Welcome to the second in a three-part blog series in which Uffe Elbæk speaks candidly about the ideas behind his book Doubt, Hope, Action, ahead of its UK launch on 15 May 2026. Uffe is the former Danish Minister of Culture, founder and former leader of the green political party The Alternative, and a long-time progressive voice in Danish public life. The blog follows my interview with Uffe last month, and has been written for Unbreaking.

“Capitalism is part of it, but what’s even deeper than the failure of our economic system – the mother of all our problems – is that we’ve become disconnected from nature.”  Uffe Elbæk

Understanding the disconnect
In today’s world, we’re programmed to have the same dream about success, and it’s very difficult to escape that programming. The way that we’ve organised our economic life, and through that our political system, means we’ve ended up in a situation where we’re not only killing the outer life of the planet, but also our inner life, and that’s a very dangerous cocktail.

People can viscerally feel it. The reason why we consume so much is to fill a hole, but the void will never be filled. If one holiday or car is not enough then we have to have two, and so on. At the same time, inequality is growing.

This extreme consumerism – the urge to consume endlessly and then purge – is actually quite a recent phenomenon. After the Second World War, my parents’ generation understandably wanted to build a better world for their children. Unfortunately, this created an egotistical, individualist mindset.

Capitalism is part of it, but what’s even deeper than the failure of our economic system – the mother of all our problems – is that we’ve become disconnected from nature. We’ve developed as a species thinking that we’re separate from nature and superior to it. Somewhere in that storyline we decided nature is something we can take, use and throw away. We created hierarchies: men above women, white above black, city people above farmers, educated above uneducated, rich above poor.

We’re at the tipping point of a new paradigm shift, where people are starting to understand that we are nature, we’re all part of an ecosystem and we’re all connected. That sounds banal and oversimplified, but it’s not. If you start to see the world through this lens you get very different conversations about social change, politics, how to organise decision-making, and who should make decisions on whose behalf.

Part of this new paradigm of human enlightenment is educating ourselves – and especially our children and young people – to have the language to express what they feel, and to encourage them to talk about it.

Power to the people
Our current political situation is a bit of a paradox: we have to stand up for our democratic institutions, while at the same time ensuring we’re revitalising them. Recent surveys show that only around seven percent of people on the planet live in what’s called a ‘functional democracy’. It’s extremely low, and it’s going in the wrong direction. The world order created after the Second World War is tumbling down – with Trump, and within Europe and the UK – our democratic institutions are under pressure, public service media is under pressure, it’s the same in Denmark, Sweden and Germany.

A way in which we can revitalise our democratic institutions is through citizens’ assemblies. In most EU countries and also in Canada, there are very successful small- and large-scale examples. In Copenhagen, a new traffic policy was recently formulated through a citizens’ assembly and right now in Norway, there’s a huge national assembly with more than 10,000 people asking how money from the fossil fuel industry should be invested.

What’s interesting – and there’s research to back this up – is the solutions coming out of these assemblies are more ambitious than those coming out of city councils or national parliaments. There are several reasons for this, but one is that when people commit to sitting in a citizens’ assembly, they really take on responsibility for the community. They speak on behalf of themselves and their community, not a specific political party.

Also, the best-run assemblies don’t go directly to the task; participants receive education on the specific problem they’re being asked to solve. For example, a climate assembly might get extensive input on how climate change affects a city, people’s lives, transport, food systems and so on. This gives people a higher level of understanding of the issues, and because they’re not standing for re-election, they’re much freer in their suggestions for solutions. In parliament and the city council, elected politicians start their re-election campaigns the day after being elected. They always think in short-term solutions and will never challenge their voter base.

Citizens unite
The way we’ve organised our political system – with parties running the way they do today – is a problem. And that’s where the paradox comes in, because you could criticise political parties with very good reason, but at the same time, if we don’t protect our democratic systems as we know them, we’ll get something much worse – Hungary or Trump’s America.

In Doubt, Hope, Action I give an example of a three-step suggestion I put to the Danish Parliament. The first: if citizens can get 50,000 others to support an idea, it has to be debated on the floor of parliament. The second: like all progressive large companies, parliament – the biggest democratic organisation – should have a built-in development department. This will allow them to learn how other countries and cities are working and to identify where they can draw inspiration. The third: chamber reform. In the UK you have a two-chamber system – the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Denmark only has one chamber, the Upper Chamber – the equivalent of the House of Lords – was closed in 1953. My idea was to reintroduce a second chamber, but this time as an ongoing citizens’ assembly. You’d have MPs in one part of parliament and a permanent citizens’ assembly in the other. Voting on laws would remain the MPs’ job but the assembly could influence topics and bring suggestions to the floor.

We’re at a real tipping point as a civilisation – we can go completely in the wrong direction. But at a tipping point, you can also swing things the other way. My attitude is: let’s use this crisis to push us to the next level.

Doubt Hope Action will be published in the UK on 15th May 2026. Follow the link to read Part 1.

Part 3, coming soon, will examine how the UK’s age-old two-party political system is breaking down, how this change could make politics more inclusive for the general population, and what Uffe’s friend Dee Hock – the inspiration behind Doubt, Hope, Action – would have thought about the book.

Doubt, Hope, Action is Uffe’s journey in search of hope and an invitation to a gentle revolution. Blending sharp social analysis with heartfelt optimism, Doubt, Hope, Action urges progressive movements and all people to recognise their shared purpose – and to unite, mobilise, and act. Now is not the time to sit on the sidelines.