The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis

by Christiana Figueres

To be optimistic, you must acknowledge the bad news that is all too readily available in scientific reports, your newsfeed, your Twitter account, and kitchen table conversations bemoaning our current state of affairs. More difficult, but necessary for any degree of change to take place, is to recognize the adversities and still be able to see that a different future is not only possible but is already tiptoeing into our daily lives. Without denying the bad news, you must make a point of focusing on all the good news regarding climate change, such as the constantly dropping prices of renewables, an increasing number of countries taking on net-zero-emissions targets by 2050 or before, the multiple cities banning internal combustion vehicles, and the rising levels of capital shifting from the old to the new economy. None of this is happening yet at the necessary scale, but it is happening. Optimism is about being able to intentionally identify and prescribe the desired future so as to actively pull it closer.