He shows us that different future, following each visit to someone working to reduce and reverse climate change with a projection 20 years ahead, showing us what widespread adoption of those approaches would mean, from turning the two-thirds of Los Angeles now used for cars (parking and freeways) and skyscraper roof tops into gardens to decentralized solar power grids that are not just environmentally beneficial, safer, less vulnerable to failure or attack, more efficient, and cheaper but are democratizing and community-strengthening. It is bottom-up economics, with money staying in the community instead of top-down, where it tends to be diverted to intermediaries. In the 2040 projection, we see Gameau's now-adult daughter telling her future version of Alexa that she will not need to access power when she is away for four days. The system asks whether she wants to sell the electricity back to the grid or donate it. She opts to donate, and is on her way.
We see one of those solar power "micro-grids" in today's Bangladesh, where the primary energy source had been kerosene, messy, expensive, and unhealthy. For the first time the community has enough power to watch sports on television and go out at night. As Gameau suggests, it may be easier to go from no electricity to a completely new solar-based system than to switch deeply entrenched interests and technology, especially when fossil fuel is, as in the United States, subsidized by the government so that the true economics are not optimal for responding to market forces and increased efficiencies.
Gameau shows us how cars will not need to be owned as physical objects (and signifiers of status) that spend most of their time parked in garages and lots; instead we can use on-demand driverless vehicles. The 2040 daughter looks at 2020's beef swap in the US, with the same amount imported as exported and says, "What were you guys thinking?" He notes that even if all emissions stopped today, we would still need to "draw down" carbon to reverse or slow climate change, with "regenerative" farming and, my favorite segment, a farm inside the ocean with the world's fastest-growing plant, a seaweed that can both absorb carbon and serve as food.
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