A short overview on our world to be in future... 2050

So if there is a silver lining to this crisis it's visible in the skies above China the dramatic slowdown in manufacturing and driving has caused a reduction in carbon emissions we've all seen these NASA satellite images which show the improvement in China's air quality now someone who has dedicated her life to climate change policy.

What are the odds that we can turn things around in time well interestingly enough the odds right now are 50/50 that's what makes this a very exciting moment because we have 50 percent probability of actually walking down the crisis path on to honestly irreversible damages that we will never be able to control and that is life-threatening for the human species without any exaggeration but we also have fifty percent probability of actually doing something completely different and that's the excitement of the moment because collectively not individually but collectively we can decide to choose a better path to write a future that we really want and that we can look forward to that's the exciting moment can you believe it we are right at the crossroads of humanity having the possibility to go one way or the other well guess which way we have to go only the positive way you mentioned two dates in your book 2030 and 2050 what's the significance of these two years by the end of this decade by 2030 we have to have achieved a reduction of,50% of our current level of greenhouse gas emissions.

If we do that then we stand a very good chance of creating a fantastic world if we don't we have closed the door to anything that we could control or influence over natural disasters that will completely take over and the ultimate consequences of this will be very evident by 2050 but we can't wait until 2050 to decide that it has to be now 10 years is not very far away a lot has to happen in 10 years.

I feel like I blink and a year has gone by so how is this all gonna happen so quickly the fact is that as wonderful human beings that we are we tend to overestimate what we can do in the short term I don't know what your to-do list looks likes every day but mine is always way longer than I can get to and we tend not to have a realistic sense of what we can do in the short term because we overestimate that also we underestimate what we can do in the minterm so we underestimate what we are capable of doing in 10 years and technology has come so far so fast the fact is that we are living in the moment of the most accelerated technological and policy shifts and financial shifts.

The UN that ultimately created the Paris agreement you initially said you never thought it would happen in your life yet in 2015 195 countries unanimously agreed to adopt this agreement you described a moment with the green gavel going down what was it like how did it feel at that moment well I have to say that when I walked out of that press conference and today I'm trying to find out who was the brilliant journalist who asked me that very provocative question because he did and I do remember it was a male he said do you think a global agreement would ever be possible and I said not in my lifetime and you know what Sheila I walked out of that press conference a changed persona completely changed person because I realized that while I had uttered that site-geist of the moment the complete lack of confidence and the despair and the grief about not being able to agree collectively on a path forward in climate.

The US administration takes the United States out of the race into the 21st century and it opens up the space for other economies namely China too be the decisive country in investing in wind energy technology and solar technology battery development in electric cars because they understand that, that's what is going to make them competitive they understand that that is where growing demand is coming from and they want to be ready to serve as a market that is growing exponentially so it's very sad that the white house cannot see that that is in the interests of the United States now fortunately 65% of the United States economy continues to decarbonize for two reasons one they happen to know that they live in a democracy and that eventually we don't know when but there will be different opinion in the white house and as soon as that occurs the United States will dovetail back into the Paris agreement very quickly because most people understand that this is in the interest of the United States it's very sad when you see leadership in the United States leading people down a dead-end road.

I learned that the purpose of our life is service to the common good and for him, that was the nation for me it's the planet but it's the same principle that is the north toward which we guide our lives I also learned from him to be incredibly stubborn when it comes to the common good we do not compromise once we have put out a target a destination that we know is aligned with the common good and frankly on the right side of history like he did unlike we're doing out on the planet then we stop at nothing because we have to be able to turn over any stone that is in the way because some things are just more important than our little issues this work is very personal to you is there anything you would like to be able to say in the future to your children to future generations about what happened during this time are you gonna kill me with that question because whenever I speak about kids I can't contain it there's a very moving passage towards the end of your book.