Dubai’s new Museum of the Future envisions a healthy planet

Al-Amiri said the museum’s ethos is that the drive toward a sustainable future and healthy planet should not prohibit progress and economic growth.

“It needs to not be prohibitive, but rather an opportunity to create new opportunities out of this challenge that we’re all facing,” she said.

The museum’s creative director, Brendan McGetrick, said addressing climate change “doesn’t mean that you have to return to like some hunter gatherer lifestyle.”

“You can actually mobilize and continue progressing and continue innovating, but it should be done with an awareness of our relationship to the planet and that we have a lot of work to do,” he said.

The museum’s goal is to inspire people to think about what is possible and to channel that into real world action, he added.

Visitors to the Museum of the Future are ushered by an artificial intelligence guide named “Aya.” She beckons people to experience a future with flying taxis, windfarms and a world powered by a massive structure orbiting Earth that harnesses the sun’s energy and beams it to the moon. The so-called “Sol Project” imagines the moon covered by countless solar panels that direct that energy toward nodes on Earth, where humanity thrives and the planet’s biodiversity includes innovative plant species resistant to fire.