…It really does make a difference to read about things that are making a difference already, about situations where change is being embraced and celebrated. We seem to be bombarded on every corner by what is wrong with the world. Chris Turner makes the case that there is reason to hope – for the planet, and for ourselves. If you need a shot of hope, I highly recommend this book. I would even go so far as to say that if I hadn’t read The Geography of Hope, I wouldn’t have started this blog. I would have continued to feel concerned and overwhelmed about the dangers of climate change without feeling empowered to do anything about it. Turner was inspired by the birth of his young daughter to explore what sustainability really means. I, too, have daughters. For their sake, and with Chris Turner as an example, I was moved out of paralysis to action. As Turner writes in the introduction to the book:
Life is not an either/or proposition, and it’s always a bit melodramatic to reduce it to any single choice. Still, this is as close to the fundamental crossroads as humanity’s ever come, and the implications of our choice of path are global in scale and monumental in impact…
The front pages of the newspaper may look like bad news, an ominous and intractable mess – storm clouds on the horizon, the four horsemen at the gate – but the back pages and the margins are filled with solutions. Tools and technologies, organizations and ideas – everything we need to avoid catastrophe. And they lead to a better way of life. That’s maybe the most surprising, electrifying thing about this geography of hope: it beats what we have now, even if our climate wasn’t compelling us to change.
The world we need: it all exists. It only took a year to find. And anything that exists is possible.
To be part of the generation that beat climate change: this is possible.
Click here to go to the book’s website, or here to go to Chris Turner’s Facebook page.