Highlights

• The situation is severe and demands that radical and far-reaching changes be made.
• It is a nightmarish predicament that we are in, and there is no way we can effectively deal with the challenges to the extent needed without fun- damental changes in the way our societies work; including challenging power structures, the way we run our economies, and the very meaning of ‘development’ and ‘progress’.
• With the stakes so high – es- sentially the future of humankind (and ‘Mother Earth’) as we know it – and with ultimately everyone at peril, there is also an imperative for far-reaching change
• Solutions do exist, and it is possible to envisage a much more equitable world that has collectively managed to drastically reduce its emissions, avoid truly catastrophic global warming and increase the level of happiness and genuine well-being
• While regarding equity as fundamentally and morally important in itself, the volume also holds that equity is a prerequisite for the drastic global emissions cuts that will need to take place over the next few decades.
• A vibrant civil society – of concerned and engaged citizens – is needed to speak the truth, and to stake out and normalise what may seem ‘radical’ by today’s political ‘realism’.