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Chris Patten makes a welcome and timely return to the
Festival to discuss his new book What Next? Surviving the Twenty-First Century. He draws on his international political experience at the highest levels in tackling the big questions about our global condition – energy, food, water, international crime, weapons proliferation, drug trafficking, climate change, epidemic disease, migration – and concludes that very little in the world has turned out as we might have expected twenty years ago. Perhaps surprisingly, he still remains an optimist in the face of this formidable agenda. He argues that the puzzle is not what is to be done, but rather who is to do
it and how? The issues are mostly matters of will. We know why action is needed, and we know, usually, how to act and what to
do, but the question is whether we have the capacity to act. Those who heard Lord Patten on his previous book Not Quite the Diplomat will know to expect another thought-provoking and fascinating discussion. |
