When the employer and their HR chief demanded this little exchange, most people marched in with a thumping heart and sweaty hands.
Where do you see yourself in three years?
The question itself is simple, but sneaky. Who really knows what might develop in thirty-six months? If the answer is “I don’t know,” the door to the outside quietly opens. The supposedly right or expected answer is always some small life plan pointing upward.
“In your chair” isn’t an answer that lands well either. It’s a test with no right answer, but plenty of wrong ones.
To this day I don’t see the point of this question. Too many possible — and above all, logically impossible — answers are standing in the queue. I think this questioning is really more of a power test, with a side order of pitting employees against each other.
Today I’m turning that same question in a different direction. It’s not aimed at one person, but at two countries. My two countries, Canada and Switzerland. And the question doesn’t target a career vision, but the temperature of nature.
So, Canada and Switzerland: where do you see yourselves in three years, that is, in November 2029? The following year, 2030, is when the exam, the test, takes place. Yes, you picked that date yourselves.
Since yesterday, everyone’s back at the table in Antalya. COP31, the thirty-first climate conference, is once again playing “Good COP, Bad COP.”
Both my countries are present. Germany’s Merz shines by his absence.
So, how’s it going with the homework, dear countries? The smaller one first. Switzerland, if you please!
Switzerland arrives at the interview with a fairly tidy résumé. After all, the little country can boast 27.3 percent fewer greenhouse gases than in 1990. That’s what the Federal Office for the Environment states, black on white. Houses heat more cleanly, industry puffs out less. So far, so keen-student. And here comes the uncomfortable question: can you reach the 2030 target of minus 50 percent, dear Switzerland?
No.
From 27 to 50 in six years, after it took thirty-four years to get the first 27 percentage points? An official from the federal office said it plainly last November: the target will be clearly missed. Honest, at least. In a job interview, honesty would be a point in your favour. With glaciers, somewhat less so.
The glaciers are sitting in the room too, melting away with glee. They lost over five percent of their ice last summer. Scientists counted it out meticulously. Switzerland has warmed by 2.8 degrees since pre-industrial times, roughly twice the planet’s average. On May 28, 2025, the Birch Glacier had had enough, and the chunk of mountain, ingredients included, slid into the Lötschental and buried the village of Blatten. In response to the scorching summer, the Federal Council tabled a full fifty-six measures against climate warming two weeks ago. Critics called it band-aid politics.
Where does Switzerland see itself in three years? As so often, Swiss policy sits mid-table — rank 26 out of 63 on the international Climate Change Performance Index. Grade: middling and modest.
Now Canada enters the room. Enormous and friendly. Canada’s résumé doesn’t shine with good results. Still, a full 685 million tonnes were emitted in 2024. That’s seventeen times more than Switzerland, with only about four and a half times the population.
That math never adds up. Against 2005 levels, Canada sits roughly ten percent lower on its climate targets. The target eventually set for 2030? A cut of 40 to 45 percent. Ten out of forty, after nineteen years? And last year the number dropped by a laughable 0.3 percent. Zero point three. Oil and gas climbed at the same time.
In the spring of 2025, a man took the political helm who ought to know better. Mark Carney, central banker, warned insurers about climate change in London back in 2015. He was one of the first bankers carrying a warning sign in his luggage. Ten years later, as Prime Minister of Canada, he scrapped the consumer carbon price and the emissions cap on the oil industry. The electric vehicle mandate went with it. With Alberta, he agreed that industrial carbon pricing would rise lower and slower.
His environment minister resigned on the spot. The old plan had been too costly and too divisive, said Mark Carney. That reaction is partly understandable. After all, tariffs out of Washington have been reshaping a country that above all needs to hold together. Team Canada, indeed. The target will likely be missed, said PM Carney. Honest, but not enough.
Where does Canada see itself in three years? Rank 61 on the same index. Grade: very low. In June, Canada’s environment minister said it was finally time to move from promises to action. That’s the line you say in your annual review as a statement of intent, when you’ve missed last year’s targets. I know that line. I’ve used it myself.
So where’s the catch? In a job interview, the question is asked by the people in charge. The holders of power. Here in Antalya, it’s being asked by the mountain above Blatten, by the wildfire smoke that in some summers made breathing in Newmarket a challenge.
For an employee, “I don’t know” is an honest answer. I’d even call it the best and most honest one there is. For countries, it’s different. Because countries do know. The bare numbers sit on the table, calculated by their own agencies. They know exactly where they’ll be in three years if they keep on puttering along as they are.
So what’s the point of asking where-to at all? So that at least once a year, someone asks the uncomfortable questions and calls the other side to action.
Where do I see myself in three years? Here. In Newmarket, on my bike, with both passports. And with the same question for the same two countries. I hope I get to write differently by then. The Swiss said yes at the ballot box in 2023 to net zero. Canadians elected a climate banker in 2025.
We know what we want. A world our children can still carry on their shoulders. It sounds that simple — until you see the numbers.
Well, knowing and doing are two different things.
And a future of people in hardship and despair, if we stop at knowing. That’s not the answer I want to find myself giving in three years.
