Dear readers, activists, naturalists, students and humans: welcome to the Future Hopes anthology. I couldn’t hope for a more joyful experience than reading these stories imagining the future of our planet. This a wide-reaching collection, ranging from a comic about evil fairies to a bug-eating school competition. The ideas stretch from the realistic – a garden on a London skyscraper – to the fantastical – the discovery of a new species of rodent with incredible powers of digestion. But uniting all of the stories is a true sense of hope and creativity and care. It’s impossible to doubt that we’ll save the planet if we have these dedicated characters as our guiding light.
The talented authors of these stories have all used solutions based in real science. Some of the ideas might seem really straightforward and simple, like growing more trees. A few require more high-tech innovations. And some are a little bit fantastical!
As a society, we do a great deal of talking about climate change, but not enough doing. We all know that we need to move to greener solutions such as electric vehicles and solar-powered lights. We’ve had that technology for decades. So why aren’t we using it more consistently?
There is a huge amount of money to be made from fossil fuels, and as a result, governments and companies have been reluctant to pursue more sustainable energy solutions. We have the science and technology available to us for cheaper and more reliable energy production – it’s our job to keep pushing for change so that these greener solutions can be put into action.
After each story, I’ll be sharing some ideas for the best ways you can make the ideas in these stories a reality.
So join me as we journey from the traditional farms of India, filled with drongos and barking deer, to a lighthouse on the southern coast of Australia, and to the lochs of Orkney, where otters make their home. In these nine stories, our talented writers are ready to show us how we can move towards eco-harmony with nature. It’s long past due.