2019 was not - mildly speaking - the best of recent years. Global warming - also manifested by ongoing horrible fires in Australia - advanced, democracy was weakened in many western countries by irresponsible populists, the vision of a globally strong single market Europe took a setback with Brexit and Russian military agression and persecution of opposition did continue. To mention a few.

But there were much important promising developments as well - to mention a few:
1. The most important being that there now is an exponentially growing awareness among people that CO2 emissions must be not only stopped but actually pulled down from the atmosphere and that the biodiversity threat is real. Individual choices - when multiplied by billions - are understood to make the massive impact needed. 

Enterprises have widely - partly as a response to this - taken a lead in cutting emissions. This will hopefully also lead to lagging-behind politicians shaping up. Solar and wind power expanded and a multitude of technological solutions show the promise that with determined investments the situation can be checked and economic growth channeled here. 

2. Responsible political parties have come to understand, that if voters are lead to believe that immigration will become unchecked, populist parties will rise further. You need to go no further than to Sweden to understand that the weekly shootings must be acted upon instead of swept under a carpet.In some countries (even Finland) these parties can also support climate scepticism (we are too small to have any global impact..).

3. Global poverty continues to shrink and health improves - thanks to the market economy. And as outlined in a recent Economist report - wealth and income gaps are not what they appear. This will hopefully lead away from shrill propaganda to a fact based political discussion of how equal opportunities will be further improved. 

4. The data driven economy - a fundamental shift -  has taken good steps forward. It is now widely understood to promote productivity, improving services, building the Single European market, widening the tax base by shrinking the grey economy and cutting emissions by dematerialisation and transparency. 

The main thrust is in continuing on two joining ladders (movements really - where I have had the privilege to be a founding member) namely the Real Time Economy program (productivity improvements with automation and data) and GDPR rights becoming actionable life event based services with MyData.org. Both firmly in the Finnish governments agenda (this has to be Public-Private..) and Real Time Economy also a central European Union horizontal program.  All this further outlined in previous blog posts. 

So there is - after all - a lot to be grateful for and enthusiastic about. 2020 must thus be an Action-is-All year.

Happy New Year and thank you for reading.

Bo Harald