Christiana Figueres on the climate emergency: ‘This is the decade and we are the generation’

The leader of the 2015 Paris accord talks about her new book, The Future We Choose, and why it’s crunch time for humanity

• ‘The only uncertainty is how long we’ll last’: the worst case scenario for 2050
• ‘Air is cleaner than before the Industrial Revolution’: the best case scenario for 2050

Christiana Figueres is a founder of the Global Optimism group and was head of the UN climate change convention when the Paris agreement was achieved in 2015.

Your new book is called The Future We Choose. But isn’t it too late to stop the climate crisis?
We are definitely running late. We have delayed appallingly for decades. But science tells us we are still in the nick of time.

Related: Antarctic temperature rises above 20C for first time on record