Currently reading “Our time: Finding Hope in a Climate Crisis” by Alasdair Skelton (2026)

I first wrote about Alasdair Skelton’s book “Our time: Finding Hope in a Climate Crisis“ before I had even read it, based on a presentation Alasdair gave online. This time round, I am looking at the story in a different way. Quite literally, as I am now reading the book rather than listen to Alasdair talk about it, and I am picking up on quite different things than when I first listened to the presentation.

My first time engaging with the book was all about the tsunami story framing of the book, and what makes us be able to recognize signs of impending doom and act on it. This time round, what stands out to me is how it is such an excellent piece of science communication, especially the amount of information about Earth’s history packed in all the stories, and how this would make this book a great recommended companion read to any course on the topic. It would give students the opportunity to recognize concepts they have learned about and cross-check their understanding, maybe make them curious about other concepts that are mentioned, and just generally anchor disciplinary concepts in a connection to the real world and our future.

Another great science communication feature are the glimpses into the process of how science is being done. For example, how sketching something in a field note book forces you to look at it more closely, making you also think about it more carefully (as Kjersti and I have used in teaching). Or how, if 34 scientists agree to write that they are “certain” about something, that really means that there is really no doubt in their minds. At. All.

In my first exposure to the book, I read about old oak trees as sign of hope, that things can change faster than we can imagine — the trees were planted to be able to build ships from them later, but before they were ready to be harvested to become ships, ships weren’t built out of wood any more, and they are still standing, still growing.

Now I read them differently: we can and should care about doing something in the world, even if we will not see the outcome outselves. Which reminds me of the quote “Even if I knew that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today” which I always thought was originally by Martin Luther, but looking it up now, it turns out that those words were put into his mouth centuries after he died! You live and learn. Anyway, Alastair writes “We do not solve the climate crisis for ourselves. We solve the climate crisis to become good anchestors. And we know we can succeed because our own anchestors planted oak trees for us“. And we can become good anchestors in many different ways, being activists in civil disobedience but also being active towards a better world without self-identifying as activists. It doesn’t matter what we call ourselves as long as we do the right thing; the process is the point!

One small but impressive way I saw that in action recently was in a workshop that Alasdair ran together with Sophie Haslett at Stockholm University’s teacher conference. They presented a transdisciplinary program and then asked the question (how) “can we teach across disciplinary boundaries without dumbing it down?”. They invited us into a “thinking environment” (which I didn’t know was a thing, but now I am hooked!) where we went around the table and listened to each other, following a couple of rules, like actually paying attention to what is being said and not already thinking about your own response, but then being able to start your own time with thinking before you start speaking. That was such an interesting experience, and a great example for how to change how we communicate in a way that makes it so much more thoughtful and collaborative. And fits so well with all the stuff I have recently been thinking about, like the classroom being the most radical space of possibility in the academy, but only if we do it right.

Anyway! In Sweden, you can buy Alasdair’s book via Akademibokhandeln, and for the rest of the world, check out the book’s website for how to get your hands on it. You can also watch Alasdair present it on youtube. Go do it!

The featured image is from a walk the weekend when I wrote this blog post. That was when the rain started and that was the end of the snow for this winter… Yep, the draft got lost somewhere…