Radically Reframing Climate Change A Guide to Saving Ourselves, reviewed

We look at this call to arms by Will Hackman, published this year by Bloomsbury. See more about Radically Reframing Climate Change, A Guide to Saving Ourselves here. 

Radically Reframing Climate Change A Guide to Saving Ourselves, reviewed

Whew, tough times to write this book, when the planet is in such dire straits, and you have a president who is actually undermining environmental safe guards, destroying data and actively embracing polluting technologies. Even when renewables are now cheaper, growing faster, providing boom times for jobs, and all being rejected because the fossil fuel industry have stuffed the Potus’s pockets with money to advocate their agenda – even though it is raising deaths, global warming and so many other negative health trends.

Will Hackman acknowledges that, in such a terrible moment in time, with key people in positions of leadership, it really does require a massive effort to counter their negative impact, combined with the negative impacts of global warming too. It seems crazy to even need to spell this one out, firebomb forest fires in Spain and France this summer, repeated heat waves in the UK, higher deaths from heat and drowning. We have had climate change deniers, lobbyists looking to distort, deny, disassemble scientific facts, to raise corporate profits, while people die.

How do they sleep at night? What about their own children, who will have to live in this future diminished world, no matter how rich you are, if the planet is destroyed, where will you live? Naturally there is no point in drowning in despair, or rather, you might as well go down fighting. As Hackman points out too, many of these awful, self interested current leaders will not be alive in the very near future, so it is up to those with their best years ahead of them to be proactive and take charge and drag things back around. Populism has currently brought some awful, self interested people to positions of leadership, but the pendulum can equally swing back just as quickly too.

More about Radically Reframing Climate Change

An inspirational guide to discussing and fighting climate change for millennial and GenZ voters that cuts through the usual myths and scare tactics to provide practical advice.

Will Hackman is a Millennial, and he is pissed. Two wars, two global economic catastrophes, and a pandemic combined with a ballooning cost-of-living crisis and crushing student loan debt can do that to a person. But there’s one thing that compounds these challenges that is unequaled in human history: the ticking time bomb of fossil fuel emissions. Millennials and Gen-Zers will be left to deal with the worst of the climate change fallout well after those responsible have passed away. And we have never been more divided.

In Radically Reframing Climate Change: A Guide to Saving Ourselves, Will Hackman identifies three main obstacles to solving climate change: polarization, paralysis, and stale, ineffective messaging. He empowers readers to turn their anxiety or apathy into passion, and anger into action at the personal, community, and government levels. The climate rallying cries to “Save the Planet” no longer work in our hyper-partisan world, nor do images of polar bears on melting glaciers. The problem isn’t scientific, fact-based, or even technological. It’s political, emotional, and ideological. Hackman provides a path forward for engagement and voter mobilization that combats apathy, dread, and resentment, and builds greater issue identification.

Hackman reframes the climate crisis as a humanity crisis, arguing that we must change how we think and talk about climate change, both in our conversations with non-believers and among those who care. Assuring humanity’s place on a changing planet will require a near universal level of public support we will never reach if we keep making the same mistakes. We know how to do this. But the stakes have never been higher and time is running out.

More about the author

Will Hackman has more than fifteen years’ experience working in US political campaigns, public policy process, strategic communications, coalition building, climate activism, and global environmental conservation advocacy. Will is a frequent climate policy expert voice online and in the media and has been interviewed on several climate change-related podcasts and filmed a TEDx in 2022. His writing has appeared in The Hill and Washington Post. He lives in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley in Front Royal, Virginia with his wife Paula, tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains and the north entrance to Shenandoah National Park.

See more reviews here.