One Question That Won’t Leave Me Alone.

What if we stopped celebrating the future and started shaping it?

Five editions of Love Tomorrow Summit have given me plenty of inspiration, remarkable encounters and new perspectives. From Yuval Noah Harari’s questions about AI to Justdiggit’s landscape restoration, from energy independence to the future of Africa, many ideas have stayed with me long after the stages went dark.

But inspiration has also made me more critical.

What is the point of imagining a better tomorrow if we fail to give people the opportunity to make it happen today?

I’m Marc Bellinkx, a Belgian geography and computer science teacher, author and systems thinker. I explore this question in my classroom, through environmental and educational initiatives in The Gambia, through my Butterfly Forest project, and in The Ten Plagues, my book project about the interconnected challenges facing humanity.

My starting point is simple: the world’s biggest problems rarely exist in isolation. Population pressure, consumption, water scarcity, climate change, energy insecurity and artificial intelligence can reinforce one another. Understanding those connections is essential. Finding ways forward is even more important.

So I keep asking:

What if we shared energy differently? What if we helped restore landscapes with local knowledge and simple tools? What if education prepared young people not merely to use technology, but to question and build it?

I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I believe we need more than inspiring stories. We need critical thinking, practical experiments and the courage to ask questions that open new possibilities.

That is what drives my work: geography as a way to understand the world, systems thinking as a way to recognise its turning points, and What if? as an invitation to act.

Tomorrow is worth celebrating. But it is even more worth shaping.

More about my work and ideas: https://marcgroet.com