New World Same Humans
New World Same Humans
Democracy on the Beach – Audio Version
0:00
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -7:52
-7:52

Democracy on the Beach – Audio Version

Sun, sand, and reasons to be cheerful: a contrarian view of the G7 summit.

Welcome to New World Same Humans, a weekly newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.

If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet subscribed, then join 17,000+ curious souls on a mission to build a better shared future 🚀🔮


Here in the UK, we hosted this G7 summit this week.

If nothing else it’s produced some beach pictures that our elected representatives can cherish forever.

But it also felt a moment to pause and reflect. On the hard problems we face as a human collective in 2021. What we’re doing to solve them. And the reasons we have to be optimistic.

Hit play!

If you prefer to read this week’s instalment, go here for the text version of Democracy on the Beach.


Links in this week’s instalment

1. Watching the Global North’s most powerful humans exchange elbow bumps on the sand, it sometimes felt as though this meeting was the long first scene in a novel by JG Ballard.

2. Seen another way, the summit has had strong new Lorde video energy.

3. We’re halfway through 2021, and there have already been as many COVID deaths this year as there were in all of 2020.

4. In advance of this week’s summit, G7 finance ministers agreed a landmark new global tax framework, intended to stop the tax avoidance practised by techno-corporate giants such as Amazon.

5. On China, Biden is pushing a new Build Back Better World plan as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road.

6. G7 leaders pledged this week to move away from coal-burning power stations at home, and the end the funding of them in the developing world.

7. Meanwhile, the summit closed with a promise to donate 1 billion vaccine doses to the developing world.


Solar power

Thanks for listening this week.

The New World Same Humans community is united around the idea that in the 2020s, we shouldn’t leave our shared future to the powers that be.

Instead, we should come together to build a better future for all. I hope this newsletter helps fuel your mission to do just that.

And there’s one thing you can do to fuel our community in turn: share!

If this week’s instalment resonated with you, why not forward the email to someone who’d also enjoy it? Or share it across one of your social networks, with a note on why you found it valuable. Remember: the larger and more diverse the NWSH community becomes, the better for all of us.

Share New World Same Humans

I’ll be back on Wednesday with New Week Same Humans. Until then, be well,

David.


David Mattin is the founder of the Strategy and Futures Research Unit. He sits on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Consumption.

New World Same Humans
New World Same Humans
New World Same Humans is a weekly newsletter on trends, technology and our shared future by David Mattin.
Born in 2020, the NWSH community has grown to include 25,000+ technologists, designers, founders, policy-makers and more.
Listen on
Substack App
RSS Feed
Appears in episode
David Mattin
Recent Episodes
  David Mattin
  David Mattin
  David Mattin
  David Mattin
  David Mattin
  David Mattin