Futurium Museum Berlin | Sortition Democracy – Well Being of Everyone | Climate Shadow – grows as actions inspire others
February 27, 2024 Leave a comment
I happened to be bicycling from an event that took place every Thursday evening Berlin Beats, in which different dj’s are featured in the courtyard of Hamburger Bahnhof museum, when I noticed that the lights at another museum were on quite late, with people milling about, when I suddenly realized that this was a night i had calendared and forgotten about the date, ‘The Langest Nacht de Museums / Long Night of Museums’.
I was stunned to see that this modern building I’d cycled by so many times, is in fact, a museum.
I went inside, and found myself fascinated. The entire Futurium museum is devoted to the many factors affecting our current global warming climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss. In a series of exhibits it features solutions and alternatives; materials we can use to produce anything from utensils we eat with to clothing, that are fungi based for example.
“At Futurium, everything revolves around the question: how do we want to live?”
What is the cost of our consumption?
“Our passion for consumption also has a downside: mountains of waste are growing; we are consuming more and more natural resources and emitting more and more greenhouse gases. At the same time, an increasing number of people in disadvantage countries also want to enjoy prosperity. However, it would take over three earth’s worth of resources for the 7.6 billion people worldwide to live like we do in Berlin.”
And delves as well into true democratic methods. I read in fascination at a concept – which is nascent – sortition democracy (selection by democratic lottery).
In a sortition democracy
“The well-being of everyone should be central to democracy (uh oh, that sounds Communist) It’s about representing people with very different values, interests, needs and about constantly dealing with new challenges. this requires decision-makers with as many different life experiences and abilities as possible. A randomly selected group could offer more diversity. This would allow new topics and a wider range of perspectives to be taken into account. Problems could thus be resolved more optimally with respect to public interests and perhaps even more creatively.”
In a sortition democracy
“All citizens are equal. Some scientists think that this democratic concept of equality can be better fulfilled through a lottery. All citizens would have an equal chance to make decisions for the public interest. It would be left to chance who sits in parliament and what political positions are represented…”
Due to its content, to me it’s one of the best and most fascinating museums I’ve visited. It’s the state-of-the-art science museum that offers solutions to current problems. It shows holistically the biodiversity loss and global warming crisis in which we are embedded, the effects of our independent and collective actions and behaviors and reveals healthy alternatives. It offers solutions to our Social and Environmental dilemmas and warming world; what we can do to attenuate our actions, what habits can we change, what natural solutions can we adapt in our production processes? How can we adapt our social as well as political behavior?
A concept recently coined by a Portland, Oregon-based writer Emma Pattee, the climate shadow aims to paint a picture of the full sum of one’s choices—and the impact they have on the planet.
“Everywhere you go, it goes too, tallying not just your air conditioning use and the gas mileage of your car, but also how you vote, how many children you choose to have, where you work, how you invest your money, how much you talk about climate change, and whether your words amplify urgency, apathy, or denial.”
In other words, rather than incentivizing purely individual actions, your climate shadow grows when those actions inspire others, knowingly or otherwise.
As Neil de Grasse Tyson states in his video citing the Tree of Life in a circular pattern. The Tree of life circular pattern, the first species in the center. This image shows 3,000 species, roughly one tenth of one percent of all the species that exist.”
Tyson reveals that “It is not humans that dominate the earth, we are participants in the unfolding of the earth with all the other life forms.”
The Futurium museum has a vast climate shadow.
Whereas global leaders who say one thing and neglect to in any way act with integrity on what they state, are basically in the dark, with no shadow whatsoever.
Ironically, this was displayed at the UN Climate Summit in September 2023.
“The United Nations’ secretary general, António Guterres, who has made climate action a centerpiece of his agenda and has called on the world’s largest carbon emitters to rapidly shift away from burning fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming, pledged that only high-level leaders whom he sees as taking climate action seriously would be allowed to speak at the event.” The leaders of the US and China were not invited.
Love and respect his honesty and integrity, “Climate action is dwarfed by the scale of the challenge,” Mr. Guterres said in his opening remarks at the summit. “We must make up time lost to foot-dragging, arm-twisting and the naked greed of entrenched interests raking in billions from fossil fuels.”
In the meantime, global temperatures continue to surpass earlier records of heat, with the increases even more excessive at the poles.
About carolkeiter
digesthis 