The absolute basics. Realise:

• There is only one planet.
• You cannot escape.
• The planet is being damaged by human activity.
• The damage is massive.
• The damage often can never be undone.
• The damage extends to using finite resources which cannot be replaced.
• The damage extends to rendering vast numbers of life forms extinct.
• The damage will have an impact on all surviving forms of life.
• One result of the damage is that the planet’s climate is changing, unpredictably, hugely and rapidly.

Realise:

• We cannot undo history.
• But the huge changes to the planet’s climate that are now underway are either being created or being contributed to by what every single person alive does, both collectively and individually.

Realise if we don’t address the underlying causes of climate change, everything else becomes utterly irrelevant:

• Any hopes you have for yourself will evaporate if there’s no future for you.
• Every lie you cling to will prove poor company.
• Everything you achieve will mean nothing.
• Anything you own will amount to nothing in a barren world.
• Sooner or later, everyone’s children, loved ones and friends won’t be able to live on a planet that’s dying.
• Your only legacy will be the damage you caused to the planet.

Realise, too, that:

• The majority of the world’s leaders represent and promote the values and beliefs that have led to the climate crisis. They are not people who will help humanity survive.
• Future leaders need to prove that they are working within the context of new value systems that will tackle climate change.
• The new value systems need to be built on a new understanding of human nature, which clearly and explicitly allows for human shortcomings and failings.

However …

Despite those basic facts being our collective ‘climate context’, the most commonly held and believed responses to what’s happening are:

(a) – persisting with the illusion that we’ve nothing to worry about and everything will somehow be fine. This is despite the vast amounts of tested, proven, publicly available research into the rapidly changing state of our planet’s climate.

Or –

(b) – broadly acknowledging the problems we are all facing but believing we can fix things; that science, innovations, international government actions … (etc) … will come to the rescue.

However, crucially, this second category of response doesn’t address human nature. Humans created the climate problem but commonly persist in not realising the actual scale and potential outcome of the mess we are all in; in denying the role every individual plays in it all; and in not facing up to the actual and potential consequences of every individual’s personal actions.

Because of this widespread denial of the fundamental causes and implications of climate change, A New Future (ANF) is, at root, about the need to manage human nature in a better way, in order to provide us with new value systems that can in turn give all of us viable future.

ANF is optimistic in that it assumes people can survive on a hugely changed planet, and can learn, and can change. Quite possibly, that optimism is unrealistic. But without it none of us have a future worth the name.

Your Future, Your Choice

We can all easily slip into ‘yes, climate change is terrible … but I still want to drive my car, fly somewhere on holiday … etc.’ If we are going to make a difference, before anything else we need to properly understand the impact of the climate changing. You and everyone else can do this by answering two questions. Are you happy with the early deaths of your loved ones, be they children, other relatives or friends? And are you happy with your contribution to their deaths?

Be clear, the deaths of these people you care about may be many years away, but they may be far sooner than you imagine. No-one knows the pace of climate change but we do know it is already happening. If you are willing to do little or nothing to combat climate change, you are committing to a future where you might be telling the people you love to their faces both that you’re happy with their impending early deaths and that you’re happy with your role in bringing that brutal reality about.

It is your choice. If you are happy with the consequences of your actions then fine, carry on living your life as you have until now. If you’re not, then now’s the time to set your focus on your role in building a new future, built on new value systems.

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