​In 2005, I took the web skills I’d picked up in the mid 1990’s to hand code a website called Modern Gonzo.  The idea was to record my one-year solo journey around the world in as much detail as possible, and let others follow me along for the ride.  It was one of the first branded travel blogs, gathering thousands of interviews and photos with 3000-word weekly reports, hotel and restaurant reviews, musings and insights.   As I somehow morphed into a fully-fledged travel writer, and then a TV host, the gonzo spirit of a wild backpacker no longer aligned with a journalist staying in $2000-a night ocean villas. Modern Gonzo evolved into a more mature personal branded website – robinesrock.com.  Things change, although I’m proud to have a Gonzo tattoo on my calf as a permanent reminder of that bold, exciting and anything-goes period of my early travels.  Today I launch the third iteration of my travel career with a new site that doesn’t look like it belongs in the  2000s (was that even a decade?)   Unlike Modern Gonzo, which I managed to gather into a book that increasingly feels like a study in ancient travel history, I was able to keep the full archive of the old blog in the new.    The rest of the pages look snappier and flashier and Perfect Web Creations did a great job.   What happens next?

Vignette Alert: I’m travelling with a group of travellers on a 6-day trip down the east coast of Tasmania (something I highly recommend when we get this pandemic under control).   I’m with three older Americans, proud Trump supporters.  There’s other Americans and Australians and Kiwis and Irish, proudly anti-Trump.  We’re hiking and biking and kayaking and I was curious how this would all play out.   If you’re assuming:  fireworks and arguments and yelling and fistfights, you’ve been watching too much news. While the topic of politics wasn’t front and centre, when it did come up it remained civil and respectful.  Both sides listened, and mutually understood - without any need for a reminder - that there would be no changing minds.  Walking among wombats on Maria Island or paddling on calm waters in Freycinet National Park,  it was just a group of diverse people getting along famously regardless of their political outlook.  This is what humanity is most of the time, we just don't hear about it, but if you need a daily reminder, consider how cars merge on a highway:  nobody has to let anyone in, they just do.  
 
I’ve seen the coming together of two sides before, in the Czech countryside, on a two-day jaunt into the countryside with backpackers and three young American soldiers taking R&R from their deployment in Iraq.   And in Istanbul, where a young Jew broke bread with young Arabs under the shadow of a minaret and together discovered we are brothers dreaming of peace.   This is the Power of Travel, and these are the stories that don’t get much air as we continue drown under the weight of rage, anger, mob mentality, misinformation, manipulation and fear.  
 
In my Breaking Boundaries keynote, I talk about intention as being a critical component before we take on any new project. My intention, therefore, for the latest public iteration of my career is to focus on the power of travel to connect, heal, and bridge; to use my voice and platform to inspire, showcase, and entertain against a tidal wave of negativity and over-information.  As I get older, I’m also aware that my belief systems are hardening.   It is a gift of youth to be fluid, idealistic, passionate.  It is the gift of age to be steady, committed, and realistic.   Winston Churchill never actually said: “If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart, and if you are not a conservative when old, you have no brain” but the same misquoted sentiment has been shared many times by many people over many centuries.   Fact is: my gonzo reporting often struck against the grain and went there while others didn’t.  These days, that attitude can get you cancelled.  

Age has taught me caution, but travel – and many years of writing – has taught me to observe, with an open-minded, positive and sincere approach.  You can visit other blogs to re-affirm and celebrate your political and cultural beliefs.  This one is a campfire that invites everyone of all ages  to enjoy the warmth of rich physical and cultural experiences.  Pull up a chair every month and lets see what happens next. 

​Like any practical optimist, I’m waiting to see how the highly anticipated tourism boom plays out.  Dramatic change has both positive and negative consequences. After bringing an industry to its knees, Covid is undoubtedly an opportunity for tourism to return as something better.  ​

A few months before the pandemic, I stood on a stage in Wellington to warn tourism marketers in New Zealand about the problems of over-tourism.   It feels almost quaint now, those reports of tourists overrunning attractions to the detriment of the environment, the industry, and experience of those tourists themselves.   I like to think there’s a boardroom somewhere where global tourism power players sit around a table to plan and plot the new normal.  I like to think they debate how the industry can return more responsibly, sustainably, and committed to the positive values of tourism as opposed to revenues above all else.    I still shudder when I think about Bali, Angkor, Western Australia’s Monkey Mia and high-season traffic in Vancouver’s Stanley Park:  pre-Covid, it was getting ugly out there. ​

I know.  All this is rich coming from someone who’s ticked off their bucket list in over 100 countries, or never spent a cent to offset carbon credits (primarily because travel writing is not one of those professions with too many cents to go around in the first place).  I wrote about how I was complicit in over-tourism before, I just don’t want to have to write about it again.  ​

We have an opportunity to force the closure of exploitative attractions for good.  We can stop treating old Europe as a strip-mall parking lot for massive cruise ships.  We can keep crowd limits and pre-bookings in place.   Unchecked growth was shaping a disaster.  As growth finally returns to the battered tourism industry, let’s do what we can to check it. ​

Congratulations!  Each decade of your life is an accomplishment. Goals are realized, professions evolve, priorities shift, families grow and experience is gained.  This is also reflected in how we choose to travel, and where we choose to go.   Celebrating these important milestones, I've gathered inspiring destinations to suit this passage of time.  Of course, every journey is unique. You can turn these decades upside down, or mix them up entirely. A bucket list is as special and individual as the person who crafts it, and each life journey is one’s own.   As for the passing of the years themselves, I defer to the wisdom of Mark Twain:  “Age is an issue of mind over matter.  If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter!” ​

In our twenties, we travel to relish in the excess.  All night parties, camping on beaches, intense relationships – all with a no-holds-barred commitment to the carefree abandon of youth.  It's a time to make the kind of mistakes you'll learn from, and sacrifices you'd only make when you're young.  Legends of Full Moon parties and all-night desert parties sound particularly appealing, and you don't mind sleeping on floors or eating instant noodles for a month if it means you can get to them.  Backpacking across Western Europe is a rite of passage, although it's also very expensive,  Stretching your travel dollar, you'll be drawn to budget-travel meccas like Thailand, Central America, India and Laos. You might be drawn to a Kibbutz in Israel or volunteering with animals in Bolivia.  Everything and everyone will be particularly vivid and intense, an opportunity to learn and grow and let your hair down.  You'll only realize just how big that opportunity was when you're further along your life journey. ​

At last, the kids are at summer camp, or old enough to join us on an adventure that's physical, but not too strenuous.   As careers stabilize and hobbies strengthen, perhaps it’s time to hike the Inca Trail, trek in Nepal, or spend our well-earned holidays on a multi-day bike ride through the valleys of Italy or France.  A fly-in fishing trip in Canada, a multi-day rafting excursion between the Grand Canyon,  or maybe just an epic road trip to explore the Oregon coast, Route 66, Yellowstone or Banff National Parks.   Consider a few weeks camping across Iceland, or taking a tour to pack in the highlights of Western Europe. Volunteering in a foreign country delivers a rich, rewarding experience.   Teaching kids, building wells, looking after rescued animals – making a difference in the lives of others makes a difference for us too. Old enough to know better and yet young enough to go with the flow, the forties is a milestone decade to follow our feet, and safely veer off the beaten track. ​

We’ve always wanted to go there.  We’ve always wanted to do that.  As we enter the seventh decade of life, we realize our bucket list destinations are not going anywhere, but we most certainly are. Fortunately, in an age of affordable airfare and such a diverse variety of packages, our dreams are more accessible than ever.   Cruise among the islands and abundant wildlife of the Galapagos.  On the plains of the Serengeti and the legendary Masai Mara, witness the migration of the wildebeest from the comforts of a luxury, or self-catered bush camp, and make friends with Masai tribesmen.  It’s not always easy, but we’ll put up with a sweaty trek for a face-to-face encounter with endangered mountain gorillas in the jungles of Central Africa.  Iconic landmarks like the Great Wall of China and the Coliseum, the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal draw us like magnets.   Perhaps it’s also time to finally tick off that Alaska or Caribbean cruise, or visit long-lost relatives in the nations of our ancestors.   Let’s celebrate how far we’ve come, and appreciate the value of all that is to follow. ​

The folks who travel to every country and territory are a very special breed.  They all have their individual motivations, but there’s an obsession that drives them to actually go everywhere, and I mean everywhere.  It’s just not enough to join the Traveler’s Century Club, because if you made it that far, why not keep going?   For starters, it requires a peculiar set of resources and skills.  Financial, most certainly, but also hustle if you’re not insanely wealthy (which is very often the case). One needs an excellent grasp of logistics, and an acumen for resourcefulness, and most critically, to stay out of trouble.  I’ve met several people who have ticked off all 195 UN-recognized countries, along with dozens of disputed territories that don’t quite make it (such as Transnistria, Abkhazia, Socotra, and other places you’ve likely never heard of).  A good example is my friend Rus Margolin, and you can read my interviews with him here and here.   This month, I was approached by a young Dane named Henrik Jeppesen who has spent 10 years achieving his impressive goal, which he’s recorded on a  blog aptly titled everycountryintheworld.com.   Henrik has been interviewing accomplished travellers and wanted to interview me.  I agreed to answer his 8 questions of course, but not without asking him to answer 8 questions of my own.   You can read my own answers to Henrik’s questions here.  ​

​One of the wilder news items I've come across is a financial report:    “Based on the expert analysis and our database of 480+ CA industries, IBISWorld presents a list of the Fastest Growing Industries in Canada by Revenue Growth (%) in 2021.”     After Covid mugged Tourism, kicked us the ground, stole our wallets, and insulted our mothers, these analysts are predicting a remarkable return. 
Call it:  The Revenge of Tourism:  This time, it’s personal.

I personally believe we’ll look back on this decade as one of the most exciting, innovative and positive of the century.  2001 gave us a disaster, 2008 a meltdown, 2016 a disastrous meltdown. 2020 was the turning point, but the pandemic will be the accelerant for many positive social, technological, professional, and environment shifts that would not have occurred otherwise.  It’s been a slog and yes, the suffering has been tremendous.  While the long-term impact may be devastating for some, others will find the silver linings so thick they’ll be able to skate them.  After wobbling thanks to explosive and largely unanticipated growth, the Great Reset has allowed global tourism to take stock, buckle up, and luck avoid the unsustainable mistakes of overtourism.   The focus will shift to quality over quantity:  more magic, less line-ups.  All this travel will also make the world smaller, kinder and closer. As we all went through the pandemic together, we’ll emerge with something we’ve lacked for ages:  a common purpose and global identity.  We all went through it, what bigger ice-breaker do you need? ​

It was December 25th, and we were exploring a beachside village on the island of Zanzibar.   The weather was perfect, the sandy beach endless, the sunset epic, and I remember my girlfriend at the time being utterly miserable.  It was Christmas Day in paradise, but she was homesick.   Literally: feeling ill in her longing for the comfort of her home and family.  ​

Homesickness doesn’t impact every traveller, but those that suffer from it can do so acutely. It accentuates the strangeness and uneasiness of being in a foreign place, causing mild distress to full-blown depression.    There have been few academic studies about the topic, mostly addressing the situation of college students leaving home, or with the aim to help immigrants or expats adjust and settle.  In the world of tourism, the fail-safe remedy is shoulder-shrug obvious:  if you get homesick easily, don’t leave home.    Still, homesickness can ambush even veteran travellers from one day to the next, onset by family events and occasions, guilt, and even weather.  Away from the sunshine of the nest, it’s easy to idealize family gatherings, the embrace of a parent, or the warm taste of home-cooking.   Life-long travellers with ants in their underpants (myself included) certainly miss home, but tend to view its absence as the cost of adventure.  Like any endeavour into the unknown, sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not. ​

Homesick has a new definition: we’re no longer feeling sick for the longing of home, but rather, we’re sick of spending too much time at home.  As winter settles into its longest stretch, my desire for a change of scenery is becoming acute, and my memories of travels – from the Amazon to Zanzibar – fade and fog.   It’s just one of the reasons why I believe the 20’s are going to roar louder than many a decade that has come before.   We will soon take our first tentative steps into the post-pandemic world, and once we feel the ground as solid as we remember it, expect confetti to explode.  Few will pine to go Home for a Rest, rather:  we’ll flee with unabashed  glee, chasing the Spirit of the West, East, North and South.  And while we’ll always long for the comfort and familiarity of our homes, reversing the meaning of the word “homesick” may ultimately end up being the best treatment for those who still suffer from it.  ​

Travel’s appeal is broad and encompasses varied experiences -adventure, food, history, romance – but I’ve always felt it keenest with the sense of discovery, of being absorbed in unfamiliarity.  It’s personally invigorating to have to decipher a new set of rules, laws and cultural norms.  Locals around us seem perfectly at ease, but we can’t shake the feeling that we are other, visitors, not from around these parts.  Travelling alone further isolates us outside our comfort zones, as there’s nobody to share our experience with, no one to point out the wonders and absurdities. Disorientation can be challenging and difficult, which is why it’s not for everybody.   I recall quite vividly my first few steps within it, in London 1997.  I’d moved to the city on a two-year work permit with lofty ambitions to excel in online media.   Tubing around, just another faceless face in a sea of commuters, I’d never felt so empowered and helpless at the same time.   Several years prior,  I had bought a small Robin the Boy Wonder figurine at a flea market in Grahamstown, South Africa (now Makhanda).  Bashed, scarred and a little bashed and bruised, it quickly became a lucky charm and has joined me in the over one hundred countries I’ve visited since. ​

Alone in London, I popped into a pub near Angel to steel myself with a flat pint and escape the sensation of being overwhelmed.  In my daypack was a little black notebook with addresses of companies to drop off my resume, and the Boy Wonder of course, anything to increase my odds.  For reassurance, I grasped my figurine and noticed that Boy Wonder was pointing to his eye, as if to say: “open your eyes, look around, observe.”  And so I did: noting the sticky carpet beneath my feet, pot lights reflecting off brass beer taps, the clientele of day-drinkers and office skirters.  I penned these observations in my notebook, which I still have somewhere, and a travel writer was born.    I now have dozens of these same little black notebooks (bought from the CNA newsagent in South Africa, others just don't cut the mustard)  filled with scribblings and interviews, observations and thoughts.  Viewers around the world have seen me writing in these same books in almost every episode of my TV show (Word Travels is now available on Prime Video in Canada).  This week, I finally went travelling again, but I had forgotten my black notebook, its virgin pages eager to capture thoughts as I wandered about aimlessly.    I was opening my eyes in a new world that felt alien and awkward yet fascinating and alluring at the same time.   Most bizarre of all, this strange new destination was downtown Vancouver, the city where I live.  ​

It’s been well over a year since I strolled the blocks of Granville, Davie, Hornby and Howe. This used to be my hood.  In a former life I could tell you the names of most of the stores, and a funny anecdote to go along with them (I think I snogged someone in the alley behind The Moose / that’s the joint where I ate late-night soft-shell crab with a rock band, etc).  These days I live and work 25 minutes’ drive away in a forested suburb, and even if Covid hadn’t come along, there’d be little reason to visit the music venues, offices, restaurants and coffee shops that line these particular blocks.  Since leaving my apartment downtown, I’ve been harbouring an image of downtown Vancouver’s urban liveliness: it’s vibrant streets jiving with crowds and colour.   Today, I found an inner city ravaged by the pandemic.  Almost every third store was boarded up, tagged with graffiti or heartbreaking farewells from its broken proprietors. Homeless were sleeping in shoddy entranceways (wasn’t that an upmarket restaurant? wasn’t that a boutique?) some were shooting up as I walked by.   Coffee shops were open but empty, except for the Starbucks on Howe which was boarded up and gone for good (a Starbucks closing, in Vancouver?) ​

There was an unusual abundance of street parking, and the few people walking around – some masked, some not - carried a heaviness about them, a sense of sorrow and guilt.  Among this decay towered proud new condos that didn’t exist a year ago.  Unlike Toronto or Montreal, construction has never ceased in development-mad Vancouver.  The hip art gallery and cheap-eat restaurants on the corner of Robson and Seymour have been bulldozed, awaiting another glass tower jammed with million-dollar 600 square-foot studios.  Opposite the city library -  looking even more ancient than its bold Coliseum-influenced design - new buildings are transforming the city’s skyline, including a massive development in the former post office to ironically house a new headquarters for Amazon.  The streets were familiar, but everything else?  I may as well be walking Doha or Dallas or Derby or any other modern city I’ve yet to visit.  ​

Tragic as it was discovering the cracking shell of my own city, I was nonetheless jolted by the nostalgia of discovering some place new, alone and lost, with only my thoughts for company.   I may not be going anywhere for some time yet, but even if Boy Wonder is gathering dust on top of my bookcase, it continues to remind me, and all of us, to keep our eyes open as we observe the changing world around us. 

Personal reflections on a turbulent, difficult and yet oddly reassuring year.  2020 was certainly memorable and entirely original within the context of modern history:  let's hope it stays that way.  ​

Headline news today, December 8:  a 95-year-old lady in the UK has received the first vaccination for Covid-19 outside of a clinical trial.  Biomedical researchers have outdone themselves in the race to get our planet back on track, aided by unprecedented support from desperate health authorities weary of telling wearier populations to wear masks and do their part.  Full credit to them, and all healthcare workers.  It is a testament to what they – not we, unless you volunteered for an experimental vaccine jab - can accomplish when all the chips are on the table.   Still, nine months of panic, uncertainty, misinformation, conspiracy, pot-banging, fear-mongering, vitriol, rolling numbers and opaque charts has taken its toll.  Like so many others impacted professionally and personally by the pandemic, it’s a duty to ask:  How could this happen?   Why did this happen?   Who was responsible for it, and who was responsible for ensuring it was under control?   Then you look at our leaders:  an idiot US President who doesn’t read books or care about anyone other than himself; Brexiters who somehow felt that isolation is the best step forward in a globally networked economy; a blundering Canadian PM learning on the job which he has only maintained due to a lack of dynamic competition; hard-line thinly veiled “democratic” dictators in China, Russia, Turkey, India and Brazil.  Bezos, the world’s richest man, is hell-bent on putting everyone out of business unless they benefit his business, and Musk, now the second richest man, is hell-bent on pursuing some sort of techno outer-space utopia so that wealth and privilege have an escape route when the planet burns.    How did we end up with this sorry lot, and how the hell can we expect this “we” to get us out of this mess?   Thank god for the women in charge:  New Zealand, Scandinavia, Germany – and soon but not soon enough, the US and Canada.  Women who can tackle big issues with a lot more empathy and a whole lot less swinging dick.   ​

The year was bookended by Netflix sensations that spoke to the times, commencing with Tiger King, a bonkers tale of excess personalities, and ending with Queen’s Gambit, a gorgeous drama about a chess prodigy’s battle for control of her life.  We could all relate.   Usually, I trawl end-of-year lists in search of the best music, books, films, photography, articles, etc.    My heart isn’t in it this year.  Even as I type, Spotify is streaming a Best Indie of 2020 playlist, but all I hear is generic-sounding beats of broken dreams.   Tough times to be a travel writer, worse to be touring musician.  And this is the theme, I think, of 2020.  It was a bad year – no doubt about it – but wow, it could have been so much worse.   Yet, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, vaccines will soon be here, and I expect there will be a global exhale.  We’ll flock to the streets, unleash pent-up positive energy, embrace a new era, and look to new progressive leaders who actually believe in science.  Don’t expect miracles:  I suspect the United States will continue its inevitable disintegration into a handful of like-minded nation states.  China’s Belt and Road initiative will continue to re-wire global trade for its own interests; economic inequality will continue its relentless march to barricade the haves from the have-nots; and the mass extinction event accompanying accelerated climate change – the real endangered elephant in the room – that’s coming up faster than an out-of-control Australian bushfire. Threats are real, and threats are here. Humanity can face the challenges, only because we now know what is possible.   Take a page from the Mandalorian and believe it: This is the way. ​

I wonder how my children will look back on 2020.  My four-year-old won’t remember much, but the seven-year-old will, certainly a lot more than I can recall about 1980 when I was her age.  She’ll read books and watch movies and say: “I was a kid during the Covid-19 pandemic.  I remember we couldn’t have playdates or go to museums or have birthday parties.  And I remember how happy everyone was when it ended.”    
I hope that’s all she remembers.  As for me, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look out the plane window with the same impressed sense of awe, assuming that whoever is in charge of the wheels has everything under control. As the saying goes: assume anything, and it makes an ass out of u and me. ​

​A growing worldwide underground sub-culture, local Alley Cat races have their origin with bicycle messengers in North America.   In order to test local couriers’ streetwise knowledge, their speed and ability to navigate obstacles, Alley Cat races were set up in cities like Toronto, Philadelphia, Chicago and Vancouver.  Legends were born as couriers, often seen racing around these urban centers in dangerous traffic, challenged each other for titles, prizes, but most often fun.    Races consist of checkpoints to be reached, and in some cases unusual tasks to be performed on arrival. Upping the thrill factor, most couriers ride fixed-gear bikes that have no brakes, no gears, and require an expert level of control and ability.   Fixed gears are popularly used in the courier messenger community because they’re easy to maintain, and for anyone with a job requiring them to run into buildings to deliver packages, the bikes are confusing and difficult for thieves.    Hong Kong has seen the emergence of an urban cyclist community, attracted to the lifestyle and challenges of riding on fixed-gears. Amidst the choking car and foot traffic beneath the late-night neon lights of the Central district, I went along for the city’s first unofficial Alley Cat race.  When it comes Alley Cat racing, it's important to note that nothing is official anyway. ​

About half a dozen riders meet at 10pm outside a coffee shop.   The manifesto is handed out, including a checklist of destinations and tasks that must be reached in order before reaching the finish line.   One of them requires racers to find two girls and tells them that they are “sooo... beautiful!”  Another requires us to find a bald man named 9-Ball and rub his head.   In each case, a third party must sign our manifesto to prove the task has been accomplished.   We count down to the start, and the race is on, each contestant racing off into the crowds.   I decide to shadow a more experienced veteran, since without him I’d be lost in the traffic and spaghetti streets within seconds.    We pedal frantically, every second counts.   A policeman shouts at me from the sidewalk, but I’ve already disappeared around a corner.  Alley Cat racing is a do-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of activity.   Biking in a light drizzle at night in Hong Kong traffic is not for the fainthearted, neither is racing on a bike that, perhaps I forgot to mention, doesn’t stop with squeeze on the handlebar.  But with the wind in my hair, the exhilarating speed and the quasi-legal thrill , I can certainly understand the attraction – it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about having fun, and hopefully surviving to trade stories at the finish line. ​

I read a review for the One World series that questioned why the show didn’t focus more on the imminent and deep threats to the natural world, why Attenborough is celebrating ever-diminishing diversity instead of hitting the panic switch.  There’s no crime in focusing on the positive, and while all his series do address critical threats to our planet’s eco-systems, panic switches have never been Attenborough’s forte.   Also, he likely knew well in advance what was coming, and exactly what his panic switch would look like.  
A Life on Earth begins in spooky, desolate Pripyat, the abandoned Ukrainian city that once supported Chernobyl.   I spent a couple days there, I’ve been in the same hallways, cracked apartment blocks and eerie streets. The world’s worst nuclear disaster has made this model Soviet city uninhabitable for thousands of years, an avoidable mistake blamed on human error.  Likewise, we are doing the same for our planet, but our destructive global meltdown is taking place slowly in real time. When Mr. Attenborough (he deserves the prefix, as do all great teachers) tells us he has witnessed the devastation taking place over his own lifetime and with his own eyes, it warrants no discussion.  For 118 minutes, everyone – boomers, millennials, scientists, corporations, politicians -  needs to shut the fuck up and listen to what this extraordinary elder has to say, and respectfully bear witness to his statement.  Accompanied by incredible images pooled from his many shows, he explains what is going on in clear, concise language so that a child might understand it.  How the oceans and jungles and forests are dying, how we’re entering the planet’s sixth great extinction event, and how every step forward is through a series of one-way doors with no turning back.  Once nature’s system is out of equilibrium, it all goes to hell.  As a graphic shows the passing of his years, the loss of natural habitat, and the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, Mr. Attenborough becomes visibly more frustrated and upset.  How fortunate we are to have shown up during the Holocene, a 100,000-year Eden of unprecedented natural stability. But like bad hotel guests, we’ve completely trashed the place.  At this rate, Earth won’t be nearly as bountiful or habitable for future generations.  The most harrowing part of the film is a projection of what the world will look like in 2030, 2050, 2080.  Wildfires, dustbowls, ocean deserts, collapsing food stocks, melted ice, displaced millions…Attenborough looks away in horror, and we feel the blackness of his despair. We had so much, and we wasted it.  How will the future ever forgive us?   ​

Often, the “we all need to change to save ourselves” diatribe can feel overly simplistic and dismissive of economic and political realities, but from the mouth of Sir David Attenborough, it left me with renewed hope and purpose.  With any luck, it had an impact on his audience at Davos and UN, for those with political and economic power are the “We” that need to change most of all. ​