The strapline of this website suggests how we might approach the future:

Others are suggesting the same – for example the New Scientist earlier in the year, showing why becoming the right kind of optimist can transform your health:

“You can test optimism-like behaviour in many animals – and even fine-tune it. European starlings become more “optimistic” if they can take a bath whenever they want. Bottlenose dolphins show more optimistic behaviour if they have been swimming in synchrony with each other. Bumblebees make more optimistic choices after being given an unexpected sweet treat.“

And from a couple of weeks ago, we have 7 Expert Tips for Realistic Optimism:

“If you hang around certain corners of the internet too much, you’d never guess that, by many objective measures, this is the best time ever to be alive. Or is that just toxic positivity talking? Amid the ever-present news coverage of tragedies, accidents, disasters, chaos and confusion — as well as algorithm-driven social media platforms that help provocative and divisive content go viral — expert Bill Burke says there’s a real challenge in finding and holding onto realistic optimism.

“Anxiety feels more and more commonplace; it’s all too easy to fret about the “Sunday scaries.” “There’s never been a better time to be alive than today, but there’s never been a harder time to be optimistic,” Burke, a media executive, writer, podcast host and founder of The Optimism Institute“

And finally from Singapore, we can look at how we can tackle the world’s three ‘long challenges’ with realistic optimism:

“The implications are clear. First, tackling climate change will be much more costly, and vastly more complex and difficult, if we defer action. We must act early, especially to develop scale in clean energy and green technologies, so that they become as affordable and as reliable as what we do with fossil fuels. 

“Second, clear and credible public policies are key to achieving the scale and speed that is required. Carbon pricing has to be the centrepiece. It will help catalyse the needed shift in private investments towards green opportunities in every sector, and also provide the revenues needed to support the transition and ensure poorer segments of the population are not disadvantaged…”

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