Choosing Our Tomorrows: Video Diaries of a Farming Family, set in 2050
It is the year 2050. How has society reacted and adapted to climate change?
A farming family have recorded three sets of video diaries. Dad (Jack), mum (Beth) and daughter (Sally). Each set of diaries decsribes life in different futures depending upon how we have to responded to the challenge of climate change. The different futures are 'Business as usua', 'Living of the land' and 'No place like home'.
The diaries highlight how the choices we made today will affect how we live in the future. View the trailer of the 9 video diaries at: Choosing our Tomorrows.
The 3 scenarios of different futures are described below, with the relefant video diaries for each future:
Business as usual - Despite repeated high-profile warnings in the early half of the century, global responses to climate change have proved too little, too late. In Scotland, summers are much warmer and are very dry. Winters are extremely wet. Violent storms are common. Many low lying areas are permanently flooded.
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| Jack, father of the family | Beth, mother of the family | Sally, daughter of the family |
Living off the land - As a response to increased climate change and dwindling fossil fuels, electricity is now supplied by nuclear, and transport is
mostly run on biofuels. In the 2010’s, heavy investment in GM, agricultural engineering, and biotech research provided a way to use the available land to meet spiralling food and energy needs. Most people now live in cities or towns which are powered by the resources provided from an industrialised countryside.
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| Jack, father of the family | Beth, mother of the family | Sally, daughter of the family |
No place like home - Rural communities across Scotland have invested in new energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro, heat exchange pumps or tidal. High transport fuel costs have favoured a move towards locally produced food, but have also constrained personal travel – leading to most people working remotely from home. By acting early, the worldwide effects of climate change have been minimised.
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| Jack, father of the family | Beth, mother of the family | Sally, daughter of the family |
Please download the leaflet about the James Hutton Institutue leaflet on the Choosing Our tomorrows interactive exhibit.
For more information about the background to the materials aboe, and Institute research into land use under alternative futures contact David Miller.
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to all those invoved in the design and production of the Choosing Our Tomorrows video diaries. The design and preparation of the Choosng Our Tomorrows videos was by Dr Richard V Birnie and Dr Dave Stevens, at the Macaulay Land Use Research institute, now the James Hutton Institute. The films were produced by Callisto Productions. Thanks also to everyone who has visited the Climate Change Exhibit while it was hosted by the Aberdeen Science Centre.
This work was funded by the Scottish Government as part of the Strategic Research Programme on Environment-Land Use and Rural Stewardship (2011-2016).
SEFARI is the collective of six Scottish world-leading Research Institutes working across the spectrum of environment, land, food, agriculture and communities – all topics which affect how we live our lives, in Scotland and beyond.
