Ukip's first elected MP Douglas Carswell, who says it's offensive to dislike foreigners

For all the problems in the modern world, most people living in most parts of the planet are better off in 2014 than they were in 2013. People today generally live longer, healthier, more prosperous lives than their parents or grandparents. And 2015 is likely to be even better.

Why is life getting better for most people? Because we have become ever more interdependent. Instead of each family, village or country trying to do everything for itself, we have learnt how to do things for each other. As a consequence, there is more for everyone.

Far from being Merrie Olde England, life in pre-industrial Britain was grim. Infant mortality was staggeringly high, hunger a constant feature of childhood.she has been.

She’s the former head of the influential Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index (ND GAIN) and sits on the board of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals. Oh, and her blog and Twitter feed have become resilience bibles. Heck, she literally wrote a resilience bible in her City Adaptation Tool.

But what I find to be the coolest part of her background — and this is more a personal note — is as spearhead in the mid-to-late 2000s of the head-turning Climate Action Plan of Chicago, where she still lives and where I grew up. In May 2015, I returned to the Windy City on a family trip and interviewed city officials for this column, which rained praise on the CAP, and here I am three years later