to collect hundreds of different solutions that already exist, and then traveled to 15 different countries to film these solutions that would enable us to solve or mitigate demography, food production and energy production challenges.
The movie is a narration of “what the world could by 2040” by Damon to his five years old daughter. This adventure takes him all the way to Bangladesh where a young engineer has undertaken the simple but truly life changing work of connecting houses together to create independent, decentralized solar grids.
Damon isn’t only a film actor and director; he is an optimistic, grounded, pragmatic dreamer. “2040” is now a community named “Join the Regeneration”. As I am writing this (December 13th 2019), its Facebook Page is being followed by over 40.000 people and its Facebook Group counts almost 10.000 members. Not only that, they also have their own public Webinar broadcasting on Sundays.
As the 2040 journey takes off, it attracts a lot of attention. Footage from 2040 was shown to world leaders at the official opening of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York on September 23, 2019.
Award-winning filmmaker Damon Gameau said of the announcement, “The intention of 2040 was to plant a seed of what a cleaner, more sustainable future could look like. To have aspects of that vision now shown to world leaders at the United Nations is obviously the best possible outcome. I am thrilled for everyone who put so much care and effort into making the film.”
As I said, Damon is a pragmatic dreamer. In August 2019, I was put in contact with him as he was intending to put together another project. The idea to let the people imagine their future remains a core aspiration. Together, him and I built www.byron2040.com.au, a platform that enables the locals from the Byron Shire (NSW, Australia) to publish their ideas regarding the future, to imagine what the Byron Shire could look like in 2040.
At the end of our interview, I asked Damon what he’d like to tell the world, and I invite you to listen to the interview to hear his words but I’ll just give you the quote he cited from Robert Swan:
“The greatest threat to the planet is the belief that someone else will save it”
“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.”
Raymond Williams
Show notes
(No show notes)
Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Good evening Damon, or morning?
Damon Gameau 1:01
Yes. Good morning-evening. How are you today?
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 1:04
Very well, thank you. It’s the start of the day, and I’m in this beautiful podcast studio in South France. Good.
Damn. And could you tell us what the 2040 movie is about?
Damon Gameau 1:17
So 2040 is a sensibly a visual letter to my daughter who’s five, just showing her what the world could look like in 2040. If we put into practice the best solutions that exists today across a range of areas from transport, Energy, Agriculture to the oceans, and I call it an exercise in fact, based dreaming. So everything I show in 2040, has to exist now I can’t make anything up. It’s not this sort of utopian fantasy. It’s just based on extrapolating the best solutions that we have available now. And really, it comes as a response to the overwhelming dystopian narrative that We’re getting around many of our ecological problems. And it’s important to acknowledge how bad bad things are. But I think as a way to motivate people, especially our children, I think if we only keep hearing the bad news, then it can really shut people down and cause paralysis. So this is really an antidote to that and offer an office up and a cup, a company narrative that says, hey, there are wonderful things we can do and let’s start putting all that energy that we’re we’re storing up when we’re angry about we’re frustrated let’s start channeling it into tangible actions that we can move forward on
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 2:32
you know, and to see the movie back in Australia and it’s rare to see a movie that has a positive take on the future and it feels good. How its presented is quite awesome. journey and through movie with your little girl and you explaining that you want the world to be good for her. He could you tell us a bit more about this actual solutions offering the movie.
Damon Gameau 3:02
Yeah. And what’s interesting is saying there that I think that big positive at the moment is almost the radical option. And there’s a really lovely quote by a guy named Raymond Williams. And he says that, to be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing. And I think we’ve just done such a good job of telling everyone how bad it is. And it’s like, oh, the doctor, if you just keep telling you how bad things are, you know, you shut down, but you want the doctor to start telling you the solutions and what you might be able to get on with. So that’s really what I did. I spent about eight months with a researcher and we interviewed almost 100 different academics and scientists and researchers from around the world, and then sort of collided a whole series of different solutions that were out there. And then spent three years going and filming those solutions, went to about 15 countries and then, you know, put them all into a documentary and did all the filming and then did about eight months of special effects to sort of bring The vision of 2042 life. But I think important, important to mention is that it’s not just based on my own visions of 2040. I consulted about 120 kids around the world, from Bangladesh to Tanzania to the US and Europe, and ask them what they wanted to see in the world. So it’s really a narrative was guided by their visions and dreams and hopes for the future rather than just mind. So it really does give a cross section of what these kids wanted. And some of those we explored were, a lot of them mentioned energy, I want to clean energy and solar panels. So we went out and look for some of the best solutions there and came across an initiative out of Bangladesh, which is a was like a decentralized micro grid system that operates in a village where any home that has a solar panel on the battery has this special box and allows them to connect to another home with solar panels and a battery. And when they combine, they actually form a grid on their own like a microgreens up it comes like a community water tank of energy that other people can give two or two From and even if you don’t have solar panels and a battery, but you’ve got this box, you can still connect into that particular network. So people are starting to buy and sell an exchange even donate their energy amongst the village, which makes them incredibly resilient in case the main grid shuts down, but also allows that money to stay within the community, it doesn’t go off to a sort of a hierarchical utility company like we have in Australia and the rest of the world. So I just thought that was such a wonderful solution. And really, if we’re going to reach a better 2040, we have to decentralize so many of our systems, I think, and especially given the levels of income inequality, now we’re sort of aristocracy levels, which we know is destabilizing society. So it just felt like such a great holistic, well rounded solution. You know, it’s clean energy, but it’s also benefiting sort of the community. So that was really exciting. And then we looked at other solutions around, you know, less vehicles like autonomous electric vehicles and what that could do to our cities. And then particularly, we looked at the biological solution. So things like regenerative agriculture, which takes carbon dioxide from the air and puts it back into the soil with a whole heap of benefits. And we looked at the role of seaweed, which is really quite a magical solution for our problems, it’s the fastest growing organism in the world about grows half a meter a day and up to 50 meters long. So it just is pulling that carbon out of the atmosphere to a really rapid, right. And then we’re able to harvest that and stored below 1000 meters that sinks to the bottom of the ocean gets trapped there by the weight of the ocean. So it’s stored as carbon there for potentially millennia. So yeah, there was a whole range of different things we explored. It was tough to try and condense it down.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 6:40
I also remember one of the big solutions proposed was to educate woman, which is quite a different kind of solutions. Could you explain that one?
Damon Gameau 6:51
Yeah, that was a real surprise, actually. And for me anyway, I just I haven’t heard this mentioned in relation to climate change. So it works out that this According to the UN, there’s about 96 million girls around the world and in both developing and wealthy nations that don’t get to finish their education. So that’s for a host of reasons whether it’s religious, or they’re pulled out for work or any other reason. And when that happens that the girl is likely to have five or more children. But if she’s able to complete their education, stay in school, given access to reproductive health services, given valuable work opportunities, she gets to choose when and how many children she has, and that number comes down to two. So that difference between having two children or five or more children by 2050 means the difference of 1.1 billion people. So obviously, that amount of people has an enormous impact on our resources and climate change and everything else. So it’s one of those beautiful solutions that, you know, let’s empower women and girls anyway, that’s a great thing to do for society. But we get this terrific bonus off the back of it, which rights to our resources and the klom amazing
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 7:57
I like the fact that the solutions are quite the diverse: technological, educational and political insights.
Damon Gameau 8:06
Yeah, I mean, certainly, I sort of deliberately stayed away from the film being too political. And that was a conscious choice I had, I had a lot of it in there at one point. And, you know, really, as you see, it’s quite an aspirational piece that’s really based on hope and quite uplifting and aimed at children in particular, because I know how overwhelmed they are with this topic. And I think it’s a great shame that this issue has been so deeply politicized because, you know, there were times where it wasn’t. If you go back to the late 1980s, you had pretty much two bastions of right wing politics, George Bush Senior and Margaret Thatcher. Both of them are Margaret Thatcher, in particular, addressing the UN saying that climate change was the most important issue that humanity was facing, and we had to come together and start, you know, solving the problem. In the same way that we come together with the hole in the ozone layer, we signed the Montreal Protocol. And what do you know now the ozone layer is actually repairing because we got rid of the gases that we knew were doing problem to that ozone layer, so We’re on track to start solving this problem. And my researchers said that that’s when Exxon and shell in particular, started to realize that this was going to happen. They were investing heavily in renewable energy at the time, but then realized that there was going to be quite heavy regulation on what were their very strong assets. So they decided to sort of develop this really extensive denial campaign, which they’ve done magnificently, to be honest. And they’ve told a very, very good story ever since. But as a result, I think the issues become deeply politicized. I don’t think it helped when al gore came out and released his film I, I spoke to a couple of Republican senators in researching this film, and I said, Look, it was tricky because some of us didn’t think climate change was happening. But the minute the other team was saying it was happening, they sort of had to take a stance. So there’s been a combination of factors that has made this topic political. But unfortunately, I think we have to find a way to not politicize it to bring everyone along for the ride because if we can communicate this around, our children can be clean air and clean water, we’ve got a much better chance of getting through this. I think it’s so polarized now that we just have to try and find new ways of communicating this. And that’s obviously what I’ve tried to do in the film is, is to sell a vision of a future and not not spend too much time getting bogged down, but actually bring people along for the ride by saying, you know what money can stay in your community, you can have a stronger community, you can have a better career or job building a better and cleaner future for our children. So I think storytelling is a huge part of this. And we haven’t given it enough attention. We’ve just relied on the science and the facts and the logic and hope that that would get people over the line. But unfortunately, or fortunately, we’re a species that evolved for storytelling. And I think it’s really important that we start telling new stories about what we want our future to look
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 10:48
like. Totally agree. My little gimmick for Future Seeds is planting a different narrative. There you go.
Damon Gameau 10:55
Yeah, yeah, very good.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 10:56
At the moment, what are the major options caused all these solutions, your friend the movie?
Damon Gameau 11:05
Yeah, I mean, there’s a it’s a long winded answer. There’s there’s lots of different complicated barriers to this. And I think the biggest one is that just the system we’ve created for ourselves that’s so entrenched. It’s the story that we’ve told about our development. And that’s very tricky to unravel from, you know, as we know, most of the money supply is debt. So that means there’s a constant growth that we have to achieve and that constant growth means that we’re you know, deforesting and we’re destroying species. And we’re doing all sorts of things in the name of keeping this GDP going. And this this idea of constant growth, and that’s having huge problem. And that’s probably our biggest challenge, because it’s, it’s so embedded in the culture and any world leader, if they sort of have slow growth, they’ll go into recession, they’ll lose their See, they’ll certainly lose their place at the G 20. Or the GA, which is obviously seen as a badge of honor. So that’s a really big block. I think there are certain rules of the game that a lot of the public wouldn’t know. About that favor corporations and give them huge advantages over our environment. And I think that’s a great tragedy. So there’s one in particular called ISDS, cause an investor state dispute settlement, which is part of the World Trade Organization. And it allows a company to sue a government for impacting its ability to make profit. And there’s numerous. It’s been around for a while, and it’s starting to come to light now, because there’s been quite a few cases where there’s a famous one of on the Old River, which is the beautiful river in Hamburg, it was a big Benton for wanting to build a big cow coal power station. And the German government went and did an assessment and said, You know what, you can’t build it here because your wastewater is going to go into the river, it’s going to cause problems for the fish. We’re not gonna let you have it. So the company sued the government for 1.3 1.4 $1.7 billion in loss of profits. And of course, the cap the government couldn’t match that they also weren’t allowed to countersue that’s the role of the WTO so they back down so the past station got built and sure enough, the wastewater going to the river and all the fish are dying. So if Unless we change that those structural barriers were, what what that did was override democracy. The people of Germany and the government they represented, spoke up and said, No, we don’t want this because we want to clean river that the Corporation was had so much power, that they’re able to shut that down. And what’s more the case where that’s held in the World Trade Organization, that case is held completely in secret. There’s three people on the panel that put there by appointed by the WTO. It happens away from the media, there’s no public allowed. So it’s just a completely undemocratic process. And, you know, I think that’s, that’s a hijack of our democracy. You know, and I think we’ve just got to be careful with that. It’s not to say that we can’t have this big business, we can’t have corporations. We can have innovation, that’s that’s important. But if they are overriding our democratic processes, then we desperately need to look at that and rewrite them
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 13:50
right. So structural issues.
I know that at the moment, there’s also a big climate deniers movement with the so called 500 scientists writing a letter.
Damon Gameau 14:04
Yeah, well, I can tell you about that on there. So yeah, that was a recent a letter that was sent by a group called clean tail, which is a. So it was 500 legend scientists came together and wrote a letter to the UN at the same time that the climate action summit was on saying that we believe that there is no climate emergency. So when you scratch a little deeper, you find that was set up by a group of fossil fuel and mining companies, a handful of them, and that only 10 of those 500 scientists were actually climate scientists. And even the scientists, the science, they use those 10 has been completely debunked by everyone who’s been on the IPCC panel. So it’s been cherry picked to tell a story. But again, the real story is that 490 of those scientists have no idea about climate or aren’t related to climate. So again, incredibly misleading. They know that once the public sees 500 scientists, they’re going to think that that’s legitimate. But again, you just need to scratch deeper and and this was done About five or 10 years ago to with an initiative called Global petition. And it was apparently 31,000 scientists that got together and said climate change wasn’t real, again, funded by the fossil fuel industry. And it turned out that about 10% of them were only climate scientists. So
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 15:15
so the funding for this movement seems to come from the oil industry.
Damon Gameau 15:20
Well, yeah, there’s a guy from Drexel University in the UK, Robert Braun is his name. And he did quite a remarkable job of going through all the tax returns of the fossil fuel industries and looking at how, where that money went to various lobbying groups and he found they spent they spent about a billion dollars a year on climate denial programs and exome are really good at it to start, what they do is fund a range of different organizations. So it looked like there was a big widespread consensus of dinar movements, but actually, all of those groups were funded by the same company, which was excellent. So they’ve been very good at sort of giving this impression that there’s a Yeah, it’s brilliant. And I think that’s what we’ve got to realize is that they have done Telling the narrative. And they’ve done a superb job, and they’ve got the money to do it. And they’ve got the algorithms to do it. And they know how to create the evocative names. And then a lot of ways I think the climate scientists, the progressive side of politics have just been a little bit too nice with all this. And I haven’t understood how sinister and tactical the other side of being and I think there’s people now starting to realize that we have to sort of come back at that a bit. And I guess my field, my films part of that, as well as let’s actually stop
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 16:29
it because there seems to be another not a gang, another crew, because you just been invited to the United Nations to present your movie.
Damon Gameau 16:39
Yes, it was. Yeah, it was pretty surreal. So what they did is they asked, because we’d actually screened the film to them about a year ago before the film came out, and they just loved the sort of the visioning piece that I asked to us about three or four minutes of the film and they, they wrapped it around the whole of the General Assembly at the opening so all the world leaders setting there and they was Sort of wrapped around, shown visions of what the world could look like if we acted on climate. And it was pretty special to be there. And it was about a minute before grexit came out and then sort of opened a can of how dare you on everyone. And so to be in the room to that, and witness that was pretty special. And then, you know, I was there for the whole week, and we got to speak one day, then we, we also did a screening for the youth delegates, which was actually the real highlight to see just how switched on this sort of younger generation is and we had a panel of four or five young girls, one from Mexico and Denmark and Brazil, and just to see how empowered these young women are. And that’s what’s really exciting, I think about this climate movement at the moment it is being quite female led by young, strong, ferocious and honest females and I think that’s really quite breathtaking to watch. And they’re very intelligent, they’re very articulate and and if we are going to get through this, we need a we certainly need a feminine perspective on on many of our problems.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 18:00
I was in South Portugal and an incredible community in May. And there was a 23 years old Brazilian girl there who lives and works in one of the most dangerous fellows in Brazil. And she leads this incredible project there. And every time she opened her mouth, I thought to myself, she has the wisdom of 1000 years old woman. And I remember the sentence she said, we were talking about all those places where it’s really hard to rebuild trust between human beings. And if so, how do you do that? And she pondered for a while, and she said, I often ask myself, if I believe in people’s capacity to change, or in my capacity to change people,
and I was like, wow, 23 years old.
Damon Gameau 18:49
Yeah, I don’t know that I was capable of a sentence like that at 23. I still now and I think I’m a casual ever say this like that. But now there’s, there’s some incredible, incredible humans coming through and they’re So determined and focused and they’re going to do everything they can. And that’s what I love about these kids, they’re just not going to stop. I think people are starting to realize that this isn’t just a fad or a bit of a trend for them. This is something they’re going to see through. And, you know, there’s precedents for this in history before we’ve seen this before. We’re very impassioned, empowered groups of people, whether it’s women or the abolitionists, or interracial marriage, marriage in America, whatever it might be. They’ve all been derived. And they’ve been ridiculed told to get off the streets, but they’re just determined and they keep going. And slowly the numbers grow. We reach a tipping point. And then society can transform very quickly. So I certainly hope that that’s the kind of trajectory we’re on right now. And the climate. Yeah,
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 19:39
so that takes me to my next question.
I noticed 2040 movement 2040 community. So what’s the community about I know there’s a big, active Facebook group, and there’s join the regeneration movement. Could you tell us a bit about that?
Damon Gameau 19:57
Yeah. So it’s called the regeneration movement and it’s by Basically, what we did is not just want to make a film that would, you know, you feel quite inspired and hopeful. And you think, Wow, this is great. And then 10 minutes later you’re back into the world and you’ve got forgotten about it, it’s worn off, and you’re on Instagram again. So we worked with about 50 different organizations to have a platform that people could go to straight after the film. And it aligned with all the things they could see in the film so that they could take action on particular areas. So if it was the microgreens that I explained in in Bangladesh, great, we work with an Australian company that wanted to bring that technology to Australia, and you could do an equity crowdfunding actually be a part of making that happen. And I just got absolutely overwhelmed. They raised a million dollars and that’s now going to happen in Australia. The same for the carbon the farmers, we there’s initiative that pays farmers to put carbon back at the soil and you can donate $8 a month. And by doing that you sequester about 1000 tons of carbon a year, which actually offsets the emissions of at people who do nothing so tons of people to sign up for that. The see we don’t talk about we’ve raise enough money to build the first see we platform in Tasmania, we’re now raising the money for the second one. So this is a host of different things around educating girls mentoring them online, we’ve raised thousands for that. So it just speaks volumes to how people are ready to hear solutions. And they want actions. And when they presented, they will get involved and take them on. And I think that’s been a beautiful lesson for us. And we’re really now trying to just make it explode even bigger. And we’re about to release the film through Europe. And then we take it to Canada and America. And we’re really sort of forming different partners in those territories as well, to really keep going with this regeneration movement. Because I think people once they learn about it, they’re really excited about it. They can see positive change. They can see tangible solutions, and they want to get involved and they want their kids to be involved. So it’s been a really interesting exercise for us and it’s almost been the test model in Australia but we’ve really seen it work now. So we want to amplify
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 21:51
absolutely not advertise you move in France a little bit already.
Damon Gameau 21:56
Thank you, my friend. Appreciate it.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 22:00
How does the 2040 movement the 2040 community resonate with the extinction rebellion movement and grana Thornburg?
Damon Gameau 22:09
Yeah, it’s a great question. So I think come I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. I think that what we’ll find is that some people don’t feel comfortable in protests protesting or going out and that kind of civil civil disobedience, and yet they still want to be involved. So I guess we tried to fill a gap there and say, all right, there are you don’t necessarily have to do that. You can do both. If you want. You can do one or the other. But let’s actually present other options, which are, here’s some tangible solutions. He’s wifey to go and help out in the community. He’s a group you can join. He’s a discussion page. He’s how you can write to your local minister. He’s how you can actually donate or shift your finance into some of these solutions. So just trying to spread the net really wide for people and not think that we have to be prescriptive. And I think that has been a failure. In a way I think most people if you ask them would say, Well, if I want to help the planet, I’m going to eat less meat and ride my bike to work. And maybe buy a Tesla, you know. And I think that’s just not applicable for everyone. We all have different passions and different interests. And that’s what we try to do with the platform off the back of the film is, you get asked this questionnaire, so it’s called activate your plan. And we asked you what type of person you are, what you’re interested in, what you resonated within the film in particular, and then we give you six or seven things based on those answers that you can get on with and I think that just helps people, I guess the psychology would say that you’re more likely to stick it that see it through if you’re connected to it and align with it if it’s your passion or purpose. Whereas if you’re just forced to eat less meat or ride your bike to work, it might not be something you want to do. So, again, just trying to give people and meet people where they’re at, and understand that not everyone is willing to go and glue their hands to the road, even though they’re passionate about this topic. They’re just not up for that, you know, and and I think we need to be okay with that.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 23:55
Yeah, agreed. We need to have solutions for everybody. Yeah. So who do you work with Who are your partners within Australia and around the world?
Damon Gameau 24:06
So it’s really mixed. It’s been quite interesting the different people that have come on board. So lots of different, mainly a lot of the sort of the energy. There’s lots of community energy groups in Australia, there’s one called the next economy as well, who sort of work with, you know, how do we transition to a better, better economy? A carbonate is obviously one of our main initiatives, the Malala Fund, another group called one girl, if people go to our website, there’s about 50 different organizations. And, you know, we were quite careful about who we did align with. But also, we’re too close when we what’s been great about the film is, I mean, how many unlikely partners have done screenings so whether that’s all the banks in Australia or even energy companies, where they’ve sort of invited us in, they screened the film and and we’ve had really honest conversations about what they’re doing, what they’re not doing, how they could improve. And I think that was a big part of making this The Wild deed and not politicize it too much because I think, especially some of these financial institutions, if they don’t come on board, you know, we’re not going to get there. So we have to find ways to communicate to them, and also get them to understand what’s going on. And then they’re more likely to try and shift. So. Yeah, that’s been, again, a very positive result. I think of just I’ve been shocked at the type of people that have done screenings and organizations that I don’t think that would have looked at a film like this five years ago.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 25:29
Yes, so banks are becoming a bit more receptive.
Damon Gameau 25:32
Summer. Unfortunately, American banks aren’t as much, but lots of other bites around Europe, America, sorry, Australia. Certainly our debates here. You know, it’s interesting, some of the bigger ones said, Look, we’ve got 12 million customers and now they are writing to us every single day saying why you divest from fossil fuels? What are you doing in that comment shine, so they’re getting that pressure? And one of the best things that come out of the UN for me was hearing how many companies including very big ones, like nurse which is the you know, the biggest shipping company? In a world, we’ve now agreed to go clean energy by 2045 or 4050, you know, make all their ships electric, because they actually are struggling to get people to work for them out of universities, because these kids are graduating from the US now and saying, Well, I’m not going to come and work for you because your company is a degenerative company that is destroying the planet, I’m more interested. So it’s forcing them to actually change their ways. And that’s happening right through America and the UK as well. That these kids these, these, these, this new generation has a very different set of cultural values and cultural norms, and what they accept, and they’re not prepared to go and earn money in a company that’s going to hurt their future.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 26:38
Whoa, that resonates with my own story. It’s really awesome to hear that I listened to this TED talk the other day where this woman she’s a specialized, specialized doctor with his people dying from tobacco every day. She is trying to divert funds from banks and insurance isn’t greed, direct them away from the devil? So yeah I saw an already bought my tickets as well. you’re participating in that conference going local in March.
Damon Gameau 27:07
Oh, I’m I’m not sure I was that with them Halina Nope, no college. Yeah, yeah, and I missed a highlight is a very good friend. And she was in the film as well. And um, yeah, she’s one of those pioneers that’s been sort of spreading this message for years and years and years and banging your head against the wall, and then having all sorts of interesting conversations, but she’s really been an advocate for sort of localizing things much like the decentralized energy I was talking about in Bangladesh. She’s been sort of pushing that for years and doing the same with our food systems and everything else. So I’m always happy to support Elena. She’s an absolute legend in this space. And Mr. Cedric is participating as well. And Charles, and Einstein. I didn’t know that. That’s fantastic. I didn’t know they were going to be there. That’s that’s,
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 27:50
that’s lovely that you do three days event as well.
Damon Gameau 27:54
Right, and I’m there Am I am I listed as being in
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 27:57
here? Absolutely.
Damon Gameau 27:58
Okay. It’s good to know going to turn up there.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 28:05
In terms of going local you and I know I build this website for you by in 2040 dot com.au. You’re setting up how to call them idea boxes all around the world for locals to be able to propose ideas and imagine the future. Yeah.
Damon Gameau 28:22
So yeah, the website is, thank you very much. You’ve done an amazing job man say congratulations. But yeah, it’s basically to just again, because I guess the film was quite the 2040 film was quite broad and generic in terms of sort of looking at a vision of a wider sense of what the world could look like. I thought it would be really interesting to test it on a local level. So with sort of built this website, inviting people in our region to sort of contribute and say what they want for 2040 to look like in this particular region. So we will then take that information and turn it into a bit of a visual piece. To then show to You know, policymakers or to business and investors here and say, Look, this is what the community has come together. And they’d like these kind of things to look like and our future, how do we actually make that happen and start building it and bringing it to life. So, again, I think it’s like a manifestation tool, people can see it first, then they’ve got a better idea of what they want to invest in, it might excite them, they’ll get their hopes up and think, yeah, let’s create that, that would be a great thing. So I really just think that’s the way we’re going to do this. We’ve got to start putting up new visions and telling stories, and as you said, new narratives, and that’s the way we’re going to bring people along.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 29:31
Yeah, and it seems like Sydney is doing something similar. And maybe you might replicate this.
Damon Gameau 29:37
Well, who knows, you know, be interesting to see if it made a lot of councils in Australia have done the screenings of the film, and then really got their residents to talk about and have discussions about what it might look like in 2040. So it could be an interesting exercise to go back to some of them and, and offer to do some sort of visualizing for them as well and put it into, you know, a format that they can share around to their constituents and get people to to agree on or give notes on it and see if, if these It is actually a vision that they want to strive for.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 30:05
Well, really awesome work them. And I’ve asked all my questions, and I’ve received pretty awesome answers. But I’d like to give you 20 seconds now say something, if you have something to say to the world is something that really touches you that you want people to know.
Damon Gameau 30:20
Yeah, I guess it would be that we’re at a point now, where I think we’re not getting the leadership at the highest levels that we should be getting. So it’s important for everyone to find their own agency or find their voice in whatever capacity that that is, whether it’s approaching your boss at work about some certain practices there or at local school, even in your own house. I think it’s not enough to just sort of by keep couple years of a paper story more, we’ve actually got to find our own voice. And I’ll end with what is my favorite quote from a, an arctic Explorer, and I’m Robert Swan, and he said that the greatest threat to the planet is the belief that someone else will save
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 30:58
it. Wow. This is perfect ending. I’m just going to end it right now. No, actually no, Everyone listen to this hop on to your computer, open your browser and type. What’s your 2040 dot com?
Damon Gameau 31:13
Yeah, what’s your 20 forty.com and then you’ll see a button there that says activate your plan. And we’d encourage everyone to, to hit that button and fill out the questionnaire and then see what you resonate with.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 31:24
Yeah, join the regeneration, everybody, join the regeneration. And on that note, thank you so much Damon.
Over a period of 3 years, Damon Gameau and a researcher interviewed a hundred different academics, researchers and scientists, to collect hundreds of different solutions to the world’s problems, and then traveled to 15 different countries to film these solutions to fight lack of food, demography problems, energy production and more. 2040 is a movie created by Damon to broadcast a different story, a different narrative about the Future.
Aren’t movies about the future always gloomy and dark? 2040 isn’t one of them.
2040 is a movie created by Damon Gameau to broadcast a different story, a different narrative about the Future. He and a researcher interviewed a hundred different academics, researchers and scientists, to collect hundreds of different solutions that already exist, and then traveled to 15 different countries to film these solutions that would enable us to solve or mitigate demography, food production and energy production challenges.
The movie is a narration of “what the world could by 2040” by Damon to his five years old daughter. This adventure takes him all the way to Bangladesh where a young engineer has undertaken the simple but truly life changing work of connecting houses together to create independent, decentralized solar grids.
Damon isn’t only a film actor and director; he is an optimistic, grounded, pragmatic dreamer. “2040” is now a community named “Join the Regeneration”. As I am writing this (December 13th 2019), its Facebook Page is being followed by over 40.000 people and its Facebook Group counts almost 10.000 members. Not only that, they also have their own public Webinar broadcasting on Sundays.
As the 2040 journey takes off, it attracts a lot of attention. Footage from 2040 was shown to world leaders at the official opening of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York on September 23, 2019.
Award-winning filmmaker Damon Gameau said of the announcement, “The intention of 2040 was to plant a seed of what a cleaner, more sustainable future could look like. To have aspects of that vision now shown to world leaders at the United Nations is obviously the best possible outcome. I am thrilled for everyone who put so much care and effort into making the film.”
As I said, Damon is a pragmatic dreamer. In August 2019, I was put in contact with him as he was intending to put together another project. The idea to let the people imagine their future remains a core aspiration. Together, him and I built www.byron2040.com.au, a platform that enables the locals from the Byron Shire (NSW, Australia) to publish their ideas regarding the future, to imagine what the Byron Shire could look like in 2040.
At the end of our interview, I asked Damon what he’d like to tell the world, and I invite you to listen to the interview to hear his words but I’ll just give you the quote he cited from Robert Swan:
“The greatest threat to the planet is the belief that someone else will save it”
“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.”
Raymond Williams
Show notes
(No show notes)
Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Good evening Damon, or morning?
Damon Gameau 1:01
Yes. Good morning-evening. How are you today?
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 1:04
Very well, thank you. It’s the start of the day, and I’m in this beautiful podcast studio in South France. Good.
Damn. And could you tell us what the 2040 movie is about?
Damon Gameau 1:17
So 2040 is a sensibly a visual letter to my daughter who’s five, just showing her what the world could look like in 2040. If we put into practice the best solutions that exists today across a range of areas from transport, Energy, Agriculture to the oceans, and I call it an exercise in fact, based dreaming. So everything I show in 2040, has to exist now I can’t make anything up. It’s not this sort of utopian fantasy. It’s just based on extrapolating the best solutions that we have available now. And really, it comes as a response to the overwhelming dystopian narrative that We’re getting around many of our ecological problems. And it’s important to acknowledge how bad bad things are. But I think as a way to motivate people, especially our children, I think if we only keep hearing the bad news, then it can really shut people down and cause paralysis. So this is really an antidote to that and offer an office up and a cup, a company narrative that says, hey, there are wonderful things we can do and let’s start putting all that energy that we’re we’re storing up when we’re angry about we’re frustrated let’s start channeling it into tangible actions that we can move forward on
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 2:32
you know, and to see the movie back in Australia and it’s rare to see a movie that has a positive take on the future and it feels good. How its presented is quite awesome. journey and through movie with your little girl and you explaining that you want the world to be good for her. He could you tell us a bit more about this actual solutions offering the movie.
Damon Gameau 3:02
Yeah. And what’s interesting is saying there that I think that big positive at the moment is almost the radical option. And there’s a really lovely quote by a guy named Raymond Williams. And he says that, to be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing. And I think we’ve just done such a good job of telling everyone how bad it is. And it’s like, oh, the doctor, if you just keep telling you how bad things are, you know, you shut down, but you want the doctor to start telling you the solutions and what you might be able to get on with. So that’s really what I did. I spent about eight months with a researcher and we interviewed almost 100 different academics and scientists and researchers from around the world, and then sort of collided a whole series of different solutions that were out there. And then spent three years going and filming those solutions, went to about 15 countries and then, you know, put them all into a documentary and did all the filming and then did about eight months of special effects to sort of bring The vision of 2042 life. But I think important, important to mention is that it’s not just based on my own visions of 2040. I consulted about 120 kids around the world, from Bangladesh to Tanzania to the US and Europe, and ask them what they wanted to see in the world. So it’s really a narrative was guided by their visions and dreams and hopes for the future rather than just mind. So it really does give a cross section of what these kids wanted. And some of those we explored were, a lot of them mentioned energy, I want to clean energy and solar panels. So we went out and look for some of the best solutions there and came across an initiative out of Bangladesh, which is a was like a decentralized micro grid system that operates in a village where any home that has a solar panel on the battery has this special box and allows them to connect to another home with solar panels and a battery. And when they combine, they actually form a grid on their own like a microgreens up it comes like a community water tank of energy that other people can give two or two From and even if you don’t have solar panels and a battery, but you’ve got this box, you can still connect into that particular network. So people are starting to buy and sell an exchange even donate their energy amongst the village, which makes them incredibly resilient in case the main grid shuts down, but also allows that money to stay within the community, it doesn’t go off to a sort of a hierarchical utility company like we have in Australia and the rest of the world. So I just thought that was such a wonderful solution. And really, if we’re going to reach a better 2040, we have to decentralize so many of our systems, I think, and especially given the levels of income inequality, now we’re sort of aristocracy levels, which we know is destabilizing society. So it just felt like such a great holistic, well rounded solution. You know, it’s clean energy, but it’s also benefiting sort of the community. So that was really exciting. And then we looked at other solutions around, you know, less vehicles like autonomous electric vehicles and what that could do to our cities. And then particularly, we looked at the biological solution. So things like regenerative agriculture, which takes carbon dioxide from the air and puts it back into the soil with a whole heap of benefits. And we looked at the role of seaweed, which is really quite a magical solution for our problems, it’s the fastest growing organism in the world about grows half a meter a day and up to 50 meters long. So it just is pulling that carbon out of the atmosphere to a really rapid, right. And then we’re able to harvest that and stored below 1000 meters that sinks to the bottom of the ocean gets trapped there by the weight of the ocean. So it’s stored as carbon there for potentially millennia. So yeah, there was a whole range of different things we explored. It was tough to try and condense it down.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 6:40
I also remember one of the big solutions proposed was to educate woman, which is quite a different kind of solutions. Could you explain that one?
Damon Gameau 6:51
Yeah, that was a real surprise, actually. And for me anyway, I just I haven’t heard this mentioned in relation to climate change. So it works out that this According to the UN, there’s about 96 million girls around the world and in both developing and wealthy nations that don’t get to finish their education. So that’s for a host of reasons whether it’s religious, or they’re pulled out for work or any other reason. And when that happens that the girl is likely to have five or more children. But if she’s able to complete their education, stay in school, given access to reproductive health services, given valuable work opportunities, she gets to choose when and how many children she has, and that number comes down to two. So that difference between having two children or five or more children by 2050 means the difference of 1.1 billion people. So obviously, that amount of people has an enormous impact on our resources and climate change and everything else. So it’s one of those beautiful solutions that, you know, let’s empower women and girls anyway, that’s a great thing to do for society. But we get this terrific bonus off the back of it, which rights to our resources and the klom amazing
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 7:57
I like the fact that the solutions are quite the diverse: technological, educational and political insights.
Damon Gameau 8:06
Yeah, I mean, certainly, I sort of deliberately stayed away from the film being too political. And that was a conscious choice I had, I had a lot of it in there at one point. And, you know, really, as you see, it’s quite an aspirational piece that’s really based on hope and quite uplifting and aimed at children in particular, because I know how overwhelmed they are with this topic. And I think it’s a great shame that this issue has been so deeply politicized because, you know, there were times where it wasn’t. If you go back to the late 1980s, you had pretty much two bastions of right wing politics, George Bush Senior and Margaret Thatcher. Both of them are Margaret Thatcher, in particular, addressing the UN saying that climate change was the most important issue that humanity was facing, and we had to come together and start, you know, solving the problem. In the same way that we come together with the hole in the ozone layer, we signed the Montreal Protocol. And what do you know now the ozone layer is actually repairing because we got rid of the gases that we knew were doing problem to that ozone layer, so We’re on track to start solving this problem. And my researchers said that that’s when Exxon and shell in particular, started to realize that this was going to happen. They were investing heavily in renewable energy at the time, but then realized that there was going to be quite heavy regulation on what were their very strong assets. So they decided to sort of develop this really extensive denial campaign, which they’ve done magnificently, to be honest. And they’ve told a very, very good story ever since. But as a result, I think the issues become deeply politicized. I don’t think it helped when al gore came out and released his film I, I spoke to a couple of Republican senators in researching this film, and I said, Look, it was tricky because some of us didn’t think climate change was happening. But the minute the other team was saying it was happening, they sort of had to take a stance. So there’s been a combination of factors that has made this topic political. But unfortunately, I think we have to find a way to not politicize it to bring everyone along for the ride because if we can communicate this around, our children can be clean air and clean water, we’ve got a much better chance of getting through this. I think it’s so polarized now that we just have to try and find new ways of communicating this. And that’s obviously what I’ve tried to do in the film is, is to sell a vision of a future and not not spend too much time getting bogged down, but actually bring people along for the ride by saying, you know what money can stay in your community, you can have a stronger community, you can have a better career or job building a better and cleaner future for our children. So I think storytelling is a huge part of this. And we haven’t given it enough attention. We’ve just relied on the science and the facts and the logic and hope that that would get people over the line. But unfortunately, or fortunately, we’re a species that evolved for storytelling. And I think it’s really important that we start telling new stories about what we want our future to look
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 10:48
like. Totally agree. My little gimmick for Future Seeds is planting a different narrative. There you go.
Damon Gameau 10:55
Yeah, yeah, very good.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 10:56
At the moment, what are the major options caused all these solutions, your friend the movie?
Damon Gameau 11:05
Yeah, I mean, there’s a it’s a long winded answer. There’s there’s lots of different complicated barriers to this. And I think the biggest one is that just the system we’ve created for ourselves that’s so entrenched. It’s the story that we’ve told about our development. And that’s very tricky to unravel from, you know, as we know, most of the money supply is debt. So that means there’s a constant growth that we have to achieve and that constant growth means that we’re you know, deforesting and we’re destroying species. And we’re doing all sorts of things in the name of keeping this GDP going. And this this idea of constant growth, and that’s having huge problem. And that’s probably our biggest challenge, because it’s, it’s so embedded in the culture and any world leader, if they sort of have slow growth, they’ll go into recession, they’ll lose their See, they’ll certainly lose their place at the G 20. Or the GA, which is obviously seen as a badge of honor. So that’s a really big block. I think there are certain rules of the game that a lot of the public wouldn’t know. About that favor corporations and give them huge advantages over our environment. And I think that’s a great tragedy. So there’s one in particular called ISDS, cause an investor state dispute settlement, which is part of the World Trade Organization. And it allows a company to sue a government for impacting its ability to make profit. And there’s numerous. It’s been around for a while, and it’s starting to come to light now, because there’s been quite a few cases where there’s a famous one of on the Old River, which is the beautiful river in Hamburg, it was a big Benton for wanting to build a big cow coal power station. And the German government went and did an assessment and said, You know what, you can’t build it here because your wastewater is going to go into the river, it’s going to cause problems for the fish. We’re not gonna let you have it. So the company sued the government for 1.3 1.4 $1.7 billion in loss of profits. And of course, the cap the government couldn’t match that they also weren’t allowed to countersue that’s the role of the WTO so they back down so the past station got built and sure enough, the wastewater going to the river and all the fish are dying. So if Unless we change that those structural barriers were, what what that did was override democracy. The people of Germany and the government they represented, spoke up and said, No, we don’t want this because we want to clean river that the Corporation was had so much power, that they’re able to shut that down. And what’s more the case where that’s held in the World Trade Organization, that case is held completely in secret. There’s three people on the panel that put there by appointed by the WTO. It happens away from the media, there’s no public allowed. So it’s just a completely undemocratic process. And, you know, I think that’s, that’s a hijack of our democracy. You know, and I think we’ve just got to be careful with that. It’s not to say that we can’t have this big business, we can’t have corporations. We can have innovation, that’s that’s important. But if they are overriding our democratic processes, then we desperately need to look at that and rewrite them
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 13:50
right. So structural issues.
I know that at the moment, there’s also a big climate deniers movement with the so called 500 scientists writing a letter.
Damon Gameau 14:04
Yeah, well, I can tell you about that on there. So yeah, that was a recent a letter that was sent by a group called clean tail, which is a. So it was 500 legend scientists came together and wrote a letter to the UN at the same time that the climate action summit was on saying that we believe that there is no climate emergency. So when you scratch a little deeper, you find that was set up by a group of fossil fuel and mining companies, a handful of them, and that only 10 of those 500 scientists were actually climate scientists. And even the scientists, the science, they use those 10 has been completely debunked by everyone who’s been on the IPCC panel. So it’s been cherry picked to tell a story. But again, the real story is that 490 of those scientists have no idea about climate or aren’t related to climate. So again, incredibly misleading. They know that once the public sees 500 scientists, they’re going to think that that’s legitimate. But again, you just need to scratch deeper and and this was done About five or 10 years ago to with an initiative called Global petition. And it was apparently 31,000 scientists that got together and said climate change wasn’t real, again, funded by the fossil fuel industry. And it turned out that about 10% of them were only climate scientists. So
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 15:15
so the funding for this movement seems to come from the oil industry.
Damon Gameau 15:20
Well, yeah, there’s a guy from Drexel University in the UK, Robert Braun is his name. And he did quite a remarkable job of going through all the tax returns of the fossil fuel industries and looking at how, where that money went to various lobbying groups and he found they spent they spent about a billion dollars a year on climate denial programs and exome are really good at it to start, what they do is fund a range of different organizations. So it looked like there was a big widespread consensus of dinar movements, but actually, all of those groups were funded by the same company, which was excellent. So they’ve been very good at sort of giving this impression that there’s a Yeah, it’s brilliant. And I think that’s what we’ve got to realize is that they have done Telling the narrative. And they’ve done a superb job, and they’ve got the money to do it. And they’ve got the algorithms to do it. And they know how to create the evocative names. And then a lot of ways I think the climate scientists, the progressive side of politics have just been a little bit too nice with all this. And I haven’t understood how sinister and tactical the other side of being and I think there’s people now starting to realize that we have to sort of come back at that a bit. And I guess my field, my films part of that, as well as let’s actually stop
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 16:29
it because there seems to be another not a gang, another crew, because you just been invited to the United Nations to present your movie.
Damon Gameau 16:39
Yes, it was. Yeah, it was pretty surreal. So what they did is they asked, because we’d actually screened the film to them about a year ago before the film came out, and they just loved the sort of the visioning piece that I asked to us about three or four minutes of the film and they, they wrapped it around the whole of the General Assembly at the opening so all the world leaders setting there and they was Sort of wrapped around, shown visions of what the world could look like if we acted on climate. And it was pretty special to be there. And it was about a minute before grexit came out and then sort of opened a can of how dare you on everyone. And so to be in the room to that, and witness that was pretty special. And then, you know, I was there for the whole week, and we got to speak one day, then we, we also did a screening for the youth delegates, which was actually the real highlight to see just how switched on this sort of younger generation is and we had a panel of four or five young girls, one from Mexico and Denmark and Brazil, and just to see how empowered these young women are. And that’s what’s really exciting, I think about this climate movement at the moment it is being quite female led by young, strong, ferocious and honest females and I think that’s really quite breathtaking to watch. And they’re very intelligent, they’re very articulate and and if we are going to get through this, we need a we certainly need a feminine perspective on on many of our problems.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 18:00
I was in South Portugal and an incredible community in May. And there was a 23 years old Brazilian girl there who lives and works in one of the most dangerous fellows in Brazil. And she leads this incredible project there. And every time she opened her mouth, I thought to myself, she has the wisdom of 1000 years old woman. And I remember the sentence she said, we were talking about all those places where it’s really hard to rebuild trust between human beings. And if so, how do you do that? And she pondered for a while, and she said, I often ask myself, if I believe in people’s capacity to change, or in my capacity to change people,
and I was like, wow, 23 years old.
Damon Gameau 18:49
Yeah, I don’t know that I was capable of a sentence like that at 23. I still now and I think I’m a casual ever say this like that. But now there’s, there’s some incredible, incredible humans coming through and they’re So determined and focused and they’re going to do everything they can. And that’s what I love about these kids, they’re just not going to stop. I think people are starting to realize that this isn’t just a fad or a bit of a trend for them. This is something they’re going to see through. And, you know, there’s precedents for this in history before we’ve seen this before. We’re very impassioned, empowered groups of people, whether it’s women or the abolitionists, or interracial marriage, marriage in America, whatever it might be. They’ve all been derived. And they’ve been ridiculed told to get off the streets, but they’re just determined and they keep going. And slowly the numbers grow. We reach a tipping point. And then society can transform very quickly. So I certainly hope that that’s the kind of trajectory we’re on right now. And the climate. Yeah,
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 19:39
so that takes me to my next question.
I noticed 2040 movement 2040 community. So what’s the community about I know there’s a big, active Facebook group, and there’s join the regeneration movement. Could you tell us a bit about that?
Damon Gameau 19:57
Yeah. So it’s called the regeneration movement and it’s by Basically, what we did is not just want to make a film that would, you know, you feel quite inspired and hopeful. And you think, Wow, this is great. And then 10 minutes later you’re back into the world and you’ve got forgotten about it, it’s worn off, and you’re on Instagram again. So we worked with about 50 different organizations to have a platform that people could go to straight after the film. And it aligned with all the things they could see in the film so that they could take action on particular areas. So if it was the microgreens that I explained in in Bangladesh, great, we work with an Australian company that wanted to bring that technology to Australia, and you could do an equity crowdfunding actually be a part of making that happen. And I just got absolutely overwhelmed. They raised a million dollars and that’s now going to happen in Australia. The same for the carbon the farmers, we there’s initiative that pays farmers to put carbon back at the soil and you can donate $8 a month. And by doing that you sequester about 1000 tons of carbon a year, which actually offsets the emissions of at people who do nothing so tons of people to sign up for that. The see we don’t talk about we’ve raise enough money to build the first see we platform in Tasmania, we’re now raising the money for the second one. So this is a host of different things around educating girls mentoring them online, we’ve raised thousands for that. So it just speaks volumes to how people are ready to hear solutions. And they want actions. And when they presented, they will get involved and take them on. And I think that’s been a beautiful lesson for us. And we’re really now trying to just make it explode even bigger. And we’re about to release the film through Europe. And then we take it to Canada and America. And we’re really sort of forming different partners in those territories as well, to really keep going with this regeneration movement. Because I think people once they learn about it, they’re really excited about it. They can see positive change. They can see tangible solutions, and they want to get involved and they want their kids to be involved. So it’s been a really interesting exercise for us and it’s almost been the test model in Australia but we’ve really seen it work now. So we want to amplify
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 21:51
absolutely not advertise you move in France a little bit already.
Damon Gameau 21:56
Thank you, my friend. Appreciate it.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 22:00
How does the 2040 movement the 2040 community resonate with the extinction rebellion movement and grana Thornburg?
Damon Gameau 22:09
Yeah, it’s a great question. So I think come I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. I think that what we’ll find is that some people don’t feel comfortable in protests protesting or going out and that kind of civil civil disobedience, and yet they still want to be involved. So I guess we tried to fill a gap there and say, all right, there are you don’t necessarily have to do that. You can do both. If you want. You can do one or the other. But let’s actually present other options, which are, here’s some tangible solutions. He’s wifey to go and help out in the community. He’s a group you can join. He’s a discussion page. He’s how you can write to your local minister. He’s how you can actually donate or shift your finance into some of these solutions. So just trying to spread the net really wide for people and not think that we have to be prescriptive. And I think that has been a failure. In a way I think most people if you ask them would say, Well, if I want to help the planet, I’m going to eat less meat and ride my bike to work. And maybe buy a Tesla, you know. And I think that’s just not applicable for everyone. We all have different passions and different interests. And that’s what we try to do with the platform off the back of the film is, you get asked this questionnaire, so it’s called activate your plan. And we asked you what type of person you are, what you’re interested in, what you resonated within the film in particular, and then we give you six or seven things based on those answers that you can get on with and I think that just helps people, I guess the psychology would say that you’re more likely to stick it that see it through if you’re connected to it and align with it if it’s your passion or purpose. Whereas if you’re just forced to eat less meat or ride your bike to work, it might not be something you want to do. So, again, just trying to give people and meet people where they’re at, and understand that not everyone is willing to go and glue their hands to the road, even though they’re passionate about this topic. They’re just not up for that, you know, and and I think we need to be okay with that.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 23:55
Yeah, agreed. We need to have solutions for everybody. Yeah. So who do you work with Who are your partners within Australia and around the world?
Damon Gameau 24:06
So it’s really mixed. It’s been quite interesting the different people that have come on board. So lots of different, mainly a lot of the sort of the energy. There’s lots of community energy groups in Australia, there’s one called the next economy as well, who sort of work with, you know, how do we transition to a better, better economy? A carbonate is obviously one of our main initiatives, the Malala Fund, another group called one girl, if people go to our website, there’s about 50 different organizations. And, you know, we were quite careful about who we did align with. But also, we’re too close when we what’s been great about the film is, I mean, how many unlikely partners have done screenings so whether that’s all the banks in Australia or even energy companies, where they’ve sort of invited us in, they screened the film and and we’ve had really honest conversations about what they’re doing, what they’re not doing, how they could improve. And I think that was a big part of making this The Wild deed and not politicize it too much because I think, especially some of these financial institutions, if they don’t come on board, you know, we’re not going to get there. So we have to find ways to communicate to them, and also get them to understand what’s going on. And then they’re more likely to try and shift. So. Yeah, that’s been, again, a very positive result. I think of just I’ve been shocked at the type of people that have done screenings and organizations that I don’t think that would have looked at a film like this five years ago.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 25:29
Yes, so banks are becoming a bit more receptive.
Damon Gameau 25:32
Summer. Unfortunately, American banks aren’t as much, but lots of other bites around Europe, America, sorry, Australia. Certainly our debates here. You know, it’s interesting, some of the bigger ones said, Look, we’ve got 12 million customers and now they are writing to us every single day saying why you divest from fossil fuels? What are you doing in that comment shine, so they’re getting that pressure? And one of the best things that come out of the UN for me was hearing how many companies including very big ones, like nurse which is the you know, the biggest shipping company? In a world, we’ve now agreed to go clean energy by 2045 or 4050, you know, make all their ships electric, because they actually are struggling to get people to work for them out of universities, because these kids are graduating from the US now and saying, Well, I’m not going to come and work for you because your company is a degenerative company that is destroying the planet, I’m more interested. So it’s forcing them to actually change their ways. And that’s happening right through America and the UK as well. That these kids these, these, these, this new generation has a very different set of cultural values and cultural norms, and what they accept, and they’re not prepared to go and earn money in a company that’s going to hurt their future.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 26:38
Whoa, that resonates with my own story. It’s really awesome to hear that I listened to this TED talk the other day where this woman she’s a specialized, specialized doctor with his people dying from tobacco every day. She is trying to divert funds from banks and insurance isn’t greed, direct them away from the devil? So yeah I saw an already bought my tickets as well. you’re participating in that conference going local in March.
Damon Gameau 27:07
Oh, I’m I’m not sure I was that with them Halina Nope, no college. Yeah, yeah, and I missed a highlight is a very good friend. And she was in the film as well. And um, yeah, she’s one of those pioneers that’s been sort of spreading this message for years and years and years and banging your head against the wall, and then having all sorts of interesting conversations, but she’s really been an advocate for sort of localizing things much like the decentralized energy I was talking about in Bangladesh. She’s been sort of pushing that for years and doing the same with our food systems and everything else. So I’m always happy to support Elena. She’s an absolute legend in this space. And Mr. Cedric is participating as well. And Charles, and Einstein. I didn’t know that. That’s fantastic. I didn’t know they were going to be there. That’s that’s,
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 27:50
that’s lovely that you do three days event as well.
Damon Gameau 27:54
Right, and I’m there Am I am I listed as being in
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 27:57
here? Absolutely.
Damon Gameau 27:58
Okay. It’s good to know going to turn up there.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 28:05
In terms of going local you and I know I build this website for you by in 2040 dot com.au. You’re setting up how to call them idea boxes all around the world for locals to be able to propose ideas and imagine the future. Yeah.
Damon Gameau 28:22
So yeah, the website is, thank you very much. You’ve done an amazing job man say congratulations. But yeah, it’s basically to just again, because I guess the film was quite the 2040 film was quite broad and generic in terms of sort of looking at a vision of a wider sense of what the world could look like. I thought it would be really interesting to test it on a local level. So with sort of built this website, inviting people in our region to sort of contribute and say what they want for 2040 to look like in this particular region. So we will then take that information and turn it into a bit of a visual piece. To then show to You know, policymakers or to business and investors here and say, Look, this is what the community has come together. And they’d like these kind of things to look like and our future, how do we actually make that happen and start building it and bringing it to life. So, again, I think it’s like a manifestation tool, people can see it first, then they’ve got a better idea of what they want to invest in, it might excite them, they’ll get their hopes up and think, yeah, let’s create that, that would be a great thing. So I really just think that’s the way we’re going to do this. We’ve got to start putting up new visions and telling stories, and as you said, new narratives, and that’s the way we’re going to bring people along.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 29:31
Yeah, and it seems like Sydney is doing something similar. And maybe you might replicate this.
Damon Gameau 29:37
Well, who knows, you know, be interesting to see if it made a lot of councils in Australia have done the screenings of the film, and then really got their residents to talk about and have discussions about what it might look like in 2040. So it could be an interesting exercise to go back to some of them and, and offer to do some sort of visualizing for them as well and put it into, you know, a format that they can share around to their constituents and get people to to agree on or give notes on it and see if, if these It is actually a vision that they want to strive for.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 30:05
Well, really awesome work them. And I’ve asked all my questions, and I’ve received pretty awesome answers. But I’d like to give you 20 seconds now say something, if you have something to say to the world is something that really touches you that you want people to know.
Damon Gameau 30:20
Yeah, I guess it would be that we’re at a point now, where I think we’re not getting the leadership at the highest levels that we should be getting. So it’s important for everyone to find their own agency or find their voice in whatever capacity that that is, whether it’s approaching your boss at work about some certain practices there or at local school, even in your own house. I think it’s not enough to just sort of by keep couple years of a paper story more, we’ve actually got to find our own voice. And I’ll end with what is my favorite quote from a, an arctic Explorer, and I’m Robert Swan, and he said that the greatest threat to the planet is the belief that someone else will save
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 30:58
it. Wow. This is perfect ending. I’m just going to end it right now. No, actually no, Everyone listen to this hop on to your computer, open your browser and type. What’s your 2040 dot com?
Damon Gameau 31:13
Yeah, what’s your 20 forty.com and then you’ll see a button there that says activate your plan. And we’d encourage everyone to, to hit that button and fill out the questionnaire and then see what you resonate with.
Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 31:24
Yeah, join the regeneration, everybody, join the regeneration. And on that note, thank you so much Damon.
