The climate crisis is our chance to create a better world

The climate crisis can’t be all about extinguishing fires real and metaphorical, it must also push us to find new ways to prosper and thrive.

Seeing opportunity in the midst of a crisis is a tough ask but it is possible. And Corinne Sawers, a sustainability and climate advisor and investor, and Eric Lonergan, a leading policy economist and author of the bestselling Angrynomics – my guests earlier this year on Inside Ideas, have some concrete suggestions here. 

In their new book: Supercharge Me – Net Zero Faster, a Financial Times Best New Books on Climate title in March, the pair have penned a fast-paced gem packed with ideas for delivering transformative change.

“We have people on the streets, we have Extinction Rebellion, we have lots of protests going on but we still don’t have clarity about what we need to do and that’s mission number one in terms of the book’s objective,” Lonergan says.

The book points to the available solutions making a positive impact now, as the basis of a new framework that can give political leaders the tools to accelerate the global response to the climate crisis.

“In some ways our book is actually about the low hanging fruit,” adds Sawers. “We’ve got ten years to halve emissions, and actually there is a big chunk of emissions we have the technology to deal with. We actually know the social, institutional, legislative change needed to do it, so let’s do it because there’s absolutely no excuse not to.”

This is what we all want to hear, that this is winnable, there is low hanging fruit and it’s not a case of mission impossible. 

So as we approach the new year let’s catch up with the authors of Supercharge Me, to find out more about how we might ’embolden activists, reinvigorate the disheartened, and reframe the climate crisis as an opportunity’ in 2023.