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THE FUTURE WE CHOOSE

Surviving the Crisis

By Christina Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac

The first question to ask when reading “The Future We Choose” is, Who exactly is the “we” of the title? Figueres, who helped facilitate the passage of the Paris Agreement on climate change, and Rivett-Carnac, a lobbyist for the United Nations, position their book as presenting options for what “governments, corporations and each of us can do” about climate change. But those are three distinct groups with different motivations and pressures. That the book lumps them all together regardless of their contribution to the problem — your average person in Guatemala has contributed far less to climate change than a person in New York City, and each has contributed less than an oil company — illustrates the book’s unevenness.

Further, in pursuit of their optimistic messaging, the authors are loose with certain facts. For example, their emphasis on tree planting and reforestation (laudable goals, to be sure) relies partly on a flawed study in the journal Science that overestimated how many trees can actually be planted, because of ecosystem constraints — we don’t grow trees in the desert — and how much carbon they can pull out of the atmosphere. Similarly, they write that biofuels will replace fossil fuels in airplanes, but what those fuels will be made of, and how we might balance the required agriculture with the prescription for more forestland, is not made clear.

Perhaps most unsatisfying, the book is presented as an action guide but offers few actions the average reader can actually take. Many of the pages focus on how one can cultivate the right mind-set, an especially puzzling section because it comes after the authors have chastised us for being too individualistic. (Yet of the 10 actions they highlight, only one mentions cultivating community.) It’s not that the action statements are bad — nobody would argue with engaging with politics, or nurturing a shared positive vision for the future — but the book falls short on telling us how.

210 pp. Knopf. $23.

