Adolescents have grown out of their belief in Santa and his elves who manufacture gifts to pop under the tree. For many young people, consumerism is not an endlessly giving Santa-sack, free of nasty surprises, his home at the North Pole is likely to produce methane, not reindeer, and Christmas trees are either plastic or are decimated by disease or bulldozed to make way for yet more real-estate and highways.

The world-renowned climate activist, Greta Thunberg, is about to release a must-read book called The Climate Book (Allen Lane). She’s invited a number of authors and environmentalists to share their ideas about what we can do now (and must), in order to ensure we’ve got a liveable planet to support future generations of living creatures (including ourselves) on this miraculous planet of ours. Here’s what nine concerned thinkers and activists have to say….

Yackandandah is a small tourist town in northeast Victoria, not far from Beechworth, with about 2000 residents. A community group of volunteers, called Totally Renewable Yackandandah (TRY), have taken on the ambitious goal of powering the town with 100% renewable energy. This, they say, will enhance the town’s resilience in the face of climate change. It will also reduce greenhouse emissions and bring savings to homes and businesses. And it will demonstrate to other towns and communities that such aims can be achieved there too.

Bringing Aboriginal and Western wisdom into dialogue, the workshop presenters will encourage us to reflect on who we are, how we fit into the interconnected community of life, and what changes we can make in our individual, community and collective lives to build a healthy and resilient future.

What do we owe to the next generations, to ensure they have a good, sustainable quality of life? They have no voice today: they don’t vote, they can’t lobby for change. All those who follow us depend on the decisions we make now. Are we capable of positive long-term thinking and action? The author of a new book, What We Owe the Future, argues that we must be, and can.

Who is best placed to drive the processes for change? Local community organisations, say the authors of a recent report by the US National Association of Climate Resilience Planners. Such groups have the know-how and the need to build new economies, encourage fellow residents to take part in the matters that are vital to their interests, and draw on their local ecological and cultural knowledge – all to help their community adapt for a fast-changing world.

Bella Lack, a leading voice in the next generation of environmentalists, is seeking to redefine activism through a focus on optimism, personal action and collective responsibility.

It was his ecological activist teenager’s angst over the state of the planet and the inaction of politicians, Tim Hollo says, that led him to write Living Democracy: An Ecological Manifesto for the End of the World as We Know It. The subtitle might suggest a gloomy outlook for our species, but Hollo offers us a much more positive view on how we can survive and thrive by rethinking our place in the world and our ways of organising ourselves.

It would be easy to become discouraged, dismayed, even despairing, now that the Australian State of the Environment report has been released. Many of our plant and animal species are in terminal decline and our ecosystems are degraded almost beyond recovery. Are the problems too big and too complex for ordinary citizens to help repair?

The scale of the climate emergency challenges can seem overwhelming. It leads many to give in to despair and inaction. But some Gen-Zers (in their twenties) have chosen to act on one cause. They offer us an inspiring example of climate optimism in real-world action.

The subtitle of Tyson Yunkaporta’s recent book, Sand Talk (2020), makes a very bold claim: “How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World”. How does he justify his belief, and what does this mean for non-Indigenous people who are concerned with living sustainably in this land?

It has proved too easy to stop people uniting around the crucial issues of our time. Some who demand better pay and conditions for workers and justice for poor people can be at odds with those who demand a habitable planet.

However, it’s within our power, the Guardian columnist George Monbiot argues, to unite everyone to advance climate justice: cancelling poor nations’ historic debts would allow their governments to channel money into climate adaptation.

At a recent community consultation, Griffith University Architecture students offered interested locals a set of options for the Making Good Alliance site on Knoll Rd, North Tamborine.

What does it take to future-proof a community’s energy delivery? Will technological innovation be enough to deliver resilience? The authors of this article argue that as the climate emergency worsens, there is too much at stake to simply roll out technology. Community-based approaches will better build the widespread support needed to accelerate climate action.

Shepparton, in regional Victoria, has reached a global milestone, where school children have planted 100,000 trees, the largest number in the world as part of the One Tree Per Child campaign.

Making Good Alliance (MGA), a local organisation that champions climate resilience, is inviting members of the mountain community to share their views, knowledge and ideas about how the MGA premises on Knoll Rd, North Tamborine, can best be transformed into a hub for regeneration and resilience.