Time & Perspective Quote by Peter Knights

Knights frames climate action the way good organizers frame any hard collective project: not as a doomed emergency, but as a live choice with agency attached. The first sentence is deliberately muscular - "we have the power" - because despair is politically convenient for the status quo. It’s a prophylactic against the learned helplessness that sets in when crises feel too big, too technical, too remote. He pairs "ourselves" with "the planet" to collapse the false trade-off between human wellbeing and environmental protection; the line insists that these interests are entangled, not competing budget items.

The second sentence does the real work. Instead of prescribing a program, he pivots to a question, shifting the listener from spectator to co-author. That move is classic activist rhetoric: a question invites participation, but it also smuggles in accountability. If a better future is possible, then inaction stops being a tragedy and starts looking like a decision. The subtext is a challenge to the soft fatalism of "someone should do something" politics - and a nudge at leaders who hide behind incrementalism while claiming inevitability.

Context matters, too. Coming from an activist rather than a technocrat, the quote reads less like policy and more like coalition-building. It’s capacious on purpose: "what kind of future" can mean cleaner air, fairer economies, Indigenous stewardship, or just the ordinary dignity of not living through preventable catastrophe. The vagueness isn’t weakness; it’s a recruitment tool, widening the tent while sharpening the moral stake.