Spring flowers blooming…in the ALPS.

As a futurist, I don’t like doomsday scenarios. In the words of my colleague Joe Tankersley, a futurist and writer for Disney, it’s more effective to motivate people with positive visions. But…

Well, the Alps have got no ice in traditionally-frozen lakes and trees are flowering, and…sigh…a lot of disturbing stuff. From the Washington Post:

"Preliminary data from the Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, and the University of East Anglia indicate that 2006 has been the warmest year in Britain since record-keeping concerning weather conditions began in central England in 1659.

Trees are sprouting leaves in Switzerland. And low-altitude ski resorts across the Alps look more like springtime meadows. "We are currently experiencing the warmest period in the Alpine region in 1,300 years," Reinhard Boehm, a climatologist at Austria’s Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, told the Associated Press in Vienna."

A note to climate skeptics as well. I’d like to say from the futures community — we have absolutely no axe to grind here. I really hope this is all a blip on the radar and was nothing to worry about. I hope that human industry has nothing to do with this, because I think the changes that need to come may be quite difficult to manage.

BUT — there are tremendous opportunities for new products and services that improve energy efficiency, reduce emissions and pollution, and increase profit for companies…and that last part is the cool bit.

-Garland