With the Copenhagen conference looming, one question looks more urgent than ever: how can people in wealthy countries be made to understand the consequences of their lifestyles? Happily for eco-warriors, a solution has arrived from the most unlikely of sources: PricewaterhouseCoopers. The firm’s latest report on “the future of work” contains a hard-hitting piece of futurology. It’s 2020 when the real trouble starts: the year when “global warming changes the climate of Europe; as the snow on the Alps melts, skiers head to the US.” If that vision of escalating winter sports airfares doesn’t get the PWC partners swapping their Porsches for bicycles, nothing will.
This piece was first published in Prospect magazine on 21st November 2009.
