The article announces a special issue of the BMJ focusing on New Year's resolutions for the grand challenges of health and well-being. The opening series of short essays is mainly devoted to the climate emergency, which the magazine describes as an inevitable and most urgent topic. The goal is to start each year with such a series of essays on one of the great global challenges. The inspiration is Kim Stanley Robinson's 2019 novel "Ministry of the Future" (doi:10.1136/bmj.r2468), which imagines the creation of a subsidiary body under the Paris Agreement in 2025. The role of this "ministry" in the novel is to find solutions to the climate emergency and protect future generations. The author reports that Robinson explains in an exclusive interview with The BMJ (doi:10.1136/bmj.r2658) that the book is as relevant today as it was at the time of its publication.