Episode 01 · 18 min
Can AI actually be good for the planet?
Everyone's arguing about energy use. Fewer people are asking what happens if we point this thing at the hardest problems we have.
AIInnovationClimate
Mark Rowland
markorowlo
Exploring how optimism, innovation and collective action can help humanity become a regenerative force for our living planet.
Can humanity become a regenerative force for our living planet?
We face extraordinary challenges. But we're also living through an extraordinary period of human creativity, scientific discovery, technological innovation and collective action.
markorowlo is my exploration of the people, ideas and possibilities that might help us build a world where humanity doesn't simply do less harm — but actively contributes to the flourishing of life.
Three lenses, one system
Optimism
What becomes possible when we believe change is possible?
Innovation
What new ideas, technologies and approaches could change the trajectory?
Collective Action
How do we bring people together to turn possibility into change at scale?
Direction
Regeneration
Not three isolated pillars. Optimism creates agency, innovation creates solutions, collective action creates scale — and together they point somewhere.
Latest discoveries
Explore everything →
Episode 02 · 22 min
What would the world's greenest data centre look like?
Waste heat into greenhouses, grid balancing, water loops. I went looking for the people already building it.
InnovationSystemsClimate
Field note
Can we engineer serendipity?
The best collaborations I've seen started with an accidental conversation. What if accidents could be designed?
Collective ActionPeopleSystems
Short essay
Why optimism isn't the same as wishful thinking
Optimism isn't a prediction. It's a working assumption that effort might matter — and that assumption changes what you attempt.
OptimismPeople
Experiment in progress
What happens when you bring 100 people together to solve one problem?
An experiment in collective intelligence: one intractable problem, one hundred strangers, seventy-two hours.
Collective ActionSystemsPeople
People worth meeting
There are remarkable people all over the world working on pieces of this puzzle. I want to meet them and understand what they've learned.
The scientist growing coral that can take the heat
What does it feel like to spend a decade on something that might not work — and to keep going anyway?
The engineer wiring a continent with sunlight
Building energy infrastructure where the grid never arrived — and why he thinks leapfrogging is the whole story.
The elder restoring a coastline with 60,000 years of instructions
Regeneration isn't a new idea. In some places it never stopped being practised.
Ideas worth exploring
Follow a thread →What if humanity's default setting became regenerative?
Not less harm. Net contribution. What would have to be true?
Is optimism a form of infrastructure?
Belief that change is possible seems to be a precondition for it.
Could collective intelligence be our most underused technology?
We've spent a century optimising individual productivity. Not group thinking.
What if cities were measured like ecosystems?
Biodiversity, water, energy, carbon, wellbeing — one interconnected balance sheet.
Why do good ideas travel so slowly?
The solution often already exists — three thousand kilometres away.
Can hope be a serious strategy?
Doom is well funded and well documented. What's the evidence base for hope?
Come explore with me.
I don't have all the answers. That's the point.
I'm looking for remarkable people, unexpected ideas, promising innovations and examples of collective action that might show us what's possible.
If you're curious too, come along.
Join the exploration
Occasional field notes: what I'm discovering, who I'm meeting, what surprised me.