new consensus

I'll be exactly 140 in 2091 so then I started to think what would happen if I survived until then (and it's not a Margaret Atwood world).  And it all turned out a bit meta.

That's interesting! Everyone asks me what it's like to be the oldest person in the world, but no-one asks me why I am. It’s a good question. I'll have to think. Luck mostly, I guess.

Certainly not healthy living. I did become a vegan of course - am I the last alive to remember eating real meat? – but I always liked my glass of wine. Bottle of wine I should say! Now we make our own in the cooperative.

Certainly I'm not the oldest through planning it. I mean, I retired on my 60th birthday. I know! Less than half my life – 80 years ago today! I thought, why not? I was comfortable, I owned my own house, a reasonable pension and savings to keep me comfortable. I thought it would last until, what? 80, 90? That was life expectancy then. I wasn’t planning a new career - it happened by accident. Luckily for me, or I wouldn’t be able to afford to still be around.

So I suppose the answer is my new post retirement career. The first bit of luck was my writing taking off. I'd only started it for something to do, to fill the time. Do you know the term ‘viral’? You might have read about it. In those days what you call interaction was fairly primitive. We called it social media - I can't remember why now. There were just a few companies that controlled how people interacted, and people hooked on to these fads. So something would be sent by someone to their friends, then passed on, and so on until billions had heard about it. No, I'm not joking: these social media thingummies literally had billions signed up. So I wrote this story and somehow people, young people, latched on to what I had written and they wanted more in the same vein. Then I had something called a blog, which people could look at and read my stories and my ideas. Then there was a book, another book, documentaries. It all went viral! Suddenly I was famous and pretty soon I was rich. All unplanned, you see.

In those days there were some influential thinkers – people you know of now as heroes of the Restoration. But then it felt like they were crying in the wilderness. I had always admired them but by the time of retirement I think I had given up hope. Now suddenly I was mixing with these heroes of mine, campaigning with them. All when I thought I was going to have a slow descent to my death. I always knew it would come from the young ones: the ones born at the start of the century. My generation – the Careless Generation, you call them, right? – well, you're spot on there. We couldn't care less. We messed up the world, killed things off, all in the name of progress, and yet the more material benefit, the less happy we became.

Then suddenly as you know it all changed. Growth is Cancer, that was the cry. It was a perilous few years. Suddenly the young people were taking control all across Europe and what they did made a lot of sense. The New Consensus and all that. I was a great admirer of Greta Thunberg and we became great friends: she was kind enough to call me her guru, but I always said it was her generation that were the thinkers, the inventors of our new world, the clever ways of using technology to turn away from growth to the system we have now.

All those big corporations started to fail, thanks to them. I think what really made the biggest push was when – you've heard of the Friday school protests that Greta started? Of course you have! So they developed into Stay at Home Fridays and then Turn Off Fridays. That destroyed the big utility companies: consumption was down by ten per cent overnight. And people were learning how to mend things, to find new uses for them, to make and grow their own food, to exchange through local bartering networks, all facilitated by clever apps. That killed the retail companies. By then Greta and her new European Consensus were in power and the Treaty of Stockholm turned the EU from an apologist for the free market into a force for good.

But I still am amazed at how quickly it all happened. And not a moment too late. The climate emergency is still with us, of course, but it could so easily have been a lot worse. Do you know, when I retired, only 5% of United Britain was wild? And it was little patches of green surrounded by grey. Now 25% is forest, heath and wetland; even more of United Ireland. Yet we are self sufficient in food. The sprawling suburbs have gone. More people live in the country now than in my day, but also more densely in the cities. New arable farming techniques and the smallholdings give us everything we need, year round. People used to travel everywhere in their own cars, and fly half way around the world every year for their holidays, eating up fuel, poisoning the air. Now we all use the shared pods and the fast tracks.

I like to think that my influence on Prince George growing up was important too, if only through symbolism. As a student he said he had read everything I'd written. He often asked my advice and even tuned in to my lectures. As soon as he became king, he renounced his use of private vehicles and started using the pods, and he and his husband turned their various houses into self sustaining communes. Eventually he abolished the monarchy in agreement with the Consensus of course. I still go over from Heathrow from time to time and visit George and Hakim – by the way, I could tell you some stories about the greening of Heathrow and the fights we had, but that would be a whole other interview! A lovely young couple – well I say that but they're over eighty now of course, with a big extended family. Have you been to the People's Palace lately? The Mall orchard is magnificent at this time of year and they have some very advanced hydroponics units they're developing at Sandringham.

But I'm rambling. You know all this. I'm lapsing into one of my undergrad lectures again! You'll have to indulge this very old man. You used to tune in too? Well I'm glad.

Yes, I've been lucky with my health too. After the drug companies were nationalised and turned to research into the greater good – rather than some new pill for erectile dysfunction! – I volunteered for the gerontimplant programme. As I was one of the first I was very carefully monitored at all stages, and have been ever since, and I think that's helped to keep me going. Of course a lot of my generation were too far gone but the implants at least give them a good virtual world experience until they leave us. But the newer versions will allow people to live even longer than me. 100 is the new 60! I'm not as sprightly as I was, but I can still get around if I have to with the help of the pods and my brain isn't too bad for 140!

The one thing that has made the most impact on my life? Well, I'd like to say it was meeting Greta of course. But I suppose I have to go back to that first story I wrote that kicked the whole thing off, the one that went viral and for some reason gave people new hope. It was really off the cuff, hammered out one evening for a competition if I remember right – what was it called now? You know it? It's still famous is it? Well fancy that. You know I just interact now with my closest friends, I don't spread my virtual wings much further these days. Ah yes, I remember now, that's it: new consensus.