The team at Accountancy Age asked Matthew to keynote their annual summit in Belgium on a subject close to his heart: the environmental cost of innovation, and how to build a future with sustainability at the heart of everything we do, on a planet that is still habitable.
Looking at today's world, he said, people could be forgiven for thinking we are on a one way road to a planet where half is on fire and the other half is underwater and being battered by the elements. But that future isn't set in stone, and we already have powerful tools to change the narrative and create a brighter future for our children. Whether we use them is down to us.
"The future is in our hands, and what kind of planet we all live on in 2050 is down to us."Matthew Griffin, Brussels, December 2019
Matthew examined the environmental cost of AI and blockchain and the new tools available to mitigate it, then the breakthroughs that together offer a path to cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by over sixty percent in the long run, though he admitted it is never that straightforward. They included the electrification of transport, new ways to produce food without animals or farms, new construction techniques and materials, and new green energy generation and storage, plus a tongue in cheek look at NASA's new green rocket fuel.
His closing message was simple: the future is in our hands, and what kind of planet we live on in 2050 is down to us.
