What if all of our energy needs could be met with NO burning? No fossil fuels. No bio fuels. NO COMBUSTION (other than hydrogen which releases only water vapor). Don’t worry, camp fires and fireplaces and barbeques are still allowed, but the bulk of our energy needs come from totally nonpolluting sources.

What if a “war-time emergency” were declared and “war-time investments” were made to find safe, non-polluting, abundant energy? During the “war-time emergency,” conservation  measures and high carbon taxes were set in place to limit global warming and to fund the necessary “new energy” R&D, and the transfer from the automobile to mass transit, walking and biking . Automobiles will still be around, but what if the true costs of operating an automobile had to be paid? And what if they were a luxury and not necessary for everyday living?

What if all industries were required to find nonpolluting energy to power their processes (in other words, they were required to pay the true cost of doing their business)?

How do we train the focus of the lens of our cameras on this kind of future? How will safe, abundant and nonpolluting energy sources, and the necessary energy policies, have an impact on our characters and their motivations? Obviously, budget will force us to show sparingly pieces of the visual future we imagine. Also, we believe our cameras we will be shooting mostly at human scale in anthropometric dimensions.  Our characters will be mostly in walkable urban villages or neighborhoods. Our -50 | 0 | +50 careful futurism predicts that much will look the same in 2064 as it does in today. Just as much of St. Louis – at human scale – looks the same today as it did in 1964. That will leave a lot of city locations for us to use. This careful futurism strategy will keep our creative conceits in check and be an interesting challenge for producers, writers directors and actors.

Yes, we also have a social point of view. That is that systemic change in our economic and political systems are necessary if we are to survive the clear and present dangers of our times — global warming and biosphere destruction; the new gilded age, and the massive inequality of wealth and opportunity it imposes; corporate capitalism and the plutocracy it has created; and the destruction of our delicate representative democracy.

All the world’s a “sustainable” stage. In developing the series concept, we asked: What would it be like to live in a future more like Roddenberry’s Star Trek than Huxley’s Brave New World? What would life be like in a sustainable city? What would it be like to live in a place that practiced good old fashioned conservation of resources and at the same time developed advanced technology to do the same? A place that practiced “New World Business.”

Stories, film and television can help people bridge the gap between what is now and what is possible. Gateway: the City’s Reason envisions a future with mostly positive outcomes – where good old American optimism touches everyone. That’s the stage on which Gateway stories take place. And we think it’s a stage that citizens should see more of today.

Your ideas?

 

A series Bible is a reference document used by writers, directors, producers and actors for information about characters, settings and other elements of the show. In many ways, we are only beginning our research into what a sustainable city will be like in 50 years. Even so, we’ve decided to publish portions of the Gateway-TCR bible in order to share the foundations of Gateway: the City’s Reason with you. We want to describe “the stage” upon which our stories will be told and we welcome your ideas.