We live in a world of scarcity: we have limited resources like clean water, arable land, and energy. We’re also living in unprecedented times, with climate change reports telling us it’s “code red for humanity.” Why? Unsustainable, unfettered capitalism has pushed us into the next mass extinction.
There are three big trends going on right now in human society:
- We are becoming more interconnected
- We are becoming more virtual and digital
- We are becoming less fit to survive in the physical world as we know it today.
We need to find ways of managing all these trends simultaneously if we want to avoid disaster for both humanity and nature itself.
Collaborating on Solutions
With the ever-growing digital world, particularly the virtual metaverse, we’re becoming more interconnected and creative.
The metaverse connects people so they can share ideas, information, knowledge, wisdom across borders and boundaries; but also collaborate on new projects; and build realities with very little energy cost compared with conventional physical reality.
This new level of interconnectivity will enable us to collaborate on solutions. That said, not all metaverses are made equal. For example, Facebook’s metaverse is a centralized project, which means that users don’t truly own and control their own data, similar to what happens on WhatsApp or Instagram.
With a decentralized metaverse like Next Earth, which is a digital replica of Earth on the Ethereum blockchain, users truly own and control their virtual assets and identity, enabling trustless peer-to-peer collaboration, without a centralized middleman pushing their own agenda.
Donating to Solutions
Digital realities can also help change the world more directly: Via donations and environmental charity efforts.
For example, on Next Earth, users contribute to environmental charity purposes with everything they do, as 10% of every new land purchase will be sent to a charity pool.
The environmental charity contribution process is completely transparent, as it’s governed by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization on top of the blockchain.
Raising Awareness
Besides directly donating to charity, solutions like Next Earth raise awareness of how we need to build a more sustainable world.
Obviously, owning virtual property isn’t identical to owning physical property; however, there are some important similarities between these two forms of ownership that could have implications for how we think about environmental issues moving forward.
For example, both kinds of ownership encourage people to care about where they live because they feel invested in making sure their neighborhood stays sustainable and safe. Both kinds of ownership raise awareness among people about how human behavior affects our environment (by encouraging people to take better care of their neighborhoods) which may then lead them to want to do things like reduce carbon emissions or recycle materials more often (since they now see wastefulness as something that hurts their own property).
And both kinds of ownership foster social connections that could help strengthen communities and promote cooperation between neighbors.
In the end, we can change the world with the help of a digital one, by collaborating on solutions, donating to environmental causes, and raising awareness.
