(birds chirping) (metallic scraping) (gentle music plays) my name is damon.

and this is my daughter, velvet. (damon laughs) - are you trying to plant dad? - (laughs) she's just turned four. her days are spent in a happy bubble, created by my excellent wife, zoe. yeah? she's lucky enough that her major concerns right now are numbers... daddy. mummy. velly. zoe: so how many pieces is that? damon: ..how to tell a knock knock joke... - knock, knock. - who's there? - unicorn. - unicorn who? unicorn jump over the rainbow. - oh, that's who it is! - (laughs) ..and the elusive art of sleep direction. but soon she'll have to leave that happy bubble and face a rapidly deteriorating environment.

reporter: yes, john, the ice sheet is now melting faster than the scientists predicted. we're seeing large waterfalls pouring off the side of the ice. it's an alarming acceleration. damon: t need to address this is so urgent... (horns honking) ..that it often overwhelms me. (sirens, honking) the simplest way i can explain our current predicament is to briefly channel my year nine science teacher and pretend our house is the planet. carbon is a miraculous building block and for millions of years, our planet has been part of a natural carbon cycle. some gets released, some gets stored, and if these things are balanced, then equilibrium is maintained. but since the industrial revolution, we've broken the balance and have been dramatically increasing the release of the earth's stored carbon into our atmosphere.

(horns honking) for hundreds of thousands of years, we've hovered between about 180 and 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. but since the industrial revolution, that number has shot up over 40% to more than 400 parts per million, trapping heat in our atmosphere. more than 90% of the excess heat being trapped is absorbed by our oceans. the oceans also absorb much of the extra carbon dioxide, and so are now 30% more acidic than they were 150 years ago. and this is impacting on biodiversity, as many sea creatures, such as oysters or clams, are struggling to make their shells. but the increased heat and overall energy in the system also leads to more intense weather events.

hotter air can hold more moisture, so rainfalls, storms, hurricanes, floods, even snowfalls can become heavier. (thunder rumbles) it is true that the climate has always been changing. it just hasn't changed this rapidly in at least 50 million years. unfortunately, the increase in heat also means that our polar caps and glaciers are rapidly melting, which causes sea level rise that threatens hundreds of millions of people in coastal cities. the earth is our collective home, but we're actually renting it from future generations. so we need to not only rapidly reduce our emissions...

man: oi! righto! ..but also find ways to sequester or draw down the excess carbon dioxide that has already been put into the system. many scientists believe that getting down to 350 ppm would be a terrific goal. so i think we're all pretty aware that when it comes to predictions of the future, they're almost entirely negative at the moment. any time you open your newsfeed or social media, there's some kind of doom and gloom story about the future of our environment. and as a father, i... ..i think there's room for a different story. a story that focuses on the solutions to some of these problems. so my plan is to go out and find some of these solutions

and then create a vision of a different future for our daughter. what about... damon: i want to show her what the world would look like if the solutions i find were implemented today. so, what would the world look like in 2040 if we just embraced the best that already exists? and that's my only rule. everything i show her in this 2040, has to exist today, in some form. i can't make it up. - velvet: see you, dadda. - see you, darling. have fun. damon: i'm calling it an exercise in fact-based dreaming.

the first step in this exercise was to consult the generation who'll be sharing the future with our daughter. - hi, everybody. - kids: morning. morning. my name is damon. now, do you guys know where we've come from today? do you know what country that i'm from? kids: no. we have animals called platypus. - kangaroo. - kids: australia! australia? yeah, yeah, yeah. we've been going all around the world and talking to lots of different children your age, and so we're going to ask you what kind of things you want to see in the future. (cheering) well, what would make me happy in the world is... hmm. i think we should get this invention which sucks up all of the rubbish in the world

and puts it in a intergalactic dimension, which is a rubbish dimension. i'd like to see deforestation being stopped because it's ruining the planet. animals are losing their homes. (speaks local language) cleaner water. that would really make me happy. (speaks local language) well, i would like for the government to have done something on global warming and pollution, as now, i think they're not really doing anything about it. you know, just be respectful to earth. it was sobering to learn how preoccupied the kids are

with the state of the planet, and what a big job i had ahead of me. so i began my search for solutions with energy. (upbeat music plays) i found myself in bangladesh, where the roads are chaotic... (honking) ..and people are openly peddling ice on the streets. man: currently, bangladesh has one of the largest solar home system markets in the world. over 5 million solar home systems. so most households in every rural area in bangladesh actually has a solar home system, and that's their primary source of energy.

damon: wow. this charming 23-year-old is neel tamhane, who has studied alternative energy technologies and come home to help power his country. turns out i wasn't the only one who wanted to hear him talk. neel: so what we do is we interconnect solar home systems and we enable energy sharing between them, which is basically trading, and the customer chooses when they want to trade and when they don't. instead of building large grids, we're proposing a decentralised structure where we start building grids bottom up. damon: the setup is quite simple. any home that has solar panels and a battery... ..can buy this special box... ..which connects them to another house with the same setup. the box allows the buying or selling of energy

between the homes. but it gets better. neel: there is still a segment of the population that still can't afford to buy a solar home system. so, instead of doing that, if they can just buy a small solbox, they can just buy energy when they need it. you fill up your solbox with money. as you keep using energy, it deducts money. damon: what this means is that all the boxes can connect to each other to form a microgrid. it's like a water tank of community energy that people can give to or take from. the beauty is that this microgrid can then connect to the adjacent village's microgrid and the network becomes stronger and stronger. there's a mimicking of nature here, isn't there? like, in the way that cells multiply and form something and strengthen it.

yeah, that's a great analogy. you have one solar home system, you interconnect with your neighbours, you make it 50. slowly, you interconnect villages. once you have collected hundreds, you can hook it up to the grid, you can sell to the grid. forget buying from it - you become the primary energy generation source for the country. so the idea is we are like a swarm of bees or a swarm of fish that move together, pool in all our energies together to run bigger loads. damon: this technology could revolutionise the way we distribute energy worldwide. (neel speaks local language) damon: from little things, big things grow. man: when we have a decentralised mode of energy, the same thing that happened with the web, happens with information where basically, it's democratic. energy becomes democratic. but also it becomes very efficient. it's far more efficient because you produce it at the point where you consume it.

damon: having efficient local energy also provides greater resilience in an increasingly hostile climate. neel: and when we talk about climate change, it's floods, it's natural disasters that happen very often here. in the last 1.5 years, we have seen about 5, 6 disasters. when you have a centralised grid, everything breaks down and then it takes a long time to build it back up. if we have decentralised generation sources, every household has their own generation source. they're independent and they have their power in their own hands, instead of depending on the government to provide it to them. (speaks local language)

(upbeat music plays) damon: the impact of the locally-generated electricity is best seen at night. the influx of cash has made the village bazaar the place to be. (man speaks local language) you guys have just skipped the landline telephone. you've gone straight to the mobile.

exactly. and it's throughout. it's not even about energy. we skipped the grid and we build our own. there are developing countries like india, bangladesh, a lot of countries in east africa that are trying to do a top-down electrification. they are spending billions of dollars here. but instead of doing that, if they can actually help subsidise these systems and let people own their own system, they would be so proud by owning these. so when i'm trading energy with you, suppose, you're actually paying me for it, and i'm getting the money, so the money also stays within the economy. this is bringing back people together. - damon: yes! - (laughs) as i left the village, i had a renewed sense of hope. particularly when neel told me this technology is springing up in other countries. this solution is great for our environment, with so many cascading benefits

for any community that chooses to adopt it. so, sticking to my rule of only showing what exists today, here's what the future of energy could look like for my daughter. this, velvet, could be you. or this. or even this. we love you. and this could be where you live. or here. or even here. but probably not here. darling! it's seven o'clock! it's time for family yoga! crystal, bring up energy.

automated voice: certainly. what would you like me to do? damon: imagine if your house in 2040 is part of a microgrid that helps power the economy throughout your city. (inspirational music plays) imagine if your windows are solar glass and come standard in new homes. and your solar battery is cheap and recyclable. this could allow you to donate your excess energy. i'm going away for four days. crystal: would you like to share or sell? share. hurricane relief. crystal: done. you're a legend. thanks. - crystal: humans are awesome. - ok. crystal: that choice was good for your soul. alright. tony: every home is going to have a battery that's going to store as much electricity as it possibly can store. and all the governments in the world

cannot push back against that because folks are going to go buy it at the store, at ikea, at walmart, at the supermarket. and it's going to be very cheap. so cheap that you're not even going to notice. damon: if cheaper home energy systems are combined with more people demanding clean energy from their politicians, darling... ..then there's a chance many countries could be close to 100% renewable by 2040. what i can guarantee is that not only will i be an embarrassing dad... find news. ..but that natural disasters will increase their intensity over the next two decades. man: absolute chaos. woman: run, run! get out! run, run! man: god. oh, my god! woman: whoa!

but what i now know is that we actually have everything we need on both a large and small-scale to power us through these disasters. and by building new grids, loads of people will get loads of jobs. - oh, that's good. - mmm. but what would be really great during this transition, velvet, is if the people who work in the fossil fuel industry are given support and funding for retraining in new careers. paid for by redirecting some of the $10 million a minute governments currently spend subsidising fossil fuels.

what struck me about the microgrids is that the profits from the shared energy stay within the community and empower individuals, rather than going to a big energy company elsewhere. but it turns out microgrids are currently illegal in some countries. if we recognised that our well-being fundamentally depends upon the stability and the thriving of this planet, we would put that at the heart of the economic system we create. damon: i met with the economist kate raworth in an appropriate location. kate is proposing a new economic framework designed for our current predicament. today's economy, the returns of production

are accruing to a 1%, which leaves us with these extraordinary levels of inequality. so we need to create an economy in which value created is shared far more equitably with all those who help create it. and daft though it sounds, i think it looks like a doughnut. the kind with the hole in the middle. so, in the hole in the middle of that doughnut is a place where people are falling short on life's essentials - be it food, housing, education, water, energy, and so we want to get everybody in the world out of that hole. but we also can't go beyond the doughnut's outer crust, because there we start to put so much pressure on this extraordinary planet, causing climate breakdown... ..biodiversity loss... ..air-pollution... ..too much land conversion. we kick out of kilter this extraordinary living planet

on which all of our well-being depends. last century's economists didn't see this. no phase of humanity has encountered this before. it's our generational challenge. we need new ideas to do this. the wonderful thing about the microgrids is that they fit beautifully within the doughnut framework. the solar energy helps restore the outer boundaries like climate change... ..and air-pollution... ..but on the inner boundaries, more people are pulled into the doughnut by improving health, with less kerosene use... ..education, by providing light to study... ..income equality, by keeping profits within the local economy... ..and networks, because the microgrid now interconnects households.

i am going to invent a plane and... ..you type in the coordinates where... what you want it...where you want it to go and... ..in a split second, you're there. i think electric cars would help the environment because that causes less pollution. and maybe, um, get electric cars if they can, um, 'cause that reduces, like, fossil fuels and then that also stops global warming. and instead of using cars, i would like to use rocket boots to go around and they would be powered by plants. oh, that would be so cool. that would be awesome. and rocket boots, i think, would really cool to see people flying around the city in. and also i want it to go worldwide and i want to try and invent them.

damon: so, it's interesting being in some of these big american cities, the traffic is just diabolical. and i can see that it... you know, i consider myself quite a happy person, you know. i've got not a lot to complain about. but i'm really... (laughs) ..feeling a bit antsy in this traffic and, um... ..it kind of does that to you. and i think probably a lot of people might not put that as a factor because they've got other things going on in their life, but if you do have things in your life that are bothering you, then you throw yourself into this environment... ..things can get a little tense. and i've been tempted to jump on the horn and abuse couple of people. (honks horn) (cars by gary numan plays) in the us right now, road vehicles contribute to 20% of emissions.

but our environment and sanity will be severely tested with predictions of an extra one billion cars worldwide by 2040. ♪ here in my car ♪ ♪ i feel safest of all ♪ ♪ i can lock all my doors... ♪ a possible solution could be replacing car ownership with on-demand driverless vehicles. the same way that we went from owning dvds or cds or records or whatever, to having all of those on demand - essentially netflix and so on - the same thing is going to happen with transportation. damon: i wasn't sure i'd trust a driverless car with my daughter, so i subjected this prototype to the surprise pedestrian test. ah! yes! robots - 1, human - 0.

the next test was a little more challenging. traffic. when i push this button, this car will be driving itself. and, um, wish me luck. (laughs) right. so, this is my first experience in a driverless vehicle, and, uh... ..i'm a little bit nervous because that wheel is turning by itself. siri, please look after me. so, yeah, you can see that's our car tracking there, and the little lidar, the radar on top is reading out all the information i think, about 50m ahead of us and scanning the area and determining what's around us, what other obstacles, what it should look out for - pedestrians, bike riders, other cars.

so it's constantly ahead of us, predicting. tony: two things are going to happen. we're all going to have a massive fleet of cars that are going to pick you up at home, take you to work, take you to the supermarket and so on, and the other one - even if you already own a car that you already paid off, it's going to be four times more expensive just to own that car than it is to access transportation as a service, so, autonomous electric vehicles. damon: i do like the freedom of my own car, so the big question is are enough of us willing to give that up and embrace shared transportation? one of the interesting challenges about a future of vehicles that involves ridesharing, is that we have all these ideas tied up with owning vehicles that have very little to do with getting us from point a to point b, and all to do with what those things said about us. so, you know, they became symbols of independence

and freedom. they became symbols of class and wealth and capital. now, the reality is, of course, we haven't had cars forever. and the notion of cars as status symbols and signals of independence - that's 60, 70 years old, at most, and less than that in most places. and so the idea that we can uncouple those things isn't impossible. and frankly, they only ever got coupled in the first place because of advertising. (laughs) damon: if we did embrace on-demand transport, much like we now require fewer cds or dvds... ..we'd also require fewer vehicles... ..and almost no parking space. tony: two thirds of la is parking and roads. you could fit three cities the size of san francisco in the empty parking space

left by the autonomous vehicle disruption. and so, as a society, we need to make decisions. what do we do with all that parking space that's going to be vacant? so, here's what 2040 could look like for my daughter without an extra billion cars. as you head off to your first school dance, velvet... - family hug. family hug. - (laughs) ..it will be nice not having to worry about your date's driving skills. look, dad! a ghost must be driving! spooky! i imagine your date to be very kind. and very impotent. all the cars that your mum and i ever owned