My Wish: Let's Stop Stealing the Future

I work on my wish for the future almost every day as Chief Buzz Advisor to Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, because I have a strong sense of purpose around making sure that what we are leaving behind for our children, and the generations after them, is a healthy, livable planet that embraces clean, renewable energy. I’m using as much of my 25 years of knowledge around marketing and persuasion as possible to unstick fossil fuel-funded denial around climate change, and help catalyze a true and authentic global move toward a sustainable existence.

I have the good fortune in this journey toward a sustainable future of working with some of the most brilliant minds in the strategic and creative worlds. This is critical as we are up against a powerful machine of mistruths with hundreds of millions of dollars of media and propaganda behind it. We are but a David to a massive Goliath. Yet, I fundamentally believe that we are on the precipice of a movement, powered by truth, reality, and a newfound ability to create collective action on a global scale leveraging a rapidly evolving social exchange landscape.

My wish, and to use some of the Climate Reality Project Chairman’s own words, is that we stop stealing from the future so that the world can enjoy the beauty and possibilities of a vital planet.

My wish is that in 100 years, humans will look back on this time as a seminal moment where we acted on scientific and real-life evidence and took a stand for the 22nd century and beyond.

My wish is that while humans in 2112 are enjoying a vital world, the history books they read will show that the reason this was possible was that an emboldened group of people 100 years ago rose up for the planet and embraced, and acted on the reality of climate change, and that corporations and governments subsequently responded. And that these governments and corporations made equally bold and extraordinary commitments to leverage the clean energy solutions that were actually in front of them 100 years earlier.

Or conversely, my wish, if you’re reading this in the future, is that you are barely even aware that we almost created a real life Water World, and that this ancient Hollywood film from almost 120 years ago predicted it wrong.