Making a Beeline for the Future
Author
Nigel Lake
Title
Making a Beeline for the Future: Charting a Path from Now to Nirvana
Synopsis
Mark Twain is often quoted as saying “History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.” George Santanya put it more brutally in 1905, saying: “Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it”. Right now, it feels like history is screaming from the rooftops.
We are living through a particularly dark decade – a set of financial, environmental
and social circumstances that I never expected to witness when I started my career in London thirty-five years ago. The impacts of global warming have shifted from distant hypothesis to brutal reality in the form of ever more extreme, damaging and life-threatening storms, floods, droughts and wildfires. The effects of biodiversity collapse are now emerging, evidenced not just by the disappearance of squashed bugs on windscreens but also by lost crops around the world. And the beginnings of societal
breakdown are evident in media reports every day, not least in relation to the fast-approaching 2024 US federal election.
And yet, surely, we all know that there are better choices to be made, a better path
to be followed and a better society to live in than the one we are currently experiencing?