A giant artificial waterfall could make the Rio 2016 Games the greenest Olympics ever. The Solar City Tower, a concept that won the architecture competition for the 2016 Olympic Games, could soon become a reality, and grace the open skies above Rio’s blue waters. Besides the staggering beauty of the proposed structure, the Solar City Tower is also entirely self sustainable, and will produce enough green energy to power the Olympic Village.

The construction of the World Cup Stadium in Qatar is scheduled to begin next year, although the host nation of the 2022 FIFA World Cup has many preliminary challenges to overcome considering the immense heat of the region. Besides developing a top notch world class stadium, engineers and construction workers in work pants need to build a stadium that is completely carbon neutral, as this formed part of their initial winning proposal to FIFA. Developing a green World Cup Station with an effective cooling system in a desert almost seems like an impossible task. However, engineers have already proposed a solution for carbon neutral air conditioning system for the 2020 World Cup Stadium.

Apocalyptic prophesies. The Mayans’s have one for this year so we don’t have much time left. The future of our children and children’s children suddenly becomes irrelevant and all notion of sustainable development loses impetus. If we look at films depicting times of great disease and cities covered in black clouds, the protagonist usually finds him/herself out there, alone in the world. Occasionally finding some sort of companion, they battle against the earth as she turns against them because of all the damage we have done to it.

Enter Arnold Schwarzenegger to save the days. Along with Project Green Light this UN-backed project sets the tone for a new perspective on sustainable development.  The idea of the project is to create a strategy for making sustainable development more accessible to people who are often intimidated by all the jargon surrounding this practice. It may sound a bit far-fetched and along the same lines as a Terminator sequel with less destructive machinery and more energy-saving battery chargers, but the virtual world of Sustainia is meant to act as bottom-up approach to sustainable growth and development.