THE NEW GLOBAL POSSIBLE: Rebuilding Optimism in the Age of Climate Crisis, factual combat with soul-sucking sadness

THE NEW GLOBAL POSSIBLE: Rebuilding Optimism in the Age of Climate Crisis
ANI DASGUPTA
Disruption Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.00 hardcover, preorder now for 9 September 2025 delivery

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Global environmental leader Ani Dasgupta takes an honest look at lagging climate action and maps out what can be done to rebuild hope for the future.

In 2015, world leaders came together in Paris and signed an agreement to save the planet. Ten years later, we have made little progress on the ground, and the climate crisis is worse than ever. We’ve mostly figured out what we need to do, but not how to get it done—and time is running out.

In this groundbreaking new book, World Resources Institute President and CEO Ani Dasgupta explores how to orchestrate change at speed and scale. How do we get countries to keep working together on climate action when multilateralism is declining? How do we harness technological innovation to protect nature, rather than destroy it? How do we dismantle entrenched power structures and rapidly transition to a clean, resilient economy?

Based on conversations with more than one hundred leaders around the world, The New Global Possible weaves together stories of unusual partnerships, collaborative leadership, and lessons learned from failure. Mining the rich history of the climate movement, Dasgupta defines the narrow path to a hopeful future—one requiring all of our collective focus and determination—and offers a radical new practice for orchestrating change for good.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm always ready to agree with the old saw, "Cheer up! Darker days are coming," because in my own lifetime I've lost large numbers of people to plagues that could've and should've been stopped sooner than they were; seen my country pull the flush chain on decency and inclusion; and sweated through summers like the ones I knew in 1960s Texas...despite living in 2025 New York.

This is to let you know that I'm not the easiest to jolly-up among the audience. I respond to "it'll all work out fine" with a snarky rendition of "yeah, yeah, pull the other one" if I'm feeling polite. So I am what comedians call a tough room for optimism that isn't firmly grounded in facts and analytically robust everywhere I, with my knowledge independently gained, can push on it. Author Dasgupta, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, passes my pressure test. (The link is to their website, for your reference; it will verify you're a human, not a malware-spreading, dDOS-havocin' bot, so be patient a few seconds.)

Starting our tour of optimism in the wake of the 2004 tsunami...in flattened Banda Aceh, no less...seemed counterintuitive to me at first. Oh gawd, I thought, another every problem an opportunity sermon. While that is a surface truth of the book, it is not close to its affect, or its intent. One of the many weapons in the catastrophist's mental arsenal is, "well it's always been this way, what can you do?" 1) No. It has not "always been this way." b) You can do something...if you look, you can do a small thing like start buying rechargeable batteries for your electronics. "It costs too much! Those create pollution and damage too!" Yep. Initial purchases are more; but, like compact fluorescent lightbulbs in place of incandescents, you buy them once for every ten or fifteen purchases of the old ones; and stopping pollution/environmental damage also includes reducing your use of the trash to dispose of the old-style items. All of this kind of "yes, but" obstructive arguing is what Author Dasgupta is supremely adept at defusing and redirecting. (I can't read by LED lights so don't use them; but they're coming like it or not, and I don't, so I'm as much a problem as the louder naysayers. I have spare compact fluorescents....)

Which segues into, the more of these things you buy, the less capitalism charges for them. And here is where we discuss capitalism. The author's job in Banda Aceh was to administer the World Bank's huge pot of money meant to restore...even upgrade in the process...the tsunami's giant destruction of the area's infrastructure. Using regional governmental coordinating bodies, microcredit lending (think of the hugely successful Kiva.org system) to the affected, and capitalism's value-generating dynamo in balance, the author succeeded in doing what FEMA was prevented from doing post-Katrina.

The US has a terrible case of libertarianism, and refuses to learn that it is not an absolute theory of governmental everything, because there are no functional theories of everything. Ask a physicist. Nothing truer has ever been said than "perfectionism is the end of action." Requiring a solution to be perfect is the fastest way to perpetuating the status quo. (You've never wondered why leftists fail so very often in the US? Look at how their policies are picked apart, scrutinized, and flaws, faults, and problems get shouted about. Funny how much more muted the criticism of capitalism, authoritarianism, religion, and other regressive evils are, isn't it.)

The truth is there are people out there doing loads of practical good across multiple axes of needed change and succeeding at it. Want a dose of climate change real-life success? Follow Simon Clark on YouTube. Want to know what's worked, in reality, on the ground, in the world of positive change? Read this book. Climate Week 2025 is the 21st through the 28th of Sepember. Join the conversation in an informed, energized way.

Jane Goodall's blurb really sums it up best: “A compelling and hopeful reminder that change is not only within our grasp—it is already happening.”