Rethinking Our World : An Invitation to Rescue Our Future

A compelling and persuasive look at the social transformations needed to cope with our environmental crises.

As this major German bestseller reports, our world is at a tipping point, and we feel it every day. On the one hand, we have never been so well off; on the other hand, we find destruction and crisis everywhere we look. Whether throughout the environment or within society, our systems are under stress.

In this book, Maja Göpel, co-founder of the Scientists for Future initiative and a former secretary-general of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, explains that this new reality didn’t just happen overnight, but rather is a result of our continuous actions―actions propelled by principles and beliefs, which have shaped us as a society over generations. We do not solely face an environmental crisis, but also a social one. It’s time to question our principles, set new goals, and re-evaluate our priorities. It’s time to rethink our world, because if we want to keep our livelihoods, we need to find a way of living without draining our planet any further. We need a fair distribution of wealth and a way to reconcile the social with the ecological.

Critical, yet full of encouragement, Maja Göpel chooses surprising and enlightening examples to illustrate how we can leave behind our familiar ways of living to achieve a better future. With that, she invites us to look at this future we are shaping every day in a new and completely different way.

Dr Maja Göpel is a political economist and an important voice for a sustainable transformation of society, working at the intersection of the economy, politics, and society. From 2017 to 2020, she was secretary-general of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, and in 2019 was appointed honorary professor at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. She is a member of the Club of Rome, the World Future Council, the Balaton Group, the German government’s Bioeconomy Council, and a co-founder of the Scientists for Future network.

David Shaw works as a journalist for Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, as well as translating from several languages, including German, Dutch, Russian, and French. He lives in Berlin.