As we are on the cusp of starting 2025 I’ve been reflecting on some hopes I expressed towards the start of this decade.

20 hopes for the 2020s

I found writing ‘10 hopes for the Tens‘ a useful exercise, particularly in re-visiting those hopes as the decade progressed.

On reflection I remember I struggled a bit putting together enough hopes to satisfy my headline full of ’20s’ and by ‘Hope number 15’ I was starting to pad it out a bit with some very broad statements like – “We’ve seen the last of Donald Trump and his like”

Along with a fair proportion of the World at that time I never imagined Donald Trump becoming US President again and would have put a sizeable bet on him being in prison by the middle of the decade.

Even as I was writing about Kamala Harris towards the end of 2021, there were questions being raised as to her suitability for President, and so the idea that the 2024 Presidential election would come down to ‘Harris versus Trump’ seemed extremely unlikely.

Approaching us being a quarter of the way through the 21st Century – the start of which seemed a very long way off for this onetime kid in the 1970s who loved a weekly dose of 2000AD (BTW – so cool that it’s still a thing – https://2000ad.com/ ) – this Century keeps on throwing up those “I can’t believe that just happened moments” ( Wikipedia nails it beautifully – Timeline of the 21st Century )

But here we all stand – on the threshold of another Trump presidency.

Although I gave up trying to predict stuff on the first iteration of this blog I did post on LinkedIn a few days before Trump’s win that I had a “horrible sinking feeling that our cousins across the pond are going to vote him back in”.

Conscious of the echo chamber and filter bubble effects, I make a point of following representatives from both sides of a debate on social media (whether that’s climate change, AI or politics). So I think that at a subliminal level I was picking up on a vibe on the platform, particularly around the increasing activities of Elon Musk.

Beyond unbelievably being legally allowed to bribe the US electorate with a million dollar chance to win if they voted for Trump, I got a sense that his wealth and digital capability were going to be targeted at just the right spots in the swing states to make all the difference. Naturally there are some quite compelling conspiracy theories about what happened in those states but I’m sure they’ve already been squashed one way or another by the World’s richest man and his new best buddy, the incoming 47th President of the United States of America.

And that leads nicely to Hope number 17 – “Technology starts helping society again rather than increasingly undermining it”

Elon Musk has blown that one out of the water during the last 12 months.

Time will tell whether he becomes a force for good or evil over the next four years but the way he bought himself a powerful digital platform and used it very effectively to secure himself a seat in the Oval Office will no doubt be debated as a total abuse of technology in the future.

So what about Hope 18? – “We truly ‘build back better’ following on from the pandemic”

Hmmm – whatever happened to those bold BBB announcements on both sides of the pond post pandemic?

Well in the UK it seems it was another Boris Johnson “Get Brexit Done” type soundbite.

There’s not much commentary about the bold vision a few years on and I guess that just illustrates our extremely short span of attention and the speed with which we are more than happy to get back to ‘Business as Usual’ – despite the fact that is increasingly being recognised as being entirely unsustainable on a planet with finite resources.

The best commentary I could find was from Citizens Advice in Scotland. I wonder how optimisitic that writer is another three years on?

Another BoJo phrase from the pandemic years was reflected in my Hope number 19 – “We truly start listening to ‘the science’ “

The article I linked to back then featured Greta Thunberg telling Trump and his administration to do just that, as he was on the verged of squashing yet more of California’s legislation to reduce vehicle emissions.

Sadly, during the last six months since returning to LinkedIn there has been a ground swell in Climate Change Denial commentary on that platform with very little being done about it.

I’ve tried to take a stand a few times on LinkedIn against this tide of fake profiles and misinformation but it all seems rather futile currently as the platform itself is not making the right changes to prevent misinformation from proliferating beyond its control.

Now we come to the all encompasing Hope number 20 – “We make the world a better place for our children and their children”

Amongst my many personal hopes and self improvement desires for this decade (some of which I am fast peddling on due to early failures) is the hope that I do become a grandparent in the next five years.

It appears pretty likely to happen but that fills me with happiness and dread.

Based on the longevity of my dear departed parents I’m not anticipating living much beyond 2050 – and that’s if I’m lucky.

However, when I consider that a child born in the next five years can realistically ‘hope’ to live beyond the turn of next Century then the outlook is potentially horrific.

Let’s hope we focus on doing the right things and embrace regenerative sustainability.

“After so many years of an extractive approach, we now need to have a regenerative outlook, where we give back much more than we take. This is how we can reduce our planet’s prevailing ecological deficit, emissions and pollution levels.”