Future Box

You want to swiftly reduce fossil fuel use at home? You want to drive structural change to the post-fossil society? You want to make solidarity with climate change victims part of your everyday life? Then read on.

Lee sobre La Cajita del Futuro en español.

Future Box

The Future Box is a very simple – and very powerful – tool.

You feed it with money every time you spend money on fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas). – For each dollar/euro/peso you spend on fossils, you put one into your Future Box.

Red Dot
The Red Dot – Symbol of Solidarity with the Victims of Climate Change
Oilwatch on COP17
Leave it in the Ground – a vision of a zero carbon future

You use the money in your Future Box for:

1.) Transitioning to the post-fossil era. Retrofitting the house, solar panels on your roof, an electric car, a rooftop vegetable garden, etc. Anything that makes you less dependent on fossils for the future is fine.

2.) Helping the victims of climate change. Famines, droughts, floods, civil war – the consequences of climate change are manifold. From today, you will have something to help out. Maybe small but still significant. Here is one example: Bundles of Joy for the victims of typhoon Haiyan in the Phillippines.

3.) Supporting organizations, initiatives and campaigns for structural change and the transition to a post-carbon society or address the plight of climate refugees.

You feed your Future Box:

  1. at the gas station, when you buy gasoline,
  2. when you buy (fossil) fuel for heating your house or pay electricity that is produced by burning fossil fuels,
  3. when you buy an airplane ticket,
  4. at the supermarket when you buy food from industrial and/or overseas agriculture,
  5. anytime you buy products that imply fossil fuel emissions.

FAQ: I don’t have much money, what can I do?

If you are spending money on fossils, obviously you do have some money. If you don’t then you don’t need a future box, because you are already living a sustainable life.

Now, consider this: the energy in one barrel of oil is equivalent to two men working 12 hours a day for one year. A barrel of oil generates 0.3 tons of CO2 emissions. You can use a carbon calculator to find out how many fossil energy slaves you employ in your current life. An average German employs about 60 of them. Our great great grandparents didn’t employ a single one, and many people in Southern countries today also don’t have any energy slaves. If you feel that you could not stop using your fossil energy slaves, this shows a bad state of addiction.

Most people agree that we don’t have a right to have slaves serving us. Much less if these slaves are destroying the planet as they work. Our urgent task is to become independent of fossil energy slaves. The Future Box helps to achieve that. You can start with basic things such as water, food, electricity, transport. Once you have all those running on clean energy, you will not be dependent on dirty energy – and ready to share some of your abundance with those in need.

Saving civilization is not a spectator sport!

(Lester Brown)