Lighting the way in a lockdown

A review of The Future We Choose - Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac

I’ve just finished The Future We Choose – a book from the combined effort of Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, key figures who made the 2015 Paris agreement happen.

Learning about the finer details of how the Paris Agreement came about were particularly interesting to me. I was in Paris at the same time, arriving a few days after the terrorist attack. 2015 seems like a lifetime ago. Climate disasters continued to happen, the US started the process of removing themselves from the Paris Agreement under Trump and still carbon emissions continued to rise year on year.

“When the story changes, everything changes.”

I’ve made ‘imagination’ a theme this year. We are projected down two possible future scenarios, one where we continue business as usual, and another where we successfully reduce our carbon emissions in half every decade. The book warns that despite some positive futures, we still have to deal with the consequences of releasing so much carbon, and the sea is still rising.

The duo crank up the gears by part three so readers are ready to take action. The ten actions offered are broken down making them more tangible.

1 – Let go of the old world
2 – Face your grief but hold a vision of the future
3 – Defend the truth
4 – See yourself as a citizen – not as a consumer
5 – Move beyond fossil fuels
6 – Reforest the earth
7 – Invest in a clean economy
8 – Use technology responsibly
9 – Build gender equality
10 – Engage in politics

Let go of the old world
“Now is the time for us to thank fossil fuels, retire them and move on.”

Build in gender equality
“We will be able to manage climate change better if we can improve the ratio of women making the decisions about how to do it.”

This book is an invitation to be part of a future I want to be in.
Thank you Christiana Figueres for illuminating the right next step.