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I pre-ordered World­chang­ing’s User’s Guide for the 21st Cen­tury some time back and promptly for­got about it (as you do). Then, last week, the Ama­zon fairy came and every spare minute since has seen my nose buried in it.

It’s a book that empha­sises the dire sit­u­a­tion the world finds itself in but is then both inspi­ra­tional and prac­ti­cal in chart­ing a path for­ward. From the introduction:

If we face an unprece­dented plan­e­tary cri­sis, we also find our­selves in a moment of inno­va­tion unlike any that has come before… Humanity’s fate rests on the out­come of the race between prob­lem solvers and the prob­lems them­selves. The world is get­ting bet­ter – we just have to make sure it gets bet­ter faster than it gets worse.

Tech­nol­ogy, of course, is not the only solu­tion (despite the head in the sand asser­tion by some that it is). But it is a part of the solu­tion as is help­ing and cajol­ing peo­ple, organ­i­sa­tions and gov­ern­ments to change their behav­iours. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sion­als have a key role to play, as I put in an ear­lier post, this is the kind of task we’re well equipped to take on.

The book is 600 or so pages which, as I was read­ing through, made me think: that’s a lot of dead tree. In the back, how­ever, is a break­down of how they’ve kept the dam­age to a min­i­mum. Here’s one of the labels:

They have also pur­chased wind power cred­its equiv­a­lent to the amount of elec­tric­ity used to pro­duce the book. I won­der what would hap­pen if all printed mate­r­ial had to carry the same declaration.

As I say, it’s a great book which should be on everyone’s book­shelf. You can buy yours here.

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