Hi,
In a few days, my first book, “The Future Earth”, goes on sale in the US. In it, I’ve tried to make the best case I can for why a better world is possible, and why climate dystopia is not inevitable.
While I’m busy packing boxes with my small kids – who are eagerly making up a factory line in the living room – and getting ready to ship early copies all around the world, I wanted to take a minute. I want to appreciate how remarkable and surreal it is that this book is entering the world during a time of global transformation.
I am so thankful and honoured every day that my words and thoughts and emotions have been embodied in the physical object of this book, and that other people (in just a few days!) will begin to steward those words and that object into their own lives. This week, I did an interview for the BBC World Service about the book and it didn’t escape me that once my voice hit the largest radio station in the world, there’s no taking it back now.
What we need, and what I hope this book provides, is equal parts anger at the injustice that created and perpetuates the climate emergency, and a compassionate reminder that we have the ability to work together to create something far better than we ever thought possible.
This week’s good news on climate
We are already in the revolution for a better world. We don’t have to wait for it. The future is just a collection of the billions of collective choices each of us make every day.
Over the past six months, we’ve proved to ourselves that we can change quickly. Working through change of this scale this quickly can create lasting trauma, even if we succeed. So it’s vitally important that we continue to have a vision of where we’d like to go in our mind, to refill our energy levels during those moments where we have to rest before we can continue.
This week, the news came that there will be no official UN climate negotiations in any form this year, due to concerns about the coronavirus. But there’s nothing stopping each of us from continuing a grassroots revolution for bottom-up change.
Indeed, that’s my #1 takeaway to readers of The Future Earth: talk about climate with anyone who will listen to you. If each of us have a conversation about what we want the future to be like, and how we can work together to make it happen, those shared visions will build the foundation of a world worth fighting for.
My hope is that this book will help bring a world into being that we all know is possible. And it all starts with understanding how much each of us mean to each other.
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